(edited by Invoker.5462)
I know the life of a dev and the vocal gaming community can have everyone believe that it’s completely fine to have a certain class type remain or even pushed into a particular play-style. But it’s flat out arrogant to assume that if you change something in a big way with a class that people will just reroll and enjoy themselves.
Well, i’ve got news for you ANET. Not everyone is like that nor are they going to fall for your post endgame strategy to reroll.
Making certain abilities powerful and then changing them later in an attempt to pigeon hole class roles entirely makes you no different than any other MMO out there. Sure its not “holy Trinity” but it’s in that same realm, and if you keep trying to classify one classes strength over another your only making yourself less and less unique in the world of MMO’s.
And by the looks of it, your so confident in your ability to streamline classes that you even added another one in the expansion.
So by making the philosophy/paradigm to make everyone less unique, you add another class to further the marketing and longevity of your playerbase while forgetting that some of us like to be versatile in a single class of choice. You even contradict yourself by stating no intentions to make changes to the original story line. You expect us to reroll yet not improve on those fundamental pillars of the game?
Both my Warrior and my Engineer are so totally streamlined into certain builds that i may as well be playing any other RPG with a dedicated class system. It’s not that having more builds is bad, it’s that the game itself just loses its charm, becoming a lesser game overall with frustrating skills that newer players soon find is useless, despite it being their sole purpose for choosing the class in the first place! I.E Rifle warriors, Pistol Thieves, Melee hybrid engineers (havent seen the wrench used in ages)
While I agree that some maps have a few hearts too many, keep in mind there are different ways to complete them. Some of them are more rewarding in terms of completion percentage than others.
@zenleto: based on the description, i’d guess the snow leopard one in wayfarer
I never complained about there being too many hearts, i’m only annoyed by how tedious and long some of them are- considering many include doing the same task over and over again. Many of the tasks are quite interesting at first but it just drags on and makes you keep doing them over and over and over till its just annoying.
The excessive nature of hearts.
They don’t even have to be excessive there is plenty of content in the open world to last long enough without having to be tedious.
Sometimes i can get immersed in a unique heart- even if its just serving brew to patrons or finding distracted faction members at a party. I’m the type of guy developers can appreciate, i read all the text and try to truly get into the experience.
But this is impossible. I just finished a heart where i turned into an animal with one attack skill and i had to kill 15 rabbits with it. Why 15? I surely would have been like alright cool after killing about 5. But instead i have to run around and search for rabbits for 5 mins and click “attack” about 50 times.
Some of these simple tasks last longer than entire call of duty missions- it really could move a whole lot faster. As much as i appreciate all the hard work that went into guild wars 2- the tedious nature of hearts is enough to burn me out for the day after doing about 4 of them.
It’s because your MMR is so high that you get matched against premades and have worse teammates than average players because you are expected to carry them. If you look at the solo Q streams of top level pvp players they lose more than they win because of matchmaking system.
If you want to drop your MMR you should 1. lose 20 games in a row everyday til you get matched with top level pvpers who will then carry you, 2. Get into an esports team and stomp everyone and only play with the team 3. just give up on this matchmaking and hope that your teammates are competent.
So guild wars 2 players are unfamiliar with tanked mmr?
As someone who does PvP both solo and on a team, i’ll give you my view on VoIP.
It’s not needed.
The only thing one needs to improve is basic teamwork. IE not falling victim to common misconceptions like (dont push far) etc.
There’s a very good quote from another product. It’s better that all 5 players follow a bad call than give 5 different calls and react to the enemies playbook.
Same thing with GW2’s arena, only the best part is you only need your minimap and UI to determine how to appropriately act.
Are voice coms nice ? Sure, but they are far from game changing. In fact most of the teams you talk about probably are sitting around on coms cracking off jokes instead of making actual calls.
lol VOIP isnt needed???
Tell that to the tournament winners. Communication is an inegral part of TEAM pvp.
Not everyone has the aptitude to type and play. I mean if it was that easy to type and play, theyd make VOIPs outlawed in tournament play.It seems to more likely tha VoIP improves an already organized team, it won’t help against randoms because they are under no obligation to use a VoIP.
So yes VoIP works for actual teams. So go form a team.
“It won’t help against randoms” I guess you’re new to competitive gaming so ill give you a pass. That or you’re trolling pretty hard.
Give me 10 human beings. Ill sow shut the mouth of your 5 and ill keep my 5 with the ability to talk. Guess who wins? Heck ill even give you 5 players which know each other. If the mmr is even like you forum knights like to boast, then my team WILL win. Sorry but that telepathic communication you heard about on sci fi isn’t actually real.
Oh dear. I think I might spark a riot with this insight.
ANET claims that in the event 5 solo que players face a pre made that the MMR can favor one side or the other while also balancing leader board points based on this favorability.
Ok so this has officially gone rant mode.
ANET you do realize that these are 5v5 “team” based arenas right?
Good!
Now let’s review what helps drive teamwork.
You guessed it! Communication
What does guild wars 2 lack? in game voice chat! Ding ding! Can you guess what pre mades do in 2015? It’s a software program known as TEAMSPEAK
But no worries, my third hand can type while I’m in combat. No probs. Only problem is most of my teammates lack a third hand and as a result there is little to no communication in any of my games!
Wait. Did you say that Stronghold was inspired by Mobas? Guess what mobas have ANET? Ill give you the credit to figure that one out on your own.
So after hearing all the “word of mouth” about silverwastes being one of the best and most innovative MMO pve zones I thought I’d try it myself.
So after following a broken waypoint to get out there for a while- I found my way thanks to the wiki.
Once I arrived I did the story quest which was OK but lacked any choice. I then set out to find one of the most disappointing mechanics I’ve ever seen.
Bandit chests..
It seems as though ANET had a bad week or was trying to create a real time sink for people used to mind numbing end game. A group I followed for an hour did nothing but walk to predetermined chest locations. Some innovative stuff eh. Came back the next day, different group same thing.
And apparently this is ok with ANET as it’s been around for a while. If this is the latest ANET had to offer post expansion then I’m beginning to fear the dev team has gone sour. My expectations for the expansion have gone way down as a result
So if you buy 5 of the limited edition unidentified dyes you pay roughly $1.15 per dye. Ok, i don’t ever remember paying that much for a crayon but to put that in perspective its the price of a cheeseburger for something that’s most likely going to be worth 5-25 cents.
Alright, thats okay! I’m not concerned since these are things that can be acquired in-game!
Bzzzt. (mostly) Wrong.
To educate the newer crowd, we used to get these dye all the time, i remember getting about 10 my first week of playing, maybe even more than that. I came back, did an entire play through from level 1-80 and got TWO uni dyes.
I’m not okay with this, and whatever mentality you want to spew about how something doesn’t effect game-play is WRONG in MY perspective as i like to SEE my character CHANGE as i play. Some of you act like playing as identical blobs would be just fine, so long as we can pay $1.25 to change our blob color.
Consider this a rant, a protest if you will. Believe me, i wouldn’t care at all if it was feasible to acquire these in-game without spending FIVE LAURELS.
You have to remember though that balance is aimed more toward higher levels of play than that where players ignore shadow refuge. By higher level, I mean potential-wise, not the devs saying “Hmm, Bob seems competent. Let’s balance around him.”
Low or high level- as long as we’re not talking tournaments where every number matters and we all play metabuilds- lets just assume we are all at high MMR where i have been (dont care for it as it just sends me against 5 mans all day)
Shadowstep- infiltrators signet, and the pistol skill which teleports you to the target AND the bow skill which blinks you to the select location are all incredible skills. You cannot deny that warriors would love to have something like this I.E impale teleports to the target.
It all seems more fitting to the melee role, the ability to be sticky. Good luck shaking me when i play thief like when i’m playing my warrior. There is no escape. I think the deepest and most difficult understanding for me has been how to keep blind up as much as possible but tbh…
Its like trying to improve something which has little value to begin with. Facing another thief with more practice could prove difficult but a lot of times it comes down to pure luck. I’m looking at going invisible, basilisk venom, backstab and MAYBE a heartseeker before i shadowstep away/repeat.
The luck is if i get my air procs or not- or if he just so happens to randomly evade right at the time i decide to initiate.
I think “difficult” is more tied to people trying to figure out how to map out their hotkey’s and how fast they can absorb things they read I.E what a skill does. For me it took about 3 games and i was rockin it- kills everywhere and easy points. I only died when i made a mistake which is a whole lot better than the hopeless situations warriors find themselves in with no escape.
I know this is a kind of troll thread. The same guy making multiple threads to encourage QQ about thieves. But there is one pretty big fail which I want to jump on anyway.
the moment i felt threatened id just throw down a shadow refuge and it was amazing how many people would give up looking for me.
This is why “stealth OP!” “nerf stealth!” “stealth has no counter play!”
People don’t think. They are like babies who haven’t developed object permanence yet – the moment they see something vanish, they forget it exists! Then sometime later they reflect, “Oh, there was a thief that vanished. How over powered.”
Look, i don’t know how the pub mentality is formed, but we can all agree that after a while we realize what works and what doesn’t against the general population. So far whenever i pop stealth from healing or shadow refuge its like a second chance at life. The only thing thats been a real issue is ranger AOE. Other than that i’m usually peachy after i stealth.
“I could just sit there and spam heartseeker as if its an i-win button”
Stopped reading there. Says everything about your average opponents and yourself necessary to judge your reliability on that matter.
Average opponents? Well i guess “average” being a 53% winrate then sure. but yea as a warrior i never had an ability that i could just spam once i ran out of other options. Surprisingly, its not that hard to get people to %50 as theif, i don’t really know that backend of it all as i copied my entire build off of metabuilds
Sorry it’s hard to believe but, a warrior player just picked up the supposed “skill class” and owned it. Do i need to stream it for you?
A brief lookover of my post history would reveal that i am an avid warrior player, its all i’ve been playing in this game. My warrior and all his builds, from all in rifle burst, to dull shoutbow- even duel mace.
I was astonished when i played thief for the first time today with d/p.
First off it took a bit of getting used to not having weapon cool-downs. It was awesome. I could just sit there and spam heartseeker as if its an i-win button, my only counter being endure pain skills.
I didn’t really worry about the bow too much, it seems like a weak weapon but the mobility of it is INSANE- endless supply of blink? Thank you very much!
My invisibility skills felt like cheating. Heck- the moment i felt threatened id just throw down a shadow refuge and it was amazing how many people would give up looking for me.
TBH the damage output here is what i’ve been trying to push out of warrior for some time now- rifle burst pushing the limits but being insanely unreliable. But this? This is crazy, i feel like i just started playing a 1up profession. It’s my first day with it, and already i’m scoring top 3 on my team several games in a row.
Hard to play? Not really- i could work on some timings and cooldowns but tbh the overall survival mechanics and reliance of cooldowns on my warrior made that WAY harder than this profession.
Personally having played many classes in pvp, not being good at most of them but i have played each enough to be an average player, i decided to stick to thief, simply because i think its one of the tougher classes to play. The only class that is harder imo is mesmer, and maybe some specific builds for classes such as s/f ele, altho i dont have enough knowledge on that.
Thief is all about patience, positioning, and knowing what your enemy is going to do. One wrong move and you die, especially in team fights. I dont see why people complain about thieves. Its really not an easy class to play, and the ones who are good only survive because they know what you are going to do. I really think thief should not be nerfed, and if buffed only a little bit because it has a nice balance of risk and reward, as well as taking a fair amount of skill to play. It just doesnt have a good place in solo pvp since teams dont understand the role of thief and the limitations.
If you have a hard time against a thief, 1. have better reactions so when they do try to burst you when you dont expect them you can move away, 2. accept that sometimes you cant win against a thief especially if you are zerk and they gank you, 3. Just take the time to learn how thieves play, and you will have an easy time countering them with any class.
Edit:
to the ranger person qqing above, i think they are a ranger, on thief ive faced some sword rangers, i forget what build but no bow, and they knew exactly how to fight thieves. They were able to dodge most of my bursts and it was one of the only hard fights against a ranger i had, because just like my build their build required some understanding to pull of properly in 1v1.
No profession has a “right” to be better if its skill cap is higher, if that were the case then mesmers would be on every team. From the start this game has been balanced around playstyles intentionally- which has worked out but made the meta boring for many.
Yes.
We’ve totally been trolling you guys with saying we’re the weak and saying how we need buffs and roll diversity and that you should stop nerfing us.
As a matter of fact we were doing so to keep people away from playing our beloved class. But now that more and more people are catching on how amazing the thief is, I guess we can tell you the truth….
We are OP, we’re amazing. The whole game revolves around us and only us.
So. If you want to be amazing like us, roll a thief.TEEF MASTER RACE!!!!!
The profession is extremely powerful as well as reliable but tends to fall short in a meta in which everyone is relatively tanky. Ironically the shoutbow warrior emerged to counter the meta which countered theives. Thus, shoutbow is weak against thieves.
Its that one profession no one can ignore, i mean lets face it, a good theif is invulnerable to normal DPS 90% of the time between dodging, invisibilty, and evading. The meta HAD to adapt- Most dps builds are generally slower- but theives acomplish incredible stopping power and interruption while also being extremely fast- and hard to kill!
The only reason you die so much now is due to how the current builds have been designed to survive your initiate and beat you. Even still- you are able to win regardless in some cases.
Dear thieves
It’s time to put down your torches and banners as you cry out for buffs and hear me. The meta is built around your specific class choice. It’s not your fault, but thief is so incredible at putting away so many other builds that the current meta has been designed around you..
To put that in perspective, the only meta build which fears you most is a shoutbow warrior. Other than that your job is to kill other thieves- take points and assist in ongoing fights.
Rest assured, if anyone was to try a theory crafted or outdated build of the historical meta you would most likely kitten their face. But as it stands everyone is building to last and slowly grind down opponents. If we tried anything different then teams of even more thieves would emerge
that is all.
So after beating the personal story, getting about 70% completion, and doing a ton of pvp, i came across a Nebo terrace event in gendarrian fields. The goal was to fend off the centaurs.
One of my problems with this game is how easy its events are. I love the concept much more than classic questing- but many of them are just tedious busywork with no real challenge at all.
But Nebo terrace was different. It was REALLY challenging and i felt like i was in a real battle.
Hypothetically speaking- if all events were as hard as that, then the world would actually feel like a dangerous place. Players would actually be compelled to pool their resources to save key locations around the map.
Think of a meta where the whole point of a dynamic world is to save it from falling into ruin. Obviously there would need to be some incentive for players not to zerg every map- but when i escort a noble to his homestead, i should feel like i helped a greater cause- as it stands most of these results are negligible
there should NEVER be the possibility to match against ANY pre made when you search alone. As far as I’m concerned the purpose of the entire MMR theory is moot when you have familiar players against unorganized solo searchers.
Just play for fun. I wouldn’t take this seriously. Even at the tournament level the prizes are pretty shoddy for what you put into it.
Now i feel like one of those kids crying as they come back home. “sobs* Guild Wars 2, take me back! I don’t want to visit ESO anymore *tears”
Bad community, horrible pvp systems, lullaby quests, and to top it all off, there was no way to keybind any combo keys! (shift+q for example)
<3 Guild wars 2, never again shall i leave you for another MMO
Alright so after reading some of these responses since yesterday i’m absolutely amazed at the ignorance here.
For one- AP means very little. A guild recruiter asked me my AP the other day so i’m going to assume this is one of those “appeal to popularity” fallacy’s. To be clear, there exists the possibility that some simply care about PVP more than AP.
And i know it needs to be said Time played does not make you a better player. I witnessed thousands of people in Dota 2 over time who never got better 2000 hours later- some due to ignorance and other’s to personal limitation.
Also….
When you view the leaderboards that percent I.E 60% means that you are in the top 60%, that is NOT your MMR. Where you see that percentage- i see the #216.
Why?
Thats my rank, and i can see it all the way to rank 1. So those of you assuming that percentage you see is the MMR, you are confused (now enlightened)
The responded who claims the amount of games played primarily determines leader board position has no source to back his claim. And as far as i can tell there is a complex MMR system under the hood AND i can clearly see people who have played 40-50% more games than me, ranked far, far lower than me.
The issue here is that the MMR system is NOT working or has been tuned wrong, and it’s taking ANET wayy to long to do anything about it and i’m convinced that they don’t care as much as they front it.
You are very confused and need to just stop before you embarrass yourself. You sound like a troll, but I’m scared you are being serious.
Strange, since when did trolls start citing sources and calling out misinformation? You sir, are special. I regret ever even debating with you at this point.
Skills, with cast time predictions (no cooldown predictions)
1. (2s) Steady shot: Hold steady for a powerful shot, Chance to cripple (high dmg)
2. (2s) Sleight of hand: Reload your pistol, gain quickness for 5 seconds
3. (1/2s) Trick shot: Quickly fire a shot which bounces between 4 foes or hits one foe twice (note: If 2 or 3 foes, extra bounces recycle on the last hit foe)
4. (1s) Disarming shot: Fire a shot that causes weakness
5. (5s channeled) Spray n pray: rapidly fire in random directions in front of you, hurting all enemies in front of you (note: only uses off hand pistol, damage is in a cone)
Burst: (1/4s) Stopping power: Fire a shot for each bar of adrenaline. Each shot knocks back. (Note: 3 separate shots, each knocking foe back)
(edited by Invoker.5462)
Alright so after reading some of these responses since yesterday i’m absolutely amazed at the ignorance here.
For one- AP means very little. A guild recruiter asked me my AP the other day so i’m going to assume this is one of those “appeal to popularity” fallacy’s. To be clear, there exists the possibility that some simply care about PVP more than AP.
And i know it needs to be said Time played does not make you a better player. I witnessed thousands of people in Dota 2 over time who never got better 2000 hours later- some due to ignorance and other’s to personal limitation.
Also….
When you view the leaderboards that percent I.E 60% means that you are in the top 60%, that is NOT your MMR. Where you see that percentage- i see the #216.
Why?
Thats my rank, and i can see it all the way to rank 1. So those of you assuming that percentage you see is the MMR, you are confused (now enlightened)
The responded who claims the amount of games played primarily determines leader board position has no source to back his claim. And as far as i can tell there is a complex MMR system under the hood AND i can clearly see people who have played 40-50% more games than me, ranked far, far lower than me.
The issue here is that the MMR system is NOT working or has been tuned wrong, and it’s taking ANET wayy to long to do anything about it and i’m convinced that they don’t care as much as they front it.
Seeking a guild on Magumma which enjoys pvp for the majority of its time. i go by the name Afareous and i rank 216 on the spvp leaderboard currently. I also enjoy WvW.
Rank on leaderboards means little, you can still have a mediocre mmr. Playing against premades doesn’t mean a lot, as they can still have a similar mmr to you. Add to that the low population means they have to match people together at some point, otherwise ques would be even longer.
Rank on leaderboards means everything, actually. Unless you can tell me another visual statistical source that’s giving you some other information i don’t know about.
Playing against pre-mades with a team assembled of solo qu’ers means that the mmr system lacks basic rules of well- matchmaking. I can name another game with similar matchmaking call of duty- where its mostly random, you think they don’t have enough players?
Matchmaking should take into account the que times… if they are extreme as in, 10 mins or more. I’d rather wait 10 mins and get a fair match than be given a brand new player against a team of premades.
I really wish people would stop referring to the current leaderboard as anything more than a farm. The current system heavily rewards time invested giving it a weak correlation to actual skill and ability to impact the outcome of matches.
What? Where do you get that information? As far as i’m seeing it, you and whoever else believes that is simply lying to themselves since they are low on the leader-board. Seriously though, where did you read that time played was the factor by which the leader-board determined your position?
heres an actual source since you have failed to provide one http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko2.pdf
Seems a lot more complex than your theory of time played
This is the source I believe you were looking for: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/finding-the-perfect-match/
You seem to be confusing MMR with leaderboard placement.
Whatever man if you believe that its all based on time played i’m not really motivated to convince you otherwise. You just linked a source which points to that same pdf i linked. gg man, gg
Rank on leaderboards means little, you can still have a mediocre mmr. Playing against premades doesn’t mean a lot, as they can still have a similar mmr to you. Add to that the low population means they have to match people together at some point, otherwise ques would be even longer.
Rank on leaderboards means everything, actually. Unless you can tell me another visual statistical source that’s giving you some other information i don’t know about.
Playing against pre-mades with a team assembled of solo qu’ers means that the mmr system lacks basic rules of well- matchmaking. I can name another game with similar matchmaking call of duty- where its mostly random, you think they don’t have enough players?
Matchmaking should take into account the que times… if they are extreme as in, 10 mins or more. I’d rather wait 10 mins and get a fair match than be given a brand new player against a team of premades.
I really wish people would stop referring to the current leaderboard as anything more than a farm. The current system heavily rewards time invested giving it a weak correlation to actual skill and ability to impact the outcome of matches.
What? Where do you get that information? As far as i’m seeing it, you and whoever else believes that is simply lying to themselves since they are low on the leader-board. Seriously though, where did you read that time played was the factor by which the leader-board determined your position?
heres an actual source since you have failed to provide one http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko2.pdf
Seems a lot more complex than your theory of time played
The last leaderboard was in no manner a sign of skill. It gave points per win and even could get a point for a loss. Sheer volumes of games played were determining positions on the leaderboard.
Ostrich Eggs had something like a 65% win ratio. He played less than the guys who were on top of the leaderboard. So he got less points.
It was a farmingboard, not a leaderboard. It’s why the upcoming season has been changed to place more importance on winning than games played. Go read today’s post about it.
Time played matters in nearly any MMR system. To further my point- if time played was any factor in MMR then why in gods name do i get matched with people on their third pvp game EVER.
Time played should play a role as it determines how seasoned you are. Dota does the same thing, it factors in win and loss for a lot of it but there is quite a bit of weight added if you’ve played 1000 games.
Rank on leaderboards means little, you can still have a mediocre mmr. Playing against premades doesn’t mean a lot, as they can still have a similar mmr to you. Add to that the low population means they have to match people together at some point, otherwise ques would be even longer.
Rank on leaderboards means everything, actually. Unless you can tell me another visual statistical source that’s giving you some other information i don’t know about.
Playing against pre-mades with a team assembled of solo qu’ers means that the mmr system lacks basic rules of well- matchmaking. I can name another game with similar matchmaking call of duty- where its mostly random, you think they don’t have enough players?
Matchmaking should take into account the que times… if they are extreme as in, 10 mins or more. I’d rather wait 10 mins and get a fair match than be given a brand new player against a team of premades.
I really wish people would stop referring to the current leaderboard as anything more than a farm. The current system heavily rewards time invested giving it a weak correlation to actual skill and ability to impact the outcome of matches.
What? Where do you get that information? As far as i’m seeing it, you and whoever else believes that is simply lying to themselves since they are low on the leader-board. Seriously though, where did you read that time played was the factor by which the leader-board determined your position?
heres an actual source since you have failed to provide one http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko2.pdf
Seems a lot more complex than your theory of time played
(edited by Invoker.5462)
Rank on leaderboards means little, you can still have a mediocre mmr. Playing against premades doesn’t mean a lot, as they can still have a similar mmr to you. Add to that the low population means they have to match people together at some point, otherwise ques would be even longer.
Rank on leaderboards means everything, actually. Unless you can tell me another visual statistical source that’s giving you some other information i don’t know about.
Playing against pre-mades with a team assembled of solo qu’ers means that the mmr system lacks basic rules of well- matchmaking. I can name another game with similar matchmaking call of duty- where its mostly random, you think they don’t have enough players?
Matchmaking should take into account the que times… if they are extreme as in, 10 mins or more. I’d rather wait 10 mins and get a fair match than be given a brand new player against a team of premades.
At this point i’m under the impression that ANET has only been using its pvp community pillars as a means to advertise its game on twitch. Cheap advertisement and relative word of mouth that the game has some merit to it’s structured competitive pvp.
I won’t argue that the competitive level is solid-even though they all use identical builds. But i have a severe distaste for how ANET is ignoring the majority.
Every day i get some sort of weird matchup, or a few matchups that lead me to believe that very little effort (if any) was put into the MMR system. To put that into context, think 5 man pre-made vs a whole team of solo que’rs. Or even better, a previous match where our team had a warrior who just purchased the game and was trying out pvp.
Okay- for my own credibility i am roughly rank 250 on the pvp leaderboards. There are likely hundreds of thousands of players that could have been put into my match yet this warrior with maybe 3 games played was put into my team. Unacceptable.
You might argue that we got a new mode in the xpac. It’s actually just 1 new map with some new rules. They can market it all they want but as far as content goes that’s almost nothing in comparison to what every other mode is getting.
This is a completely uncompatible comparison. You’re reaching way too far to justify your buff request.
I felt compelled to write this as the premise for the buff was (and correct me if i’m wrong)
That warriors could enter combat with an advantage
So when an engineer has turrets pre-placed at a location, what the heck can anyone do about that? Is that not entering combat with an advantage?
This is somewhat countered by the fact that some warrior skills and traits give added benefit from building up adrenaline and NOT spending it. Not using toolbelt skills means they’re simply useless, there’s never any benefit to them being unused.
Case in point- shoutbow meta.
The trait you are referring to is on the defensive traitline which is used by shoutbow. Rest assured many of the older and undocumented builds which proved powerful would rely on using the burst skills quite often in order to win the fight.
The tempo of the legacy warrior relied on the opponent not dodging, blocking, or retaliating the burst. The current warrior meta doesn’t really worry about that.
Is this logic bad? Lets put it into perspective, an engineer can place a turret/turrets at any location he chooses and it stays there, the longer its there, the more value it gains. It remains at it’s location regardless of being in combat. In many cases you see engineers stacking turrets on top of turrets-heck sometimes i’ll even go in pvp to find an engi sitting on 6 turrets on the cap point.
And lets face it- Turrets do their job just by being there. They are hardly the situation utility they once were… Rather than being responsive, the engi just spams all his turrets.
So why then, cant a warrior keep his adrenaline? What is the value of adrenaline if not 1.5x more damage/utility than a normal skill? People say signet warrior is bad- maybe fury signet would actually have use if we could use it with our burst to open a fight.
And lets face it, its a whole heck of a lot harder to pull off most burst skills than it is to spam some turrets. Killshot, blade flurry, and eviscerate are all a bit better than a normal skill but are harder to land.
And lets not forget that unless we actually spec for it or take some time, we cant just press a button and get 3 bars of adrenaline by pressing a button like an engineer can to gain his turrets.
We all wonder why shoutbow is meta- and i’d be willing to bet that its due in part to the adrenaline mechanic, warriors simply can’t get value anymore unless they stay in combat 90% of the time.
Rifle’s like okay right now. But okay isn’t enough. I think Mace is borderline OP when you’re good with it just because it’s so well-designed. It’s balanced right now because it can be hard to play under certain circumstances.
http://www.twitch.tv/blacktruth009/c/6269321
http://www.twitch.tv/blacktruth009/c/6259903
For reference.
If Rifle could do something of equal caliber that would be great. They probably could make “crack shot” a built-in thing so you don’t have to trait for Rifle. That would be a big buff but that would make Rifle have a place without making it broken.
Sometimes i feel like we are playing a different game. But i digress, ill admit- rifle is more than okay if you go on a losing streak and need to carry your noob team out of the noob bracket. Against less intelligent foes i’d say i can rack up about 15 kills in a single match with rifle. In contrast, the moment i’m facing opponents with skill i’m lucky if i score 2 kills.
This is also taking into consideration that i became fluent in using my hotkey’s, using a proper rotation, finding a good position, and knowing when to fight and when to run.
I pitty the noob who uses the rifle in comparison, who’s likely going to get stomped harder than a level 1 worm in queensdale.
For the past two weeks, i have been playing nothing but builds of rifle warrior. I have been able to achieve rank 312 on the leaderboard and a lot of that is due to extraordinary luck facing somewhat bad players.
But thats the thing about rifle. It crushes bad players. In fact, among other incidents, i once had someone say “i fear the rifle” as i was critting him for 12k consistently.
This rampage of ownage comes to an end every time i reach the 52% winrate mark. Aside from 5 man pre-mades, the general cancer builds+the ability to dodge correctly put my rifle out of business fast.
With any number of the current meta builds the damage of the rifle becomes quite irrelevant. Even if i can land four killshots in a single fight, it often wont matter. In a 1v1 situation the common ele/engi/guardian is able to recuperate insanely fast while dishing out damage at the same time. damage which i simply cannot handle due to my investments in traits which make rifle worthwhile.
In other words, without traits like burst mastery and crack shot, rifle can often feel like a napkin cannon. Its autoattack with mediocre power attributes does about 200dps and only gains adrenaline if your opponent has vulnerability.
In an attempt to take advantage of vulnerability i switched from great-sword to axe/shield which allows me to stack about 13 vulnerability onto whoever i’m fighting. Truth is 13 vulnerability stacks are usually cleaned off in most cases before i can even shoot a single auto attack. As ignorant as it sounds, the rifle auto attack is a weaker auto attack than any other weapon in the game can provide+its range is very limited.
Kill shot, along with other rifle skills, suffer an unacceptable plethora of obstructed shots. Sometimes even a a slight, barely noticeable elevation in terrain can cause a shot to be obstructed. In other cases, i think it actually just bugs out- i sometimes even noticed that trying to shoot through a turret (with crack shot enabled) would cause the shot to be obstructed. Thats a really big deal when you just channeled 6-10k dmg and all your adrenaline into a single shot.
Rifle butt is a great skill but its likely the hardest skill to land that i’ve used thus far in guild wars 2. You’re enemy has to be practically standing still right in front of you or this skill usually misses, its rangebox or whatever you want to call it is likely even less than that of a dagger.
Some final points…
MY best success came from using gs/rifle as well as axe/s+rifle as the bursts offer significant dmg increase. The severe problem, however, is that you can mostly only deal raw dmg. Meaning that you have almost no ability to stun or interrupt anyone. Thats right, people can actually ignore you as long as they dodge your killshot. I experenced this when i lost a game where i simply couldn’t do anything to the 2 players attacking my lord other than cause dmg which simply was not enough.
In conclusion….
I found that most other ranged options can deal the same net dmg as rifle with far more reliability over say- a 10 second period. I originally was under the impression that a killshot had the strongest stopping power, until i ran into some burst ele’s and guardians which deal IMMENSE damage without sacrificing nearly as much sustain.
The rifle, in its current state, has no use in conquest and as much as it pains me to say it, your teammates do have a right to bash you if they see you using it. That is all.
27 days ago the mod of this forum closed the thread which is pinned up top which allowed us to post unfair matches. Anyone else think this is a prime example of the front that’s put on in these forums. In addition, many threads related to raising the awareness of cheating are usually trashed within 2-3 days. I just got out of a match with complete randoms against a pre made team of 5. So did the guy just straight up lie? Get moved? Fired?
While I agree with you there is a huge skill disparity, I have to disagree with your assessment that a mesmer at skillcap is worse than a thief at skillcap. Its the other way around.
Disagreed. You’re going to have to persuade my as to why. Currently i see a profession at skill cap which allows it slightly more mobility and dps (with the ability to trick people).
Versus theif, which can (when played correctly) Destroy anyone using a skill rotation which has very few breakers, all while avoiding hits and inevitably winning at pvp in every iteration. About the only thing a theif isnt good at is zerging. But what do ya know? I hear they are giving you all rifles in the expansion, so now you can be best at everything! [ill have you know that if theives do actually get rifles me and 90% of the people i know are dropping their professions and rolling theif]
So here i am, in the lair, the hornets nest of thieves on their very own forum. What should i expect? The typical ignorance of the players who can’t seem to get better no matter what or the try hard overly committed players who treat the profession like it’s their lifestyle?
It’s readily apparent that a HUGE population of theives have no idea that they are contributing very little to the team, and in many cases actually think their far tactics or lord rushing (into death) are actually helping the team.
On the flipside, when thieves are actually good. They are too good, and incite confusion among the general playerbase. “How can he dodge that many times?” “Is it really fair that he can bypass the down mechanic by going invisible?”
Short answer is, yes its fair, but the profession, when played well is in need of a nerf. Lets step back for a second and look at a class with an even higher skill ceiling, the Mesmer.
Now a mesmer, when played well, finds itself in weaker position than a well played theif, yet is harder to play to its full potential. Can you respect a mesmer who plays well? I know i sure can. On the other hand, a theif who play’s well almost seems to be abusing several rotations that allow it to be nearly unkillable. It feels cheesy to fight a well played theif, not like the mesmer who just tricked the hell outa me.
So on both end of the spectrum, bad and good theives are toxic to this community, the profession should have never been added to the game, but since it’s here it really needs to be reworked.
There shouldnt be a meta based around any single amulet, or two amulets for that matter. But to clarify my standings on a true zerker meta, is that it would require a whole heck of a lot more skill than this meta.
This comes from personal experience and observation. I have played iterations of engineer and warrior which are focused on either a bruiser or suicidal play-style, I.E an engineer that does not use turrets but instead uses elixirs and toolkit like a steampunk warrior all jacked up on drugs. On the other spectrum, i’ve played rifle warrior as well as GS warrior variants focused on full DPS and mobility mechanics.
Then i tried shoutbow and turret engineer.
It was very clear right off the bat that playing shoutbow/turrets that i no longer needed to worry about setting up any sort of “play”, for the most part i have plenty of time to think with those builds and feel that as long as i’m doing some sort of rotation i’m being useful. In contrast, i feel like the skill ceiling is so low that putting forth extra effort for minimal dmg is usually abysmal and all i should be worrying about it staying on a point, reviving downed allies, and thats it. No tactics, no set ups, nothing.
no mesmers, EVERYONE was running sustain builds.
Just off the top of my head there was supcutie playing mesmer, tage playing meditation guard and fraelina playing thief.
You’re lying to everyone if you say those builds are not sustain. Those builds are designed to deal more dps than the celestial but are also designed to survive. You can’t give me one of these classes and tell me that they don’t have some sort of defensive trait.
No, a real haymaker/damage build is one that has almost no (or none) anti condition, healing, or dodge traits/skills. Similar to the rifle/hammer warrior, all-in dps powerhouse.
Sadly, as others have said in the past, thief has completely monopolized this area with the ability to be mobile, survive, AND dish out as much dps as the next best thing. Why is it that a class that can go invisible AND dodge can simply spam dodge to gain virtual invincibility while dealing more burst than a traited profession with little/no stealth, low mobility, and/or slower attacks. The math just doesn’t make sense, and neither do the mechanics.
Not sure all the hate for builds and finals? Yes the last match was a stomp, likely Adjourned was tilted. They haven’t lost matches in quite a long time and pro teams aren’t so much about builds to kill as it is about player movement and reactions on the map. You don’t need zerker burst builds in competitive play you need to play the points correctly and get downs off the point at the moment. Builds will always change with class balance, do we so easily forget when hambow was in its prime? Huge burst, cc, unkillable warriors… spirit rangers that never died. Outside of competitive gaming, almost any build works in soloQ and I’m pretty sure not everyone here is running with a 5 man premade.
For the record the matches between Adj vs Orng before the finals were stunning as was their first match. This game has better pvp than most mmorpgs atm, try to enjoy the game and understand builds will come and go, they won’t change as fast as you would like because development and class balance takes longer than you understand.
I like to call these types of responses “artificial sweetener”. You just typed a completely biased 3 paragraphs and told us things we already know.
Sure- i can make toolkit+elixer rifle work in SoloQ with the elixir elite (no turrets). This is all about consistency. Heck, i still role rifle/hammer warrior in SoloQ even though its prolly the worst tradeoff for power and mobility known to man. The problem is that some of the traits related to certain weapons or lack therof is not only bad, its blatant. Some of these mechanics lead me to beleive that the developers follow the same philosophy of a TCG and have 40% of everything completely abysmal and make a few things super good.
Thus you have all of this complexity to make it seem like a vast system when in reality you could simply cross out about half the possibilities or more, take whats left, and then find that only 5% of that actually works well.
90% of everyone using celestial ammy’s. Ele and engineer on every single team, no mesmers, the only warrior played was a shoutbow (imagine that) and EVERYONE was running sustain builds.
Besides the comeback (which would be exciting in any game) the game was just as dull to watch as it is to play in sPvP. Everyone playing 100% safe builds with no haymakers and a ton of conditions.
Where are the combined ability techniques we saw in the trailers when we bought the game? Why has warrior gone from the most versatile profession to being pigeonholed into an extremely dull support role?
The lack of diversity here is absolutely astonishing. It’s become no different from any other MMO- i was watching what people consider the best in the world do repetitive skill rotations. Does shoutbow or ele REALLY care about whats happening? It’s gone from being important to dodge, to completely abysmal.
Lets not forget that torches in general, rifle warriors, and summon necros are completely out of the picture from the game entirely, and that mesmers are an absolute mess of a profession with no actual purpose. Why are rangers more adept at fighting like a warrior than warrior? (6 second invulnerability? What the actual Fk?)
I hope the expansion breathes new life into this game as it’s currently a complete bore fest.
Ill make this easy- if grinding is what you came for, its time to leave. (points to WoW).
People play this game for how fun it is, not because they’re forced to do a raid 50 times a week. No one is telling you there is something you should be doing. I guess choosing your own destiny is too hard for some people.
Would this build be for:
Wvw ( If so, please specify if solo or group roaming, or zerg fighting)
Spvp
PVE outdoors
PVE dungeons
or Fractals?
Not sure what its best use would be but i’m sure it could potentially see viability in everything with a bit lacking in the outdoor PVE department (due to lack of mobility).
Strangely i couldn’t find any topics on a build using bow+rifle. A broad speculation would be that its effectiveness would stem from the ability to adapt to single target and group targets at range.
Since it has not yet been exploited or even attempted (and documented), i’d expect to see some utility skills like kick, bolas, ect being used. Or, perhaps banners since you can maintain a stationary area with this build.
You can blind, knock someone REALLY far back + slow and immobilize. You could argue one of the best immobilize builds could stem from this build with almost 10 seconds of immobility AND slow.
I hypothesize that the elite skill would likely be signet of rage as the build lacks and form of swiftness and needs the fury.
Perhaps some of you long time warrior players have tried this? Thoughts?
Sigh. I miss the day’s of a good game commercial/trailer. When this game was announced they had so many amazing ones. Its a mistake to put you’re marketing money into streamers.
1. Not everyone loves streamers, in fact some people hate them
2. It seems lazy- and streamers are more likely concerned with donations anyways. You might get a few shoutouts here and there but in the end its all about them. Me Me, giveaway giveaway donate donate.
Only the developers know how to spread their love of the game. Only they can tell us what they felt was the best they could do.
This message is sort of a shout out to Anet and anyone considering this game for its PVP. While i will say that i adore the mechanics of the pvp in this game. I have grown tired of its lackluster matchmaking.
So as someone with a 50% winrate this is what i put up with.
1. Certain matches i’ll get someone who has literally never touched pvp before.
2. Many game’s are so lopsided that- win or lose these games are just boring. And it’s not the fact that player’s are not trying to work together, its that you can be matched against AN ENTIRE PRE MADE TEAM while searching alone.
PS: If you can’t figure out how to match players on skill and experience then FOR THE LOVE OF ALL KITTTENS please change it so you can’t be matched against pre-mades while alone. This is the single most devastating flaw of matchmaking and regardless of skill this is a MAJOR problem. I don’t think i need to go into detail why… (teamspeak)
It happens when the downed person was knocked back, or otherwise teleported right before getting downed. The servers and the clients have different information about the downed person’s location. So you might see the stomp prompt come up, even the stomp animation but it won’t work because you are stomping thin air.
I guess the best thing you can do is to target them and ranged autoattack them as if you are using targeted skills, you could be targeting the wrong area.
The devs could come up with a solution- maybe if a player begins a stomp animation the server can try to figure out why. I mean- its not like you can just stomp whenever you want.
its by design ranger pets and mesmer clones are apart of their classes so working as intended
Thanks for the meaningless input.
To clarify (in case you were serious) this would count for players only. Clones of players can easily be counted in that category. Tab targeting somewhat avoids turrets and should do the same for Ranger pets. Ranger pets don’t deserve to clog my scroll.
Anyone here in PVP who clicks on screen onto the target they want? I didn’t think so. I use tab target to select my foe and it actually works as a major disadvantage when i have to scroll through like 3 ranger wolfs before it selects the ranger- its extremely annoying and i have no interest in attacking the wolves- like, no interest at all.
Suggestion:
Option: Tab targets players only (you can still click on the AI pets if you REALLY feel like attacking one and losing)
Over the course of three weeks- i have played about 200 matches of sPvP and on four occasions there were players who were somehow immune to being finished off by the “stomp” and can only be killed with direct dmg.
And its not just me- i remember 3 of us were trying to stomp one guy for about three tries and he was nearly able to heal himself up before we hit him down with our normal attacks.