Guild Wars 2

Ayrilana.1396:

Spartacus.3192:

Ayrilana.1396:

Was getting matched against a team of 2-4 players really that large of an issue?

No it wasn’t an issue at all except for players complaining every DAY since soloq was removed long ago.

/sarcasmoff.

Just seemed like the easier thing for people to blame for a loss than themselves. I just don’t see it as a really contributing factor. Of course the vote will favor it being solo/duo and people will find something else to blame.

The advantage that voice comms gives is huge.

Voice comms is the realm of 3+ man teams.

Ayrilana.1396:

Lucred.1802:

Ayrilana.1396:

Lucred.1802:

Ayrilana.1396:

Lucred.1802:

Ayrilana.1396:

If the other team knows how to counter DH then having four of them on a team is a handicap.

Right now the only counter for 4 DH is 4 (competent) druid+1 (good) powerhammer scrapper.

So, yeah, I guess if you have a team on voice comms that all have druids/scrappers to swap to that they’re actually decent with, I guess you can call that a counter.

That’s wrong. If you feel that the only counter is another similar composition then it’s simply a l2p issue. DH has plenty of weaknesses. Take advantage of them.

The only weaknesses a DH has are low mobility and somewhat weak ranged damage.

Which means the natural counter is a high mobility, high ranged damage class with equal or better healing. IE, druid.

The typical build that they run with has low condition cleanse and stability. The bulk of their damage is from the traps.

Most builds run Purification and Smite Condition. Coupled with the traited condi removal on Wings we actually have the second-highest condi counter of any class (beaten only by necros invested in condi transfer). All builds run at least Purification, giving us around 7-8 condis removed every 30 seconds just from Smiter’s Boon (remove 2 condi every time you heal yourself).

DH’s running more than 2 traps are generally bad, and are always sub-optimal builds. Though I’m not going to pretend they’re not prevalent.

Yes, we don’t have much in the way of stability, but we have excellent access to blocks which works almost as well.

Condition application is so easy and frequent on some classes that while they can clear 7-8 every 30 seconds, it won’t do them much good when their skills are on cool down. I’ve killed plenty of DH on necro simply by kiting them and using scepter auto attack.

The issue that many people have with is the frequent access to traps. Practically every complaint that I see on the forums and in game revolve around their traps. Every DH that I have seen runs at least 3 which includes the heal. Occasionally you’ll have one that uses the elite trap.

The DH trap build is just a gimmicky build that works on players that don’t know what they’re doing. Unfortunately there’s enough players like that where having 4 DH on the enemy team seems like an instant loss for them.

Yes, i agree condi is out of hand. But saying DH has “poor” access to condi cleanse when they have the second best in game is ridiculous.

Ayrilana.1396:

Lucred.1802:

Ayrilana.1396:

Lucred.1802:

Ayrilana.1396:

If the other team knows how to counter DH then having four of them on a team is a handicap.

Right now the only counter for 4 DH is 4 (competent) druid+1 (good) powerhammer scrapper.

So, yeah, I guess if you have a team on voice comms that all have druids/scrappers to swap to that they’re actually decent with, I guess you can call that a counter.

That’s wrong. If you feel that the only counter is another similar composition then it’s simply a l2p issue. DH has plenty of weaknesses. Take advantage of them.

The only weaknesses a DH has are low mobility and somewhat weak ranged damage.

Which means the natural counter is a high mobility, high ranged damage class with equal or better healing. IE, druid.

The typical build that they run with has low condition cleanse and stability. The bulk of their damage is from the traps.

Most builds run Purification and Smite Condition. Coupled with the traited condi removal on Wings we actually have the second-highest condi counter of any class (beaten only by necros invested in condi transfer). All builds run at least Purification, giving us around 7-8 condis removed every 30 seconds just from Smiter’s Boon (remove 2 condi every time you heal yourself).

DH’s running more than 2 traps are generally bad, and are always sub-optimal builds. Though I’m not going to pretend they’re not prevalent.

Yes, we don’t have much in the way of stability, but we have excellent access to blocks which works almost as well.

Zelulose.8695:

DH has good mobility what are you talking about. 1200 range teleport from anywhere+leaps. I can always reach far when or before my enemy does to give us an early start.

That teleport requires an enemy to target, and as such is unreliable (though very very nice when it works, esp. since you can port through walls on coliseum).

The leap is short range (800) and on a 26sec cooldown. If you’re counting the greatsword charge’s 500 range as a second leap, sure, but it’s even shorter ranged.

In order to get “good” mobility you need to use trapper runes and run at least 2 traps (heal and ToF usually), but you sacrifice ALL your power in exchange for a small amount of condi damage when you’re a 95%+ power class, and thus are far far less viable at actually fighting.

DH’s are heavily reliant on another player giving us quickness.

Ayrilana.1396:

Lucred.1802:

Ayrilana.1396:

If the other team knows how to counter DH then having four of them on a team is a handicap.

Right now the only counter for 4 DH is 4 (competent) druid+1 (good) powerhammer scrapper.

So, yeah, I guess if you have a team on voice comms that all have druids/scrappers to swap to that they’re actually decent with, I guess you can call that a counter.

That’s wrong. If you feel that the only counter is another similar composition then it’s simply a l2p issue. DH has plenty of weaknesses. Take advantage of them.

The only weaknesses a DH has are low mobility and somewhat weak ranged damage.

Which means the natural counter is a high mobility, high ranged damage class with equal or better healing. IE, druid.

Kuya.6495:

coro.3176:

Yeah, it seems like fights are constantly getting +1’d, which happens in PvP, but especially on this map. It just doesn’t really feel good to be winning a 1v1 on point, then get jumped by 2 enemies that just ran over from mid in 2 seconds. This happens ALL THE TIME, on Coliseum because it’s a short distance from mid point and you can’t see +1’s coming due to walls.

That’s a good thing actually. It means the strategies you use for coliseum are different from the ones you use for capricorn.

I don’t really think so. It basically means full-bunker builds (which are cancerous and otherwise 100% negative to gameplay) are the only classes that can hold a point at all, much less for any length of time.

Thieves are 100% useless as decappers on Coliseum because the distances are so short their speed/stealth advantage is not enough.

DH, necro, mesmer, and ele can teleport through the walls, making travel distance for them even shorter from mid to the side points. A DH using GS charge, JI, and wings for movement can cover the entire map faster than a thief can if he’s got enemies to target along the way for sword2 and JI. Throw in trapper runes and it’s a huge lead (though their viability in a fight goes down).

Yasi.9065:

Score needs to reflect how often you died, and how long you defended a cap against equal or higher numbers. Thats all thats needed to fix scoreboard for conquest maps.

Scoreboard is 100% irrelevant when matches like this ever happen, even in unranked, without a full-game DC.

Ayrilana.1396:

If the other team knows how to counter DH then having four of them on a team is a handicap.

Right now the only counter for 4 DH is 4 (competent) druid+1 (good) powerhammer scrapper.

So, yeah, I guess if you have a team on voice comms that all have druids/scrappers to swap to that they’re actually decent with, I guess you can call that a counter.

Wargameur.6950:

Hey I’m just curious about the results of people of the forum this season:

here are mine :

season’s statistic :
- started emerald, Got diamond
- Game played : 251
- Game won : 127
- Loss streak : 4
- Win streak : at least 2, one that got me through sapphire, the other one from ruby tier 1 to ruby tier 5. Then I stayed there for 2-3 weeks before reaching diamond.

Things I remember : I got nights playing more than 5 games and not moving one pip up or down. But I believe it is ok.

If you look at the stats only, wich I believe mmr is mostly about, then that’s a good season for me. As for the quality of the matches, well there was ups and downs.

I played only with my thief ( 90% of the time ) and my mesmer.
background : I’m playing for 2 years and half. I have ~1k games on my thief, ~700 in ranked.

Anet, if you could post the repartition of the players in each league at the end of the seasons I would be grateful !

-Started Emerald, got Ruby.
-Games played: 469
-Games won: 120
-Longest win streak: 4
-Longest loss streak: 79
-Entirely 100% solo-Q
-277 matches played on DH, 100 matches played on rev, rest split between necro and warr
-My matches were plagued with disconnects, trolls, and afk’ers (on both sides). I’d routinely get matched against 4-man premades of 3 diamond/legend and 1 Amber (amber was always a guard), showing just how incredibly broken the matchmaker was. I’d have games were total pip spread on either team was >150.

I played the last third of last season, starting the second I hit pvp rank 20, and pretty well cruised to high Ruby last season with an almost-flawless record (97:6 IIRC) so I’m assuming my MMR was artificially high. Which still wouldn’t explain the number of keyboard-turning, base-class using, “guise how do I pvp?” spouting idiots I’d get in Ruby as teammates.

pdavis.8031:

Thie question is would you rather them push out a “balance” patch right away, or take their time and do a much more complete patch?

Well since 5 years of history suggest they’re incapable of doing a “much more complete” patch, I’d rather have a bad patch now than a bad patch later.

Ayrilana.1396:

Zelulose.8695:

The answer is pure laziness. At this rate Gw2 esports is going to face the same end as Gw1 esports.

How would you balance all of the classes? It’s one thing to criticize but can you some up with a solution? If not, maybe it’s not as easy as you think and they’re not being “lazy” as you put it.

I can, rather easily.
-don’t give only 2 of the classes absolutely everything (high sustained dps, high burst dmg, high zero-skill AoE, high mobility, high access to blocks, high access to interrupts, high access to heals, high access to invuln) like they did with scrapper and DH this season, while nerfing the pants off everything else.

I really don’t know who thought that was a good idea or why it got approved.

Rolisteel.1375:

faster queue always better. we have life we have job. can’t sit at video game all day waiting for q pop wasting life. 10×10mins = 1h 40m waste of life. 10×2mins = 20 mins waste of life.

20 mins > 1h 40m

And when 8 of those 10 matches are pure garbage because the matchmaker is pure garbage, you’re looking at a total waste of around [10×10min matches=100min PLUS 10x 2min queues=20 mins: 120 minutes total waste for 2 good matches.

There needs to be a happy medium, but in order to get a happy medium they have to improve the quality of the matches so it’s not “wait 2 minutes for a guaranteed crappy match or wait 10 minutes for only a 90% chance of a crappy match”

Supreme.3164:

Exciton.8942:

I know I can still try to avoid the F1 spear throw in the first place. But if you ever get hit by the first part of F1 skill, you seem to be completely at DH’s mercy.

The second pull part is unblockable and unevadeable. During the whole time being attached to the spear, the only option is using an invulnerable skill. The DH can then use LB2 or some other hard hitting skill to bait out your dodge and then interrupt it by the pull and then chain together some other powerful attacks.

There are quite a few other pull skills in the game and they are all evadeable. I don’t understand why this skill has to be this extra strong.

-1) every profession has way to play around the pull
-teleport out from the traps
-stability
-invulnerability

-2) everybody can save a dodge and use it the second they get pulled in

-3) everybody can LoS the DH trying to use the pull, he won’t be able to pull you over from a lower level or from behind an obstacle

Not everything must be A to B gameplay…..

-teleporting out of traps means you still take 2/3 of the damage as they activate during the pull while you’re still in the air. Stability works but not every class has it on-demand and not every meta build has it at all. Invuln works but is almost always on 3x the cooldown of the spear pull and not every class has it.
-traps activate while you’re still in the air during the pull. No class can use any skill while falling. This means you still take 2/3 or more of the total trap damage before you even have control of your character again to even hit the dodge key.
-LoS is extremely finicky. Some terrain blocks it that probably shouldn’t, some terrain that very definitely should block it doesn’t (such as getting pulled straight down through the bridges on Skyhammer or through an entire bloody mountain around the GY on Foefire). More over it’s inconsistent—some times the little mole hills and barrels won’t LoS it, some times you get pulled through 30ft of solid rock. I don’t know if this is a latency issue or just very poor coding but I absolutely refuse to play Ranked if my ping is over 50ms (it’s normally in the mid-high 20’s), and I’m aware I can’t control for server-side latency or other players’ latency.

Miles Smiles.8951:

Stability, out of range, line of sight, immediate stun break.

Stability works.

LoS doesn’t seem to even though it should (I’ve pulled people through cliffs/bridges/platforms/other significant terrain that LoS’s all my other abilities, especially and particularly the hills around graveyard and the bridges on Skyhammer).

Range is too large.

Stunbreak does nothing.

Ragion.2831:

Crinn.7864:

Ragion.2831:

so the reason for smaller cap points is to shorten the duration of the fight? You understand that some classes are better at fighting on smaller cap points than others right? and that is a huge problem since the matchmaking doesnt take profession mix into account

You have just basically said that shorter fights are more important than classes fighting on an even footing. You are saying, it doesnt matter if two (even 3) thieves are staring down a multi DH, multi condi war comp it doesnt matter as long as the thieves die quickly without wasting time bothering about contesting. This is why people have a problem with anet devs.

Lol im done.

The problem with longer fights is longer fights changes how the rotation games works. If the fights take too long then rotation becomes devalued and strategy turns to simply taking home and bunking mid.

A example of this is 3point maps in SW:TOR (back when it had 8v8 ranked) where that game’s more difficult capping system meant that teams simply take close and contest mid, and the team that capped their close first wouldn’t even need to cap mid. Thus winning simply became about getting the first cap and the rest of the match was just for show.

Thieves would actually be less useful with large nodes because with large nodes the gameplay turns away from rotations and towards bunking. And thieves strength as always been in rotations.

Before, the June 23rd patch that killed core thief, i was a combat thief so i would run S/D and D/P, rune of lyssa, 30 points in trickery, improvisation trait and old feline grace trait. I ran this because i really hated (and still do) stealthing but i liked the evade gameplay.

I noticed that this build was really good at fighting revealed and did really well in team fights and outnumbered fights against other classes. This was really useful on a large point because when i recalled out of range to avoid a pin i would still be on the point or very near it so i could still contest. This doesnt work anymore after all the changes.

Nowadays with smaller points thieves cannot participate in a team fight well because of DH traps and all the random AoE, Often times i would see a thief hanging back looking at a fight waiting for an aoe skill to end before jumping in, waiting because going to another point isnt a good option at that moment for whatever reason.

This is why Helseth (i think) said they dont pay any attention to what thief is doing.

DH traps are really bad for the game, the amount of stealth on thieves also really bad for thieves. Ive said this for months its only now people are finally beginning to understand why.

And I think this is why I’m seeing so many P/P thieves in mid-high ranked and why you almost never see a non-P/P thief in unranked. If they get even remotely close to melee range they melt from untargeted AoE and Unload will kill or come close to killing most classes most of the time plus it’s on a short enough cooldown they can usually get 2-3 off before they’re caught. It’s a cheese build and not viable at ESL levels but it’s enough to make them not-useless at Ruby/Diamond/lower Legendary.

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

Hey everyone,
This has come up before and I thought I would give some insight as to why the capture points are the way they are.

When we look at the data we have for capture points, we notice that fights on bigger capture points tend to run much longer than capture points that are smaller. It makes sense, when players are able to use skills to guarantee hits on players that are on point, instead of the missing players that are on point but running around the outskirts of the point. This means on smaller cap points players will need to weigh the risk of being on the point and know when you need to rotate out.

Question time:
How do we like smaller capture points knowing that they reinforce fights coming to an end?
Would you change the mid point to be larger?
Would you change the side points to be larger?

We don’t like smaller capture points AT ALL because they extremely heavily favor 2 of the 9 classes, considering there are no other game modes as an alternative.

Completely redesign all PVP maps, rotate Capricorn into ranked

Completely redesign all PVP maps, rotate Capricorn into ranked

I would also shrink the size of every single ground-targeted AoE and trap in the game in every game mode.

Razor.9872:

I occasionally have unexpected network issues, and am forced a DC. However, I always try frantically to come back every time.

If the people you are talking about are coming back to the match, and not just straight out ditching it, is it still being done on purpose?

Odds are at this point in the season, yes.
-hey I’m gonna lose a pip either way
-lemme screw over other people while I’m at it

I routinely have people DC, come back, say stuff about screwing over the team, DC’ing again, and coming back right at the end (usually at the 10 minute mark +/1 5 seconds) so they’re never offline more than 120 seconds and kitten-talking the whole way.

I have rarely encountered people on my team from the same guild as the 4 or 5 man premade I’m facing that do this as a way to “game the system” and guarantee their guildies’ team a win, though that seemed to stop happening about mid-way through Ruby.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Lucred.1802:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Lucred.1802:

Chaith.8256:

Lucred.1802:

Kuya.6495:

Haste stomp?

Anything that modifies attack speed also modifies all channels (including stomps).

Can’t decide if Lucred is saying facts wrong to trigger people, or he actually believes it

Considering I witness it firsthand every day (both on the giving and receiving end), I believe it. I’m not trying to be confrontational, but it seems like this is how it actually works.

Unless there’s another explanation for sub-1-second stomps from characters with no specialty stomp mechanic (like guardians and warriors) when and only when they’re on the same team and in close proximity to a chronomancer. I’m willing to learn here.

edit
According to the wiki, any and all Quickness shortens the channel on all actions.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quickness

January 26th 2016

Reviving: Reviving characters will no longer be affected by time-scaled effects like quickness and slow.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-January-26-2016/first#post5957898

So no, haste stomps aren’t a thing anymore, and when the Druid enters stealth it’s only for 3 seconds which still leaves a time where they are visible for the stomp same with Mesmer and Thief unless they waste everything they have to stack stealth or if the Thief drops SR on you.

The only skills that can stomp are Function Gyro which is 5 secs iirc or Thief Elite which can be timed exactly when you go to the downed state to finish almost instantly if they use those attacks before you enter the downed state.

I’m complaining about quickness speeding up the cast of stomp, not the cast of rez.

It’s not listed in the wiki that there are any exclusions for it and I don’t believe that’s a change that stayed in the game as I can see it in action daily.

Apparently my phone didn’t copy properly go to the link I posted look right above class balance, it says Finish them is not affected by quickness or slow. That’s why I provided the link.

Also the Wiki is user maintained not developer maintained, lots of outdated sections.

And, again, the wiki says there are no exclusions and I can see there are no exclusions in-game as far as anything I can actually test on (such as the training mobs). I don’t believe that’s a change that stayed in the game, either intentionally or unintentionally I think it got reverted at some point because this is something I can and have tested and quickness does speed up the cast of stomp.

Ubik.8315:

The reason for playing vs the same people again and again while flip flopping from the winner to the loser is the probably because there just aren’t enough people playing anymore.

I’m not sure I believe that.

If I’m on a good team, I’ll never see those players ever again even if I do well in comparison and my MMR should go up almost identically to them.

If I’m on a bad team, I’ll be stuck with that bad team for the rest of the day and sometimes all of the next day.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Lucred.1802:

Chaith.8256:

Lucred.1802:

Kuya.6495:

Haste stomp?

Anything that modifies attack speed also modifies all channels (including stomps).

Can’t decide if Lucred is saying facts wrong to trigger people, or he actually believes it

Considering I witness it firsthand every day (both on the giving and receiving end), I believe it. I’m not trying to be confrontational, but it seems like this is how it actually works.

Unless there’s another explanation for sub-1-second stomps from characters with no specialty stomp mechanic (like guardians and warriors) when and only when they’re on the same team and in close proximity to a chronomancer. I’m willing to learn here.

edit
According to the wiki, any and all Quickness shortens the channel on all actions.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quickness

January 26th 2016

Reviving: Reviving characters will no longer be affected by time-scaled effects like quickness and slow.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-January-26-2016/first#post5957898

So no, haste stomps aren’t a thing anymore, and when the Druid enters stealth it’s only for 3 seconds which still leaves a time where they are visible for the stomp same with Mesmer and Thief unless they waste everything they have to stack stealth or if the Thief drops SR on you.

The only skills that can stomp are Function Gyro which is 5 secs iirc or Thief Elite which can be timed exactly when you go to the downed state to finish almost instantly if they use those attacks before you enter the downed state.

I’m complaining about quickness speeding up the cast of stomp, not the cast of rez.

It’s not listed in the wiki that there are any exclusions for it and I don’t believe that’s a change that stayed in the game as I can see it in action daily.

R O C.6574:

Did DH get some major buff prior to S4? Aren’t over half the issues you are discussing existing mechanics? Wasn’t DH a “noob killer” class that was “trash tier” in “high levels” of play?

How many backseat drivers does it take to ruin pvp balance? Just check the forums…

Depends on what your idea of “major” is, but when almost everyone else got a relatively significant nerf and DH gets a rather hefty buff to 1h weapon damage, a lot of people consider it so.

Prior to S4 if you could avoid traps you pretty much didn’t die to DH’s, as that was over half their damage output and 90% of their CC. Now it’s a small fraction of their damage output because they basically got a 200% on-point-only DPS buff because of how damaging the 1H symbols are, how easy they are to stack, and the fact that they cover the majority of a cap point and can’t be blocked. They’re still not very good roamers because it’s easy to fight around the symbols, but they have amazing point control coupled with good sustain coupled with decent burst and good overall DPS.

kdaddy.5431:

Literally after i posted that last comment i got this match. We actually should of won but my team mates felt it was necessary to give them the cap points back after killing them in fights, to chase beasts.

I’m seeing this as an issue more of class stacking than it is any one build of Guardian being OP (this is not saying DH doesn’t need some tuning, it does). You’d have had the same or worse outcomes if those’d been 4 Scrappers or 4 Druids, and probably the same outcome with 4 Mesmers or 4 Ele’s.

The reason DH gets complained about the most is it’s infinitely more common to get a team with 3 DH’s than it is to get a team with 3 of anything else, in part because they’re easy to play “well enough”. Their skill floor is too low.

Chaith.8256:

Lucred.1802:

Kuya.6495:

Haste stomp?

Anything that modifies attack speed also modifies all channels (including stomps).

Can’t decide if Lucred is saying facts wrong to trigger people, or he actually believes it

Considering I witness it firsthand every day (both on the giving and receiving end), I believe it. I’m not trying to be confrontational, but it seems like this is how it actually works.

Unless there’s another explanation for sub-1-second stomps from characters with no specialty stomp mechanic (like guardians and warriors) when and only when they’re on the same team and in close proximity to a chronomancer. I’m willing to learn here.

edit
According to the wiki, any and all Quickness shortens the channel on all actions.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quickness

kin korn karn.9023:

For me, S4 is the best of the last three seasons. Didn’t play S1, but I’ve heard stories. The matches on the whole are more engaging, and there are way fewer players throwing in the towel early on (and, as a result of that, some very interesting late-match comebacks). My win% appears to better reflect my skill level as I perceive it in relation to the people I play with/against.

Just my 2c. I know that there’s a wide range of what players experience, so I’m not saying this season is objectively better, by any means. I’d actually be surprised if there’s really all that much difference overall.

I started very late last season (11 days remaining) and rode a 92% win rate to high Ruby as my first time ever in ranked (started the minute I hit rank 20 and could) and would’ve easily made Diamond if not Legendary if I’d had more time. Yes, I realize at that point most of the very good/pro-level players had had their titles for weeks and had quit and I was facing the last gasp groups.

Start in Emerald this season and start off with an 87 game losing streak. It took 3 weeks to get out of Emerald, then blew through Sapphire on an ~18 game win streak, then hit a 25 game losing streak in Ruby.

I’ve since gone from 1 win from Diamond to zero pips in Ruby on four separate occasions with 20+ game losing streaks. I have over 700 games played this season and am currently at about a 35% win rate. It seems that if I get in on a blowout match I will either continue to be stuck on the exact same team (if I’m on the losing team) or get transferred to the losing team (if I’m on the winning team). There’s no way my MMR is fluctuating that wildly match to match.

While I am seeing more D/C’s than last season (including some very intentional trolls who will D/C the second the gate opens and reconnect exactly at the 10 minute mark then yell “Ha, you missed me?” or similar) I’m seeing fewer intentional AFK’s. Most of the D/C’s are gone long enough I’m not losing pips over them at least. I’m currently at about a 20% rate for matches where a teammate DC’d >120 seconds, and around a 45% rate where someone on either team DC’s for any length of time. Whether this is a symptom of a broken game client or whether it’s intentional I really couldn’t say.

So…why am I having such major swings in wins/losses?
—class stacking
3 Guardians on a team in Conquest will win against a team similar in skill that doesn’t have either a comparable number of guardians or a comparable number of scrappers 99% of the time. Teams with 2 Ele’s in Stronghold will win 100% of the time, even if one or both of the ele’s is terribad, because that makes the doorbreakers almost impossible to kill without taking 3+ people and pretty much makes summoned heroes impossible to kill (in time) period. 3 thieves on a team is an almost guaranteed loss for that team. People are not willing to switch this season regardless of how unfavorable the comp is.
—an extremely wide range of ranks/pips/MMR in one match
I’ve seen Ambers in my matches as Ruby that are soloQ. I’ve had matches that had everything from an amber to a diamond in them all soloQ. I’m getting 3+ person Legendary premades going against me because Anet decided that 3 Legend+2 Amber=4 Ruby+1 Sapphire. I’m seeing pip spreads of over 100 on one team.

And I’m seeing the worst keyboard-turning, first-person-POV-using, mouse-clicking, window-licking people in Ruby and Diamond. There’s no way they belong there, there’s literally no way their MMR is high enough. And of course due to Murphy’s Law, they’re on my team more often than not.

tl;dr
Season 3 was good to me because noob with normalized MMR. Season 4 despite no changes on my end has been a nightmare.

Kuya.6495:

Haste stomp?

Anything that modifies attack speed also modifies all channels (including stomps).

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Lucred.1802:

fishball.7204:

Ario.8964:

Solution is to remove all safe stomps

Why? Why would this be a good thing? Safe stomps usually come at a cost and there’s at least SOME decision making required in whether or not to waste a cooldown to safestomp -_-.

If you remove this then the game just becomes more brain dead than it already is.

Because a stomp should NEVER EVER EVER EVER NEVER EVER be 100% guaranteed.

And right now 3 classes have basically 100% guaranteed, near-instant stomps with effectively no penalty for using them.

At that point, why even bother having downstate?

So what are those 3 classes I know Scrapper is one what are the others? Mesmer and Thief? Where they have to use their biggest mobility CDs when they have no access to Stability reliably And they can still be cc’d if you time the cc for when they return before they stomp? Mesmer is a little harder since they do have accesse to invuln.

Or are you complaining about Thieves elite which to get an Instant stomp they have to time it the moment you go down and have it already precast since it’s a three part skill that can be interrupted.

Scrapper (function gyro, shrink pot+reg. stomp)
Thief (Daredevil uppercut chain, stomp from stealth)
Druid (stealth+haste stomp)

I think it’s bull that druids out-stealth the quintessential stealth class and with several different abilities that give them significant haste they have a half-cast-time stomp plus stealth plus immunity plus mobility plus stability.

kdaddy.5431:

Kuya.6495:

I think the realistic way of cutting down on the dominance of dh on low tier pvp is to lower damage specifically on procession of blades, dragon’s maw, and symbol damage from sword 2 and scepter 2. I don’t think the damage on test of faith should be touched because that’s the trap used for higher tiers of play and it actually requires the DH to watch for stab before combo, and then perform, in order, a specific set of skills depending on enemy positioning (if enemy is outside circle, you pull with f1, if they are inside, you push with either lb 2, hammer 4 or shield 5). I don’t know if you need to increase the healing from symbol trait on honor line to compensate for symbol damage nerfs on sword 2 and scepter 2.

I know lowering the damage on those two symbols wouldn’t necessarily put symbolic out of meta, since the build doesn’t just use symbol spam to damage but also to maintain a sustain cadence along with aegis and dodges. As long symbolic still maintains its shield 5 knockback, daze on trap, heal on aegis, cleanse on block, it still serves its purpose even if symbol damage is lowered on those specific one handed skills. So symbolic might survive damage nerfs on symbols for higher pvp, but just become less useful in low tier pvp.

Please also increase speed on mace 2 while you are at it, it’s too slow for what little it offers.

snip
I mean in 1 vs 1 DH are what the 3-4 best class? Then in team fights they are what the 2nd or 3rd class you target? I mean the class is in no way OP but my question to you is what would you try to change that makes lesser classes on par with DH without making them OP in the ESL scene.

It depends entirely on the spec. 1v1 full trapper is like 8th (equal skill levels should only consistently beat thieves and even then not even 90% of the time), Symbolic is like 3rd, meditrapper 4th or 5th.

In team fights full trapper is still only like 5th at any kind of actual skill, they’re the quintessential noobstomper and even a good one will never get much damage from the traps. Meditrapper is like 3rd (most people would much rather have a scrapper or mesmer on their side in a teamfight, both do significantly more total damage, have more devastating burst, and bring much more group support) and Symbolic is easily the worst at 9th (poor mobility, low AoE, poor point control, no group support at all, lower personal sustain than any other DH build so they die easily and frequently, decent but nothing-special burst compared to thief/warrior/ele).

Tissitra.4153:

Lucred.1802:

20k every 30 seconds?

Not even with Mender’s. Not even CLOSE with Mender’s. Mender’s will do 11-13k healing every 30 seconds and that’s assuming you’re also not using WoR so you get its passive, and that you’re running and not activating Signet of Courage so you get its passive.

Using Demolisher’s, this is what I’m seeing on my guard (zero healing power):
-Purification (24s cooldown)
-Initial heal: 2192
-Trap heal: 6413
This gives 8605 healing every 24 seconds assuming something activates the trap and I’m dropping the trap on cooldown every cooldown. This normalizes out to 10,756.25 healing every 30 seconds.

You appear to have conveniently ‘forgotten’ about 80% of skills that heal a DH. Here is an actual complete count on marauder amulet; this count applies to BOTH the meditrapper and the symbolic build as listed on metabattle (symbolic gets EVEN MORE from traits):

8,5k from purification (24 second cooldown)
+2k from smite condition (16 seconds)
+2k from smiter’s boon (24 seconds)
+2k from judges intervention (36 seconds)
+4k from wings of resolve (26 seconds)
+6k from renewed focus (2k since meditation + 4k from wings of resolve recharge) (72 seconds)

I invite you to crunch these numbers to confirm that the average healing from using everything on cooldown is 0,855k per second or:

25,6k OVER 30 SECONDS

And all those other skills that aren’t purification have exactly what to do with a discussion about nerfing purification?

You’re moving the goalposts.

Justine.6351:

Lucred.1802:

Brenil.8957:

I don’t get the poo poo party on the staff 2.

It has AoE, it provides weakness, and if you hit someone using a skill, it hits like a truck and dazes. All of this for 5 energy on a five second cooldown.

Why the hate? It’s a great skill, especially in PvP.

-it has a significant precast, a half-second cast time, and a significant aftercast coupled with a very telegraphed animation. Good luck hitting anybody that wasn’t already CC’d in PvP with it.
-it uses a TON of energy, and the on-hit secondary uses even more. It’s basically usable once per stance change despite the low cooldown.
-the hit range on it is less than the graphic depiction of swinging the staff, even on small characters with negative graphic scaling (or about half of the animation on a Charr); the hit range is extremely small, smaller than our AA with any weapon, and has a very narrow cone of effect.
-it hits for less damage than hammer AA and less than half the damage of Hammer 3 while using twice the energy with about 5% of the range, for nearly the same secondary effects.
-it’s not a combo finisher, unlike hammers 2, 3, and 5 or sword 2 or axe 5.

It has potential but wasn’t very well thought out and is very clunky.

What type of combo finisher is CoR?

Ack. Ir’s not. Sorry, I posted that off memory and was just plain ol’ wrong.

fishball.7204:

Ario.8964:

Solution is to remove all safe stomps

Why? Why would this be a good thing? Safe stomps usually come at a cost and there’s at least SOME decision making required in whether or not to waste a cooldown to safestomp -_-.

If you remove this then the game just becomes more brain dead than it already is.

Because a stomp should NEVER EVER EVER EVER NEVER EVER be 100% guaranteed.

And right now 3 classes have basically 100% guaranteed, near-instant stomps with effectively no penalty for using them.

At that point, why even bother having downstate?

Ragion.2831:

Lucred.1802:

Jayce.5632:

Lucred.1802:

Staff auto attack gives 3% life force per hit. Your marks give between 10-15% life force per target hit. One Mark of Blood dropped in the initial team fight should give you just under half your life force (10% x 4 players), and with staff AA hitting every 3/4 second it should take you less than 20 seconds doing nothing other than AA and dropping marks to be at full force. And then of course every attack and ability while in Shroud generates life force, so as long as you don’t jump into a 1v3+ you should be able to generate it faster than you’re losing it.

What game version are you running and where can I find it?

Whoops I actually screwed that up a little. But anyway,
—http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Reaper_-_Signet_Chillomancer
“all your marks are unblockable and build life force” through Soul Reaping specialization Soul Marks, 3% per trigger
Necrotic Grasp generates 4% life force per hit and is your staff AA, can hit up to 5 targets for 22% of your life force in one attack (if you’re specced in Gluttony, otherwise 20%)
Feast of Corruption (scepter 3) generates 8% plus 1% per condi on the target up to 5%
Staff 1 strikes every 0.788 seconds with no haste according to the wiki.

When I get back from work I could post a video of my baby necro going from 0% life force to full in about 18 seconds, but that is admittedly on the target golems that don’t fight back. I do think it fair to say that in a team fight where you can hit multiple foes going 0-full in 20 seconds is doable frequently.

This is just plain ridiculous. 0-100% in 18 seconds. any dps class can kill you well within that time. You also said if 3+ people are porting to you at the same time that is a l2p issue. What are you talking about? you cant prevent 3 people from porting to you even if you are staying behind. You really should play more pvp before writing paragraphs about it

If you have 3+ people focusing you within the first 10 seconds of a fight you were the first or only person from your team to get there at all play levels. end of story. It is a L2P issue. Don’t go charging headfirst into melee range in a team fight with no shroud, hang back and use the terrain and you won’t get focused because you won’t be on the point. Yes you won’t be building life force as fast as if you went all out spamming everything that builds life force into the thickest group of enemies you could find, but guess what? You’re not getting focused which means you have a significant amount of LF before you ever get attacked.

And that 0-100% is single target. Yes, it may be luck to hit 3+ people with staff AA in an actual match, but you’re hitting 2 people at least half the time due to the relatively long range of the attack and the relatively small points.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Lucred.1802:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Loathar.9375:

I don’t know if this is a thing or not still (Maybe fixed/changed?) because I have not seen this done to me in any match but…

Portal stomps….

Like, Anet how the kitten is this allowable? How is cleave damage going to affect THAT situation? Same goes for the thief teleport stomp…If anything needs some balancing………………

for one Thieves don’t have access to Stab or invulns like other classes and that puts their biggest Condi cleanse/ Stun break/ mobility skill on CD for 60 seconds.

And Same with Mesmer minus the Invuln part and portal not providing all that utility besides actually porting… So unless they remove every other classes safe stomp mechanics no they shouldn’t touch those.

They should remove safe stomp and safe rez entirely from all classes in all game modes.

Can’t really be done unless they stop people with stability from stomping or Rezzing since that is a form of safe stomping/Rezzing.

Okay, let me rephrase.
*remove function gyro entirely from the game (it’s the most powerful of all the downstate mechanics as the engi is free to go on about his business). Remove thief uppercut combo stomp entirely from the game. Remove mesmer rez dome from pvp. Remove Search and Rescue from pvp. Remove any and all other cheesy +rez or +stomp mechanics from PvP. Make all invulnerability abilities so that you cannot perform any actions other than run while invulnerable.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Add healing and WvW poison shot can give interesting dynamics to the fight.

• Poison cloud duration needs to adjust to power variant so people will actually pick it, while shorten its remaining duration so it doesn’t give cap advantages too much. I think having multiple stacks on short duration is sufficient, something like 3 stacks for 1s and pulses 3 times?
• Healing shot could probably go like 1.5k heal on hit and 3s regen or something like that. They sound OP on paper but need to weigh out lost of opportunity with hard hitting physical shot.

I think currently the time taken to kill treb is balanced for power players, just need to adjust condi players to them. The time was sufficient so that people who was on treb can decap/cap points if they decide to rotate. If its too easy to destroy the treb then people who was on it will be at significant disadvantage when challenged.

Treb dies entirely too fast currently. 3-5 seconds for a power thief, 8 seconds for power herald with sword/shield or about 6-7 for hammer, less than 10 seconds for symbolic guardian, less than 4 seconds for ele (since they can do a lightning overload then drop lava font or meteor shower on it and bail knowing it’ll die in short order).

It should take at least twice as long as it does to run up the ramp, which without teleport/shadowstep is about 9 seconds with no movement speed increase or around 7 seconds with 33% movement speed increase and OOC, or around 12 seconds with no +move and in combat.

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to jump in here and give a quick summary list of some of the feedback in this thread.

• Have treb take damage from condi’s and crits
• Rotation speed increase
• Remove Treb completely
• Faster fire rate
• Different treb amno that supports allies on points
• Teleport skill drop the siege bundle

Remember that this thread is a discussion between myself and you the community. I can’t promise any of the suggestions will be implemented or when. However, I am reading the thread and taking the feedback very seriously and passing it along to the PvP Team.

Now some additional questions:

• If you could add one ammo type to the treb (poison shot, healy shot, etc.) what would it be?
• How long (in seconds) do you think it should take the treb to turn from Home to Far?
• How long (in seconds) do you think a damage dealer (either physical or condi) should take to kill a treb?

Thank you all for participating in the discussion and keeping is constructive.

I could see adding an AoE poison or bleed+cripple ammo to it, to keep it in line with historical/IRL use of trebs (bags of small rocks to act as buckshot, close range IE mid and home only can’t reach far; rotten animals to spread disease).

Full rotation should be no greater than 6 seconds. As is the treb can’t even keep up with normal runspeed of a character running perpendicular to it through the center of the map.

Treb should be killable in 15 seconds or less by a balanced bruiser build. I don’t think treb should be opened up to all condi damage as it makes zero sense from a lore/history standpoint both IRL and ingame for a wooden catapult to take torment/confusion/bleeding damage. In order to make up for this it should take double or triple damage from burning (and maybe 1.5x damage from direct fire damage) and maybe 1.2-1.5x damage from chill/ice/water effects (yes I realize this pretty much throws mesmer out on their ears but unless you make portaling drop the bundle and make it harder for them to port onto roof of mid they’re already the kings of this map). While this won’t make all classes able to unilaterally kill a treb in, say, exactly 13 seconds I do think it will introduce some play/counterplay and strategy to an otherwise pretty straightforward map (mesmer next to useless killing trebs, ele extremely good at killing trebs but will be fairly vulnerable in the process as has to stay in fire attune, everyone else decent or better within a narrow margin).

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Loathar.9375:

I don’t know if this is a thing or not still (Maybe fixed/changed?) because I have not seen this done to me in any match but…

Portal stomps….

Like, Anet how the kitten is this allowable? How is cleave damage going to affect THAT situation? Same goes for the thief teleport stomp…If anything needs some balancing………………

for one Thieves don’t have access to Stab or invulns like other classes and that puts their biggest Condi cleanse/ Stun break/ mobility skill on CD for 60 seconds.

And Same with Mesmer minus the Invuln part and portal not providing all that utility besides actually porting… So unless they remove every other classes safe stomp mechanics no they shouldn’t touch those.

They should remove safe stomp and safe rez entirely from all classes in all game modes.

Chaith.8256:

Lucred.1802:

(inb4 “just cleave/CC the gyro!” it has 21k health and more armor than a bunker guard as well as 3 stacks of stability that refreshes every 5 seconds)

Scrappers actually be like, you mean Gyros have 8k health and 1 stability for 3s from the Grandmaster trait.

Good remedy would have been to not make taking Function Gyro the Scrapper’s entire Elite mechanic itself, if it were a utility or not compulsory in any way, I think balance would be a lot easier to attain.

Even so, the cooldown of Function Gyro would be the only thing that would make sense to adjust if ArenaNet determined Scrapper was too good compared to other Elite Specs

There is absolutely no way gyro only has 8k health, ive crit them for over 8k with Arc Divider and not taken them below half.

And stability is plain for everyone to see, they always have 3 stacks.

nicknamenick.2437:

1 hate those tomes.. i have 800 tomes and enough spirit shards.

But almost no mastery stuff because i rarely play pve

Then why would you care about PvE masteries that have zero impact on PvP games? Bragging rights?

Jayce.5632:

Lucred.1802:

Staff auto attack gives 3% life force per hit. Your marks give between 10-15% life force per target hit. One Mark of Blood dropped in the initial team fight should give you just under half your life force (10% x 4 players), and with staff AA hitting every 3/4 second it should take you less than 20 seconds doing nothing other than AA and dropping marks to be at full force. And then of course every attack and ability while in Shroud generates life force, so as long as you don’t jump into a 1v3+ you should be able to generate it faster than you’re losing it.

What game version are you running and where can I find it?

Whoops I actually screwed that up a little. But anyway,
—http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Reaper_-_Signet_Chillomancer
“all your marks are unblockable and build life force” through Soul Reaping specialization Soul Marks, 3% per trigger
Necrotic Grasp generates 4% life force per hit and is your staff AA, can hit up to 5 targets for 22% of your life force in one attack (if you’re specced in Gluttony, otherwise 20%)
Feast of Corruption (scepter 3) generates 8% plus 1% per condi on the target up to 5%
Staff 1 strikes every 0.788 seconds with no haste according to the wiki.

When I get back from work I could post a video of my baby necro going from 0% life force to full in about 18 seconds, but that is admittedly on the target golems that don’t fight back. I do think it fair to say that in a team fight where you can hit multiple foes going 0-full in 20 seconds is doable frequently.

Brenil.8957:

I don’t get the poo poo party on the staff 2.

It has AoE, it provides weakness, and if you hit someone using a skill, it hits like a truck and dazes. All of this for 5 energy on a five second cooldown.

Why the hate? It’s a great skill, especially in PvP.

-it has a significant precast, a half-second cast time, and a significant aftercast coupled with a very telegraphed animation. Good luck hitting anybody that wasn’t already CC’d in PvP with it.
-it uses a TON of energy, and the on-hit secondary uses even more. It’s basically usable once per stance change despite the low cooldown.
-the hit range on it is less than the graphic depiction of swinging the staff, even on small characters with negative graphic scaling (or about half of the animation on a Charr); the hit range is extremely small, smaller than our AA with any weapon, and has a very narrow cone of effect.
-it hits for less damage than hammer AA and less than half the damage of Hammer 3 while using twice the energy with about 5% of the range, for nearly the same secondary effects.
-it’s not a combo finisher, unlike hammers 2, 3, and 5 or sword 2 or axe 5.

It has potential but wasn’t very well thought out and is very clunky.

mrauls.6519:

I hate Khylo with a passion, and the treb is a contributing factor as to why. The treb does a crazy amount of damage and takes long to destroy. Please remove it or reduce the total amount of HP it has

How does the treb take a long time to destroy?

It’s like 8 seconds to dead on my rev and like 10 with sw/foc/GS DH. Maybe if you play a condi class since it doesn’t make sense to confuse/blind/bleed something with no brain/eyes/blood it could take a while, but c’mon. It takes 10x longer to run up the hill to it than it does to actually kill it, and half the classes can just teleport to it anyway.

Vicariuz.1605:

Supreme.3164:

For the love of God…do not give a free pass to Condi Chronomancer at the next balance patch.

Can you please, please, please, PLEASE..nerf Chronophantasma to keep this trait with no ICD is pure madness.

How does it make any sense to allow mesmer to use shatter after shatter like nothing?

I’m looking at the whole picture not only PvP Conquest where people are forced into a small circle, how can you expect me to avoid all this crap 24/7?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1B1s04gVLA

And this is in PvP..imagine the same crap in wvw…wth man….

Cleanse on shatter, teleports on 6s CD, blocks for days, insta gapcloser…IWIN elites…and worst of all auto-lock clones, add to that chronophantasma and there is no point even trying to dodge the shatter.

Regardless of what you do ( dodge/block or more) the shatter still recharge..what? lol

Nerfing condi chrono will leave mesmer with what viable build? Power is already not viable.

For supposedly not being viable I’m seeing a lot of powershatter mesmers in Ruby/Diamond and know at least 1 player who’s 3rd tier legendary with his powershatter mesmer as main. Yes, they don’t have the sustain of chronophantasma, but good lord they hurt.

There’s 3 viable condi mesmer builds, of which chronophantasma is only 1. Calling for a nerf of Chronophantasma is not a unilateral call for nerfing condi mesmer as a role.

Josh Davis.6015:

This is something we’ve been monitoring for a while. We’re looking at a couple of different options here, but we do need to be careful making changes to something that is so integral to PvP gameplay (and as a note, we’d be making changes to PvP only).

Below are some suggestions I’ve seen on this forum over the past few months. We wouldn’t do all of them of course, but I figured I’d throw them out and see how you folks feel about them.

• Implement 1-to-1 rally policy, similar to WvW. This means that only 1 player would rally per enemy killed, rather than up to 5. Would likely be the downed ally closest to the enemy player.
• Cap the range at which someone can rally.
• Bring back PvE-downstate policy
• Shorten revive/downed “invuln” buff.
• Reduce healing per tick when rezzing.
• Further reduce downstate HP
• Adjust outlier revive skills (Function Gyro)

Let me address all of these instead of my rant about specialty rez/stomp skills.

-1:1 rally
Maybe. I see this helping a lot at the lowest levels of PvP (unranked and amber), and I see it hurting a lot at the highest levels of PvP (diamond/legendary). Which IMO is a good indicator of balance. However, a skillful stomp with more than 1 friendly down under the current cap can turn the tide of the game and is 100% skill (since it requires setup and forethought, even if they use a cheese mechanic like thief uppercut-stomp or function gyro) and I don’t see mass-rallies happen on accident frequently enough to matter.

-cap the range for rally
Absolutely 100% agree. Nothing more frustrating than having a good 1v1 on a point, be 99% through your stomp cast, and the guy pops back up for seemingly no reason because their teammate stomped someone on the other side of the map in a totally unrelated fight. The rally range is HUGE currently, and while probably not game-breaking it can be exceedingly frustrating on the comparatively tiny PvP maps.

-bring back PvE downstate
No. Downstate is already enough of a joke in pvp, see my post above about this.

-shorten transition invuln period
Yes, absolutely. It’s ridiculously long now, especially since they can be rezzed during this time. Halve it and make them unable to be interacted with by anybody during it (you’re not bandaging a guy literally while he’s still falling over anyway).

-reduce healing per tick while rezzing
No, this will just make the specialty rez abilities even more valuable and comparatively significantly more powerful. And especially without major nerfs across the board to stomping/cleaving it would basically mean if you don’t have an engi standing on your toes when you go down you’re guaranteed to die.

-further reduce downstate HP
No, for the same reason as you don’t nerf downstate healing. Would basically mean the only rezzes that happen happen OOC where they don’t really matter.

-adjust outlier rez abilities
Yes, absolutely. And while you’re at it adjust outlier stomp abilities. Both are entirely too strong to be outliers.

Muchacho.2390:

Question why was the pve down policy removed in the first place? Just curious.

Popping back up in the middle of an aoe with a third of your health and no buffs (and potentially still having condi’s on you from downstate) and immediately going back into downstate happens too many times and is too random as it is. I’m okay with it happening a lot, I’m not okay with it being random/unintentional.

Especially since downed players don’t trigger traps, a valid strategy is to drop a bunch of traps on a downed guy then let him rez himself (5-15 seconds depending on class, if nobody’kittenting him), he’ll pop back up with almost no health and get eaten by the traps which will trigger before he has control of his character again and has no chance to block/dodge and go back into downstate. A player in downstate for extended periods of time (up to 45 seconds from one set of traps this way) is way worse than a dead player that will rez in 15 seconds.

Josh Davis.6015:

This is something we’ve been monitoring for a while. We’re looking at a couple of different options here, but we do need to be careful making changes to something that is so integral to PvP gameplay (and as a note, we’d be making changes to PvP only).

Below are some suggestions I’ve seen on this forum over the past few months. We wouldn’t do all of them of course, but I figured I’d throw them out and see how you folks feel about them.

• Implement 1-to-1 rally policy, similar to WvW. This means that only 1 player would rally per enemy killed, rather than up to 5. Would likely be the downed ally closest to the enemy player.
• Cap the range at which someone can rally.
• Bring back PvE-downstate policy
• Shorten revive/downed “invuln” buff.
• Reduce healing per tick when rezzing.
• Further reduce downstate HP
• Adjust outlier revive skills (Function Gyro)

I absolutely think you should adjust (IMO completely delete) the outlier revive skills. In no way is it fair that 2 classes can basically guarantee a revive with 3 people cleaving the downed guy, or that the 3 specialty revive skills (function gyro, war banner, and whatever the purple mesmer dome is) revive at vastly different rates with one being overwhelmingly superior (function gyro rezzes the fastest while being only slightly less likely to fail due to the gyro having a ton of health and armor plus stability).

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to ask the community what your thoughts are on the secondary mechanic of Khylo: The Trebuchet.

The treb gives your team map wide big area damage and crowd control, at the expense of a single player controlling it. Each team gets their own treb near their base and is useable the entire duration of the match unless it is destroyed. If the treb is destroyed a player needs to run a repair kit from a designated area to the treb to repair it back to full health.

What do you like about it?
What do you think needs improving?
If needed, what would you change?
If needed, what would you add?
If needed, what would you remove?

I like the fact that it can hit any capture point on the map. I like that on top of doing a decent amount of damage, it also has a knockback effect.

I think the only thing that needs improving is it’s too hard for your team to get to in order to use it and too easy for the enemy to get to in order to destroy it, but realize that either way of fixing this (reworking the map to add a secondary path to it, and moving the treb elsewhere) requires significant overhauling of the map.

While I’m not necessarily sure it needs it, I would like to see the damage of the hit increased and the time between shots increased correspondingly. It’s a siege weapon, it (looks/acts like and historically IRL since it’s flinging a massive flaming rock at high velocity) should be able to 1-shot people, but it also shouldn’t be spammable on mid (which is quite easy to place shots accurately on). This will retain its utility but add more of a skill requirement in timing and aiming it.

I would also change the front edge of the platform so that mesmers and thieves can’t teleport straight to it circumventing the significant run up the spiral ramp, and so Rangers don’t have LoS on the treb from the roof of the bell tower (it’s just barely in range from one corner of mid)

I would add an NPC guard or two to the base of the ramp to the treb, roughly on par with the door guards in Stronghold (token vs. an actual assault but enough to slow some people down). They would be circumventable by several game mechanics like stealth and teleport and are mainly there to dispel the image of the treb being a complete afterthought and relatively useless (why would you leave the single most powerful non-magic weapon ever invented completely unguarded in hostile territory?)

LionChain.7694:

Can necros please start pvp matches with at least 25% life force? We’re not like guardians or warriors where we start off the match with blocks and invulns at the ready. We’re not like thieves and mesmers that can evade and port away at any second from the beginning of match. We’re not like druids who, even though they start with no celestial force, still have access to weapon skill evades, water fields and blast, pets, leaps, immunity to direct damage and stability.

Life force is pretty much our biggest form of sustain (as well as stability….we have Chilled to the Bone, but that’s on hit, and it’s so easy to blind or interrupt…plus, it’s a bad idea to pop it so early just for the stab), and we start with zero life force while all the other classes have all of their sustain skills ready to be used from start?

Even after spamming marks and life force gain skills, we still end up with too little life force (like not even half), and it takes a while to even get our life force up to that point. Basically, as necros, we end up being liabilities and our teammates end up having to cover us until we get life force up, because everyone knows that as soon as a match starts, it’s “focus the necro.”

I’m not asking for a full bar of life force from start. But even just 25% at start would be amazing and give us a better chance to survive at start of match, when 3-4 people decide to all port/leap at you and bomb the ever-loving crap out of you because as a necro, you have no blocks, no invulns, no weapon-skill evades, no nothing, and you literally have to pop everything you have and all your dodges just to stay alive long enough to get your life force up. Usually by the time you have your life force up enough to barely pop into shroud form, your health bar is at like 15%, and you know as soon as your little bit of life force gets obliterated, you’re going to die.

So please, let us necros start matches with at least 25% life force. Please.

Staff auto attack gives 3% life force per hit. Your marks give between 10-15% life force per target hit. One Mark of Blood dropped in the initial team fight should give you just under half your life force (10% x 4 players), and with staff AA hitting every 3/4 second it should take you less than 20 seconds doing nothing other than AA and dropping marks to be at full force. And then of course every attack and ability while in Shroud generates life force, so as long as you don’t jump into a 1v3+ you should be able to generate it faster than you’re losing it.

Reaper Shroud is such a strong ability I don’t think it’s fair to be able to charge right into the melee swinging your scythe around right off the bat, and it’s not an ability designed to have >50% uptime (even though a skillfully played necro can manage >80% uptime even in a losing match with bad teammates and a skillfully played necro with good teammates is approaching 95% uptime).

*edit for addition
If you have 3+ people porting/leaping at you right off the bat, that’s a L2P issue on your part. Don’t go charging headlong into a teamfight’s melee range, you’re a ranged class with either invisible or hard to see projectiles and every map has a ton of terrain you can work around. Between your multiple fears, cripples, and chills and Signet of the Locust, very few classes (IE, thief/guard/druid) should be able to reliably close with you unless you let them.

Silv.9207:

The only thing I will chamnge in DH is traps cooldown system.
Frequently the time i die and turn back on mid is enough for them to recharge they’re traps, making them able to spam them again just after I activate the previous set ones.

That make them able to spam too much they’re traps.
Change the CD system of Traps will be good to match all the other skills, that can not double activated in the same row (unless for some tricks like chronomancer and engi), expecially why they’re traps are really strong with High damage, AoE daze, boons and short CD.

An example on how they can be changed:
The CD start when the traps is Activated by the enemy that step on it. While set, a trap can be activated also if no one step on it, starting the CD.

That can be a good solytion to fix the double trap spam that make this class OP as point holder.

Another thing I will fix is about Enginers Function Gyro.
They have a Double Ress and Double Stomp, making the downed enemy totally unable to not be stomped (expecially for other engis, war, reve, necro) and ressing players at the speed of light, or even ressing/stomping two allies/enemies at the same time.
To fix that ANet can fix that when using the Gyro the engi can not stomp/ress anyone by himself, untill the gyro is destroyed by damage or CCed, making it unable to continue it’s function.
He still grant a Incredible Boon, making him able to ress/stomp while still fighting or keeping the distance, but at the same time don’t grant to him a double actio effect, making him too strong in both the actions.

in the end, I will cancel the revenant trait Roiling Mists, that grant them a the double of the Fury bonus, making them able to reach a Permanent 85/95% of Critical Rate while using the “passive” effect if Facet of Darkness skill (that grant permanent Fury).
It’s really too much. Already a class with permanent Fury is really strong and dangerous in damage, if you add that he can double it’s effect, that’s seriously too much. There must be another way to make a good Fury related trait that don’t make who use it able to critical hit at 100% basicly without any problem of skills, enemy status or time.

I’d leave Rev alone, they’re underrepresented right now due to being the single squishiest melee class and being riddled with bugs.

yes, with fury and Roiling Mists a Rev can pull off some big hits…if the skill doesn’t bug out (flat ground, stationary caster and target, no barrels present anywhere on map, no walls to get stuck in within 30 yards). But everything that hits hard on a Rev is interruptable, they have no unblockables, and the odds of stuff like UA, Hammer 2, Hammer 3, and Precision Strike not actually working are quite high due to them all being bugged. And even their heaviest hitter (hammer 3) still only does about 80% of the damage of Arc Divider and Backstab (which are instant) or about 90% of the damage of Decapitate (which is also instant). Though I will say it’s gratifying to see a 6k crit in pvp on a class that otherwise doesn’t hit for over 3k on any other ability with a weapon not considered in the meta.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Lucred.1802:

Razor.9872:

If we’re going to call for stomp/rez buffs/nerfs, we’re going to have to be very careful about it.

Be mindful that the slightest buffage/nerfage could result in further imbalance; if stomps are buffed to a point they can out-stomp specialized rez’s, then there will no longer be any point to rezzing.

I think most people here are calling for the abolishment of the specialized stomps and rezzes, especially since they’re not equally distributed among the classes.

Wouldn’t that make Warbanner useless?

I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw someone using it (100% of warriors I’ve played with/against use headbutt), so I’d say it’s already quite useless.

Razor.9872:

If we’re going to call for stomp/rez buffs/nerfs, we’re going to have to be very careful about it.

Be mindful that the slightest buffage/nerfage could result in further imbalance; if stomps are buffed to a point they can out-stomp specialized rez’s, then there will no longer be any point to rezzing.

I think most people here are calling for the abolishment of the specialized stomps and rezzes, especially since they’re not equally distributed among the classes.

Opc.4718:

Lucred.1802:

I’m not saying Fragments is godly, I’m saying it can make or break a team fight assuming your team is either lucky (accidentally steps on one) or good (actively looks for them). I couldn’t tell you the number of times I saw a ragezerker pull out the GS so I drop it on him and his 6k Arc Divider did squat all to the 3 people he was in the middle of, and the trap itself does similar damage to about the only other skill used in that slot (Smite Condition). It’s a situational use and you’d better believe if I’m facing a team with necros I’ll swap it for Smite Condition, but in a power-heavy match I’d rather have Fragments.

Doubleclick to cast means a JI+ToF+Deflecting Shot chain is almost entirely instant (less than 1 second considering you can simultaneously cast JI and ToF and the initial aim activation of DS) and at point blank ranges where JI already orients you to the opponent a guaranteed hit. Hunter’s Verdict+doubleclick Deflecting Shot auto-orients you to the target and is a 90%+ hit rate. It’s only when you’re not right on top of the opponent that you really have to aim the thing. And even if you don’t get the knockback from DS (stab or similar) you still just did a 6-8k burst with 3 instacast skills plus the at least one AA you got in there.

That’s great fragments play then, but I don’t see a lot of use of it outside the bunker version of the symbols build, and this build isn’t particularly prevalent in either high or low tier play. Not sure it needs a nerf as it is :P

The proposed trap changes would mean ToF insta cast wouldn’t do as much initial damage, it’s only the subsequent CCs through the trap that will do most of the damage. The JI combo is kinda predictable as it is already, you wouldn’t want further nerfs to the ability to actually cc people. I can’t see any way of nerfing the knockback without taking too much away from high end viability. If you want to bring it in line with the ranger kb, you’d also have to remove the fact that it’s also a skillshot and that’d be taking a step backwards in the wrong direction towards making the game more skillful.

Like you mentioned yourself earlier, “it’s relatively easy to avoid 1v1 due to the slow projectile speed and the fact it has to be manually aimed (people flat-out miss a lot)”, so you fix that by JI-ing into the target you want. But that also means you wont be “blasting that through the mid melee teamfight”.

…I actually do just “blast it through the mid melee teamfight” a lot because it hits pretty friggin’ hard for an instacast multitarget with long range on a short cooldown (2400-4100 depending on crit and might). Especially against minionmancers as it will kill or come close to killing most of the minions, and it seems I get lucky or am able to set up angles to where the knockback blows someone onto/through someone else’s traps/marks/other ground targeted AoE with some regularity. I know it’s cheese, I know it’s not skillful, but it works more often than not.