Guild Wars 2

As an engineer I can say that we are good against guardians (at least my build which doesnt even rely on condition stacking).
Basically against one I’m in control the entire fight, can easily knock them off and hold them away from points long enough to decap (timing against stability ofc) and whatever happens eventually I will win (once they exhaust one or two of their bubbles).
Against 2 guardians, well I would honestly send one true bunker, could be Engi, Necro or Ele. All three have enough survivability to comfortably deal with the two bunker guards, and that way you can concentrate on zerging the other two points with a numerical advantage.

Basically 2 guards on one node is a waste because they cant kill a decent player and it means an instant numerical advantage elsewhere.

What I find amusing is that an awful lot of players never feel like their PvE capabilities ever warrant a nerf, because they should ‘feel powerful’.

In my humble opinion PvP is the only thing that keeps classes relatively even in PvE (not that they are, but it certainly helps). On top of that complaining about nerfs in PvE has always confused me, especially as for many players on these forums the next most popular topic appears to be a lack of depth and difficulty with PvE content at higher levels.

As anyone who played a Warden in LotRO knows, one of the finest ever MMO class designs was completely destroyed by over zealous buffing so baddies could perform well in PvE. If that game had a more involved PvP side then there is no way that level of god mode that they now have would’ve happened.

I say embrace the benefits of PvE vs. PvP rather than simply assuming it’s a bad thing.

Sure thieves gank my engi occasionally, usually during a fight in progress.

But frankly 1v1 and even during bigger fights thieves are really easy to kill, especially the glass cannon types.

Try using Self-Regulating Defenses if you need to virtually guarantee not dying during their opening burst.

Is it just me, or is the overall standard in the video pretty bad?

Is it an early match or something?

Ha nice, I got 70 odd hits yesterday and was only on it for a couple of minutes.

Amazing how stupid some zergs can be in sPvP, head down facerollers will be trebbed!

Meh Guardians are way easier to play than Engineers (I play both, far easier to be good on Guard imo, though Engineer is far more dominant once practiced).

Mine and turret damage is pretty terrible (well placed field CAN do okish burst, but too reliant on luck and really, nothing to write home about) and relying on them against an opponent with even a vague idea of how to play is asking for trouble.

Don’t get me wrong Engi’s are OP, but not like that (and not without knowledge and ‘skill’ from the player). I’ve only met what, 2, maybe 3 Engis in any form of PvP that I’ve considered to be any good on the class, and not one good version of my own build (rifle/nades/control/burstbunker). All the other good ones have been pistol condition types, though condition is my builds only vague counter so maybe that exaggerated it a bit.

I enjoy it when glass cannon thieves bring a friend to try and gank my engineer. I just counter their opener and then melt them with a quick burst (they are hilariously easy to kill when they’re stealthed with ’nades ).

I may or may not then lose to their friend (depends what they’re running and whether the thief took a decent chunk off me before going down), but either way it’s a) funny to imagine the thief grumbling about how I can have burst in a bunker build ^^ and b) delays both of them giving my team the upper hand elsewhere.

@teviko

If the thief has to go and get allies in tPvP to kill you 1v1 (well 1v? upon his return) then you have countered their roaming player and your team now has the upper hand on the rest of the map. If it’s sPvP… who cares?

As for immobilise, well it’s better CC than stuns (sort of), the weakness with it is that the victim can still use skills (such as blinds, their own CC etc).

I understand the frustration with the stealth bug, it’s very annoying to not have your assailant appear while attacking you.

But bear in mind that despite this, the thief can be attacked and responded to (as in dodges, aoes, breaks, protection skills, reflects, hell even auto attacks still work).

I find that despite not seeing the body of the thief, I can still see the animation ‘swirls’ as they mash their faceroll skills

But yeah, should be fixed really.

Personally I use Rifle with ‘nade kit for pvp and pve.
The main reason for this is that I find it hugely effective in PvP, and so just build the same for PvE in everything but dungeons (muscle memory in PvP is far more important for me).
On the rifle, the number 4 skill is probably one of the best skills in the game in pvp (short cd, breaks CC, acts as escape, great setup skill too, huge number of functions in
the right hands), combine with 2 skill it makes barrage virtually unavoidable.
I’m regularly bursting over 10k despite using Dolyak pvp armour, the way the rifle affects the damage from toolbelt makes this possible.

Basically, 4>2>vulnerability from toolbelt+discharge(goggles)>fury from goggles>barrage+discharge>ranged slow rams head+discharge>3/5 skill depending.

This hits HARD, like REALLY hard.

In the last two days alone I’ve had 5 tells from strangers in s and tPvP complementing my burst to survivability ratio. I’m not going to reveal my exact build details, because, well it took me since beta to work it out and get it perfect.
It’s a build I’ve never seen anyone else use against me, and maybe that’s why it works so well, knowledge is power!

Anyway rambling, basically it’s not rifle OR nades for me, rather rifle AND nades.

Engineers are simply awesome, personally I think the strongest pvp class in the game

Well said Schwahrheit.

My Engi barely even takes damage from a warrior nevermind actually losing.

I reckon Engi is the best class in pvp though, it’s just most of them are pretty bad ^^. Well and mesmers of course but they are really easy to play which I suppose is why they are seen as OP by many people.

I personally think thieves are fine. They perform their function pretty well when built as glasscannons, they kill very fast, but if they lose the initiative in the fight for even a second then they melt.

I reckon if you see a thief coming and you still die in 2 seconds then one of two things
is happening:
1) You’re bad (sorry but yep ^^). If you know they’re coming it’s very easy to counter them.
2) You’re a glass cannon yourself, in which case of course you melt. If you caught them out in a similar way then you would mow them down just like they do to you.

There are many ways to counter the initial burst and no, not just ‘dodge!’. I’m not going to list each class and each option, people should just work it out for themselves.

I don’t play thief, but I do fear that if the nerfs that people seem to want do go ahead the class will become pointless in PvP.

As things stand right now for me thieves are already moving towards getting on the ‘free kill’ list, along with Warriors (biggest offenders, needs serious buffs imo), Rangers and even Guardians (can take ages but no way they can actually win in my experience), this is from an Engineer main btw. At least right now thieves occasionally get the kill on me if they get lucky with crits/me starting afk, if nerfs happen I just don’t think they’ll be competitive.

Pretty obvious balancing change, just remove the ability to use portals while holding the kit.

Another argument could be had over removing portals entirely from tPvP, although then you could argue that my Engineer shouldn’t have ‘free’ permanent swiftness, so I won’t go there ^^

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen moa used well tbh. It’s either way too early so the victim can double evade and LoS for the duration without losing that much health or way too late when the battle was won and the Mesmer has just wasted the cooldown.

It is definitely cheesey, but unless you’re playing a Necro regularly (rare) and using the most ‘hurt by moa’ build with minions (even rarer) then there is little reason to complain.

As others have said it’s actually really easy to spot (if anyone stops for a while in pvp it’s probably time to evade/interrupt/LoS) and if you do get caught by it often it isn’t too hard to avoid a lot of incoming damage. Oddly I usually find that once the moa is over I usually own the mesmer, probably because they use damage cooldowns trying to kill me during, which are obviously coming so can often be avoided only for all my stuff to be ready to retaliate once my bird brained session is over.

My engineer build is defensive, and in my OP I said that I beat thieves virtually every time unless everything I have is on cd.

My point is not that I can’t beat these people, it’s that due to some classes being more powerful than others, people flock to them. And it allows dodgy players to perform better than they should.
It also causes pvp to become stale and boring because everyone is playing the same classes. Lack of variety is exactly the opposite of why I PvP.

Oh and due to some classes being stronger than others PvP isn’t skill based, but rather ‘I am better by enough of a margin to beat this player on a more powerful class than me!’.

Yes another of ‘these’ threads.

Currently the PvP that was promised to us all as ‘balanced and competitive’ is fundamentally broken due to class balance.

For proof of this surely the devs only need to look at the stats for classes played in pvp. Virtually every Battle I join is either 80% mesmer and thief, or ends up that way after 3 or 4 rounds. In one group last night we had 4 mesmers evenly split amongst the teams and close fights each time. In one instance all 4 ended up on the same team (with 2 guardians as well) and they won 500-80. Anecdotal? Yes. True? Also yes. All my guildies are having the same experiences.

It’s a pretty sad indictment of modern MMO players that they flock to the fotm classes, and it’s this sort of behaviour (similar to exploiting PvE content) which genuinely ruins it for everyone else.

The trouble is that progression is tied to account, so there is no point in playing the class you truly enjoy the most if you actually enjoy winning at all costs.

Before anyone claims it’s a l2p issue, I currently main an engineer, and the only class I really have trouble with is certain necro builds, I find guardians very easy to beat, thieves too unless I get unlucky with cooldowns and mesmers I’d say it’s 50/50 (although I sometimes get annoyed when an obviously bad player beats me through the power of the class).

My point rather than balance is that the community has worked out that mesmers and thieves are the two classes which allow you to be bad but get good results. This then means that sPvP ends up being dominated by these classes, which ultimately results in boring pvp for the rest of us.

As a fix please simply bring the aforementioned classes back into line with the rest. If these changes need to be PvP only to appease the PvE crowd so be it, but right now the PvP is becoming stale and boring!
I know many people want to see buffs for everyone else, but in all honesty I believe the damage and skill level to avoid that damage is ok for most classes. If you keep buffing then you end up needing to increase morale pools, or toughness levels, diminishing returns etc. I say keep the base as it is now and bring classes down to (or up to) that overall base, to avoid complex changing of gear stats etc.