Guild Wars 2

Just ridiculous: Diamond player queues with Emerald or below, full premade, i queue solo get a three trash player premade (ruby) and we have no chance (cause 5 man remade). We lose 2 pips.

They probably don’t lose pips if they lose against diamond randoms with a 5 man premade, and such players become legend? Ridiculous.

I am out till matchmaking is fixed.

There is a real aspect behind “elo hell”, its not just a psychological phenomena. It exists, because GW2 PvP is mainly a group skill game, meaning that your individual skill can be really high, but if you are in a bad group OR your group skills (team play, coordination) are bad, you will lose and play together with people, who have a much lower individual skill. This leads to frustration and can establish a “devil circle”, since this frustration might cause you getting worse in your group skill (basically the “kitten off team attitude”) and thus leading to more lost games (thus getting paired with worser players, and so on).
This can be prevented by
a) a periodically (each season) reset of mmr.
b) form/join a team

1. Why does the whole team get a loss, if someone disconnected and doesn’t make it back in time even if they win the match?

2. The dishonor of missing the queue and of being afk should be separated. I got one disconnect and missed after that the queue and had to wait 30 min is ridiculous. Basically i had to wait 30 min for missing the queue pop. And this with queue times over 5 min.

3. Your system punishes players who play your game, cause you implemented it the way that it crashes around 1-2 times a day. 2 min. are very short, since your login server lags after a crash.

4. I don’t see the sense in having a dishonor system for premade teams.

Its because of this boring bunker meta. Just listen to the commentators themselves, when they commentate a 1vs1 on a point: “This can go on for a while, lets look somewhere else.” Back in the old days, those outer node 1vs1 were something really exciting. Also strategy was more complex, when you couldn’t afford to run 3 bunkers, which mean 1 for each point.

When there was a berserker meta in the first two years, spvp tournaments like the team paradigm invitational Tournament had 10k viewers.

First of all Tempest clearly involves major design errors, and if I would been head of that company, I would have reason enough to fire anyone, who is mainly responsible for the tempest design. He obviously has no idea, how that class gets played. I have given Feedback like many others, and most of it got ignored (with the exception of the rebound redesign, which surprised me a lot, that they were willing to change an ability completely from the core). But its a shame, that they didn’t step back from the overload mechanic.
However even with the current overloading mechanic there is a huge design error:
The Water Overload needs a water field. Otherwise, it will always be a noob detector, basically each elementalist, who overcharges water in its current state, doesn’t know its class. And we can agree, that you shouldn’t design spells, so that the best play is, to not use them. Overcharging in water means a longer wait time for another waterfield, this can only be justified if you get in exchange an immediately water field.
Arena net seems not to understand, that healing in this game is done by blasting water fields, and doesn’t require heal stats. Everything which gets effected by heal stats leads just to a bunker role, not to a healer one.
The other core design error is in the new form of Rebound: The heal is far too low, thus the entire effect doesn’t matter in those situations, for which it should be designed. Its only useful for its auras….
The whole tempest doesn’t feel new in anyway. The warhorn cannot in any way compete with dagger offhand (greater mobility, which is one hell of a reason d/d bunker is so strong) or focus (more blasts, more auras, more utilities).
The heal shout is ridiculous week.

Its really a shame, since I want also to play something new, I had to leave my elementalist as a main class, and now having fun on druid, which in some areas feel like a better or at least fresh version of elementalist.

Heyho,

there are several ways how you can increase your mmr in solo, if that is what you want to do, although there is no real leaderboard atm.

1. If you play bunker guardian, while there is no other bunker in your team, you have a high chance of winning, if you know how to play with it.

2. If there exists a good decap build, use it and tell your team to avoid far, you are a decapper.

3. In general type a tactic in your team chat at the beginning of the game ( like 1 close, 4 mid. I go …)

4. If you are very good in 1 vs 1 cap close (not far). Play the role of a defensive roamer.

5. look at your team composition, and think: To which class can I switch to improve it? Then switch.

6. If your good at one class, people will notice it, and then swap accordingly (this only happens at a certain mmr and higher (in the old leaderboards – the real ones, not the kitten of this year) it happened around rank 900). You can then stay on a class that you are really good with.

7. If there are 2 thieves in your team, ask if one can switch.

8. If they will ever add sky hammer again to competitive play, run a sky hammer build!!!! (it leads to 80% win rate on that map). A lot of people are not willing to change build or underestimate how much impact it had on this special map.

9. On temple of the silent storm, write the timers in the beginning of the match: “Hi team. Plz be aware there are buffs appearing on the middle of the map at 11:30 (only upstairs) at 8.30 (upstairs and downstairs), 5:30 (upstairs), and 2.30 (again upstairs and downstairs). And plz all ignore Sidebuffs, they are useless and a waste of time (very important to write this).” Its also very important to remember the 2:30 tranquility buff, a lot of players forget this buff, and you literally can steal games with remembering it.

10. Concentrate on primary targets (with the exception of silent storm).

11. On Legacy of the Foe Fire, you need to learn to determine, in what situations a lord rush makes sense. It never makes sense before 350 points. If the enemy team just barely reaches 350 and attacks your close point, prepare for them rushing your lord!

12. Play meta builds.

13. You have to know the basic roles and how to play them (defensive roamer (close point defender), mid bunker, offensive roamer, far point assaulter (decap bunker)).

14. If you die on far, you add a huge factor for losing this game. If you go far, unless you are a decap bunker, make sure the point is contested and not in there favor, and that you retreat in the right moment. Learning not to die on far gets your win percentage higher.

15. Don’t fight, where it isn’t related to a primary target.

16. Train 1vs1.

17. You have to know all meta builds of all classes, which are meta. Think how you can counterplay or counter composition them.

At the moment, you have to understand, that most of the people doesn’t really act competitively, because there is no leaderboard. This might change with the add-on, if the new system doesn’t suck as much as the last one.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

The concepts behind overloading an element were pretty well received, however you called out that the time cost of overloading compared to the final rewards were too unbalanced.

The first part of the sentence must be a joke, it was very bad received. It doesn’t fit elementals at all. Increasing the numbers is not close to enough, it needs to be redesigned: remove the requirement to channel it!!!!!! + reduce the availability CD from 5 sec to 3 sec.

Redesign the Elite!!!!!!! (make it e.g. on a very low CD, so that it makes at least sense)

Overall I am very disappointed. I didn’t expect much, but the elementalist specialization is worser than everything I could imagine.

However warhorn was fine. Traits were ridiculous.

My Impressions of the Dragonhunter from the beta weekend:
I tested it only in spvp and WvW, but I can’t see much use in bow or traps for PvE anyway.

Main Issue in WvW: In the start of a fight, as a frontline of course, I want to leap into the enemy, which the Dragonhunter can do with its F2. The trait, which grants damage and immobilize is very nice for that scenario. However sacrificing the passive regeneration from the F2 in the beginning of a fight is very stupid. Thus leaving the F2 as an emergency button and the leap ability of it becomes irrelevant…
(The virtue changes are the only relevant aspect of the Dragonhunter for WvW, if you want to take this trait line for WvW, its only because of them (as I said the leap and the shield (F3) are very nice in general, but if only the leap was on F1, which is a useless virtue anyway, instead of the so crucial F2). Hammer and Staff are required weapon for a frontliner, Traps are too stationary in general.

Spvp: I could only find a playable bunker guardian variant with this new trait line. The bow just does to less damage and has no weapon which adds up with its play style. Maybe focus on a more condition based theme, that would also make traps more useful. For a power build, the auto attack damage of the bow is far too low, which results in almost no pressure from the bow as a whole. Damage of the other abilities was fine.
In general I don’t see a sense in Dragonhunter at all. The bow has no synergy with the new virtues, none with trabs and vice versa. Why is the F2 not a leap? Why doesn’t the traps grant combo fields? Why doesn’t the bow have a blast? Also to make the dragon hunter feel like a new class it should not center around burning or fire/light fields!!!!!

Summary Suggestions:
1. Increase either velocity or damage of the bow 1.
2. Add a blast finisher and change the light field to water/ethereal field (depending if you want to go more the condition direction or not).
3. Increase the AoE damage of traps, give them ground targeting, and make some of them into combo fields.
4. Change the leap to F1 and make it a leap finisher. Change the spear to F2, make it targeting up to three allies for a certain time and if they stay in a certain range: incoming damage gets splitter equally on all allies bounded this way.

we should make a ladder with queue times. It would be more accurate than any of the leaderboards before, showing actually the good players in the top 10

I agree with those who posted before me at least with the points of the incredible weakness and awkwardness of tempest.

First of all, I highly doubt, that it is clever to develop warhorn around the use with dagger, since it can’t give a new feeling to this elite specialization. We already have dagger in mainhand dominating pvp and the offhand doesn’t add much difference to the play style of dagger mainhand. The current version of tempest feels just like another dagger/focus specc, especially since one grandmaster talent aims for the already implemented aura share build (nothing new here too).
This is by far the biggest flaw of Tempest. It is nothing new and with dagger it feels inferior to the other offhand choices (focus and dagger).
Why not develop it with scepter in mind? It gives scepter specs a completely new play style, namely more supportive one (scepter dagger is full burst, scepter focus is egoistic defense, and scepter warhorn seems already very supportive while preserving the nature of scepter mainhand).
The earth shout already fits nice in the scepter/warhorn build. Sadly the other shouts, especially I wonder why the fire one, do half the damage of earth, which makes them useless for this build. So at least fire should make the same damage as the Earth shout.

I agree with the need of having a trait which reduces the CD of shouts, maybe it should replace the useless aura grandmaster trait (which has a far too long CD to be good).

The Master Traitline of Tempest is just really awful, you don’t want to choose any of them. Maybe make the third one remove the 5 sec. need to wait for being able to overcharge attunements (which makes them useless beyond the use of them as escape mechanism).

The overcharging attunements in general are a huge problem, since it should be the reason to pick tempest, yet they are useless and bad besides ridiculous animations. Why do you want to give yourself a longer CD on water while on top of that you have to stay in water (which loses a lot of sustain)? I mean I can’t imaging what the wateroverload needs to do, to justify these drawbacks??? In general it doesn’t fit the play style of elementalist (attunement swapping), you normally don’t stay long enough in an attunement until you get the ability to fire of those overcharges (especially with dagger mainhand builds). HUGE ISSUE right here.

Air overload feels too weak, but can be tuned with damage increase. However Fire overload is just awkward (why is it not a kind of meteor shower).

With the Tempest specialization comes a new potential to give an alternative for staff in WvW zerg builds:
make the water overcharge a water field and the fire overcharge a kind of meteor shower. Also decrease at least the movement speed of the water field you get with warhorn, it is just awkward if the regroup has to run after their water field to blast it… I don’t see any useful aspect about it moving anyway.

Th next reason and last reason to design it around scepter mainhand is PvE. You don’t use dagger mainhand builds in PvE since they do less damage and you don’t need their sustain and support. While support is not bad in general, going into melee range without reason makes no sense. You normally play either Staff or Scepter builds. For making the Tempest more interesting for PvE, you could for example let the fire shout give up to 5 allies 3 stack might (and increase its damage like mentioned above).
Since in PvE you tend to stay more in one attainment the overloads should really shine here, which sadly (and I think that says it all) is not the case: You need to channel them while casting and thus you can’t do anything else and its damage is so far away from compensating that.
At the moment, the only good thing about the overloads is the movement speed increase, which makes them a very good disengage mechanism. This again fits very well the scepter mainhand!!!!

Conclusion: While actually not designed to play with scepter, I enjoyed it only with it, since it really felt new. Normally Scepter builds don’t give support, but with tempest they do and your mobility is really really good (so fun to play ). The build was not very strong in the current tpvp meta, but thats not the point. It could use some damage increase of the warhorn air abilities but actually everything else was pretty fine (except only the earth shout seemed worth taking.)

The elite is a joke. Give it a very low CD (5 sec) and it might be a new mechanic. But otherwise it is the most garbage I ever seen.

The Heal shout is too weak. Besides that it needs to remove (lets say 2) conditions, the tempest has really nothing against conditions ;((((

they definitely need to reintroduce those punishments. It is now every 2-3 game that end in a 4vs5 and often right from the start.

Here are my thoughts concerning mostly problems with revenants (I really like Revenant and there are a lot of good things about it, so plz dont misunderstand this post):

1. Hammer and Mace skills are generally far too slow. It makes those weapons nearly unusable. Staff however is wonderful in this regard, so you have a good orientation where the other weapons should be in terms of speed. The other option is to increase the damage of hammer and mace significantly.

2. The Taunt ability in the dwarven stance cost to much (50% energy is just too much). It should be around 30 %.

3. Overall the Revenant lacks on damage, especially for spvp. I really hope the last missing normal traitline is a classic critical strikes trait line, with iconic talents like “Bleeds on crit” (very important for a condition variant of the revenant) and maybe a talent like “20% chance on crit to deal the same damge again” (double strike) to adress the lack of damage.

4. The centaur stance needs a complete rework. It should be less dependant on the tablet. Right now it feels like a classical healer, which doesnt fit gw2 and makes it completely useless. The moving of the tablet just feels so strange and will never be viable in any area of the game (unless you make holy trinity encounters in pve). My suggestion would be: The heal skill summons a tablet, which surrounds you: healing allies and you for a bit. The Elite lets it explode and heals everyone for around 5k and knocks enemies back (basically what it does right now). Maybe make an utility spell which moves the tablet from around yourself to around an ally.

5. I kittening like the staff, plz dont change it

6. A dps soul is definetly required!!!!

Wonderful Job!
The only way the pvp community gets an accurate leaderboard is obviously, if we do it ourselves, since A-net proven to be complete incompetent in this.

To all the stupid haters above, there is one obvious prove that this leaderboard is better than the existing one: known top gw2 players are on the top spots! A leaderboard algorithm should be proven on this ground not on some purely mathematical ground (which presumes a perfect world among other unrealistic assumptions).

I think, there exist a general misunderstanding, what “meta build” means. That there are “meta – builds” doesn’t mean, that there arent any good alternatives or that these meta-builds are neccessary op. For example turret engi is an op build, but is not a meta build.

There are several reason, what makes a meta build a meta build. The most important factor you already mentioned, it must be an often played build among teams which battle for the sake of the esport spirit (esl). From a very dominant build you can often derive the meta buils option.
For example: d/d is atm a very dominant build, you even face on a regurlarly bases 2 d/d ele in one team, and it is even imaginable, to have 3 d/d eles in your team (same as hambow back in the older days.).
D/D Ele is a mobile bunker-dd, which can do decent damage when unnoticed or against inexperienced players, but in the most cases he shines in 1 vs 1 attrition fights and more small scale fights. For big scale fights the addition of another cele class (engineer or ele) improves his value exponential.
From this follows, that having something similar to him improves his performence in all aspects of the match (Just from this aspect follows, that the second member of your meta comb is something similar to the d/d cele ele (meaning a sustain d/d with support: cele engi, Offguard, another d/d ele or staff or whatever cele ele (s/f ele doesn’t harmonize well with cele though).
From the dominent presence of d/d – ele it follows that certain builds are supoptimal: all builds who have medium up to big problems with cele Ele. Here can be a difference between top teams and not so good players, since for them more specs might be not viable against d/d-ele (e.g. Mesmer). Because I am myself not a top player I can only assume, that here lies the reason for the preference of the shout bow over the hambow. The shoutbow also fills the role we conluded above that we need it in our meta comb.
the next step for guessing the meta is to look at all the possible speccs, which do well with d/d-ele. Since it has a burst possibility (pretty unique as bunker) it combines well with shatter mesmer/thief/power necro and other burst speccs.
Since d/d-ele neither combines good with condition nor is weak against it, condition classes are not meta.
The last step would be the overall consequences: with the dominance of the d/d ele (remember this is just an example, for the meta it just matters that it is a very popular class in top teams, it has not neccessarly to be because it is op) there is a reasonable shift towards power. This plus there is a natural tendancy in this meta to run several support bunker dps, the bunker guardian gets less value, especially if everyone is mobile on its own accept the bunker guardian. (However I think there is a meta build for bunker guardians too, just that nobody tried yet to adjust the old bunker build to the new meta: less condition removal, more damage).

For example a meta group could be: D/D Ele, Thief, Mesmer, SHout Warrior, Medi Guard.

A meta group among weaker players (not top esl players) could be something like: D/D Ele, Cele Engi, Shout Warrior, Medi Guard, D/D Ele.

Your absolute right with your concerns. It is obvious, that stronghold will be the next skyhammer, although it really had potential. But having it in the same queue with conquest makes it just a readicolous bad conquest map. It forces you to play strange builds, which you cant use on the other conquest maps and so you need to painfully respecc every third game. It will also not feel like a new game mode, just as some annoyning interlude between your good conquest maps.
Why the hell is it just 5vs5? It would attrack so many new players to pvp if it would be really GvG, but this way it will attrack no new players, just force the old ones to play something they dont like.
How can you really think a game mode, which makes players play perma stealth builds, is a good pvp mode?
Also it is quite boring to play a trebuchet. The argument, that it allows to play with your weaker friends, is ridiculous, because how should they ever improve if they are only allowed to use the trebuchet or give swiftness to some npcs?

wow this Video is really good. Great Job! I will definetly test that build

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

In all reality, this is most likely the most friendly language for engaging -some- of the development team. Props for trying.

You mean we should engage them in this way, so that they only need to copy&pace?

What are all the updates for the game for, if this creation of absolute garbage stays in the game? If I would be a game designer who could in one way or the other be connected with the creation of such a crap, i would die for shame and try to delete this as soon as possible. This map makes soloq unplayable. This map shows the skill of the game designers and leaves no hope for coming patches.

Mrbig.8019:

HPLT.7132:

Also in the current state your are not stunned for the whole time of PW. I think he meant that the stun duration is exchanged by an equal immobilise duration.

This is actually worse because you have 20% more condi duration, something that doesn’t count with stun.

Inf strike is already 1 secs and 1/4, add pw and it’s 2 secs neat.

If you remove 0.5 secs cast time from PW you have 1.5 secs immo.

Exactly PW flurry duration.

Every time you IS-PW, your opponent, with nag “genius” suggestion, would be immo for the whole duration of PW ( with the great allegiance of immo stacking of course).

This is a beyond terrible suggestion, and i’m telling this as a thief.

All those critics, which go in the same direction as the quoted one, miss the point, that olli also suggested, that you can dodge while immobilized. I think in that case the PW change might be ok.
The “dodge-while-immo-change” would also solve the Unfairness, that some classes have dodges on their weaponsets, which already allow them to dodge while immobilized.

Thus said, I think it is better to just revert the folowing changes that anet made:
- revert the buff to initiative reg
- revert the buff to PW
- remove immobilize stacking

In Addition to that:
- reduce burning and bleed damage per tick/intensity
- Berserker Stance, AR, Diamond Skin changed to: increase your damage for 10% per each condition on you.

We are still searching!

wonderful guide, vote for sticky!

this ugly maps should be restricted to hotjoin, especially skyhammer, which is ridiculous.

the worser the blog will be, the longer the time till they put it on forums^^