Guild Wars 2

Doesn’t work in this game. At least not anymore. Sure, you can dodge the usual pindown, pbs, burning speed, mirror blade, zerker, net shot and the like. But what about:

Air/fire sigils
Geo/doom swap
Steal, Backstab, Panic Strike
Overcharged shot, Incendiary powder
Guardian Scepter immob, Judge’s intervention, Smite condition, Passive Burn
Krait Rune #6 (currently even ignores evades iirc)

And many, many more. Point is, in a dodge based game, the ammount of instant damage that kills you is in my opinion over the top. The effect is that people can random dodge (especially tankier builds) and still survive just fine.

Arenanet! Please try to reduce or remove some of the instant undodgable damage in the game for HoT. We would see people who know how to dodge and Los survive longer while the rest can practice and become better. Some of these skills are fine as they are, such as backstab (meant to be stealthy), but most are simply impossible to react to and are still game-changingly strong. Some can’t even be random dodged, as they will simply propc again on the next attack (looking at you, panic strike). Say no to random dodges, please.

you can predict instant damage skills coming and evade it. and yes its a gamble, then what?

Good luck predicting sigil procs.

MadVisions.4529:

you can attempt to predict instant damage skills coming and random dodge to evade it. and yes its a gamble, then what?

fixed this for yah

True, I think that there is another problem concerning dodging (and the upcoming interrupt-buff), which is the fact that a multitude of skills can be faked (stow-/esc-/dodge-cancel) with a very small downside.

Yes, this doesn’t work for channelled skills and not for skills using some sort of ressource like initiative, but it works for a ton of skills that you actually would want to dodge/interrupt.

In anticipation of the upcoming interrupt-buff, I feel that more and more ppl will actually start using/abusing this more often, so I think the drawback should at least somewhat mirror the CD of the skill, which is in most cases the “ressource” you spend on the skill, if there isn’t an actual ressource like initiative.

Let’s say 5s flat+20% of CD.

In terms of what you’ve mentioned, there could be easy ways to fix it in some cases:

- Geomancy, hydromancy: Make the animation go outward or appear slower with a delayed effect after 1s. There’s already a huge animation that lingers for quite a while, so just make it disappear faster and there won’t be additional clutter on the field. ^^’
- Doom: well, you can dodge the atk, since it’s tied to hitting and you can anticipate weapon-swapping based on CD’s – it’s hard to anticipate, but it’s possible, so I got no problem with this one.
Air/Fire: that’s a bit harder: maybe just make the effects have some sort of windup thats visible? I hate adding more and more visual effects on the already cluttered screen. You could also make them apply the added dmg more continuously, so it can’t be abused that hard in spikes. Like higher perentage of triggering on crit, lower ICD but way lower dmg.
With the Fire Sigil I also had the Idea of just making it hit ONLY the players surrounding your target (but make the dmg a bit higher), not the actual target: couldn’t be abused for spikes and the dps could be mitigated by good positioning.

PowerBottom.5796:

…

I understand your concerns, but cancel casting should be rewarded, as it is currently one of the harder things you can do in this game. It was a central part of guild wars 1, as well. If any overpowered/abusable things appear after the patch, they can hopefully be fixed.

Now, in terms of doom sigil. You will find it extremely hard to predict and avoid it if they take geomancy with the doom sigil, which many do. In fact, you will find it impossible, since it is now instant. Also, doom can currently be used on basically any build, condition-focused or not. This is because it gives poison to professions or builds that are not designed to have it. Since poison reduces healing doom will always be a strong choice for ANY build.

Quadox.7834:

PowerBottom.5796:

…

I understand your concerns, but cancel casting should be rewarded, as it is currently one of the harder things you can do in this game. It was a central part of guild wars 1, as well. If any overpowered/abusable things appear after the patch, they can hopefully be fixed.

Now, in terms of doom sigil. You will find it extremely hard to predict and avoid it if they take geomancy with the doom sigil, which many do. In fact, you will find it impossible, since it is now instant. Also, doom can currently be used on basically any build, condition-focused or not. This is because it gives poison to professions or builds that are not designed to have it. Since poison reduces healing doom will always be a strong choice for ANY build.

stowing-cancelling in GW2 isn’t hard at all, just cancel your important stuff once or twice before using it …. -.-°
The hard part in GW1 was using it efficiently, because the drawbacks were immense compared to the ones in GW2, cuz almost every skill used mana, which you lost when you cancelled the spell. So you actually had to watch multiple characters in a teamfight (1-2 Mesmers, Ranger and certain other builds with interrupts or stuff like that), because cancelling your spell when you actually didn’t need to was a big deal, but not as big as if you’ve eaten an interrupt, diversion or sth. like that. So you’d have to watch where the mesmers/rangers are facing, what animation they cast, if they’re near enough to interrupt you fast enough, keep their CD’s in mind etc – all because the drawback of cancelling the animation was high enough. If the cancelling was basically for free, interrupting/diversion etc. wouldn’t have been a thing in GW1. ^^’

The drawback in loosing 5 seconds on a CD’s with potentially 10 times that CD in situations where you could be interrupted (very broadly speaking, just when the classes that have interrupts are somewhere near) is just a no-brainer. If they’d make the drawback higher, you’d actually have to be pretty kitten certain that an interrupt is flying your way if you cancel your important skill.

It’s the other way around Quadox: it’s BECAUSE you can dodge that pvp players use these instacast or random skills. Most skills in the game can be dodged, but you choose not to use them in pvp. Why do you think that Churning Earth or Dragon Tooth are almost never used on elementalist?

That being said, random procs are more annoying than instacast skills, which can still be predicted, because players are easy to read. I think Ferocity should be buffed (as it stands, power is so much better than precision and ferocity it’s ridiculous), and air and fire sigils nerfed. I don’t ming geomancy sigil (it still requires positioning), but the poison duration on the doom sigil is really over the top. I think I play it on every build on which I can not consistently apply poison. It’s not healthy.

[quote=5042185;PowerBottom.5796:]

Sorel.4870:

It’s the other way around Quadox: it’s BECAUSE you can dodge that pvp players use these instacast or random skills. Most skills in the game can be dodged, but you choose not to use them in pvp. Why do you think that Churning Earth or Dragon Tooth are almost never used on elementalist?

That being said, random procs are more annoying than instacast skills, which can still be predicted, because players are easy to read. I think Ferocity should be buffed (as it stands, power is so much better than precision and ferocity it’s ridiculous), and air and fire sigils nerfed. I don’t ming geomancy sigil (it still requires positioning), but the poison duration on the doom sigil is really over the top. I think I play it on every build on which I can not consistently apply poison. It’s not healthy.

Of course people will use the most uncounterable things in pvp games. This is always the case, and does not mean they should remain. I would also be alright with geomancy if it actually required positioning like you say. Let’s take a guardian for example. They could teleport on you, spam weapon and use smite condition. Suddenly, you have done a massive amount of damage that is instant. Of course, people will say “but they used their utiliy to do it!”, but it doesn’t matter. It is still bad for the game’s competitiveness and skill level.

PowerBottom.5796:

…

Sorry, i thought you meant stowing to avoid using a skill in a dodge. For example, you see the enemy starting a block and you stow your pindown as to not waste it. The examples you talked about (stowing a couple of times without watching animations) are indeed bad for the game. However, it would be hard to fix this. The added cooldown would be weird since some abilities would then have a shorter cooldown if you don’t stow them. Suddenly, a whole other problem appears where you can argue that skills like maul and mirror blade have too short cooldowns.

MadVisions.4529:

you can predict instant damage skills coming and evade it. and yes its a gamble, then what?

“and yes its a gamble, then what?” i didn’t understand this part, but ill answer anyways.

No offense, but this logic is bad and only further promotes random dodging at intervals, trying to predict things. But the reality is that once people get better, they will just stand by, wait for the prediction and then proceed to smack you to bits when you have less cooldowns or endurance up. Instead, promoting skillful dodges and animation watching is a better path to a more competitive and fun game.

Quadox.7834:

PowerBottom.5796:

…

Sorry, i thought you meant stowing to avoid using a skill in a dodge. For example, you see the enemy starting a block and you stow your pindown as to not waste it. The examples you talked about (stowing a couple of times without watching animations) are indeed bad for the game. However, it would be hard to fix this. The added cooldown would be weird since some abilities would then have a shorter cooldown if you don’t stow them. Suddenly, a whole other problem appears where you can argue that skills like maul and mirror blade have too short cooldowns.

Ah okay, then we’re both right. ^^’

I don’t get your pther point though, why would some skills have higher CD and some lower? stowing only works if you do it fast enough so the skill doesn’t have any effect. The Skills are then put on a flat 5s CD no matter what skill you’ve used.

What I wanted to change was that the 5s flat CD would be changed, so that when you cancel an animation (with esc, stowing or dodging) before it actually had any effect (either because you don’t want to get interrupted, because you wanna bait out dodges or because your opponent was dodging right when it would’ve hit), the flat CD would reflect the actual CD of the skill somehow. So stowing a skill with 50 seconds CD would have 5+20% of 50=5+10=15s CD after cancelling the skill. I guess it could also be just 10%, but there needs to be an increase depending on the CD of the skill you’ve cancelled.

PowerBottom.5796:

Quadox.7834:

PowerBottom.5796:

…

Sorry, i thought you meant stowing to avoid using a skill in a dodge. For example, you see the enemy starting a block and you stow your pindown as to not waste it. The examples you talked about (stowing a couple of times without watching animations) are indeed bad for the game. However, it would be hard to fix this. The added cooldown would be weird since some abilities would then have a shorter cooldown if you don’t stow them. Suddenly, a whole other problem appears where you can argue that skills like maul and mirror blade have too short cooldowns.

Ah okay, then we’re both right. ^^’

I don’t get your pther point though, why would some skills have higher CD and some lower? stowing only works if you do it fast enough so the skill doesn’t have any effect. The Skills are then put on a flat 5s CD no matter what skill you’ve used.

What I wanted to change was that the 5s flat CD would be changed, so that when you cancel an animation (with esc, stowing or dodging) before it actually had any effect (either because you don’t want to get interrupted, because you wanna bait out dodges or because your opponent was dodging right when it would’ve hit), the flat CD would reflect the actual CD of the skill somehow. So stowing a skill with 50 seconds CD would have 5+20% of 50=5+10=15s CD after cancelling the skill. I guess it could also be just 10%, but there needs to be an increase depending on the CD of the skill you’ve cancelled.

I agree with you, but my problem is that for some skills, such as maul or mirror blade, this cooldown would be larger than the acutual skill’s cooldown. As such, it is never ever worth stowing them. I am not sure, however, if the solution is to handle stows differently or to increase the cooldown of these skills (and in turn increase their effects, i guess).

Quadox.7834:

PowerBottom.5796:

Quadox.7834:

PowerBottom.5796:

…

Sorry, i thought you meant stowing to avoid using a skill in a dodge. For example, you see the enemy starting a block and you stow your pindown as to not waste it. The examples you talked about (stowing a couple of times without watching animations) are indeed bad for the game. However, it would be hard to fix this. The added cooldown would be weird since some abilities would then have a shorter cooldown if you don’t stow them. Suddenly, a whole other problem appears where you can argue that skills like maul and mirror blade have too short cooldowns.

Ah okay, then we’re both right. ^^’

I don’t get your pther point though, why would some skills have higher CD and some lower? stowing only works if you do it fast enough so the skill doesn’t have any effect. The Skills are then put on a flat 5s CD no matter what skill you’ve used.

What I wanted to change was that the 5s flat CD would be changed, so that when you cancel an animation (with esc, stowing or dodging) before it actually had any effect (either because you don’t want to get interrupted, because you wanna bait out dodges or because your opponent was dodging right when it would’ve hit), the flat CD would reflect the actual CD of the skill somehow. So stowing a skill with 50 seconds CD would have 5+20% of 50=5+10=15s CD after cancelling the skill. I guess it could also be just 10%, but there needs to be an increase depending on the CD of the skill you’ve cancelled.

I agree with you, but my problem is that for some skills, such as maul or mirror blade, this cooldown would be larger than the acutual skill’s cooldown. As such, it is never ever worth stowing them. I am not sure, however, if the solution is to handle stows differently or to increase the cooldown of these skills (and in turn increase their effects, i guess).

It would be worth stowing maul when we look at the new upcoming interrupts, which often add additional dmg, conditions, additional CD, buffs for the interrupter etc.

The idea is that you block what you can effectively react to, if you have dodges to mind-game their steal-backstab combo then bait it, but if you’re dodging what you’re supposed to then you’ll have skills available to get out of the other stuff.

For example, if you eat a cele engies magnet pull as a thief, and have to shadowstep out in order to avoid the nade combo, and then later he catches you in a slick shoes, you’re screwed because you wasted your shadowstep on something you should have dodged.

This game is far too forgiving and rewarding for the amount of dodges we are given. If anything it should punish people a LOT more for failing to dodge appropriately.

Furthermore, if you’re engaging in combat when your important “OH KITTEN” skills are on cooldown, then you deserve the punishment.

I’m not defending the insta-cast skills, but for every insta-cast skill (of which there are very few that are dangerous), there are 2 “oh kitten” skills you can use to get out or nullify most of the damage.

Lux.7169:

The idea is that you block what you can effectively react to, if you have dodges to mind-game their steal-backstab combo then bait it, but if you’re dodging what you’re supposed to then you’ll have skills available to get out of the other stuff.

For example, if you eat a cele engies magnet pull as a thief, and have to shadowstep out in order to avoid the nade combo, and then later he catches you in a slick shoes, you’re screwed because you wasted your shadowstep on something you should have dodged.

This game is far too forgiving and rewarding for the amount of dodges we are given. If anything it should punish people a LOT more for failing to dodge appropriately.

Furthermore, if you’re engaging in combat when your important “OH KITTEN” skills are on cooldown, then you deserve the punishment.

I’m not defending the insta-cast skills, but for every insta-cast skill (of which there are very few that are dangerous), there are 2 “oh kitten” skills you can use to get out or nullify most of the damage.

the main-problem with the stuff you can’t dodge like fire/air sigils, panic strike, guardian Scepter3, guardian Hammer5+JI etc. is that they’re used out of stealth with 2-3 ppl spiking you down instantly. There’s literally no way of getting out of spikes like that if you don’t have CD’s. And once they’ve hit you, you’re immobilized within half a second cuz of panic strike and you won’t be able to dodge.

What you’ve written is completely true in straight-up fights, but falls apart in the above described situation which you see happen A LOT in the current meta. It’s just kinda dumb if the sole reason you’ll survive a burst like that depends on whether your CD is rdy or not. That’s also the reason we see literally 3-4 out of 5 players per team run vamp-runes, why Shoutbows begin to run endure pain and dictates what builds are and aren’t used atm. Thats just another reason we see no real condi-builds: they don’t help you stealth-spike sth. down real quick.

if we make every skill non instant then we have to make dodges non instant so I’ll never use a skill when I see you dodge-windup

PowerBottom.5796:

Lux.7169:

The idea is that you block what you can effectively react to, if you have dodges to mind-game their steal-backstab combo then bait it, but if you’re dodging what you’re supposed to then you’ll have skills available to get out of the other stuff.

For example, if you eat a cele engies magnet pull as a thief, and have to shadowstep out in order to avoid the nade combo, and then later he catches you in a slick shoes, you’re screwed because you wasted your shadowstep on something you should have dodged.

This game is far too forgiving and rewarding for the amount of dodges we are given. If anything it should punish people a LOT more for failing to dodge appropriately.

Furthermore, if you’re engaging in combat when your important “OH KITTEN” skills are on cooldown, then you deserve the punishment.

I’m not defending the insta-cast skills, but for every insta-cast skill (of which there are very few that are dangerous), there are 2 “oh kitten” skills you can use to get out or nullify most of the damage.

the main-problem with the stuff you can’t dodge like fire/air sigils, panic strike, guardian Scepter3, guardian Hammer5+JI etc. is that they’re used out of stealth with 2-3 ppl spiking you down instantly. There’s literally no way of getting out of spikes like that if you don’t have CD’s. And once they’ve hit you, you’re immobilized within half a second cuz of panic strike and you won’t be able to dodge.

What you’ve written is completely true in straight-up fights, but falls apart in the above described situation which you see happen A LOT in the current meta. It’s just kinda dumb if the sole reason you’ll survive a burst like that depends on whether your CD is rdy or not. That’s also the reason we see literally 3-4 out of 5 players per team run vamp-runes, why Shoutbows begin to run endure pain and dictates what builds are and aren’t used atm. Thats just another reason we see no real condi-builds: they don’t help you stealth-spike sth. down real quick.

It depends on what you’re talking about, sure if you’re a random pug vs an organized burst I am not surprised if you’re 1shot from 3 people in stealth.

However, if you’re with a real team a burst like that almost always fails because the shoutbow, or whoever you have cleansing condis can just cleanse and peel for you. It’s not as if their burst has stab so someone can easily CC.

3 people can jump a thief but a thief with decent reaction time can easily SS out. Why would he not have SS available if three of the enemies are coming in to burst him? Why is he even on point? It doesn’t make sense.

If it’s an engie the 3 are trying to burst he can easily just gear shield it, if it’s a guardian he will shelter. Warriors will either endure it or laugh because they’re the tankiest even w/o endure, etc etc. Every class is able to get out or survive the burst because the game does not punish for wasteful dodging and has way too many invulns. If anything they should remove energy sigils or make them far less effective than they currently are, and also nerf vigor.

Last I checked top teams aren’t grabbing 3 people for a stealth burst. Why? Because good players know how to time their invulns/blocks, peel for each other, and aren’t just sitting bait if they don’t HAVE their “oh kitten” skills available.

But sure, if you have tournament footage of a team just wrecking everyone because they stealth bombed a good team/player, I’d love to see it.

If we’re talking about randoms/pugs/solo Q, I would be really disappointed if they balanced around that.

Sigil of air and fire are cancer to spvp and wvw. They should nerf them and buff stuff like sigil of force. Sigil of force adds dps but the dmg comes from landing your normal skills, not insta cast RNG like air/fire.

geo/doom is just as cancer as air/fire though.. Even if they can be dodged just wait for a dodge and then weapon swap.

Booms.3952:

if we make every skill non instant then we have to make dodges non instant so I’ll never use a skill when I see you dodge-windup

I can’t see instant cast skills getting removed from the game. still, the nerf to thieves it would cause would be pretty kek.

in regard to overcharged shot, if you give it a cast time remove the self cc.

If we’re talking about randoms/pugs/solo Q, I would be really disappointed if they balanced around that.

Let me use the judge scale here ….. based on the community expirements we had these 2 years …

a) Unhappy person vs b) more happiness in the PvP community + viewers and contunation of ToL money prize

What to do …. what to do :P

Even silly games like LoL , decided 3 months ago to move away from 100% to zero TTK among the numerous meta changes

Edit: Ofc we can go in the GW1 style … 1 paid tournament and then 7 years of a ’’tight’’ community enjoyment

Well things like overcharge shot and chains of light can be predicted.
For overcharge, most engis will get close to you because there aren’t many reasons for them to be at 400 range. Most even do it in a hilariously obvious way by slowly walking towards you with the rifle out.
As for chains of light it’s the same idea. Scepter skills are 1200 range except chains of light so most of them start to autoattack you and use the immobilize as soon as you are in range.

But none of this really matters because anet servers are potatoes and you will get hit by stuff like pindown mid dodge anyway.

Lux.7169:

This game is far too forgiving and rewarding for the amount of dodges we are given. If anything it should punish people a LOT more for failing to dodge appropriately.

for this to work, they need to increase cast times of many abilities and overall slow the pace down. otherwise it’s too easy for kitten y specs like d/p thief to bait dodges. there are also a slew of hard-hitting abilities that simply aren’t dodgeable, unless you use intuition or guess.

I will clear some things up. Firstly, the stealth bomb actually happens all the time in top play, it is very common. In fact, d/p is used over s/d alot because of the stealth and the panic strike immob.

Secondly, i don’t want ALL instants to be removed, as this wouldn’t work for the game. For example, defensive instants are fine since they don’t kill a person for no visible reason. Also, things like backstab is fine since it only does damage, has to be lined up in close range and is supposed to be stealthy. We are talking major things that are undodgable for no reason. Overcharged shot, Scepter immob, Death Shroud 3 fear, Panic Strike, and so on. Outside of a 1v1, getting hit by one can kill you for no reason other than luck. Sure, you can say that you can “predict” guardian scepter 3, but think about how it really works in game. Either they will wait for a dodge and use it on you, or just use it right after swapping to scepter. It doesn’t matter either way, since it is practically impossible to react to. Hammer immob is however how an immobilize skill should work (perhaps even too slow).

mistsim.2748:

Lux.7169:

This game is far too forgiving and rewarding for the amount of dodges we are given. If anything it should punish people a LOT more for failing to dodge appropriately.

for this to work, they need to increase cast times of many abilities and overall slow the pace down. otherwise it’s too easy for kitten y specs like d/p thief to bait dodges. there are also a slew of hard-hitting abilities that simply aren’t dodgeable, unless you use intuition or guess.

Very true, i would like it to be this way, but partly because stealth exists in this game it would be very hard to do, since you could bait dodges by just standing in stealth. However, i would like to see sigil of energy changed to give vigor instead or something.

Perhaps stealth should never have been made sharable to all profesions, but this is a whole other topic.

Lux.7169:

It depends on what you’re talking about, sure if you’re a random pug vs an organized burst I am not surprised if you’re 1shot from 3 people in stealth.

However, if you’re with a real team a burst like that almost always fails because the shoutbow, or whoever you have cleansing condis can just cleanse and peel for you. It’s not as if their burst has stab so someone can easily CC.

3 people can jump a thief but a thief with decent reaction time can easily SS out. Why would he not have SS available if three of the enemies are coming in to burst him? Why is he even on point? It doesn’t make sense.

If it’s an engie the 3 are trying to burst he can easily just gear shield it, if it’s a guardian he will shelter. Warriors will either endure it or laugh because they’re the tankiest even w/o endure, etc etc. Every class is able to get out or survive the burst because the game does not punish for wasteful dodging and has way too many invulns. If anything they should remove energy sigils or make them far less effective than they currently are, and also nerf vigor.

Last I checked top teams aren’t grabbing 3 people for a stealth burst. Why? Because good players know how to time their invulns/blocks, peel for each other, and aren’t just sitting bait if they don’t HAVE their “oh kitten” skills available.

But sure, if you have tournament footage of a team just wrecking everyone because they stealth bombed a good team/player, I’d love to see it.

If we’re talking about randoms/pugs/solo Q, I would be really disappointed if they balanced around that.

It’s way beyond being effective only against unorganized groups – it’s basically the number1 way top-teams get kills nowadays, just watch the recent ESL monthly’s.

Cleansing the condis with a shoutbow is almost impossible, because fistly, they’ll spike the shoutbow down first anyways and you’ll have so many condis on you (from nade-engi for example) and die so fast, that it’s impossible to cleanse the important immobilizes. Besides, you’ll also be in the ring of the Medi-Guard, dazed and boonstripped (steal) and they have like 3+ immobilizes (2 from Medi-Guard and 1 from panic-Strike, maybe there’s even a Mesmer in the mix).

And if the spike doesn’t kill you instantly, which is rather unlikely anyways, it’s very possible that your team is out of position and you’ll just get trained down, because the whole movement was either in stealth or with portals.

I don’t necessarily mind the portals or the stealth, but all these undodgeable immobilizes and DPS just rob you of any chance to actually dodge….

Quadox.7834:

Doesn’t work in this game. At least not anymore. Sure, you can dodge the usual pindown, pbs, burning speed, mirror blade, zerker, net shot and the like. But what about:

Air/fire sigils
Geo/doom swap
Steal, Backstab, Panic Strike
Overcharged shot, Incendiary powder
Guardian Scepter immob, Judge’s intervention, Smite condition, Passive Burn
Krait Rune #6 (currently even ignores evades iirc)

And many, many more. Point is, in a dodge based game, the ammount of instant damage that kills you is in my opinion over the top. The effect is that people can random dodge (especially tankier builds) and still survive just fine.

Arenanet! Please try to reduce or remove some of the instant undodgable damage in the game for HoT. We would see people who know how to dodge and Los survive longer while the rest can practice and become better. Some of these skills are fine as they are, such as backstab (meant to be stealthy), but most are simply impossible to react to and are still game-changingly strong. Some can’t even be random dodged, as they will simply propc again on the next attack (looking at you, panic strike). Say no to random dodges, please.

Air/fire sigils – I agree, purely rng based off crit.

Geo/doom swap – geo I agree with, although you could argue positioning based off class, lining yourself up for it. Doom I don’t agree with because there is a on screen proc.

etc etc etc.

Tldr: The sad truth is sometimes the only tell you have is based off an individuals play style, which doesn’t incorporate fun play, or balanced play in that regard. For example if you see a medi guard running away for no reason, you know he’s just going to teleport through walls and cheese you so be ready for it, etc.