Guild Wars 2

I don’t want to delve into class balance issues here, but when some classes have more appeal than others it is usually sign of not-so-good design. Interesting that after some beta adjustments Arena Net is silent – while the pvp badly needs designers’ attention.

Without pointing out particular skills, I just want to say I don’t want to play pvp dominated by two classes because it is simply boring as hell and I am sure a lot of people feel the same.

Flavour of the week.
Last week it was warriors.

ArenaNet is not silent. There was this post just a few posts down from yours:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/sPvP-things-to-come

And I read elsewhere that they’re waiting to see how things play out. They don’t want to rush to buff/nerf classes without letting the players get used to the game, learn how to play, and come up with proper counters to things. I think that is the smart way to go, honestly. Rushing to judgement and making rash changes is never a good idea. The game just came out, give it time.

nice, in tournament i see a lot of “balanced” teams. funny people take a simple class to stomp noobs in 8v8.
call me again when fotw will be engi … guess you will whine again

It was engie during the beta, engie bleed builds were really OP.

If you play against premades in tPvP teams are usually balanced, I would have to say that it is rare I solo que up for a game and don’t see either one of the follow on my, or the enemies team. 2-3 guardians, 2-3 warriors, 2-3 thieves, or 2-3 mesmers. Solo que should really look into checking what classes are being put on teams, it really sucks when you get bum rushed by any of those combos. Thieves/Wars will just burst you down before you can even use an ability, not to mention all the knockdown/knockback that you can take with 2 hammer wielding wars. Same thing with the guardians, so many ways to just throw you around and put up retaliation getting rushed by multiple of them is a steamroll. A skilled player can spot a mesmer easy, when you get 2-3 of them, sure call a target on one, all the meanwhile there will be in total about 8-12 enemies on your screen, good luck playing call a target on that, especially if your in a solo que group.

i won a lot of tourney with pugs, my face was like O.O wut? so good.. when players knows they need to teamplay to win , victory is so easy even in solo Q

What’s worse is that it’s all people just playing thief because they know everyone else is doing it. They don’t actually know what the hell they’re doing and just spam heartseeker constantly. Although I play a thief, I refuse to play sPvP; it just isn’t fun anymore. I can’t even say these people aren’t skilled because any mode of sPvP is a straight zerg. Even in tournaments people are cheating and using that gate glitch to get a head start. Really can’t be bothered.

you try winning tourney games with all mesmers and thiefs and see how that goes for you. naturally classes are going to be more popular in the 8v8 zergfest that is sPvP, but in tournies class and team balance are much more important.

The thiefs that just spam heartseeker are dumb lol. If they spam it on people above 50% other than gap closing, it’s basically an auto attack that wastes your initiative. However, the skilled thief that hits you with a 50% backstab with the power signet popped for 150% damage, hits you for a decent chuck with cloak and dagger to get back in stealth, hit you with another backstab and then use heartseeker 1-2 times, all within the matter of 2-3 seconds are another thing altogether.

and 90% of those players suck as hell…
i played mesmer from the very beginning and i just own them one after another. just playing an OP-considered class doesn’t make u OP

There’s really no easy way to say this….

People flock to playing Mesmer and Thieves in 8v8 because they are easy, and you don’t need much skill to kill people or to get away without dieing. So everyone plays them in 8v8 because of that fact. This is still while I say we should limit the number of any single class in a single game. I’ve played a warrior since release, tried various builds (hate hundred blades offensive builds) and I am glad the warrior fad is “somewhat” over. I hated being one of a sea of warriors in a game. I would have rather just waited (heck maybe the fact that you have to wait a minute or two might make some people not play FOTM).

I also love oblitering the faces of random thief/mesmer#149025802578 in 8v8. It only sucks when that random actually knows how to use a couple of their abilities….because they are just too easy to survive/get away/harass with (at a bare minimum of effectiveness without needing a lot of skill or practice).

FrozenDream.1590:

and 90% of those players suck as hell…
i played mesmer from the very beginning and i just own them one after another. just playing an OP-considered class doesn’t make u OP

Of course you did, unless you can AoE down the clones at a rapid rate, which tends to happen when there is a group around, a mesmer can easily beat any glass cannon thief, because glass cannon thiefs, don’t have the aoe to get rid of your illusions, so they just pump damage out on him, or you pump damage out on him when he tries to 1v1 kill all of your clones, because you can spam them faster than he can take them out 1v1.

Mesmer is easily one way to hard counter a thief, even in a 1v1 a skilled mesmer and a skilled thief the outcome will be either the mesmer wins, or the theif escapes.

Sjach Darasv.3729:

Mesmer is easily one way to hard counter a thief, even in a 1v1 a skilled mesmer and a skilled thief the outcome will be either the mesmer wins, or the theif escapes.

It also depends on their builds.

Burst mesmer vs burst thief boils down to if the thief can make the mesmer lose 51% of their hp before they get off a distortion and heal, since most of them will run with Illusionary Invigoration.

Bunker mesmer has it a lot easier against burst thieves, but condition thieves can give them a run for their money if played cautiously.

There’s quite a few more build pairings I could list, but to summarize those two classes do decent against each other.

About sPvP balance, I believe there won’t be any significant buffs or nerfs incoming to any classes. ANet is likely to focus on fixing the numerous bugs plaguing every class first before deciding if anything needs balancing.

They can be a good matchup if the specs of both are right, but the mesmer has it easy with as many ways to stay out of a thiefs melee range unless the mesmer doesn’t see the first strike coming at all, not to mention the aoe fields it can put down. Ground fields are a thiefs worst nightmare when the person you are trying to kill constantly stands in them.

That’s the thing – the mesmer must not be able to react fast enough to hit distortion before his hp drops to 49%. That’s not hard when you have a proper burst thief against a burst mesmer, who is likely to be squishy and will only have 17k hp – one mug/backstab/autoattack combo will take out at least half of that, and suddenly the mesmer is on the backfoot.

Also, remember that the thief always has the option of baiting out fields by going into stealth, hiding behind something and letting the mesmer fidget/throw out AoEs before actually going in with a steal.

If you think mesmers are a thief’s worst nightmare, try a good condition staff/scepter+whatever necro with all his cooldowns up, especially when you’re trying to assassinate him solo on point.

Don’t even have to be condi specced, I do it well enough as a well necro with + healing that makes my non healing wells heal me for 260 a tick my healing well tick for 700 and an initial heal of 8k, combine that with the 4 skill on the staff for retaliation, i just let the thief kill himself while trying to assault me, and when all else fails, plague form blind i can tank 3-4 players the entire duration of the form lol

Pretty much flavor of the week. But I still see Guardians and Warriors the most. Thief and Mesmer just happen to be popping up more lately. Makes me want to play Necro/Ranger.

Guardian is the easiest class.
Thief is the easiest way to farm glory.
Mesmer has the best sustained presence.
Needs a nerf..?

Maple

Guardian is the easiest class.
Thief is the easiest way to farm glory.
Mesmer has the best sustained presence.
Needs a nerf..?

Until this kind of thief gameplay is even possible, GW2 PvP will be even inferior to WoW’s.

I play a lot of free tourneys and the most common prof I see in the early rounds is ranger. After that teams normally don’t have a set composition with the most common being necro actually.

In HJ it can vary across any class not that it matters since about 95% of ppl in the game are so awful they could play any class and still suck.

Guardians is what i see everywhere .

wow in tourney i see a lot of every class. strange thing..

Funny round….ofc, mesmers dont need any nerf, plp just find them cute

Kabra.4586:

Funny round….ofc, mesmers dont need any nerf, plp just find them cute

They probably are the best noob stomping class it’s true. Which is why they seem to be far less prevalent in the tourneys than in HJ where you have at least 6 bad’s to abuse.

Play a Guardian. Counter both Thieves and Mesmers. :)

Maple.2936:

Guardian is the easiest class.
Thief is the easiest way to farm glory.
Mesmer has the best sustained presence.
Needs a nerf..?

Actually, thief is the easiest class. Every build, even tournament viable thief builds, require you to know less about your class and other classes than any other build of any other class. The gap between the best thieves and the worst is paper thin at best.