Guild Wars 2

As noted, your MMR increases/decreases based on the skill level of the enemy team and your team.

lighter.2708:

GhandiBot.6257:

Only thing I can think of is the aoe boon strips and reveals for pvp. Other than that, a vanilla power warrior who goes into Strength, Defence and Discipline with Might Makes Right is better. Puts out a lot more pressure than Spellbreaker.

why take spell breaker when you have scourge with sand sade aoes and elite converts every boon to condition

Because spellbreaker with revenge counter kittens scourge up?

Ditch offhand dagger and run shield. run disc, str, spellbreaker. I tried running it as pure defense, and it’s terrible with SB. need to play an active play style.

WUROCKET.5182:

I feel like we are living in different worlds here. Resistance feels beyond useless if there is a scourge on the other team.

We literally have several ways to apply resistance now. Revenge counter wrecks scourges.

I find disc/strength/spellbreaker seems to be working out well.

Eh,

strength, disc, spellbreaker
dagger/shield + greatsword
might on hit + other might traits

Seems fine to me. Heavy use of full counter is where much of your damage comes from. Boonstrip is real, and all is well.

Ditch defense and healing signet. It’s decent. Screw offhand dagger its trash.

This is all.

Can I rain brony death down upon my foes?

Lost me at anything involving clicking.

Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497:

Ghotistyx.6942:

Deadeye stolen skills are already different than Thief stolen skills. We’ve only seen one (two? afaik) of Deadeye’s so there’s not a lot of speculation you can make.

Silent Scope just transforms the Kneel skill into Sniper’s Cover. We haven’t seen Kneel itself so there’s no information, but you’ll be immobile either way.

So you are saying the dead eye gets a completely different steal table?

Yes, it’s already known that the steal table is different for deadeye. What they steal is still up in the air however.

Dropdown.7460:

Yup. One less customer and one less PvP player in an already shallow pool.

One less player who doesn’t understand the counters to the condi meta (hint, they exist) and cannot adapt. I would rather the playerbase be 10 players large but actually decent than 200000 players who cannot theorycraft and adapt.

Other competitive games have tried this in the past and almost always regretted it. Smite for example. The problems were it became mostly unused and if it was it was used for trolling/BM.

I dont think they will change it. The entire point is to NOT know what you are against. Otherwise, might as well just broadcast everyones rune/amulet/sigil choices as well.

Sifu.9745:

Dragon.4782:

Does anyone know what the elementalist elite spec will be for the next expansion? What weapon will it use? I am farming gold like you would not believe so I can get gear for my toons and their respective elite specs.

Please, no more elite specs: one is more than enough. If we get two elite spec next expac that will drastically reduce the way that we create our own builds. Just think about, two elite specs means we will be “forced” to take these two elite trait lines: Tempest + the new one.

You can only choose one elite spec (3rd trait line).

That’s the intent. You will be forced to choose between core, tempest, or weaver.

Aeroxe.8140:

Just to clarify my statement as a lot of people seem to replying to it->I understand the reasons for the ban: RMT, account sharing, abuse of game systems, etc. What I’m looking for though is clarification as to why it was necessarily a perma-ban, as opposed to the usual lengthy temp ban of a one to a few years.

If I recall, some of them had already been granted temporary dishonor in the past.

Generally whomever gets the burst first wins if they force the fight.

Alternatively, you can win matchups where you are disadvantaged by properly using your blinds. Blind is king. And d/p has several ways to do it especially in spvp. Don’t be afraid to use your blinding powder for the blind as well as the stealth sometimes.

As non condi thief, just avoid it. You’ll always outrotate them.

You noted a crap ping, so that’s a problem. You basically need to fight them inbetween evade frames or bait them to blow their endurance and endurance refreshes then burst them. Most of the time, your time is spent better elsewhere.

It’s garbage. A d/p thief can easily outrotate a condi thief. Biggest mistake thieves make is trying to fight a condi thief 1v1. Let him have the point, you won’t win, but you’ll +1 faster than he will and same with roaming decaps.

Also occurs from knockbacks (rev tablet, ranger longbow 4, etc.)

Can either type /stuck (only once though, and DONT move while /stuck counter is going) or relog to char select screen.

Very annoying though, has happened to me more than once.

zHasgard.9827:

It is,if you clear 2 condis and you have 2 stacks of confusion,3 of torment and + 9 stacks of burn you have a chance to dont cleanse the burn.

As noted by others before you, it is not. Condi cleanses cleanse in a specific order. Good players know when to cleanse and not to cleanse, just like good condi players know to pad their condis.

You lost me at “Condi cleanse is 100% RNG”. it is not.

Noble.2670:

https://youtu.be/avhWI1dGABo

All these clips were taken during my placement matches, they are rather lacklustre, as are the opponents, but hopefully someone finds it entertaining anyway!

Just a note for those who are familiar with my stuff, my account unfortunately got hacked. Again. So I once again find myself in a position where I’m forced to start a fresh, unfortunately I do not have my previous videos saved on my pc anymore, so they are lost. However I should be uploading every week or so now (if everything goes to plan) so hopefully my account won’t be looking so bare for long!

Seven, isn’t this like the third or fourth time your youtube has been hacked? 2factor auth that thing man!

narcx.3570:

Amaranthe.3578:

Justine.6351:

None of the legends are useless.

cept for jalis and ventari

Jails is used in both the power and condition version of our top dps raid builds…
Ventari is used for hand kiting in Deimos…

If you meant sPvP tho, yeah those stances are a sure sign that the rev isn’t going to contribute much to the match!

Uhm.. ventari rev is new decap engineer. Spam tablet elite . 10 energy cost, huge knockback, low CD.

shiro still better, but it’s decent and in the meta still.

You are dying to a power mesmer. Dodge the burst. It’s obvious when it comes. After that, they’re kitten.

Cynz.9437:

They do not have same constraints -_- because due to their MMR they already land at 2k rating after placement so for most part they will be always on team A.

It also doesn’t help that those “pro” players (especially on NA) resort to exploiting/cheating/wintrading (not all of them but you know who i mean).

Helseth proved that wrong with an alt account that he purposefully tanked down to bronze 1 (so total kitten mmr) and got to legend .

They’re just better. :P

I see tears. I giggle.

megilandil.7506:

Mal.1670:

This might explain why the same people are topping the leaderboard every time. Truth is, every system has its flaws. The community wanted duo queue because 5man stomps are no fun, just reverting to 5man queue is not going to fix all of these problems, surely you must see that. Every “solution” would introduce new problems.

Like people have said, that is a hell of a lot of work for just a title. That’s it. Just enjoy the game and do what’s fun for you.

the comunity not wanted duo q, the great amount of players wanted pure solo, duo are introduced by anet cuz a minority of top vocals wanted it, thus they can retain in some sort control of matches playing with a asured other top(the “legal ones”), and cheat most others

That’s not true at all.

They ran a poll. Majority wanted duo queue. The polls were there, if people didn’t vote that’s their thing. I play with a buddy. Solo play is boring.

Let’s be honest. Nobody actually looks at it. We look at the stats then exit asap to pop another queue. This is a non issue.

I can’t stand this map for this and only this. Dodge to avoid an attack OH RANDOMLY THROWN INTO AIR THANKS.

Yes, I’m aware it’s part of what makes the map “fun”. for many people. I find it the antithesis of fun. I hate this map as a result.

KkIenJuju.9406:

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

It’s a soft reset. So your previous ranking does matter.

Mhh are you sure?

I was Plat in the first season. In the second i got some real gud pve people in my placement games and ended up in Silver, i gave up for that season because i could not stand the quality of games i got, it was horrible. (i could have grinded back to Plat but i already did that with an alt in the first Season)

In the current seasons i won a lot of my placement games and got into Plat again….

Proposal —> You get set back to the start of the Tier from your last season:
If you were Silver last season you will start at 900 rating. If you were Gold you start at 1200, for Plat and Higher you start at 1500. (idk about Bronze i think 0 would be a bit mean ;-) maybe start at 800 or let them keep their ratings)

An anet dev said yesterday or the day before that it’s a soft reset and your previous season rank does count in determining your MMR during placements.

Soft reset. Not hard reset.

axe/shield + greatsword is still acceptably performing in wvw roaming. Bit more counterable, but still viable.

Miyu.8137:

The PvP ranking has nothing to do with your actuall skill. It’s just all about luck whether you get decent players as your team mates or not. Mostlikely the game will try to force you into 50/50 so one match easy with decent team mates and the next one blowout with uncarryable team.

What you can do is get a decent duo partner so you can influence the RNG a bit, solo you have almost no chance to carry whole team. So again, the current ranking shows some weird numbers which for sure don’t reflect your skill

Wasn’t this disproved by one of the ESL players? I wanna say Helseth? He tanked an alt to bronze and climbed up to legend last season or the one before?

Granted, their skill level is significantly higher than most of us, but this disproves your theory. It is not entirely about luck. A good player can potentially have a heavy influence on his team. And yes, it is a difficult climb because you’ll lose games due to total randoms that just don’t belong there, but a positive climb can occur.

teammo.3146:

elementals are too overpowered with healing skills almost impossible to kill in pvp

Literally press any interrupt during water overload or wash the pain away. Come on now.

As noted above:

Rune of scavenging ( for the meta necro build) will put leeching on you. You will see it appear in your buff bar too.

Because a necro is stronger in teamfight/group play than a guardian?

A well played necro can down multiple players, massively boonstrip, and just in general wreck face.

A guardian can support his team and provide some nice tanky damage. They are also built with better heals and blocks.

Guards are CD based. Outlast or bait their CDs and they are a sitting duck. Necro, it’s all about either negating/bursting the shroud. A well played necro can sustain far longer than a guardian, especially with a support.

There’s a reason necro’s are often first target. Not just because of their squish, but because you need to keep them on the defense or they are the most brutal to a teamfight.

From what i understand, general consensus is that the power builds are better in solo or duo queue. Condi is strong in team builds.

Ele air elemental channeled ability follows you still in stealth as well. very useful on my ele when I am fighting thieves.

We had this for like, weeks if not months. To the point where it got so boring and lame that at least 1 of those servers intentionally tanked their rating so they’d fall out of T1 into T2 for something different and fun.

JemL.3501:

Why does people appear even from under the rocks to type ‘’mengz i play in desert bl all days and i find 24/7 fights and i win 100% of those fights and kill em all and i make them quit the desert bl so it becomes my own map which i rule as a dictator’’ when somebody makes a post about the truth in that bl, we arent being deceived by you typing ‘’i kill 24/7 people in there’’ no matter what time or day, the map just empty, period, just because you find 1 guy around in like 1 hour or suddendly 2 in five mins doesnt mean anything, the map is empty, rarely people go there to cap or in reset. and when people is capping are a small group because they know is empty map.

I keep thinking the Desert BL is the best PVE map ive ever seen in this game

Because there are those of us that roam it often and find players. Often. More often than on alpine in many cases. Why? I have no idea. I play 11pm-3 am eastern time, maybe late night players prefer DBL, who knows.

Sure, there are plenty of days as well where we find nobody. It changes based on what servers we faced. When Blackgate had it as their BL, they were out in numbers. When SoS had it, there was a nice core group of roamers that we routinely found. I had more pvp fights than I did in alpine those nights.

Of course, some nights it is indeed a graveyard like you said. We get it, the majority of players don’t like it, but many of us apparently do. EBG is always the place to go however for players if you want fights.

Again too it matters the style of fights too. I rarely see zergs in DBL, and I’m cool with that.

Sviel.7493:

I should have also asked what server you’re on and class you play~

At any rate, it sounds like you’re on a Thief, Rev, Necro and Ele mostly? Specifically, a build of thief that can disengage at will and runs an anti-condi set-up. That makes sense as you’d then have ample access to anti-condi stuff. I tend to run on a Thief or Warrior, mostly. As a warrior, I have plenty of cleanses and can sort of dance with condi though it’s not what I’d call fun or engaging—it’s just a matter of cycling my cleanses and hoping I don’t run out before they do. As a thief, I don’t have much cleanse and thus don’t fight condi people at all. To do so would require a huge shift in skills and traits that would render my play experience unrecognizable.

Correct. d/p thief, power shiro/glint rev, and d/d ele.

d/p thief has plenty of condi cleanse, running both signet and shadowstep. (bandit’s defense as my other utility.) It’s important to remember one of the biggest ways to avoid condi is to not be HIT by condi. Most near all condi attacks are block/evade/blindable. And thief has plenty of blind/evade, and a decent block on low cooldown for those stunned oh kitten moments.

That said, you do need to build for what you expect to face. I always try to build a “well rounded” build and occasionally alter my build if needed. For example, if I’m finding I’m struggling vs tons of condi players i will change my build to adjust PI to escapist for the extra cleanse. On my power rev, it’s all about the blocks/invuln frames (UA etc.) to avoid condi. If you get hit, time to find the nearest rabbit or critter and shiro port out to reset for a few if possible. D/d, I have cleanse for days in my standard build so not a huge worry.

Part of that is curiously punishing condis like Torment and Confusion, though. They’re a little more powerful than the norm because they have ‘counterplay’ in that you can not move or not use skills…but it’s not real counterplay because those are not viable options. They make it fairly impossible to continue fighting unless you have an immediate cleanse…and they can be reapplied with impunity by some classes.

Agreed, Torment/Confusion suck because combined they leave you little options, but minimizing movement until a cleanse/block comes up is important. IE, if I have confusion stacks the worst thing I can do is try to use my rev’s UA for evasion because it hits me 5×. Instead, I try to stand there and get off a sword 4 block or a staff 3 block while waiting for staff 4 or glint heal to come up. Sometimes it just comes in too fast and I made too many mistakes to really keep up. (IE, standard chronoshatter builds are heavy on the illusions in the first part of the fight, but then have moments where they are much slower on clone generation assuming I avoid hitting their blocks etc. If I blow my dodges or blocks before those clones have hit me, I am screwed generally.)

Conversely, if I’m fighting a power build with all my cleanses slotted, I have a lot of dead weight in my build.

Agreed, it’s all about building properly. I prefer a balanced build myself for the reason that I am not sure what i will run into. That said, power players are far easier to beat with condi cleansing skills than condi players are with skills with a power oriented build. :P

It seems you love roaming for the sake of roaming, which is great. How do you feel about the big picture things? I usually spent my time scouting/roaming but eventually stopped playing because there just wasn’t much point in doing those things in match-ups. Partially due to population imbalance and partially because putting in effort to boost PPT is a totally fruitless endeavor. When it became apparent that combat was also not enjoyable and Anet had no discernible plan for the future, I couldn’t find a reason to keep playing.

I definitely enjoy roaming primarily. big picture things, I do my part for the server. I scout, I cap when I can, I help out for emergency waypoints etc. My buddy and I tend to ensure we keep DBL mostly for our server (Which is JQ) if we can, at least camp/tower wise. We don’t really enjoy the large scale zerg fights, except when they are small scale defense vs large zergs. (Like our garri vs SoS awhile back. We kept them at bay until the numbers got too high, retreated to inner just to regroup, and waited for our lord and savior commander to appear with the zerg, split their zerg with a mass rush, then theyd port out leaving us to hold it again. That was intense fun.)

QTwo.6824:

Am at this moment standing here in the Desert Borderlands. Standing in the literal sense as there are no players here. The effect of having such a map that is so distasteful to players that no one shows up to play surely cannot be the intent of the developers. Is there any hope for improvement?

I play DBL nearly every night (and am a JQ resident.) in a roaming fashion. So does my roaming partner. We prefer this map. We often find players, especially when we were paired against SoS. And when blackgate had DBL a few weeks ago? Oh man… they were out in storm.

Don’t say there are no players. Time of day matters, but they play there, and play aggressively.

Sviel.7493:

Can you clarify a few things? You’re a bit of an anomaly and thus rather interesting~

What do you enjoy about roaming? Is it engaging other roamers/small-groups or taking enemy structures or something else?

You said you don’t mind the condi mess. Can you elaborate on your interactions with it? Do you participate in large-scale battles? Do you face other roamers/small-groups that use condi?

A combination of both honestly when it comes to roaming. I enjoy solo / duo / trio roaming and going against like sized or larger groups. I enjoy the challenge that steps from 2v3 or higher for example. I enjoy taking enemy towers and whatnot and then even larger to see if I can. One night I took fire keep solo in DBL just to see if I could. (Of course I learned the proper movements to never be hit by the lord’s frontal AOE knockback at around 4% health.)

I tend to not participate in large scale battles, but I have in a defense/attack combo. (Was very common when JQ was fighting SoS for example.) Condi hurts, no doubt, and there are some classes that can just wreck with condi, but I always count that as a weakness. When I play my thief, between shadowstep and the new signet, I have no problems with Condi as long as I cleanse it on time. Blinds help with the rest. On the rev, if I mess up a block or evade, I get bombed by condi and I get wrecked. My fault.

Of course, in larger scale fights, condi is everywhere and thus you need someone to help counter it of course. I do generally play power mostly myself, but my most common duo roaming partner is a condi player. I do have a condi reaper I roam with, but that’s more for hilarity than actual functionality.

I do tend to really enjoy roaming on classes that are not “popular” to roam on though, like my necro and my ele.

Yes, I often face small groups that have condi as well. Some of the fun that comes from that is yelling over discord or skype to my buddy that I need to reset because I got condi bombed etc and coming back to burst the condi class down while my friend goes full defensive etc.

I like that wvw and objectives allow mobility to reset and allows the terrain to be used against me and for me (hence I like DBL for its many hills / rocks / whatnot.). I like spvp too, but the requirement to defend a point rather than an objective or a guard or a wall irks me a bit.

Justine.6351:

totally not a condi chrono…
;-)

Lol no. Power thief, power rev, and a d/d ele

About to do power Chrono though.

Bans went out for this looks like. Kind of lame since it was an in game item that did it, but this was handled.

Going to throw this out that I’m the weirdo, but I will say it.

I like the state of WvW and find it my most enjoyable mode.
I like the fact that in the past few months, I’ve seen several servers slip into and out of t1 t2 and t3.
I like desert BL more than Alpine.
I like the current state of roaming.
I don’t mind the condi mess out there or the fact everyone runs dire/trailblazer.
I will continue to play the game mode and small group roam because it gives me a fun open world pvp feeling that I dig.

I know everyone hates wvw lately, and everyone has valid concerns, but there ARE plenty of us out there who enjoy the mode as well.

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

Funny thing is I ran into a stealth trapper teef and wheni triggered one of his traps (needle trap), he stayed stealth. Pretty sure I have it on recording as well as it was only today or yesterday.

It is still possible to do damage while stealthed, just can’t use the high damage traps. There are still non reveal traps but they do very little damage and are unlikely a threat.

Alternatively, it’s possible for you to hit a trapper thief’s traps and him be nowhere near you, so you’ll think he’s stealthed but you just hit a trap laying in the ground and he’s not nearby anymore.

As someone else noted, ghost thief was nerfed to the floor. It’s possible to do damage without being revealed now, but would take about 10-15x longer to kill someone. The main damage traps were made to trigger reveal.

You don’t see ghost thieves anymore because Anet nerfed it when a thief solo’d a raid boss with it.

Glass Hand.7306:

Nobody wants to come out and play on it so if you are red it’s going to be a long losing week.

I don’t know who voted for this but it was a really bad idea.

I roam on it nightly. Some of us actually love it, and we often find fights that are interesting due to the land layout.

Please don’t assume everyone thinks like you.

Wait… I’m seeing someone claim that people easily get away from a warrior because it’s not mobile.

Let’s start with the mobility part: Whirlwind, rush, headbutt, shield charge all provide bursty movement abilities that can be used offensively and defensively (for escape.)

Secondly: yes, other classes have other ways to move away from you, but you have the ability as a warrior to chain CC someone into multiple stuns. Lastly, even if someone does get away from you, arc divider’s range is biggly and yuge and will often people people out of range saying “what just hit me?”.

Being kited as a warrior is not a common problem lol.

Magnito.6187:

A few months ago they came up with a poll about wether pvp should be restricted to to solo/duo queue only. And I was stunned by the fact so many people voted yes for that.
(I’d like to remind you this is a team based competitive game mode)

That being aside, hey now, there’s a new poll up! They want to avoid class stacking. They want to AVOID, the one thing people have been crying their eyes out about. It was obvious. I had to go vote yes. Because why would we not want fair match ups and leaderboards reflecting your “true skill”, through linking it to the class you main.

Yet again, community, you’ve left amazed. Turns out a lot of people voted against it. And I just can’t find the reason why. Is this just me?

Class stacking is primarily an issue in low ranking matchups. At higher tiers, players know how to switch chars to counter comps.

Part of the strength in spvp is the ability to counter the enemy’s comp during the initial ready time of the match. It is on us to communicate our roles to our team, and ensure that we don’t wind up with 3 supports and 2 dps. It is not up to matchmaking. On the flipside, it is on us to see if the enemy has 4 dragonhunters to play classes that counter DH fairly easily.

Why did I vote no? Because the ability to adjust my class based on the enemy and my team’s composition is one of the last remaining choices we have in this semi forced meta. I do not want to see that removed. Matchmaking already tries to ensure that you don’t queue with 4 dragonhunters for example, but people switch to it after match entry. I’m fine with that. They counterable.

Last season was an awesome season. The solo/duo was a lot of fun. The ranked changes were great. I found myself competitively fighting for the first time in a long while. I felt the decay could use some work, leaderboard manipulation could be fixed, and the deviation from not playing every day could use some tweaking (You can get on some pretty brutal MMR loss if you don’t play for a week and get stuck with the bronze players during your decay. ), but other than that, it was my favorite season yet.

DuoQ is fine.. christ… it makes a difference, but not the end of the world.