Feedback on the Halloween Update (From a PvP perspective)

I love how Costume Brawl got reduced to "boring" in one update. Don't get me wrong, there definatly was some issues with the format, and I can see the Krewe really tried, I highly doubt there will be alot of PvP'ers (big word, more later) left playing it after this update.

Note I say PvP'ers because a large part of the PvE community venturing in PvP don't care about fun, they mostly care about rewards. On top of that, due to their lack of PvP experience, most of them wouldn't even understand what is fun and whatnot. (Similar to how peope in the 80's concidered Space Invaders etc fun.)


Syncing

Syncing is fixed, but in what manner? One of the biggest complaints of the match-up system is the large amount of terrible people playing. Now, don't get me wrong: it's a good thing syncing no longer works (I must admit I synced last year aswell), but at what cost? Imagine if syncing was weeds growing on your lawn. You've succesfully burned the weeds to the ground, but at the same time your intire lawn is reduced to a pile of ash...

Getting consecutive wins is one of the most fun parts about PvP, because it gives the feeling (illusion?) you're getting rewarded for your play. Now, it's only a matter of time before you get teamed up with 4 complete retards, and your sense of achievement goes down the shitter, because you simply can't carry an intire team. I've done enough runs last year where I didn't sync, and I got teamed up with 4 other semi-competent people. My skill was more ofte than not that little bit we needed to carry our team to victory, and my allies were good enough not to loose matches and ultimately frustrate me to death.

Now, you'dd be lucky if you get more than 3 consecutives, solely because the overal skill level of peope is so low, you might aswell Rock-Paper-Scissors. This alone is for me a reason not to play it anymore.

Instead, they should've just fixed syncing at it's core, and that's shuffling the list of entering players 2-3 seconds before going in, and then form teams out of that shuffle. They've ruined a large part of the fun in a format solely to fix a problem which could've been fixed alot easier...


Bar Changes

Then there's the bars. The main problem was, everyone agrees, the Sin bar. The Palm Strike template was simply so strong, it had no problems killing every other bar 1v1, and even being able to beat most other professions 2v1.
However, the problem never was the efficiency of the Sinbar, but rather the inefficiency of all the other bars.

The Sin bar was so strong not because it was overpowered, but because it was overal; it had healing, condition removal, survivability and killing power. Not only did this make the Sinbar the best to play, it also made it the most fun to play. Nowhere during the time you played sin, even if you died or got rolled 0-20 you got the feeling you got gimped because of your bar. Every other bar had some kind of lack to it, which made it useless in certain situations giving you that "Damn, if I would've been a sin, this would've went differently (better)".

So what should've happened is they should've brought every bar on par with the Sin's, rather than the Sin's with every other. Why? Because the Sin bar was, by far, the best and most fun/complete bar to play, similar to balancing PvP around GvG.
The Monk should've gotten RoD, Veil, some kind of prot elite (think SoR or PnH), maybe even Word of Censure. (If they wanted to go more offensive)

Every other profession in general needed more damage, warriors shoudl've gotten Heavy Blow (for Dev hammer). Rangers were relatively fine, but barbed arrows for their elite, and cripshot or melshot for one of their attacks would've made them alot more suitable. I can keep on going for just about every profession. Rather than making the Sinclass incomplete and gimped, they should've made every other class complete, or compensate lack in certain areas by extras in others.

Now we've got 8 relatively boring bars to play, or atleast for the people who know what they're doing (Just because monkeys think it's fun to play with a stick doesn't mean playing with a stick is fun) because there simply isn't much you can do if your bar is gimped. Blind as a sin? /sit for 8 seconds.

And this whole "bring down every bar to a redicilously bad level"-thing wouldn't have been so bad, if it wasn't for the fact that every bar is so straight-forward. As a Warrior, you litterely go in, and spam your shit. I mean, there really isn't many other ways of playing your bar. As an Ele, you go in and spam your shit. If you don't kill shit, too bad, nothing more you could've done.
Agreed, it's a little bit the nature of the beast (sealed deck), but when you had bars like the old Palm Strike sin, you could work around 90% of the problems you faced simply by playing differently or playing better.

Every scrimmage has now turned into a Rock-Paper-Scissor match. If you're facing an Ele 1V1 as a frontliner, you're going to loose. (Unless they somehow mess up on ashblast + Lsurge) If you face a ranger or rit or monk as an ele, you're going to loose.

Rather than giving every bar some versatile skills, they stripped all bars of all versatily. This in result turns the format in a very boring one to play, atleast for me, and every friend I've pm'ed so far to come and play some CB together. (and talk on vent for the lulz)

The bottom line here is that the balancing of the format (It's relatively balanced now with the exception of a profession or 2) came at the cost of removing the one profession which showed the format in perfection...


GvG Changes

Then there's the GvG updates: 50 bags of ToT-bags per win. I like the intiative, but once again implemented competely wrong. For starters, why would PvE'ers start GvG'ing all of a sudden? 50 ToT bags in peanuts compared to farming them, or doing CB. Given the fact that on average, you'll need 2 GvG's for one set of bags (50/50 ratio, probably even lower for PvE'ers), and an average GvG lasts about 25 minutes (including set-up, waiting time, etc).
That's 50 bags per hour, hardly worth playing for, especially when you still don't know what you're doing.

And even if PvE'ers started playing in masses all of a sudden, what's stopping them from turning this into a RR event? Anet once again mistaked promoting PvP with promoting farming. More and better rewards are good, as long as they can't be farmed. "Force" PvE'ers (so to speak) to LEARN to play better and more efficient, and reward that effort. For those who absolutely don't want to PvP, don't. (So don't give unique rewards, but don't spit in our faces either -like 50 ToT bags-)

Nontheless, for the people already GvG'ing, this is a nice bonus, but ask yourselves, is this really what the GvG scene needs? Already alliance chat (of a top 30 alliance) is getting filled with jokes as to how redicilous this really is. Surely, it's welcome free money, but this in no way makes up for the years of neglect, or gives people a feeling of "satisfaction" all of a sudden.


Final Statement

So in overal, what happened is Costume Brawl got reduced from being a fun format for both Die-Hards as the casual gamers, to a format at best playable for an hour orso, only to leave it with a taste of sentiment to the old CB.
As for GvG, I believe hardly anything will change for both the GvG or the non-GvG community. Rewards aren't high enough to lure people, and if they were they'dd be given for the wrong reasons. Getting more people to PvP is psychology more than good game balance or other attributes.
You got to get people to want to GvG, rather than to want to farm the rewars for GvG, and I believe this update failed miserably at that.

I can see, and feel, Anet is trying to reach out. But it's FAR to little, maybe not too late. Anet, and apparently the Test Krewe, still has alot to learn as to fixing the problem rather than the symptoms. A good effort, but I can not see me enjoying this Haloween more than I would've any other week, aside from the "free" ToT bags I occasionaly get...

Regarding the GvG presents, this is just a test for future implementation. Hopefully, we might see something better there.

I don't play CB at all, so I won't comment on the skill bars there. However, shuffling teams every CB game is a pretty depressing last resort to fixing syncing.

And I love it how you reduced your entire argument into a poorly stated opinion with a single sentence.

You wrote all that about a once a year gimmick mini arena? I mean consider that when you think how much time they really have to spend on making it something amazing... it's just a week long activity.

Agree with this. All of this nonsense for an event that only happens once a year. Seriously? Maybe you have something better to do no?

Very true on the whole. The simple fact is that the only frontliner in this CB format thats decent is the derv. Paras like always are pretty gimped. Rangers, Rits, Monks, and Eles are decently strong. Mes are nice, but not enough offence power themselves, its all focused on what the others are doing, that and its all reactive not proactive. Necros are a joke.

Here's my 2 cents regarding CB:

syncing fix - all the same for me, didn't sync before, can't sync now
mesmer bar - lots of fun echo-ing stuff, but i HATE waste not, want not. needs moar pdrain/leech sig
new map - pretty but not interesting to play
format - getting teamed with new random ppl every round, win or loose, is not fun

overall - it's still bad

This.

"Good Players" don't get to tell everyone else what is fun. If 5 or 10 times the number of people play CB for an hour each day, while the sync pros quit, mission accomplished.

P.S. I'm getting 3-5 consecs quite regularly.

There's a reason why the re-randomization was done with CB, but I'm not sure if I have the liberty to say.

As to the Build Changes - they were made to be balanced so that each build has its own niche, and in turn is strong against some professions while weak against others. We spent a lot of time to get it feeling right, because it is simply impossible to have every build able to use everything. Why was last year's sin build so fun to play? Because it had everything necessary. That is what made it too strong and not every profession can mimic this.

I have no comment on the GvG stuff since I hardly ever GvG.

I prefer this way of playing, it's better to see too strong team pown all the teams, I play for fun and not to win (and I did GVG, HA, TA)there is more "variety" and "competitiveness" for both proplayer the must give the best to try to balance things, and for the noobs so that they understand what it means to work in teams (even if sometimes lack the base experience).
for someone is better having a pro team, but if there is 1 noob in a team with 5 pro the first don't undarstand what he do and mirror the action of other without learn (this is my expirience first time i came in pvp).
And the concept is RANDOM, more random than this can't be.

(sorry for grammar errors if any)

Wow...

Really?

Your beef about the lack of consecutive wins is a moot one. I just went in twice, and both times I got 10 win streaks (one of the streaks had to end because of an update). As far as I'm concerned, the syncing fix is fine by me.

Also, the bars, as far as I can tell, are fine. They all are non-optimal, but decent enough for the purposes of costume brawl (I personally like the ranger bar).

Agreed on both "syncing fix" and skillbars.

It's good that syncing no longer works, but the fact that I'm limited to 15 points per win is f-ing stupid.
Before if I had a good team I had an advantage over bad teams- how's that unfair? Good beats bad, simple. Instead, no R3 Skillz for me.

Skillbars- sin bar now is laughable, so is ranger bar. They definitely should work on other classes' skillbars instead of dumbing down the most powerful.
But that's ANet for you, silly half-measures all around.
In my eyes, instead of making all builds equally good, they made them equally bad.
And playing with a bad build isn't really my idea of fun.

Guys this serious! How can I get a serious streak going without syncing? GW is my second job

I'm a sad panda (ps I'm for sell 10k ecto..unded)

The most fun part about syncing is that even if people sync (be it CB, FA, JQ etc) they still fail.
Hello [KISS]

Dammit, someone ninja'd.

Yeah, the bars are fine.

It's how they fixed syncing that's the problem. The analogy from the other thread was a nice one, in an attempt to get rid of the weed on the lawn they ended up torching it all to ashes. Getting to know your teammates and adjust to each other's playstyles over consecutive battles is no longer an option. New terrible players every round, big incentive to socialize..

The playstyle that is being promoted is rushing in to get 20 quick points so you maximize points earned per hour. Getting a bad start? Start saccing so you can get back to outpost as soon as possible to try again. Capping shrines and await your enemy's next move? Screw that, not worth it! People who like to play with their brain disconnected and roll their face across the keyboard will love this new CB. Unfortunately these people seem to be today's majority so if they are having fun this way I guess the rest of us should just shut up and do something else.

For the love of god, stop resetting my skill order each game.

That doesn't describe the change at all.

I don't fully understand what you're trying to say with this. My intire point was that for PvE'ers playing Costume Brawl is playing Costume Brawl. You could throw in a lever that gives you immunity for 20 seconds, a catapult which kills everyone on the map, and whatnotelse, and the average PvE'er still wouldn't frown or ask questions, solely because they don't know how competitivity or balance works. (for PvP anyways)

If you showed a person from the 80's space invaders, he'dd be competely overwhelmed because he's never experienced anything else. If you were somehow able to take a gamer from the 80's (if they even existed back then) to the now, and showed him all the stuff we have got now, he'dd see how boring Space Invaders really is.

I mean yeah, the game's original (for it's time) and nowadays has a nostalgic value, but compared to nowaday's games (purely on the game and today's standards) only a handfull of peope would enjoy it more than 30 mintutes.

A PvE'er who has never experienced competitive PvP, doesn't know where the value lies in a competitive game or format. Like mentioned earlier, you could have him play something competely overpowered (which makes him beat every other player with the touch of a button), he'dd see nothing wrong with it because he doesn't know what it's supposed to be like.

I don't know why people go so bend over that one comparison? Are you guys all just some hard-core vintage/retro gamers or something? I didnd't mean it offensive in any way, neither towards PvE'ers nor towards Space Invaders.

If someone said I was terrible at World of Warcraft PvP, and I have no clue how WoW balance works, I'dd say he's correct because I've never played the game.

I have no idea where this hostility comes from...

@ Konig:

Yeah, maybe you could PM me the reason or something? But untill we (the community) get an explanation, you can't really blame us for asking or complaining. The solution is so obvious, yet these redicilous measures get taken which more often than not ruin the fun. (And in this case they do)
If there is a solid reason to do things this way, I'dd love to hear it. But common sense is telling me it's either one of 2 things:
- To stop people from going in during dead hours, and then play hours straight (cuz even if they manage to form a synced team, they'll be broken up the second more people start to play)

OR the more obvious one:
- Certain hacks which allow hackers to team up with whomever they want. (I've heard from reliable source this has been a possibility for a long time)

On the build changes:

I know not every profession can mimic the Palm Strike bar, but most professions would come really close. Think Hammer warrior with enraging charge, think water ele with steam, think illusion mesmer with frustration and some interrupts, etc...

There's enough tools to play around with, but instead you've (as the intire TK together) opted to push every profession in more in a RPS-box.

I've played most of the bars, and pretty much all of them have the same problem: It's either raw damage or raw defence, and each bar just counters another. On top of that, from a PvP perspective where the skill/reward ratio should matter, these bars are far from ideal.

The Rage of the Ntouka warrior for example:

The perma rush is a nice feature, but the fact that you're sword and have absolutely no form of interrupt means your intire playstyle gets reduced to C+Space => Rush => 2345. Bull's on this bar is fun (Hitting Bull's is always fun) but redundant for many ways:
-You have perma rush, and most other professions don't have a perma speedboost, so you'll kill them anyways.
-Most people don't even bother to run. (You rezz anyways, they don't know (bad ppl), ...)

I'dd rather have seen Savage Slash, and Grapple on the bar... From a playability point of view, this would make alot more sense, because you're not just playing a waiting game anymore with elementalists: "When are they going to mess up their Ash blast so I can finally hit them, zzzzz"

Every profession could've still gotten his own niche, but the common ground, the versatility and playability, should've been there. Instead, you're always in that position which I've mentioned in my first post, where you're in a certain situation, but unable to do anything about it because your bar doesn't allow you to. All you can do is sit back, and hope the enemy instead will change something about it. (Aka, RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO up)
For someone who enjoys competitive PvP (and the old CB), this is very frustrating...

All I wonder is why not every bar has been given some form of KD, interrupt or movement control (for both you or the enemy) skill, simply put versatility skill, when surely every profession has them.

Monks have RoD, Bane Signet (though they do have it), Armor ignoring damage, Buff's, Healings, Hex and Condi removals.

Rits have the channeling line, they recently got binding chains which is perfect. They shoudl've gotten anguished was lingwah and that channeling hex that gives energy aswell though.

Dervishes have featherfooth, big damage spikes, hex removal, acces to many conditions, etc...

Paragons (despite being gimped by nature) have the ability to do large ranged damage. They also have one of the best utility lines in the game: command. Brace Yourself is invaluable in formats with small-sized teams. Make Haste would provide great movement control. Barbed Spear + Maiming Spear, ...

Eles have so much utility, but instead they're given a below-par, unfun bar to play. (It's on par with all the other bars though) Why not glyph of immolation + snares and steam. Or Lighteing Javelin, Shock, Windborne, Gale, Freezing Gust, etc...

The necro bar that exists now is alright, but could've done with Weaken Knees and life siphon.

It's not like not a single bar couldn't have been improved a little bit. And my point merely was: from a PvP perspective it's more fun to play a complete bar than to play a gimped bar. And I'm pretty sure most people who played CB so far, and understand the basics of PvP balance would agree with this.

It's just not fun playing as any of the professions, because it's nothing more than: Run in, see if your profession beats his profession. If it does: engage, if it doesn't, run...

CB Sucks this year soooo much Even without syncing but just normally playing in the last year the best part of CB was getting a solid team with like 2 other people that had brains and were able to communicate and get a basic strategy working and getting the consec wins with them. I had streaks of 40+ wins WITHOUT syncing and it was a great fun AND very rewarding.

This year it's pathetic, miserable, just bad. Not only the players are almost all completelly horrible (as every year in the first days of CB) but victories aren't really rewarding - when you get a new team of clueless noobs at next match wins feel like loses. Big disappointment.

Oh and as for GvG added rewards, if the real thing that will be added later instead of the ToT bags will be worthwhile, I can imagine GvG turning into insane /resign abuse among PvE guilds.

tbh the bars are not the essential problem here, its the new system for dealing with syncing

and while you are right in saying that it is not a good change, your argument about why it is so is not a very good one. it is not so much with the win streaks that matters, but rather the fact that good players are being forced to carry the team every single game. this is frustrating to these skilled players, and will drive them away.

having a long win streak is alright, but what is more important is playing a truly fun, engaging match that rewards skill and high lvl game play. does the new system do that? no, because those ppl who knows how to play are carrying game after game, and helplessly brought down by incompetent teammates. if the average player skill is in fact high, and most ppl are capable of making sound decisions that contribute to the team, then this system is not that bad. however, this is not the case because the avg skill lvl is just that bad. maybe it has to do with anet neglecting pvp, idk.

also, the new cb map is a joke, and demonstrates, once again, how inept the devs are. basically, the whole thing just rewards whoever has the most dmg. it completely undermines any strategic play as most of the games on that map just turns into a big brawl. i would go further into details, but then again, its pretty pointless to expect any thing good in gw at this point.

I think your whole problem stems from treating CB as serious PvP.

for some players, it is. for example, ex hbers, because its resemblence to the deleted hb, or event players, who just likes to play festival games. but wait, even if ppl do treat it srsly, whats wrong with that?

Yeah, I've thought about the rewards not being on scale with the effort of carrying your team each time, but I decided to put it out for the obvious reason that as a good player, you will indeed get more ToT bags than as a bad player. (Because you'll have more wins)

However, the quantity is not as much as it should be. The way the system works now is it promotes "leeching". The best players would have to give in rewards because they'll loose more games because of bad players. The worst players would gain more rewards than they would've in the old system, but they'll get teamed up alot more with the better players who would've been in on 20+ consecutive runs.

All in all, it made the format more random, and less skill-rewarding, but this all in the eye of the beholder to judge. From a PvE perspective, this would be concidered positive, because the average PvE will, in fact, get more wins under this new system. (Albeit a redicilously low percentage)

So to avoid further confusion or discussion, I decided to let it out alltogether...

@ Mr:

By posting on these forums, you seem to be taking GW serious. (As do I) I can make a million jokes and claims about this fact, and all of them would be pointless and true, but it wouldn't serve to anything.

I think Costume Brawl is how Codex Arena shoudl've been implemented, and after 5 years, I still have a sparkle of belief that Anet can be convinced to implement costume brawl (albeit in it's old format) as a full time PvP-format with a ladder and such, because it is alot more enjoyable, and fresh, than just about every other PvP-format.

seems to me some people here think they are too cool for school.
blaming an event for being unable to handle your rage at being unable to fully control the field is sad.
get over it, its supposed to be fun, a game remember.
i dont care what anyone thinks while im having fun, do you?

Would you prefer 10? Or what about the 5 from DA?

I find rangers annoying to kill and assassins is fun to play as - even with the lack of defense. As I said in my previous post, each professions' bar has its pros and cons. As they are meant to.

I cannot say the reason - in any form - as it would breach the NDA. You'll have to wait. And I am not blaming you for complaining, I'm merely saying there was a reason why it was done to CB.

"The solution is so obvious" - yet you never say it. Or do you mean the shuffling? Unfortunately, due to the districts, that cannot be done and the district aspect of outposts is too tied into the game to remove - as far as I'm aware, at least.

I've never heard of this and you saying you had a reliable source without saying who that reliable source is far less than reliable. The only hacks I know which you're talking about is syncing.

Which requires you to think and also focus on capping rather than just having one big arse brawl in a ball while 1 person from 1 team realizes "hey, everyone's here, I'll go solo cap and not have any issues!" like the past few years.

Where's the issue in that?

But it still isn't a series PvP. It's nothing like HB.

in this case, then tell me why this new map is so bad at encouraging ppl to "think and focus on capping". afaik, almost every game on that map turns into a "big arse brawl in a ball", apparantly the person who goes solo capping is useless because no matter how hard you cap on this map, or the other norn map, the team who spams out the most dmg in a brawl will win. these maps are so small that it is extremely difficult to avoid either a huge brawl or getting rolled.

wait, are you stating this as an objective fact? that anet wrote in cold hard stone saying that "cb is not a serious pvp and nobody should take it seriously or care about it"? if yes then i would like to see that

Gamer doesn't count as a PvP accomplishment in the HoM. Gamer doesn't help your Balth faction. Costume Brawl is not PvP according to ANet.

and so people should allow the inept devs to force everything down their throat? even if its a bad update? now i know how gw went down the drain

GW has yet to go down the drain. It's still active, CB is active, obviously you're not in the majority here. GW is old, that's all. You should seriously stop complaining about something that isn't bad.

I wouldn't doubt that you hate CB just because you used to sync. Same with the others who're complaining.

I've played a good number of CB matches and in fact won every match. Never had the same team - a few times I fought the people who were on my previous team. I was playing the so called "sucky" assassin. Yet... I did so well? Wait, what? That is the complete opposite of the arguments of your and the OP!

see, again you continue to make objective claims that are either irrelevant or unfounded.

yes, gw is old, but the state of pvp that it is in is a direct result of the devs actions. some players don't like that, and that includes me, my old ta and hb friends, and now my gamer friends who looked forward to playing cb this whole yr.

cb may be active, but i doubt it will be for much longer. idk maybe im wrong, but only time will tell.

now about the complaining part, if you can prove that my, or the ops, reasons for thinking this update is bad, then you can accuse me of that. but so far i am only raising a different point of view, that you do not like, in this discussion.

wrong, i dont like the old system either, but that does nothing to discredit valid arguments against the new one.

yea, ever heard of something called fallacy of hasty generalization? yea, thats what you are doing. even if you win every single match it has nothing to do with the argument that it is unfair for the good players to carry every single game. its just irrelevant.

ps: i played sin too, for about 40-50 games now, and i won a lot of these games. but it has nothing to do with me thinking that this update is sht.

Idk I rolled a ranger and thought it was pretty fun. I always seemed to get a minimum streak of 5 and never really lost when the game was 5v5. The builds are bad sure, but the warrior and ranger bars (only two I've played so far) kept me entertained because I wasn't gimped compared to everyone else.

There is an awful lot of shit talk going on though for something that seems so...casual. Not to mention I always seem to get someone on my team who takes it upon himself to order everyone around and they usually give terrible orders. I end up overcalling them and my team usually follows my lead cause I guess they get annoyed by those players too, lol.

Overall its still fun because its not something you can always do. It isn't fun enough for me to want to play it for hours on end every day like GvG is/was, but still fun...

CB is one of the best PvP formats, it is player Vs player. You can tell the PvPers who play in CB compared to the less serious and PvEers as they wander aimlessly, run into 4 players thinking they can take on the world, cant work the maths that 3v5 is not good odds when you dont have shrine advantage so maybe go cap some?

Anyway, seems some TK folk cant really decide what PvP constitutes. Is CB serious, me and many other people I play with have been looking forward to this. Darn pleased about the syncing being knocked on the head but at the cost of possibly playing with good players, finding synergy with players that can actually play the game? Hmmm......

Some bars are certainly not as much fun, like really Echo on the mesmer? What? Seriously?

No hex removal on the monk?

Wait, you (TK and anet) actively decided to play CB as rocks, paper and scissors? Have some professions that can beat others etc? You decided to inform people in your opinion what beats what? Like really? This is a format to showcase incredible bars and what classes can do, and you failed hard at it.

No need for the TK to defend the tripe for this years CB here, please. It is clear that the TK and anet really dont understand the fantastic thing CB was, and could be.

Surprised? Yes. Disappointed? Yes.

Silver

My 2 cents on this horrible Necro bar

From a quick glance and little studying of it, half the skills require a health sacrifice(and almost no way to make up for it because Blood Renewal has 15% health sacrifice and must be cast every 7 seconds) and Ravenous Gaze is a joke. To break even on the health loss you have to hope that you can hit AT LEAST 3 of their team members (at 500 health, and many have more than that) to benefit from the skill(and from a few matches today, it seemed like people didn't want to group too much). Sure it has some so-so degen if you catch them all(more grouping issues) with Ulcerous lungs, then hit them all with various skills under the effects of barbed signet. So it does have some so-so synergy between plague sending and foul feast or between the skills mentioned above, but overall, that build seems no where near alright

True, and that's a good thing, but the problem is that the pros and cons are so straightforward, individual play hardly matters anymore. Simply put again: You've taken a format, and succesfully made it a 10-way Rock-Paper-Scissorts. And this might work for the average PvE'er (once again no offence intended), but for the average PvP'er (Hence thread title) this is unacceptable.
Ok, could be true. What about shuffling the teams when they are formed. Obviously teams from different districts can oppose eachother (If 4 people enter from Polish, and 4 from Russian, they will both be assigned in their respective teams with members from their district), this means there is a pool of 8 names created somewhere. Right now, syncing abuses the fact that the game puts all 4 players from the same district (or region) in the same team.
Why not make it so the game randomly puts the 8 member in either team.

So even when syncers succesfully sync all 4/5 members into the same battle, the chance of them being on the same side will be 12.5% (If I'm not mistaken)/6.75%. (Percentages calculated from the top of my head assuming the first guy can be on any team, the second has 50% to be in the first, so do the next players, resulting in a chance drop by 50% each time a new member needs to be in their team)

That's 12.5% (4 players)/6.75% (5 players) chance opposed to the 100% chance which still exists today in RA; People from the same region still get teamed up together. That, in my eyes, would seem a pretty decent fix to the syncing problem.

You can argue all you want about this, but you can't argue the fact that a monkey could do this. Guild Wars gets reduced to nothing more than Rock-Paper-Scissors where you always win as long as you know who wins against who.

The fact that it's either this or that is the intire point I'm complaining about. The fact that the bars are so straightforward and one dimensional, no form of input is needed whatsoever. The game plays itself for you.

Whereas ideally, every profession would be able to beat every profession in certain conditions, and a good player would beat a bad player. Giving every bar versatility and utility (which is what I'm preaching for) does just that.

No reason to be throwing insults and namecalling around. Yes, I used to sync, but not because I wanted to win but because I wanted to play together with my friends. I've played more matches (way more) non-synced than I did synced. Also, one of the first statements in my OP is that I think it's a good thing syncing got fixed.

However, something leads me to believe the Teste Krewe had alot to do with the sync fix, aswell as (obviously) the skill bars. To me, you're just trying to defend poorly made descissions by a majority of PvE'ers to a PvP format. Yeah yeah, we can bitch all day about wether or not CB is PvP or not. There's no NPC's, you're facing other players, there's no PvE skills and you enter from GToB. In my eyes, and by the general definition, it's concidered PvP.

I never said you couldn't get consecutives or win matches. Or atleast not in a non-dramatising way. If the gods of fortune are smiling upon you, you can obviously get 10 consecutives. You can also win the lottery if you're lucky, that doesn't mean someone should try to get his income from winning the lottery.

The system is flawed from the ground up for reasons mentioned before. When you finally, legitimately, get a decent team you almost feel bad for wining because you know you'll loose them the next round.

The better players carry the worse players, every match. There's no point educating, calling team chat tactics or in general communicating with your team because:

A) Consecutives don't matter, so it doesn't matter if you win every match or not.
B) It takes too long and gets too tiring to re-explain tactics every match.

All this update has done is turn CB more into a buttonbashformat. This might amuse people like you yourself, and many others, but anyone with the least sense of competivity and game balance will feel something is off, and it simply doesn't work.

Anet has once again done what they do best, and that's dumbing the game down so the masses can farm them. Instead they should be focusing educating the masses so they finally learn how become efficient in GW and find synergies and ultimately truly learn how to play GW.

"Why?" you ask? I don't know, because I like to believe a game can be more than rolling your head over the keyboard. I like to believe there is such a thing as intelligent gaming where skill and brainpower matters. Let PvE'ers have their PvE (I concider myself 50% PvE'er too), but please give us PvP'ers the PvP we deserve aswell.

Tooooo much QQ.

On another note,
this year I think we have the best CB so far. Why? Random teams. I've said it briefly in another post, but random teams = every team is the same, same level of noobness or leetness (more or less). I easily had 6 consecutive wins earlier today, some lost matches, but at least I wasn't as annoyed as last year. Yes, last year I managed 20-27 consecutives but I also had my ass handed by good teams over and over and over again to the point where it became insanely annoying. That's probably the reason for which I stopped doing CB when I got 1000 or so gamer points.

This statement is utterly inane.

Fun is fun. Enjoyment is enjoyment. Mirth is mirth, etc. If everyone is enjoying themselves when they are playing, they are doing it right, because games exist for the purpose of enjoying ourselves. Saying "Stop having fun! You don't understand proper recreation" is just about the most foolish thing one can say about a game.

If you aren't enjoying yourself in a particular activity.....don't do it. If you don't like playing one format, stop playing that and do something you enjoy. The fact that you don't like Costume Brawl isn't a legitimate logical flaw in its design. It just means the format doesn't cater directly to you. It's a casual format, meant to be a minor diversion open to anyone (I'm amused by the fact that you declare that the previous CB, which you admit to syncing, was "fun for both the Die-Hards and the casual gamers", without perhaps pondering if your syncing made it not-so-fun for a certain category) with the purpose of creating general PvP play. It is not hardcore. It is not serious. It is not meant to be anything more than a fun time, hence the Gamer title.

If you are not having fun with it, describe why. But don't tell people who are having a good time that they aren't enjoying themselves properly, because that is just not classy.

I spend too much time on facebook because I just spent a solid minute trying to find out how to like this post.

i read... my assassin no longer has an advantage over other classes and that makes me not want to play.

it's fake gvg. enjoy it for what it is. you know where to go for better competition.

maybe i'll try it out with my ranger now or my war or nec or whatver.