Guild Wars 2

they can simply turn passives into actives.

for example, tempest has a passive stunbreak that casts gale song on cc. change it to “activate gale song with your special action key on cc”. the special action key was introduced with some living story episodes and raids. mine is on my c key.

so instead of getting a free stunbreak (or elixir, or endure pain or whatever) you have to press your special action key to activate the trait. instead of a passive activation i would have to use my c key to make use of it.

this has multiple benefits for the game:

- it brings more skill to the game, turning passive get out of jail cards into actives that need to be used at the right moment.

- it lets you actively decide when you want to use your trait.

a passive trait should always be a passive trait; gain x% of whatever. it should never do something actively unless they change it to a way that you as the player have to make use of it.

the build is completely fine. it has the same purpose that decap engi had back in the days and while it might be frustrating for some people to play against it, there’s nothing wrong with it.

this is conquest and bunker decap rev is a build that makes use of the conquest mechanic. this game needs more builds like these, not necessarily decap builds but pocket off meta builds like venom share thief or trap ranger for example.

it’s a one dimensional build that has one job it does well and is basically useless for everything else. there are 2 other points, go make use of them and leave the rev where he is.

ah, and no, i don’t play decap builds but have played against them whenever they came up in history

imo d/d condi is a troll cheese build and can be countered if you know what you’re doing, it is not a good build.

s/d on the other hand is a very tactical build and has a high skill ceiling. if you play it you need to exactly know the amount of condi cleanse your matchup has and when they’re going to use it. you need to know how to LoS and make use of terrain on each specific map. you need to perfectly time your skills, you can’t simply spam both venoms and steal. steal is your only interrupt and the venom is your “burst”. the build also only has 1 stunbreak which makes it vunlerable against matchups with a lot of cc like berserker.

so, how can you counter an s/d daredevil? drag him into open field. don’t let him use the terrain against you. stand out of infiltrator stike’s range and force him to go on your node if he wants to decap it. predict infiltrator strike and dodge it and he will deal no damage.

s/d compared to d/p is actually quite balanced. you trade mobility and killspeed for better 1v1 matchups and teamfight utility.

i think the biggest offenders here are daredevil, chronomancer, dragon hunter and druid. the 4 of them are just straight upgrades in terms of survivability and damage compared to their core classes (some more, some less).

daredevil is extremely mobile, has damage, has decent condi cleanse. thief was “very” mobile too in the era of core specs but never on a daredevil level. condi cleanse was something thieves usually struggeled with too.
what is deadeye? a stationary ranged damage dealer with less mobility and survivability than daredevil.

chronomancer has good pressure, good survivability and cleanse. core shatter mesmer was basically pure glass with no condi cleanse at all, a high risk high reward (more or less) spec. chronomancer added so many things that mesmer “needed” and people seem to have forgotten how mesmer played pre chrono.
now that mirage doesn’t have the defensive capabilities of chrono people start whining when it’s actually supposed to be an offensive spec (wether it is offensive enough or not is a different question).

dragonhunter is in my opinion the worst designed elite spec by far. it’s cheesy and had to be nerfed multiple times just because of that, has good survivability and damage. just the healing trap alone is a big upgrade over the block heal, f2 heals like double and f3 is great too.
if we look at firebrand that is melee heavy, more complex and doesn’t have instant virtues with great survivability, it makes sense that people prefer dragonhunter.

druid on the other hand is thematically a great elite spec. ranger was unviable in pvp for a very long time because it had bad survivability, mediocre damage and added nothing for a team comp and wasn’t viable for side nodes either because spirit ranger was dead, and condi survival couldn’t beat ele warrior or engi. with druid ranger got very good survivability, mobility on staff, good 1v1 for side nodes, good teamfight support and damage from pets. even on marauder builds you benefit greatly by slotting the druid elite spec.
what does soulbeast offer? while it’s a nice idea it kinda tries to be what druid is, just without the support and survivability. i don’t see soulbeast as a teamfight spec and it is heavily outclassed by druid for defending/contesting side nodes, and yet druid can teamfight too.

the verdict is, HoT elite specs added too much. the devs stated they want elite specs to be tradeoffs. you lose something but gain other things. most HoT specs don’t do that and just “add but don’t remove” things. people are dissatisfied with PoF elite specs because they follow that principle. it’s not that PoF elite specs are bad or undertuned, it’s that HoT elite specs are overtuned in terms of a design standpoint by what they add.

i don’t think PoF elite specs should be buffed to HoT level (well, some do need buffs but it’s mostly QoL and small number changes). it might be an unpopular opinion but i think they should really revisit the design of HoT specs and change them accordingly.

something i noticed and asked you about but didn’t get an answer was why you never use single attunements (eg. water/water). do you feel like it isn’t worth it? because water/water 3 has a nice heal and earth/earth good bleeding application. fire/fire and air/air kinda suck tho.

i tried to push my build a bit more into might stacking, dropping water for fire with hoelbrak and battle or courage runes but it just doesn’t work. survivability is low and stacking might is not worth it because of a) removal and b) low direct damage values on weaver skills.

sword/focus was also the only combination that felt viable, maybe dagger but i’m not too sure. marauder builds were a disaster and fresh air feels weird and clunky.

i’m not a fan of the global attunement cooldown and i hope they’ll buff the direct damage values a bit. gotta be glad that at least 1-2 builds are playable.
there is still a lot of potential for weaver if arenanet tweaks everything properly.

i felt that out of all the new elite specs weaver is somewhere in the middle. holo spellbreaker and scourge? on the stronger side.

global cooldown on elements feels terrible. takes away all the reactive gameplay and usually you don’t even stay in an element for 4 seconds.

Saiyan.1704:

I disagree with the fact that 1 amulet can do it all… high skill factor or not. Besides, this was only true for 3 classes so the amulet was very much unbalanced across all the professions.

If you want to have the Devs pull their hair out again, add Cele amulet back but tbh, no one is truly asking for Cele amy back, they are wanting d/d ele back. A huge difference.

i am actually asking for the celestial amulet, not the d/d ele. it opens up an interesting playstyle of min/maxing damage, buffs and sustain/support. while i did love to play d/d ele and have invested close to 3000 matches on it i don’t think it will ever come back, not even with celestial. it just doesn’t stand a chance against elite spec bruisers, and most likely doesn’t even have enough condi cleanse for today’s meta.

i see a lot of potential for celestial builds in some of the new bruiserish elite specs (and a lot of counterplay too, hence the thread), and would prefer not to be limited by only mender and sage.

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

The idea behind the new icons was that we weren’t pleased with the readability of the old ones. As others have noted, you had to already know what the rank art looked like to know whether someone had achieved a higher or lower rank.

That being said, considering the feedback, we’ll revert them.

if it’s about readability, why don’t you put the first gem-like badges back in then? or make a metal version of them instead of amber etc.

out of the current elite specs mesmer would probably use it the most. after that possibly engi due to auto might from hammer but with a different build.

i don’t know how well rangers can use it without a shortbow or a torch.

ele would stay mender because shout healing was nerfed already, if you drop even more healing shouts will become obsolete.

necro could possibly use it but is most likely better off with a pure condi or pure damage build.

guard nope.
thief nope.
rev nope.
warrior maybe but i don’t think so.

it’s all about the might stacking. if the coming balance changes can keep that in check it won’t be a problem.

Chaith.8256:

If Ele and Engi were balanced around having Celestial it’d be great, all for it, but they’re overtuned in PvP with Celestial stats

they should have balanced the classes, not removed the amulet(s) in the first place.

Crinn.7864:

Jekkt.6045:

berserker – marauder

Berserker is better off with either Demolisher or Berserker, not marauder.

most likely. i listed it as marauder because it basically functions the same way and is only possible due to warrior’s armor class and health pool. will edit in my post above.

Stand The Wall.6987:

might stacks are pretty easy to build up for some classes. also where is the mention of the now op sigil of battle? nice selective memory. even without might, cele is still the best stat combo to use for some classes; and because of this cele destroys diversity for those classes, not the other way around lol. its pretty obvious that you want cele back, but don’t try to tell me that its good for the game. I can see 4 hot classes using cele right now, maybe more with pof.

so you’re telling me that diversity is good right now?

dh – marauder
berserker – berserk/demolisher (marauder)
thief – marauder
necro – marauder/carrion
rev – marauder/deadshot
engi – mender
ele – mender
druid – mender
mesmer – sage, which is basically mender with condi

Allarius.5670:

I agree with Trevor. Assuming spellbreaker and scourge successfully counter what would likely be the rise of multiple cele builds: (1) you force all teams to include both counter specs and limit build diversity, and (2) if all the needed boons are stripped away consistently, what would have been the purpose to reintroduce cele anyway? Assuming both counters cannot keep up with aoe boon support of multiple opponents, then you’ve successfully slowed down the game and forced cele use to compete, again limiting diversity.

Let us move beyond the nostalgia of yesterday and try to concretely determine what cele would actually bring to the current state of the game and what we anticipate with PoF. Show us some theory crafting of builds you would expect to become functional and worthwhile only upon introduction of cele that are currently not or otherwise would not be upon the expansion release AND that would also be good for the game and promote diversity.

spellblade will be mandatory with or without celestial.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Depends on how these new specs run. If there is more AoE boon removal, adding cele back in might be worth a test run. But as it stands now, having a few single target boon removals with higher cool down times than someone who is constantly might stacking to 25 in 10s or less, isn’t going to make much of a difference in the cele’s power. You’ve also got to consider how many boons that person has that is covering the might stack. A team of cele builds also means a team of full on bunker support specs who are constantly tossing boons to each other, including might stacks… So when you get 2, 3 or more guys on a node who are all constantly buffing AoE mights on top of everything else, these new boon removals you’re talking about aren’t going to make much of a difference unless they are deep boon removals with no number limit, such as contemplation of purity with flat out removes all condis. Team boon support will be absurd and infinitely cycling when teams are wearing/using nothing but cele and support bunker builds. And if I were wrong but you were right, are you ready for a meta with UBER sustain where no one deals damage? Because that’s what’s going to happen in a full on cele meta with too many boon removals.

scourge has boon corruption on basically any skill, spellblade on most of the dagger skills and his ult completely denys boon application for 10s while removing 1 (or 2?) boons every second aoe for 8 or 10 seconds.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Simply put, Celestial stats honestly break the game’s pvp.
And the #1 reason why is might stacking is too godkitten powerful on celestial.

you’re missing the whole point of this thread. sigil changes and PoF elite specs have high boon removal, that’s why celestial is possible as a balanced amulet.

NotASmurf.1725:

Bunker meta killed season 1 and GW2’s best chance at establishing a scene, so they got rid of cele and other amulets.

Imagine if they suddenly brought them back just in time for something to go wrong and bunker meta 2.0 destroyed PoF’s first season LUL

Would be hilarious. And tragic.

I’m okay with a trial for celestial, just not right away. Wait until PoF season 2 at least.

the sole reason what broke season 1 was double support chrono. you could have played any amulet on that build and it wouldn’t have made a difference. anet took way too long to balance it. how about giving celestial a 1 season unranked only trial with PoF. if the amulet is balanced, bring it in for season 2 ranked.

Exciton.8942:

Jekkt.6045:

Exciton.8942:

Cele ele and cele warrior definitely take way less skill than any of today’s specs to play.

This is far from true. are you seriously trying to say that mender scrapper, medi trap dh or berserker are harder to play than d/d ele, shoutbow or rifle engi? sorry but that’s a ridiculous statement. not a single elite spec takes more skill to play than the core specs. even with celestial, d/d ele, shoutbow or rifle engi wouldn’t stand a chance against elite specs, druid would simply outsustain an ele.

those builds weren’t bunker builds either, they were hybrid support bruisers, filling 2/5 spots to be an anchor for 2 nodes, cleansing and healing your dps thief/mesmer/X and setting up bursts with the cc they had. their healing was also rather low compared to today’s healing output, that’s why you took 2 and not one tempest that heals 600-650k per match.

a celestial amulet with 460 per stat would be balanced as the total stats would equal 4 stat amulets, putting it 39/stat above the release celestial amulet that was considered trash and 100/stat below the celestial meta amulet.

Absolutely. I played a lot of these builds back in the day. They were waaaaay easier to play than any of today’s spec, even compared to trap DH.

Your logic is flawed when you compare the power level of these specs to today’s spec. Of course, today’s specs are all stronger but that doesn’t make them easier to play. Because you are playing against equally strong specs.

I agree that these specs are not solely bunker specs and I explained that in my original post as well. But that is exactly what made them OP as hell.

Just imagine today’s healer tempest also becomes the best duelist in the game. That would be totally broken. However, that was exactly what shoutbow warrior was back in the day. They carry teamfights while still being better than anyone else on point dueling.

Surviving on those specs is also much much easier than any of today’s spec. You can face tank so much more damage while today’s spec relies more on important skill. Again, take healer ele as an example, once you used your obsidien flesh, you are doomed if you get caught by a burst. Then think about old DD ele with rune of vamprism, even mesmer/thief moa burst can’t take it down. One can just go in mistform, go in water and come out full health in a matter of seconds.

celestial tempest existed on HoT release and was not a good duelling spec. tempest was only really strong with minstrel and has been neerfed multiple times and went from minstrel -> celestial -> cleric -> to mender amulet. post HoT specs are much more spam heavy than the old specs. there are far less important skills than before and the only good ones by design are chilled to the bone and reaper shroud 5. baiting dodges is by far less important than it used to be and all the specs have way more passive defense, more blocks, more invuls, more evades, more cc and more stability.

moa burst combo, or in general thief/mes/guard, were the reason why you had to run vampire runes in the first place. getting instant oneshot from stealth without being able to use your skills is about as bad as vampire runes themselves.

but that’s not the point of the thread. the point of the thread is that PoF boon hate would allow for a reintroduction of a nerfed celestial amulet because balance circumstances have changed against the favor of might/boon stacking which made celestial so strong in the first place.

Exciton.8942:

Cele ele and cele warrior definitely take way less skill than any of today’s specs to play.

This is far from true. are you seriously trying to say that mender scrapper, medi trap dh or berserker are harder to play than d/d ele, shoutbow or rifle engi? sorry but that’s a ridiculous statement. not a single elite spec takes more skill to play than the core specs. even with celestial, d/d ele, shoutbow or rifle engi wouldn’t stand a chance against elite specs, druid would simply outsustain an ele.

those builds weren’t bunker builds either, they were hybrid support bruisers, filling 2/5 spots to be an anchor for 2 nodes, cleansing and healing your dps thief/mesmer/X and setting up bursts with the cc they had. their healing was also rather low compared to today’s healing output, that’s why you took 2 and not one tempest that heals 600-650k per match.

a celestial amulet with 460 per stat would be balanced as the total stats would equal 4 stat amulets, putting it 39/stat above the release celestial amulet that was considered trash and 100/stat below the celestial meta amulet.

akaCryptic.2389:

The skill required in the cele meta was not a result of cele stats themselves. It was because defensive skills were fewer along with cc. Key skills needed to be timed well to outplay. Now builds are so much more forgiving, and passives are stronger than they should be.

That said, bringing back cele may not be the worst idea ever for build diversity. The 3 stats amulets give 3000 in total so 400 or 430 per stat might be reasonable (excluding concentration and expertise). This might be too strong for some PoF hybrids that have good might generation.

i agree, skill timings were important too back then.

celestial used to be 480 after the nerf for all stats (boon duration and condi duration should not be included), so if that would be too strong, which i kinda don’t think, a compromise of 450-430 would be fine too. as i said above, with PoF boon hate will become a real thing and a spellblade will most likely be on every team.

NotASmurf.1725:

I wanted to suggest the revival of Celestial in PvP not so long ago, but it might work too well with barrier which is why it’s probably a bad idea.

i don’t think celestial and barrier would have too great of a synergy. from what i’ve seen barriers on bruiserish elite specs like weaver and holosmith aren’t as big as for example on scourge. weavers get like 300 barrier for combination skills which is basically 2s of regeneration or less because of the decay while scourge, which is most likely played best with sage amulet, grants you like 4k+. this could also easily be balanced by letting barriers scale exponentially with healing power.

many people remember the celestial meta with hambow/shoutbow, rifle kit engi and d/d elementalist. many people miss it and other people condemn it.

why was the celestial meta so good? and why was it bad?
what was really good in the celestial meta was the amount of skill required to be effective. skill on your class was everything, practicing hours upon hours to perfect your play, making use of everything your class can offer. back then it was easy to see if a player was really good on his class or not.

on the other hand, this changed with the pre HoT traitline update when skill floor was lowered considerably and destroyed build diversity to a certain amount, and buffed classes to a point that wasn’t enjoyable anymore. one example would be 25 might stacks fire/water/arcane elementalist, smacking nasty 9 stacks of burning on you.

but was it really celestial’s fault?
no it was not. celestial per se isn’t that tanky nor does it deal that much damage. only 3/8 classes used it while the rest was using marauder or carrion/rabid. (later 4 with signet necro).

what made celestial so strong?
it was the combination of 15-25 might stacks, permanent fury, regeneration and protection that certain classes were able to pump out.

what changed up until now and why would it be fine to bring celestial back?
first of all, might stacking was nerfed a while back, and a couple of patches ago on swap sigils, introducing counterplay to geomancy and co and adding sigils that remove 2 boons. the biggest reason why i think it’s fine to bring celestial back is the boon hate that’s coming with Path of Fire. elite specialisations like scourge and spellblade specialize heavily in removing and corrupting boons.

lastly a personal opinion of mine and some people might not agree with me
it was much more enjoyable playing in the celestial meta with hybrid builds, direct burst builds and sustained condition builds than in the current meta with healbots, direct burst and condi burst builds.

removing all those amulets was a mistake. classes should have been balanced, not amulets removed and build diversity destroyed.

feel free to discuss, but keep it at a constructive level. simply hating on x or y is not constructive.

no. pvp is a kitten show full toxic players and win traders. balance is horrible and the skill floor is so far down from what it used to be. also, there is no competitive support.

Crinn.7864:

The irony of necro:
1) it’s entirely dependent on having a support ele.
2) it’s the best class for killing the other team’s support ele.

Necro is meta because support ele is meta, if support ele stops being meta then necro will stop being meta.

oh no, the “hyper carry” dps needs a support? what kind of concept is that

when stronghold was in beta players provided an incredible amount of feedback for the devs. the devs didn’t seem to care and didn’t do anything. you release a new game mode and then you let it die at the same time?

first they released courtyard – dead
then they released stronghold – dead
now they release 2v2
see a pattern?

change greater nullification to removes boons depending on the amount the target has. 2 boons → -1, 4 boons -2, 6 boons -3 with a normal cd of 9s

can you go a little more crazy with the sigils? even if it’s just ideas. post them and see how the community reacts. doesn’t always have to be on hit, or on swap.

how about..

the longer you stay in one weaponset the more damage you get, every Xs you get X% more damage. it needs to balanced in a way that it is better than 5% damage sigils in a reasonable amount of time. like after 10s you reach a cap of 10% or something. if you swap weapons the buff disappears. same for attunement swap, legend, kits etc.

i would like to see class specific sigils. this way you can give a class something they need without breaking the game. some brainstorming:

necro sigil: when entering death shroud, gain 50 endurance.
ele sigil: after swapping attunement, increase vitality by 50, stacks up to 4 times, lasts 8s.
thief sigil: on steal, remove 25 endurance and a boon from your target.
rev sigil: on legend swap, increase boon duration by 30% for 6s.
mes sigil: for every shattered clone that hits its target, increase your ferocity by 10% for 5s.
guard: gain aegis each time you use one of your f skills, 5s internal cooldown.
warrior: every time you hit your target with a burst skill, apply 10 stacks of vulnerability for 8s.
engi: using a toolbelt skill increases your condition damage by 50 for 10s.
ranger: each time your pet lands a critical hit, both of you gain 1 stack of might for 8s.

just some random ideas. i feel like sigils don’t really have to be limited to weapon effects only, but to offensive effects.

another option would be weapon specific sigils:

a sigil that increases longbow damage at max range, a sigil that increases dagger damage when hit from behind, a greatsword sigil that increases damage when you hit more than 1 person, etc.

megilandil.7506:

no, celestial is cancer, having power + condi presure at the same time that healing power toughness etc etc is to strong for some clases like eles

ironically, celestial is the only good stat combination for an ele in pvp… everything else sucks or is a band aid.

What would you guys think about a 1v1 or 2v2 arena fighting game with GuildWars2’s engine, but with fixed characters/builds? This is all fantasy, but wouldn’t that solve the balance issue, the watchability (streamability) issue, and still leave players with the core of what we love about PvP.

The really tragic thing about potentially losing PvP in this game is that, at its heart, the combat is really fun.

battlerite on steam. community isn’t that big but still bigger than gw2. you have to like arena style pvp tho, which i didn’t. afaik, teldo also plays/played it.

forget it. the game is 4 years old, many have dropped it already and even with a pvp standalone, arenanet won’t have the money/manpower to advertise it enough.

look at what happened to battlerite, that’s basically gw2 + moba/arena, and while it’s more popular than gw2 on twitch, 800 viewers isn’t exactly amazing either.

furthermore, gw2 is a terrible game to watch. too much spam, too many effects going on.

the only reason why pvp isn’t 100% dead in this game is because of pve rewards. i would say that around 70% of the “pvp” playerbase are made up of casual pve players that play for the pve rewards. that’s why the game mode isn’t “competitive” anymore. back in the days when all your rewards were pvp skins from pvp rank, the spirit of the players was completely different.

first was the AH support guard as a dedicated healer.

he was later outclassed by d/d ele, shoutbow and rifle engi because they could support each other with their hybrid builds, had more mobility and damage.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Jekkt.6045:

gw2 is everything else than remarkably well balanced.

What did you feel was so egregiously overpowered last season?

the whole game is in a state of overpoweredness and spam. core specs are basically useless, half of or even more of all skills / weapons are useless and should in no way be buffed with cooldown reductions. gw2 pvp used to be all about dodging high impact skills/combos or baiting dodges so you can land yours. this aspect of the game is close to nonexistent these days. balance looks different. just because it is playable doesn’t mean it’s well balanced.

Phineas Poe.3018:

They hit the things they had to. Purification was slightly nerfed, Adrenal Health was nerfed, Signet of the Wild was fixed, and both engi and rev saw some buffs. Last season was remarkably well balanced. We just needed more checks against DH and Berserker, and with condi engi being buffed we may now have one.

Besides, most of today’s balance is related to PvE changes, not PvP.

gw2 is everything else than remarkably well balanced.

and i wouldn’t call these changes good, they’re lazy and uninspired:

Frost Aura: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 40 seconds to 30 seconds.
Cleansing Wave: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 40 seconds to 30 seconds. The number of conditions cleansed has been increased from 1 to 2.
Earthquake: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 40 seconds to 30 seconds. Fixed a bug that caused the blast finisher to occur around the elementalist’s selected target rather than around their current position.
Frozen Ground: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 40 seconds to 30 seconds.
Healing Rain: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.
Static Field: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 40 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP only.

most of the stuff i’m reading in the patch notes is… “reduced cooldown by 5s, 10s, unsplit from PvP and on a global cooldown of Xs”.

guildwars is already way too spammy, why are you reducing cooldowns to make it even more spammy?

if a skill has a long cooldown, instead of reducing it, buff the skill so the cooldown is worth it… by reducing cooldowns all over the place all you promote is skillspam. it makes dodges less valuable and forces you into damage mitigation and invuls…

balance team, wake up!

Flumek.9043:

Jekkt.6045:

Flumek.9043:

They said it before.

season ends.
2 week after balance patch.
2 week of non season with new balance, hotfix if something is broken.
2 months of season and no balance midseason.

that… doesn’t make any sense. for what reason do you want to stay on the same patch after season end, waste 2 weeks that could be used for further balacing, for a total of 4 instead of 2… that’s not how you balance an “esport” game.

Official answer you can expect:
To sum up results of whole season, who won, who lost, how the meta fully developed. Then think which way to push balance.

Unofficial banter:
Anet doesnt anything for 2 months, then rush “something in 2 weeks”, if its not broken gg ez no work for next 2 weeks + 2months

you know, the sad thing is, the “unofficial banter” is what came to mind first lol.

Flumek.9043:

They said it before.

season ends.
2 week after balance patch.
2 week of non season with new balance, hotfix if something is broken.
2 months of season and no balance midseason.

that… doesn’t make any sense. for what reason do you want to stay on the same patch after season end, waste 2 weeks that could be used for further balacing, for a total of 4 instead of 2… that’s not how you balance an “esport” game.

balance? ¯\—(:/)—/¯

Sledge Stone.9017:

Hello notHelseth. I’m not a good pvper but I’m learning slowly. I just got into silver, I mainly play DH this season with a combo meditrapper/burn build, but I also enjoy my Reaper and Berserker. But with each class (mostly with my DH) I seem to have the most difficulty against Shoutbow and/or bunker druids.

Usually the scenario is I’ll come across one holding a point and I’ll 1 vs 1 them. They generally stay off the point and attack at range with longbow and bristleback. They always somehow get their bristleback to be on the opposite side of me and will strafe to ensure I stay in the middle of their attack so I can’t get the pet damaged in any aoe or cleaves while focusing on the druid. I get the druid down in hp, but then they toggle celestial avatar to proc stealth and condi cleanse and then heal while stealthed. The pet taunt annoys the hell out of me too because they must be reading my moves well and know when I’m about to burst. On my necro I can usually out sustain them and harass them with staff marks until they eventually go down. My warrior shield will reflect all that damage back to them as I close the distance to mace them so its not as much of an issue. But with my DH my bursts are often taunted by the pet (same with my berserker bursts). At that point the fight keeps going on until somebody +1s the fight because the druid keeps getting distance between us and I keep teleporting back to the pet with judge’s intervention or sword 2.

Question: Is there ever a time where its best to burst down the pet and focus solely on destroying it over the druid in a 1 vs 1 to take a chunk out of their dps? Sure they’ll swap to smokescale but the bristleback seems to be the more annoying pet to me because of it’s ranged attacks.

i can give you some tips as an ex-pvp veteran with 8500 pvp matches. first, if you don’t die that’s already good. second, never focus the pet, never. druids are most vulnerable after they leave celestial avatar, that’s when you want to burst/condi bomb them (they’re weak to condis). if they’re not on the point you don’t have to be either, use LoS to dodge the bristleback while trying to stick to the druid with sword. i’m neither familiar with dh, nor the build you play, but you should never slot more than your heal trap and the damage-passthrough whatever it’s called trap. if they’re in celestial avatar don’t get too close because of the root/slow, so range them with the lb you should have (i guess?). on berserker you shouldn’t have that many issues because you have stab in berserker form. kiting and regenerating hp is key on berserker. and about guardian, what i can tell you from past experiences, guards have a hard time against classes that can kite and outsustain them (for example, pre hot hammer or gs guard vs d/d ele). i’m not really familiar with the matchups atm, but if you feel like it’s not something you can win then try not to lose it.

yo helseth, which game balance do you prefer: pre 3 traitlines or S5 post HoT? honest answer

if it’s about pvp and you’re 1v1ing the ele on a neutral node, you already won even without killing him. the ele is the core of the team, supposed to be present in 4v4/3v3 teamfights, if the support is missing in those crucial fights chances are high that your team will win that fight.

Iain Ross.6903:

lol tempest is top tier and meta…

top tier and meta does not equal fun to play. i quit ele when HoT was released because the elite spec is as interesting as a snail, and i had 3000 matches on ele in pvp.

you see, the problem with ele overall is the importance of your self survival. the reason why fresh air ele doesn’t work well is because it lacks survivability and damage. give it survivability and it will turn into a pseudo bruiser. give it enough damage and people will cry because they just cry about anything that kills them.

what ele needs is more damage overall. fresh air ele is supposed to be a burst mage… and yet it hits like a wet noodle. turn it into the highest single target dps glass cannon, the core damage of a team that beeds to be protected that wipes the enemy team. dps ele never had much team utility, so don’t give it any.

on the other hand, if the damage gets a buff the skills need to be give counter play options. delay on scepter air 2 and so on. auto attacks are terrible so they need to be buffed too.

but hey, this will never happen. after all shatterstone didn’t even get a buff last patch :^)

don’t think any further tournaments are worth the investment. watched some of the recent world’s and wow did kaelaris look bored compared to other games he hosts… this should tell you what kind of an exciting “esport” gw2 is.

ele is completely dead and what remains of tempest is a boring spamfest. no other build than shout support is playable without crippling your team. if they nerf the heals/cleanses of tempest the class will completely vanish from pvp.

started pvp with a thief when s/d was meta. always wished i started with ele so i switched because i liked the amount of skills/combos, the bruiser d/d build (long before it was nerfed to death for the first time), and the amount of flexibility. ele got nerfed and didn’t see any play anymore so i went back to thief which i wasn’t enjoying much.
after a year ele got buffed again and i was able to enjoy the playstyle once again. back then ele used quite some skill as it was in rivalry with celestial engi and hambow war (later shoutbow). when i wasn’t Qing with my team i enjoyed fresh air in soloq even though it was a subpar build.
specialisation patch hit and the mechanical skill ele once took was gone. burn stacks and blind brought about the rise of trash eles and people flamed you for playing ele, even if you had over 2000 matches on that class.
HoT announced the tempest, the elite spec nobody ever wanted, only viable because of its brainless press-1-skill-aoe-heal.
played through season 1 & 2 to get my legendary wings which was the last thing i did in pvp.

shouts will heal over 4 seconds now instead of instant. – burst heal shouldn’t be a counter to burst damage.

shatterstone damage increased by 7%, radius by 3%, animation by 2%. – we feel like this skill has a lot of potential, so we want to build on that.

water scepter auto damage increased by 4%. – if eles suck at healing they should at least be able to deal damage.

phoenix can only hit 2 times now. – fixed unintended behaviour that was in the game since launch.

rebound heal will not be triggered by condition damage. – we feel like condition damage is not lethal enough.

…is what i don’t hope.

- started in sapphire (s1 and s2 legendary).

- played 1 match. was a complete clown fiasco.

- already have the legendary wings.

- ele still a healbot.

-> quit s3 on first day. no regrets.

1. why are you not watching pvp on twitch?
   - watching somebody play soloq is boring.
   - watching teamfights is disgusting because of all the random stuff on the screen.
   - many streamers are bad / not funny, why would i watch them.
   - tournaments are boring because there is no build diversity, no pocket picks, too many effects on the screen, and with all due respect to jebro… the casters are bad and unprofessional.

1. how could ANet improve viewer experience?
   - reduce visual clutter. and even then it will still be boring because there are no crucial plays, important skills; you just spam most of what’s on your skill bar…
   - casters need to become more professional. no hype casting.. no play by play casting all the time.. camera is terrible, often the camera doesn’t show the important stuff but rather a boring fight. where did the double camera casting go from NA?
   - build diversity. in gw2 you can basically run the exact same comp with the exact same traits on every single map… there is no build diversity at all…

1. What is the most imprtant thing you look for in a pvp srtream?
   - skill, if i watch a stream i either wanna learn or i wanna see amazing games
   - skill got less important over the years, so tbh it’s not even worth watching gw2 streams anymore

1. Do you think that the MM and leaderboard is gating the growth of GW on twitch?
   no

i just recently watched the finals of heroes of the storm global championship which had 56k viewers.. and then i remember the pro league finals for gw2 that had like.. 2-3k max?

the casters, the production, it’s all just simply better and more fun to watch. matches are actually interesting and you have a lot of diversity in teamcomps, even if there’s a strong meta.

that’s not the case in gw2, production is bad, camera is cringy… casting is meh and it’s basically always the same teamcomps… and the same 2-3 teams..

Classic Perception.2507:

All the ideas have already been repeated over and over again, i’m sure you’re aware of all this.

i don’t think they’re aware of it. or maybe they’re ignoring it, or don’t have the manpower to fix it.

i have played 1 match in season 3 to get my placement rewards from sapphire.
the match was a complete catastrophe… 1 player left, and the other 3 lost 3v2 on our homepoint the whole game.
i reached legendary in s1 and s2; the people in that match were supposed to be just as good – but they weren’t.

that, the fact that i have my legendary back and there’s nothing new in pvp/gw2 made me quit the game. if anet is not aware of those issues then i see no reason to play this game anymore.

the only reason why it was higher than usual is because people wanted to see what the “pros” play this season. viewercount will most likely decline over the next mondays.