Guild Wars 2

Been playing pvp on an off for a long time, but started taking it serious for the last month. I also started watching tournaments. WTS, GO4GW2, etc. But I feel the amount of elementalists in the games are shatteringly demotivating for me as a ranger/warrior/necro.

Dealing with them personally is, for me, a problem. Their skills provide healing, blocking, armor, mobilit, aoe damage/area denial, and decent damage, whereas I feel the classes I play has to rely on about two of those gameplay aspects.

However, personal problems aside, I think it’s a huge blow to other classes that a team would go: “We could either bring a ranger or a necro… No! Let’s bringer another elementalist!”

I know Orange Logo didn’t run ele in the finals, but that team could win with 5 naked spirit rangers if they so desired.

So even if I’m just bad at the game, the current meta kind of speaks for itself.

The current meta is about ele and engi. All you need to win is: 2 engi, 2 ele and a guardian (only for condi removal and stability, to stomp your downed enemy.

That’s because engi have swiftness, vigor and protection almost all the time and a direct damage dealer can’t kill a engi easy (and sometimes just can’t).
And the ele have a large amount of condition remove skills, healing skills and good damage skills that make it a perfect class against condition damage builds.

Then a good ele can kill also a direct damage class and a good engi can also kill a condition damage build (but only for it’s -50% of condition duration if under 33% hp and -25% condiiton duration by rune that make the engi able to avoid the 75% of condition damage just watching the enemy in the eyes and smiling. Ah, and they can transform a condition in a boon every 20 seconds just with a minor passive automatic trait).

Then if you have problems against ele and engi is a normal thing. Because if you find a good player and you’re alone you can leave the point and flee to your allies because in 1vs1 against a good ele/engi you can’t win.

But we’re lucky because there’s a lot of bad engi and ele that play, making us able to kill them.

well, the winners of WTS were not the abjured and they ran only one ele. sure, basically every team brings one of them, but the same used to be said of bunker class. d/d ele + thief just seems to be what most teams are built from.

regardless it’s never stopped me from abandoning my two mains. i play them well and they perform well, often killing d/d 1v1.

Psh. I laugh at Ele’s. All they do is run around healing, pop armor of earth, and then a thief chops them a few times and they drop.

choovanski.5462:

well, the winners of WTS were not the abjured and they ran only one ele. sure, basically every team brings one of them, but the same used to be said of bunker class. d/d ele + thief just seems to be what most teams are built from.

regardless it’s never stopped me from abandoning my two mains. i play them well and they perform well, often killing d/d 1v1.

Right, sorry. Orange Logo*.

And it’s not that I have abandoned ranger, but experiencing crafting a team, using the right professions and such, suddenly made me realise the lack of space for my ranger. I’m more easily countered than other professions doing the same role. I could take you through the whole conversation, but we ended up at guard, engi, ele/warr, ele, and thief. (thank god I play one of those!)

We dont run dual ele ourselves solely on the fact that only one of us can play the class. :P

MeTx.6712:

choovanski.5462:

well, the winners of WTS were not the abjured and they ran only one ele. sure, basically every team brings one of them, but the same used to be said of bunker class. d/d ele + thief just seems to be what most teams are built from.

regardless it’s never stopped me from abandoning my two mains. i play them well and they perform well, often killing d/d 1v1.

Right, sorry. Orange Logo*.

And it’s not that I have abandoned ranger, but experiencing crafting a team, using the right professions and such, suddenly made me realise the lack of space for my ranger. I’m more easily countered than other professions doing the same role. I could take you through the whole conversation, but we ended up at guard, engi, ele/warr, ele, and thief. (thank god I play one of those!)

Orange Logo actually loose reasonably often in EU. i think you need to watch more EU Go4 cups, i’ve seen double thief win, and 55hp run a clerics staff ele. EU are more creative build and comp wise than NA, and weirdly enough they haven’t had one team just dominate the scene. abjured’s rule over NA shows the flaw will always rolling meta, that or NA players are just worse.

3 cele 2 zerk/rabid

Celestial need to be meta warrior/engi/ele.

Rabid/zerk need to be picked on matchup, and following that the weapons they use should be picked to counter the opponents 2 rabid/zerk further.

Just a thought

Lol… eles are easily countered on a Ranger as are Engies. I suggest you lern2play.

Dat meta ranger

screw meta….i run my own build and kitten most eles and engies

actually quite funny. the same build ive been using for 2 yrs on my range is very close to what they have posted on meta……funny it took someone that long to realize rangers are awesome.

MeTx.6712:

I know Orange Logo didn’t run ele in the finals, but that team could win with 5 naked spirit rangers if they so desired.

You are vastly over-estimating the skills of oRNG, or writing off a team like the abjured. Also, you kind of miss the point. oRNG didn’t run a team with no ele because they were hipsters, their actually team-comp was designed to be the COUNTER to eles. The abjured have like-wise swapped to a no-ele team that is so potent at taking down cele builds.

Teams that can coordinate bursts actually make eles and cele warriors pretty useless. Watch the games that the Abjured, for instance, played recently with their power necro, medi guard, cele warr, cele engie, d/p thief comp: Elementalists and cele warriors get blown up so fast and don’t have any way to truly recover. They are using the weakness of bruiser builds (who are great against sustained damage with high prot and regen uptimes, but very susceptible to burst with no real way to recover) to their advantage. When you properly run a zerker comp like this, any elementalist on the opposing team is just a liability. Sure, the ele could hold a point in 1v1’s like a boss. However, the zerker comp forces outnumbered or 2v2/3v3 engagements where at least 2 team-members are always able to focus any ele in the vicinity, making the 1v1 capabilities much dimished.

As teams start to follow the leaders and move to more zerker comps, eles prevalence will lessen. In fact, against a comp like oRNG or the abjured run, a bunker guard would actually be VERY good due to superior capability to stall out fights through superior support, kiting, and burst mitigation/recovery capabilities. Stalling out fights really combats their snow-ball strategy and gives you opportunity to establish superior map-control and break out of their preferred setup. With a bunker guard stalling or winning a mid-fight, you could push 3-points and force oRNG to send a zerker into a 1v1 or try to hold a point 2v1 with a bruiser.

This kind of adjustment is the metagame that gw2 has been missing for a long time.

Silv.9207:

The current meta is about ele and engi. All you need to win is: 2 engi, 2 ele and a guardian (only for condi removal and stability, to stomp your downed enemy.

That’s because engi have swiftness, vigor and protection almost all the time and a direct damage dealer can’t kill a engi easy (and sometimes just can’t).
And the ele have a large amount of condition remove skills, healing skills and good damage skills that make it a perfect class against condition damage builds.

Then a good ele can kill also a direct damage class and a good engi can also kill a condition damage build (but only for it’s -50% of condition duration if under 33% hp and -25% condiiton duration by rune that make the engi able to avoid the 75% of condition damage just watching the enemy in the eyes and smiling. Ah, and they can transform a condition in a boon every 20 seconds just with a minor passive automatic trait).

Then if you have problems against ele and engi is a normal thing. Because if you find a good player and you’re alone you can leave the point and flee to your allies because in 1vs1 against a good ele/engi you can’t win.

But we’re lucky because there’s a lot of bad engi and ele that play, making us able to kill them.

This is exactly what I experience in game as well.

Every team needs two of them? Hell no! EVEN MORE.

Just take a look at this random match up in ‘Unranked’ we’ve got today…

No
Comments
Bye

the community really needs to remember that engineer loses to condi builds really hard.

BlackBeard.2873:

MeTx.6712:

I know Orange Logo didn’t run ele in the finals, but that team could win with 5 naked spirit rangers if they so desired.

You are vastly over-estimating the skills of oRNG, or writing off a team like the abjured. Also, you kind of miss the point. oRNG didn’t run a team with no ele because they were hipsters, their actually team-comp was designed to be the COUNTER to eles. The abjured have like-wise swapped to a no-ele team that is so potent at taking down cele builds.

Teams that can coordinate bursts actually make eles and cele warriors pretty useless. Watch the games that the Abjured, for instance, played recently with their power necro, medi guard, cele warr, cele engie, d/p thief comp: Elementalists and cele warriors get blown up so fast and don’t have any way to truly recover. They are using the weakness of bruiser builds (who are great against sustained damage with high prot and regen uptimes, but very susceptible to burst with no real way to recover) to their advantage. When you properly run a zerker comp like this, any elementalist on the opposing team is just a liability. Sure, the ele could hold a point in 1v1’s like a boss. However, the zerker comp forces outnumbered or 2v2/3v3 engagements where at least 2 team-members are always able to focus any ele in the vicinity, making the 1v1 capabilities much dimished.

As teams start to follow the leaders and move to more zerker comps, eles prevalence will lessen. In fact, against a comp like oRNG or the abjured run, a bunker guard would actually be VERY good due to superior capability to stall out fights through superior support, kiting, and burst mitigation/recovery capabilities. Stalling out fights really combats their snow-ball strategy and gives you opportunity to establish superior map-control and break out of their preferred setup. With a bunker guard stalling or winning a mid-fight, you could push 3-points and force oRNG to send a zerker into a 1v1 or try to hold a point 2v1 with a bruiser.

This kind of adjustment is the metagame that gw2 has been missing for a long time.

Good post – hammer guard is certainly an effective way of shutting down cele engi, and can punish other bruisers too if timed right.

Necro comps are just as snowball reliant IMO however. As I said in the post above, to me it’s the zerker/rabid matchups which decide it. D/p thief is a massive amount of pressure on a necro, with ‘middle finger’ sceptre guard also proving a favourable matchup.

In the same way d/p was used vs helseth, which again tipped the scales on the zerker/rabid 2v2 matchup. There are of course counters to d/p, both in class and playstyle, but I don’t think this was exploited by their opponents at this round of wts.

Stop using elite world class teams as an example for meta discussions. It is an unrealistic and impractical comparison to what the majority of the community is experiencing during play.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Stop using elite world class teams as an example for meta discussions. It is an unrealistic and impractical comparison to what the majority of the community is experiencing during play.

The general community usually follows (slowly) the example of the elite players. Watching ESL’s is like looking into the future a few weeks what the general population will be playing.

Despite all this, you’d be surprised how many people would whined about rangers when they’re not even needed.

BlackBeard.2873:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Stop using elite world class teams as an example for meta discussions. It is an unrealistic and impractical comparison to what the majority of the community is experiencing during play.

The general community usually follows (slowly) the example of the elite players. Watching ESL’s is like looking into the future a few weeks what the general population will be playing.

That is true but they won’t be playing at the same level as the elite teams play, thus the builds have entirely different functions and roles within the different tiers. They even have different levels of viability between the different tiers of skill levels. This is a very true example of why I say “don’t judge everything based on Abjured vs. Orng”:

• Power Rangers rule low tier ~ Do great in intermediate ~ Terrible in elite play
• Power Necros rule low tier ~ Keep up in intermediate ~ Not so good in higher tiers
• Cele/Rifle is a fumble in low tier ~ Decent in mid ~ A must have in high tier
• D/D Ele is alright in low ~ Good to have around in mid ~ A must in high tier
• Thieves are monsters in low tier ~ Keep up in mid ~ Begin to struggle in high tier
• Mesmers are honestly decent all around
• Guardian Bunker is strong in low ~ Medi/Burst good in mid ~ Viable in high tier
• Warrior is decent all around

You’ve got to approach “meta” from all tiers of players or you’ll never understand why everyone has such varying opinions and before you say “the low tier and medium tier players don’t have viable opinions” remember that they do indeed embody the large majority bulk of the GW2 community.

I’ve said it before in other threads and I’ll say it again:
To truly balance the pvp in this game, we need to stop creating nerfs and buffs based off of elite tournament balance and focus more on how to make all build structures more viable at all levels play. In example: the power necros/rangers should be just as viable in high tier as they are in low tier. I have no desire to toss suggestions or elaborate on the topic at the moment but this is what needs to happen to kill all debates and to get all opinions on the same track so that we can make better progress for game-wide and community-wide balance.

Silv.9207:

completely delusional and false information

No team runs 2 ele 2 engi 1 guard.
Engineers have very low protection access unless they spend all their time being cced to death. Most don’t even run protection injection at all.
Nobody runs automated response since the golden age of decap.
Transmute is 15s not 20s and it’s a random condition. It can be a stray cripple or vuln that occured your way.
Ele has no counter but also it has pretty weak pressure.
Engi has decent damage(higher than ele but not thief-level) but gets shut down by cc and conditions.

@MeTx

You’re a bit behind the meta imo. When the Abjured lost the WTS, the real weakness of the 3 celes + 2 zerker/condi was obvious to everyone: they can’t burst. I know that in NA the meta is still dominated by celestial comps, but if you look at 55HP Monks for example, one of the best EU teams, the actually use a comp with two bunkers and three dps. Celestial elementalists are still very strong, but we’re slowly shifting towards a meta in which you have to win fights quickly and snowball, and d/d elementalists don’t fit in that meta that well. We’ll see.

the abjured currently run no eles. phanta is on medi. the only cele in the team in 5gauge.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

• Thieves are monsters in low tier ~ Keep up in mid ~ Begin to struggle in high tier
• Mesmers are honestly decent all around

lol, thanks for the good laugh. If Mesmers are decent all around where are they in higher tiers? Same can be ask for Rangers and Necros. And you are downplay thief, if a last spot is for a zerk burst class, people tend to take thief over mesmer most of the time.