Guild Wars 2

Vyrulisse.1246:

Revenants still have the same weaknesses they always had. Don’t let the changes make you forget that.

^Now that they can’t even run vipers (which was why condi rev was so good in Season1+2) they are even worse imo.

If they run glint/malyx they are easy to kite and CC. If they run shiro/Malyx they are easy focus damage targets.

I honestly don’t understand all the QQing about condi rev. They are still bad. In fact, they are a worse version of condi necro. I have yet to find one in my games since patch that doesn’t instaexplode when focused.

Inb4 all the people that say rev is slow realize, that malyx/shiro is actually the the way to go as condi rev….like it has been in Season1+2 already.

That being said however, I don’t think that condi rev is actually broken. Dropping Glint and the fact that they have no block on one of their weaponsets actually makes them struggle with focus damage.

Still a meme build

I don’t really play that much mesmer, but yes, this nerf was completely uncalled for.
Tbh though, I wouldn’t be surprised, if the reasoning behind this was to make Scepter-builds (for Condi) and Dueling traitline (for Power) more desirable as well…After all a nerf to Chronomancer traits feels like a stealth-buff for other clone-generating skills to me.

As I have already explained in your other thread in the pvp-section, condi has overall more damage potential, while power is far more self sufficient (which is why it is so popular in Solo/Duo Q.

As for the necro’s role: Cleave and Aoe pressure are great on the class, but furthermore – as already mentioned – necro just reks bunkers like ele/engi/ranger thanks to boon corrupts. These 3 classes in particular are super sustain(y) thanks to their defensive boon spam, so with some corrupts they actually melt.

If you have a good support setup (preferably Ele AND engi) id suggest a hybrid variant with Carrion rune. While the 900 Power on it’s own doesn’t seem like much, Necro has various ways to increase their crit chance (not precision) by quite a lot actually just via traits.

Although there are A LOT of ways to build a hybrid necro, Personally I like this one:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBmWD7kjGo8GszGw2GgeTsgLYxXxv4YMarlv+AQXtAwBA-TpxFwAFuAAHeAAn2fAwBBIxRAwZZAA

If you like to be more self sufficient or struggle with life force, you can replace either spite or curses with soul reaping…Death Perception is amazing on carrion builds and unblockable marks are simply great as well.

Although I dont spend THAT much time in WvW, when I do, I generally roam.
There is such an immense skill difference between players there, it’s almost maddening.

Although I’m not half-bad when it comes to sPvP (top 200 this season), I genuinely feel like my mechanics aren’t that good either. I main a D/P thief, so taking 1v1s generally isn’t my strongsuit. And yet I find myself winning 1vXs more often than not. Every once in a while you surely find a competent player….but those really are rare imo.

If you want raw damage – which is the necro’s primary role – condi is definitely the way to go. If you have competent supports, you might even want to drop Soul Reaping and go full beast mode with a Spite/Curses/Reaper setup.

Condi has always been better damage imo (speaking overall/aoe-wise). Power is just so popular atm, because the spec itself just requires much less support and works even in subpar setups.

jihm.2315:

no esports have drained all the soul out of pvp

Please explain. I hear this argument so often, yet nobody ever feels the need to elaborate on it.

Crinn.7864:

There is no trait called Chilling death.

The trait you are presumably talking about is Deathly Chill. And no it’s not overtuned.

My thoughts exactly. Initially I was thinking that OP was talking about ‘chill of death’ (from spite line) so imagine my confusion.
Since I don’t play much WvW I can only speculate about how that trait affects that mode, so I don’t really have an opinion about it. In sPvP it’s pretty mediocre imo.

Same goes for bandits defense btw. What is broken about that?

Other than that however, most -not all, but most- suggestions are actually pretty good and in alignment with my own thinking…especially about bringing Rev up to speed.
The main issue with that class is that it currently has no role, in which it excels at…everything the class does, it does in a far too mediocre way.

For PvP id like to see the class be less reliant on support and be a really good skirmisher. Just giving it more condi cleanses (especially when on Sw/Sh) would help with that already. Also, maybe some slight tweaks on energy-costs for weaponskills would be nice.

For warrior: Tbh i don’t think that Arc Divider is the main culprit here. Personally, I like the skill design actually, since you can somewhat actively counterplay it (50% health threshold). What my problem with the class is, are it’s unkiteability (weird word) PAIRED with double invuln. When NOT running zerker-amulet their damage is actually fine, so id like to see a change, where demolisher/marauder amulet are actually forced upon them (like they are for literally every other class as well).
Defy pain needs to simply be deleted from the game imo. Completely rework that trait and I actually think warrior should be fine.

The problem with 1v1ing either of those classes, is that you have to play flawlessly while they have so many “fail safe”s its almost laughable.

Warrior:
Most (!) warriors start a fight in a similar manner. Usually its Sh#4 → headbutt. Dodging the headbutt is super important as it denies them quick access to their zerker-mode, which makes the fight FAR more relaxing. Other than that, I have found the following things to work pretty well against them:

a) DON’T spam dodges. Warriors have so many short-CD nukes/CCs that you definitely don’t want waste evades on autohits.
b) Hit-and-run tactics work really well. Both weaponsets of the zerker-meta build are melee only, so keeping them at bay when you expect a CC-chain to come is a good idea.
c) Blinds and Poison are your best friend. Blinds, especially from ShadowShot (where the blind part actually IS unblockable), are a good way to preserve dodges and make the warrior waste important CDs. When they use their shield block for instance and you blind them THROUGH it, their followup is essentially kittened. Poison-upkeep is also pretty nice, since it reduces their passive regen. The only thing you have to be very careful about, is when they pop their berserker stance and gain resistance in general. Just disengage for a bit, recover some initiative/endurance and re-engage once it has run out.
d) Try to keep an eye at their buff bar as good as you can. Missing a zerker-stance or wasting initiative while endure/defy pain are active can seriously ruin your momentum, making you lose the fight in the long run. Just disengage/kite them whenever they use those those CDs.
e) When they are on GS, don’t stay in melee when you are close to (or under) 50% hp. A single arc divider, while under the 50% threshold, can literally end you.

In conclusion: 1v1s against warriors are ALWAYS tedious and drawn out. Bait their CDs and safely w8 them out. Utilize hit-and-run tactics and try to keep up posion and blinds as good as you can. Once they are out of CDs, safely grind them down.

For DHs it’s practically the same, although I honestly haven’t come up with a good/reliant way to beat them. Kiting them is not an option with their ranged pressure and instant-teleports. This matchup is definitely the most difficult for a thief, so I really would recommend to avoid it as good as you can.

Mistborn.9514:

At the same time, target and untarget the enemy every time I have to use “Weakening Charge” seems to be very unfeasible!

Now I dont play much thief in PvE, but afaik you dont target the boss even when using Staff#2. Having no target when using Weakening charge is the whole point of it.
Its like with heartseeker (Dagger#2) for instance. If you have your camera angle top-down and use these skills (without a target!), the traveling distance is actually shorter, allowing you to land 3/3 hits with Staff#2 easily…even on small hitboxes.

As for the whole defiance bar issue. Most raid bosses actually use some sort of special, highly telegraphed, mechanic that makes it easy to tell when to use CCs.

While I agree, that there was certainly confusion regarding the poll options …all in all I am happy that it turned out the way it has. And yes: I voted “No”.

Saiyan.1704:

A No vote meant we would queue up with 1 class but able to swap that class before the match starts. MMR is based off of our rating vs their team rating as oppose to class specific rating.

• Pros – We can swap classes before a match starts.
• Cons – Players may not want to swap at all, regardless of team comp. Anet can do very little in terms of changing the Matchmaking layout for future fixes.

The main problem with that “No -Con”-argument is, that it can just as easily be a “Yes – Con” too. Creating a matchup based on classes alone doesn’t automatically mean that it is ‘fair’ when people can run all kinds of different builds with different roles.

The fairest matchup possible would obviously be a mirror-setup, where both sides respectively run the same classes AND builds!
Now how ‘fair’ would you rate a setup, where both teams have one ranger each for instance…only that one is running the meta druid build and the other one plays core condi ranger?

While this might not be much of an issue in plat or higher divisions, where basically pretty much everyone runs the meta builds (or at least some very similar variations), such a system would completely destroy balance in the lower ranks, where random builds are FAR more common.

In all honesty, I think Anet might just want to use the WoW concept. There you get asked what ROLE you play, before you are able to Q. Obviously they would have to adjust that concept to fit for the conquest gamemode, where it’s not just XvsX deathmatch.

kdaddy.5431:

Thats a serious problem when Anet put 4 players on 1 team running those builds on 1 team. And 1 on the other and they are so superior that potentially the team with 1 meta build were actually the better players but because of the poor balance in PvP.

Its better in your suggestion to not care.

You do realize, that its practically (!) impossible for Anet to tackle this issue.
They would have to rate EVERY single build based on strengths and weaknesses for EVERY player Qing at the moment and then miraculously come up with a fair matchup. Such a system is straight up impossible to implement.

This is also the reason, why I for instance voted ‘No’ in the class locking poll. Creating a matchup based on classes alone does absolutely nothing in terms of “fairness” when people have the ability to run multiple random builds, which all do different things. Unless of course you would prefer to have 10 people hectically adjust their respective build in ~1 min.

MakubeC.3026:

Really like this one as well. But I would approach it a little differently:
1. It is the target who gains said debuff. (“You are being targeted by player”).
2. Only one Testing for Weakness debuff can be active, so if you hit somebody else, you have to start from zero stacks. It also vanishes after a few consecutive seconds of not being hit.
3. At X stacks target gains high amount of vulnerability and can’t block for X seconds. (This way I think is more group oriented).

What do you say?

I get the idea. Hardly makes sense to “look for weaknesses” in a targets defense and then, once the stacks are built to just burst another one^^.
While I like the target-bound thing, Id like for the sniper to just get some added damaged instead of just applying a stack of vulnerability….complements the thief’s bursty nature better imo. Disabling blocks on the target would be borderline broken in pvp i fear.

I cam up with a few more ….didn’t know theorycrafting (if thats even the right term) could be so much fun^^

Clean Shot (Trait): As long as the target isn’t within x Range of another enemy, ranged attacks deal increased damage.

Unspottable (Trait – combat only): After standing still for X seconds, the thief gets Y seconds of stealth (and maybe even superspeed?). Movement of any form (Knockbacks, pushes, pull etc) reset the timer on this trait.

Graze Shot (Weaponskill): In addition to dealing damage, your targets gets up to X seconds of cripple, depending on how close they are to you (The closer, the longer the cripple)

Tracing Bullet (Utility?): Hit your target with a tracking bullet, placing a visible debuff on them. Allies (and yourself) within X Range of the target have their movementspeed increased by Y% (Stacks with other speed buffs). Target is revealed for the whole duration of the debuff.

Single Out (Weaponskill): A skill with a very long cast time that fires a projectile that simply deals MASSIVE dmg. —> A bit unimaginative, but lets be honest….this just is NEEDED for a sniper spec.

Quick Load (Utility): Gain a unique buff that reduces cast time for all weaponskills by X% for Y seconds.

Testing for weakness (trait): Each time you hit your target, you gain a “insert random name”-counter (hitting multiple foes at once only adds 1 counter). At reaching X counters, your next weaponskill will deal Y% bonus damage and be unblockable.

the whole “120 games limitation is too high” argument is pretty funny to me.
The season lasts for more than 2 months! Playing 15 games a week is a meme if you actually want to get onto the leader boards.

As for the question itself…yes definitely skillbased.

I don’t think that the sudden disinterest has to do with any form of balance or mm issue.
Many pro players that left, did so because there was absolutely no support for competitive teams any more…No tournaments for over half a year and then ESL wasn’t supported anymore either.

For the rest of us, the game has just become stale. Without a pro-scene and a balance path that did absolutely nothing in terms of meta changes, Seaosn 6 essentially just was Season 5.v2. With the laughable rewards and literally the same meta, people just had no incentive to play.

On the other hand, class-balancing is a bit tricky now. Balance wise (and this is my genuine opinion) the game has never been in a better spot. EVERY single class has at least one build that can be successfully played. NO class is excluded from top tier play due to being considered ‘underpowered’. And that is actually quite something imo.
To preserve this state, Anet has to be very careful when it comes to balance patches, which may be the reason for the weak February one.

Edit: Before I get a kittenstorm of players ‘mimimi’-ing about my balance statement….Yes, some classes could need some ‘fine tuning’, but NO class is over- or underpowered in terms of being ‘broken’ or just ‘unplayable’.

The metabattle build you posted is definitely usable, although I would recommend running the Deadly Arts > Shadow Arts variant. DA simply offers an enormous dmg boost and the utility (altho a bit rng-based) from Improvisation can be incredibly handy…If you dont like Improv you can definitely switch to executioner for even more damage (although I would seriously recommend giving it a try at least). With the DD-trailine you generally can experiment a little….almost every trait-tier has some viable options.

As for Utilities, Shadowstep and SoA are a ‘must have’ imo, since both skills are pretty overstacked and offer a lot of utility (especially SoA in WvW). For heals, both Withdraw and CV are solid choices. The last utility slot can essentially be anything and comes down to player preference. SR, Bandit’s Defense, Blinding Powder or even a damaging skill like Impairing daggers are good choices overall. For Elites we unfortunately only have 2 viable choices: BV or IS. Personally I think that BV is far more usefull than IS…however, fell free to experiment a little.

When it comes to sigils, you basically just look to maximize your damage. Fire, Air, Blood and even Draining (especially when running Impacting Disruption) are all solid choices. Some people suggested Hydromancy as well, which definitely can work for some extra burst damage….but really is a double-edged sword since it CAN break stealth if you are a bit careless.

I almost exactly run the Meta build from PvP with a marauder/zerker mix and draining sigil.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoaVn8lCFOhlPBmOB8PhFYCTLBEA2NephzQbYOEeCbhA-TVCEQBbUJIAPBAOUZm/U/xd6DYy+jSDAcIAIwDA4BHBASBYuQL-w

Dear God, please no!

CrimeMaker.8612:

thats old, I highly doubt they will do any of that..

that is literally what they announced after the last balance patch…so how is it old.
Also, under what presumption would you think that they wont do it?

There you go https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Sigil-Proposals-v2

There is a link in there to an older discussion with a lot more Dev-comments about what their general goals for pvp-balance are.

Aeolus.3615:

Now on a more seious note, i dont think players will see a balance update for quite some time, and even if Anet throwed them they would be minimal.

dunno about that. They announced some major changes to sigils and some downtuning to passive sustain. Im really curious about that.

Since last “balance” patch was late february and Anet usually does those quarterly, id expect somewhere between end of may / start of june.

Ashantara.8731:

Stop talking down to others just because you don’t agree. Not only is everyone entitled to their opinion, but — most importantly — the OP has a valid point there.

The fact that PvP is mainly unbalanced due to a completely awful team balance (i.e., the 100% random constallation of teams) cannot be denied, and that leads to people losing (interest, especially with the puny rewards this season).

How is that unbalanced? A match shouldn’t be balanced around participating classes but around player skill. Did it for instance ever occur to you, that swapping one engi and one necro just wasn’t an option because it would have destroyed skill balance?

Also OP said that he (and 3 other people on his team) weren’t playing meta-builds but some gimmicky, sub-optimal builds….so OF COURSE they would be on a disadvantage.

Call me an advocate of meta-builds (because I actually am), but those builds are considered OPTIMAL because they play into the respective classes’ strengths.

You can play your support guard, but it wont be as good as a meta ele.
You can play your condi ranger, but it wont be as good as a meta mesmer.
You can play your thief as a 1v1er, but it still wont be as good as a meta warrior.

Meta builds exist, because they outperform any OTHER Class when it comes to a certain aspect of the game…or at least be flexible enought to perform “good enough” in multiple scenarios. Even when they just are a tiny bit better than another build….those are the OPTIMAL builds to play.

Also…that screenshot you posted. Comp-wise that game actually wasn’t that badly balanced….if anything I’d have given the advantage to red.

Oh gee….1 bad game….Matchmaking definitely has to be broken. In all honest, I can’t hear this kitten any more. If you are so easily frustrated, then I guess leaving PvP probably is the right choice.

I tried to look for a class that complemented the thief role, in case i did have to switch.
Thieves are very good in quickly outnumbering smaller fights and at bursting down squishier targets. On the other hand however, they struggle in team fights due to their lack of aoe and can have a hard time against bunkery classes, if your team lacks high-pressure damage dealers.

I choose to go with necro, since they can handle those exact scenarios, where thieves might run into problems.

Ye, moving targets can be a problem, but there are some ways to secure a backstab.
The safest, most commonly known one, uses steal.
Steal has no cast time and can be used WHILE casting something else.
If in stealth, that means, that you can precast your backstab and use steal, just as the BS animation is about to finish.
Same thing can be done with Shadowstep or even with Shadowshot.
Shadowshot basically has 2 parts to it. First you fire the projectile (this ports you to the target) and THEN attack. The second part can be canceld however if you chain another skill while the projectile is mid-air. Requires some timing but can be done consistently if you practice it a bit.

while i like the general idea, I think this whole “player incentive” discussion needs a few direction changes.

1) Your concept is designed for people, that barely need an incentive to play pvp anyway. Top 250 players, tend to spend a lot of time playing the mode anyway (they are TOP 250 after all). What you want to do, is cater this idea for the masses. Bronze, Silver and maybe even Gold namely. Also reaching leaderboards is an absolutely unrealistic goal for NEW pvp-players.
2) The Reward it self shouldn’t be tied to PvP-modes only. Finisher are something only used by pvp-players (and wvw players) anyway. WE however want to widen the playerbase, so we have to create an incentive for PvE players mostly.
3) The Reward should be something people have to work for more than one season. Take the legendary backpiece for instance. A lot of PvE players actually were playing ranked just for that for about the first ~4ish seasons. After the majority got it however, interest in ranked plummeted again. A new item every season on the other hand is unrealistic from a development PoV.

Personally I’d think unique armor skins would be a great idea. You can have a whole set cost 18 tokens for instance. Token acquisition would be through division gain.

Bronze = 1T, Silver = 2T, Gold =3T, Plat =4T, Legend =5T.

Doesn’t even matter if you get placed in the divison after your first 10 games, or if you climb up to it. You receive Tokens just for gaining a tier. If you get placed in gold for instance you get the tokens from Bronze, Silver and Gold (=6 Tokens). Meaning that if you manage to get Gold in 3 seasons straight you will be able to afford the whole set. And Gold is a pretty realistic goal even for new players imo, if they put some dedication to it. This would also mean that Anet would just have to introduce new sets every year or so.

While I think that using team-MMR as a baseline for rank gain/loss wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea for soloQ, it just leaves too much room for exploitation when considering duoQ.

As for the whole player-performance thing….just NO. Im 100% with Shaogin on that one. Top-Player stats mean absolutely nothing when it comes to player impact.
You can have an allied druid fight with an enemy on THEIR node for 10 minutes straight….he will get Top player offense, but that doesn’t do anything for the team at all. Top stats in general don’t mean anything.

Between lowest and highest rank of any division there can still be a 300 rating gap, which is and SHOULD reflect a high skill gap.

Don’t get me wrong, I get what you try to say. The grind upwards (especially from the lower ranks) can be one hell of a roller coaster especially if you aren’t super pro and can’t maintain a ~90% winrate. But the season is 2 months (!) long, so having a feeling of progression is actually pretty nice. Imagine if your placement at the beginning and at the end of the season were practically the same (if the system would miraculously rate you at a level where your winrate is at about 50%). What motivation would you have to play ranked for to begin with. People would just log in every 3 days, play 1 match and log off again.

I dont get the whole “placement matches are basically root of the bad matchmaking” argument.

This season I started in Gold1 and made it to Plat 1 by playing ~70% of my games solo.
Last season I started in Silver 2 (due to kittening up my placements) and at one point even got close to Silver 1 ….and you know what…. while almost playing exclusively solo (~90%), I still managed to reach Plat 1.

Granted ….during both seasons I played about ~350 games. But still, if you really are good enough, you WILL eventually climb. Blaming poor ranking alone on bad placements seems like a really weak excuse to me.

Don’t think so.
Anet usually releases balance patchs quarterly (=every 3 months), so my guess would be to expect one at the end of may / start of june.

as long as it takes about the same time for both zergs and roamer alike to take objectives, I dont have a problem with that. Basically you get the same value (score wise) from it but one side commits far more players to it, thus being at a disadvantage everywhere else on the map.

An example:

Imagine one 30-man zerg on one side and six 5-man groups on the other playing for 10 objectives. Depending on how far spread out those objectives are, the side with the smaller squad would have a significant advantage in terms of map control if it takes about the same amount of time to capture objectives as it does for the zerg. All they essentially have to watch out for is to avoid the zerg.

I think you mistook what I meant with setup when I made that “full traps DH” comparison.

DH has NO SETUP time at all. He blinks on you (with Sw#2 i.e.) and furiously smashes whatever keys his Utility 1-5 are bound to. Time needed to do that: ~1 second.

Now for the Thief, considering the stealth setup you suggested earlier. Smoke Screen > Blasting it with shortbow until reaching a comfortable amount of leadattack stacks> Precast Vault + Assassins Signet > Shadowstep. Time needed to do that: ~too freaking long.

You have also – just like the DH – used your entire Utility bar and almost ALL of your initiative for that. If you haven’t downed every single enemy with that attack you better pray to whatever entity you believe in, cause you have no condi cleanse nor stunbreaks left.

And that is exactly what makes builds like these garbage for higher level play ==> People realize when you are vulnerable and exploit that.

For once, I feel like supply-costs for siege are far too high. If you run arround as ~3players you can drop pretty much 1 siege weapon. Then, with that 1 siege it takes ages to break down a gate (left alone a wall), all the while you hope it doesn’t get destroyed, because you dont have the resources to build another.

Blobs on the other hand don’t have that problem. They deploy 3-4 sieges at once and take the Door/Wall down in a matter of seconds, while the other 36 players just stand there and watch, essentially doing nothing if the objective is unguarded.

What I want, when I say that small groups should be able to have higher impact, is, that it shouldn’t take THAT much longer for small groups to take unguarded objectives than it does for a zerg.

okay…now I have done some actual testing on a few dps golems, just to see HOW much setup it would take to reach consistent nuke-like crits.
Trying to reach max damage, I used the following build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQFAWn8lCFOhNOBmOB8PhFYCTLBEAyAzdwR4K0LNcGaDA-TJRBQBjpMAAuAAAc/hH8AAAA

Testing setup:
- Light golem (0 toughness / 2k armor)
- 0 might, 0 bloodlust stacks, nor any other form of damage modifiers than the ones in the above build.
- DustStrike 3 times => 15 invuln stacks on target, 12 lead attack stacks.
(this is mainly to fuel Lead attacks but also to mirror a realistic combat environment)
- Bound + Steal combo on target (extra 10% from bound, +Resource Refund from steal) ….this brings the target bellow 50% for ALL instances of my testing (20% dmg from executioner and triggering the DD-Runes)
- Activate Assassins Signet
- Vault

I did this 20 times (which took some time b/c of w8 for CDs and whatnot) and the results are as follows (always rounded DOWN to the nearest hundreds):

1) 12.4k 11) 12.6k
2) 12.8k 12) 12.8k
3) 12.5k 13) 13.2k
4) 12.4k 14) 13.5 k
5) 13.3k 15) 13.0k
6) 12.6k 16) 12.8k
7) 12.7k 17) 12.3k
8) 13.1k 18) 12.5k
9) 13.0k 19) 13.0k
10) 12.0k 20) 12.4k

Reaching higher numbers definitely is possible, but unlikely without some team support (or dropping Trickery for Crit strikes for instance, which would kitten resource management however).

May this be as it is. The build still requires A LOT of setup before being able to perform these kind of nukes and therefore feels more like a 1 trick-pony (similar to “full traps Dh”), which is utterly useless if opponents can mitigate or even evade the damage.

Sviel.7493:

To be fair, Nightcapping is far less of an issue than it used to be. It’s still a problem and likely always will be, but it’s been improved.

As for blobs…when players stop complaining about the things that break blobs up, maybe we’ll make more headway on that. Right now, any change that allows defenders to even slow down an attack is decried as pro-PvD and anti-fights. If blobs can’t be slowed, there’s no point in splitting up.

You don’t necessarily have to be able to slow down blobs to somehow force more spread out fights. As I have said previously, id like to see, that small groups just have more impact. If a handful of players were able to take objectives comfortably on their own on MULTIPLE places on the map, the response time for big zergs would just be too long. Its like for conquest-sPvP: running from point to point as a full grp of 5, may be a way to consistently win fights, but it will still lose you the game when the enemy team decides to just contest the other objectives at the same time.

I like the way this whole topic has shifted.
The problem with nerfing those entry-level builds (LB Power Ranger, 5-Traps DH, Vault thief and whatnot) is, that they won’t see any play at all then. Those builds dont work to begin with in higher level play. Plus there will ALWAYS be those gimmicky entry-level builds that just maximize damage to pick off unaware players.

New players usually don’t have the focus/experience to know what is going on in larger fights anyway, so they tend to miss very important stuff. They tend to tunnel-vision, look at the skillbar a lot, neglect the minimap, not understand enemy builds etc.etc.

You can of course just nerf all of those builds and force new players to only play meta-builds as well, but that would be a poor choice for various reasons as well.

@Xanctus I completely agree.
Although many players coughed at the idea of ESL and even where thankful once Anet didn’t support it any more (which is very very petty imo), a pro scene is very much needed for any competitive mode.
I can’t even say how much it helped me to improve my own gameplay, just by watching tournaments and pro-streams (like sind, phantaram, hellseth, nos and so on). sPvP and especially Conquest have so much more depth to it, than just randomly bashing players, that it would take an incredible amount of time for a complete beginner to learn everything about it by themselves. People should be thankful that there are high-skilled players showcasing their gameplay, rather then blaming them for destroying the gamemode (which is a ridiculous argument on its own).

Regarding the power creep….Anet appears to already have seen that as well. Let me remind you, that we are very close to another balance patch and Anet has announced some down-tuning for passive/proc based sustain and damage (mainly for sigils). I am really looking forward to what they have in store for us and hope that it actually contributes to a more pro-active gameplay.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

You use a short bow and blast stealth to get stealth.

You land vaults with shadow step by aiming the vault under your own feet and shadow stepping in at someone after you start the vault. It works just like Judge’s Intervention.

this is just wrong. Im sorry to say this again, but you CAN’T use any form of shadowstep while performing a vault. What you might mean, is the bounding dodger which yes, you can use shadowstep with.

Also blasting stealth with SB on a SB/Staff set cant be done alone, since you…well, lack the combo field.

Swamurabi.7890:

What do people need to play WvW……a reason to play.

My first reason to play was map completion.

That reason no longer exists. The Gift of Battle reason doesn’t keep players in WvW long enough to get to like WvW. WvW map completion could take months.

My second reason to play was to find a good commander/guild to follow.

It used to be that you could find a tag on every map. Sometimes there were more than one tag and there were calls for one or the other to tag down. I eventually found a guild and played for a few years. When the commander quit the game the guild collapsed. So I’m back to looking for a good commander/guild to follow. Unfortunately, because of linking and the current state of WvW, sometimes there isn’t a tag on a map, even EBG. Last night in NA T1 I went to EBG and there was a tag, after they got wiped twice they either quit or went to another map. Our side was quickly outmanned. I see this more and more, no tags and outmanned on multiple maps. Even if you do see a tag because of linking they might not be on your server or might not even be on your server’s teamspeak.

If I know what to look for in WvW and can’t find it how do you expect someone new to WvW to find it?

I get where you are coming from. By now it’s pretty much apparent that the WvW population has reached a pretty steep low. That being said however, the main issue tied to this seems to be, that most players just don’t seem to enjoy the overall concept of the mode. Luring players into mode with rewards, might be an incentive for people to actually give WvW a shot, but it doesn’t really provide a reason to consistently play it…or making you want your server to do well. How to solve this? I have no freaking idea. The idea of providing better rewards isn’t really going to help with player’s dedication (or rather: lack of) towards the mode imo. So, and again in MY opinion, there needs to be fundamental changes to the overall mode design.

Like, lets say you enjoy the large-scale fighting aspect of the game….What would you do to make this aspect more enjoyable? Obviously you would need a big population to support large scale fighting. Would – as previously mentioned – timed (like every 2 hours or so), deathmatch-like meta events help? Where your server has time to get ready for the upcoming event and since there is a timer on it, people would have it easier to organize.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Dont stay on point? Doesnt DH have ranged weapons just for that reason? Their not weak hitting weapons either.

I didn’t say “don’t fight on point” but “Kite offpoint to avoid unnecessary damage”. Node-control is a very import aspect of this game mode….and node-control ALSO means kiting offpoint if necessary.

Sure, you can tank that Lightning Overload, Thunderclap, Acid Bomb, various traps, Chaos Storm and possibly even some necro-wells and keep the point capped/decapped. But after those glorious 3 seconds (which is the amount of time you will last while tanking all of this) of milking some juicy extra points, you will die, be on respawn, have to get to that point again and THEN can start contesting it again…. while your team has to fight an outnumbered fight.

I like your thinking Gorani.
Map awareness and decision-making concerning movement should be a huge part in this game mode…and not just from 1 commander who everybody else just blindly follows. The mode is designed to drive community-effort to gain victory, where everybody needs to constantly be of use wherever they can and not just running after a tag, doing whatever and whenever the commander tells them to.

Reacting fast and correctly on a large Borderland also would make classes that are currently merely laughed at due to their lack of large-scale combat impact more relevant again.

The thing with “meta-events” also sounds rather interesting. Something like SM only being attackable during these events and granting a specific buff to the server or maybe even just some static points. There are many possibilities to setup such events.

Shaogin.2679:

True, but that is an issue with the players themselves and doesn’t justify nerfing a class.

my point exactly

I kinda get why OP is trying to say here. Now, personally i dont have any issues with DH. I think they are actually amongst the more balanced classes right now. Good Teamfight and 1v1 capabilites. Solid, CD-based defensives, so they can’t endlessly outstain damage just with passives.

I think the main issue why DHs are so obnoxiously strong in lower tier plays, is one the OP has mentioned many times in previous posts. Most of their pressure comes from static, on-point skills. It is a complete mystery to me, but people on lower ranks NEVER EVER leave points or even kite properly with LoS and whatnot for that matter.

No matter how much the node gets SPAMMED with aoe, all participating players relentlessly try to stay on point, rather tanking a bazillion damage than to give the enemy team that 2-3 ticks, even if that wouldn’t let them fullcap it.

Swamurabi.7890:

While YOU prefer a small scale aspect to WvW, that is not what the game mode was designed for.

sPvP is for small scale fights.

WvW is for large scale fights. So if you want WvW to be about fifteen 5v5 encounters instead of one 75v75 megabattle, you should either play on DBL or play sPvP.

You are exactly right. I have stated many times, that those ideas would specifically appeal to me and might not be for everyone. I never intended for my opinion to be the “be all and end all”.

All I wanted, was to setup a platform, where people could talk about what would make THEM play the game mode.

First of all, let me tell you, that I am by no means a veteran wvw-player (300 wvw level or something) so I don’t know how much merit my following statements have. Anyhow, a lot of my friends are very passionate about WvW and have tried to get me into it a few times. Unfortunately however, although I have tried to get into it a few times now, the mode seems to disagree with me on a very fundamental level.

Personally (although I know that a lot of players prefer this style) I dont like the whole blob/zerging aspect of it. I, as a player, like to feel the impact I have in a fight or on the map. Unfortunately, in a mass of >40 players, there is no way to tell how good a single player performs so there is that. In terms of roaming, which I would prefer …well roaming is dead. The impact you have on the matchup when running as a small group is just insignificant on a overall scale.

To the point now:
What would like to have, is more of a system/map design that is closer to the sPvP one.
A LOT (and I mean A LOT) of equally important objectives all across the map, one big zerg can’t possibly contest all at once. This would – essentially – force players to group up in much smaller groups (of lets say 5-10 people max) to cover all important areas of the map.

This would do two things at the same time:
Firstly, it would break the whole blob vs blob aspect of the mode, allowing single players (or small groups at least) to have significantly higher impact on the overall match outcome.
Secondly, it would spread out the entire map population. Cause, as it is right now, whole areas of the map, except where the zerg is fighting, are completely abandoned. I basically spend more time running around in wvw than actually combating other players (which is completely unenjoyable imo).

Now, I don’t know about map balance or even map design for such a mode, but personally I’d play the kitten out of such a mode. Obviously UNGUARDED objectives should be able to be easily (!) taken by small groups, so there is no need for a zerg at all.

Anyhow, those are my opinions about WvW. Let me remind everybody, that this is supposed to be a DISCUSSION thread, where everybody can state what they would like WvW to be. This might be a good way for the community to express what they expect from WvW on a FUNDAMENTAL level (rewards, builds and whatnot can be an issue as well….but here I’d like to talk about more basic matters).

now I havent read all the comments posted so far, but let me tell you, that those numbers are definitely achievable even without “hacks”.

The basic idea is to run a lot of damage modifiers from traits.

Bounding Dodge (10%) + Executioner (20%) + Lead attacks (15%) + Havoc Mastery (7%) + Exposed Weakness (10%) = 62% damage increase.

If said thief now runs very high ferocity, they can EASILY crit for >10k .
Its not a very popular, but there is a build that uses Valkyrie amulet combined with Daredevil Runes (= guaranteed crit after a dodge roll), where you get 210% crit dmg.

Edit: as people correctly said below: damage modifiers dont just stack additively, but rather inflate one another even more, so the damage increase would actually be significantly higher than I stated.

The more you know, I guess^^ …helps my point either way, though.

pretty standard acro-monkey thief build.
For my taste smoke screen is far too situational, so I definitely would swap it for Shadow Step or Bandit’s defense (the later adds even more 1v1 potential and can be a potential vault-setup). I don’t know about initiative management on this build, since I don’t play much staff myself…but if it isn’t an issue id swap Roll for Initiative out as well (for the other of the above stated options).

Sigils seem a bit lackluster imo, so maybe replace them with more damage-oriented ones (Fire/Air/Blood).

Other than that, looks solid. There is actually a similar build on metabattle, which sees it’s fair share of usage:
https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Daredevil_-_Vault_Spammer

For me it’s about lack of incentive.
Don’t get me wrong, I HAVE played a lot of games (~150) this season, but once i have reached a certain spot I feel comfortable with, I suddenly loose all motivation to play.

Currently I’m rank 183 on the leaderboards and since I know, that I am not good enough to be a top 100 player, I just stopped. And I think many other players on this level feel the same….which directly leads to the next issue.

Match Quality. IF I want to have quality matches, I have a very short window per day I can play (like 3-4 hours max on prime time). If I play at any other time, I will be matched with and against teams, that are way higher or way lower than myself….and that just isn’t enjoyable.

While I get your general frustration, I have to say, that placement matches are always unbalanced. Even when speaking of a soft-reset, the matchmaking system needs some sort of data to rank you correctly. Seeing as this was your 4th match on an alt-account, the amount of data the system had, to determine your rating, obviously is incredibly low.

Now, I don’t know if pvp-level/games played actually have any impact on your hidden MMR, but in case they don’t: the system had to determine your rating according to the data it received from just 3 matches (where you lost 2). I would be very interested to see, what MMR your teammates had.