Guild Wars 2

DeWolfe.2174:

Gunlaugr.2716:

According to what you say, it is not your fault that you lose the games. OK
By any stretch of imagination, if you keep dropping in MMR and get paired with more crappy teammates, you also face more crappy opponents.

See… THAT…. that right there is where you are mistaken. Matches are made with two teams and within each team are players of similar MMR. Though the MMR range is exclusive to the individual team only. The teams MMR is not taken into consideration for pairing against, only Pip range. So you can in fact have one team comprised of very high MMR facing off against another team of much lower MMR. That is the issue with this season and these lop sided streaks. That it is by design forcing lopsided matches to push high MMR players into Diamond and Legendary quickly. Though no consideration was given to all the other players that are being used as cannon fodder.

No, I am not mistaken. You are correct that teams are only matched against each other by pip-range, but you imply that pip-range does not reflect skill level. Are you saying that, on average, I will find an equal number of ‘’high mmr’’ players in amber tier 3 +/- 15 pips as in sapphire tier 4 +/-15 pips? If you don’t accept the notion that divisions reflect the average level of player skill in that division, then this discussion is pointless, of course.

The more time passes, the more the divisions reflect a particular range of MMR. There will be an accumulation of low MMR players in lower divisions. This also means, if you are losing games, you will, on average, face players of lower MMR. If for some reason you end up in this situation as a great player, you should be able to tip the balance in favor of your team.

You lose games because of crappy teammates, which leads to a drop in your MMR that leads to even crappier teammates. This is what you claim.

According to what you say, it is not your fault that you lose the games. OK
By any stretch of imagination, if you keep dropping in MMR and get paired with more crappy teammates, you also face more crappy opponents. If it is not your fault that you lose these games, you should be able to tip the balance in favor of your team. That is how the system works. Or are you convinced that the system treats you in biased fashion and specifically provides YOU crappy teammates while the opposing team consists of better players?

This is a load of rotten cabbage, just like every other thread in this forum that complains about the imaginary concept of ‘’MMR hell’’.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Getting ‘stuck’ in ruby is a very important topic regarding how best league should operate. We changed matchmaking to make the ladder more prestigious and so far it has done that. Divisions are aligning with skill level much better than season 1. The product of this change is that the bulk of players who hover around the middle of the mmr curve should stay in sapphire and ruby. Win rate will level out at 50% because there are plentiful players of similar mmr in the same division.

Should average players be able to climb out of the middle divisions by grinding? This removes prestige and can make matchmaking worse within a division, but always allows a sense of progression.

Should average players stay in the middle divisions because that’s where they belong at their skill level? This retains prestige and only improving skill will allow climbing, but rewards and progression stop at some point through the season.

Is there an incentive that could be added to league games for players who have reached their appropriate division and can no longer climb?

Players absolutely should remain in the divison appropriate to their skill level. That is the point of a system that places you in the league according to your skill level!

It seems to me the people who complain about getting stuck at 50% winrate are the ones who want a particular reward from league advancement. That should simply not be the end goal of ranked PVP. Make the rewards available in alternative ways that do not compromise matchmaking. Or just leave it as it is. The notion that every possible reward has to be attainable by every player does not go hand in hand with ‘’competitive PVP’’.

‘’32 is statistically significant’’ – What nonsense is this?

Your hypothesis is that the system unevenly distributes classes. There is not a specific minimum sample size required to test this hypothesis. The greater the sample size, the greater the precision of the test.

Depending on the distribution of the data points you collect, a sample size of 32 would or would not be enough to disprove the null hypothesis (no difference between equal class distribution and the group of data points you’ve collected).

If the class distribution is massively skewed, you would be able to disprove the null hypothesis with a sample size less than 32.

PVP perspective:

Before the patch, there was consensus that with chrono-bunker it was too easy to sustain against multiple opponents longer than is reasonable. On top of this, the alacrity share was an incredibly powerful team-wide buff to provide. Thus most matches consisted of teams with two chrono-bunkers. As such, it was necessary to address these two points.

Instead, the implemented changes completely diminished the performance of chronomancers altogether. Shatter chronomancers were a rare sight before this patch. They were absolutely dependant on the 66% personal alacrity buff to provide their teams with mobility, damage and utility. 66% personal recharge rate was not an issue from a balance pov. It was a necessity for chronomancers in general to be viable. In an effort to address the two above-mentioned issues with chrono-bunkers, you decided to carry out a blanket nerf to alacrity. This blanket nerf to alacrity also means that all the alacrity-associated traits become less useful, as they all depend on the efficiency of alacrity.

Please revert this general alacrity nerf, and instead nerf the specific traits and abilities that provide alacrity to the team instead.

It is understandable that chronomancer will be shaved due to the strong bunker performance. However, based on what you decide to cut, it is likely that you will make shatter chronomancer even more obsolete. Particularly if you plan to increase thief damage output simultaneously. Steal+Backstab+2 auto atk is already devastating against a shatter mesmer.

If you want to move the meta in a faster-paced direction, don’t gut the shatter mesmer.

Evan Lesh.3295:

There were a few reasons for keeping players in HotM when queued:

• It forces new players to recognize they have completely different builds in PvP maps.
• You won’t miss the match accept because of load screens and get dishonor.
• We can make a better user experience (match accept and map voting) without having to worry about interrupting whatever a player might be doing elsewhere.

In order to allow queuing from outside HotM, we would need to change these things.

• We would need tech to remove players temporarily from queue during load screens.
• Create better tutorials or gating for new players so they don’t hop into PvP unprepared.
• Revisit the way the match flow UI works.

Allow us to join hotjoin matches and custom servers. Players will still recognize that they have completely different builds in PvP.

I am positive people who are queued while in hotjoin or dueling in a custom server are well-aware that they have queued and will not be bothered by queue pop-up and map voting. That’s what they went to the mists for to begin with, after all.

If nothing else, make it possible for us to join hotjoin and custom servers while in queue. This would make the pvp experience considerably more entertaining.

If anything, right now I only miss queues because I occasionally go AFK out of boredom, and sometimes miss the queue pop. If I was actually engaged with the game I wouldn’t miss the Q pop.

If nothing else, allow players to join hotjoin/custom servers while in queue. Waiting 5-7 minutes for a 10-15 minute game is simply poor entertainment.

This has been brought up multiple times. At least allow players to join custom servers and hotjoin while we are in ranked/unranked queue so we have something to do instead of bashing golems.

No buffs for thieves. Cut back on the power creep instead. Overall damage is out of hand. Once again..

Again, you should split the stats into more pieces so we can mix and match different stat combinations for more varied builds.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hmmm, new amulets. Aside from zealots, anything else you folks think would be interesting?

It would be interesting if you split stats into at least two items again, so we can have more build flexibility. The ‘’increased complexity’’ of having to choose two items to determine your bonus stats is far outweighed by the flexibility and variety in builds that would arise from such a change.

With the notification for queue pop and the requirement to accept, it is no longer an issue that people are afk while in queue. TeamQ has a queue time of 5-8 minutes. For people who only want to do spvp, that means you spend about 1/4th of your time waiting. If we could join custom servers and duel/practice in the meantime, the whole gameplay experience would be much improved.

Why are we not allowed to do this currently? What is the reason?

With the removal of stats from traitlines (specializations), the additional stats will supposedly be moved over to the amulets, except for the small boost to base stats. In the interest of more build diversity, it would be nice to be able to mix stats rather than just go for more of the same.

Either add a variety of additional amulets with a mix of the current amulet stat combinations, or distribute the total amount of stats on several item pieces so we can customize and distribute stats in a more balanced fashion.

I believe this will open up for classes to take on roles otherwise not possible. We will possibly see more semi-zerker classes played if they can customize stats to favor toughness such as to deal with thief burst, which currently outrules several zerker class options.

In league of legends, there is a similar wheel function. The most used options are ’’Missing’’, ‘’On my way’‘, ’’Need backup here’’. I think all of these would be helpful. Another nice option would be ‘’Attack here’‘. It would also be nice to have a short, but distinct sound for each chat wheel command. Although there should be a spam limit, so you don’t have to deal with trolls on your team who only use it to bother the rest of the team.

There is no good reason to exclude this option in soloQ. There are plenty of ‘’high-end pvp players’’ playing soloQ. You already have maps like skyhammer and spirit watch which many people express discontent about. Now you finally decide to implement a great change in the name of pvp, but once again you want to screw over soloQ?

It is this simple: People who play soloQ are just as happy for the change as people who play in teamQ. Both populations (which are not exactly mutually exclusive..) join their respective queues to do PVP. It is equally important in BOTH game modes to read your opponents’ animations. That is how you have designed this game. So be sensible and add this feature to soloQ aswell.

Why have you added soloQ if you are going to undermine it by awkward maps AND lack of features? I know a lot of people who play both teamQ and soloQ, and many of them express discontent with asura animations. For these people, only allowing the feature in teamQ just makes no sense. It would be appreciated equally in both game modes.

It simply makes the game more rewarding both in terms of success and failures when you win or lose in a way that seems fair

The case where standard models are allowed in soloQ:
I clearly saw the animation, and I failed to dodge it. Fair enough. I lose.
I clearly saw the animation, I managed to dodge it and capitalized on my advantage. Fair enough. Victory!

The case where standard models are not allowed in soloQ, aka how it is now:
I COULDN’T see the animation, and thus I had no chance to deliberately counterplay my asura opponent. I lose. kitten THIS GAME!
I COULDN’T see the animation, but I randomly dodged the crucial ability of my asura opponent. Phew, I made it this time, but not due to my own capabilities.

I know which case I prefer. And I think the large majority of soloQ players agree with me.

Arenanet, if you want a larger PVP playerbase, do yourself AND US the favor of adding this standard model feature to soloQ also.

There is no good reason to exclude this option in soloQ. There are plenty of ‘’high-end pvp players’’ playing soloQ. You already have maps like skyhammer and spirit watch which many people express discontent about. Now you finally decide to implement a great change in the name of pvp, but once again you want to screw over soloQ?

It is this simple: People who play soloQ are just as happy for the change as people who play in teamQ. Both populations (which are not exactly mutually exclusive..) join their respective queues to do PVP. It is equally important in BOTH game modes to read your opponents’ animations. That is how you have designed this game. So be sensible and add this feature to soloQ aswell.

Why have you added soloQ if you are going to undermine it by awkward maps AND lack of features? I know a lot of people who play both teamQ and soloQ, and many of them express discontent with asura animations. For these people, only allowing the feature in teamQ just makes no sense. It would be appreciated equally in both game modes.

It simply makes the game more rewarding both in terms of success and failures when you win or lose in a way that seems fair

The case where standard models are allowed in soloQ:
I clearly saw the animation, and I failed to dodge it. Fair enough. I lose.
I clearly saw the animation, I managed to dodge it and capitalized on my advantage. Fair enough. Victory!

The case where standard models are not allowed in soloQ, aka how it is now:
I COULDN’T see the animation, and thus I had no chance to deliberately counterplay my asura opponent. I lose. kitten THIS GAME!
I COULDN’T see the animation, but I randomly dodged the crucial ability of my asura opponent. Phew, I made it this time, but not due to my own capabilities.

I know which case I prefer. And I think the large majority of soloQ players agree with me.

Arenanet, if you want a larger PVP playerbase, do yourself AND US the favor of adding this standard model feature to soloQ also.

Just give us the option to turn other players’ character model into a standard human client side. That way people who want to look like an asura can look like an asura, and the rest of us don’t have to suffer the lack of visual cues when fighting them.

It is inded a terrible trait which leaves little room for counterplay. I suggest changing it to reduce the duration of applied conditions by 50% for 5 seconds after changing to earth attunement. This allows you to benefit from it even after you leave earth attunement, making it a flexible trait which plays well with the way an elementalist works a: Continouos attunement swapping.

Interesting additions. I sure hope they also added some traits or changed existing skills on elementalists to actually help the ELEMENTALIST survive. It’s great to heal your allies, but you won’t be healing anyone if you are dead yourself.

Logic.

There has been countless threads on skyhammer, with the far majority leaning towards removal of the map from soloQ. This does not necessairly reflect the opinion of the majority playerbase, as most people who don’t mind skyhammer in soloQ probably won’t bother to visit the forums and look at complaint threads about skyhammer.

Either way, in order to keep both camps satisfied, a map veto system could be introduced. Say for example that you can veto one or two maps when you queue for solo or team tournament matches. Those who…dislike skyhammer, to put it politely, can choose to veto skyhammer out! And those who like it can simply leave it be.

This might lead to increased queue times for those who choose to veto maps. But if you can’t bother to play soloQ in the first place due to a particular map, then a longer queue is still a better alternative.

Organized teams can also choose to focus and practice on particular maps by using vetos to exclude unwanted maps.

I don’t know how many vetos should be allowed. Two at most with the limited number of maps present, I suppose.

No matter how you look at it, MMR is an appropriate marker of your skill. Your skill within the boundaries of the game. If your decision making and execution is better than the average player within the boundaries of the game, you win more games than the average player. You increase in MMR.

There is no ELO/MMR/blabla hell.

Necros do not need dhuumfire to take a dump on engineers. They have two powerful condi transfers and a great heal vs condi classes. They will still take a dump on engis when dhuumfire becomes dodgeable.

The changes to pin down, however, will definitely even the match vs warriors.

BurrTheKing.8571:

I hate repeating myself all the time but very few ever actually confront the points I bring up and would rather just say “Healing Signet is better than X heal, therefore OP.”

I have read your posts in this thread. You claim my original post is weak, because I present no facts.

Is it not a fact that the healing from HS cannot be interrupted, and thus circumvents the counterplay which other classes face when they try to activate their heal?

Is it not a fact that a hambow warrior principally has access to 3 condi cleanse/10 sec?

Is it not a fact that HS starts healing you from the moment you start taking damage?

I state facts, and from the facts I infer certain problems with HS compared to other heals.

I quoted this particular part of your post because it is seething with hypocrisy. You see, in your posts, you didn’t even address any of the points I made in my original post! Instead, as you put it yourself, it became a rant about the general nerfs various warrior builds have received. Fear not though, you are far from the only one to do so of the posters in this thread.

In the end of my post, I point out that I would love to see a useful active for HS to compensate for a nerf of the passive healing. Healing Surge and Mending are both lackluster alternatives, although mending would be fine if it healed 6,5-7k.

I don’t want warrior sustain to be lowered compared to what it is now. I want a risk involved with the current sustain warrior has.

Healing Signet is a hot topic, and has been for several months. Recently, the the devs shared their opinion on Healing Signet with us, stating that a decrease to the passive healing of Healing Signet would make it inferior to Healing Surge.

If such a simple and direct comparison was appropriate and correct, it would be hard to argue that Healing Signet should be nerfed. This is not the case.

While Healing Signet does not heal much more than Healing Surge in the span of 30 seconds, there are other factors to consider, many of which have been mentioned by others, but are worth mentioning again countless times.

Healing Signet has no cast time, as it is a passive heal. If you have pvp’ed at a high level or watched high level pvp matches closely, you will notice that players occasionally get their healing skill interrupted by various forms of CC. CC’ing a heal can mean the difference between killing your opponent in 3 seconds or 15< seconds.

Healing Signet completely circumvents this counterplay.

Healing Signet is not as susceptible to poison compared to many other healing skills. Most warriors play hambow these days, and with hammer+longbow burst skills, it is relatively simple to cleanse 3 condi/10 sec, thus, it is unlikely your heal will be poisoned continuously. Active healing skills, however, can be fully poisoned if your opponent predicts your heal and poisons beforehand.

Healing Signet heals you from the moment you start taking damage. This is a huge deal. Most classes do not gain anything from their healing skill until they activate it, and even if they try to activate it, there is the possibility of getting interrupted. If your heal gets interrupted and you die, you have gained NOTHING from it. A warrior with Healing Signet will get something out of it from the moment they start taking damage!

The downside to this is that you could potentially get focused hard and get killed in a matter of 3-4 seconds, in which case Healing Signet doesn’t heal you for more than 1,5k hp Fortunately, warriors have relatively high base toughness and vitality. With plenty of access to stability, it is also hard to burst down a warrior this quickly. Or, just bring endure pain and it is very unlikely to happen.

With the above mentioned points in mind, I see no reason why Healing Signet should heal anywhere near as much as activated healing skills. When you choose Healing Signet over active heals, you choose the safe route. You are not as vulnerable to counterplays as players who use active heals. Less risk should mean less reward.

It is worrisome that Healing Signet, in its current form, even made it into the game. What troubles me more is the suggestestion of decreasing the passive by 8%, and intend to make the active strong enough to use over the passive heal. I seriously hope the devs will make the active very appealing to use in certain situations, and I also hope they will lower the passive heal amount by 20-30%. Anything above that is too great reward for a passive heal.

DiogoSilva.7089:

It has been a long time since this forums has been happy and peaceful about upcoming changes.

Not that it’ll last, once the preview post comes and announces some nerfs too. :P

I think this piece perfectly captures the picture you are trying to make.

Bsgapollo.5364:

Most cc requires you to be in close distance and have obvious animations. Fear on the other hand is instant, can do tons of damage and has a pretty low cooldown in DS.
If fear would get a more obvious animation and wouldn’t do so much damage. Then I’m fine with it being removed as a condition. Otherwise it would be too strong imo.

Fear deals damage due to a trait, not by default.

People are entitled to their opinion, of course, even if it is that animation system serves for counterplays. This opinion is completely WRONG, of course!

Yes, there are certain abilities with obvious tells, like Big ol’ bomb, churning earth, burning speed, dragon’s tooth, eviscerate, warrior burst skills, pistol whip, mesmer greatsword skills and whatnot. But at the same time you have a buttload of important abilities which aren’t possible to identify in time for counterplay

Introduce the casting bars, and add an option for players to turn them on/off. All of you who complain about cluttering casting bars can turn it off. The screen is already obliterated with effects when there is a 4v4 fight on a node. If I can actually tell what is going to happen next by looking at casting bars, I will gladly take it.

We’ve had this discussion countless times, and the some points will be brought up here as in the previous threads.

Give us our kitten casting bars.

Phantaram.1265:

Can’t give back what was never there.

Oh snap.

For real though there has never been a reason to play dagger over scepter in my opinion.

For real though, there is a concept known as ’’enjoyable’’. Some of us find d/D playstyle enjoyable. Even if it is suicidal to stay in melee range for the majority of a battle with the lowest base hp and toughness.

Did any of you consider that this thread is not about how the ele fits into the general meta, but about elementalists builds in particular? Jesus…

The current ele meta is to run a fresh air build of this sort: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArdhEmKbzxzgjDIjCdg4hF4AcY5ROMD2AA-TkAg0EIpQyhkBJJSWkGFM/A

You can change evasive arcana for elemental surge to increase the likelihood your burst will land. In this case, you would go triple arcane utilities. Another option is 20 points in arcana & 20 water.

You can also play around with dagger builds using Rock solid from the earth traitline to provide stability for revives and stomps.

Jumper.9482:

Belgarion.1975:

snip

11k with no aegis or protection. That’s a fair amount considering an elementalist can do the same thing, if not more, with less telegraphs and still offer more support to their team, right?
And what can D/P Trickery do? 25% less damage but with a game-changing steal every 21 seconds that interrupts stability/aegis stomps and resses and a plethora of blinds and other interrupts? I for one would still choose trickery. But those who prefer pure damage wouldn’t be at such a huge disadvantage anymore now would they?

Indeed, full glass eles can pull off 11k with two arcane utilities and crits on lightning strike & air attunement. Which also means the ele has ONE utility to provide some sort of defense. This could be arcane shield or lightning flash. None will cut it. Thief can use stealth or shadowstep to get out of trouble. And no, you don’t offer much team support as your boons are only applied to allies within 240 radius. Not exactly a wide circle..

Sorry for off-topic, but I just thought it would be fair to take the whole thing into consideration when you make a comparison between thief burst and ele burst. There’s more to it than just the burst part.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

ahuba.6430:

Conquest will never work in e-sports.
There is no build up in conquest, the game is always steady, the points keep flowing in and there is never a tense moment where the match halts because the next move can decide the game. This is why, in my opinion, games with an early/mid/late game are making it work. There’s the slow early game for people to get a sense of strats going on, there’s the fast paced mid game where all sort of plays can happen, and then, if the game gets to it, there’s the super tense late game, where every decision makes the difference. There is tension and the crowd is nervous, there’s emotion.
In gw2, in conquest, the only map that comes close to this is foefire, and even that is nowhere near that level, you can’t really appreciate what is going on. You see the enemy team playing piñata with the lord and the defenders desperately trying to keep it alive, while the casters are just bambling words waiting to see who comes out victor. It’s a mess. If you watch BLU’s bets of 2013 pvp video, most of the highlights are lord kills, monster kills or stomps. It’s never a pure player play.

So yeah, conquest only was a pretty bad idea ArenaNet friends.

hmmm so you said "games with an early/mid/late game are making it work. " then does this mean we need to have a MOBA styled guild wars 2 map? O_O

No, but you could introduce various stages in the match where different objectives are prioritized. This is conceptually available on Temple of the silent storm, although the objectives on this map are still linked to the capture points. Still, Temple is one of the maps where you can see massive turn-arounds due to the secondary objectives.

You could change the buffs so that obtaining Stillness grants you 80-100 conquest points and tranquility grants 200 conquest points. This would make the matches more teamfight-centric, rather than decap/bunker oriented.

Harrier.9380:

I guess people complain about Skyhammer because rolling their face on keyboard with fotm build is not enough. You actually need a brain to not get outplayed and avoid long drop and sudden stop.

Your posts generally seem well-informed, but this just reeks of ignorance. You make it sound like the map merely leaves players in the hands of skill. WRONG. There is a huge discrepancy in access to cc and stability between the various classes, and the people who play classes with limited or no cc/stability are left at a major disadvantage.

The terrain and the skyhammer are the two strongest tools on this map. Furthermore, the two are linked, as the fight for skyhammer often comes down to pulling or pushing the opponent over the edge/onto panels (use terrain). This does not belong in soloQ.

DiogoSilva.7089:

One of our major problems was base attunement cooldowns outside of arcana. That was fixed in the last patch. Good. It was a first step in the right direction.

Two other major problems remain for us. Base survivability and auto-attacks. The former is obvious. The later is tricky, because I think auto-attacks should be nerfed across the game. However, it’s not like arc lightning, lightning whip and fireball are breaking the ele, right? Making our other auto-attacks at a similar power level to those three would be great.

Not only those! Scepter auto-attack for fire and earth attunement is absolutely useless, especially in PvP. The time it takes to even cast one auto-attack in fire and earth attunement with scepter locks you in place for far too long compared to the damage they deal. Especially considering how squishy an ele is. Spending 1 second to channel an auto attack which deals 600 dmg is nowhere enough to counter the pressure you get in return in that time window.

Elementalists lack pressure in the damage department. We have plenty of burst, but simply no pressure to punish people for chain auto-attacking us. This issue can be alleviated by increasing the damage of the majority of our auto attacks with dagger/scepter/staff, or simply making the class more sturdy so we can stay toe-to-toe with our opponents for prolonged battles.

If you choose to play with dagger or scepter mainhand in spvp, you invariably end up in melee against theives, warriors, because your burst damage DEMANDS that you get up-close and personal. And your auto-attacks are simply not powerful enough to trade against your melee counterparts, save for lightning whip. And other melee classes are not even the worst problem. If you want to do reasonable damage with ele in this meta, you better go berserker amulet. If you go berserker amulet, a necro can outright kill you in a fear-chain. Lose-lose.

To sum it up: The problem for an elementalist is that you need to get within melee range to do reasonable damage, and when you combine this with its poor sustainability and capability to apply counterpressure, you become cannon fodder. This is what pvp players call a free stomp. Sure enough, you can move in, do your burst and mist-form, lightning flash or ride the lightning out of there. BUT THAT’S IT. Then you cannot commit for another 40 seconds. And since we have no proper damage output (save lightning whip) besides our burst abilities (burning speed, phoenix, arcane spells, lightning strike) we can’t do anything for our team until escape abilities are back up.

Bring a shatter-specced mesmer with greatsword instead. You can do proper burst at 1000+ range, decent pressure with greatsword auto-atk, and force your opponent to overextend to you instead. Follow up with stealth, chaos storm, chaos armor and distortion to avoid getting killed.

Oni Link.4621:

Gunlaugr.2716:

Oni Link.4621:

Josh Davis.6015:

I think Skullcrack is a good place now. Ideally, all of our high impact skills should allow for counter-play via a clearly telegraphed attack animation. It’s something we’re constantly thinking about when we look at existing skills, and doubly so when we brainstorm new ones.

Agree BUT where are telegraphed skills on other classes? Don’t want to be sarcastic, but Warrior is a “telegraph” compared to other classes.

Mesmer: All greatsword abilities except for the boon removal one are quite telegraphed. In particular mirror blade and phantasmal berserker. Sword #2 is an essential and quite telegraphed ability also.

Ele: Dragon tooth, phoenix (sound), fire grab (extremely telegraphed and has an awfully narrow range), burning speed, dragon breath, ride the lightning…etc

So no, warrior is not the only class out there with telegraphed abilities ^^

It didn’t mean “the only telegraphed”, but the “most telegraphed”. Obviously all classes have some skills with a typical animation, but Warrior is full of them compared to others.

PS: I’m not against “telegraphy”, the opposite. More skills should have a recognizable animation to enable more counter-play.

I simply went by what you wrote ^^, but yes, I agree with you on more recognizable animations. I like the new skullcrack change. Hopefully many other skills for all classes will follow suit.

Oni Link.4621:

Josh Davis.6015:

I think Skullcrack is a good place now. Ideally, all of our high impact skills should allow for counter-play via a clearly telegraphed attack animation. It’s something we’re constantly thinking about when we look at existing skills, and doubly so when we brainstorm new ones.

Agree BUT where are telegraphed skills on other classes? Don’t want to be sarcastic, but Warrior is a “telegraph” compared to other classes.

Mesmer: All greatsword abilities except for the boon removal one are quite telegraphed. In particular mirror blade and phantasmal berserker. Sword #2 is an essential and quite telegraphed ability also.

Ele: Dragon tooth, phoenix (sound), fire grab (extremely telegraphed and has an awfully narrow range), burning speed, dragon breath, ride the lightning…etc

So no, warrior is not the only class out there with telegraphed abilities ^^

The world is not ending. Everybody gets their share of clueless players during solo queues. The world is not conspiring against you. Last but not least; There is no ‘’ELO hell’.

Acandis.3250:

I’ve played LoL since it came out and saw it go through many of the same problems we are now. I hope you guys are paying close attention to they way they’ve dealt with those problems and hopefully implementing similar fixes.

For example, there was always a huge problem with AFKs in queue because there was no check after the queue popped. So what they added was a neat little popup that says “your game is ready. Accept? Y/n” AFKs are kicked from the queue if they don’t respond within 30 seconds.

It’s a very simple fix that immediately got rid of 99% of AFKs in champ select

I wholeheartedly agree, this would be a step in the right direction.

I don’t know why this map is still in solo queue. It is evident that the vast majority of players do not enjoy it. You don’t even need to make a poll to know this if you play soloQ. It is the map most players complain about before the match starts.

Skyhammer does not belong in soloQ, just like it does not belong in team queue! It favors particular classes with particular builds (pulls and knockbacks). I absolutely hate this map. And if you do soloQ, you will realise many people share this opinion..

Completely agree Henry. It is absolutely INFURIATING how much visual clutter is on the screen in anything greater than a 2v2 fight, and if a spirit ranger is involved it’s enough to make a total mess by itself. It’s completely detrimental to target acquirement. Before balance and build variety comes playability: It doesn’t matter that the game is balanced or not if you can’t even play properly without resorting to spamming because you can’t properly observe what your opponents are doing – and where they are.

Jesiah.2457:

“You would know that this won’t change kitten.”

Maybe that’s the whole godkitten problem? Perhaps if kitten baderp kitten …

Where did I complain about stealth? I enjoy playing against d/p thieves. It’s a great challenge, and you have a fair shot at winning if you catch them in the brief moment they are visible, or if you can predict where they are while stealthed/when they are going to backstab. I have no issues with stealth. I certainly do hope Arenanet manages to increase thief build variety, just as we see with warriors, where longbow/hammer and various viable condition builds are played with in soloQ at least. I don’t have any problem with warriors being challenging either.

The only reason I posted was because you made a big deal out of this nerf in your first post, which is completely uncalled for. Boon-dependant classes will still struggle to keep boons up due to the abundance of necros corrupting boons. This change to S/d thieves is of minor importance.

Jesiah.2457:

I wouldn’t honestly care if it felt like thieves had more than two weapon sets that were truly useful in spvp, and seeing one of the sets get nerf after nerf really is disheartening when we all would like to see the viability of other sets get raised.

Not just receive more nerfs. Nerfing something to make other weapon sets seem appealing is really a garbage way to go about doing things.

I’m quite positive if you were in the same situation, let alone actually understood instead of having an ill-thought out / mindless response that takes 0 brain power, you would be singing a different tune. ^^

I’m quite sure if you had any kind of perspective beyond that of a thief player, you would know that this won’t change kitten. S/D thieves have amazing burst, great mobility, great damage avoidance, and the ability to disengage countless times. This is all a glass cannon needs to carry out its work. ON TOP OF THAT it steals boons. Now they reduce the effectiveness of that part. Nothing more. You still dodge around like a kittened monkey dealing 3k crits without having to deal with the same risk other glass cannons have to suffer.

As it currently stands, eles are one of the first classes to get focused in a tournament match during a teamfight. With this build, you will probably die before you even activate arcane shield, or your passive arcane shield will proc, block 3 attacks, whereafter you die.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

1- Reduce passive (unbuffed) endurance regeneration in half.

Instant fail. Evades on weapons should be nerfed, not endurance-based. Vigor is too powerful too.

5- You had the right idea with the Incendiary Power but you should take it a step further and make it and the necro’s duhmfire last 6 seconds but have a 15 sec ICD, to make it less “sticky” if removed in a timely manner.

It was said in many posts – any passive chance based damage/conditions should be nerfed a lot or even deleted from game. Because you cant block it, it cant miss, and can not be evaded. You cant predict it too. 2-3k damage from trait like this is TOO much, something like 300-400 is fine for me.

Reduce hard counters

Agreed.

2- Projectile absorption/reflection

Ranged beam attacks should be absorbed/reflected too. Thats what i think.
And also – projectile absorption and reflection are NOT hard counters.

2- Interface option toggle: Normalize Height. Makes asura appear 50% larger and char and norn appear 50% smaller.

Silly try to reinvent the wheel. We should be able to toggle normalized races, so all players will appear as a human males for example. That was said many times, and if you’re new here, then spend some of your time reading forums.

50% of your post was about conditions. I think that devs awared about how strong they are and are doing something, i also dont think that your suggestions about them are good since it seems you’re new here.

His suggestions are not good because he is new…

Please, you are making an utter joke of yourself. Next time you want to post in a constructive debate, I suggest you leave out your hostile caveman-like attitude and stick to getting your valid points across. The rest is just garbage.

There are considerations to be made in regards to some of your suggestions, such as the change to endurance regen rate. Certain trait effects which proc on dodges would have to be improved to compensate for the less accessible dodges. Otherwise I agree with the majority, especially on a buff to vitality, as it is indeed inferior in its current state. I would welcome a change to the pace of the game (burstiness?) by buffing vitality.

Edit: Monmalthias brings up a great point in regards to lower TTK if a global endurance regen cut is introduced. Perhaps a cut to vigor in particular would be better. I’d also like to add that this would hit certain classes more than others, which should also be taken into consideration. With the abundance of death shroud atm, necros are hardly the most squishy of targets, despite their lack of vigor accessibility. Mesmers and eles, however, greatly depend on dodges to stay alive, and would die extremely fast to both direct dmg burst and condi pressure. They kinda do already.

While balance issues will always be around, there are certain broken aspects of the game which can be resolved once and for all. All of these have been mentioned countless times in other threads and posts, but they can’t be repeated often enough!

Trouble with targeting: Pets, spirits and illusions are most likely going to stick around for a long time. That’s fine. However, it is completely unacceptable, that these npc’s should prevent players from fetching the right targets. This becomes EXTREMELY frustrating, in particular when you take into account all the teleports and stealthing going on!

Solution: Add the option for the ’’tab’’ key button only to select players. This should perhaps not include mesmer clones, but it should be possible to skip all other npc’s when you are tabbing to get the right target. Considering how fast-paced this game is currently, targeting should be a VERY CLEAN AND CLEAR process. There’s nothing remotely acceptable about losing a fight because your targeting gets kittened up by pets, spirits or other garbage on the screen.

This brings us to the next issue – animations and effects. In a fight with more than 3 people, sometimes even two, there’s simply too many huge and fancy animations and effects going off. No doubt it is quite pretty to look at. But since we are supposed to read our opponents through the character animations, all these fancy effects become a MAJOR hurdle. Either these effects have to be toned down, or character animations have to become a lot more apparent. Or simply add the kitten cast bars and get it over with!

The last issue, which ties into the previous ones – asuras. I don’t have to say much. They are too small for opponents to read their character animations, which provides a ridicilous advantage to the asura players. Introduce the option to scale all characters up client-side, so those of us who aren’t playing asuras have a chance to read their character animations. Or, once again, add the casting bars…

These issues are all very frustrating whenever I decide to play a few matches in guild wars 2. Please take care of it, or explain to us why it isn’t possible for you to resolve these awfully annoying issues.

Arheundel.6451:

@Jmatb : no, the ele does not require boons to be played at all, try it, or you can simply time your dodge against s/d thieves as they’ll all use same strategy with signet teleport, infiltrator strike- shadow retreat and lyssa rune almost on recharge with basilisk’s venom, with d/d you can hit them with burning speed as they teleport to you( try this trick : burning speed – LF 1s befofe impact , teleport to them ) then dragon’s breath bonanza..in the end s/d thieves are not easy but eles are not a free kill for them at all

Time your dodges? Right. You have BY NO MEANS enough dodges to mitigate the damage from a proper s/d thief training you. The ones who weave auto attacks in between larcenous strike will pressure you nonstop with 1,5k- 3k(crits), and the only way to kill a top tier s/d thief as an s/d ele is by catching him in one of those rare moments when he isn’t dodging/evading, below 80% hp, with double arcane skills and lightning strike, or predicting the moment he ports in and throw phoenix into air attune + arcane burst. Most of the time, however, the great s/d thieves will just catch you while you are focusing another target, and kitten you hard. You could argue that ele can do the same to s/d thief, but s/d thieves are dodging or evading more than half the time they are in the fight…

First, I want to say that the variety between the playstyles of classes in GW2 combined with the ability to dodge shapes a solid fundament for a great competitive game. I still think it’s one of the best games to play PvP ever. At the same time, whenever I play the game, I simply cannot avoid getting overly frustrated. Here is why.

1. The concept of reacting to visual signs from your opponents as to which skills they use is interesting, but as the game is now it simply does NOT work. Too many effects/pets to distinguish important abilities being used, and some skills are indistinguishable from auto attacks when you are in the middle of an intense fight. This is particularly problematic with asura characters, where the problem is amplified.

Add the OPTION to enable casting bars. I have no game engineering knowledge, but I imagine it must be less time-consuming to introduce casting bars rather than going through all skills & abilities and clean up the extent of glamourous effects/pew pew.
Furthermore, add the option to scale all characters, regardless of race, to a certain size. This will circumvent the asura issue. People who enjoy playing asura can continue to do so with NO detriment. The rest of us can stop puking on our keyboards because our opponents are stealthing their animations by playing a small character.

I have pvp’ed in every mmo, and I mostly only play mmos to pvp. My pvp experience in GW2 is by far the most confusing compared to other mmos, and I believe the above issues are partly the cause of this.

2. Too high damage output across the board. Being able to one-shot players, or kill them in one combo in a span of 1-2 sec is fun and exciting to pull off, but I find it detrimental to the overall fight. It doesn’t allow for comebacks. Some players are great because they are able to predict the next few of their opponents’ steps, which is where skill really shows, and what is fun to watch. Right now, it is more a matter of reaction time, because one-shot combos are so powerful. On top of this, several of these combos provide little visual cue. Elementalists with Fresh air, lightning strike weapon sigil and double arcane utilities can do incredible damage in the blink of an eye. Necromancers can swap to death shroud and immediatly fear the target, preceded/followed by a full complement of conditions, which deals so much damage it resembles a direct damage burst.

I don’t think an overall damage reduction across the board would be the right answer, as some weapon sets/abilities already deal mediocre/poor damage, and thus would become completely obsolete, instead you could perhaps move the damage from certain abilities to others ( move damage from lightning strike to other scepter attacks, for example), or just reduce the damage on all the big-hitting abilities.
At the same time, the strongest healing abilities should also be reduced(Looking at you, warrior heal sig), or else it will become an attrition battle with too great advantage for certain classes.

3. Make it possible for players to disable de-targeting when left-clicking the ground. It’s annoying when you lose your target because you left-click to rotate the camera to watch your opponents chase you, or when you spam left-click to use template-placing abilities and lose your target. You will still have Esc to deselect a target.

4. Too many dodges available. Nerf energy sigil or just remove it. There’s too much random dodging going on, because it is too easily accessible.

5. Allow us to use glory for the PvE aspect of the game by converting it to gold, karma or something else.

teonimesic.1403:

The ele meta has changed a lot. With new fresh air an less healing, eles are supposed to go more offensive than defensive. You may or may not like it, but thats how they decided to ‘balance’ the class. Burst elementalists are very decent, and do very well against most classes.

Eles are also a very powerful counter to necros and every other condition class. Their ability to cleanse conditions on very low cooldowns, while having a lot a of burst damage makes then very powerful. And if everything goes bad, an ele can usually outrun a necro, meaning he shouldnt ever lose an 1v1, and should still be powerful on a 1v2.

Also, eles do have a decent amount of team support with group healing and cleansing, aoe swiftness, protection, regen and so on. While a necro delivers a lot of offensive power, its team support pales in comparison.

The fact tha playing as a certain class will hurt more than help is unfortenetely how this game has been from the start. It usually was necros, warriors and rangers, and now its more towards mesmers and eles (and maybe warriorstill).

Even when next patch comes, i doubt that every class will be balanced with every build. So either adapt your build to try getting the most of it (while still being supbar), reroll, or rage quit. I am pretty kitten ed with the whole PAX thing, but unfortenely i cant do anything about it, and i still enjoy the game enough to keep playing.

Cleanse conditions on a very low cooldown. You must clarify this statement. If you spec for fresh air, 10 pts water and 30 pts arcane, you can at BEST cleanse 2 conditions every 10 seconds. This is by no means enough to outlast a single necro. If you go for this build, you don’t get a heal when you swap to water attunement, which is also by far the largest source of group healing provided by an elementalist.

Thus, this disproves your next statement: That ele’s have team support through group healing; No, not if you want fresh air and decent burst to match that of a condi necro. You can’t get fresh air, decent condi cleanse AND group healing.