Guild Wars 2

I wanted to get your opinions of how you see spvp going after the latest patch.
Let me start off saying that my main is a necro, and it took me a while to configure a viable combo of traits/weapons etc.. in order to actually stay alive and be able to hold my own on 1v1 in spvp. And I did try everything. Conditions is just not there, when you have about every classes having conditions themselves, and some I might say even stronger per tic, and most classes able to dust themselves off anyway, scepter/con necro doesn’t measure up. Summener.. pff don’t get me started on those mindless idiots who just stare at you sucking their thumbs while you’re 10 secs into combat. Only damage dealing viable necro combo I came up with is axe-dagger/power/crit with rest on vitality and toughness. ( ~ 3,100 power/ 57% crit / ~2k toughness and 21k vitality). With this configuration I could hold my own with all players who know their characters ( 50-50) and down noobs easily.
After the patch I’m noticing that Guardians are just untouchable. Not only can I not dent them, they pack a mean punch. I’m rank 29 in pvp and noobs just steamroll me over. (I’ve seen Guardians hold their own against 3-4 and still come out alive). Warriors the same, get stunned and my 21k health drops like a rock. Rangers with pets and Eles, I’d be lucky to take out a noob. Mesmers have always been frustrating; they have to do something with that class. Most Necros I have no problem with.
It seems that the Devs wanted to create stand alone characters, each with heals, buffs, debuffs, dots etc.. in order to create parties easier, not having to worry about whether you have a buffer, tank, or healer. Noble Idea, but a tall order. If you go that way you have to eliminate distinctions in armor. Heavy, medium, and light, which have always been to distinguish the tanks (whom by the way were never DD’s), from the cloth glass canons (usually the damage dealers). So now we have a community of self standing characters, they gave dots to everyone, buffs and debuffs, self heals. And now they give more dps to tanks. If they’re using that formula, then give more toughness and vitality to squishes. All those light armor wearers that will suffer for all these changes… OHH wait, that’s the Ele’s and the Necros.. Well the Ele’s have a ton of shields and more dps then daggers now.. LOL.. yea I know I have an 80 Ele too. So I guess the poor necro will have to fumble about in his light armor, meaningless dots, mindless summons of rotting meat, playing around for a viable trait configuration just to stay alive again.

I started doing some sPvP after the patch and my results are quite different. I can handle myself pretty well against most players. I haven’t lost a 1vs1 vs a Guardian or Warrior I consider these easy targets, followed by mesmer/necro/ranger.

The classes that give me the most trouble are engineer/ele/thief. I’m condition specced so this might be why though I’m pretty tanky but the thief stealth and so much evade annoys me, Engineer for some reason conditions don’t seem to work on them and same with eles, I guess because they have so many condition removals and boons, and corrupt boon is so unreliable I hate when it doesn’t work wasting a skill but if I don’t take it then I def won’t win against those classes unless the players are pretty bad.

Of course there’s always the exception, I played a couple of matches vs a very skilled mesmer that used a lot of stealth/immob/stuns with a shatter build it was tough to keep track of the real one with so much dps coming at me.

Heavy armor =/= tank, light armor =/= glass cannon. The only true difference between light and heavy armor is 301 armor, not insignificant but far from defining heavy as tank and light as DPS.

Want to kill a guardian? Bring corrupt boon for the bigger boon stacks, interrupt his heals with Doom, and he’ll die. They don’t have a strong PvP spec that can deal enough damage to pressure people while still being tanky, and their non-tanky specs just aren’t good.

Warriors, except people who are insanely good with them, are absolute trash in PvP. If you are dying to one, its on you.

Elementalists depend on your spec. I can usually beat them, but 1v1 its about a 5 minute fight, and neither one of us really want to do that all game. You need to bring boon removal, learn their skill rotation, learn their attunement rotation, and then learn how to counter bigger abilities (like transferring off earth dagger 5 for a decent bleed damage burst).

BM rangers are again, based on your spec, same with Mesmers. You just need to learn whether you need to kill the ranger first, kill the pet first, or if your spec can even fight them well. Mesmers are more an issue of finding the real one, which becomes easy with experience (and the right name settings).

TL;DR Necromancers are okay in sPvP, there are just specific ways to deal with each class.

Just a month ago I was more of a critic too. I said “Fixing the broken classes/builds ie thief, mesmer and d/d ele and exploits are the first needs (for necro)”. Although d/d ele is still a little too strong the devs have in fact seen the light and reduced burst damage and nerfed stealth. Some ridiculous exploits like 100nades are gone too. Meanwhile necro has slowly gotten better in comparison with the only real nerf being to epidemic which was understandable. I still have problems with the whole melee heavy philosophy in general but I’m not paying a subscription and like the game balance more than I have in months. Have to say the one class that still needs attention is warrior more than any other. They have been forced into the shout heal survivability builds for general purpose use and need more than that.

Zogyark.4597:

I started doing some sPvP after the patch and my results are quite different. I can handle myself pretty well against most players. I haven’t lost a 1vs1 vs a Guardian or Warrior I consider these easy targets, followed by mesmer/necro/ranger.

The classes that give me the most trouble are engineer/ele/thief. I’m condition specced so this might be why though I’m pretty tanky but the thief stealth and so much evade annoys me, Engineer for some reason conditions don’t seem to work on them and same with eles, I guess because they have so many condition removals and boons, and corrupt boon is so unreliable I hate when it doesn’t work wasting a skill but if I don’t take it then I def won’t win against those classes unless the players are pretty bad.

Of course there’s always the exception, I played a couple of matches vs a very skilled mesmer that used a lot of stealth/immob/stuns with a shatter build it was tough to keep track of the real one with so much dps coming at me.

Engineer:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleaning_Formula_409

Thief:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow%27s_Embrace

Elementalist:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Wave_
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Evasive_Arcana <—- Procs “Cleansing Wave”
and
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elemental_Attunement
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Soothing_Disruption
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Water