Guild Wars 2

This may be a very unpopular opinion, but I kind of like the effect CoR has in WvW, and I would like to see more abilities changed to have this kind of application. Before you scream at me, just hear me out:

It has always confused me that in a massive PvP skirmish game mode like WvW the strongest strategy has always been stacking everyone on top of one another so AoE can’t hit everyone. I never found it to be a very… uh.. realistic strategy, although I know that realism isn’t really a factor. But the way I see it, in a world where people can summon massive fireballs and earth shattering strikes it would be almost suicidal to have people stand in a group so they would be a massive target for what is essentially the walking artillery known as Eles/necros/etc.

But of course, all of that isn’t necessarily relevant. What is relevant is the game play. Well, I won’t comment specifically on GvG as I don’t participate much in that, but people have always been complaining about blobs rolling through a BL/EB, and forcing the smaller pug group to never be able to take them head on. If more skills like wells, meteor shower, AoE spells, etc all hit more than 5 targets, perhaps we would see a shift in strategy where people wouldn’t all stack on top of one another. It would help alleviate some of the massive 1 spam fest that we see in fights where people die if they leave the tag. Setting up groups with the new squad system would become much more important, as you would need a nice composition to keep everyone alive since stacking everyone on top of the same heals/buffs would be asking for a bomb that would wreck you.

I don’t know, just my two cents. I see this as a way to help us. Right now it actually sucks because there is only 1 ability that can really fit this bill. But rather that nerf the hell out of it, maybe we could make it the norm?

This is, in my opinion, part of a large overarching problem of one step forward two steps backwards with these HoT changes. There were a lot of good and interesting changes that unfortunately were not implemented in the best ways. A few examples:

The changes to yaks were wonderful. You can activate all these cool new improvements on them to make them faster, tougher, or have more supply! That’s awesome! But unfortunately the auto upgrade change pretty much negated any of these bonuses by making yaks much less useful. That fancy new yak escort buff is not relevant because there’s no need to guard the yaks anymore.

The upgrades themselves were made free! That’s great, it was a huge concern for those who dedicated their time to upgrading. But now all those fancy new tactics cost a ridiculous amount of money, way more than upgrading ever cost. So instead of an annoying gold cost for upgrades we have absolutely punishing costs for accessing all the cool new tactics and improvements.

I won’t comment on the auto upgrade itself here, as we have a lot of threads already on it, but I see it in a similar vein as “good in theory, not so much when implemented.” The cons just outweigh the pros, at least in my opinion.

I really hope Anet gives us some feedback on our feedback, at least to help assure people that they are being heard. I really love this game and WvW especially, and I don’t like to see it hurting like this.

Nike.2631:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Hey all,
…
We felt like minions were in a good place for PvP so we didn’t want to change them there for now. Thus, the interaction between players and minions in PvP combat will remain the same.
…

That’s a joke right? While ranger pets are more or less a thing because they have to be, Ranger Nature Spirits, Guardian Sprit Weapons, and Necromancer Minons and even Elementalist Elementals are extinct as an entire class of utility skills in sPvP and WvW. Even Engineer turrets have largely been bred out of the competitive environment and you can’t expect gyros or Reaper’s shambling horrors to change that.

I am going to have to agree with this sentiment, if perhaps not the severity or anger. Specifically in the WvW setting.

As it stands now the only real minions that see a use in WvW are the necromancer minions, and that is more of a gimmick build that people run in full minionmancer zergs or for fun. I rarely see an elementalist running a greater elemental, maybe once a month, and I can honestly say I cannot remember the last time I saw a guardian spirit weapon or ranger spirit that was not my own little experiments.

I understand that 1.) These are specifically class balance issues, and a sweeping class wide change like this in a Player vs Player environment must be considered adequately, and 2.) That many people despise playing against AI builds. However, these are entire lines of utilities that see no use in WvW because of their undertuned nature, and while I can’t speak for other classes, the guardian forum has continually advocated for some form of reduced AoE damage to spirit weapons to bring them into line with other utilities’ power levels.

I strongly urge you to reconsider your stance, at least for WvW, if you wish to see a wider range of utilities be used. Like I said before, I know many people dislike playing against AI specs (most likely the turret engi juggernauts of old), but I believe in the case of spirit weapons the innate limited duration of the utilities combined with their lack of large amounts of buffs and CC would make them a lot less problematic to fight.

I mostly play guardian if that isn’t evident by now, so I don’t have a lot of experience with how a change like this would affect other classes’ minions, but I encourage people who do focus on those classes to share their feedback.

As a useful suggestion, perhaps we could see a different reduction in damage value in PvP or WvW? Possibly even different reductions per class?

I would also like to voice support for a super awesome True Shot charging and firing animation.

More fiery blue energy beam!

Feedback Time! So I played a large amount of Dragonhunter this weekend and I just want to preface what I am saying with this: I exclusively played WvW, so all of my coments are in reference to that. It’s the game mode I spend 90% of my time in and the one I have the most experience with these past 3 years.

That being said, I have to say that the Dragonhunter feels a hundred times better this weekend than it did on the previous one. I am very happy with the way Dragonhunter is turning out, and I think the developers have done an awesome job on improving it. Let’s get to the rundown:

Longbow:

The improvements to the autoattack’s speed and targetting for the Deflecting Shot (#3) & Symbol (#4) have done wonders for this weapon. The damage is in a great spot, the weapon feels strong and useful in a variety of situations. I feel it is a valid option in the guardians line up. However, there are 3 things I would like to see looked at.

1.) The first is a simple bug that seems to be occuring with the Hunter’s Ward (#5) ability. Sometimes it does not deal damage until the final strike. I used this ability many times and got zero response from the screen, no “miss” or “block” messages, and certainly no damage. Again, this does not affect the final strike, just the strikes that occur before it. The final strike still hits and the walls still form, but since the ability itself requires a lot of commitment it needs to have every bit of damage squeezed out.

2.) Next I would look at the Hunter’s Ward ability itself. I’ll be honest, at first I was with a majority of the complaints and saw the long CD and casting time as a major hinderance for the ability. However, once I actually used it in combat I can see why this ability is regarded as being so powerful. The ability to put up to 5 stability stripping rings can be devastating against a group of players without enough stability. This becomes even stronger in areas like Stonemist Castle’s hallways or the bridge at the Hills Keep. That being said, I think it would be wise to keep careful observation on this ability, as outside of those niche conditions the power of it can fall drastically. I think any CD reductions on this ability should be done incrementally to reach a good spot. Reducing just the cast time seems like a better option in terms of guarding against making the ability overpowered, at least in my opinion. As it is now it’s extremely useful in a big group setting where you can hide in a sea of players, but as soon as you are in a setting where someone is attacking you personally it falls off. Although, this might be intended as the Ranger LB #5 ability faces a similar issue.

3.) Finally I would look into improving True Shot (#2) in two ways. First, and this is more of a personal feeling, I don’t think the skill is flashy enough. I don’t even mean this in terms of counterplay. I know this ability is strong from the numbers I feel when I use it. I don’t feel that same sense of strength when looking at the ability itself. The Ranger LB #2 ability feels strong because you can see a flurry of arrows ripping into a target. True Shot feels sort of… lackluster for how powerful it is supposed to be. At the very least I would like to see that added swirl effect around the bow while charging, the same effect you see on the Ice Bow #5, Warrior LB #5, or Ranger LB #4. At most I love some of the suggestions to make it similar to Archer’s Caladbolg from Unlimited Blade Works. As for balance issues, I want to draw attention to a particular issue that True Shot seems to uniquely have. That issue is dropoff. Unlike a lot of both Longbow and Shortbow abilities, True Shot has a very hard breaking point where it no longer does anything. The bow abilities that fire some sort of projectile usually begin falling at max range, allowing for the ability to hit a little bit beyond the range. This plays well into a longbow fight style, as you are trying to stay as far away as possible. However, True Shot stops very abruptly at the 1200 mark, making the ability functionally… awkward at times. There are numerous times where I fired True Shot expecting it to hit an enemy and it did nothing. The animation even tickled their nose but no damage. I understand that this is something to get used to, but I feel like this takes away from the power of this ability. This kind of cutoff feels drastic and I think it could be improved. My personal recommendation would be to increase the range of this ability to 1500. I know this might sound like a big change, but I think it can accomodate the full weapon set well. If the range cannot be increased, I’d really like to see the dropoff smoothed a bit, to give the ability more power at full range.

Virtues:

Next up are the virtues, which I think are very strong in their current setting. I will preface this section by saying that I almost felt compelled to run the Virtues trait line for the synergy with the spec. I think this is a problem that the Reaper specilzation will have trouble with as well as these are the only two specilzations that effectively take away your old mechanics and replace it with a new one. And they were heavily utilized mechanics. My Necromancer feels weak without the Soul Reaping line, whether it was a reaper or not. My Dragon Hunter feels just as weak without the Virtues line due to how much I rely on these new virtues. That being said:

Shield of Courage. This ability is in a very good spot. I disagree with the opinion that this ability must have a shorter CD. It is quite a game changer, and is drastically stronger than the regular virtue. If the ability had to be “buffed” I’d rather see a very slight duration increase, maybe 1 or 2 seconds, rather than a CD reduction. This ability should (and does in my opinion) scream at the enemy that you are not the be triffled with. I find it an elite-esque ability with an elite-esque CD. However, I do understand the complaints of some people, as these game changing elites are often seeing shorter and shorter CDs as the power creep moves forward.

Wings of Resolve. I love this ability. This almost feels like a second heal, but this may be due to the Virtues line synergy I talked about earlier. My only complaint about this ability is the sheer amount of times it can fail. It is so easy to stop the effects of this ability, which is something the regular virtues did not have an issue with (since they were instant cast). I understand the need for counterplay, but I feel like this ease with which this ability can be stopped actively encourages not using it to its fullest. Just looking at the ability it would appear it is meant to be used as an either an escape from an enemy dealing damage to me or as a means to heal a group of allies a distance away. As it is now, I feel punished for using this in the midst of a fight where I would benefit from both the healing and the repositioning whenever I get interupted. I can use it before the enemy is close to avoid this chance, but I miss out on all of the healing. The same goes for healing allies. Allies that need healing are usually in the middle of a fight, and trying to jump in on them can sometimes be disasterous as I get interupted, leaving me in the middle without actually having helped anyone. This might just be a WvW issue, I don’t know. Or perhaps it’s all intended counterplay which is fine. If it’s not, I think adding some kind of evade to the skill would be beneficial. It doesn’t need to be the full duration, just something around the end of it to ensure you can land once you are airborn. Of course, I understand if nothing like this is added, as the ability itself it already strong. Just my opinion on getting the fullest effect out of it.

Spear of Justice. I think this ability it in a great place as well. It seems pretty strong, but I can’t say for sure how well the burn works as I only ran power builds. The functionality seems on point though, the spear itself seems fluid and responsive, the chains are noticable and didn’t seem to break easily. I particularly loved the interaction with this and the trait Big Game Hunter, as it allows fast hitting abilities like Sword #3 or GS #2 to rack up a nice amount of vulnerability. My only gripe with this ability is its interaction with the Justice is Blind trait. I know not everything is meant to work perfectly together, but I love the playstyle of running Dragon Hunter with the Radiance line and chuck spears all day. The other two minor traits on this line work great with the Spear, but Justice is Blind does not. Since it occurs in an AoE around the guardian it encourages a short range playstyle, while the Spear itself encourages the opposite. I can see two ways of fixing this. First would be to simply have the AoE occur at the first target you hit. The other would be to have the spear itself blind anyone it damages with no AoE effect (only on the first pass through, not the burn damage). I can’t say for sure which I would like, and I think this is a decision that could use some discussion by smarter people than myself.

Dragonhunter Traits:

As a whole I found the traits to be a large improvement over the previous iteration we saw last beta weekend. I have 3 small complaints.

1.) The middle line. I feel like some of these traits are still in that sort of limbo where they aren’t very useful without the other. This is especially true of the adept trait Dulled Senses. The Guardian has limited access to both knockbacks and cripple, so having this trait without at least 1 of the other 2 middle line traits seems almost useless. I think moving the cripple on knockback to Heavy Light, and the vulnerability on cripple to Zealot’s Aggresion will work both functionally and thematically. And this opens the door for a new trait! (More work though…)

2.) Small little thing about Hunter’s Determination would just be that the Aegis on CC is shared with the Virtues trait Retaliatory Subconscious. Not really a big deal, just wanted to point that out. Perhaps changing Retaliatory Subconscious to Protection and Retaliation and lowering the CD would allieviate this overlap. Like I said, not a huge deal as Hunter’s Determination is strong.

3.) Hunter’s Fortification. I’m sure this has been said a lot, but the requirement of having 0 conditions is pretty harsh. I as a power DH inflicted quite a lot of condis on an opponent. In fact, every build in the game will apply conditions, quite a few of them. This makes the damage reduction almost useless. You reduce perhaps the first couple of strikes but that’s it (and sometimes not even that). The other half of the ability is very strong though, so there’s good with the bad. I think increasing the conditions threshold to say 2 or 3 could help. Otherwise, it might be interesting to buff the damage reduction a bit and turn it into sort of an anti openning shot (your first few hits won’t do much to me). Either way I think a very light change would put this trait in a perfect spot.

Utlities and other Traitlines:

And finally we are at end. Utilities. Traps are getting a lot of flak, but let me just say that all of the traps are quite amazing. They all work well, they all look absolutely beautiful (seriously bravo), and they all do their job very well. But that is the biggest issue. Traps themselves are very limited in scope of what they can do, especially the specific Dragonhunter traps. You’ve got 6 traps in total, with most of them doing large amounts of spike damage. Thats very good and all, but it limits the amount of use that these traps will see. Outside of damage you have 1 reveal, 1 block drop, and 1 heavy CC trap (and the heal trap). No condi cleanse, no buffs, no repositioning, no real interaction with allies. All of these things means traps will not see much use in an organized group setting, at least in WvW. Sure you can have a DH running traps, and he can position them nicely, get some good damage in, even deny certain areas. But you won’t see it in a group going through their players 1 by 1 and picking a setup for them. The traps offer no real incentive to the group, and offer no real survivability to the DH outside of Fragments of Faith. But perhaps that’s intended. Elite specs aren’t supposed to replace things, and shout guards will still be more useful in a group. I just don’t know. I’d love to see more utility on the traps. Things like heals, things like buffs. Something to synergize with the class as a whole.

My biggest problem this weekend was determining which utilities to use. It’s really hard to get synergy going between the traitlines while sacrificing a whole line for DH, and this is especially true for roaming. The DH traitline itself does not encourage a particular utility skill besides traps. Which would be fine if traps worked well in most situations. I tried lots of combos, looking for any particular setup that amplified my utilities. Consecrations were a good one, but even they have limited uses, especially in a roaming setting. I even tried an interesting Radiance/Virtues with Consecrations and Signets build. It seemed alright, but in the end I eventually went back the old meditations. That’s because meditations just have so much utility. They offer damage, condi clear, repositioning, invulnerability, HEALING. So much is given by meditations that it seems almost oppressive. I’m not asking for meditation to be nerfed. Quite the opposite, I want to see these other utilities be more useful. And since Traps are still in development I think they are the best place to start. A healing trap that heals the next ally that steps on it below a threshold and gives you the ability to shadowstep to them. Procession of Blades and Test of Faith somehow combined into one, giving you a crippling high damage trap. A new trap that offers some way to clear conditions. Just.. something.

I think Dragonhunter is so very close to being perfect, it just needs some way to breathe life into the traps. They are amazing, they look amazing and they doing their job amazingly. But their job is so limited, and they will see limited use because of it.

Below are 4 of the builds I ran this weekend:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAT8ensABVdiFdC+CBkdiF/hSO8H/43KA+26MLJqwLE-TVSBABFpELw9HuS5REPBQJ4Nq/giuhFOIAIYiDgLAApAiYLA-w

The first experimental build I did with traps. Works pretty well for high damage roaming, but has big trouble if you can stay away from an enemy. The traps don’t really help them stay away with the amount of mobility most roamers have.
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http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAT8elsAhehYzQwQIQTEL+Dlc5P+xvVA8tPQWSUhXIA-TFSBwAFVidd/R5RknAoE8m6Po0NgwE3iDCAgLAApAiYLA-w

A second kind of small group roaming build that I found pretty interesting. Has some really nice damage. As you can probably tell by this point I REALLY like the radiance line. I think it is so much fun to play. This was trying to make it work.
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http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vdEQFASncTBFpiVXB2aBEqil7iCcBjwAge1j9ZXsg+hcA-ThBEABJ8AAKUJYUK/A4CA0o6PLt/ApAMTZE-e

The final Meditations build I fell back on. I think wall of reflection allows you to be a very effective anti-range ranged character, easily dealing with anyone who won’t come close.
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http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJATWlsAhahYrQwUIQQELJE11yGAHA2GECpgc1H9XPA-TVSBwAFViRb/hrKPi8EAlg3U/BlugFHCAEm4AcBAIFQEjBA-w

A full shout backline build. I didn’t get to test this as much as I would like. I don’t know how effective it is to replace a frontline guard, or a backline necro/ele.
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TL:DR: Hey, I worked a while on this. Read it

Ya I am going to disagree. I think from a WvW perspective the Stealth Gyro is an amazing ability, and one that will see a heavy amount of use. This assumes that they do not add a number of players cap to the stealth component.

4 seconds is plenty of time to have the group pull off the engineer and attack from another direction while the engineer continues on the same path, perhaps even drawing out some attacks. Of course, the ability itself constantly stacks stealth, so sitting in it for a while will be even stronger than a veil.

Is it super strong in PvE? No not really but lots of stealth skills are that way. I believe it will see great use in PvP/WvW.

I think what would make a lot of people happy would be to make certain siege more counter-able without placing more siege. I have always found it super annoying that AC fire can go through practically everything. I would prefer if they were able to be treated like projectiles such that they can be destroyed (reflected would probably be way too wonkey). I don’t know the specifics of what kind of programming would be necessary, so I can understand if this is perhaps not possible. I just wish Anet would let us know.

Of course if it is possible this would need some balancing on its own to keep ACs useful for the outnumbered defenders… boy I can start to see why this can be a hassle to balance. You don’t want ACs to be useless, else servers with populations that can’t blob up will face a lot of problems defending. And this will become more important since Anet has plans to make defending more worth while. On the other hand, no one likes to stand in AC fire, we’ve all been there and I totally get why some people just wish ACs were gone.

Perhaps cannons should be looked at, since they are limited in number and can’t be used in the open field. Cannons right now are pretty good at destroying siege, but fairly useless against a zerg, unless it’s one of the high cannons. And even then it has to be manned before the zerg destroys it.

I’ll preface this by saying I ran full zerker in WvW this BWE as a Shiro/Glint rev with Hammer and S/A. You definitely are squishy, but the glint heal helps a lot for small fights, and in larger fights you can rely on hammer range to still do reliable damage while using glint to support the group. It felt amazing, as it was a build that I didn’t feel the need to change no matter what I was doing in WvW (Note: It is glaringly weak to Condis. As in only 1 condi removal on legend swap).

However, if you do want a little more defense, I think Valkyries is a good bet. The limitless fury you can get with Glint coupled with the double fury bonus trait should give you enough crit to substitute in some health for defense. Additionally, using Shiro’s utility skills to re-position constantly, as well as have access to a lot of evade/dodge, should do wonders to keep you alive. But, again, condis will still shred you.

Raven.9603:

It was already discussed at length earlier in the thread that very long cooldown utility skills are not the primary counters to weapon skills, weaponskills counter weaponskills. In other words, immunities obviously can stop direct damage just like double dodge, but no skill in the game other than UA actually requires an immunity or double dodge to counter it for most classes. If you remove double-dodging and utility skills from your list, you will have the list I just posted.

DeathShroud is mitigation, not a counter. Deathshroud is a healthbar, the necro is not dead (generally) until he runs out of both healthbars.

Of all the comparable skills that you listed, every single one can be 100% countered with either 1 dodge OR 1 interrupt. That is a huge difference. Why does UA get a pass?

The 3/4sec tooltip cast time is not the same as “the period in which UA can be interrupted.” The backflip animation is much faster than that, and activation times (as you can see from looking at most skills on the wiki) are drastically different than listed tooltip times.

As far as constructive feedback, there was a great suggestion in either this thread or the other one that maybe UA could be countered by stopping when the target left the radius of the spell. This would introduce ride-the-lightning and weapon leap or movement skills as a counter. Not sure its the best idea, but it was good and constructive.

Excuse my ignorance, by why must weapon skills be countered only by other weapon skills? When I’m stunned and getting Hundred Blade Worked into the ground, I definitely don’t turn to a weapon skill. I said this before, and I’ll say it again: looking at single abilities in a vacuum can be useful in certain discussions, but if you aren’t getting the whole story it’s pointless.

When you compare Hundred Blades, Rapid Fire, Pistol Whip, Unrelenting Assaut, and Blurred Frenzy in a vacuum, HB falls super short and could be considered practically useless compared to the rest. However, we all know it isn’t and has its place when coupled with other warrior abilities. UA has its own advantages and disadvantages.

You said:

“Of all the comparable skills that you listed, every single one can be 100% countered with either 1 dodge OR 1 interrupt.”

And then you try and wiggle your way out of it by saying the interrupt on UA doesn’t “count.” What kind of BS is that. But more importantly: Rapid Fire is the ONLY one of those skills that can be utilized at 1500 range. Why is that? Perhaps because it is a unique aspect of the skill.

UA has the lowest damage of all 5 of those similar skills. Additionally, it also the only one that is both affected by 7 ticks of confusions (as opposed to 1), and also affected by torment at all. Why is that? Again, BECAUSE SKILLS SHOULD HAVE UNIQUE ASPECTS. I don’t want another carbon copy of Blurred Frenzy.

One such advantagous unique aspect for UA is that it will follow your target for the full duration regardless of position. That’s cool. I like that. It makes the skill unique. As it is right now, it’s the only way to follow a mesmer through a portal. You said everything needed a counter, well right now a mesmer can precast a portal and proceed to exit any fight it wishes just with the press of a utility key. Nothing could stop it except stunning/dazing before it’s cast (which stops everything, UA included).

Meanwhile, UA has some glaring disadvantages. I mentioned the confusion and torment before. Furthermore, and I know people will whine that we are only talking 1v1 but I don’t care, UA is the ONLY one of those abilities that can be mitigated just by being near anything else that’s targettable. Rangers, Mesmers, and Engineers with healing turret (hint: almost all of them) all have reliable ways to exploit this. So it does actually matter in a 1v1. Additionally, stealthing will completely negate the skill. Again, something that affects none of those other skills.

Phew. As a note, I stress again that you can’t look at skills in a vacuum. People have pointed out time and time again that Enchanted Daggers is a real problem for UA, because it almost doubles the damage (which was supposed to be relatively low for UA compared to other skills). I think looking into that is a more appropriate way to fix UA.

Mosharn.8357:

Raven.9603:

Mosharn.8357:

Every class has multiple ways to deal with UA. If you lower the power and put it on the end then ppl can just walk around and dodge the last hit without a worry.

That simply is not true. Hard counters atm are:

1) Shock aura. Ele dagger only.
2) Mes torch 4.
3) War shield, only works if no phase traversal from rev.
4) Long evades: Mes blurred frenzy, pistol whip, ranger 1h sword

That is the smallest set of counters for any ability out there. If the OP’s suggestion of ramping damage was used, mitagation via late dodge would be more reasonable, or if the evade didnt last the whole duration, interrupts would function as counters.

engi invis/block/elixir
warrior shield stance/endure pain/whirlwind into dodge full negate
Guardian Renewed focus, shelter, aegis into evade/focus 5
thief stealth/evade skills
necro deathshroud/plauge form
mesmer invis/blurred frenzy/shatter 4
ranger many evades/ signet of stone/ protect me
ele mist form, focus invulns evade on dagger 3 in fire and air 5 into a dodge/arcane shield.

Now before you tell me why you would use any of these for a 10s CD skill…
Let me ask you will you just stand there and take any of the following low cd multi hit dmg skills for free?
Ranger rapid fire
warrior HB
mesmer blurred frenzy
thief pistol whip
guardian whirling wrath

You can easily interrupt the ability within its 3/4 cat with its super obvious eviscerate animation, at the start of the ability. You can also troll the Revenant by taking it to your team while he is in UA to kitten him with no remorse.

Also lets not forget the after cast time where you can get damaged very badly unless you spend energy to cast a skill to save you or use a dodge.

Agreed. There are a lot more ways to counter it than people realize. Also, I don’t like to put skills in a vacuum, but people seem to forget that out of similar skills such as Blurred Frenzy, Hundred Blades, Rapid Fire, and Pistol Whip, Unrelenting Assault does the least amount of damage. Each of those 5 skills have different advantages and disadvantages to their use. I personally believe UA is fine as is, but I know many do not.

As to the topic, while I will agree that this change would give the skill more counterplay, I don’t think that it will help alleviate any of the complaints in the future. A typical player will see the revenant start hitting them and then immediately dodge/block/whatever. They will end up taking more damage with this change, as the last few hits that make it past the defense will do extra damage. I think it is a cool idea as it punishes bad play, but I foresee a lot of future complaints to what is essentially a direct damage increase against a majority of people. Just my two cents.

I came here to make my own thread, but upon finding this one I guess it would be better to vent here:

Any word on when this will be fixed? We got a nice mortar nerf right off the bat, meanwhile people are still being one shot by grenade barrage.

I do not in any way think that this is meant to be intentional by Arenanet. The amount of engineers running around to completely one shot enemies from stealth is just ridiculous, and a little disheartening that so many find it fun to complete abuse mechanics like this.

WvW is now full of people hopping out of a keep while stealthed, erasing a character, and running back into the keep for “lulz.”

Everyone has had a tough gank. Everyone has been deleted by a thief/mes/etc, but I’ve never been completely one shot by a single ability in the entire time I’ve played this game, until now. This interaction offers no real counterplay. As a fellow engineer, the only thing I can hope to do is spam AoEs around me and pray I proc Lock On. I realize that this build makes the engineer very squishy, but that means nothing when I auto lose the fight immediately from stealth. Not to mention, rocket boots/ Elixer S / Gear Shield provide amble ability for even an engineer with 1 health to escape.

I’ve always hated grenades, and I have stayed away from using them. This crap just makes me hate them even more.

Ben K.6238:

T3 has it far, far worse than AR.

I don’t understand, is this an argument against change? I see Northern Shiverpeaks does indeed have a problem, and you are right their situation is much worse. Should that make me feel better? There is a problem that needs to be addressed, more so for Northern Shiverpeaks than for AR.

Rimmy.9217:

ChainedOne.7369:

I am having a hard time understanding some of the opinions in this thread, as they are clearly not from a server experiencing these gross balance issues in WvW. I am from Anvil Rock, and for the last 4 weeks we have been paired against Maguuma and a random other. The first week went alright, with us getting second behind by about 21k points. No complaints. Week was fun.

However, after that WvW has been terrible. For the next 3 weeks (as it has just begun AGAIN last night) Maguuma has been fielding at least twice our numbers minimum at all times. This is not an exaggeration. We had around half their total points two weeks ago, a third last week, and this week looks to be just as bad. Our server fields the same guilds, same numbers each week but it is simply not enough. The other server can field zergs on every map that grossly outnumber anything we can manage.

I understand that this happens. I don’t mind it happening every now and then, but this is the fourth week in a row. The 3rd server has been switched out, why are we stuck playing against a server that is clearly in the wrong tier? It not only ruins the experience for us but destroys our chances of gathering new players because they enter WvW and see us behind by over half.

TL:DR: I don’t mind unbalanced matches. I mind when they happen literally 3 weeks in a row. It is destroying our server’s morale to get stomped every week. Stop making us play the same server.

They are ranked at 16, AR is ranked at 17. It’s how it goes.

Maguuma just got/bought a few guilds, so in the short term they’re imbalanced to be in your tier. BUT, to move up, someone also has to move down. This is likely to happen after this week’s matchup – GoM will drop down to T6, and Maguuma will rise up to T5.

Also, they’re not fielding “zergs” on every map – you may want to talk to your server’s WvW community/commanders for a better picture of the overall situation. You’re not grossly outnumbers, but you are outnumbered. Mag will be running guild groups with their not insignificant number of pugs tagging along.

Build arrow carts for the rest of the week. Good luck.

I am part of my server’s community. There are zergs on every single map. I am using the definition of zerg as 25+ members running in a group. Perhaps it’s just my kitten tier showing, perhaps the higher tiers have a more refined definition, I don’t know. Some guilds just hop maps to reinforce, but typically one group has at least 40 or so members while the other maps might be a little bit less. This doesn’t include their coverage or roaming groups. Of course, I am not trying to say they just sit on a map when no enemies are there, but it doesn’t matter how many maps you spread across or where you attack, they will have a group there to fight you and it will be much larger.

I’m not trying to argue numbers, we’ve wiped their ze-.. groups of people before, and I am not even going to go into the night crew stuff and how we wake up every morning to 650+ ppt. I am just concerned that they haven’t moved up yet.

I am having a hard time understanding some of the opinions in this thread, as they are clearly not from a server experiencing these gross balance issues in WvW. I am from Anvil Rock, and for the last 4 weeks we have been paired against Maguuma and a random other. The first week went alright, with us getting second behind by about 21k points. No complaints. Week was fun.

However, after that WvW has been terrible. For the next 3 weeks (as it has just begun AGAIN last night) Maguuma has been fielding at least twice our numbers minimum at all times. This is not an exaggeration. We had around half their total points two weeks ago, a third last week, and this week looks to be just as bad. Our server fields the same guilds, same numbers each week but it is simply not enough. The other server can field zergs on every map that grossly outnumber anything we can manage.

I understand that this happens. I don’t mind it happening every now and then, but this is the fourth week in a row. The 3rd server has been switched out, why are we stuck playing against a server that is clearly in the wrong tier? It not only ruins the experience for us but destroys our chances of gathering new players because they enter WvW and see us behind by over half.

TL:DR: I don’t mind unbalanced matches. I mind when they happen literally 3 weeks in a row. It is destroying our server’s morale to get stomped every week. Stop making us play the same server.