Guild Wars 2

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

We’ll take a look on Monday.

The guy was supposed to be perma dishonored from pvp has the kitten to get on here and ask where his statue is at and a dev responds immediately on a weekend no less to look into it XD

#AnetDevPriorities

Exedore.6320:

Having had time to play to play more:

Holosmith
The photon forge #1 and #2 damage is just too high. Using a power amulet, 1200-1500 (non-crit) damage auto-attacks at 0.5s cast just wreck anything. And since they’re auto-attacks, dodging isn’t a viable way to avoid the damage. #2 is a leap which does 2500-3000 (non-crit) on a 2sec CD which makes them harder to kite.
The might stacking at high heat is also a bit of a problem.
However, the rest of holosmith is fine, maybe even too weak.

There are a lot of skills that hit harder than those in the game, so I don’t follow your complaint here. Some numbers with zero context isn’t much in the way of useful feedback…

Some other food for thought on Holosmith is that it gets deleted by condi pressure. Holosmith can be setup with a fair bit of mobility via leaps (PF#2, rocket boots + gadgeteer, rifle) that it can certainly roam, but on the flip side the specialization lacks enough survivability options to avoid getting snacked on by current meta roamers.

I’m curious how you set up because the sword is pretty clunky so you’ve very little pressure outside of proton forge mode; rifle being your best option. I’ve found the condi variant to be fairly lackluster – others just do condi much more effectively tbh.

I’m not suggesting the class is weak or underpowered, instead its refreshing to see the devs create professions that have soft spots and aren’t good at (or trying to be) at everything — that goes for all of the PoF elite specs.

The recover animation on both of thes leap is awful. Added bonus you can stow-cancel the recovery either. Rocket boots also suffers from the exact same problem, but the ‘fix’ was they added superspeed if you take the Gadeteer trait.

These skills feel gross, please polish. Thx.

I’m actually not a fan of going even more condi biased on the flame thrower. All of the kits should have a good mix of both power and condi damage. Personally, I think removing the large power damage hit from Flame Blast/Detonate was a mistake. It basically removed a kit option from power builds.

My suggestion for Flame Jet:
• Reduce the attack to 1s channel; remain as 5 attacks per second; final hit remains unchanged (applies burning, base duration will need a shave down from 4s)
• Remove ‘10% bonus damage to burning target’

The overall damage is similar but you get the burn application on the 5th hit and would eat a lot less retaliation procs to get to the burning application. This lets you setup or chain into Air Blast more easily within the kit itself (i.e. not have to rely on Incendiary Ammo, RNG Incendiary Powder proc, weapon swap Blow Torch) which makes the kit a bit more enticing to power and power/condi hybrid builds. The 10% bonus damage vs burning is pretty irrelevant as it only applies to direct damage on Flame Jet (which is already pretty low). I’d say remove it for now but its a line item that should be addressed at the same time as a rework to the Juggernaut trait because they both encourage a play style of camping flame thrower and auto attacking.

The ‘fix’ for mesmer clones was to add a trait that gives super speed when you shatter them. The same ‘fix’ would apply to gyros as well. Not only is the pathing pretty awful, but my personal favorite is that stealth gyro can’t keep up with your character even if the pathing was immaculate.

Also as a bonus, I like how stealth gyro interacts with any skill that has ‘bounces’ as enemies can target your gyro and it will bounce to you even though you are in stealth.

Pet AI is still awful, but in HoT they found a work around: give the pets cheap abilities that negate the pathing such as repeatedly shadow stepping to the target (to prevent dodging a single big hit or effect) with Smoke Assault or a 1200 range multi-hit attack that tracks the target (again to prevent dodging a single big hit or stepping out of the way once the attack animation starts up) with Spike Barrage.

In PvE they made pets/summons take massively reduced damage so them standing in damage and getting instantly destroyed wouldn’t be a thing anymore. It’s not because pet AI is ‘better’.

Weylin.6478:

At the moment, sweeping with the flame thrower will only utilize your enemy’s Power stat, leaving Condition damage out of the loop until the last shot is fired as you proc a zillion ticks of retal.

Fixed that for you

Kusumura.8642:

[snip] and the damage is.. yeah, okay, the damage is pretty rad, [snip]

If you look at the skills they have very high base damage values with low scaling. Also the seemingly random addition of ‘explosive’ type on some of the skills (i.e. pointing you to the explosives trait line for synergy). To me, this suggests that the devs want you to play holosmith as a hybrid power/condi setup for your damage. We’ll have to wait for the beta weekend to test stuff out, get more details though and confirm the skill values, etc.

Profs that actually do ‘rad damage’ are typically classes that just play a game of ‘collect the damage modifiers’ or can hemorrhage loads of condis, burning in particular. Looking at the skills and traits, neither of these concepts have been implemented.

All Matters Fecal.9560:

I’ve been seeing a lot of turret engineers lately in spvp and it dawned on me that with the current state of botting in spvp that this would be the most logical build to use if scripts are running a character.

I’ve never played engi before and have no idea what’s popular other than the builds that are on metabattle.com, so I ask…is turret engi back or is this a red flag for bots?

Turrets are absolutely awful:
• Nerfed to be no longer immune to conditions or crits without any other compensation (hp, skill effects, CD reduction to summon, etc etc)
• A nerf to turret engie was needed (i.e. knockback from trait, removal of sustain stat amulets) but not necessarily to turrets themselves
• Turrets also nerfed to ensure that the mobile turrets, aka gyros, would be superior in every way when HoT was introduced
• The ‘flip over skill to detonate’ is a nerf on most of the turrets, the exception being healing turret because it is often instantly detonated after summon to blast finish the water field it creates, because even if you place it so and it survives long that it could have been overcharged again, it now cannot (i.e. only uses the overcharge on summon)

Turrets are absolute and complete garbage for utility slots, however I don’t know that I’d assume that its automatically bots that are using them. With PoF on the horizon its quite likely that newer players have joined the game and may be dabbling with them to try them out.

It’s going to really depend on your and those your playing with’s level of skill on your PvP experience with engie. You’re really not going to be able to carry a match on an engie.

Engie is a bunker-type these days. It doesn’t have a tool available (i.e. knockback, launch) to decap other bunkers, has pretty low damage output (near zero chase dmg, so if you are chasing you are probably playing ineffectively) against even moderately skilled players and has some bad matchups. The playstyle is to fap around mostly wasting one or possibly two people’s time trying to kill you, while you either wait for your team to notice and +1 you or make use of you being outnumbered by outnumbering another fight. This playstyle is as much up to your teammates and enemy’s choices as it is your own (assuming you’re where you should be) to be effective or impact the outcome of a match. The other option is to take 2vX’s (not as effective when solo queuing) and act as a rezbot.

Since your second sentence referenced doing damage, its quite likely that engie isn’t the class for you in PvP.

@MrCameron
I agree wit most of your post in that engie is in need of a lot of love from a balance team with a clearer vision for the class.

Engie is one of the more complex classes. The ability to be able to drop in and out of kits on a 1s swap to cherry pick the skill you need is both what made engie so unique and versitile but its also a very powerful mechanic. The original engie concept seemed to be really built around kits with many of the utilities created to be intentionally niche to cover gaps your base kits/weapon choice didn’t cover. Engie also has access to nearly every field and finisher in the game and while not ever field/finisher combo is relevant this adds another layer of complexity in mechanics and by extension in finding a balance.

HoT’s power creep was absolutely gross and for engie its been nerf after nerf after nerf without the dev’s either taking the time or having the time to fully address the bandage fixes/nerfs. A classic example here is Impact Savant remaining untouched despite the nerfs to gyros. Another example is the nerf to slick shoe’s multiple knockdown application being implemented without a corresponding consolation adjustment to the CD, AoE, number of puddles, how long the puddles last, addition of other effects etc etc also implemented at the same time. It’s been a development style of triage rather than vision for the engineer for years now, and its got to the point where there are just too many bandages and patches trying to hold the class together.

Looking at Holosmith it seems a bit strange in design choice. It’s like a necro’s shroud without the benefit of being able to use shroud/life force in place of your hitpoints? And also does what looks like pretty sizable damage to the engie for staying in shroud (aka proton forge) too long? It locks you out of kits for 6s on activating proton forge? So locks you out of blocks, mobility, CC, cleanse, biggest damage options for 6s?
On first glance it once again seems like we’re once again gonna have to load up on defensives everywhere to not get farmed in pvp…

As long as players can auto attack for ~30k DPS in raids, I’m sure Anet feels its mission accomplished…

@Anthony
Probably the winner for best troll post in the thread. Being able to plink from range with a pet (ranger) or having being passively useful (warrior banners) or being able to buff yourself by doing literally nothing (warrior signets) are much more new player friendly. Most common two professions after launch? Warrior and Ranger. Least common? Engineer and Mesmer.

Sorry, pretty unorganized post.

TLDR:
• @OP: good post. Engie really really needs some dev attention to fix the mess they’ve made after years of applying band aids
• @ Anthony: pretty likely you don’t play engie; most certainly not in a setting or gamemode where build choices and mechanics are important
• @ Anet: plz help engie. Plz consider pvp and wvw in your design and balance choices.

Kusumura.8642:

I’m sorry if this is rude, but how in frell’s name does being ****blocked from casting anything actually useful for four seconds help? Even untraited, the skill is a liability. Unless you’ve got buddies around that can cleanse 6-8 condis off of you lickity-split, you’re done and your death warrant is signed and stamped thanks to Elixir S stopping you from doing anything to help yourself.

I think you are exaggerating the downside of the skill. Yes there are times when you can get wrecked by condies already applied to you, but thats usually if you’ve used the active Elixir S at the wrong time or you’re getting trained and RNG doesn’t go in your favour for the auto Elixir S proc. That said purge gyro can still clear your condies while you’re invuln (i.e. no new condies can be applied), incoming healing still works (regen, rapid regeneration, bunker down bandages, etc plus external healing sources) and it lasts long enough that your likely gonna have a dodge roll available when the invuln ends.

My suggestions to you:
• Know that if you’re blobbing in WvW its not a good fit for engie; play something else
• For smaller scale WvW and PvP, work at making better choices of when to pop the active

wow that’s along post…

FWIW all of the ‘on CC’ traits work in this same way; they all proc even if you have stability or not. It makes it so the most efficient use it eat the CC and late the game auto-stunbreak it instantly for you. If you are reading the situation and proactively using stability to avoid the CC the trait still gets proc’ed and largely wasted.

Thanks HoT! Playing the game for you since October 2015.

Phineas Poe.3018:

If that was their design philosophy, they very poorly executed it. Celestial amulets made builds that were literally “good at everything,” and the meta was dominated by builds running it for years until they forced its removal in 2016.

Even still in 2017, Celestial builds absolutely dominate WvW.

It certainly wasn’t perfect, but each prof having some baked in weakness or shortcoming was a good thing imo. I also get the impression you missed out on most if not all of the pre-HoT days.

Not sure how cele ami being a borked stat combo both before and after HoT dropped, or the current meta in wvw in 2017 has much to do with anything but do go on…

Phineas Poe.3018:

I’m inclined to disagree.

There have always been “face roll” builds.

While I agree that Heart of Thorns introduced a lot of power creep and passivity, especially with regard to the scrapper and berserker, it’s no “easier” or “harder” to play than it ever was.

I don’t think that pre-HoT PvP should be put on a pedestal for other PvP games to look to, but you’ve massively understated passivity of post-HoT.

Pre-HoT the dev’s had a philosophy they referred to as ‘holes in roles’ to both encourage teamwork to cover you weaknesses and limit or prevent apex builds (i.e. good at everything). HoT flushed that philosophy as the elite specs are largely patches to weakness in the core profession. In general post-HoT skills/traits are often doing to many things at once without any trade off or opportunity cost.

You’ve also just hand waved the time line of HoT as well. Even after having years experience with pre-HoT live to players, making shaves and tweaks etc to the power level of individual skills/traits, the dev’s introduced HoT at a very large step change in power creep. So large in fact that spent months nerfing and nerfing and nerfing trying to cut down the grotesque power creep bomb that had been unleashed.

Ivantreil.3092:

Ill give you a link: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUlcTh6rY1Vw8KQ+FLTG1461eRA9cn3Bu4zUABAA-TxRBQBA4BAQSlgXU53DuAA3THwBV/hf7PAA-e

The build is based on abuse elixirs via HGH so you empower yourself with tons of boons, 25 might, fury, quickness, and more other boons, all thanks to that high amount of boond duration from the commanders stats.

This build is pretty awful. Kinda trolly to put it out there, especially for newer players to invest a bunch time/effort getting cmdr stats… Not going to able to tag in zergs, guaranteed to get completely destroyed by roamers, no cleave will make even flipping camps a chore…

Also there is much more efficient ways to get boon duration (i.e. not giving up loads of stats from your gear choice) if that’s what your going for:
- Run with a rev for facet of nature / naturalistic resonance
- sigil of concentration
- food/nutrition slot

1. To increase the skill shot feel and play of DH traps, all traps now have a 33% chance on hit to place an additional trap. No internal cooldown.
2. Engineer trait line has been streamlined and now has a better purity of purpose. Engineer now has a single trait in pvp called Face Tank which collects all previous defensive traits. The pvp build window has been reworked such that Face Tank is the only trait selectable for Engineer in pvp. Bonus: taking a hit from the front reduces all defensive cds by 33%.
3. Impacting Disruption has been reworked to increase the lethality and speed of combat. If the target is moving, turning or using a skill an additional a new application of Impacting Disruption will be applied. No ICD. If the target is standing still when the Pulmonary Impact hits, 33% chance to apply a new application of Impacting Disruption.
4. Blurred Frenzy has been reworked to make it more consistent with shield. Evading with Blurred Frenzy now provides an additional cast of Blurred Frenzy. Each hit with BF reduces the cd by 5%. Skill no longer roots player during cast.
5. Healing on Medkit Med Blaster increased by 3%. After cast increased by 0.13s. Fixed a typo where Garbage was listed as Medkit.

Now available in the gem store HoT++ Deluxe Ultra Collectors Supreme Pack – includes a glider skin, 3 dyes and a 4th trait line for your character (usable in pvp only)

Best way to get it addressed is to whisper WoodenPotatoes and ask him to make a lore vid about it so the devs will take notice.

Your second best option is to try to get some drama/hype going about it on reddit (aka the actual GW2 official forums). Devs do not read these forums.

Zero.3871:

i would like to see that anet decrease capacity of maps, so each server can bring a maximum of 40 players to the maps. that would stop this newbie blobbers and stop skillaggs in big fights. the players would have to transfer back to smaller server because of qeues, if they want play wvw.

That’s pretty doubtful. All it would change is that instead of running 75 on a pin, people would run in a blob of 40. There’s no need, at all, to spread out in wvw (auto upgrades, auto scouting, PPK encourages blobbing as a strategy, need big groups to carry enough supply to siege objectives – the list goes on and on).

Also the philosophy of ‘if you design is miserable enough players will pay money move to have fun again’ seems like a negative way to go about your goals.

morrolan.9608:

Nobody left at anet has any vision for WvW, perhaps with the exception of Tyler B but of course he was moved off WvW development.

I don’t know where this idea of Tyler B being some amazing savior of a dev to WvW came from. Is there something specific that you could point to that Tyler championed for WvW?

A: When a developer creates an expansion with very little playable content, it’s important to artificially extend and stretch play by roadblocking as many aspects as possible.

Creating and coding interesting perks masteries is difficult. It’s much lower risk (and cost) to put a common sense quality of life perk as the digital carrot on the end of that stick.

I think we need to keep in mind that GW2 has exited the honeymoon phase with the player base and we can all look forward to game development philosophy of keeping the lights on instead.

Here’s Anet’s approach to the player base (4:05-4:50):
https://youtu.be/YLslqhBn3PU?t=4m5s

Keep this in mind if you’re feeling frustrated (like to OP) with the lack of content or balance changes or QoL or bug fixes or matchmaking, or compete lack of response/interaction from the devs, or increase in grind, etc etc etc (whatever your beef may be): Anet sees you only as a cash flow. And the longer you play the more money you will likely spend.

I’m not suggesting that OP or anyone quit, but I’m really encouraging them to give some thought as to how/what message they are trying to send. In this case being frustrated with the state of PvP and making a lengthy post on these forums (shoulda put it on reddit if you wanted to have a chance of dev reading/seeing your post btw), but then closing with that you are staying around to do PvE instead means Anet wins Your still playing, so they are still likely reaping the benefits from your cashshop purchases. Essentially, Anet doesnt have to change anything, no matter how frustrated you may be, because you’ve chosen to continue to pay them for operating exactly how they are. If you were in their shoes, would you do any differently?

Obtena.7952:

It fits the build, that’s my point. You can’t can just dumbly replace hammer with rifle and get better builds. That’s nonsense HoT in a nutshell.

Fixed a couple of typos you had there.

Obtena.7952:

Hammer builds outclassed by rifle builds … that’s not a compelling reason to change how rifles work.

You’ve got this backwards (not a surprise, you haven’t played the expac yet).

Obtena.7952:

I can go to any class and find superior builds for weapons that outclass others. That’s normal, that’s not a thing that needs fixing because it’s about purpose, not rank.

A few pages of you trolling a mostly dead forum and this is honestly the best strawman you could muster? yawn

Obtena.7952:

So if I swap my rifle for a hammer in my build, it’s better, just because Hammer is better than Rifle? I can assure you it wouldn’t be better for me to do that. I lose quite a bit of things that the Hammer doesn’t give me and on the other hand, the hammer adds nothing to the build. What you have said makes no sense.

Sounds good. Link build plz.

Loboling.5293:

Ya, I’ve had a few games over 1mil damage now. I was quite surprised. I still don’t get it…haha.

Time spent team fighting, and if you are going against a team with many summons can both significantly inflate that damage counter. Be careful not to fall into the trap that many new players do in that they care more about their personal score or stats and not the only score that matters: the one that determines win/loss of the match.

Loboling.5293:

With the land mines removing boons (stab first), its very easy to control your opponents. Test it out, and let me know if you have any luck. Its very fun to watch too, because your opponents are flying all over the place. Don’t forget you have 2 unblockable cc.

Scripted boon strip was removed almost entirely outside of a couple exceptions. Throw Mine and Mine Field are not one of those exceptions – they randomly remove a boon. The hard CC on Throw Mine will remove a single stack of stability.

IMO it seems that engie weapons were intentionally weak or underwhelming as the devs were factoring for kits in a player’s loadout. In the post-HoT powercreep landscape this design concept (like many others from the vanilla era) are no longer inline with the state of the game.

The hammer offers too much compared to the other weapon sets for engie (evades, blocks, damage, self might stacking, hard cc, both a field and finisher) and has strong trait support (more free dmg, easy access to stability). In theory, maybe the dev’s were thinking that a weapon this baller would take some of the pressure off of running kits on the utility bar. And they were somewhat right. Unfortunately for engie the utilities status is an absolute mess (turets+gadgets are complete garbage), access to our best elixirs come from elsewhere (alchemy line), and so it leaves only better version of turrets gyros, and back cherrypicking from elixirs and kits again.

I’d love to see rifle be relevant again, but I realize that significant changes both to engie itself and the state of the game would be required before that could be realized.

Obtena.7952:

coro.3176:

Rifle used to be the #1 Engi PvP weapon. Pistol held its own too. These were good weapons. Why are they not used any more? Two words: power creep. They weren’t nerfed. HoT happened.

HoT introduced so many things that obsoleted vanilla weapons and builds as competitive options. They need to be competitive so that the game isn’t pure Pay to Win, for free to players as well as for some build diversity – something that the game used to have, but really doesn’t any more.

That’s a nice vague, catch-all you’ve provided as a reason but you need to be more specific … You’re saying that HoT all of the sudden made Rifle and FT go from good to not good, but all those power creepy things we got from HoT are a great benefit to those weapons as well. In fact, one of the traits in Scrapper is a DIRECT boost to FT. I mean, how is Rifle as PVP obsolete with HoT? Is there some special way hammer replaced it? I don’t think so.

So … unless you have a specific example, just throwing out key words like power creep and Pay to Win doesn’t really cut it. Your explanation makes no sense.

@Obtena

Maybe just play HoT and then come back to this thread to discuss it further.

HoT is a massive injection of powercreep. As critical as players are on the dev’s for ‘not knowing their own game enough to balance it’, I think HoT proves otherwise. Across the board, in 100% of the content, HoT classes and specializations where stronger than their free to play counter parts. This indicates dev’s are very aware of power level of the elements that make up a class, and also just how strong of an influence marketing/management has on game development. People will buy the new shiny because its stronger (mobile game market is absolutely swimming in pay-to-win right now), they may be mad about it being pay to win, but players will still buy it. HoT powercreep = more sales

Sazdek.6830:

…. Forums are notoriously barren, especially in regards to discussing what works/what doesn’t. Subreddits are even more so less populated.

I suppose I really don’t get how the game can have this many players…….

lol. This post is amazing.

Hint: you may need a new assumption to test.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m not sure about that since the playerbase voted to bring back the Desert Borderlands. We have them back now.

Go back an look at the polls and how they were setup; it was very unlikely that DBL would go away entirely.

If I could offer another alternative: just pass on poor or unfun content.

The whole achievement thing has been a god send for devs. It provides a digital carrot on a stick to get a player to run the same content/task over and over and over thus providing the illusion of content without having to make, well, any more actual content.

Better to wait until the next xpac for a few reasons:
1. It’ll likely be available for free
2. When the new xpac drops HoT conent will likely be completely dead and it’s not very enjoyable to play solo and a significant amount requires an organized map blob. Additionally Anet will likely use the same business model as when HoT dropped which was de-incentivise the vanilla content to steer players to the new xpac (i.e. help push vanilla players to purchase the xpac).
3. HoT end game is raids, and unfortunately you can expect to be kicked and not very likely to find a raid group because you haven’t been grinding raids right now.

Negativity aside, just enjoy the free game while you try guild wars 2 out. The vanilla content was actually fairly good and as you are a new player you can explore and check some stuff out.

It’s important to really pile the trash loot on to maintain pressure on your bag space and generally hit that sweet spot for making inventory management just annoying enough to help push sales on bag slots, bank tabs and additional characters as mules. Trash sigils are never relevant at any point in the game, but a new player isn’t like to realize that and may want to hoard stuff (requires bag space) until they figure it out.

It’s not going to happen.

Shouldn’t you be buying guilds for FA right now? Ya know, to help perpetuate the server stacking in wvw?

I think some people here are waaaaay underestimating how little Anet cares about wvw. There have been several changes that made for extremely oppressive play such as venomshare, stab nerf, HoT powercreep, etc that have all had significant impact on crushing the life out of a fairly unique and fun gamemode in the mmo marketspace.

Kimiku.1652:

You know, it’s OK to let other people enjoy themselves. As frustrated as you seem to be with whatever your experience has been, it’s not cool of you to attempt in your post to shape me into everything you despise about what you’re going through.

Hopefully you will find your own enjoyment from the game or the people around you and if you can’t, maybe it’s a good time to move on or take a break.

I do enjoy the game. I think its incredibly lame to kitten on the officials about blobbing people down and bm’ing in a gamemode on life support. Didn’t have to shape you into anything; go back and read your posts.

Kimiku.1652:

lol, you guys, I joined sbi server when we were being overrun by maguma…still fun because of the people.

And yet not a single post thanking Anet for matching you against Mag to get thumped for weeks? Spends two weeks in T4 matchup and you’re on the forums chest thumping about emote-spamming a havok group with your map queue blob. That logic seems tight. Maybe just post at gw2wvw, they love this kind of ‘bragging about beating up cripples’ over there.

Kimiku.1652:

Being knocked down to t4 after winning our tier was frustrating and made no sense to me [as a former admin of a competitive online fps gaming league and ladder, and as a long time fps competitor,] but everyone did their best to keep it fun.

If you feel that a ladder system would work for 3-way matchups in wvw with a very small pool of servers to match, then I can see how “Being knocked down to t4 after winning our tier was frustrating and made no sense” would be a struggle for you.

Ladder has two big weaknesses:
1. Not necessarily the most skilled person wins or is sitting atop the ladder
2. The implementation and clunkiness of challenging up

Discuss

Kimiku.1652:

We’re back in t3 and having great times in match up that is closer to our play level.

Translate: ‘their map blob and EBG queue is as big as our map blob and EBG queue’

Kimiku.1652:

Definitely my preference for game play is to have a challenge…

But not really enough of a challenge to make good on self-improvement or stepping off of the map pin.

WvW really is just another form of hot-join. There are other ways to play if you are ‘bored with blobbing players down’, but I don’t think that you bored; in fact it seems you quite enjoy it. It’s not really a surprise though Anet has trained you through game play from the first hours of entering the game that GW2 is blob-to-win. From champ trains on starter maps for months and months, to turning a blind eye to match fixing and organized k-training in EotM, to blobbing down a toenail on world bosses in a slideshow, to out right building maps around map queue blobs in the taxi-wars that HoT is – you’ve probably never wandered to far out with a smaller group or on your own. I really suggest you give it a go with pvp, or roaming or join an organized wvw fights-oriented guild – you really may find you enjoy a different style of play. (Hint: if you are tagging along with a guild that is so big it can’t all fit onto the same wvw map, it’s not a fights-oriented wvw guild).

Thanks, I’ll ponder your advice your sending k-train car #47 of 60.

I notice you straight skipped the part about self improvement. gg wp.

Kimiku.1652:

Being mistreated by the disaster of a ranking system has been a bonding experience.

SBI got an unlucky matchup roll when the dev’s broke CD out of the locked T4 match and you’ve come to the officals with a passive aggressive title to have a cry? I guess maybe WvW is more alive than I thought. This also kinda baffling as your post makes it pretty clear you are a k-trainer or blob guild player, so it anything you shoulda enjoyed the last couple of weeks of having massive numbers on your opponents.

[/quote]

The map queue is crazy long every night now because everyone is rallying. Is it due to injustice or because we just have so much fun? Both, I think.

Your maps are queued because, like yourself, many like to just k-train and blob down opposition. SBI’s fairweather has like come out in droves to enjoy the easy matchup. This is a sad reality of the player mentality in general. WvW operates much like the hot-join matches in pvp did, where players would swap to the winning side to zerg and outnumber the opponents or if full they could find another matchup to hop on the winning side. No one was there to actually pvp. It’s similar here that SBI, and yourself it would seem, are enjoying the lopsided matchup.

Kimiku.1652:

We crashed in on a tower about to be turned last night, enemy zerg working on lord. Instead of fighting, we tried one of King Bullyfoot’s new strategies…lying down to sleep right there on the bridge to the tower. It must have been very scary because the enemy jumped out of the tower and ran away. Really, this happened. (Devs, please add “zzzZZZzzzZZZ” to this emote).

Ya that’ll happen when you are rolling a map queue in TS on map that is queued with more people trying to get in on that organized blob. Bully runs a full squad+ when he’s rolling. It seems kinda lame to be blobbing that hard and then come to the forums and post that you /sleep to opponents with much much less numbers. Good stuff. I didn’t see any posts in your history where you came here to share and thank Anet for the tough and uphill fights against Mag for example.

Kimiku.1652:

SBI, I joined you guys while we were getting smashed by Maguma. You make everything fun. You guys make me want to be a better player.

A suggestion if you want to get better as a player: join a wvw guild and get off the map pin blob. Try some roaming and/or pvp to improve your individual play rather than run around with 50 others in TS complaining you can’t find a good ‘battle’ to spam skills.

stephanie wise.7841:

there is no problem of boon share it work as it is suppose to work. rev have receive already enuff bad nerf. because some people do not know how to play their class. so much bad nerf that against some class they are ineffective one on one. herald works better in group now and cannot play to much active in front because of the bad nerf to healing that as all ready been made. not only that but most of herald attack are condition attack so made for long fight, power is for shorth fight. so having healing reduce and needing it for fight 1 vs 1 where other player play power necro life sucking, 2 health bar or zerg fight where you will be the first one targeted all ready gives the rev a very bad handicap. not only that people that are starting to play the game or play only one class have no idea that rev reinforce them and that they should help their rev that as been handicap badly by the bad nerf. they see people attack they run away the rev get killed since the shield skill stuck them in place and healing is not good enough anny more. then they try to attack with out the rev and they get killed and they do not understand why they die faster this time if they are even aware of it. (since the rev cannot give them boon protection and a little healing.)

rev was fun at the beginning since bad nerf not as fun to play it suffer badly and if another bad nerf happen will probably not be good to play any more. since playing with rev healing or boon is playing with is survivability and it was made to have high survivability to be able to play in a zerg fight to survive while giving boon. and be also able to survive one on one. now against 4 class is almost impossible now to survive. and since there is 9 class in total that is 4 class out of 9.

rev need more healing like it was when it first came out it also need more power in is attack. rest is good. no more nerf or you will kill that class.

Just want to hop in here, and double check if you’ve read the title of the thread and even a single post in here so far?

Bezerker.2379:

Guys… just strip the boons.. problem solved.. Focus target and they’re rip anyway.

That’s not really how it works in wvw. Even in pvp scale fights the aoe hemorrhaging of boons and skills that pulse boons doesn’t really fit with skillful boon strip. In wvw, the numbers scaling makes boon strip counter play options even further limited.

stephanie wise.7841:

I agree to much complaining rev boon Mesmer boon yada yada. what if rev start complaining about thief, warrior and necro. some class are very good against other class and some not it is part of the game. as a rev I could complain about the bad nerf they did to healing. – 36% healing also heal skill no 6 not setting of right away, now rev get killed to easy. a change should be made to that bad nerf. but you see I as a rev have adapt skill does not activate right away use it 0.50 second before you need it. heal does not work good enuff bring food that give some healing.

not as fun to play as beginning when rev just came out.

but I have adapt to that bad nerf so stop asking for other bad nerf because it is a class that you do not play. just learn to play your class better.

Holy eff that post is incoherent, but I guess that tends to happen when one types while crying…

The context of the discussion in this thread is regarding stacking incredibly long duration boons on groups in WvW play. The issue here, imo, is not that long duration boons can be stacked so much as that it can be done without an opportunity cost.

I don’t know that FoN is untouchable here as you swap Legends frequently in pvp, rather then camp a single legend for long durations at a time as in a wvw raid group. In either case I really believe that a passive 450 points of concentration to 5 allies is too much and should be shaved.

Jeknar.6184:

Naix.8156:

(i.e. boon duration really isn’t needed on the mes as it doesn’t increase the duration of anything passed from sig of inspiration)

Unfortunely, boon duration DO increase the duration of the boons you share. I’m not sure if it’s intended, but it happen. I run 60% boon duration on my mesmer, and if I share a boon which I have 10s duration left, I give 16s instead.

So I did some testing and the boons passed out by active on the signet do not benefit from boon duration.

Jeknar.6184:

Naix.8156:

(i.e. boon duration really isn’t needed on the mes as it doesn’t increase the duration of anything passed from sig of inspiration)

Unfortunely, boon duration DO increase the duration of the boons you share. I’m not sure if it’s intended, but it happen. I run 60% boon duration on my mesmer, and if I share a boon which I have 10s duration left, I give 16s instead.

I haven’t been on my mes for a bit so I’ll have to check that out. This is Anet so I wouldn’t be surprised to find that its working as you’ve described.

I had thought that for duration stacking boons, the boon share was passing out the boon as a single application (rather than retaining the stack count) and was letting you bypass the duration stack limit.

Archeia.8905:

Nuzt.7894:

What about putting something in to the effect of, once X boon has been stripped/corrupted that boon type can not be reapplied for 10 sec, or 5 sec or whatever just throwing out random numbers.

I feel this is the most logical solution, fewer nerfs that go around the better imo. A 5 sec delay between a corrupted boon being able to be reapplied would work well enough imo.

That would be pretty harsh in PvP with the current boon implementation. There would be no sense having the pulsing boon application skills as one corrupt would negate the pulsing effect.

There really is one main culprit in wvw that’s responsible for the boon share meta – its revenant and more specifically the passive boon resistance on Facet of Nature. For a measly 2 upkeep you can passively give +450 stat points of concentration to 5 players. That’s absolutely insane and not even remotely close to inline with existing with traits (eg. strength in numbers, empower allies, etc) that are similar in function. Additionally, the existing traits require you to be in combat before they activate.

I don’t have an issue with the boon share mesmer. That build requires a significant investment to make it work, and more importantly the mesmer can’t really generate the boons, only share them out (i.e. boon duration really isn’t needed on the mes as it doesn’t increase the duration of anything passed from sig of inspiration). This is important as it means if rev didn’t provide this massive passive boon duration bonus essentially for free the other sources of boons in the raid and even the revs itself would have to invest in boon duration on their gear to generate the long duration boons for the mesmer to be able to share them out. i.e. it would be an opportunity cost to run a boon share guild group setup which would be fine.

I suspect and hope even, that we see flat condition and boon duration sources from runes, sigils, food, etc get a pass from the devs (much like they did with crit damage to ferocity). If you look at these sources as stat points, the bonuses they give aren’t inline with all of the other stat point bonuses. In short its really too easy, in any game mode, to get very long duration conditions and boons.

Haven’t tested recently but the AED didn’t clear confusion after the downstate and it likely would clear chill dmg’ing you from a necro.

A big issue with AED is that its giving up water fields, a blast finisher, a potentially smaller heal for condi cleanse, etc. These are things that help your team and water fields can be blasted or leaped though by others as well as yourself. On top of this their is an audio cue to let your attackers know to hold up and wait out the AED effect before finishing you off. While this skill is similar to defiant stance on warrior its much clunkier and even higher risk to use. For example if a warrior is condi loaded or under cleave/aoe spam they can quickly gain significant health. Where as the engie the pressur is on you to estimate/guess if the condi load or cleave is enough to get you to downstate and get the big heal. You miss judge the small heal and long cd is likely a death sentence. Also a 3/4s cast time on a skill that you need to play chicken with your health bar is asking to be interrupted.

Bonus: that short-range, long cast-time w/ a big animation (essentially a ‘electric effect’ version of fire grab) is pretty weak in the current gamestate.

Nightshade.2570:

lol, well seriously I love this.

Good to hear your happy that dev’s spent time on this.

More good news: those open field canons you voted yes to are nearly ready to ship!

Gadgets need love so bad right now. Or perhaps Anet could just change the skill icons to look as desparate, needy or generally unloved as the skills themselves.

In all seriousness, if you are going to suggest changes to gadgets (or anything for that matter) you need to keep the scope as small and effort as minimal as possible. For example, even if you look at the expac content absolute reams of stuff is cut-and-paste or re-purposed from already existing in the game.

To have even the slightest chance of your change being implemented (aside from the fact we are posting on a forum that the dev’s don’t read; need to head over to reddit for that generally) your change(s) must adhere to following constraints:
- can be cut-and-paste or absolute minimal programming (eg. increase a duration, lower a cd, add a stack of boon/condi.) Nothing new and no functionality reworks
- does not require any localization work (i.e. nothing that needs translated into other languages) such as numbers or the ‘invisible stuff’ (eg. healing of skill X increased by 17%)
- cannot make a vanilla build equal to or greater in power/effectiveness than a HoT build

Bonus factors in the change suggestion:
- doesn’t overlap with another class and/or stays inline with your class’ general theme/playstyle
- clearly identify the issue and how your change addresses set issue

Happy brainstorming fellas

Galtrix.7369:

Sorry, but it’s borderline ridiculous trying to play PvP against people with elite specializations when I don’t have them myself.

Why is this even a thing?

It comes down to money. IMO Anet did a really good job of putting everyone on a level playing field when it came to pvp: we are all at max level, normalized stats, access to the same gear (amulets, runes, sigils). These were really well thought out in terms of getting new players into the game mode, versus having a barrier to entry of grinding levels/gear on top of the skill level disparity when you first start playing pvp (i.e. need to learn what other classes builds can do, recognize the animations, what to dodge, where to be and when, etc etc).

Along comes HoT and across the board every single HoT spec is stronger than the vanilla version. This is type of power creep that comes with a price tag attached is the definition of pay to win. Now, the reason you are paired against HoT specs is because the pvp population in this game could comfortably sit around your mom’s dinner table and not bump elbows with one another. A more interesting questions is: if the game had a larger pvp population would Anet still pair you up against HoT players? imo, I believe they would. You getting repeatedly dumped on by players that have purchased HoT just might make you made enough to drop some cash to ‘level the playing field’ and I believe that’s what Anet would bank on. Look at some of the responses you’ve already got in this thread…

imo I think we all lost a bit on this patch:

HoT > vanilla
Hidden & passive procs > player skill/activation
Spam more > skill shots, skilled setups, cd baiting/mindgames

StickerHappy.8052:

Let’s look at what hasn’t changed and will never likely be addressed:

• Soul Reaping, Discipline, Inspiration, Beastmastery + Nature Magic, are all Mandatory still. This alone kills build diversity.
• Elementalists after the FA nerf way back then, Eles still doesnt have a DPS spec aside from the Staff Zerk/Marauder one which has 11k hp (not viable), with the removal of cleric, Eles do not have any roles now.
• Ranger pets AI never gets addressed, took them 3+ years just to save pet names.
• Thief role is always the same since launch. 0 build diversity.
• A lot of the Core traits from ALL CLASSES Never gets reworked.
• Unused Utilities, Elites since before HoT (or more) are the same till now.
• Still No build diversity

The build diversity argument doesn’t make much sense. Talk us through it here; do you expect to be able to hop on any class, run any traitlines and/or weapons? condi or power or support; it don’t matter? Yours and others gripe with build diversity lies in defining viable and optimal.

Your point on the theif’s build diversity doesn’t make sense. Thief’s role was decap and +1 fights. Thief’s incredibly high mobility has made it the best choice for filling this role it’s not just a build ‘thing’. Both s/d and d/p were the meta setup in the past, and still filled their role of decap and +1. So what’s build diversity for a thief look like to you then? Looking outside GW2, could you point to an example of a game that you see this ‘build diversity’ concept well implemented?

StickerHappy.8052:

Lets Buff Pigs and Moas but let’s not address Hitboxes and AIs of Pets?

One of these two things is much easier than the other, hence the changes. Realistically, does this even matter? i.e. do these changes bring the vanilla pets up to part with the HoT pets? So why all the tears fella?