Guild Wars 2

I don’t necessarily agree with using metcritic to bomb reviews of game like this, however I can understand why especially in the case of Druid balance.

This isn’t the first time there’s been a knee jerk change to the way AF is generated, which is the heart of this elite spec, it’s a massive change. Whilst I don’t expect the Devs to be posting constantly and spending hours discussing skill balance with players on the forums like some people do seem to expect, I would expect some communication about why a drastic change to the core of an elite spec was being made.

Absolute silence on the part of ANet on subjects import to their player base seems to be par for the course though.

I have to agree I find the new WvW XP bar really annoyingly distracting.

Nope. They’re a joke, the worst utilities of all the Elite specs bar none.

Dynasty.5127:

Ajax.4970:

The ridiculous gating of the Elite Spec behind an enormous amount of grind has really just soured this whole launch for me after a few hours of play.

Sorry but you got it very wrong this time ANet. People want to play the new content with the new specs not have to play the new content just to get the new specs. As a mostly WvW player I’ll just be going back to my normal build now until I can unlock the Elite spec, whenever that might be, its just so very disappointing.

It does seem to be overshadowing the excitement that should be HoT release. All those people that don’t use the forums often just got hit in the face with this, many of which seem to be none to happy.

I use the forums and knew there was a high cost, however it was unclear how it was made up, how much was skills & traits and how much was items.

If the traits and skills were bought separately as with other specs I could choose the skills I wanted and unlock the traits as a priority, as it stands I can’t play the scrapper without paying for the terrible gyros I will never use.

For what we are now understanding to be a very integral part of the expansion that people have been asking about for a long time they have been very tight lipped. I am just extremely disappointed and feel very misled, this is basically levelling all over again, a part of the game dislike.

The ridiculous gating of the Elite Spec behind an enormous amount of grind has really just soured this whole launch for me after a few hours of play.

Sorry but you got it very wrong this time ANet. People want to play the new content with the new specs not have to play the new content just to get the new specs. As a mostly WvW player I’ll just be going back to my normal build now until I can unlock the Elite spec, whenever that might be, its just so very disappointing.

Hymi.7265:

We can do GvG if you’d like! That would be awesome, and good training. PM me in game, and we can plan for a GvG ^^

I’d love too, Psy was even asking to get some GvG’s arranged a few weeks ago

http://www.gw2wvw.net/comment/179745#comment-179745

However after reset most of our already low turnout logged out in disgust, myself included, and most won’t be back till next reset. People have had enough, read what Nozzle wrote he pretty much hit the nail on the head and due to the poor antics of “some” of your server people just don’t want to play anymore. It’s a game yet they are deprived of any way to enjoy it.

Hymi.7265:

But when it was GuildvsGuild, for example HARDvsJd, we defeated them easily.

Sorry but thats just made up [HARD] are the worst hand-holding pug shield guild, you run away even with 2:1 odds.

Jd roll you so often its unreal you are a server of free lootbags when you don’t blob that’s why you have to blob. Then only way [HARD] win fights is (G+G+G+G)vsG, you’re terrible.

The only way you’ve made it to tier 8 rank is due to all your opponents leaving the matchup because we’re sick your cheating in so many various form, and ANet won’t seem to do anything about it. Lets get this straight, you are only getting +600 ticks because we LET you have them, no other reason, you’re still the same terrible server, with the same awful guilds, we just want you to give tier 8 free lootbags for a while instead.

DiscoJacen.1590:

kitten even with “trapper runes” on our side we can’t win XD^^

FTFY

His link showed no proof of hacking, unless he has more any more evidence it’s just a ranger hiding in a tower with trapper runes.

Szmer.9602:

Blah

Let me explain that video to you the easiest way;

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Trapper

I’d suggest removing the link and their name from your post unless you want infractions and your post or this entire thread to be deleted for naming and shaming.

A Hacker ban week where ANet actually finds and bans hackers would be nice

T9 is full of Blacktide hackers taking everything and ANet have been deleting threads if we decide to complain about it.

The lack of Rifled Barrels is really screwing us over. It was almost mandatory prior to the patch for rifle builds to get the most out of Overcharged Shot, Blunderbuss and Jump Shot, without it the rifle feels much less effective.

Well at least you have an aura, put this legendary on an Asura and the legendary aura doesn’t’ show up at all, I think its actually too small and so is hidden inside the character model. I bug reported this well over a year ago when I made this legendary and have yet to see anything come of it.

I run this in WvW in groups

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQFAUlUUpEr9dx+KseRiESRhdfgKoXiKoffeQftFEC-zkyAYfASEQ2rIaslxioxqXwUnRW/GENMq3AzfEZCBkbLA-w

It’s not a zerker setup, but I do sometimes run it with zerker armour and celestial trinkets just like you’ve got setup and it works pretty well.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQFAUlUUpEr9dx+KseRiESRhdfgKoXiKoffeQftFEC-zkyAYfASEQ2rIaslxioxqXwUnRW/GENMq3AzfEZCBkbLA-w

The one thing I would say is if you want to go zerker, you’ll be running a power build and I would ditch the pistol and try the rifle. I used to run nothing but pistol + shield and rifle took a lot of getting used to but now I find I much prefer it in a lot of circumstances and have learnt how to cope with Thieves a little easier using it.

Asuran Engineers beware on The Predator, your legendary won’t show much due to kit use, people won’t see it so much as you’re so small, you wield it more like a shotgun so the sniper rifle skin seems a bit odd, but also your Aura won’t look anywhere near as good as on a human as most of it is hidden inside the Asuran character model.

I’ve recently made The Predator on my Asuran engineer and was pretty disappointed on the Aura, however the shots sounds and visuals, plus the grenade barrage effect and footsteps are all good.

It’s not a bunker build but with 3k armour and 3.5k power this is fairly tanky with decent damage

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQFAUlUUpEr9dx+KseRiESRhdfgKoXiKoffeQftFEC-zkyAYfASEQ2rIaslxioxqXwUnRW/GENMq3AzfEZCBkbLA-w

1. Ranger
2. Engineer
3. Elementalist

ANet have only ever shown any interest in balancing for sPvP even though massive glaring imbalances have existed across the rest of the game since launch. Unless they act in any way to contradict that I can only assume they do not care about the state of class balance outside sPvP. Get used to it.

It’s pretty simple really, they’re a pet class and WvW is a game mode where pets are pretty ineffective for the most part. Add to that they have a large amount of trait’s and utilities centred around benefiting their pets and no other allies and what you have is a selfish class in a team game…and you wonder why nobody wants them?

Halvorn.9831:

Ajax.4970:

Halvorn.9831:

Prysin.8542:

Take rangers. They are hated through and through by pretty much every player around. Why? Because once upon a time, they all tried to play it at some point, they couldn’t get the hang of it (it is NOT supposed to be an archer, if you try play as one, you die) due to the treacherous design. Most players fall into this design pitfall, making rangers seem weak and useless.

Now let’s look at the name of the class. It even has the word RANGE in its class name. Can you guess what is wrong with this? It is supposed to be THE ranged class. So it is not a design pitfall, the current state of ranger is a misconception. It should do the best damage with ranged physical weapons, full stop.

Why should the ranger do more physical damage than a Warrior with a longbow, why should it do more damage than an Engineers rifle, that would be unbalanced.

The ranger is already weaker in close combat

Evade on auto attacks say otherwise. If you really believe Rangers are weak in melee I think you haven’t explored all the available options. In small scale melee combat Rangers can be extremely tough and I have fought with and against some pretty decent melee focused Rangers. The problem though is still having to micro manage the pet to make it effective.

Halvorn.9831:

Prysin.8542:

Take rangers. They are hated through and through by pretty much every player around. Why? Because once upon a time, they all tried to play it at some point, they couldn’t get the hang of it (it is NOT supposed to be an archer, if you try play as one, you die) due to the treacherous design. Most players fall into this design pitfall, making rangers seem weak and useless.

Now let’s look at the name of the class. It even has the word RANGE in its class name. Can you guess what is wrong with this? It is supposed to be THE ranged class. So it is not a design pitfall, the current state of ranger is a misconception. It should do the best damage with ranged physical weapons, full stop.

Why should the ranger do more physical damage than a Warrior with a longbow, why should it do more damage than an Engineers rifle, that would be unbalanced.

The problem with the ranger, it’s a pet class. The ranger needs to be able to be played without a pet as it was able to do in GW1 and gain some benefits to balance it out by doing so. The pet is a useless unnecessary class feature outside of open world PvE and its been pointed out so many times but nothing has been done about it. I have all classes at level 80 except a ranger and won’t be leveling one until this is sorted.

Sensotix.4106:

I really tried to stay as objective as possible but then again this post gets ruined by pve and wvw people.. :/ it’s sad
some actually provided nice feedback and suggestions but they also got destroyed by pve and wvw guys

The sPvP minigame, yes that’s what it is and will remain so until it has more than just conquest mode, forums are the only place where Devs will engage on balance discussion. That’s a serious elitist chip you have on your shoulder and you should take note that Mesmers, now that Warriors have helped calm the condi spam meta, are just as powerful, perhaps a little to much I think.

The discussion on balance that occurs in these forums affects players of WvW and Spvp, to some extent PvE but not as much. Everybody is entitled to discuss and express their opinion here, because there is certainly no Devs paying any attention over in the WvW forum.

I just can’t bring myself to try it yet. It seems to have no synergy with anything else I use. No synergy with any of condition removal that’s useful, Cleansing Formula 409, and no condition removal itself. If I take this heal then I have no condition removal whatsoever, unless I drop a kit and take Elixir C which I just can’t see being viable.

Read this thread over here;

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/HGH-power-nades-wvw-vids

I’ve been running something very similar both before and after the patch and it works very well and yes you get big numbers.

Absolutely agree here. I don’t want to be showered in riches for getting all the meta achievements, however WvW is lacking in anything really exclusive and special.

Everything you can get in WvW can be achieved much easier and quicker via PvE. I’m sorry but a mini pet just stays in the bank, especially when it still shows up when you’re stealthed as the Dolyak does. It’s a liability not a reward. Give us something that matches up to things like the Gas Mask and Wings skins you’ve been able to get from PvE meta achievements.

And that t-shirt Ikaros I suspect it wouldn’t be thumbs Devon would be holding up.

Tribio.8531:

Have to agree with OP here actually, I’m a native Fissue of Woe player and an avid WvW partaker, but never ever have I seen an ANet tag around.. :/

Oh well, you get used to being the ginger-haired stepchild that no one cares about after a while..

Trib, you missed em. They arrived on Vabbi once, Sam found them, they never came back

Taking a look at the EU league week 2, 6 of the 9 matches are blowouts and are already decided by a long margin. Bronze Tier is 3/3 http://mos.millenium.org/eu

Bronze Tier has been rendered almost unplayable for most of the lower tier servers, an issue which should have been sorted long before leagues started as the population difference was well known. The Dev’s themselves have been on Vabbi and seen how sparsely populated their WvW maps are this is an issue they should have been well aware of.

My question to Anet is at what point will the leagues be recognised as a failed experiment and eliminated. I’m not going to stick around for 7 weeks of this it’s just not fun.

Meh PvE problems.

Wish I had a bank full of ascended rings from WvW, but as it is I’ve never seen a single one from a rank-up chest in over 500 ranks.

I main a Warrior but have 6 level 80s all with multiple sets of exotics and some ascended for various builds and I have to say that of all of them the Elementalist is in the worst state by far.

The main source of the issue I would say is that the majority of the useful defensive/mobility skills required to survive have cooldowns just aren’t comparable to those used by other classes, they’re all massively long by comparison. e.g. Burning Retreat 20 sec CD compared to Phase Retreat 10 sec cooldown and can be traited much lower.

You can’t survive any pressure at all and I have to say that the Elementalist is pretty much where the Warrior was many months ago. It has useful tools but no sustain to actually be of use in combat under any sort of pressure.

Attunement swaps take way too long compared to weapon swaps cooldown. Having no weapon swaps locks you into a single style of play, staff only ranged red cirlces, daggers only melee etc. Other classes can have flexibility of having range and melee swaps, why isn’t the Elementalist able to have two attunements with one weapon set and two with another so you can melee range earth swap for a defensive style of play and weapon swap to have long range in water for supporting allies or fire for long range AoE’s.

Overall though sustain for the Elementalist needs to be improved massively and it nots something that can wait 4 months they’re in a terrible state right now.

1) Class Balance
2) Game Modes and lack of alternatives to conquest
3) Rewards

1) Class Balance
2) Alt Disincentives (Ascended Items and WvW Ranks)
3) Server Population Imbalance

sorrow.2364:

Maybe you missed the part that this build has 62% crit chance on stunned foes.

No I didn’t miss it, you have a 12% crit rate lets not act like Unsuspecting Foe gives a perma +50% crit rate. If your target has stability, stunbreakers or just the good sense to dodge your stuns you won’t benefit from Unsuspecting Foe. Sounds like an appropriate counter to me, Hidden Killer has no such counters and as such deserves its place as a Grand Master level trait.

sorrow.2364:

I repeat that warriors have way to completely cancel damage and I’ve listed also how. Don’t forget also that stunned foes usually don’t attack.

Yes you mentioned this before, however with only 3 utility slots and 2 weapons swaps we have to pick the best of them to suit our needs we can’t have them all. They have prohibitive cooldowns and so timing is key, other classes are able to use skills like phase retreat to teleport out of harms way, which can be traited for a 5 sec cooldown, Flanking Strike with no cooldown for evasion. As for repeating oneself;

Ajax.4970:

The best defence is to not get hit at all however, as a class don’t have the tools for that.

The Warrior is a very different class to those like a Thief or Mesmer and as such has different tools to get the job done.

Ghoulina.2976:

Well, healing signet for warriors isn’t working as intended (tics every second vs every 3) so atm they have a slight advantage.

That’s incorrect, probably misinformation due to Anet getting the original patch notes for the buff to healing signet wrong. I can’t find the post at the moment but I’m pretty sure it was confirmed by an Anet dev and I think the confusion was around the fact that the Adrenal Health trait regens health every 3 secs, Healing Signet was always every 1 sec.

It doesn’t need compensation, the Warrior will still have strong CC. Without this fix Unsuspecting Foe is way too strong, with it, its strong and usable but not a must have and that’s where it should be.

sorrow.2364:

Pic of the warrior I’m talking about attached.
Keep in mind that it is PvP, where Crit damage cap is about 50-60%.
This build has Unsuspecting Foes, which means 62% crit damage on stunned foes.

I can show you also a log if you want to realize which kind of damage this build does. 4-5k damage on Earthshaker or Skull Crack are fairly common.

You didn’t explained why having that insane healing capability comes into the equation. We have said that armor+HP is a fair tradeoff from the lack of escapebility of other professions, but this topic started from Healing Signet, not armor, neither HP.
Most professions to get the healing capability provided by Healing Signet alone have to bring Cleric amulet, which completely destroy their damage output and vitality.

Confirms the awful crit chance I was talking about, and you might get the odd 4k earthshaker and skullcrack is a higher damage single target skill so this doesn’t surprise me that it hits high when it does crit.

The reason the other skills come into the equation when talking about healing signet is that defence needs to be assessed as a collection of skills. Some classes and builds are about not getting hit and therefore don’t require the same amounts of mitigation or healing , other are built entirely around mitigation and/or healing for the majority of their defence. You can’t just compare the healing skills from one class with the healing skills of another and just say they should provide the same amount of hp/s that just doesn’t work.

sorrow.2364:

Unsuspecting Foes.
That’s 50% crit chance for pretty much all the time.
Added with good base crit damage, you can really deal massive damage with that build.

Warriors have tools to completely mitigate damage, they are just not as prominent as other professions. There are some blocks, some evasions (on GS), vigor on stances, endure pain and berserker stance, stuns (which are also defensive) and so on.

Those are simply different professions. Imagine if warriors were able to evade like thieves, that would be insanely broken.

The fix to Sigil of Paralyzation will drastically bring down the window where UF is applied, however to get the stats you spoke of earlier my point was that you won’t have good base crit or the crit damage to deal the massive damage. Screen shot me a character window with these golden stats that let you deal this uber damage.

Warriors have some tools on long cooldowns for windows of defense, they are not quite up to par with the tools other classes have to kite around avoiding damage and I don’t think they should be. You’ve made my point for me, Warriors would be OP with the armour level they have AND those tools, but the point was that is why they need that level of armour and mitigation.

sorrow.2364:

You are right, Healing Signet isn’t that good by itself against burst builds. But, on the other hand, being able to reach 3.2k+ armor is. Uh, you can also have 24k HP and 2.2k power while doing so, dealing massive damage per hit.

To achieve those stats you would have little crit chance or crit damage, hardly going to deal massive damage, sustained damage yes, massive damage no.

The other thing which you need to bear in mind is that 3.2k armour is nowhere near the defence that you can get from much lighter armoured classes can with mobility, evades, teleports and stealth. Melee Warriors have to get up in peoples face and then get kited around constantly. With the lower armour and none of the mobility and evades other classes have we would be no threat whatsoever, i.e. we have to be where the damage is and mostly just take it to be able to dish it out. The best defence is to not get hit at all however, as a class don’t have the tools for that.

Healing Signet is strong against attrition builds/classes and poor against burst builds/classes.

Why is this discussion still going on? Is the hard counter to every strong build really just moan on the forum till its nerfed?

a t s e.9614:

pvp is getting more and more empty these days

PvP is empty due to the fact it’s a dull mini-game which lacks any depth. Anet refuse to make any major changes because they’re still chasing the esports bone without realising nobody is playing their esport game mode because it’s boring.

Stop blaming Warriors for a shortcoming of the game mode.

DevonCarver.5370:

we are not making WvW rank account bound.

This stubborn refusal to see that you are making people play mains otherwise they damage their progress is what stopping people playing alts. Nothing else you can do will stop this short of making WvW Rank progression account based.

RoF have been getting large groups of people through our EB keep gates, which are still up, with this bug all evening so far.

We turned up to defend a keep which they were attacking and as soon as we started taking them down and getting the edge over them with defensive siege they immediately started getting people into the keep to take us down. This is a game breaking bug and is being actively exploited and needs to be fixed ASAP.

Have to agree with this especially with the lack of roles, there’s no depth to the action in GW2 like we had in GW1