Guild Wars 2

Awe.1096:

They could just add a /suicide command to sPvP only. Make it not usable in downed state and slap a triple respawn timer on it to prevent abuse. It is a super easy bandaid if they can’t prevent this issue from happening (might be encoded deeper into the game engine).

…This is the worst idea I’ve ever heard. you want to make people who are stuck have to wait 60 seconds to get back into the game?

dear lord…what about the griefers? i can just imagine a bunch of naked charr running to mid, /suicide and going on a 60 second re-spawn timer until the game ends. Sounds like fun.

dude, the answer is extremely simple…Fix the pathing. That’s it. It could take alot of work, and a long time, but that is the only answer to solve all these problems.

Everything else is literally a bandaid that gets rid of one problem and spawns another, more annoying problem.

There’s really not much else to say here. Anet needs to fix this. They also need to fix the pathing in this game…

They are doing alot to improve pvp, but they really need to address these old bugs that never ever got fixed, but still persist to this day.

Good luck trying to get the devs to fix the real problems in this game, like pathing…

Instead, they’ll just nuke out all the teleport spots making any class with any teleport requiring pathing completely useless in pvp

I had a little theory that after a certain point, something triggers in the algorithm that will try to balance out your win to loss ratio.

So basically, lets say you’ve been winning, and your W/L gets to 76-50, and your in plat 1. It’ll then place you in matches that favor the other team, as a test to see if you still belong in plat 1. Of course, you get rekt, and that 76-50 turns into 76-76, and after that the algorithm will change back to normal.

I think this happens on and off, and will trigger to reset your W:L so that your sitting at 50:50. The same goes the other way around as well. If you have 70 losses and 40 wins, it will give you 30 games that favor your team, to try and balance that to 70-70.

If you could provide more details, on how often this happens, and what your win to loss ratios are, that would be nice, just to see if any of this could be a possibility.

Personal story:
Last week, i had a series of games, which were excellent. I was in plat 2, and i felt right at home, in which everyone knew what they were doing, and the plays were so tight, that very very small details in the match were the deciding factor on who won/lost . I’ve never had better games than those few matches, and i felt like that’s where i belonged in terms of my competitive level of game-play.

Then after like 7 or 8 great games later, i started getting the crappy matches again, where people struggling to survive longer than a few seconds, rotate, kill stuff, people not understanding comp match-ups etc… and i dropped back to where i started.

So at the end of the day, i’m not sure what the purpose of the algorithm is for trying to reset your W:L ratio to 50/50. I guess its to determine whether you are good enough to carry yourself out of crap matches, which gets very difficult, the higher up you go.

1) no

2) no

3) no

4) no

5) Errr…sure why not. They kind of already do this, but the way they do it now is strange. They add the two MMR’s together, and average them out, but it will not bring down the range of the match equally. Like lets say you que as a legend, and you duo with a bronze. You will get platinum rated enemies, but gold level allies, and you will lose a kitten ton of rating if you lose the match. I believe this is how it works, not 100% certain.

6) okay, i agree, but i can see why people would be against this. S4 and previous wasn’t so bad when the ranks were shown for each player, so it wouldn’t hurt to see the team mmr just to see if the algorithm is working.

7) Ya, nobody likes it, me included.

8) Not sure what this means, but i’ll just say no.

What if the world just stopped complaining about kitten and started offering informed counter criticism.

Spoichiche.1290:

Okay, so, hopefully i managed to clickbait a few guys here.

Hi everyone, i’m looking for advice on how to improve in spvp, both with fight mechanics and rotations. I’m currently playing rev and ele, at low plat2, and i realise that it’s gonna require quite some effort to actually perform well at that level.

Here’s the match : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa6N5uJiFxw

To be honest, you did pretty well.

To start, your team was at a disadvantage, as they had a thief and double mesmer with portal, so they are able to rotate way faster than your comp. You and your team made the right call at the start, You and ele at mid, leaving the guard to home.

• Around 3:53, it gets tricky. The thief and mesmer took the even fight between you and ele while you guys were on CD’s from the previous 3v2. at 5:20 Your guardian lost a the fight at home with the enemy druid and a +1 thief, They took this opportunity to snowball you guys pretty hard from this, not much you could have done here as a Revenant.

• At 6:50ish, you take the +1 at home with guard against druid, while your ele went to mid to contest an enemy node in a 1v2? Personally, i though this was a bad call. You got their in time to peel, but you guys needed some more coordination there, he should have been heading towards home rather than far if he was being pressured and needed better peels from you. Plus him going to mid in the first place may have bought you time at home, but both you and the ele got nothing out of that play by splitting up. Even thought its a tough choice to do a 3v1 split, sometimes you need that regroup, especially after a snowball.

• Immediately after your ele died at 7:30, the enemy ranger was once again on home, but now he has a thief +1ing. Your guard is gonna die again and lose home if you don’t do something, and your fighting a 2v1 at mid. You should have left mid pronto to make the home fight a 2v2, and peel for your guardian. I think you got lucky, and the enemy made a huge misplay by leaving you when you were being rezzed by the pet in downstate. If they would have killed you, that would have given them a crazy advantage.

• Anyway, at the same time at 7:50 ish, your ele is the one that goes home. The thief that was +1ing left (a misplay on his part imo) in order to get to that off-node fight.

• Now, also at this same time of 7:50ish, Your ranger+guardian who were rezzing you, were under so much pressure from the attempted rez, that they ended up getting nuked shortly after. This was just a consequence of burning CD’s to try and get you up. Sure it was somewhat successful, but your team ended up paying a price anyway. After you get rezzed up you go for the 1v1 at far, which of course turned into a 2v1 (a +1 from the thief) and you ended up dead. I think that was a huge waste of your time, but you really had no choices there due to that entire situation.

So those crucial key moments, both misplays on your part and the enemy played a big role in the match. After you were given that second chance when you were rezzed, you should have done something more useful than try to contest far node. Because essentially, you wasted it, and it allowed the enemy to snowball hard. In addition the enemy team was getting hammered in some important fights that they needed to sustain from. So they got a triple cap.

• at 12:50 ish, you made two amazing plays, getting both kills on the mesmers there. That was super clutch, and mechanically, you did all the right things to get those kills.

The enemy druid around this time was trying to attack lord, in an attempt to drag you guys to the lord, which he failed miserably at. The guard and druid became a non-factor, and he left his squishy team to try and hold a 3 cap, so he kittening throwed the game so hard for his team by doing this. The guard who engaged the 1v1 made the right choice by “keeping him busy.”

This misplay by the druid allowed you to recover from that devastating 3 cap. Eventually the druid realized his mistake and tried to return home, but against your bunker team, it was too late, and probably the worst call of the game. After that everything’s history, and it was just a matter of contesting all nodes, and holding the ones you had.

All in all, you should try to improve more on the what-if rotational choices. Like, you need to think preemptively, on what happens when you do certain things, and how those things will play out in the future. Like, you should have known that if you tried to fullcap far by yourself, that eventually someone would come to 1v1 you, and that the 1v1 would eventually lead to a +1 from the thief. You cany hold the node in that 1v1, and you definitely can’t hold it in a 2v1 in that kind of matchup.

Other than things like that, understanding your comps strengths was important for a match like this. They had a DPS heavy comp, with good 1v1 potential from the mesmers, and a perfect +1 potential from the thief. You guys had a bunkerish comp, being able to hold nodes and sustain fights. You and your team for the most part, took advantage of this, especially during the later half of the match.

The 3 way split on the nodes was probably not the best idea for your comp, i think securing two nodes, and bunkering down would have been a much safer play, and having your ele rotate between mid and home would have forced the mesmers to create portal plays to zerg. It would have put you guys in a huge rotational advantage, just swapping between two nodes, forcing team fights.

Vague Memory.2817:

I’ve played Mes for a few years now, and there is no “one shot” can be done. Out of all the classes mes has one of the lowest effective dps. If you build for damage you have to sacrifice sustain, old skool style, unlike some other classes. Highest single shot/skill classes including effects are Thief, Warr, and Guard. Sounds like the Op got hit with a skill combo.

Naa, Mesmer is the only class as of right now that can one shot people with an array of burst skills. It usto be stronger before the patch.

But for those having trouble with this build, you need to be able to dodge the shatter. Most the time, you’ll notice the little purple kitten hit you, combined with a stun. You need to Stunbreak and dodge as soon as possible to avoid the rest of the spike.

If you want to avoid the spike all together, you need to preemptively predict the shatter. If the mesmer used Mass invis, it can be tough, but if not, you will notice the clones start to run at you fast. That’s a good indication to dodge, and more than likely you’ll dodge the spike.

So Sigil of Enhancement’s effect :

“Deal .5% extra damage per boon on yourself.”

The assumption is that for every individual, separate boon on you, you’d gain .5% damage.

This would mean that in order to get 5% damage like the rest of the sigils, you’d need 10 boons total…sounds pretty difficult to achieve for the majority of classes in the game, even then it’s still difficult to achieve even to match the power of the other damage sigils.

On the other hand, if it was .5% per boon, even stacked boons, this would mean that having 25 might would give 12% damage, on top of stability stacking, or any other stacked boons…so it’s either too strong, or too weak.

My question is, has anybody tested this? I’ve been trying to test it and i can’t get a definitive answer.

PierPiero.9142:

Another thing strange i see is that it is now full of terrible rangers. Rangers which die in seconds and not do damage at all. I have not idea which builds are they using .

Ya I’ve noticed this too. Good druids shouldn’t die in 1v1’s, period, If they do it’s because they are being murked in a 2v1, or 3v1 by a necro and/or thief.

The rangers I’ve seen die in seconds in 1v1’s, or in team fights…in plat games. it blows my mind. I’ve also seen a lot of condi trap rangers lol.

I had a bad night yesterday, nearly a 15 game loss streak, fell from plat to gold 3. Some games i felt like it was impossible to carry because the opposing team was decent, while my team wipes to a single burn guard or something ridiculous like that.

Ya, they need to make the place a bit more spacious, especially in the training area and the brawlers arena.

If they could manage it, add a location for dueling, because i mean at this point why not? it would be great for those who would rather duel one another and learn stuff instead of just mindless carnage into a brawl. We have WvW for that.

Aside from changes like these, i think the new hotm map is wonderful.

Agreed. They did a nice job. I like the little areas where you could just lounge around and chill.

Although i still think they should have added dueling (There’s many reasons for this) instead of brawling to the lobby, it’s still an overall better lobby with more things to do than before.

It was simply too strong as a no-skill gimmick. Good players getting roasted by noobers with overpowered mechanics.

We’ve already been through this with DH trap causing daze. Why did we have to go through it again.

And no it wasn’t smiter’s booned. It’s still better than what it originally was.

omgdracula.6345:

Could you relink the video. I just wanted to take a look at it. For the fact you said staff daredevil but every skill mentioned sounds like typical D/P.

Ya idk why the OP decided to delete their post.

I think he’s staff/DP Bound thief.

word.

S/D is so fun to play. But i feel like i hit with the stregnth of a wet noodle.

Locuz.2651:

Ive seen horrible players complain about MMR hell.

- Ppl who died non stop (10+ times per game) every game i played with or against them.
- Ppl who seem to do little to no pressure or healing resulting in them getting 1vs2 or even 1v3ed.
- Ppl who have clearly no clue about rotations, capping empty points with 3-4 etc.

And still they complain about being stuck in MMR hell.

Its never their fault…always the sucky teammates that keep them down.

I went from plat to gold this season. Partially it was due to ppl randomly afking….but it was partially because i sucked as well the first few games.

MMR hell does exist. It’s just not so apparent as to where it is, because MMR hell isn’t a specific place in the rankings.

I like to call it “Personal MMR hell” because its based solely on the players ability to carry. Like i said in the previous comment, you need to be able to carry the bads super hard in order to advance. If you can’t carry hard enough, you will lose and be stuck in the viscous cycle, of bads bringing you down with them. As you progress, you will find more and more matches where other players are also trying to carry, until every game consists of people carrying each other (Which is what i call civilized gameplay)

Most people who complain about mmr don’t understand that at all, and just say that “silver sucks” or “gold sucks” When really, it’s more like a myriad of terrible people across all leagues who get carried into higher leagues by better players (or their even their own builds). Those terrible players will stay in those leagues normally, but the ones who try hard and can’t carry hard enough don’t exactly belong in their mmr bracket.

I mean i’ve seen really good players get stuck in certain leagues (including myself in S5), and i know for a fact that they were better than 90 % of the baddies in the game. Like you can tell when a good player is fighting 3v1’s on a contested node, JP kiting like a boss, while the rest of the map is zerging, struggling to kill someone else on their team doing the same thing. It just means that out of the 10 players in that match, 2 of them were good, the other 8 were terrible. and the guy who lost didn’t deserve it because they were the ones really trying to win. This is personal mmr hell.

EremiteAngel.9765:

Thanks!!!
That was very helpful.
Looks like I am better off not dodging his steal from blinding powder? The backstab seems to hurt a lot more…

If I don’t dodge his steal from blinding powder, will he still be able to go invisible and backstab?

Like someone else just said, you did the right thing by dodging his steal.

If he dodges while in blinding powder, he will go stealth regardless of whether he lands steal or not, and the only way to counter the incoming back-stab is to reveal him, or dodge his spike again.

Frankly, as a Necro with no defensive options, there was not much you could have done to avoid that spike, other than to gain enough distance away as to not be hit by the backstab. At that point in the fight, you were in Axe/WH while in close quarters. I would have immediately switch to staff to throw some marks on the floor.

I don’t know why people complain about duo que’s. It’s not that difficult to juke a team with duos. If the entire team understands pvp, than it shouldn’t be that hard.

I do feel like the matchmaker is trying to give you a 50% win rate (I had a 8 game loss streak after a 10 game win streak in plat, in which my teammates went from competent to completely terrible…) I always fought the same talented people (I knew some on the opposing team, on leaderboards last season) and i always had the same ridiculous low golds on my team…condi-thieves, squishy guardians or just people lost in terms of how to rotate according to their matchups (Engi’s engaging necro in 1v1’s smh)

But to be fair, it just means i needed to carry way harder until i can stay in plat. There were games where i made small mistakes that you just can’t make if you want to win in plat games

So…

1) This thief has a few stuns. Traited Steal, which dazes for a second, and Impact Strike, which has 3 available CC’s, Each with about a second stun each :
- Impact Strike
- Uppercut
- Finishing Blow

He also probably has Bandits defense, which when blocked, he gets a counter attack that kicks you down for a second.

2) The thief used a certain combo, and triggered it in a certain order. You dodged steal which is good, but because he starts out with blinding powder, he dodges, triggering bounding dodge animation, while stealing (which you evaded), the Bounding deals damage to you, followed by him entering stealth, ending with a backstab.

The order is something like this : Blinding powder -> Bounding dodge -> steal (This made him teleport to you) -> You dodge steal -> Bounding Dodge stealth -> Backstab

.edit: edited for clarification

Umm, you don’t need a meta build in order to carry.

You need a core understanding of your role, and understanding of your good/bad match-ups in order to know how to rotate properly.

Meta builds just happen to be the best possible build to use in comparison with the rest of the meta.

Here is the thing.

MMR hell actually does exist, depsite what the nay-sayers say.

In order to climb out of low ranks, you need to carry games super kittening hard.
If you try to carry a game but it’s not enough carry to win, then you lose just like your bad teammates. You are essentially forced into carrying the bads super hard every game until you reach what i call “civilized gameplay” in which people are no longer struggling with basic concepts and mechanics.

So if you are the type of person who is “good” but can’t carry hard enough to win games, then you will be stuck in MMR hell. There is no middle ground. It’s either you carry like a b0ss or you lose and stay in silver league.

I don’t know what you play in your ranked matches, but if you want to carry, you need to also play a class that can carry hard, like thief, mesmer, necro, ele or engi.

Ramoth.9064:

The problem is, there’s little to no information for a new player to understand this. Like I said, sure, it doesn’t apply for all situations, but there is likely more certainty in getting a decap, than there is killing an enemy.

There are lots of low level games where people fight off points, when they could have gotten a decap definitely.

Isn’t it better to arm the average player with this information rather than have them discover it for themselves blindly?

I’m gonna try and respond to this with an example :

John Conway’s “Game of Life” is essentially a computer program with 3 very simple rules. From these simple rules, the complexity of the system increases exponentially as time passes, until the program starts exhibiting structures that we see similar to the mega-structures we see in the universe., like galaxies, and star systems and just increasingly complicated behavior for a computer program.

Conquest is very similar with regards to its complexity. There are very simple rules, and from this, a vast array of different possibilities become possible. It’s the reason why we see such drastically different approaches to the same mechanic in both low level and high level game-play.

For example, in low-level game-play, people tend to fight off nodes because they are tunnel visioning and zerging. While in high-level game play, people tend to fight off nodes because the securing kills and surviving become more important than keeping a node contested. Both are the same in terms of mechanics, but used in vastly different ways.

The appeal of conquest as a game-mode is it’s complexity from simplicity, something that Death-match doesn’t really have to offer.

In addition, there is really no straightforward tutorial that can be made to streamline the process of winning. Like you said, there are situations in which fighting bunkers on their capped point does nothing, while at the same time, you might be forced to fight a bunker on their point because your team forced a rotation (for example, if your team wipes mid and home, your not gonna fight an outnumbered 2v1 at mid/home…you have to fight the 1v1 at far)

Ramoth.9064:

I’ve explained to new players after a game many a times that decapping a point is almost always better than getting a kill. Killing a player earns 5 points, 5 points that they would accrue in 10 seconds. If a player holds out for 10 seconds and you chose to fight them instead of getting a decap, you’re fighting at a deficit. Obviously, this doesn’t apply to every situation, but it is generally true.

Okay, i can see the reasoning behind this point.

However, i have to disagree, that kills aren’t as important as decapping. It’s really complicated to articulate, but removing someone from the game for 15seconds+the time it takes for them to get back into the fight+a decap and or fullcap is much more important than just forcing a node into contest.

There’s more to it then that, but its complex. For example, if you are fighting a tanky team, getting a kill might not be worth it because by the time you kill somebody else, that previous guy comes off of respawn to further contest their node. On the other end of the spectrum, chasing down a tanky engi trying to kite is important because if you give him too much time, he will just reengage the node and reset the fight. I’ve won 2v1’s like this on my necro (and 3v1’s on my ele) because people focus on trying to full cap the contested node, or defend their node rather than trying to pressure and kill me.

I didn’t do so well in my placements.

But i’m not worried, i can always carry myself into plat, it’s just now i have to play more lol.

Alatar.7364:

Should you be in need of a little bit more damage, one of the sigils can be swapped for Sigil of Fallibility. It may not seem like it, but the amount of vulnerability it applies boosts your dmg a lot. Also I am not really sure if 6th of Rune of Adventure is really worth it over entire rune bonuses likes Scholar, Wurm or Vampirism. But I guess it is a matter of personal preference.

So i’m gonna look into Sigil of Fallibility. As far as i can tell, on paper the damage seems marginal. Removing 3 boons via sigils, plus another 3 boons via steal is pretty hard to beat. Sigil of Fallibility will only give you 5 stacks of vulnerability, a condition that is easily cleansed, so it doesn’t seem all that great to me.

Like others have said in the thread, The adventure runes 6th bonus is very potent for a number of reasons. The Runes you’ve mentioned also have some flaws that don’t make it good for a PP build.

• Rune of the Scholar : Most of the time, you are almost never over 90% health in a fight due to retaliation or even just from an enemy autoattack, So you are mostly relying on the passive stats it gives, which is just a marginal advantage over much needed survivability.

• Rune of the Wurm : 7% Vit to Ferocity is cool (15% extra ferocity). If you crave more damage over survivability, go for it. The vitality provided by the rune is near useless for a thief, because their defenses come from dodging. Rune of the Wurm i think is not as powerful as Rune of strength though. Your might stacks is what gives you a kitten-ton more damage, and having longer might duration helps keep you at 25 might stacks.

• Rune of Vampirism : Now I’ve never experimented with this Rune. I know that it has a bigger advantage in big team fights, because the life-steal gets bigger the more nearby foes are around. Like i mentioned above, a thief’s defense originates from dodging, which is straight mitigation along with a slew of other nice things. Because you are a PP thief, you generally don’t even want to be near enemies in the first place. Even if you are stealing 5k health in a big team fight every 40 seconds, it just does not match up to the usefulness of a full on extra dodge.

babazhook.6805:

The thing about Adventurer is that while damage lost when compared to those other runes, survivability ramps way up and IF you use one of the other dodges as example, you can generate extra damage via that dodge that those other runes can not,

I quite agree with the Ops premise that damage is more than sufficient in this build. I think too many fixate on getting ever higher numbers when you in fact do not need them.

DeceiverX.8361:

P/P generates so much damage as it is via Unload that there’s very little reason to push for BD. Especially since the bonus range is so good given the set’s desire to kite, while also making the thief effectively immune to chill/cripple/immob which otherwise easily kills P/P.

Yep. I’m glad others can see why the Adventure Runes are useful, especially for a P/P build. I’ve spent a lot of time theory-crafting a meta-capable PP build, and that a lot of options open up to you by just using these Runes alone.

Not only does it feel good to refill your entire endurance bar with juicy endurance, it can potentially free up a utility spot that would have otherwise gone to SoA, and accommodate the build to fit with the enemy comp. If you are facing a condi-heavy team, you can take Signet of Agility instead of Blinding Powder/Bandits Defense, or you can also exchange Bandits Defense for Shadow-trap for god-tier mobility.
————-
I also wanted to point some other things out.

The more damage you do with PP, the more dangerous reflects become to you. Having just the right amount of damage (not too much, not too little) can mitigate the risk of a bad stow on a reflect, while still doing enough damage to burst things down.

And of course, If the opposing team is too reflect heavy, then it’s simply a matter of being hard-countered. You can easily swap to D/P, change a single trait around to go from being hard-countered, to being DP Meta.

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.

This is a hilarious observation. We are victim to our desire for maximum efficiency.

FrownyClown.8402:

In my humble opinion, this build would be much better with easier access to stealth. Is there any benefit to using bounded dodger for stealth? Or would the use of pistol 5 cost to much initiative to be worth it?

I don’t main thief but I applaud the effort to theory craft new builds.

I see this a lot, Most thieves will try and tell you that bounding dodger should be taken over Unhindered Combatant. But in my opinion, Bounding Dodger is much more of a duelist trait, rather than a conquest trait if you know what i mean.

Dodger makes you slow, no matter what weapon set. The extra damage modifier is nice, but it’s not necessary…especially with the recent changes, there’s no need to do any more damage. The only reason you would take dodger is to duel other’s, which doesn’t fit “the role of the thief” in conquest.

Stealth is great and all, but if you position yourself correctly, it’s not all that necessary. If you are being a good +1, you are literally going in, pew pew-ing for a few seconds till they die, and then you’re out again to the next +1. There’s would be no need for the stealth other then to have an easier time versing DP thieves. Hope this helps.

Since fellow thieves were having doubt’s about the viability of P/P as a weaponset, I recorded some games to show that PP Dash can indeed be a viable alternative for SPVP.

Now, just a disclaimer, this is an unranked match, but the idea is that you play it exactly how you would play D/P thief…Sindrener style, except you are using pistols instead. Don’t get me wrong. DP is still the best weaponset, and is the only one that will be seen at top level gameplay…don’t expect PP to be on that level…But you can still perform all the way up and into Plat.

This build’s main attraction is that it takes advantage of Adventure Runes, which provide you an extra dodge every 16 seconds, giving you an enormous boost in mobility.

Build Link : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaVn8lClOhFmCmPBkmiFYCbOEWCbhephzQbQLBEA2NA-TpxHQBA4IAsj9H83JA4alBU4DAQZHCAA

Enjoy.

Mrbig.8019:

Shadow refuge was good for party stealth, not really for ressing.

Naa dude it was and still is good for rezing. It heals for like 2k per tick in downstate. It’s just not as good over other power rezes provided by druids and engi’s.

haha. I’m the type of person to join the losing teams because i enjoy trying to overcome challenges.

Some people just get a kick out of stomping others…I just don’t see the fun in that.

A down state for the creatures would be cool…

But are you really being serious? It’s totally fair and balanced, and fine as it is. You should be punished for being unaware of the enemy players in your vicinity, or for engaging in combat knowing you don’t have any burst damage to deal with enemy sneak attacks.

and your Q is not even a question…it’s a suggestion… You might as well change your signature to say “I’m new to the game and want to complain about mechanics that i don’t understand”

Martym.6971:

@ your bottom paragraph, I literally stated this in my response. Wasting time? This is subjective if the opponent also wasted the same time to defend the node not capped. Sure you would be a moron to go around 1v1ing capped nodes, but giving up uncapped nodes? That just speaks volumes for your skill level and expertise as a Thief.

This just further proves you have no insight into higher levels of game-play.

No, good thieves do not fight 1v1 over full cap nodes… Once a node has been decapped, there is no other reason for them to stay, other then to finish a +1. For a thief, the better play is ALWAYS to leave instead of engaging the 1v1, whether it’s your cap, contested cap or the enemies cap.

Ask any decent thief and they will tell you the same thing.

Martym.6971:

…I stated only for Thief and the nature of the class is why this is the only class designed for 1v1s…
You have already lost all credibility long ago, so I am not speaking to you further.

To be honest, you had no credibility from the start, by saying thief was designed to 1v1 any class…

The ability to disengage is not unique to thief… Nearly all classes can disengage/reengage or reset the fight if they wanted too.

Mesmer’s have portal, stealth and blinks
Ranger’s have stealth, long range transport, and heal resets.
Elementalist’s have heal resets and blinks.
Warrior’s have pretty sick mobility and regeneration.
Engi’s can reset forever using their pressure, heals, and blocks and some kiting.
DH’s can not really disengage, but they can maintain a target, and maintain point defense, making disengagement not all too necessary.
Revenent’s can’t disengage all too well either, similar to DH… but they can keep a fight engaged with reveals and teleport. (Rev’s need a buff btw)
Necromancer’s can’t disengage at all…Maybe with flesh wurm, but after that they are pretty much done for.

Martym.6971:

And in many situations you are forced into 1v1 with Thief.

You must play in bronze league dude… Because thieves who engage 1v1’s don’t understand their role as thief (unless they run staff-acro). If you find yourself losing to a DP thief in a 1v1, you need to reevaluate your own skill, and how to fight other thieves (hint., dodge steal.)

Martym.6971:

Thieves do not just hand over nodes just because it’s a 1v1. The sheer ridiculousness of this claim is absurd. Thieves go for a kill always, and if they fight a losing battle, they retreat if they know they cannot win the 1v1.

This is something only bad thieves do in conquest.

A thief will hand over a node clearly if they can not take the 1v1, which most can’t. The only 1v1 thieves can take in conquest without wasting time, would be a necromancer, or another thief. If a thief is 1v1ing anyway, they are already losing, because they don’t even need to 1v1 to make the better play, which would be to keep the enemy on their node (by decaping), forcing them to stay there, and forcing a 4v5 on the rest of the map.

jihm.2315:

why when i put water fields at the begging of the fight with my staff ele and mender amulet on the point my team ends up being dead 2 – 3 seconds after?

No offence, but you sound like your either very inexperienced or just not good yet at playing ele.

I play staff ele exclusively over any other weapon set. You need to use more than just water fields in order to heal others and survive. Staff 3 is a smaller water field that heals very nicely (2-3k heals per tick), and is good for healing yourself passively, or to heal someone else who is contesting a node. Staff 5 doesn’t heal, but rather grants regeneration, and removes a condition per pulse. When traited, it removes 2 conditions per pulse (or 3 i can’t remember), so it’s an extremely powerful condition cleanse. You can also blast these water fields with aftershock for an extra 2k heal.

You also have other heal skills, including “Water overload” and “Wash the Pain Away.” These should be your main source of burst healing your allies.
In addition to that you should be using your shouts to provide protection and minor healing, while using utility skills from Earth(4), pressure and evade from fire(2, 4 and Fire overload), and CC from Air.

jihm.2315:

dont say staff ele is not the best thats why i know that but if you wanna play something for fun it means it has to be totally useless?

This isn’t true either… it’s very useful and powerful when used correctly. Your inability to play it right is what is holding you back. Not only that, but if you have allies dieing in seconds, it’s because they themselves are also inexperienced at surviving for any meaningful amount of time, which isn’t your fault. Good players can survive long enough for support to come. Good players can come support in time for players to survive. That’s the motto.

Weo weo.6378:

From a 90% Pve’er point of view. I personally enjoy the 1v1 duel servers far more than a capture the point fiesta though I’ve played a fair bit of ranked every season.

Right! I’m a duel server local, and the atmosphere is so awesome, with people versing each other, others learning, others joking around, talking to each other and having fun. If they do put dueling in the lobby, i hope it doesn’t void the atmosphere that the servers provide, but instead bring that atmosphere into the heart of the mists as well.

Saiyan.1704:

It really comes down to Anet not wanting to experiment with GW2 PvP, rather, the lack of resources to do so.

True, I assume that the lack of resources are due to the production of the expansion, and is the reason we haven’t seen all that much change in PVP other than lackluster balance changes. Perhaps the devs think that the expansion will bring about new pvp goodies and enhancements, which will coincide with the flux of new people buying the expansion, which will increase the pvp population “back to normal.”

Problem with that, is the new expansion is about a half a year away still…i’d be surprised if anyone is still pvping at all when it arrives.

A majority of what people are saying on this thread is that the build diversity is still lacking, and that the only way to fix pvp is to increase the build diversity. This makes sense and it’s a core reason as to why GW1 was so successful…there were so many builds one could create, not only for yourself, but even for team builds (like who remembers rainbow spike…Invokespike, spiritway…hell all the -ways!

This brings us to a new problem…which is why is there no build diversity in the first place? Someone mentioned revamping the trait system, which i don’t think ANET will do…but i do believe that the trait system has potential to be enhanced, to increase diversity exponentially. (My little idea was to add some sort of point system to each trait… you get 25 points to spend, and each trait has 5 levels to invest in, the higher points invested into that trait the more powerful it becomes.)

Others have said that unused skills need to be buffed to be inline with all the other overpowered kitten introduced with HOT…but idk if more powercreep is even a good idea at this point.

Thanks for making these.

I feel the most important video’s for people struggling in silver and above are the roles/matchup videos.

Most people just don’t know. As a thief, we’ve been blessed to have an expert like Sindrener provide insight into how to thief, and understanding the roles and matchups, and the same should be done for other classes.

Personally i think this post should be stickied maybe

TheTimelessShadow.2958:

Get rid of the current trait system. Bring back the old one, or something similar.

I don’t think they will ever revamp the trait system.

I do think that the current trait system has potential, and can be built upon to increase diversity and complexity.

TheTimelessShadow.2958:

Allow people to make creative builds (and save them). Because right now, the cookie-cutter bull is boring and inspires nothing.

Yea, totally agree. Perhaps some nice QOL changes to PVP could do the trick as well.

Perhaps build templates, allowing duels in the lobby, more game modes, and more maps could reinvigorate the PVP scene. I’m hoping we can see changes like these before the next expansion, but indeed these changes would HAVE to come out in the next expansion.

So, We’ve got an update that reduced the passive gameplay of “certain classes.” This was the first step in a positive direction.

But it’s not over yet…with Season 7 looming closer, we still have yet to face the spooky monster that lurks in the corner of the room… Low Population.

Background
The low population count in Season 6 caused the matchmaker to hand out imbalanced matches. Huge forum arguments developed, about what the real “culprit” was behind the bad matchmaking.

Folks like myself believe that the culprit was a mix of stale game balance, combined with the rewards nerf and monotone diversity to game modes. All three culminated in the exodus of all the PVE’ers who stuck around in S5, and the departure of veteran PVPers who were getting tired of the meta-game. These in turn, caused the matchmaking to hand out terrible matches, causing even more players who remained for S6 to give up…placing us in the situation we had at the end of S6.

Others believed that matchmaking was the sole reason for the pvp population decrease, Believing that the matchmaking was always terrible (in S5->S6), which caused people to stop playing, which in turn causes more people to leave due to low population.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

The death of ESL was the nail in the proverbial coffin and set the tone for S6. If i have to make an analogy, you could consider this “the great depression” of Gw2 PVP. The great depression wasn’t solved in a day’s worth of patch notes. I think to get the community back into a healthy state, we need many additional positive changes that will reverse the damage done in S6.

This is where we can begin having our discussion. What else is needed to make guild wars 2 pvp great again?

Sure, from a design standpoint, necromancer is weak in the defense department compared to other classes.

But, if you play it right, you shouldn’t be dieing that often, and is a powerful class for what it does.

I play shout-mancer and i find myself winning 2v1’s because i know what my role is and how to play my class. You need to learn how to not engage bad match-ups. Technically necro is not a duelist, it’s a teamfighter/scrimmager class and it shines with a good support.

No, Dash doesn’t need a nerf.

/end discussion

I agree with Shaogin.

People are overreacting…and the warrior/guardian sustain was based on a reliance on passive traits. They needed to go.

That means that when you are fighting an opponent, you aren’t actually fighting them…you are fighting the games mechanics.

The fact that it was even possible to have 8 seconds of damage immunity, nearly 20 or so seconds of pulsing condition immunity, and passive 1.5k heals per second? Where is the skill in using any of that? absolutely none… You had to literally wait out all that stuff before being able to kill them…given that you could survive long enough. Where is the counterplay?

As for guardians, they at least had to activate skills in order to sustain themselves, some of which you could interrupt.

The heals and block duration were excessive (x2, 6 second traited SOC, 3 second invuln, medi heals, condi clears on block, trap heal and WOR… holy kitten, ohh and don’t forget the x2 invuln-bubble dome thing on revive and on 25% HP) All of that on maurader amulet? Ya it deserved a nerf.

Thieves also got nerfed with the endurance nerfs. Although i don’t agree with exactly how they’ve done it, something needed to be done.

Being able to sustain and do damage is just not good. If you have sustain, it means you should give up your damage…if you have damage it means you should give up sustain. Zerker amulet wars sustaining in 2v1’s was kittening imba…now get over the nerf please thanks.

Sly.9518:

Sorry did I say 33k dps

Lol so condi reaper don’t have enough dps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow-iSt27j7U&feature=youtu.be

It’s a lot higher

All you had to do what a little bit of research dude….to realize that it was just a bug that was super unrealistic.

No hope for this generation.

coro.3176:

It’s just bad gameplay.

Warrior approaching. You’re out of dodges, but they don’t have stability, so you use your big cc move to keep them away.
.. BUT WAIT! Last Stand procs and your cc does nothing. Headbutt. Arc Divider. You’re dead. Such skill. You can’t tell by looking at their status bar. Clearly you should have been watching the warrior constantly from the start of the game, then counting 40 seconds in your head for the ICD, assuming you even knew they were running that trait in the first place.. I mean. obviously.

I played warrior for one day…what a joke.

I was so terrible… but i was killing people. I didn’t even know what my skills did, i just loaded up meta and started dropping bodies…sheet, surviving kitten like a b0ss

I main thief, so i felt pretty mad that it was really that easy to play…

So ya, I’m with you on nerfing the passive BS mechanics, as long as they increase build diversity.

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

How do we beat godzerkers?

You don’t.

Ralkuth.1456:

Oh you mean Spirit Watch? cough

Abelisk.4527:

Support.

Give it Spirit Watch mechanics but without Conquest

Spirit Watch’s CTF mechanic is very bare-bones. Consider the following :

Let’s say we get rid of the conquest attributes of Spirit Watch, so that the only objective is that little Orb, and Two nodes in which someone has to take this orb to. The following scenarios become possible

• The Orb has an interrupt-able cast time, which potentially means that it could be next to impossible to pick it up in the first place.

• Traps become a huge thing…because of the stationary and singular nature of the orb, it would make sense to just load a kitten-ton of traps on the orb spawn…we will begin seeing many kamikaze-style builds that will only focus solely on this task. I don’t think that’s particularly fun game-play at all.

• Consider that because of the singular nature of the orb, zerging becomes a thing as well, because there is no reason other then to be with the flag carrier at all times… This makes thieves and other such mobile classes nearly useless, which is a slap in the face because on top of that, traps and other AOE-centric skills would be the primary choice in the meta…

These are just scenario’s at the top of my head, but in summary, if CTF isn’t approached with well-though-out mechanics, we will end up with another “courtyard” fiasco.

Mutaatti.2789:

Got confused with all the buffs/debuffs… Just make it simple 5 point from kill, 150 points from flag and 10 min/match time. And yes flagcarrier couldnt be stealthed/invul/teleport, but could use other skills and has -50% speed and swift doesnt work when carrying.

Flag dropped instantly when downed, but couldnt be returned in 5 secs so someone else can grab it.

So i thought about the idea of a simple version of CTF before making this post months back.

However there was a very large elephant in the room that needed to be addressed when thinking about CTF… and that is the following : If the primary mechanic of the game-mode happens to be one single object, then the following would occur at the same time…

• Bunker becomes meta, because if you can not die, you will be able to bring the flag to the end with no problems.
• Zerging becomes meta, because as long as all 5 of you are protecting your flag, there is no need for anyone to be anywhere other then with the flag carrier.
• Classes that involve mobility become completely useless, in particular, thieves, and classes that involve team fighting and AOE spam (particularly Dragon Hunters, and Necromancers) become meta.

To be honest, these 3 things in conjunction with each other are terrible and have to be negated by something. So the idea was to involve secondary objectives (nodes) that are actually necessary to help capture the flag, or to hinder the advancement of the opposing teams flag carrier. In this way, thief and other mobility classes have a purpose, as well as defender classes who need to be thinking about protecting their own buff/debuff nodes.

sephiroth.4217:

No I understand the issue perfectly. I’ll simplify it for you though.

Active game > People having fun.
Rating comes around > People see how broken matchmaking is > People leave.
People leave > population gets low.
Population gets low > matches get worse.
Matches get worse > More people leave.
downward spiral from there.

You’re more than welcome to speculate why some of us are leaving, but I’m telling you from my personal opinion that I left because of matchmaking and your ideas to help me come back, won’t work because it’s the matchmaking that killed the game, or having rating to allow us to see how broken matchmaking is. Which ever way you look at it. But the defining factor and what is making people leave, is matchmaking.

You know what changed from S5 to s6? It was hope. Hope that season 6 would be better, but it’s not. There’s no mystery to it.

Your ideas were good, but only for people who are still playing the game but sadly even those ideas won’t make me sit through insufferable games.

Okay, Did you know they actually improved the algorithm in S6? They abolished class stacking… Probably one of the worst offenders in matchmaking, and they were successful in getting rid of it.

The algorithm works just fine when there are more people playing…So when we had a high population in S5, how come people left? Can’t be because match quality was bad due to silver people being in Gold matches? The population was fine enough for that to not be the reason. There’s an obvious answer here as to why people left, and we are in the situation we are in now…but ill leave that to you to make that conclusion on your own.

Anyway, lets say Arena-net were to “improve the algorithm”, and gate matchmaking by rank or division(even worse). This is what will happen…on the first day.

Legendary players = will never get matches
Platinum players = will never get matches
Gold players = a few matches will be played, but there is a line, because only 1 or 2 might be going on. Means you have to wait 5 – 10 minutes for a game… and you’ll be fighting with the same people over and over again. “How fun.”
Silver = Matches will be played
Bronze = Matches will be played

At night, these will significantly dwindle.

So what happens? the current Legend, platinum and gold players stop playing…because the que times won’t work for them…

Okay. then what happens? The players who hear that “matchmaking improved” come back to find that their que doesn’t exist, because everyone who’s tried to get a match haven’t had one. This also has a feedback effect….people cant get a match for 15 – 30 minutes? They are just gonna do something else and leave…that’s way worse then what is happening now. Now is this an over-exaggeration? No it’s not. Within the top 250, lies all the gold 3 players, platinum 1 – 3 and legendary players. That means those 250 people, 10 of them have to be online, in the same division to get a match. That’s a razor thin margin, and if you count right now, there are probably only 50-80 people maximum in gold 3…

Gold 1 and 2 it gets slightly better, probably around 200 people all together, maybe more. but again, we’re talking razor thin margins, in which 10 from the same division have to be online for you to have one game.

So no i’m not exaggerating when i say people wont have games…who’s gonna say the algorithm improved when they can’t even play games? lol

sephiroth.4217:

As a player who played since game release for about 4-6 hours a day who hasn’t played in 2 weeks now, none of that will make me return.

Changing the matchmaking how ever, will. Hard capping games so I don’t have to play with Bronzes and top 20 players while I’m in Gold WILL actually let me enjoy the game, the purpose of a game is enjoyment after all.

TLDR: Matchmaking is horrible and is killing the game, reducing population and creating a downward spiral that’s only getting worse.

Then you clearly don’t understand the issue.

The reason you are getting bad matches is because the population is low.

If they were to change the algorithm to favor better matchmaking in this low pop state, you’d get NO matches because there aren’t enough people at your skill level that are playing at the same time.

Nothing has changed between season 5 and season 6, yet the population went down… It’s not a mystery to anyone as to why that is.

I made this post a while ago on reddit, but i thought i’d share it here as well. I was thinking about how to best introduce a “capture the flag” game-mode and i want to see valid critisims and perhaps improvements to this idea, and perhaps maybe, since anet has expressed their interest in returning Team Death Match, that we may be able to work towards a Capture the Flag mode that’s fun. So here is my idea :

Capture the Flag
There should be two bases, with two entrances (Main entrance and secret backdoor entrance). Each base has a flag, and 2 buff nodes and 2 debuff nodes, one of each close to bases. There are no NPC’s, other than a One-Shot Sniper NPC that nukes anyone close to spawn.

Mechanics of the Flag

• Capturing the flag is difficult but should not be impossible. The idea is to make the flag easy enough, but hard enough to capture that it would require 2 defenders to prevent the flag from being capped by a single person.
• After claiming the flag, you will get an inherent -50% run speed. You can not be stealthed, and you can not be invulnerable with the flag. You are immune to CC’s like cripple/chill/immobilized and stuns.
• The flag is dropped 3 seconds after the player enters downstate.
• The idea is the flag will ultimately require 4 people to make a successful capture…3 people to defend, one to carry. This means that your base will have one defender for it’s flag, making it more vulnerable to enemy capture.

Now the buff/debuff nodes. These nodes provide boosts, or debuffs to the flag carriers. There are 4 nodes, 2 nodes per base, with 8 different buffs/debuffs that can trigger, on a cycle, so in order to get the same buff/debuff, you need to use the nodes 4 times in order to do so. (It could also just be random, which might be a better idea in terms of couterplay!)
The node spawns once every minute, and take a 3-5 second interruptable channeling time. These nodes are placed in close proximity to the bases, but are accessible by enemies. Only one buff and one debuff are allowed at any time per team.

Buffs

• Flag Carrier gains the ability to use skills while holding the flag. Skills that grant invulnerability or stealth fail. Lasts for 30 seconds.
• Flag Carrier when entering downstate will automatically revive with 50% health, and the flag will remain active. Lasts for 30 seconds. Effect ends when consumed.
• Flag Carrier pulses a radial aura (600 units) that sets foes on fire, causing 3 seconds of burn every pulse. This pulse also cleanses any CC effects currently on the carrier or their allies. pulses every second. Lasts for 30 seconds.
• Flag Carrier takes 90% reduced damage from conditions. Lasts for 30 seconds.

Debuffs

• Enemy Flag Carrier becomes prone to CC effects, and hindering conditions, including chill, crippling, and immobilized. Lasts 30 seconds
• Enemy Flag Carrier becomes a burden to their allies. boons turn into negative conditions within a 600 radius. Lasts 30 seconds.
• Enemy Flag Carriers lose control, turning on their allies, becoming foes. Lasts for 30 seconds.
• Enemy Flag Carriers gain a debuff that reduces endurance to 0. Lasts 30 seconds.

Anti-Turtle Mechanics
Now turtling is when basically a team captures one flag, and then for the remainder of the game the entire team remains in their base preventing the enemy from getting the flag. I believe their should be mechanic that discourages this. So for every person inside their own base, they gain a debuff that reduces stats by x% and for every person this percentage increases, so that if all 5 people are inside their base, total stats are reduced by 50% for example.
if that’s not feasible we can have the opposite effect, where the more enemies in the base, the more % stats they gain the more people there are inside. This way, making a push for the flag makes more sense against a comp that is turtling.

So that’s my idea. I really would like to hear some thoughts, and want to expand on this further if people think its a good idea.