Guild Wars 2

IDK about Anvil Rock, but in Europe switching to Desolation has major benefits for PvPers. Pickup teams often have voice comms and skills and usually are better than other pvp teams then on other servers. A lot of pvp guilds recruiting and many pvpers to get into contact with. On the other side, you will be able to guest on other servers for PvP anyway, so the only reason you should really switch is WvW.

Dsquaredcri.9421:

@shakuras: 1on1 is on Temple of the silent storm.

Very closely february ?

Really, only on Temple of the silent storm?

That will get players tired of it real soon then… I genuinely hope this isn’t true, and maps are randomly chosen/voted for/chosen by teams.
Otherwise we get to grind one map again like bad pugs do with forest of niflhel (did that when I was still a noob, not fun)

I also hope the order of the maps is changed for tournaments… That’s also a major reason for the high difference in skill between casuals and hardcore players: Those last ones get to play all maps, whereas casuals usually only play Niflhel and Foefire.

I don’t mind if they keep a strict order for tournaments, as long as they change it every week. Totally random is probably not an option as some people want to respec for every map they play, making such as system rather annoying.

Btw, Jonathan, thanks for the replies. A lot of people were just waiting for any response. It feels great to know that you are actually listening to what we have to say.

Technically spoken the only teleport that is also a stun breaker is Blink, which is a utility skill. There is one leap on the staff that enables you to teleport backwards, but does not remove the stun. The other leap is on the sword, but it requires you to have summoned a clone already (it’s a chain skill) and if you wait too long, it resets.

Blink is on a 24-30 second cd, depending on traits. The staff and sword leaps are on shorter cooldowns.

I think this staff leap you find so problematic is the main mechanic ( and winds of chaos, the AoE) that makes staff such a viable weapon, because it enables you to avoid damage. And that’s what mesmers are all about: avoiding damage by creating illusion.

You could argue that this is not the way mesmers should be playing. In my opinion, it is though. The mesmer wears light armour, which makes it very vulnerable in close combat. That’s why it has blurred frenzy, the leaps, and most mesmers also use at least 1-2 stun breakers as utilities (usually blink, mirror images, decoy). This is a must in the high damage, glass cannon builds most mesmers are currently running because they simply are the best (and only viable mesmer tPvP builds btw).

Just to say that the reason mesmers have these utilities is because the other weapons/utilities don’t match up to the stun breakers in high damage builds.
So you either:
- nerf damage evasion for mesmers (their main mechanic)
- nerf damage output for mesmers so they start playing more defensive builds
- do both of the above slightly (longer cd on staff leap e.g.) and buff the other mesmer weapons (torch, scepter) to make condition/all-round builds equally viable.
- L2play and use high aoe without stuns to seriously pwn mesmers. (which is also why good necros and eles can easily beat mesmers, unlike bad warriors who start off with hundred blades which is so predictable you don’t even have to use a leap but just dodge to avoid it)

PvP:
Are you planning to add more game modes in the future? I feel like a lot of players are slightly disappointed with only point capping as a feature for PvP.

Desolation is where all the hardcore PvPers play. It’s definitely the best server if you’re a PvPer.

Why bash on GW like this just for the gear aspect… As for the gear, that it takes almost no time to achieve a full exotic set, that’s absolutely not true. That is only true when you have reached your max level and it would also mean only level 80 characters can play pvp. It’s also not true if you want a decent looking armour set. You don’t get a full dungeon set by playing 6 hours. It takes several days to get enough tokens. Also, crafted gear requires more time and costs way more.

If you would like this feature added, go back to playing WoW. This was one of the things that I liked most about Gw2, being a Quake player where everyone has the same stuff and winning is actual skill and also very rewarding.

It means that nobody gets discriminated in any way, that you can try out a new profession at max level without having to level it, and that PvP is skill-based, not gear based. That’s why higher ranked people usually have more skill in this game. People who like grinding (like the typical WoW player) don’t have any advantage.

We don’t need battlegrounds the way you say we need them. We need a tournament upgrade which will come soon and we need new game modes, like CTF and TDM that are team based.

And also maybe a GvG like in the former GW. I’ve heard it was really nice.

But we do not need another WoW copy. Guild wars has more potential.

Considered the amount of dc’s my team has had during tournaments, we’re far from implementing such systems. I agree that relogging/swapping shouldn’t be an option, but they first have to stabilize the system.

I have the same issue on my mesmer. Only one build seems to be the best, restricting me to use it and limiting my creativity in every way.

ZenoSpyridon.1396:

Ashumet.8674:

I’m certain that people will come back to gw2 pvp if a good update comes out. At least I will.

I used to be impatient, but now I realise Arenanet has just gotten a lot of constructive criticism on the tournament system as a whole. I think they were planning a major update for February anyway, so I really expect they want to do this right and not just quickly implement something that isn’t as good as we want it to be. The matchmaking which they are making, requires a lot of things to consider. (Sharp said he wanted it to be based on not only score but also damage dealt, amount healed, conditions inflicted, damage taken, etc…) I can only imagine what time it would take to balance that out over the professions so that the score that comes out is based on skill level and not profession.

And the new/modified tournament system they want to implement, heavily depends on this matchmaking. You can’t just change the way tourneys work for 2 weeks, and then implement a new patch that changes everything again. That would most likely kitten off players.

So I only have one message for Arenanet: Take your time, but do it right and prove once again you are expectional developers.

Ashumet out.

I agree that a lot of people will come back if they do a good PvP patch.

The only issue here is that “good” is subjective. A large amount of people are waiting for them to do away with the Tournament system and add 1v1 team matchmaking, which would bring a lot of them back.

But there is also a large amount of the community, especially GW1 players, that quit the game a long time ago because GW2’s style of PvP is so different from the PvP Guild Wars was known for.

Personally I’ll be fairly satisfied with 1v1 team matchmaking, that would get me back on a regular basis as long as it didn’t have any major problems. But I can’t lie…. What I really want is that GW1 style PvP. I would be so happy if it’s just announced to be in the plans for the future somewhere.

But there are many people unlike me who won’t touch GW2 again without that style of PvP. The best possible thing to do to get players back would be to make both types of players happy.

I didn’t play GW1 before, so I have no idea what that style was like, though I suppose it had something to do with Guild versus Guild pvp, something that has now completely vanished from the game. In fact it’s a shame that a game called Guild Wars merely relies on the guild system as an extended friend list (imo).
That scale of battles has indeed completely vanished. World versus world indeed implements larger battles, but it doesn’t require any Guild cooperation. In fact, this kind of mass PvP is now organised on a server scale basis, and does not require guilds however. The squad system even encourages this. Mass zergs are the way to go.

But WvW is doing well atm. Everybody who plays it seems to love it and last time I did I was impressed by the great progression in strategy my server had made.

Regular PvP however, is still in experimental phase as I see it. Though I love the GW2 combat system for it’s dynamism, the repetitiveness of the kind of PvP we have now, is the main problem. A lot of players already know these maps and strategies so well, that there is nothing left to be discovered, and thus they get bored from playing the same games over and over again. It is only logical that decent PvP requires more maps, more game modes, more viable profession builds for it to get to an enjoyable and in the long term even an esport level. GW2 isn’t LoL, this dynamic combat style needs more variety so the main skills required are environmental adaptation and team support, not just getting used to playing a few maps over and over again with no variation in strategy whatsoever, because it seems that only one strategy is the best.

However, at this time, PvP seems to get little love from the developers compared to the amount of PvE content that was released. The time it would take to design some more decent maps can’t be this long compared to the time spent on Fractals for example. If the map isn’t good when released, it can always be modified later, but in the mean time the lack of variety can become frustrating. And 2 of the current maps aren’t even used in tournaments.

I still believe all of that will change in the future. But it will take more time than we like.

I’m also thinking about a lot of builds that just aren’t viable compared to ‘that one best build’.
I’m talking about the typical thief backstab build, the mesmer shantasm build, the guardian bunker build, etc…
As I’m mostly playing a mesmer, I will just explain it from my point of view.
I used to experiment a lot with different builds. Condition builds, confusion/retaliation builds, defensive builds, glass cannon builds, etc…
I really liked and some builds seemed pretty strong at first, but after a while I realised that there was just one build that was better than any other build in almost any situation: the shantasm build.
Since I never really liked shattering a lot, I used to play heavy phantasm builds or pure clone condition builds, but these were completely underpowered compared to the shantasm build.
Now there are 2 options, as stated above: you nerf or you buff. I definitely think that mesmers should get a little buff when it comes to conditions, especially when using scepter and torch, weapons that are rarely used in tPvP because of their low utility compared with sword/pistol/focus.
I honestly think this should better be fixed with a buff than a nerf. I know it has already been buffed, but not enough as it seems. Confusion remains a little extra condition that is never relied on to create a good build. A pity, it seems.

And so it goes on for a lot of builds in a lot of professions. What they should do is balance the builds out over the professions and in the trait lines as well.

Or maybe create profession specific amulets?

I’m certain that people will come back to gw2 pvp if a good update comes out. At least I will.

I used to be impatient, but now I realise Arenanet has just gotten a lot of constructive criticism on the tournament system as a whole. I think they were planning a major update for February anyway, so I really expect they want to do this right and not just quickly implement something that isn’t as good as we want it to be. The matchmaking which they are making, requires a lot of things to consider. (Sharp said he wanted it to be based on not only score but also damage dealt, amount healed, conditions inflicted, damage taken, etc…) I can only imagine what time it would take to balance that out over the professions so that the score that comes out is based on skill level and not profession.

And the new/modified tournament system they want to implement, heavily depends on this matchmaking. You can’t just change the way tourneys work for 2 weeks, and then implement a new patch that changes everything again. That would most likely kitten off players.

So I only have one message for Arenanet: Take your time, but do it right and prove once again you are expectional developers.

Ashumet out.

Don’t worry. It’s not that hard to get into a free tourney. In fact, I was able to play multiple tourneys on monday afternoon with a max waiting queue of three mins. In Eu though I have no idea of how the situation is in the us. Been having a lot of lag though lately and I know I am not the only one. Anet should fix that asap.

What you’re basically saying here is that the necro ‘condi-tank build’ is not strong enough atm.
Necromancers have the highest vitality in game +their elite skill and f-skills give them high survivability.
If you can’t survive long enough/do enough damage with the current amulet, it’s a matter of training. I personally am very happy with my current necro build and it offers me enough survivability compared to the damage.
Condition removers can indeed be annoying, but a necro can usually reapply them in a matter of seconds

I think a high toughness/power/condi dmg build would definitely be OP, especially for necro.

Probably, some amulet combinations would be OP, such as the one you’re talking about. The cond/toughness/vitality amulet would give you very high survivability combined with very high condition damage, which would make necros very hard to kill.

The best thing you can go for atm is rabid amulet+carrion jewel I think, combined with rune of the undead/divinity.

I personally use that combination on my condi necro and it works pretty well. Since crits can cause bleeding in your trait line or with runes, the precision isn’t entirely wasted in a condition spec.

Hope that helps!

But yeah, you’re right, maybe Arenanet could add some more amulets so we can customize more. A good option would be to include an extra amulet slot and cut the stats in half for every amulet. Or maybe add different jewel slots for the amulet. That would give us lots more of customization for builds and it is actually pretty easy to implement.

Step 1: Dodge, use cc, reflect, block, etc…
Step 2: Profit

Your screenshot proves nothing, except that your team lost.

Jumper, it would please us all if you just quit making a post for everytime you lose a game to someone who is better then you. Thieves are annoying little girls, I agree, but if you just press the right buttons you’ll notice that you can mostly beat them. Every profession has something what makes it require skill to face it. Mesmers have shatters and illusions, Guardians are hard to kill, Elementalists have high mobility/survivability, warrior has 100b, etc…
Thieves have a deadly, super high damage output for a short time, but usually make up for that by having very low survivability once they get knocked or disrupted.
So learn to live with it. I don’t have a problem facing them on both my necro and my mesmer.

Into PvP and looking for tournament groups to get to a higher level, but don’t have that much experience yet? Looking for a PvP guild but not a hardcore one and with no strings attached? An experienced player, but having trouble to find a tourney group?

Then EDS is just something for you.

We are a cross-server (EU) group of semi-experienced tournament players (currently about 50 members) who use this guild to group up when we feel like doing some free (and paid) tourneys. We also advise eachother for the use of builds, tournament setups, map tactics, etc…
We do not, however, ask our players to represent at all times. But when you’re pvping and you have a question, are up for a tourney, etc… join in and ask anything. You’ll get to meet a lot of fellow PvPers with whom you can group up later.

As opposed to other PvP guilds, we are willing to take rookies into the guild and train them by letting them play with eachother and with us (the ‘veterans’). This is the best way to get better at PvP.

With our best teams, we have a 60%+ winning rate in free tournaments (in the final round ofc) and are now trying hard to perform in Paid tournaments as well, which is very hard as the gap between pro teams and good amateurs like us is big, but I feel like we’re getting there.

The main goal of this guild is to offer a platform to learning PvPers for getting better, and also to be an extended friend list for those who are already proficient at tournaments but just looking for a group to queue with for free and paid alike.

You can always invite or ask guildies to join you in PvE activities as well, but it is not likely you will have a lot of reactions to this kind of requests, as we focus on PvP.

We also have Mumble VoIP server which is free to use for guildies. The use of it is a necessity when doing serious tPvP and thus it is recommended you have this installed on your computer so you can communicate with us. The main language is English. A lot of us also speak Dutch (Flemish).

If you would like to join, feel free to send an in-game mail to the character called ‘Ashumet’ and if your intentions are good, you’ll have a good time with us :P

Looking forward to seeing you in PvP!

Ashumet – Guild Leader

I guess Anet is going to reply anytime soon, this is one of the only ‘serious’ and highly supported posts on this forum where people aren’t complaining about some profession but instead coming up with lots of ideas that would actually make the game better for all of us.

So I’m just bumping this up again :-)

I actually disagree. The 8v8 is good for new people and just casual play. It actually motivates them to continue to PvP, because the rewards are good (fast matches + fast kills = a lot of glory).
It is also ideal for build testing on different professions and in zerg situations, which are much rarer in 5v5.
I do agree though that they are not the ‘real PvP experience’, like when voice communicating with your PvP team and experiencing highly competitive and tactical gameplay.
But imo that doesn’t mean they should just get banned. 8v8 has its advantages and disadvantages.

They should just rework it a bit so that you have less incentive to zerg. That is the real problem.

Trust me, a team with 3 bunkers isn’t going to get anywhere facing a balanced team in tPvP. I’ve tried it and failed. The other team will always focus the bunker and take him out eventually. Bunkers can hold a point for a long time, but then there just comes a time when they have all their cds running and they die (at least if you’re skilled enough to kill them) assuming you’re running a decent dps build. Every profession has its own mechanics to make it viable in PvP. Once the bunkers are down, it’s hard for them to cap a defended point back, since they can’t kill the guy standing on it. Sometimes they still achieve it by constantly knocking the opponent out though.

I like playing pure condition on the necro, using staff/scepter-dagger.
I think I play something like 0/30/20/10/10, would have to check. I use blood is power, the boons into cond utility and epidemic/res signet depending on situation.

Together with rabid amulet and rune of the undead. Pretty solid build, focusing on condition damage and survivability. Also, always use plague form as elite, best imo for condi builds.

However, I’ve heard my mate played a dagger dagger/staff build which focused the high burst damage of the daggers together with conditions and life siphonigh and the minion elite. Pretty solid as well.

We (me and my irl friends) started playing tPvP at the end of september (note that a lot of the good teams now started playing in the beta already, so they already had more experience and these good teams also play more than 4 hours a day). In paid, we haven’t even won once (except for my mate).
So we usually stick with free tournaments. Mostly we face about 1-2 pugs/semi-pugs. We have gotten quite good at it, and are now winning about 50% of the times. Every once in a while, me and my pvp buddies still play paid tourneys, but we simply don’t stand a chance, so we do it for the gear mostly.

The current system allows us to get better, but not even close to the level of these top notch teams.
What happens is this: the top notch community gets better and better, playing against each other, while teams like us (good amateurs :-)) rarely get the chance to face them, and when we do, we’re getting destroyed (I’m always happy if we get to 200 points). We don’t get the chance to study their tactics on the second and third map, so even if we would win the first round, we’d get destroyed in the second round.

So we need different things here: (and I know I am repeating it from other posts, just to say it is important to me and the whole community)
- Different map rotations (why always start with forest of Niflhel? Why isn’t Temple in it it yet?)
- Matchmaking (as was stated above, this would be a great improvement, especially for free tournaments)
- New types of game (I don’t see why a CTF mode would be hard to implement, the christmas PvP minigame was just that, just use the close caps on the current
symmetrical maps as a base and make people spawn close to it (cfr Quake maps, I’ve heard the developers were inspired by it), same goes for a team deathmatch)
- NEW MAPS!
- The stealth thing (super annoying)

A system to save builds on characters to switch between games would be very useful as well.

I must agree with the fact that making the losing teams play against eachother would be a great improvement as well (Making 3rd place an actual achievement).

As for the matchmaking, why not do it with a tier system. You give each player a specific amount of rank points. If they lose, they get less points, If they win, you get more points depending on the average rank of the team you’re playing against. Every time a player is queued for a game, the average rank decides which tier they are playing in and against. This way you get tier-1 tourneys for beginning players, tier-2 tourneys for better players, etc… Best not to make to many tiers (max 3-4) or otherwise the queues will take to long.

As for sPvP, please do something about it. Zerging is actually rewarded, which is a bad thing as people don’t learn tactics this way, leaving them with no true PvP experience whatsoever when they pug for a free tourney.

I can live with thieves in most cases, since they nerfed most real OP damage like pistol whip and heartseeker. There are only thing that really annoy me about thief:

The first one is the abundance of stealth, especially when playing on my mesmer. Since you can’t create clones without a target and mesmers are not that AoE-based, a thief can almost always escape from a battle that it is about to lose, leaving me annoyed because if it had been any other profession, I would have gotten the kill. It is the only real ‘coward’ profession in GW2 because it is the only profession that actually benefits from running away from a fight.

But that is not the worst part. The real OP stuff is the cluster bombs. Especially when the thief has a height advantage and you’re in the middle of a hectic fight, you can’t do anything about a thief just clusterbombing the hell out of your entire team in tPvP. Since the AoE damage can be repeated that fast, it is likely you get defeated with half the damage done by just cluster bombs, requiring no skill however to use.
I would suggest three things for fixing this (either one is fine to me):
- Make the area of effect smaller so it is easier to evade and doesn’t down entire teams.
- Make it requiring more initiative (even with a little higher damage output)
- Make it do less damage (less creative and skillfull than the other 2 options)

or maybe nerf it in multiple of the ways listed up here but make it do a condition such as a cripple, increasing the kiting ability of the thief (kiting actually requires some skill, as opposed to just standing still and landing some cluster bombs over the enemy team)

As for the rest, idc about backstab thieves as long as I see them coming in my direction. The stealthing for more than 5 seconds is what makes it really annoying.
Condition thieves are actually fun to play against, since they do good damage but can’t rely on just standing at a distance.

C’mon Arenanet. This bug takes all the fun out of playing tournaments. It’s not even worthwile playing a tourney when you know there’s a chance of about 1/5 that you’re going to be stuck watching an endless loading screen when you respawn.

I love your game and your PvP but this is seriously annoying me. It is very frustrating when you get to Khylo and then one of your teammates has to dc because of the screen, therefore resulting in a loss.

You have had this bug before and you have fixed it before. I know you can do it again. (Yes, I still have faith in you :-P). But please, don’t make us wait too long. We are really getting tired of this bug so make it a priority to fix it, rather than focusing on creating new content.