Guild Wars 2

Really hope Tap Dat Mouse comes back. He was fun to watch both on YT and on Twitch. Was trying to link the 4.0 build to one of my friends and noticed I couldn’t find it. Thought I was going crazy until I found this thread and the related hacking incident.

I would love to know what builds are at play here. The Warrior seems like a really standard Power Roamer with Durability runes. But is the Herald anything special?

Edit: Just saw you are the Rev. Would love to know more about the build if you don’t mind sharing. Otherwise, great vid dude!

borgs.6103:

Boons you steal from it have a fixed duration.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Priority-Stealing-Resistance/first#post5174817

This is very helpful because it confirmed this seems to be by design. However, it’s terribly unclear and remains inconsistent with other things that are worded verbatim the same. If I was a product lead at ArenaNet, I would still consider this a bug. shruggles

Posted a topic in the Thief forums: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Bountiful-Theft-Boon-Duration-Bug

So, that’s what we thought too. And for Bountiful Theft, that is true. However. They are no where near that high. Swiftness is like 4-5 seconds. And it is only for Bountiful Theft. If you steal with the new trait or Lacerous Strike (sp?) then it will steal all stacks with the full duration that the boon had.

So it is not only not consistent between all boon stealing methods but it is also unclear if there is some default duration.

Reported on the bug forums, thought I would ask if anyone here knew why this was happening: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Bountiful-Theft-Boon-Duration/first#post6297244

Friend and myself were testing some stuff. I was on Guardian and he’s on Thief. All boons he is stealing from me only last 3 seconds. It seems consistent enough that this is not a bug, but we also couldn’t find anywhere (including the wiki) where it discusses this.

For example, I will cast “Save Yourselves!” which gives 10s, one stack, of each boon. When he rips them, he gets 3 seconds of whatever he takes.

Gotcha. Thanks for the reply. Watching some of your VODs and you even are like “Dodge the Plague Signet” — Crazy man. I have played sPvP since the launch of the game (albeit, on and off with long breaks) and there is stuff you’re calling that I can’t see for the life of me. My experience with other games is like… you can play it casually and never get better. Or you can play it critically, get into the game, etc and progress skill wise. I feel like with GW2 I’m somewhere in between. I’m playing to get better and don’t think I’m trash, but I’m clearly outclassed by a lot of streamers (just categorically with how people are calling things, etc).

Thanks for the video and I hope you keep producing content like this. Would love to see it, and would love to see other classes (if you play them).

Great video. Love the commentary. Question for you: Could you give general tips to improve? Of course the Thief specific stuff is helpful, but I feel I get overwhelmed with conditions when playing on my own in sPvP. Pro teams seem to have no issue with them. And observing your match, you always seem to know the right times to cleanse, see what’s happening (even down to calling Moa).

How do you watch for all these things? Is there any resource you could recommend to getting better at this stuff?

I agree with a lot of what you say. I think it’s a really level-headed outlook and would be interested to know more of what ArenaNet is planning. My assumption right now is they’re collecting a lot of data with the server pairing. For now, I remain patient and hopeful.

Xenesis.6389:

People need to accept that players will move to find better situations for themselves, a guild that wants to fight will have more opportunities to do so in t1 than they would in t4.

I would disagree with this — kind of. This week we were reliably beating larger groups because we can outplay people at T4. If your guild is good, you can win fights in T4 a lot easier than in T1. Even if you’re getting “zerged on”, a smaller, competent team will do better. So much of what I see in T1 is back capping. Yes, there are havok fights as well — But mostly back capping and a blob full of actual builds so it’s harder to zerg bust or for smaller groups to shine.

Xenesis.6389:

I think both the developer and player need to figure things out and get on the same page for links.

Nail. Head. Agreed.

Reh.5986:

Every server has to blob up sometimes as it’s the only real way to counter blobbing. Having a good mix, though, is what makes wvw more fun.

…

Much of it is the fault of the way the system works and much of it is bandwagoning.

I categorically disagree with the counter blobbing. The way you beat servers that only know how to blob is to outrotate them with havok groups. That group has so little mobility compared to smaller forces that can behave independently.

However, I agree that back capping is insanely boring, and it is pretty similar to an EOTM train. It is most certainly a systemic issue.

Gehenna.3625:

One could argue, as you similarly did in the upper quote, that a person would need to work for ArenaNet to know what they do or do not do. I hope you understand this made my contradiction sensors tingle to some degree.

Do not mistake what I’m saying: I’m saying we don’t know what happens there. But I’m asking the community, assuming they are logical, what do you really think happens man? They push changes then stop caring? Stop telling them to look at DH balance. Stop telling them to look at this that or the other. They know. Is that an assumption? Yeah, kind of. But it’s a relatively safe one.

Gehenna.3625:

I suspect that your particular brand of self-righteous anger will probably not improve any of that. Quite the contrary in fact.

And do not forget that even if the vast majority of this community were in fact entitled little wretches, they are still customers and this tends to be significant to companies. That would be a sad reality, but a reality nonetheless.

Don’t mistake me writing with conviction as anger. I’m not trying to improve ArenaNet, nor the community. If I was trying to help the community I would donate money to K-12 education and hope the situation naturally works itself out in a decade.

The vast majority of the community is exactly as you described. The issue is, the community on the forums is such a vocal minority. They are not the millions of players ArenaNet has had over the year. There is no evidence pointing to the forum community spending more money with ArenaNet (be it gems, etc) than the less vocal players. (I’m sure they actually do measure and track that internally, but I doubt we will ever be privy to that).

My point is that the community here on the forums is just toxic. You are not game designers. You do not understand formal balance. You are not educated to speak on the topikittenil people can humble themselves on that, and turn this more into discussion (rather than outcry) — nothing will ever get fixed.

Edit: To clarify, I’m not viewing people who don’t post on the forums as part of the “community” we’re describing.

I think the play for me is subbing out Endure Pain and seeing how that plays. It will likely be too little defense for the current meta, but maybe it will allow me to counter some classes nicely.

Right. I agree that back capping is boring. Everyone wants fights and I believe the burden is on ArenaNet to make that happen. To be clear: I believe that is happening. They have said that they are gathering data before releasing fixes for WvW. So hopefully it’s on their upcoming radar.

I was more just saying, as a YB player, I did not see many instances where we were winning because of numbers. There were certainly nights later in the week where it seemed the other servers gave up. But especially early on we were giving people the business.

Dude. This thread is toxic af.

First off, Anet beyond listens to their community. Ascended weapons only exist because of the “pve progression WoW first mmo” outcry community. It is my opinion that they listen to the community too much. The forums are a very vocal minority of their player base.

Second, you are not a game developer. You have no idea what it takes or what balance even means. Unless you’re a top-level fighting game player, Leagues player, or have a formal degree in computer science (specifically with finite state machines) — then your opinion is, frankly, uneducated. If they listened to every whim the forums put forth, we would hate the game. Players do not know what they want. Game designers are the creatives and experts. What I want is ArenaNet to step back into the driver’s seat and give us the amazing content that LWS1 and GW1 are known for.

Lastly, they are fine with communication. The community is so entitled to want hourly updates from them (or whatever pipe dream you’re expecting). Time is money for any company, and the more time they spend on here the less time they are working on a product — that is free to play — for you to enjoy. Knock it off with the entitlement. They said they would patch 6 times a year. What do you want them to say? “Yes, we are looking at balance issues” — Of course they are looking at balance issues. What do you think happens? They don’t push some change and not examine it. They are looking at a lot of things, and I would much rather them keep working on it than take time out of their day to answer some petty forum nonsense.

The community in this game is terrible and you should feel ashamed.

Right, right. I would definitely consider that. My issue is that the 10% damage and Taunt are amazing. I used to take the Stability but I wound up recently switching to be more offensive. I’m debating taking out Endure Pain. The idea behind that is with SoM I can apply so much pressure that maybe I don’t need the double tankiness and I can push them into a bad situation instead.

Does anyone think this is a solid take right now? I feel like it would really help vs Shield Chronomancers, Revs, and other Warriors. And when we don’t need it, it’s still a nice power boost. The issue is, what utility would we take off for it? I view Balanced, Berserker, and Endure as completely necessary.

Yak’s Bend player here — We have consistently been running havok groups against you, out rotating, and straight up winning 20v30 fights. The LGBT guild was camping spawn for a long time against YB, and we pushed out with 5 people against their 15+.

At some point, you also need to understand that since you weren’t in T1 maybe your population isn’t that skilled and it’s not all getting out zerged. Because honestly if you are losing to a 60 man blob with your 40 people, the solution is to run havok groups and back cap across multiple maps. Just saying.

This is roughly where my head is at btw: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoIhUMozB+NgPilHAroKMDfCCBgFwDwdymZ/sA-T1xHABvr+zAnAAv0DMnSQAeAALp8Tj9HAA-w I’m not sold on any utility skills yet. I love the blend of stats I get from this, but I do question if full Celestial might be better. Signet of Earth I love for the immobilize for hitting Earth 5. The toughness also helps vs power builds as well.

Gokil.2543:

I found that the 40% protection is pretty much indispensable. With enough boon duration you can at least drop earth for arcane which is a little more aggressive at least imo.

Glad the conversation was inspirational! Curious, are we talking about the same build though? The one you linked has Water/Arcane/Tempest. Where is the 40% protection coming from and what do you mean dropping earth?

What I’m thinking about trying over the next week is Air/Arcane/Tempest, but I’m not sure that can fly.

Gokil.2543:

I wrote this up a while ago hoping it’d help someone, maybe you’ll find it useful. Thanks for linking my video btw

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Tempest_-_Roaming_D/D

Of course! It was a solid video. What are your thoughts on subbing out Water for something like Fire or Air to be more aggressive?

Great discussion. I completely get what you’re saying. My thought process here was based around GW1. They had so many skills to choose from, and build diversity was rather good in that game. You had a lot of room for innovation, as you could take an idea and really flesh it out. It wasn’t always the most viable thing, but it was decent and fun. In GW2 I no longer get that feeling.

I agree with the point you make though — it’s possible that in the future other specializations will come out with no reason to take them. In my mind, this expresses more of a fundamental problem with how the game works rather than with having there be more skills to choose from. It’s silly, in my mind, to believe that we can continue adding specializations and now run into redundancies, unbalanced lines, etc. So many traits change things like… +25% movespeed, 10% damage, etc. They are huge changes in the way you play.

In my mind, I would much rather see skills unlocked independently of specializations. I would be 100% fine if the next expansion unlocked skills from professions, gave me a new set of skills (e.g. “Rage” skills for Warrior) that I had to unlock via quests, and rebalanced existing specializations to increase build diversity.

Elite specializations were a really cool idea, and I actually didn’t mind the way they were implemented. It made me feel like I was truly growing my character, even at Lv80. However, the power creep was unreal.

Generally classes had at least one “mandatory” specialization tree before HoT. Warriors it was Discipline, Thief it was Trickery, Necromancer Soul Reaping, etc. Some would argue that certain classes had more than one. With the introduction of Elite Specs and the power creep they bring, they have pretty much become a must take on every class — effectively adding another mandatory trait line. We can dig into the specifics as to why this is on a per-class basis, but I wanted to theorize about a solution that came to mind:

What would happen if we could use the skills (utility, healing, elite) from our elite specialization without actually taking the trait line? In my mind, Warriors would certainly get a lot better. Head Butt is massive.

Would that help build diversity? What else can we think of to start down a healthier path?

Yeah, this is about what I was thinking. It just bothers me because I’d really like to be able to take Earth or something more aggressive (Fire, Lightning, etc). Right now my issue with Tempest is simply that it doesn’t synergize well with Signet of Restoration. But I do like the Glyph heal — Water + Heal is a ton of healing over time.

Part of me thinks there is room to run Lightning + Glyph Heal for Inscription. The other part of me knows that Arcane and Tempest are so core that I will never escape them.

Curious though — Why run Glyph heal in this case over the shout?

Yeahhhh. I imagine this is going to get no traction with the wishy-washy rules lol. “Yeah but, I can ban something if I say it’s ban worthy”

What you deem as ban worthy is completely subjective and, frankly, you don’t have any credentials to be an authority on the matter.

If you had to spec out the most optimal Dagger/Dagger build for Elementalist, how would that look? Right now I feel like, at least for roaming, it is an old-school Celestial build without Tempest. I have found in my experiments that Tempest and Signet of Restoration don’t synergize particularly well.

But what are your thoughts? Right now I’m debating Water/Earth/Arcane and Water/Arcane/Tempest (inspiration from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvEpO5sTTRA). The motivation here is that I love the skill set and would like to see how far I can push it. Even if it’s some gimmick Fire Grab build (Fire/Lightning/Arcane) I would be ok with that.

Vicariuz.1605:

Remember in GW1 how conditions worked, and the builds that used them (Cripshot/Melandru’s shot Ranger) (or pressure heavy comps via hex+condition). Much more balanced, much more enjoyable. I personally don’t care if condi or power is stronger, ill just play meta; but the amount of aoe blind/block in this game is disgusting, the GW1 devs are rolling in their graves). Extremely powerful conditions should not be spammable, ever.

I think you highlight a very interesting point here. GW1 was much more about damage in vs damage out (sans the Mesmer shut downs which were incredible on healers). All things considered, given the non-action oriented nature of that game, the combat was more methodical and conditions made sense. I would agree with you that they were generally less powerful there in terms of damage numbers. But you summarized it well: Extremely powerful conditions should not be spammable.

Pretty standard pre-HOT specialization load out. Strength/Defense/Disc which you can see from the video. Also easy to infer that it’s full Zerker given the health pool (and you mention on the YT comments that you run some survival).

So pretty much your build is known sans the following decisions, which I could probably gather from watching the video when I’m not at work:

- Runes
- Sigils
- Last Stand vs Cleansing Ire

But ultimately, this build is pretty bad and gets outclassed by Berserker. The damage you get from Strength is just so small compared to the Berserker output (Swiftness, Head Butt, Quickness, etc). Good play though at least, and entertaining to watch.

This is a nice idea, but a really bad rule set. You clearly are just banning what your opinions are on the vanilla meta. Need more people to take initiative like this though to liven up the scene.

Lots of interesting opinions being expressed here. So much of this has been focused on balance, and I don’t think that’s the right approach for this. Instead, I will present a two-fold argument: build diversity and game feel.

Build diversity suffers because of how prevalent conditions are. As a Warrior, I pretty much have to take Berserker Stance, Healing Signet, and Defense Specialization because if I didn’t, a Necro could handle me faster than I could blink. Pretty much every “meta” build exists because it has ways to mitigate damage in ways that are extremely powerful, and often not counter playable. Whether that be sustain, condition clear, stealth, etc. The issue is these polarizing mechanics enforce a lack of build diversity.

It feels awful to play around conditions. They are generally just an annoyance and go against core ArenaNet design philosophy. Early on in development the mantra was “Watch your screen, not the UI”. Conditions are almost the complete opposite of that. Yes, there are visual queues. But how should I know, without looking at my bar, if I should remove the burning I have on me? Yes, you can wait until a tick of the damage. You can maybe infer it from the skill they used. But really you have to look at the number of stacks and know they are a condition build. Even if you don’t have to do that, playing this silly game of whack-a-mole with Conditions is not a good game feel. It’s terrible.

These are just problem statements. I don’t think Conditions are breaking the game from a balance stand point. As several other people have pointed out, Power is kind of the thing right now. However, sPvP remains boring to watch as a spectator sport because of how the builds work right now. Sustain and long time to kill runs rampant at high level gameplay. It’s conjecture whether or not this is by design.

Proposed solution:

- Conditions do more per tick but last a shorter duration
- Abilities that apply conditions become more telegraphed
- Increase visual queues for conditions, making them scale with the damage they will do (e.g. one stack of fire from non-condi is barely any visual queue, 6 stacks from a condition build is me engulfed in flames)
- Rework skills that provide too much access to conditions such as Signet of Spite

The idea behind this is that conditions become more counter playable and more of an active system in Guild Wars. The issue right now is conditions are pretty free to apply. So much auto application, so many skills applying tons of conditions, etc. It’s not a healthy state for the game and it should be a much more deliberate and active decision to use them, to cleanse them, and to have meaningful options to counter play without having to stack tons of cleanses on yourself.

So, I’m getting back into my Thief. I have never liked backstab builds in general, as I find the positional stuff more trouble than it’s worth and generally dislike the play style. I think the obvious answer to conditions for Thief is Shadow Arts. However, I’m trying to mess around with a Sword/Dagger or Sword/Pistol build for WvW roaming and sPvP in general — not super competitive, just fun and effective.

That all said: I’m struggling with finding a way to remove conditions. These are the options currently in my mind:

• Acrobatics trait line, Pain Response
• Sword 2
• Signet of Agility
• Hide in Shadows / Withdrawl
• Escapist’s Absolution

My issue with them, in the same order:

• This completely guts so much of the offensive power Deadly Arts brings. Despite this being an excellent tool for conditions, I feel like it’s not viable because of the trait line you give up.
• 5 initiative for one condition clear does not seem great.
• Again, one condition clear is just ok to me.
• Both of these are solid tools, but you give up Channeled Vigor, as well as not being able to deal with Confusion.
• This seems solid, but a bit slow for when you get condition spiked.

Where my mind is right now is that I have to use combinations of these tools and be very reactive (e.g. if I get condition spiked I need to pop my heal, and try to use another means — Maybe Shadowstep etc).

Does anyone have any really solid insight into this? I’m trying to recreate the crazy heavy-dodge build of S/D that we had back in the day. Heavy brawling/skirmishing, solid dodges. Maybe it’s a pipe dream, but would love to hear feedback.

That build was problematic. From the start, they said they wanted to avoid a trinity. Having Elementalists with one viable sPvP build and that being a dedicated healer is not a good place to be. This is the first step to a better PvP environment, methinks. I could be wrong, but at this point I’m just repeating my same point in several different threads. I will let it be and see how it plays out for now.

Tomiyou.3790:

You see, the problem isn’t that Anet decides to nerf. The problem is that Anet doesn’t address problematic things correctly. They just flip numbers.
Oh and these nerfs are probably gonna push ele out of meta, more than thief ever was, it’s gonna probably be as weak as warrior pre-buff.

I whole-heartedly think Menders will do a fine job. Will power builds eat you harder now? Yes, but that’s kind of okay since they were too powerful before. No one wants immovable objects. It leads to unfun gameplay.

witcher.3197:

Mender has no toughness, which makes you lose health faster, has a lot of vitality to make it harder to heal up and has lower healing power to make it even more impossible to reach the now much higher max HP. It’s worse in every possible way than Cleric for a support role.

It is worse in every way (sans dealing damage). However, that’s kind of the point. That build was far too strong and created a lot of problems with the meta. It was a well-targeted nerf.

Jourdelune.7456:

Nobodies know you around, are you a forum “chill”?

You speak about pvp much too well for a noob.

I guess I’m a lurker? I’ve been playing since launch, am a game designer by hobby, and play a lot of competitive games at a medium-high level — that’s where most of my diction and analysis comes from. So it’s more that I’ve played GW2 PvP seriously since launch, but really only read reddit and the forums on occasion.

In fairness, I really want to try M/A out when I get home. I used to run a build that was all about punishing people who blew too many stun breaks and then getting them with a full F1 to Whirling Axe punish. 20% buff today + Strength line. Nom nom.

Don’t think it’s competitive in any way, but I’ll have fun with it <.<

I’m surprised at your response. It’s well thought out and less emotionally charged than expected. I respect your view of this and am anxious to see how it plays out. I’ve been playing since launch and I do recall the times you’re speaking of (about Ele’s being gone from PvP). I hope you’re wrong and Eles can find a way into the meta.

There have already been waves of topics about how you made the “mistake” of removing Clerics. The reality is, PvP has been in an unhealthy state. Conditions are silly, the crazy time-to-kill for Eles and Druids was vapid, etc. The removal of Cleric’s Amulet, along with the changes made to specific classes like Druid, were extremely necessary.

It is the first in what I hope to be a long string of “game feel” patches. It felt awful to fight against a D/F Auramancer. Builds like that are what limit build diversity. If you are playing a D/F Auramancer two weeks ago, you output X amount of healing per second, regardless of what happens (assuming we account for interrupts, etc — but it is still an expected, measurable value). What this means is that if your build can not produce damage greater than X, then you will never kill the Auramancer. You would be forced to +1 them or fall to boring, slow gameplay of sustain.

This is not an ok reality for the game. It crushes new players, limits build options, and ultimately is unfun. More plainly, too much of the outcome was decided by what build you were using, rather than the skill you brought to the table and how that interacted with your build. Consistently they have pushed the idea of “minute-to-minute” combat. The D/F Auramancer build this targeted is categorically out of line with that mind set.

ArenaNet — You are game developers. You are experts. Please continue making the tough decisions that you know are necessary. This game is great, and I’m looking forward to coming home and playing tonight.

Cheers.

Note: I’m speaking strictly from PvP as the PvE rotation complaints about Ele are probably valid, but I have very little insight into that.

Edits in bold

Cleric’s Amulet was extremely problematic. If you want build diversity, we can not have certain amulets being strictly better than any other choice for a class. People stopped exploring things like Fresh Air builds because of how good D/F Auramancer was. I elaborated a bit more in another post

We need to remove the idea that you can do damage and be tanky at the same time. That being said, we do need to solve the core issues that plague the game: too much of it is focused on builds rather than skill-based dodges, etc. But many of their changes (e.g. Scapper lightning field) are pushing for this sort of counter-play based approach to their PvP. Over-all, this was a solid patch and removing Cleric’s was necessary.

This is a short-sighted response. Elementalist is completely viable, even without Cleric’s. The reality is that at low level play, the D/F Auramancer build was a free win. At high level play, it created a long time to kill that was unfun to play and watch. This is a much needed change to bring PvP back into a healthier state.

The issue with Cleric’s was that with Obsidian Flesh, Eles now had 900 Toughness against power builds, and great solutions against condition builds. And with 1200 Healing Power plus all of the abilities on their insane cooldowns, you could not simply ignore them. It created a build that had to be solved, and covered most of its solutions extremely well. More plainly: the Elementalist had to make the mistake.

Why not try the same D/F Auramancer build but with Menders? 1k Power/HP, 500 vit/precision. Pretty good, but now there is counter play from power builds. Beyond that, you’re making the assumption about what Elementalists have to do in your view. But that’s just not the reality. Fresh Air was a popular build for a long time, and is likely still viable in the right hands.

Long short of it: Give the meta time to redevelop. Clerics was problematic.

Backround: I’m a developer and understand the answer to this might be technical in nature. I’m assuming the sheer amount of hit detection becomes too great for the servers to handle. ArenaNet has a world-class technical background and I’d love to hear insight on this topic. But for the sake of discussion, let’s assume that is not the reason.

Consistently I see people complaining about two things:

- Inability to defend keeps vs a zerg
- Zergs dominating the WvW scene and generally being unfun

I play on Yak’s Bend and consistently get into small “Havok Groups” only to run into a zerg and die. To me, both of these issues would be solved if targets no longer had a max target limit. If 100 people tried to go through a choke point and we had 3 Elementalists bombing it, and wells ticking… well, suddenly that’s not viable. Suddenly you have to find other ways to win.

The idea here is that if every server has 100 (arbitrary number, I think it’s 300?) people, the goal shouldn’t be to get 100 v 100 fights. The goal should be to split those people up in efficient ways to win on multiple fronts. I think the “ideal” WvW state is to have havok groups a plenty with 5v5 or 10v10 skirmishes happening all over the map in organic ways. Guardian walls help prevent arrow carts, heavy AOE from Ele/Necro help defend chokes, etc etc. To me, we should be designing systems that punish zerging, not reward it. The less empowered small groups feel in their contribution, the more people will get driven away from WvW. Then you have a mega-power like BG emerge. Just a mass of people consistently zerging. And go figure — now a lot of them are quitting because “wvw is dead”, etc.

I personally really enjoy WvW and would really like to have a meaningful way to do small-scale skirmishes that are organic (e.g. Not some 10v10 arena). I wouldn’t mind GvG making a comeback from GW1, of course, but I would really like to make the best of this system.

TL;DR Remove target limit on skills to punish zerging instead of rewarding it.

ANYWAYS. Thoughts/discussion?

My two cents: I don’t like the ability for large groups of people to ignore AOEs or CCs. I thought this quarterly update was amazing, but I passionately disagree with the wall and stability changes. It is my understanding that both from a game philosophy and game feel standpoint, zerging is a behavior that you would like to not reward in WvW. The changes introduced in the update make them much stronger.

Choke points (such as door entrances to keeps) are already not as powerful as they should be because everyone can come in all at once and my literal meteor strike can only hit so many targets. The entire point of AOEs is to punish groups of people clumped up, and should directly combat zergs. To me, this design choice reinforced the big, zergy play that we currently see. Of course in T1 (I’m on YB) there is a fair bit of small fighting, havok groups, etc. However, zerg vs zerg fights are still insanely common and more mindless than I would like.

All of that said: I’m not sure what the right change is. Giving spells unlimited targets is nightmarish from a technical stand point I’m sure. But right now the feeling is I can pop Stability and Defy Pain and there is very little the enemy can do to me. “But what about boon strip?” — No, my 20+ other allies that are around me will soak those up just nicely. In my opinion, it’s more of a numbers game now than it ever has been. The stability changes and wall changes are no small part of that.

My issue with this line of thought (regardless of if the pastebin leak is true or not) is creates a static play environment with tools limited to a few classes. We will use Warrior (my main, admittedly) as an example for this. Right now one of their biggest issues is that they can not get damage to stick and they have generally become outclassed by the power creep that came with HOT. That being said, having stability strictly exist for its duration means that the only way to get around it is one of the following options:

- Strip/corrupt it
- Design stability in such a way so that it is limited and can be baited out

The issue is that the first option is limited in this game. Not many classes have means of corrupting boons in the volume that is necessary to make stuns meaningful. And of course the second is not true as well. There are many sources of stability in the game and enough stun breaks to save a lame Dolyak from getting combo’d.

That all being said, my issue with this mantra is that it makes stability a one-dimensional skill. The right fix is much more exhaustive because we really have two problems: AOE stuns that are inescabible in WvW and then balancing whatever stability around sPvP as well. It’s a big task and really should be viewed as separate.

My issue with WvW is that this really affects zergs and small teams the most. But the reason it affects them in the capacity it does is that you can be “inside” each other. As a programmer I understand the technical limitations with this proposed idea are insane and probably can’t happen because of WvW, but the right solution in an ideal world where computing power isn’t an issue is that you make people collisions. That way you can only have so many people in a space. It solves zerging and makes defending meaningful. It solves the idea of making a “max number” for AOEs. And more over, it means you can talk about true tactics for AOE stuns and how stability works.

The second idea is around sPvP. My big issue right now is that you really can’t stun people. It’s a perpetual dance where you strafe around each other, watch health bars, and manage cooldowns. This is not only unfun to play, but also rather boring to watch (hint: this is why their push for esports has received mixed feedback). When you see an incredible play happen in any other realm of competitive play, it’s because someone messed up and got punished for it. There are currently far too many “get out of jail free” cards in play right now. If I’m a Warrior and I have 3 bars of Adrenaline for my big 3s stun with Mace… that should remove more stability than a Shield Bash. My argument is that bigger stuns should be more effective against stability and give meaningful ways to achieve a “stun lock” or a “combo”. Not only would this increase aggressive play, but I believe it would also increase build diversity.

</ramble>

Hey all,

I was looking to pick up Elementalist but have been pretty turned off by them mechanically. I enjoy the idea of a caster but find Necro too indirect (IE: it’s a lot of conditions, whereas I just want to hard-nuke people). Is there an option to make the Ele more single atunement focused?

At launch I ran DD Combo for the high dmg crits on Fire Grab and that was fun. But in terms of viability I feel like it’s pretty bad right now. Too many people run stability and that shuts down your combo for a good 30s~.

Anyways — I’m just looking for some ideas on playing a more single atunement Ele. Any thoughts?

F2 ability based on your off-hand is god-like. It could work similar to the Thief’s dual (#3) ability. I think it would increase build viability.

I don’t understand why a dev hasn’t commented on the inclusion of this. One of the biggest goals of GW2 (as stated in early development) was to become a contender in the realm of eSports.

Right now you effectively have Paradigm and Legacy trying to hold on to that idea, but here we are almost a month out and we have barely got any support for it. I think it is confirmed that a PvP patch is hitting October 6th, but no word as to a mode like this.

Dislike. =(

I would really like a dev to comment on this. There is absolutely no reason why this wasn’t in the game at launch.

This absolutely needs to be an option in the game. For players who want an truly action-based combat system, this would go a long ways. Considering the coding is largely done for you, there is really no excuse to keeping this out of the hands of your players.

Dallas.2536:

THE PVP TIER LIST

good players
———————————————
average players
———————————————
bad players who get destroyed by quickness and qq on forums

I love you forever.

Mmm. It could be because my original post didn’t go through, but I’m fairly certain I covered use cases in even fights, in 1v1s, and in 1v Many.

In any case, I’ve stated my opinion more or less clearly: I do not think Quickness is out of balance. However, that is not to say it isn’t. What the latter part of that means is that we can not prove it. Balance is a very formal thing. You can literally prove balance, deterministically — in other words, game balance is not an opinion. Simply, we can just have intuitions to help us say if it is or isn’t.