Guild Wars 2

Sup GW’ers!
I’ve been away from the game for just over 5 weeks now due to going on a trip to travel South East Asia. I honestly didnt miss GW the whole time i was away, not until i sat on my flight home. With like 14 hours of travelling to do my mind invariably started to wonder about the state of the game.

Last i remember Sky Hammer had not long come out and everyone was QQing about it being lame. Hammer too powerful, too many chanced to get knocked off and a new map with no variety compared to the old maps. I remember Necro being OP, Spirit Ranger being OP and Warrior being “terrible” (or at least in the eyes of the forums; from what i remember).

So im sat at my desk at work, my first day back, on a break dying to check forums and see whats new, only im so snowed under catching up that im not gunna have time before i get home tonight and jump on for the first time in WEEKS.

Was hoping you guys might be able to give me a quick run down of whats new?

nothing except warriors are now good

Ok so in the last 5 weeks:

Features:

- Solo Queue (called “Solo Arena”) – it’s a really good addition, though it has it’s share of problems.
If you’re just starting out or have low rating, you’ll be encountering an uncomfortable amount of 4v5, leavers, afkers etc.
Matchmaking isn’t perfect and the population isn’t really big, which in turn doesn’t always give you good competitive matches.
And about balance and cheese builds, I’ll touch on that later.
Though all in all, Solo Queue is one of the best things that PvP got in last few months (IMO), and I and many others enjoy playing it a lot.

- Permanent finishers – finishers aren’t stupid consumables any more. From now on you simply unlock them and active them in the hero panel (H). You unlock the usual ones from ranking up (rabbit -> deer -> dolly …) and some others from the gem store (cow, spectre …).

- Effect reduction/LoD – there’s an option you can toggle in graphic settings called something along the lines of “Effects LoD”, it should be reducing the effect spam we all dislike. I personally haven’t noticed any difference with it’s introduction.

Also, you can find out more about that yourself at http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Releases

Balance:

There practically hasn’t been any balance changes, and the first balance change is coming on October 1st.

Spirit rangers, Necros and S/D thieves are still considered OP, and something that may surprise you considering what you wrote, Warrios are also considered OP. Main reasons people cite are an overabundance of CC + sigil of paralyzation bug which results in huge CC chains, and Healing Signet regeneration (~400hp/s).

Guardians are the same as always, Engineer’s are considered a good class but needing a lot more skill to play efficiently than your momentary FotM. Eles and Mesmers are considered to be the worst, but not nearly as Warriors were for example a few months ago. Eles generally go berserker with fresh air and often Scepter/Focus as the weapon set at the moment (made popular by Denshee I believe).

All in all, meta is considered to be unfun due to the large amounts of low skill floor/ceiling builds and condi spam, but every profession can be played with reasonable success.

ESports:

PAX has happened a week and a half ago, spoilersthe finals weren't very fun, both due to the cluster-kitteny meta and the fact that CC (the European team) destroyed Sync (NA team) with 3-0 in matches. The only one that was close was the last one. I hope that's gonna be a lesson for gw2 tournies in the future, we wanna see the 2 BEST teams fight, not the best NA and best EU team. Realistically, the real finals were CC vs TC in the EU qualifiers. On top of that, the finals were really hard to follow with 3 (!) spirit rangers, necros and general spam. We had a warrior in CC's team, and he did really well..

ESL Opening cup is going OK, though it has fairly bad viewership due to it being stretched out (2 matches every few days? something like that), lack of advertisement (I never find out about when it’s going on), and bad rewards (ESL premium?) not bringing any top teams and competition. BLU is doing a great job shoutcasting though, he’s improved a lot and the production value seem really nice.

http://www.esl.eu/eu/guildwars2/news/228411/

MLG tournament is rumored to be coming up soon, but people who know about it aren’t allowed to talk if I understood correctly.

ahuba.6430:

nothing except warriors are now good

As you can see though, forums haven’t changed.

hrkljus.1243:

ahuba.6430:

nothing except warriors are now good

As you can see though, forums haven’t changed.

Huh? I said the truth, if you re-read your comment on most things you said “x is the same as always”. The only relevant thing you said was new (permanent finishers are pretty irrelevant for the state of pvp atm) was solo queue, wich i think was implement over 5 weeks ago. So where exactly was i beeing the typical forumer? Balance is the same terrible crap like it was 5 weeks ago, and esl and mlg are, again, irrelevant for the casual pvp player.
So, tell us what RELEVANT things have been introduced in the past 5 weeks? None, except a broken solo queue.

WOW!
Thanks hrkljus that was a lot more inciteful than i expected!
Seems like not a lot has changed, which i sorta expected. I’d been playing CC warrior for a while before i left but i’ll probably leave it now if it has become FotM.
I had a little go as ele using Fresh Air but with a dagger off hand not a focus, maybe ill give that a go for a while.

Not this week though as ive just brought Diablo 3 on xBox and arranged a week long 4 man session. For anyone interested, whilst on the subject, it transfers very well to console and god knows you can’t beat 4 man sat on a sofa playing together!