Guild Wars 2

maybe its a bit early to say this but it feels like the meta is even worse than before

cond spam engi with balthazar runes is a bad joke. fought one with my cleanse-them-all ele and still died. in that fight i recieved 42k burning damage and some other condition damage.

decap engi 2.0 with turrets. knocks you off point with thumper or simply detonating any turret while recieving all the boons from the new grandmaster. low hp? np make a water field and detonate them all =>full hp

necro with nightmare runes. not much to say here, you can fear certain classes from 100 to 0 hp.

hambow still as strong as before. nerf the stun damage by 5%? np runes of strength make up for that.

condition warrior. condition burst and you’re down in no time.

spirit rangers still as forgiving. i still see a lot of pew pew spam shortbow 1 spirit rangers that still do decent although they suck. player skill helps against bad spirit rangers but against good ones? and if the ranger dies he can simply use the elite spirit on himself if he’s got the timing right. why should you be able to res yourself in an instant?

minion mancer. minions deal too much damage while the player himself doesnt have to do much and is tanky. fix immobilize stacking… minions block attacks/projectiles and mess with AoE

all in all there is more condition spam after this balance patch which is very bad imo. im not touching my thief anymore because i simply cant cleanse anything on that class. even on my ele i cant cleanse the conditions fast enough although i run tripple cantrips + regen + cleanse on regen and regen when critical hit + water skills.

if you took 42k burning damage froim that engi, and burning only does like ~700 per tick, and engi has additional bleeds, poison, confusion, and physical damage, you must’ve survived against that op condi engi for like at least 5 minutes. nerf eles.

I think it is a bit early to tell, but it does seem like my Thief is getting his butt handed to him, more than usual :P

I don’t know, really good players still kick my butt regardless of their class, bad players still get their assistance kicked regardless of their class (playing as DP thief).
If anything, the additional burst of sigil of air+fire helps killing scrubs faster.

Jekkt.6045:

maybe its a bit early to say this but it feels like the meta is even worse than before

cond spam engi with balthazar runes is a bad joke. fought one with my cleanse-them-all ele and still died. in that fight i recieved 42k burning damage and some other condition damage.

decap engi 2.0 with turrets. knocks you off point with thumper or simply detonating any turret while recieving all the boons from the new grandmaster. low hp? np make a water field and detonate them all =>full hp

necro with nightmare runes. not much to say here, you can fear certain classes from 100 to 0 hp.

hambow still as strong as before. nerf the stun damage by 5%? np runes of strength make up for that.

condition warrior. condition burst and you’re down in no time.

spirit rangers still as forgiving. i still see a lot of pew pew spam shortbow 1 spirit rangers that still do decent although they suck. player skill helps against bad spirit rangers but against good ones? and if the ranger dies he can simply use the elite spirit on himself if he’s got the timing right. why should you be able to res yourself in an instant?

minion mancer. minions deal too much damage while the player himself doesnt have to do much and is tanky. fix immobilize stacking… minions block attacks/projectiles and mess with AoE

all in all there is more condition spam after this balance patch which is very bad imo. im not touching my thief anymore because i simply cant cleanse anything on that class. even on my ele i cant cleanse the conditions fast enough although i run tripple cantrips + regen + cleanse on regen and regen when critical hit + water skills.

Look on the bright side: Guardians are in a good place.

Purgatory.

Saw some good interrupt mesmers. They still lost, but they provided a lot more challenge and support than mesmers have been able to lately.

As PW got nerfed, it seems like a lot of thieves switched back to S/D.
Thank god for that. Such a difference.

EverythingEnds.4261:

As PW got nerfed, it seems like a lot of thieves switched back to S/D.
Thank god for that. Such a difference.

They went S/D cuz might stacking runes.

S/P is still the best around, even stronger now with air/fire sigils.

S/P is probably the only set where you can still play lyssa effectively, altough there are now better runes.

At least im not the only one having trouble with condis on my ele that is build to counter them. But yeah I pretty much agree with everything, it still doesn’t promote active/skillfull play or at least timing it’s just “I hardcounter you so leave point and deal with it”

DaShi.1368:

Saw some good interrupt mesmers. They still lost, but they provided a lot more challenge and support than mesmers have been able to lately.

I love the idea of an interrupt Mesmer but it does have severe issues;

-Warrior does it better and lasts longer
-The spec itself is a little disjointed, some traits need to move down in tiers to really make it work
-you lose out on massive damage from not traiting phantasms or shatter [again, warriors do insane damage at the same time as controlling a target]
-no dedicated CC weapon, lots of CC spread over all weaponsets [see warriors with hammer]

Mesmer has definitely lost effectiveness post-patch, which is a shame as they were one of my favourite classes to play as and against

From an elementalist’s point of view, matches no longer feel extremely unfair against us. We can deal decent damage and have decent survival, which makes the gameplay a lot more enjoyable than the extreme burst-or-die or the older nothing-kills-me eles.

DiogoSilva.7089:

From an elementalist’s point of view, matches no longer feel extremely unfair against us. We can deal decent damage and have decent survival, which makes the gameplay a lot more enjoyable than the extreme burst-or-die or the older nothing-kills-me eles.

I agree. Even as fresh air though I feel so much better. Thieves can’t just dive me without risking their own life.

Meta got worse? In my experiance meta hasnt changed at all …. in tourneys ppl still run double wars, with hambow or swords, ppl still run 1 bunker guard, 1 spirit ranger …. Only thing change i saw was that eles are stronger, necros with thousand ultralong fears, fewer decap engis. Tho i havent notice, as some ppl say, those “op” engies with strong burns, at least nothing/noeone that would stand out.

Op builds/proffesions are still op, just as before … nothing changed about toning them down …. war nerf was joke. Many new traits are joke (PvP point of view).

A celestial elementalist can make good use of its entire skillset in a single build, for once. Conditions, heals, auras, bursting – none of them feel underwhelming and “filler” because celestial fuels them all. This makes the class more satisfying to play with. And with room for breathing (due to higher survival), and without being pidgeonholed to specific traitlines for the sake of mandadory stats, I’d dare to say that this is how anet always intended for elementalists to play like.

For that reason, celestial eles have a lot more freedom when trait building, only being restricted by the overall usefulness and synergy of each trait, but no longer by the trait line’s stats (unlike, say, a valkyrie elementalist, that was stuck on air and water traits, because valkyrie demands the former, and the elementalist is not viable with the health bonus that the later offers).

The innate survivability Anet has set to our class has shown to be ineffective. Not only because we are a very hybrid profession, even when we specialize into something, but specially because we do not have enough tools to justify our base health+armor values. Speccing into vitality and toughness (and healing power) is not a tactical choice, but a necessity. Celestial takes us away from that burden. Our base stats are automatically put at an acceptable and appealing value. This frees us a bit, both when traiting, and when fighting.

EDIT It also gives strength to the argument about stat ranges being too high in pvp. With celestial, the stat ranges are not very high because any stat differences comes entirely from traits and from runes. And… it feels very nice! We can specialize into more power, or more condition, or more healing, all of them making a noticeable difference, but without falling into extreme situations. It’s so much more fun this way.

DiogoSilva.7089:

EDIT It also gives strength to the argument about stat ranges being too high in pvp. With celestial, the stat ranges are not very high because any stat differences comes entirely from traits and from runes. And… it feels very nice! We can specialize into more power, or more condition, or more healing, all of them making a noticeable difference, but without falling into extreme situations. It’s so much more fun this way.

That actually makes me kind of jel. Almost all of the specs that work in the meta are totally trait locked.

I’ve gotta say that is one thing WoW absolutely nailed with their new trait system, you get to pick the traits you actually want and not just the ones that are obviously the best without putting yourself out of reach of another mandatory trait. Becomes very spreadsheet-y.

Amount of damage and conditions has risen a lot, mainly consequence of extra sigil on 2 handed weapons + runes being changed (especially Strength). A lot of people saw this power creep coming… seems they were right.

What i’ve noticed:

Condi engi: They still die if you focus them, have your necro counter him. Nerf baltha runes a bit and not the trait, altho i would prefer if i could control the burn somehow.. or if they removed it completely and made engi function as condi damage dealer without it.

Necro: just don’t duel them and nightmare is less of an issue. Dhumbfire is still good if used well, they can have better survivability but lower damage. And they still pretty much hard counter engis.

Thieves: PW still strong, higher initial burst but they die a lot easier now with no lyssa.

Warriors: hurt with strength, but they die easier with no lyssa.

Mesmer: Scary at times.. their burst is quite insane at range, powerblock is broken as crap right now but it’s getting fixed but i do hope they keep the 10sec interrupt on skills vs thieves. Torment shatter feels pretty strong too.

Guardian: Bunker guardians can actually put out some decent pressure now with intelligence, not amazing but it can provide okaaaaay dmg >_>.

Ranger: I haven’t seen anything to special beside it’s actually quite a bit more fun to play now with pets being pretty responsive(it bumped up quite a lot on my fun to play list).

Ele: pretty good now! Not overpowered and not super weak, probably the best place in terms of balance of the classes tbh

Might stacking is getting incredibly stupid. Make the cap a bit lower in pvp perhaps? like 15 or so.

Lyssa nerf: LOVE IT

Strength rune buff: Way over the top buff.

Balthazar runes: Too much.

Traveler runes: Loving them.

Sigil stacking is quite stupid with certain setups.. Shouldn’t have allowed double on crit or double on swap to stack.

I much prefer this current gameplay/meta over the super sustain, lyssa thing we had going on before and i’m enjoying the patch quite a bit.

Emapudapus.1307:

Meta got worse? In my experiance meta hasnt changed at all …. in tourneys ppl still run double wars, with hambow or swords, ppl still run 1 bunker guard, 1 spirit ranger …. Only thing change i saw was that eles are stronger, necros with thousand ultralong fears, fewer decap engis. Tho i havent notice, as some ppl say, those “op” engies with strong burns, at least nothing/noeone that would stand out.

Op builds/proffesions are still op, just as before … nothing changed about toning them down …. war nerf was joke. Many new traits are joke (PvP point of view).

Still needs time to adjust. This patch was a big one, people are still playing the old meta b/c that’s what they’re familiar with. Once people figure out how to play with the new stuff, then it will change.

Keira Ferland.5619:

Emapudapus.1307:

Meta got worse? In my experiance meta hasnt changed at all …. in tourneys ppl still run double wars, with hambow or swords, ppl still run 1 bunker guard, 1 spirit ranger …. Only thing change i saw was that eles are stronger, necros with thousand ultralong fears, fewer decap engis. Tho i havent notice, as some ppl say, those “op” engies with strong burns, at least nothing/noeone that would stand out.

Op builds/proffesions are still op, just as before … nothing changed about toning them down …. war nerf was joke. Many new traits are joke (PvP point of view).

Still needs time to adjust. This patch was a big one, people are still playing the old meta b/c that’s what they’re familiar with. Once people figure out how to play with the new stuff, then it will change.

New stuff, more like new hambow, check out my hambow build in warrior forum, you can 100-0 any squishies with 3 hits while being PTV.

Emapudapus.1307:

war nerf was joke. Many new traits are joke (PvP point of view).

It was serious enough for many warriors, myself included, to reconsider using longbow because although condi still can do a decent amount of damage 15% damage nerf on burst is highly noticeable.

Hammer stun-lockers seem to have become more annoying, I’ll admit that but nothing serious unless you get to face two of them.

Yesterday some friends and I tried 4 zerk mesmers(different specs) +1DP thief. It was hilarious, we never held mid aside from a few decaps, but our dmg output was so high that no meta build could keep up with it XD.
Still, matches are polluted with baddies these days. Both ranked and HJ

The new meta is much more fun than the previous bunker heavy metas of the past, now it is all about offense. Don’t care if its conditions or power or hybrid, an offensive meta is more fun to play and watch than a tanky meta.

There is nowhere near enough competition for a ‘meta’ to mean anything in four days.

The gameplay is 300% better however. The devs listened to our feedback, dps has been increased substantially, and despite the reward system catering entirely for casuals the gameplay has never been more rewarding for decent players since launch.

Engis, hambows, necros. Whoever plays those will win all the matches. Easy