Guild Wars 2

Ranked doesn’t have skyhammer or spirit watch, it was like that in season 1 as well and for very good reasons.

Thats the thing with pvp, theres so many variables that its hard to say who’s at fault in those fights. While you are correct that a necro is a good target in mid, theres also something like going too agressive. If he stays really far back ,even uses some of the walls behind the point to kite (like on foefire), then those who stay on the point cant hit him, those with no mobility can’t reach him. Right there it would be a lot better to simply swap targets and try to get someone else. Your own necro seems to die fast? Try helping him out, try to go for the guy that overextends on your necro. As long as your team focusses the same guy, he should be going down eventually.

Theres also team composition that is an important factor in winning or losing your fights. If i see that the enemies have 2 elementalists, and we have none , then i know that it’ll be hard to win mid if they are both there. I’d like to mention also that i play dragonhunter, and ele is such a stupid hardcounter to me that makes this even more a problem than for other classes. So what do i do in these games? i dont give up no, i look at where they are going! If i see 2x ele mid, i will simply push far, take my 1v1 which i usually win (currently diamond) and carry the game that way. Your team might still lose mid, but then atleast you will have close+far, and then it becomes a game of rotations. They will probably overrotate to you(far), if you can keep them busy for a little bit, then maybe right after that your team can group up to mid again, you can jump in and BAM you got middle. 2base+time to hold it.
Other scenario being that you go mid and fail again, no worries, if you can spot the team falling apart, try to sneak ur way to far once again and try to hang in there! You might only need to cap a 2-base once to hold it for the most part of the game.

And remember, you may not win all games, but you sure as hell can turn a few losses into wins by being just that tiny bit more significant, and sometimes your team will follow through and show they are not completely kittened.

I think a small buff would be better than reducing the points gained, otherwise no1 will ever bother with the boss because it can still be a liability. But i also dont think it needs that crazy of a buff either. Especially when theres an elementalist guarding it with spamheals/condi cleanse/projectile blocks etc. It can be pretty hard to actually finish him before you die yourself.

As for the “you shouldn’t be able to solo him” , ofcourse you should be. But take this into consideration, when you start the lord the enemies get a big message YOUR LORD IS NOW UNDER ATTACK. When are you solo’ing this boss, you will need a deccent amount of time to actually kill him. If some1 notices the gate being down, or the lord being engaged, then it really isnt that hard to simply go back to the lord and deffend it vs that 1 guy solo’ing it. Meanwhile the 1 solo guy just wasted well over 30 seconds, probably died because you came to deffend it, and got nothing at all.

Maybe a small scaling? for every added player, the boss gains 5% hp/something? This way the solo part stays there, but a 4/5-man mindless bossrush is atleast a tiny bit harder?

I think the main problem here is that in theory it sounds pretty fun and amazing. But in practise its going to be veeery infuriating. Some classes simply perform soo much better in a 2v2 scenario. I’ll give just one example, double elementalist. Imagine you have to play vs something like a double elementalist, they constantly heal eachother, give invuls & blocks/reflects. There will always be broken setups that people will abuse. (Look at WoW 2v2 arena). You know what, they might not even be able to kill you, but you sure as hell wont kill them either.

IF you make a deathmatch styled gamemode, it has to be 3v3 as this is the easiest to balance, and even then i fear it might just not be very fun due to a few classes being OP beyond belief in this type of format.

If you arent already, use rune of the traveler.

Its by far the best rune for us atm. It gives the movespeed we need, it gives a small amount of all-stats (hey better than nothing right), and it gives boon/condi duration increased, ofc the condi duration is practically nothing, BUT the boonduration is actually really nice. We get soo many boons, esp with Contemplation of Purity which can give you 5 boons insta. All the fury from using certain spells also gets those few extra seconds, which in turn really does add up the dps.

As a Dragonhunter myself i actually really like to fight other dragonhunters for the most part. Its a lot more interesting to 1v1 them than most other classes, theres soo many variables, dodge the trueshots, remember the trappositions, try to get my own traps to hit! avoid getting pulled into the traps, etc.

However, i almost dont even remember the last time i lost to a dragonhunter 1v1. Most DH’s really arent that good at 1v1’s at all. They use their CDs poorly, they put their traps down thinking you will simply run into them, which wont happen unless youre forced to play melee obviously (sorry melee classes, rip).

Now i gotta say tho that i can imagine that not every class has potential answers to all the things DH can do, which can be a bit frustrating. I could give some advice but i dont think you specified anywhere what class you are playing.

On a sidenote however, traps really aren’t what they used to be, and for the most part they are only used by noobs who want to spam traps for a quick kill, and when that fails they will die and try again. While Procession of Blades can be a deccent trap, simply walking out of the aoe nullifies the whole thing.
And if they are using this trap, it means they are either not using their teleport (HUGE mobilitycut, maybe better in 1v1’s, but they can’t rotate properly at all anymore).

Or, they chose to skip Contemplation of Purity, a must-have condi clear vs necro’s. Without this extra condi clear its almost impossible to beat good necro’s, so send your necro at em.

Or, they chose to skip Smite Condition, another insanely useful condi-clear which is needed to deal with the many necro’s in ranked atm.

So yea, while DH is considered one of the weaker classes atm, i can understand your pai because DH actually does quite well against most classes 1v1.

DH exclusive main here( Ruby atm), have to say i fully agree with the list. From my personal experience the support ele spec is as much of a must-have as bunkers were in s1. If one team has a elementalist and the other team doesn’t, i can guarantee you that atleast 7 out of 10 times the team with the elementalist will win. It makes teamfights soooo favourable and people aren’t playing around it enough atm.

Furthermore the rise of this elementalist spec is also the same reason why DH are lower on the list than they should be. DH right now is for the most part in a solid spot, we can beat necro, rev, warrior, thief, mesmer. We can “hold” engineers if we play it well and even beat the worse ones. Druids are again beatable if they are bad but you will die if they have any brain.

The main problem is that elementalist just counters DH sooo hard. Aside from the crazy heals and the invul that every class has to deal with, DH also has to deal with reflect and projectile blocks and DH relies on projectiles almost exclusively.

That’s not to say that a DH is completely useless vs any elementalist ofcourse, if other classes can put the ele in CC, a nicely played true shot+ burst from other classes can put the elementalist down quickly, but it comes down to being VERY reliant on teammates.

Im sure im not the only one thats been noticing more and more elementalists in ranked. Im not one to call kitten OP or cry about it but this is such a joke. These elementalists are even stronger than s1 ele’s. They can heal from 10 to 100 in a few seconds, they give multiple sources of reflect, they have invul, and to top it off their damage really isn’t all too bad either.

Engi’s & reaper might be strong too but imo Elementalists completely blow these classes out of the water.

So far since ranked started (and im sapphire atm) every single game where the enemy had 2 elementalists and we had 0 was a complete stomp.
If they had only 1 elementalist then the only way i saw us winning was by somehow getting the elementalist to sit on the point they alrdy have, leave him alone ,and go for the other point to get a 2cap that way… No1 is killable and its seriously some of the most boring games i’ve ever played. Im fine with every single class but not elementalists.

Am i crazy here or what are your thoughts?

Lucky your teamcomp is vastly superior. The elementalist will help with condi clear & keeping the team alive. The druid should have search & rescue to keep the downed people alive whilst also giving a lot of dps (root is extremely easy to hit on a necro and then bristleback machinegun does so much work). The guardian can play with smite condi and CoP to be able to clear condi’s like no tomorrow.

ez win in my book, did you win? please update! :o

@Darknicrofia , yes no doubt, but i never said i swapped out smite condi!

I swap out Test of Faith for CoP in addition to playing with smite condi.

While it does seem like matchmaking is a bit off, how would soloQ only fix that? You would still get matched against teams that do not have the same skill level as your own team and bam same results??

Rebound.3409:

If that’s the case let’s do it like this. Any player who even stepped once in pvp, will have their access completely taken from Fractal legendary wings…because we have to be fair right? U make pvp wings impossible to get for “everyone” then we do the same for the rest of content for u.

Thats the most childish comment i’ve ever heard, pvp is just that, player vs player. Its entire core is about skill and being better than your enemy. Hence it only makes sense that there is more than just the feeling of being one of the top players. The rewards should be tied to the way you perform.

Those wings aren’t just pretty wings, they are also a sign of “this guy pvps a lot and most likely takes his pvp serious”.

Theres plenty of fancy purely cosmetic wings in the store, or as you stated yourself, with some effort the fractal backpiece will eventually become availlable (which wont be free either, it takes effort in its own way).

I played with marauder’s as well for quite a while, its a tricky one because its not always easy to see just how much dmg you end up losing over the switch. bad engi’s/druids are still very beatable for me too. the outsustaining goes both ways, if you have paladin’s it’ll give you those extra few seconds sometimes to survive and get your heal cooldown back and all of a sudden your full hp again. However if the druid is really good he will kill you (or force you to run) regardless of amulet. The engineer shouldn’t really be able to kill you if you dont kill yourself on reflects, but once again it’ll be almost impossible to kill them 1v1 if they are actually good (good being close to ESL engi’s i guess)

So overal the main thing you gotta look at is what you need most in 2v2 or even bigger teamfights (as these should be the fights where the amulet matters most).
And here DH is just such a prime target when compared to engi’s, druids, etc.

The extra survivability toughness gives really does add up, and it won’t just be “survive 5 seconds extra” either. Because the way DH can go back to high health or clear condi’s as soon as it can reach its defensive cooldowns, it basically means that you might just be able to survive for another 20-30 seconds and turn the fight instead of dying.

I was hesitant to make the switch at first too, but once i did & noticed that my damage really didnt drop THAT much i kept it and haven’t really looked back.

engi just about the strongest class next to necro’s and your suggestion is to slightly reduce the healing of their healing station and thats it? I stopped reading on your engi suggestions. You are right that there should be better balance changes but your changes are not the way.

Its supposed to be a legendary, something that not many people have. If it was up to me i would slap a legendary division requirement on it to even be able to get it. But they were considerate to the more casual players to allow them to slowly get it over multiple seasons (through going ruby/saphire a bunch).

This mentality that everyone should have everything without having to work for it or be required some form of skill is what ruins so many games these days. (WoW for example is dying because of this very reason, every1 wanted to be able to do everything and all of a sudden youre out of content after 1 month and you dont really know what to play for since everything is so kittening easy to get)

I’m still having a hard time believing that people who go 0-10 or worse are ONLY losing because of teammates. You can be quite impactful yourself if you truely are a great player. People are bandwaggoning on this “ITS MMR NOT ME” so hard right now.

I’ve personally steamrolled through amber with like , 10-2 or w/e. Then second day was a bit back & forth , overal gained 2-3 tiers in emerald but did not steamroll at all. then 3rd day it was hard games for the most part, BUT i managed to win 80% of them and got to saphire. Among these hard games just to paint a picture, we had an engineer who litterally ended the game on 0 score. He played all game long, died all the time, and ended on 0 score. Meanwhile our druid was also dying quite frequently but he did do something atleast. ended the game 500-470. (and to counter this, all the enemies had a score of over 50, so its not like it was balanced out by our enemies having equally trash players)

What does this tell me? If i was not considerably better than my opponents and i did not win every 1v1, get clutch finishes/revives in teamfights, then this game would have easily been lost.

Ontop of that, conquest is a gamemode that can be very snowbally, plus people are giving up a bit earlier than before, or are simply tilting (just lost 10 games in a row and now you just lost that middle fight AGAIN!!??). This alone is a big factor in being able to win games 500-100 +-.

I’ve been playing the pretty standard meditrapper build with rune of the traveler and paladin amulet. So far going really well. Currently swapping out test of faith for CoP (condi→boons) when against necro’s to help manage those (which it really does, makes the matchup very doable especially in bigger teamfights)

Currently sapphire with only having been able to play a few hours each day the past 3 days. Feels like i can impact the fights, outplay potential is there.

A good engi/druid still seem a pain in the kitten to 1v1 but even then we have plenty of tools to stay alive for a while (untill some1 helps), and 2v1 a DH provides soo much that you can always kill them pretty quickly. Otherwise running away works too!

Overal pretty satisfied with our current position in pvp.

DH is OP if you dont use dodge rolls or any defensive skills yea… Welcome to GW2 pvp where these things are very important. Once you have played more than a week you will realise DH has ways to counter it. Now dont get me wrong! Its not a bad class at all atm, its very possible that you outplayed the traps and still lose. but its not an OP class so stop calling it that. If you litterally have 8 DH’s in your game, then i can guarantee you, the team with the scrapper/rev/druid will win over the DH’s on the other side.

I personally feel like the changes for season 2 are a very big step in the right direction!

Season 1 had its good and bad features but ultimately it really spoiled us with pips that we did not deserve (atleast not always!).

1. winstreaks being rewarded is a good thing and in some way, shape or form is in almost EVERY matchmaking system in good games.

The idea behind this is the following: If you can manage to win 3+ games in a row, then maybe you are the reason for these wins? You are playing under your league and the game will help you to go up faster towards where you belong. Now obviously you can luck out 3 wins as well, it won’t be a common thing but its possible for sure. then gz you got a bonus pip, chances are that if it was just a fluke that this wont actually happen very often.

2. Full premades vs non premades.

People have to understand that GW2 simply does not have the population to support exclusive 5v5 ranked. It will result in 20+ min queues and it will break the game more than it will fix it.

Other than that did you know that many premades most likely haven’t even played together very much, some don’t even use voice comm, and basically just play together because they are friends or guildies or whatever reason?
These premades do not have any more chance to win than the soloQ players they might be against, unless they are actually just better players in which case they should win because they earn it?

The only premades that cause problems for soloQ’s are semi pro teams or ESL teams who have played together for a while already, and yes this can be frustrating but you really dont meet teams like this very often.

3. Trying in a lost game will no longer have any use unless you can turn it around completely and win the game.

This is the change that scares me the most, and wanna know why?
Because while i think its a good change (losing 300-500 is still losing people, you should not be rewarded for getting a few points, you win or you lose!), people however will take this as a reason to give up as soon as the enemy gets ahead slightly.

Lets make one thing clear, ‘afking’ because the game is ‘lost’ is ony a legit reason when the enemy team has 400+ points and you have <100. AND EVEN THEN YOU COULD TRY (I’ve won games like this).

Every single person who afks a game at 50-200 because they think its lost should be banned from ranked for a certain amount of time.

So ultimately while i think this is a good change, it will depend on the community to make the best of it

TL;DR Good changes that will create a better ranked environment than season 1 was. But the pvp community has to show what its worth and not give up the second you fall behind. Most could do this in season 1, keep doing it in season 2 please.

GL & hope to see ya’ll in ranked in a week

Played a fair amount of unranked so far. Feels a lot more fun than pre-patch. Bunkers had to go because they were unskilled and broken. Damage is higher now overal, but that goes both ways, hit 3 abilities and a thief is dead. Their damage should be relatively high to balance out their low survivability.

Its obviously unfortunate that mesmer/elementalist doesn’t have a very good place right now. (from what i’ve seen atleast!) But maybe they can still fix some of the weaker classes and we’ll have a pretty interesting and fun season 2 ahead of us then.

I’ll give traveler/paladins a shot tonight when i have some time to play!

About Contemplation of purity, i’ve been thinking about that one a bit and from my personal playstyle i’ve always kinda felt like i simply dont need it. Maybe its my playstyle where i will go for 1v1’s a bit more frequently than other DH’s maybe. In 1v1 situations you pretty much dont need it, smite conditions/jump condi clear/heal clear is quite sufficient in keeping condi’s away or at a bare minimum. (I guess a O-kitten button always helps here too incase stuff happens, still i’d rather have more offensive power to simply take my enemies down quicker, or even make sure i am capable of killing my enemy at all, since that can sometimes be tricky with druid/engineer’s who can still be a pain in the kitten to kill). The only real situation i can think of is bigger teamfights where it all gets a bit messy and after using several cooldowns a necro manages to get spite signet or some boon-corrupts on me and i actually get kittened by several condi’s that i can’t clear. So i suppose in those situations CoP will help a lot.

Still i find it hard to drop traps for what seems to me like a “just in case” ability. Thanks for the update tho, interesting stuff.

Dragonhunter is deff gonna be competitive & fun, looking forward to season 2.

Interesting stuff! I’ve been thinking on some similar changes like pack→traveler and marauder→paladin/similar amulets, but i’ve been hesitant to try them because of the reduced dmg (maybe too greedy on my part hm).
(Amulet) Do you think the toughness over ferocity is worth it in the “current” meta where it still seems like condi’s are main dmg for some classes? I guess it would help deal with thiefs when you get thief+X+random stuff focusing you in teamfights.
Might give this a go myself tbh because i guess the crit dmg loss isnt the end of the world and dead people do no damage.

(Rune) Here i personally struggle a bit because i’ve also thought about the buffs being a potential downside vs necro corruption. But then i look at the alternatives and even something like traveler, the 25% movespeed seems very nice to play with but dont you drop too much damage? you only get a tiny boost in allstats which is nothing compared to the power/precision pack gave you. I’m thinking on average you’ll be facing against only 1 maybe 2 necro’s, will that pack buff really be more downside than upside?

Traps! I personally hadn’t rly put any thought to not using traps anymore, i still like the daze even tho its very small to simply interupt people, catch people mid-heal, while they are trying to ress/finish without stability. The dmg itself isn’t crazy bad either, although its not amazing. I’ll look into it myself and test it out.

Some very interesting stuff, i deff think this will be a top build but i suppose it all depends on what you want to achieve when playing dragonhunter. You’ve gone a very defensive route by taking nearly every tanky choise when it came to “more dmg or more tankyness”. Maybe that’ll pay off with thieves running around everywhere.

Don’t you think that maybe you’ll lack a bit of damage by chosing so many defensive options? Or do you think a more “glasscannon” dragonhunter will simply not survive long enough and in turn be a liability to the team.

I’ll deff keep some of these changes into consideration when testing and figuring stuff out myself.

Thanks for the post! Interesting read

I’ve done a good amount of pvp already yea, its alright tbh, dont rly feel like anything is crazy strong.

About the runes, been looking at alternatives but rune of the pack is simply too good idk.
I’ll probably stick with pack for now.

Hmm its hard to tell atm due to unranked not rly giving very skilled opponents most of the time. But from my personal experience i think dragonhunter will have a solid spot in the next meta.
Thiefs are fine 1v1, in bigger fights they can be tricky.. but they are very fragile so if your team can help they should be punished fast.
druid/engi feels like beatable matchups for now, need to fight some top top ones to check if they can actually beat me.
ele/mesm weak now, revenant was alrdy a relatively easy battle, now its even easier.
it really is just necro that causes most problems, and so far i dont feel like its that uphill of a battle, with smite conditions removing 2 on a relatively short CD, and then using your CDs/positioning properly its deff a battle that can be won.

So how exactly do you see guard not having a place without changes? i think its a top 3 class atm

Oh and smite condi removing 2 conditions is a biiig difference, you can use it for dmg purposes but really just keeping your condi’s low is so nice and you can’t deny that. You can use it almost immediately on the first set of condi’s that he applies on you and just keep shooting from far away, by the time he finally gets to you (keep distance with whatever you got), you can pop some traps and its not even that unlikely that you’ll have smite condi up again. popping heal in a dire situation once again will remove 2 more AND if hes close deal a nice bit of dmg.

Either way i think dragonhunter will be viable at the very least, if not one of the stronger classes in the meta.

Side question: Im currently still running rune of the pack, do you think this will stay the best rune to use? or maybe could it be better to go with a rune that doesn’t provide any buffs? Im thinking with all this boon convert it might be more of a downside to get the proc from pack than a benefit? idk maybe it depends on how many necro’s the enemy team has)
Opinions?

Once they fix smite condition to actually remove 2 condi’s instead of 1 (like the patchnotes say it should be doing) then that’ll be a big help vs necro’s. Add onto that that maybe you should just not use contemplation and you’ll see a big difference in chances to win. Dragonhunter vs necro is also not a braindead run in class, its beatable if played properly. I exclusively play dragonhunter and it was relatively easy to get into legendary, if you were struggling it wasn’t class.

Furthermore, its been 1 day since patch is out, play and test around a bit more, from my personal PoV it seems like dragonhunter will be in a solid spot.

Arena hype!! ^.^