Guild Wars 2

I’d really like to see the default key bindings to something more sensible and make mouse look on by default, or at least make it a pre-set option, ‘pvp bindings’ or something. Holding down right mouse 90% of the time isn’t exactly ideal for a controll method, or very healthy! Nor is encouraging new players to get used to having ability’s in places that are very impractical for pvp game play if you hope them to be able to transition relatively seamlessly from pve to pvp game modes.

For some inspiration on this I really recommend playing a bit of the recent FTP MMORPG cash cow based on a elderly and very popular P&P RPG. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t play it for long, it’s got a lot wrong with it and I’m certainly not taking this much effort to try and provide feedback on their forums. It does however do some things very well that could be worth thinking about. Not least of which is a sensible set of key bindings and mouse steer on by default, along with very ‘solid’ feeling combat with little ‘spam’ and clear animations, though it’s perhaps a little bit on the ‘slow’ side (along with many other issues not worth going into here).

I didn’t participate in the 1st CDI so I can’t offer very useful direct feedback on that process, but I think it is a great idea, and will endeavour to do so in future discussions.

From the little I did see, and other experiences on forum discussion of this sort here and elsewhere I think;

• Both more focused topics (at least some of the time) and some sort of system for summarising the thread every so often are good ideas.
• Where appropriate, including some kind of poll in the thread may sometimes be useful.
• I also sometimes see a tendency for a few individuals to drown out contrary opinion, so it may be worth giving some (very careful) thought to mitigating against that a little.
  Edit: periodic thread summaries may well be a good way to achieve this too done well.

I have suggested the removal of hotjoin before more than once, or at the least it’s moving away from being offered as the ‘default’ mode for sPvP. Not becuase I want to ruin peoples fun, but because I feel it can help achive the devs stated aims, and a large number of the sPvP populations desire, to see a healthy and thriving competative scene. I have suggested before that all hot join could perhaps be being renamed as custom servers, some of which may be provided by the devs rarther than players, but the focus moved onto unranked que as the ‘go to’ sPvP, with customs being mostly for practice. Leavers can be a problem, but MOBAs seem to manage, and with much longer game lengths too. Hot join being seen as the ‘main’ spvp mode since realease is in my opinion one of the worst things that could have heppened to spvps chances of successfully building a competative scene.

Don’t forget WvW is there too if you want to charge around with a big group of players without too much stratagy and just have fun (it’s certainly not the only way to play that either, but it’s definatly an option there), and that should be even easyer with the Edge of the Mists map, which to my mind suits the purpose better (with the exception of being tied into pve gear and level, so experimenting with builds is harder there)

Edit: – I’m am almost certain that the popular moba games would not attract millions of players and hundereds of thousands of viewers had drop in drop out 8v8 been their default mode on their 5v5 maps at release.

Cross posting from https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/How-would-you-improve-sPvP/page/2#post3253361 my rough take on what I’d like to see for conditions is this;

" – more importance of individual conditions, more importance of de-buffs, less spam, condition management (covering from cleanse ect) more important, less full condi clear, no/much less rng application and removal.
Condi builds should have high up time on probably just 1 damaging condition and 1 de-buff, with potential to build for ‘spikes’ of 1-2 more. De-buffs should be as much a reason to run a condi comp as damage, fitting better the ‘pressure’ role they seem to make most scene in.
More team play required to achieve ‘burst’ condi damage seen currently (power too for that matter), so a ‘burn comp’ might involve and ele and engi both stacking long duration burns (one would not be enough for a fast kill) on a target, before they and team mates apply any non burn conditions they have available repeatedly in order to try and insure the burn is not removed (and no one apples burn again unless it gets cleared somehow, it’s last on 1st off right?).
Chill or weakness builds should be scary things, and something your team has to stratagize to deal with. The order you and you team apply conditions should matter due to covering important ones from cleanses, and no one should have it all (or even half of it)."

Edit – if I want to beat a cleansing ire warrior on the BM ranger build I play a lot, one of my best chances is through keeping them poisoned. They can remove 3 condis regularly, so in order for me to do this I 1st have to get the poison on (seppent strike + stalkers srike) and then cover it with 3 more; icey pounce (chill), crippling talon (criple + bleed) and spam sword chain (keep refreshing cripple). This kind of play being required across far more builds/match ups would be good.

• Conditions – more importance of individual conditions, more importance of de-buffs, less spam, condition management (covering from cleanse ect) more important, less full condi clear, no/much less rng application and removal.
  Condi builds should have high up time on probably just 1 damaging condition and 1 de-buff, with potential to build for ‘spikes’ of 1-2 more. De-buffs should be as much a reason to run a condi comp as damage, fitting better the ‘pressure’ role they seem to make most scene in.
  More team play required to achieve ‘burst’ condi damage seen currently (power too for that matter), so a ‘burn comp’ might involve and ele and engi both stacking long duration burns (one would not be enough for a fast kill) on a target, before they and team mates apply any non burn conditions they have available repeatedly in order to try and insure the burn is not removed (and no one apples burn again unless it gets cleared somehow, it’s last on 1st off right?).
  Chill or weakness builds should be scary things, and something your team has to stratagize to deal with. The order you and you team apply conditions should matter due to covering important ones from cleanses, and no one should have it all (or even half of it).

• Time To Kill – should be less variable between different match ups, maybe 30-90 seconds for a close fight 1v1, not 1-300+

• Skins – bombarded with way to many too similar, most not all that interesting. A better system could help with funding further development a lot.

• Animation clarity and length – more of it

• Ability, dodge and field spam, instant cast offence, un-interruptible/irremovable sustain, pet spam, RNG procs – less of this sort of thing

• Kittening Asura – they can hide all but their feet in a healing turret and are smaller than the Mr Sparkles MINI. Madness! Characters sizes need to be much less variable.

• Team Play! – combos should matter more, and be more impact full, there should be perhaps less field and finisher spam, and them be stronger (also see below). Projectiles especially feel pretty week, and the RNG finishers ones are horrid. They should be too important and require too much precision for RNG finishers to be anything but a joke anyway. Whirls are also mostly poor.
  Correct multi class combo play should be the sort of thing players casters and viewers would focus on, and sometimes dictate the outcome of games. Burst and/or CC spikes should be also require strong team play to achieve, and the rewards make attempting it potentially a worth while strategy. Also, see conditions above.

• Rallying – mass rally events are stupid. Making 1 kill 1 rally would make sense, but it’s hard to see how it would work. Just get rid of it altogether (at least in spvp/wvw)

• Mists Merge / redesign

• Build templates

• Replace hot join with unranked que – as default game type like mobas, perhaps leave a few Anet ‘custom servers’ along with purchasable ones, or perhaps not.

• Duelling!

• Better tutorials, hell even a ‘manual’ – it’s pretty bad that people I meet who have been playing spvp for ages have little or no clue about things like combo fields and condition cover, though the latter is rarely worth the effort with the amount you can spam.

• More game modes – 2v2 seems to have potential, maybe 3v3 too is spam goes down and TTK up
  Cap the flag?
  A 5v5-8v8 MOBA/WvW/PvP version of a ‘competitive race to the Temple of Melanoma event’? Kinda like a cross between a WvW map, a moba map and a smaller straights of devastation mirrored across the temple where you push forward to the centre for a final clash rather than from the centre to your opponent start? Should result in potentially 2 initial lines of conflict, as you push your own chains forward whilst sending attackers to slow your enemies events.

• X-pack – seems few other hope to bring in large numbers of players. Perhaps full standalone, or full but integrated, or 2 version, one a ‘mists’ one that is easier/free? entry. Also make other changes easier to swallow for existing players such as gear system redesign and better monetization/shop (need if reduced price pvp only version is to succeed I would assume) May also allow some Out There Stuff (see below) to make it in. and engi hammers, mesmer fans and ranger staff

Out There stuff

• Make buffs/de-buffs WYSIWYG as originally intended, though means bye bye malice so quite a task.
• Make maps capture zones not points (25-30% of map for each of 3, little no man’s land) and have them tend to neutral when contested over time based on ration of players from each team in zone. Choke point and terrain play more important, aoe spam less so.
• Make aoe friendly fire, traits/skills to allow entry to fields without ill effect.

Edit – Force on melee assist – ‘the beast with 2 backs’ circle fighting style is less prevelent here than a lot of games, but solid characters would be great.

& for typos

Most of the benifit of “Save Yourselves!” + Contemplation of Purity, without the downside (if your a squishy dps with no interest in support per say), on a potentially lower cooldown than they have in a Guards utility slots, for a 6pc rune bonus?

Lol!

Yes, they are OP.

I too agree with pretty much everything Adian.8756 suggets, great post.

Though with regaurds to AoE I’d rather see it impactfull but riskier (longer cooldowns &/or charged cast) than watered down and spammy. I also think diminishing effect scaling is a bad idea due to unintuitivness, as CutePicsHunter.7430 suggested above.

Arachnid.4062:

I like the guardian class and I don’t think it needs to be nerfed, but it seems like it would be nice if people were able to create a good team comp without one. It gets rather boring always seeing two guardians fighting at mid and basically acting as boon and condition removal bots.

Agreed, this has been the elephant in the room since launch. More classes being able to fill the mid point bunker role would be great.

Melee BM ranger crushes most thief builds pretty easyly, though it does take a little while.

My personal fav ranger build – very strong 1v1 (though mes can be tricky you’ll rarely find one on your back point) able to back point and roam, very mobile. Take any elite you like. Signet of renewal is a good replacement for lightning reflexs atm.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAsYRjEVV2BWKWgWCi2DNZJMxKconiYxeXB/nyDSAZWA-T0AgzCmIMSZkzIjRSjsGN+Y9x5jZDvPA

It’s vital you use your leap finishers to combo with your healing spring to get the most from it, as well as manage your pet, and try get the raven to do blinding slash following a hilt bash, this is your burst, other wise use counteratack and evades to avoid burst and keep poison up on them as much as possible. against mobile opponents you will need to try keep cripple up on them if you want the pet to do decent dps.

Another version using some spirits I also play a lot, provides a bit more of a support at the cost of mobility. Place non elite spirits a little off point, where you will get the buffs but they wont get hit by much AoE. You can also chain fear/knockbacks to get someone off the point and immob them there with the stone spirit active and spider – capping a guardians point whilst it’s still alive is always good for a laugh

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQJATRjEVV2BWKWg2Bi2DNlJM9UEr17UUKSlynqAZWA-TsAgzCmIMSZkzIjRSjsGt+48x7DA

Death match with no dedicated healer = 1st team to run out of AoE stealth loses a member to burst and stability stomp, game lost.

Perhaps a slight exageration, but I think not by much.

Seisyll.5914:

kirito.4138:

Hmm… my pet still works. Maybe yours need to see the vet.

No way. Yours always hits the moving target, uses its abilities without a long timeframe and dodges attacks and red circles? And that with only pressing F1 once?

All that just pressing F1 once? That would be pretty silly. There are 3 more profession skill keys for a reason. Would you expect just pressing F1 once on Ele to cycle through your attunments just right for you to combo?

They could perhaps be a little more responsive (especially pigs/boars – these are as bad with their charge as the old drake was with it’s tail), but if you pay attention (and use F3 if it needs reminding what to do or moving out of trouble) then I can mostly get them to do what I want.

Ranger Weakest class? No, I don’t think so.

I still have plently of success with a variety of BM builds (my friends and I may not be top x%, but we do ok – 9w/2l last night, and we had a shatter mes, a glass ele and me on a shout ranger) , and am getting some value out of a couple shout builds atm. Traps also seem to still be dangerous played well, and I’ve seen some signet builds doing ok too. Spirits still seem to be usefull, though I never like pure sprit much I do run a BM build that uses a couple without the mobility trait.

Great post with some great ideas. I agree with a great deal of it.

No time for further comment on it now but may get to it later.

I’ve been doing some theorycraft and experimanting recently, and figured out some shout ranger builds with Natures Voice and Runes of the Soldier that actually seem to have potential.

However, for some reason the shout “Guard!” has a channeled cast of around 1s, not instant like other shouts. This holds the builds back a fair bit as making them work relies on spammming guard (which then needs a lot of pet micro as a result, but it’s workable) and trying to cast it with the channel during combat it pretty tricky, and tends to get inturupted a fair bit. Please make it instant cast, and I think we might start to see shout rangers seeing regular play.

The builds I’ve found most successfull so far (though they’re still very much work in progress)

Res Bunker – http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQJATRnEV0FcfFeWAaZAppIT0kniZJVcPGFSJETZFX5JJA-ToAgzCmIySllLLTWyssZN+Y9B

Hybrid dps (pet heavy) – http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRBHhx+1JRFdBXFkWQoWGQYKOEE5pYWUP3D/bUCxM+ZlXSA-TwAAyCsIySllLLTWyssZNqYVxWgZAA

Any suggestions for improvement greatfully recived.

Give em a try and see what you think. Be warned though, they require heavy pet micro, try calling to heal right after guard when moving to keep pet by your side (stealthed!), managing them in combat whilst keep boons up is trickyer, but doable. The bear can be stealthed via “Guard” befor using “Search and Rescue” for steathed res with stability proc if anyone trys to AoE inturupt! Doing the same with the other pets can make using their ‘F2’ a lot more reliable.

Should “Guard” be instant cast?

(Edits – typos)

Now the QQ about spirits should be over, how about we deal with the real issue with pet builds, and the games potential viewability – health bars, name plates, AoE spell effects and asura.

How many people would watch LoL if all the player models were small enough to hide in a caster minions hit box, and by doing so totally obscure thier name plate and health bar? Not many would be my guess.

I can’t see any good reason not to remove the AoE target limit in sPvP alltogether.

If it turns out to be necessary pet health could be raised a bit afterwards.

changes to pet helath and name plates, and adding a 2nd ‘tab’ target functionality which only selects players would also be a big help, and may make pet builds much less annoying to play against (mesmer clones, but not phantasams, would proabably need to be an exception)

FoopOplo.7914:

Since apparently you live under a rock, spirit rangers were basically the most op thing in the game since release.

Hhahahahaah, just no.

The latest incarantion was a bit over the top, but most OP since release? Your kidding right?

Unfortunatly these changes don’t do anything to effect the real problem with pet builds of all kinds (and what I think was most players real gripe with them) visuall clutter and targeting difficultys.

Changes to AoE caps, name and health plates for pets, the tab targetting system and asura size and animation would all have helped far more than just removing spirit builds (not for the 1st time!) from the game (they arn’t used in pve or wvw anyway – as the spirits get one shot by all kinds of stuff and don’t provide much that other builds can’t)

BM bunker should still be playable at least, I far prefer it to spirits anyway.

Obviously the ele traits like fresh air for other attunments would need to trigger on things other than crit. This might make designing them a bit trickyer, but I should emagine something could be come up with.

No one got any feedback on any of this?

Cynz.9437:

How can you look up someone build outside of looking at their buffs and spells they use?

To clarify, join spectators, select the player you want to veiw by clicking on thier health bar at the upper edge of the screen, once you have the camera following the player you want click on thier class icon at the side of thier health bar on the upper edge of the screen, and it should open a little window where you can view thier traits and equipment.

I’d like to see it gone personally (or just custom arenas and maybe some kind of ‘practice’ mode)

Can you imagine how LoL would have grown if the norm for new players was drop in drop out 8v8 on summoners?

Ranger – really needs some acceptable power based builds. I’m not sure how to go about this, as power scaling + pet are a odd mix to balance. Perhaps give ranger a 30pt major called something like ‘lone ranger’, to exchange the pet for better power scaling? this may be to much, the ranger without a pet would be a strange beast. Perhaps allow the pet to be brought out, at the cost of the extra power scaling? I dunno, but one way or another ranger needs to be able to build power/crit.

Warrior – still needs available bunker spec, of all the classes, after guardian warrior seems the most natural bunker, yet they don’t seem to have a spec that can do it (maybe it’s hidden in there somewhere though, I don’t know warrior as well as some other classes)

Thief – still needs a viable condition spec. I think this would be best accomplished by giving them access to confusion, a condition that seems to suit the thief. My initial idea for this would be to give thief a trait somewhere that gives a stack of confusion to an opponent who’s attack they successfully evade. this could have an internal cool down to stop huge stacks being built up, say max once per opponent per evade. This would give bleed thief the additional condition they so desperately need to be viable, and putting it on a evade related trait would mean that d/d, p/d and s’bow condi builds could all access it. Obviously this would be a bad idea on s/d in it’s current state, but I doubt that’s going to stay as it is for long, and it could be placed in the tree where it would not be practical for a s/d power build to run.

Your thoughts on this, and other suggestions, would be great.

1st off I’d like to thank the dev team (and the players) for their continued commitment and love of the game. It’s been really nice to see dev’s in HotMs in Europe recently, and their activity on these forums over the last few days.

Whilst there is so much debate about the future of the meta, and balance in general going on , I’d like to make a few suggestions that for things that seem to have fallen by the wayside. I appreciate the huge amount of work balancing across 3 game types is, and that partly as a result not all builds and specs are ever likely to be useful in all of them. None the less, I feel s/tPvP is in desperate need of more variety within classes.

I’d like to throw out a few ideas I’ve had over the time I’ve been in the game (since BWE1)for ways to perhaps go about this for a few classes. Some of these suggestions I’ve been making since that 1st beta weekend, some are more recent. This is by no means comprehensive.

Necro – condition Necros have mostly been in a pretty good place, I really don’t feel they needed access to burning. Giving necros (and engies) so many conditions not only makes them a bit too much, it also means that most other classes condition builds have no way to compete (i.e. ele, thief).

However, power based necro builds have been pretty terrible since day one (soldiers MM is kinda ok, but that’s it), and continue to be so. The 1st step I can think of that might help dagger and axe necros is to add a pvp equivalent of the pve knights set – power toughness precision. This alone would help dagger necro builds out a great deal, seems like it would be simple to do, and is unlikely to effect many. if any, other builds balance (what else would use it?). This is something I’ve been submitting tickets about since the 1st or 2nd BWE. Once that’s in see how the builds start to fair, and adjust accordingly.

Another huge help to power builds would be to have necros spawn with a set amount of life force, maybe 30%. This would of course also be a buff to condition builds, a little reigning back may be needed there to compensate. This would help dagger builds with the problem they have that they cannot safely engage without a good amount of life force, but that they cannot get it without engaging (I’ve tried variants with staff and soul marks to get around this problem, but it doesn’t help much, and also reduces the damage potential of the build, as well as its trait set up)

Ele – currently the only really viable weapon for PvP ele is sceptre. the reduction in the water/arcane d/d spec was needed, but it may have gone to far, and also killed the (not out of control) staff support bunker build.

Remove blasting staff and have it built into the staff. Any staff build basically requires this trait, without it the staff is terrible. This would help reduce the dependence on arcane.

Reduce base attunement cool down to 12 seconds, have the reduction from arcane line be halved, so that the range is from 12-8, rather than 15-8 as currently. Again, this reduces the dependency on arcane traits.

Give every attunement an equivalent of fresh air, probably as the 25 point minor. Fresh air, and it’s matching equivalents from other attunements, may need to be toned down a little to account for it’s minor status, but should be easy enough to get at a reasonable point. Again, this reduces the dependence on arcane traits and opens up build variety.

Then see how things look.

Warriors murder spirit ranger, hands down, I’m mystified why there is any argument about this.

Sure I’ll get a lot of hate for this, but MM necro (soldiers amu) also has a pretty easy time with spirit rangers, at least 1v1.

As to GvG, personally I much prefer objective based pvp, have been bored of stright up death match for best part of a decade. That in no way means I think tPvP is in a good place right now mind you.

Edit:

Just to claify, shamans Spirit rangers might do a little better, but most carrion builds seem to get rolled right over.

Immobalise the ranger, (after hitting once with axe 1 to waste empathic bond to 2 vuln stacks) apply vulnerability with reapers touch, golum charge + detonate minons = half health ranger with no spirits, proceed to walk right over whats left.

No.

At least, it’s poor in sPvP, might just get away with d/d, the staff version is almost totaly useless.

Might still work in WvW with d/d and the higher gear stats, though I doubt it.

Same issue.

Error codes (muliple attempts) – 21:6:3:2205 & 42:0:9001:4131

Server – Desolation.

evilapprentice.6379:

Fella Feller.4936:

First I’ve gotta say this is one of the best threads I’ve seen on this forums for a while.

I too would love to see a more sustained sword thief be an option. As others have said sustained fighting pretty much requires protection (and probably regen) to be effective in pvp. I also love the idea of confusion on the thief, and think it would really suit an evasion heavy playstyle. It would also give condition builds anouther damaging condition they really need to work well.

So how about;

Duelist (Acrobatics, Master Tier Major)
Gain 3 seconds of protection and 6 seconds of revealed when using a main hand sword duel (‘3’) skill.

Disorienting Evasion (Acrobatics, Grand Master Tier Minor)
Cause 2(?) seconds of confusion on your opponent when you evede an attack.

As to regen, Withdraw + 6 Runes of Dywana are one solution, though a built in one might be better, maybe a trait providing something along similar lines?

I don’t see why protection:revealed should be a 1:2 ratio. Protection doesn’t count for much during PW, as you’re already evading. On demand protection is also pretty powerful – I honestly prefer OP’s suggestion of X seconds on crit (either 3 or 4 IMO), non stacking (IE, you only gain protection on crit if you do not already have the protection boon).

Also, confusion-on-evade would need to be at least a few stacks (2 or 3 IMO) – our primary evade weaponsets are S/D, S/P, and DB D/D – S/D and S/P are power based with 0 condition options, so their confusions will tick for crap – it works for those builds because with this new trait you’re suggesting, you can build a more survivable Sword thief, allowing the time for even crappy confusion damage to add to your attrition win.

As to D/D, it would be powerful to give a constantly evading condi focused spec 2-3 stacks of confusion on evade, but lets be honest, D/D needs it – it’s a 1 trick pony. A second option to doing some damage would serve it well. In addition, it’s a nice skill check – your opponents wont be allowed to just spam AA and wait for it to connect to mark DB’s end; they’ll actually have to learn the timings and counter it properly. This would actually need some playtesting tho – I can see an x/x/x/30/30 ini/dodge focused spec evading 80% of the time and being severely OP.

I was thinking a close to 1:2 ratio for protection to account for potential boon duration, and insure you couldn’t stack up a bunch and/or weave it into a daze rotation. On demand protection is powerfull yes, which is how most builds that can actually fight succcsfully in a sustained fashion can do so. Having it on crit has a few problems – it’s RNG, it heaviely limits the builds that can access it (to offensive types which probably shouldn’t have/need it at that), and it can’t be rellied upon.

As to confusion, I mostly agree, but remember condition duration can be increased, and that many attacks hit at a rate of faster than 1 per second – dodging a hasted 100b or QZ Crossfire spam would give you a lot of stacks – these need to not last longer than a swing or two to not get out of hand. It should still be enough to give an evasive LDB build a base level of a stack or two, and help cover the bleeds. It might want to be a bit higher (or even lower!) though, as may the times for Prot and Revealed. Would have to actually see it in practice to make calls on the exact amounts, I figured thouse should be at least ball park.

First I’ve gotta say this is one of the best threads I’ve seen on this forums for a while.

I too would love to see a more sustained sword thief be an option. As others have said sustained fighting pretty much requires protection (and probably regen) to be effective in pvp. I also love the idea of confusion on the thief, and think it would really suit an evasion heavy playstyle. It would also give condition builds anouther damaging condition they really need to work well.

So how about;

Duelist (Acrobatics, Master Tier Major)
Gain 3 seconds of protection and 6 seconds of revealed when using a main hand sword duel (‘3’) skill.

Disorienting Evasion (Acrobatics, Grand Master Tier Minor)
Cause 2(?) seconds of confusion on your opponent when you evede an attack.

As to regen, Withdraw + 6 Runes of Dywana are one solution, though a built in one might be better, maybe a trait providing something along similar lines?

King of 1v1 isn’t ele (assuming running away isn’t an option), It’s Mesmer.

As skilled mesmer should destroy pretty much any ele 1v1.

Back on topic : I’d like to see the extreames of both bunker and burst brought down a little. Just adding more dps will mean that the only viable builds are extreame burst, or (depending on how much more dps) extreame bunker. That’s only going to hurt build variety more, not increase it.

Best way to use the sword 2 I’ve found is to bind ‘about-face’ (instant180) to a convenient key. Hit about face, hit 2, whislt in the air ‘mouse steer’ the camera to where you want the 2nd leap to go, once you hit the ground take a single (or few more if you like) step and hit 2 for the second time. You can cover a lot of distance like this. Make sure you don’t have a target selected though, or the 1st part will move you away from them no matter your facing, and the 2nd towards them.

The GS Swoop is also really good, again, make sure you have no target.

Entangle is also great as Paleeshi mentioned, as are the dog pets (especially traited!) to help CC anyone trying to chase you.

Also try to make the most you can of the evades built into the sword (and dagger if you have it) and the block on the GS (this works as a block for 3 seconds vs ranged attacks, but if your hit in melee and the knock back tiggers it will stop).

Obviously it also helps to have a tanky build.

Make sure that when you cast it you hit the ability only once, and don’t touch anything else till the pet is actually rezzing you.

This is by no means a 100% workaround, but does seem to help quite a bit. ‘Interupting’ the cast of Lick Wounds with any of the other skills seems a sure fire way to get it to bug out.

Antihero.5429:

Making a tier list based on classes is plain stupid without considering builds. The strength of a class changes immensely depending on what type of build it is running. For example, ele is only top tier due to 0-10-0-30-30 w/ toughness amulet, mistform + variations of it.

A proper tier list would be something like this (my opinion):

Tier 1 +/- variations:

0-10-0-30-30 d/d, s/d Ele
0-30-30-5-5 trap Ranger
Any guardian that isn’t running something like glass cannon condition dmg
20-20-0-0-30 Shatter mesmer or phantasm mesmer w/ portal, illu of life, time warp

Tier 2 +/- variations:

Every other mesmer (i.e bunker)
0-10-0-30-30 staff ele
25-30-0-0-15 Burst Thief
30-30-10-0-0 Staff+S/d well or condition Necro w/ res signet
30-10-0-30-0 HGH Engi / Bomb Kit Engi

Tier 3 +/- variations:

Bunker Ranger or SB ranger w/ 2 signets + stunbreak
20-30-0-0-20 100b Warrior
30-30-10-0-0 Staff+s/d well or condition necro w/o res signet
0-30-20-0-20 terror necro
100nades Engi / bunker engi
Attrition thief

Tier 4:
Everything else

I think i’ve gotten most of what I usually see

Gallrvaghn.4921:

+1

+2

Zeroumus.5402:

man, spvpers got it all wrong.

sPVP, also knows as BG’s, is NOT PVP
WvW, RvR, or open world … IS PVP

‘Player vs Palyer’ – Thats both s/tPvP and WvW.

I’m quite shocked and disapointed to find this amount of ‘us vs them’ and elitism here.

I play both. Though it’s worth pointing out that (rightly or wrongly) the professions are being balanced for tPvP, with tPvP gear spreads, so if your gonna make thouse kinda claims your on the wrong side of (your imaginary) fence.

Amins.3710:

Yep.

And complaining about Gear Imbalances is hilarious… It takes all but 2 weeks to gear yourself out in Craftables.

Farm your “Skins” on your off time. Wear your Craftables to pvp in.

Sheesh.

[EDIT] Oh, and HORRIBLE idea.

You do know you can’t get crafted gear for several popular stat sets right? Guess you never tried to gear a condition damage class.

Why is the idea horrible?

And sure, I could try and persude my guild mates who s/tPvP to spend 2 weeks (assuming they only want stats avialable from crafted, not counting levelling to 80 as well) of their leasure time doing something they don’t enjoy so they can come help out the guild in WvW, but unsupprisingly they’re not that keen.

I don’t have time to reply to every post directly right now, but many of you seem to be assuming I’m an ‘sPvPer’. I’m not, well, not just. I play every area of the game, I was WvW officer in my guild (Dark Reavers) from release up untill I resigned (as I felt I was neglecting other parts of the game) shortly befor christmas. I still WvW, I also play tounament sPvP and run dungeons.

I agree having more choice in gear is nice, it’s not choice I’m oppsed to, it’s masive stat stacking with stats that effect each othe multiplactively.

It nothing to do with elitism or a ‘free ride’. Why should a player who has spent most thier time in PvE be able to hop staight into WvW fully geared, whislt a player who has done sPvP cannot? If any preference was to be shown by the WvW population for one or the other of these (not that I think it should) surely sPvP players would be more able to hit the ground running in what is still a pvp game type than dungeon runners?

Even befor asscended gear the difference in total stats between sPvP and WvW is huge. max +crit damage in sPvP is around 60-70%, over 130% (with food) is already possable in WvW iirc.

Braxxus.2904:

TLDR: No free rides for the elitists.

You do realize that’s exactly what your post makes you sound like?

See here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Bringing-balance-and-PvP-players-to-WvW/first#post1438401

stinkypants.8419:

Nope, part of the fun is leveling up to get to do the Wv3.

this wouldn’t prevent you from doing that if it’s what you enjoy. Just allow thouse who don’t to also take part on a level playing field.

They could use it, it just wouldn’t have a crazy (in a PvP environment) amount of stats on it. sPvP had an amulet + 5 jewels in BWE1, and this was reduced to an amulet and 1 jewel for good reason.

I have a suggestion that may help WvW in several ways.

Firstly let me outline a couple of problems I see.

1. With the ‘power creep’ in PvE gear stats, WvW is becoming increasingly imbalanced (how much +crit damage?!)

2. s/tPvP players are largely excluded from playing WvW as the only way to gear up a character for it in any kind of timely fashion is to grind dungeons and/or other PvE in order to obtain gear (WvW gear obtained with badges comes laughably slow and has only 1 set of stats available)

The solution?

Reduce WvW gear stats to just using the amulet, which is scaled up to the PvP equivalent. Allow players entering from the mists to use their PvP gear in WvW. Players entering from PvE would keep the appearance of their gear, and runes and sigils, but all gear would have the stats ‘removed’ and the amulet they have equipped would be boosted up to the PvP equivalent.

This would bring much better class balance to WvW and would allow s/tPvP players to jump in without feeling like they must grind PvE content in order to compete. PvE players could still keep the looks of their dungeon sets / legendary, and would also be able to try out different builds and stat set ups without having to grind for a whole new set of gear.

Given that the mechanics are already in place for gear to change when entering /exiting the mists this shouldn’t be too hard from a programming angle (though I expect would still take a fair amount of work).

Seems to me this would be a win for the PvE, PvP and WvW community’s, and help bring them closer together. What do you think?

There is no doubt that asura animations are harder to see, even in a 1v1, let alone a team fight with AoEs everywhere. There is no doubt that this is an advantage, and one that only gets bigger (no pun intended!) as player skill gets higher, and inturupts and dodging specific skills become increasingly importent to success.

The solution? Dunno. As people have suggested, adding cast bars, scaling up asura in PvP, or giving the option to display all opponents as human all sound like good possibilitys.

Personally I’d prefer one of the later 2 options.

Thanks for posting this – been fooling about with a few pet damage based defensive builds, and looking for a way to make greatsword work as its always been one of my favoret weapon sets.

Only given it a quick try but this seems like a great build, thanks!

After a few duels the main problem seems to be if people focus down your pets, the white raven especially is very fragile. How do you deal with that?

Gotta confess I play 0/10/0/30/30 ele a lot, and have since release, with both D/D and Staff, in sPvP and WvW. Unfortunatly its pretty much the only ele build thats not basically useless.

I’d love to play other set ups (I’ve tried many), but there don’t seem to be any that don’t suck. 20-30 in air can work with S/D, as long as you have team mates to keep bursters off your back, but that’s highly unlikely in hot join

Absolutely.

Cheep = easy to do, irritating and ‘anti-fun’ to play against, may provide a ‘free win’ against a player not expecting it

OP = may be very difficult, or not, to execute, but when correctly executed has few or no viable counters, may provide a ‘free win’ regardless of opponents preparedness.

Some things may be both cheep and OP, but this is not a given.

Sprawl.3891:

For hot join it’s more like this

1. Thief (99% d/d)
2. Mesmer (99% shatter)
3. Ele (99% d/d)
4. Warrior (99% HB)
5. Guardian
6. Ranger (99% shortbow)
7. Necro (99% scepter/staff)
8. Engi

Might be based on the times I play, or the region (I’m in the EU) but I don’t think I see more mesmers and eles in hot join than warriors and guardians. Tournaments are a diffreent matter though (but less thieves there too).

I agree completely about the lack of build variety.

This would indeed be very interesting to see.

I think I can hazzard a pretty good guess though, at least for hot join:

1. Thief (by a huge margin, at least 25% of total I’d guess)
2. Guardian
3. Warrior
4. Mesmer
5. Necro
6. Ranger
7. Ele
8. Engi

5-7 are probably all pretty close together, and may be a bit different.

Great Idea. Treb duty is the pits.

I’m having this problem too.

I’m having the same issue. Tried the above workaround with no success.

We (Gunner’s Hold) are having exactly the same problem with the Orb on Elona’s Reach borderlands. Early this morning we took all three keeps on the map – the Orb was in none of them, nor was it at it’s original location. When on other boarderlands the Orb shows on the map as being at the Garrrison, and Elona’s Reach have the buff for all 3, however when on the map in question the Orb does not appear on the map, and cannot be seen or interacted with at any of the 4 alters.