Guild Wars 2

Link.1049:

I find both necro and warrior can stack conditions faster than they can be removed while still having an otherwise viable build. I can build to do nothing but clear conditions and try to live for 10 seconds, but if I do that I’m doing zero damage. Like OP, if I don’t clear the that first burst of condi… I’m insta-downed… but then they throw the 2nd, 3rd and 4th set (doesn’t need to be 2v1) and it gets frustrating.

This would be a valid complaint if GW2 just involved 2 people standing still and casting spells at each other, fortunately that isn’t the case and you have the option to dodge, mitigate, or flat out avoid a lot of those conditions.

Yes, if you eat every single condition from a condi warrior without avoiding a single one, then you are probably going to go down, condi clear or not. On the other hand, if you take every part of a DH’s burst combo without blocking or evading, you will absolutely go down.

Just like the trick to fighting a power class is knowing how to take the weak attacks so you can avoid the hard hitting ones, the trick to fighting condi is learning how to eat a few conditions so that you can avoid the big bursts.

JTGuevara.9018:

If placement truly worked and did what it was supposed to, WHY is there all this fluctuation? WHY must we wait until the system stabilizes?

Every single MMR system needs some place to start. Nobody in their right mind would say that placement matches are always going to give you the perfect rating to match your skill level.

Your suggestion of having the previous season’s MMR determine the starting point sounds good in theory, but you’re not taking into account players who either take a break from the game, or players who don’t play ranked PvP. Perhaps for those who do play ranked and receive a rating during the course of this season, the next season could take that ranking into account, but for players who did not, where do they go?

The unfortunate fact is that some system that gives a rough estimate of a player’s rating is necessary for this system.

Serious answer for OP:

Necro is (In my opinion) really not a good solo queue class. Necro is the definition of a class that needs team support to thrive, and you simply cannot rely on a solo queue team to provide that. If necro is the only class you can play at an acceptable level, then i’d recommend finding a druid or ele player to duo queue with.

Personally, I did my placement matches on necro and got put in mid gold, however since then i’ve found that solo queueing on mesmer gives me much more control over the outcome of the match.

There has been a sentiment among many people i’ve seen post on this forum about how placement matches “screw over” some players by putting them at the wrong rating (usually lower than they believe they should be) and them finding it difficult or impossible to raise their rating.

What i’m wondering is, for those who believe that the placement matches are an unfair and badly designed system, what is your alternative solution that would do roughly the same thing?

Now, i’m going to be completely upfront about the fact that I am biased towards saying that the current system is probably the best one there is (not that it is always right, but that it does what it needs to do effectively and that there aren’t many better systems.) I’ve played CS:GO and Dota 2, and I felt in both of those games that I was placed fairly close to my “true rating” and the same is true for my calibration in GW2.

Basically, if you have an idea for a better system to replace placement matches, or if you would want them removed altogether, convince me. I’m really genuinely interested to know what ideas people have here.

Honest John.4673:

It’s a measure of your ability to win games. Whether that’s because of your raw mechanical skill, or your ability to work well with a team, it all plays a role but the only constant is you, and your ability (or lack thereof) to win games.

This guy gets it.

shion.2084:

You said “its a measure of your ability to win games.” The contradiction is that it is not a measure of your ability to win games. It is a measure of whether your team won or not.

And what’s the one factor that exists in all of your games? it’s you.

Oh man, so for those who don’t know, this “pure MMR” system (as in, you just have a number that represents your rating) is really similar to the one that games like Dota 2 and CS:GO use to determine their matchmaking. In Dota, the number is visible, while in CS it is obscured by tiers, GW2 has a little of both.

In any case, there are a few things that people need to understand about matchmaking of this type.

1) The only real way to “Progress” in rating in this system, is to actually get better at the game. The pips system allowed you to basically get lucky over time and end up progressing just be getting a winstreak that gained a few pips, and hitting a tier that prevented backwards progress. In this system, if you are at the correct rating, then you should not be winning more than 50% of your games, not because the system forces you to, but because you are playing against roughly similarly skilled player and with players of similar skill (sort of, more on that later). If you aren’t actually getting better as a player, why would this system want to increase your rating?

2) Your rating is not a pure measure of your skill MMR in a team based game is, and always will be a measure of your ability to win matches. Just as an example, there is a well known example of a guy in the dota community who is ranked fairly high (5k MMR), despite the fact that many people who know and have played with him say that he has the mechanical skill of a ~3k player. The reason he is rated so highly is because he is very vocal, communicates a lot, stays incredibly positive, and moves around the map very well. Winning a game in GW2 comes down to a lot of fairly complex things, none of which can be easily measured by any “top stats” the only stat that measure how good you are at winning is how often you actually win.

3) You are the only constant factor in all of your matches. I see a lot of people saying “but I get bad teammates all the time, and I can’t carry them all”. Guess what, if that’s the case, you get bad opponents all the time too. Suppose for a moment we pretend that you are the only good player in the game, and every other player is just terrible, every single time you queue up, you get 4 terrible players on your team, and 5 terrible players on the other team, which team should win? The fact is that if you play well, and at or near your rating, there is a 25% percent greater chance for the enemy team to have awful players.

Now, all of this is true, but since the matchmaking pool is fairly small in GW2, we can have anomalies like the guy who said he ended up on a team with 4 bronze players as a gold rank player. This is only a problem if the enemy team didn’t have a similar composition (like 3 bronze players and two silver players) but regardless, matches like that shouldn’t happen.

In general though, i really like the new rating system, it’s a lot more straightforward as a system for rating players and matching them against each other. And as someone said earlier in this thread:

Kuya.6495:

I think people here genuinely aren’t used to having their skill level represented as something tangible and when they find it doesn’t match their own perception of how skilled they are, they get angry.

Death Aggro.9602:

Polismassa.6740:

nearlight.3064:

It honestly depends on your class and your build. I play a condi reaper build that’s very different from the meta build and I think I do just as well as the meta build, if not better in certain match ups.

Meanwhile if I try to play some off meta burn dragonhunter build, I’ll be completely useless and lose if I try to do anything with it.

So it all depends, sometimes the meta isn’t the one true God of the game

I can’t really say for sure, but i’m of the opinion that Condi reaper will be more meta because of the balance patch. To me, Mallyx rev and tempest were the two classes that basically checked condi reaper, and with mallyx rev resistance being nerfed quite hard, reaper can now do a lot more against them.

Tempests are still a pain, but a condi reaper should be able to kill most any class in the game other than a diamond skin ele or a scrapper (which is debatable).

Remember that Spoookie actually ran double condi reaper before chronobunker and mallyx rev became basically mandatory, and were pretty successful with it too

It wasnt nerfed that hard. All you have to do is hit pain absorption a little more. Thats it. I hardly noticed the change. And watching phantarams stream after patch he pretty much said the same thing. Mayllx is pretty much good to go still. I dont think we’ll see much of a change in the meta. But i guess we will find out next month.

you might be right tbh

my though is just that in general, rev’s are really weak to conditions without resistance, so even the smallest reduction in resistance uptime can cause them to take a ton of damage. but with pain absorption, they can still have mostly full resistance uptime, although it might cut into the energy that mallyx revs have available to do other things.

nearlight.3064:

It honestly depends on your class and your build. I play a condi reaper build that’s very different from the meta build and I think I do just as well as the meta build, if not better in certain match ups.

Meanwhile if I try to play some off meta burn dragonhunter build, I’ll be completely useless and lose if I try to do anything with it.

So it all depends, sometimes the meta isn’t the one true God of the game

I can’t really say for sure, but i’m of the opinion that Condi reaper will be more meta because of the balance patch. To me, Mallyx rev and tempest were the two classes that basically checked condi reaper, and with mallyx rev resistance being nerfed quite hard, reaper can now do a lot more against them.

Tempests are still a pain, but a condi reaper should be able to kill most any class in the game other than a diamond skin ele or a scrapper (which is debatable).

Remember that Spoookie actually ran double condi reaper before chronobunker and mallyx rev became basically mandatory, and were pretty successful with it too

Dahkeus.8243:

OP: I see that your post history only goes back as far as Oct 19th of this year. Is it fair to say that you’re a relatively new player or are playing on a relatively new account?

If so, that may account for more of your victories than the minor shave bunker mesmers encountered. =P

Considering the UI displays “105 Solo Arena Games” he has to have played the game for at least a year (solo arena was removed in december of 2014). He also has over 5k “top stas awarded” which, looking at my account means probably about 2-3k games.

On topic: I’ve found PvP to be a lot more fun lately now that bunker mes can no longer indefinitely hold points, and mallyx rev has less access to resistance. I do see a lot of tempests (predictably) but for the most part, team fights end with one team actually dying, rather than just bunkering until the end of time.

Xenesis.6389:

- Keep It Simple Stupid -

Should be plastered on an Anet wall somewhere.

I think at one point it was, but the “simple” faded off or something…

Diku.2546:

@Infusion

That’s the amazing thing about server pride…it’s like NFL or Major League Baseball.

You’ll always remember the team you first fell in love with…even though you’ve changed over the years.

I really wish ANet makes the right decision & fix the broken Base Map Mechanic that is a simple fix that was described above.

You keep quoting this analogy over and over again in this thread, but you appear to be completely ignoring a huge flaw in the entire thing.

People who play WvW are not fans of a team, they are the players. Every single argument you’ve tried to make with this analogy has been focused around us being the fans, but that’s simply not the case, comparing WvW players with Football fans is completely nonsensical.

And even you were comparing professional sports players, your entire argument falls apart spectacularly, because overwhelmingly Loyalty does not really exist in Football, between the players and the teams, or in baseball.

Do yourself a favor and stop trying to support what are, in my opinion, a lot of valid points, with an analogy that makes no sense.

the answer to all of this is also terribly variable based on exactly when you win the games in emerald and sapphire. For example, what if you have an exactly 50% winrate because every time you go up a tier, you immediately lose 5 games, but lose no pips. You could then proceed to win the next 5 games and have only forward progress but still an exactly 50% winrate. This doesn’t work in ruby obviously, but the issue still remains.

If that were the case (whether through throwing games, or sheer dumb luck), you would progress through emerald (which is 25 pips btw, not 20) in exactly 50 games.

Ultimately you’re asking a question with far too many variables to be accounted for so it’s completely pointless.

Vieux P.1238:

Coming back to the point. Disguising the old MMR with the cute UI is really cheap & lazy. Arena Net should not have done this outta of respect to there loyal costumers. I mean, even when they presented it. They presented it as a brand new mmr system with a more visual UI. That’s misleading & taking costumers for granted. In the end, it don’t matter what Helseth ranted about. Yes, he was right. & it’s sad that Anet taking us for a ride. I mean really? Did they think this would go unnoticed?

Except that this is not what they did…

The problem that Helseth is highlighting is that the old MMR system and the new “Pips” system are both in the game, and both affect matchmaking, which causes a problem for highly ranked players in the old system.

right now you have a hidden internal MMR and a visible league ranking. A player like helseth who is probably one of the highest ranked players EU might be a low/mid emerald, while a player who is almost totally new to PvP can also be low/mid emerald, but they won’t get matched together. This gives the high ranked player a disadvantage because he has to win much harder games to gain pips, while the low ranked player can farm them fairly easily.

Shepherd.5839:

The only problem with queuing with non-division players is the fact that Gw2 is using a simple win / loss system rather than a points system like mobas do. Which causes the problem that the amount of points gained / lost cannot reflect any skill/rank mismatches since its a solid win or lose with no grey area.

That said, I mean a 1 division difference isn’t huge, so I mean it really isn’t that bad. The difference between say, silver and bronze in Smite or LoL is not that high.

This isn’t true actually, Read the blog post detailing this:

“Winning a match will earn you a point toward the next tier or division. Matching up against tougher opponents can earn you points for getting close to winning and multiple points for pulling off an upset, so it’s always worth it to play your best and never give up!”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-pvp-league-begins-on-december-1/

Xillllix.3485:

Heavy classes: Warrior’s 20k gunflames, insta kill Dragon Hunter traps,15k Coalescence of Ruin on a 3 second cooldown…

Like what the hell Anet, since when are the classes with the best armor, best blocks and most hp are supposed to also do the most damage?

To be fair, warriors have absolutely nothing else going for them other than one really strong one shot ability.

Also, +1 for the OP

Sabull.5670:

Monoblob and counterattacking
A monoblob is detrimental to the action in the map so any changes should incentivise splitting up to atleast 2 raids and smaller roaming parties that try to disturb the minor objectives / ninjaing.
Though in my opinion it has been incentivised all along. While I encourage Guilds to take all fights they can boldly and accept the challenge and find creative ways to win against the odds. There is a serious lack of simple strategy: Counter attacking, to counter the blobs. Too many times you see 50 man blob attacking say SM, 15 people gather up to defend in order to delay the blob by 10 seconds and then dying. Instead of simply making calculated choise to leave SM and move instantly for counter offencive: Forcing the enemy blob to either 1. Cap SM, loose home tower 2. Split up (awesome!) 3. Abort SM mission.
For pugs to stay and bend over “defending” SM with their 15 man is exactly what the blob wants you to do. Stop doing it and counter attack, atleast then you have a chance and create some gray hairs! And maybe the monoblob will have to rethink its strategy.

While i think this makes sense from an overall tactical point of view, it is very much contingent on structures themselves actually having value beyond PPT (or PPT becoming important again). The issue being that if I simply try and back-cap and circumvent enemy forces every time a larger force comes to take my objective, then I end up with a cycle of just back-capping. Ultimately, like the OP said, WvW should be about the fights, so if the strategy required to succeed in WvW from a score perspective involves me NOT fighting, then there is a disconnect in the system itself.

+1 Fozzik, a great writeup and a lot of points that Anet should certainly be mindful of

I’ve been brainstorming ways to improve WvW in the mechanics, as i’ve pretty much been forced to accept the new maps for the time being. I have many of the same ideas as you with regards to the game mode. For context, i’m in a fights/GvG guild right now that has been hopping between the top 3 tiers of NA (currently on T1). i’ve been in PPT guilds before, and done my fair share of roaming as well.

The most significant point of WvW is, as you pointed out, to encourage players to come in contact with, and fight each other. Just as important (IMO) is that fights must be encouraged whether they involve only one player from each side, or 60 from each side and anything in between.

With that in mind, I’m of the opinion that waypoints should be available on every single walled objective on the BLs (towers and keeps). Maybe it makes sense for the waypoint to come as part of an upgrade tier (eg. only a T1 Secured tower gets a WP), but all in all, i’d err on the side of more waypoints around the map.

Also, I was thinking that it might make sense to change how objective waypoints become contested, either in the BLs only, or in EB as well. What I would propose would be that the waypoint on a Keep (or tower if they get WPs) should only be contested if a part of the structure (either wall or gate) has been destroyed. No players have to be inside, but the structure has to no longer be secure. I would maintain the current system of the waypoint becoming open every 3 minutes during an attack, as I think it adds something of an element of strategy to attack/defense of an objective.

The upside to this would be that waypoints are open far more often and allow players fighting open field near keeps to return to the fight much more quickly. It would accomplish this without creating an effectively infinite stream of defenders when actually inside of a keep. The major downside however, would be that a small group would have a very hard time contesting the respawn of a zerg, and in general I always want to encourage small groups. I’m not exactly sure how this could be implemented, but in general i’m of the opinion that more waypoints are good for making the action feel fast paced and consistent, which the new BLs currently have a hard time with.

Ragnar.4257:

So we can conclude from this that WvW is worth roughly 20% of API development, 35% of Revenant, is roughly equal to Ranger, about 25% of PvP and less than 10% of PvE.

No, we can’t conclude any of this from just a simple count of red posts. For one, a lot of people have even noted lately that “red posts” are actually more common on reddit these days, so you can’t take this as any sort of real measure of attention given to any game mode.

Additionally, Forum communication =/= Development time spent or “attention”. Anet often has significant issues not communicating with the playerbase about issues unless they have a complete and concrete response worked out.

This is actually quite an interesting analysis, and for what it’s worth, I do in fact agree that WvW is the game mode that receives the least love from devs. That said, trying to make that argument with only loosely related data just gives off a victim vibe

Aleos.2195:

You’re right, I should’ve added my playstyle.

I prefer a support kind of playstyle in dungeons and raids. While in spvp I usually try to roam solo and cap points / defend them.

Guardian seems appealing. I’ve never really tried them.

I haven’t bought HoT yet but I plan on doing so in the near future.

Guardian is good, and might fit your playstyle better, but I will say that HoT actually fixes one of the small but nagging problems that several professions have including mesmer, and that is the lack of an easily accessible 25% movespeed buff.

One of the major things that can make traversing large open world maps easier is a flat move speed buff that all classes technically have access to. For thieves, necromancers and Elementalists, a signet is available that can easily be slotted on to their bar and removed whenever other utility is needed, for a while mesmers had no access to this until the change to traveler runes, which now offer fairly lackluster stats on mesmer but with a 25% move speed buff.

The heart of thorns elite specialization called the “chronomancer” which seems to actually fit your bill fairly well. It has a minor trait (so one that you automatically gain when you slot that trait line) that gives 25% increase move speed everywhere. In addition, it offers arguably some of the greatest utility of any current class, and is included in groups for a lot of PvE content simply due to this fact.

In addition, chronomancers are very powerful in PvP (although they have a very high skill ceiling) and arguably one of the strongest roaming/1v1 classes in the game right now. With some work, they can fulfill quite a number of different roles (I’ve even seen 5 well support chronomancer played in high end PvP).

This might not be quite the answer you were looking for, and I know HoT is quite expensive, but I just thought you should know that they really expanded the mesmer class massively in both PvE and PvP with the expansion.

morrolan.9608:

Nice summing up, thanks. I personally prefer guild alliances but I do think the server alliances is the only think that will work with the game as it stands now without alienating a large proportion of the player base.

This is exactly how I feel about it. I definitely think that something needs to be done, but completely removing the current system seems like a recipe for disaster.

morrolan.9608:

Your last point is something that must be considered carefully, especially in light of the way the current server cap changes were still able to be successfully gamed by servers. And I think anet need to be more transparent about such changes so they can get frank feedback. The playerbase will eventually work out the system and attempt to game it. TBH I think the system might have to be manual.

A manual system would prevent any serious shenanigans, but I still think that using some sort of consistent algorithm is more the way to go. IMO the best way to prevent gaming the system would be to measure man hours played by a server for each week, while also taking into account the average man hours played over several previous weeks. It would cause the system to be slightly slower to respond to actual population changes, but ensure that tanking for a week would not change standings too much.

To be clear, there are really 3 distinct Ideas that people are talking about in this thread (including just keeping the current system). What we have is:
——————————————————————————
Current system (Server v Server v Server)
Pros:
- Strong sense of server community and culture
- Tier system develops stable (although not always balanced) matches
- Tiers each have a distinct style of play (zerging vs small group vs medium group)
Cons:
- Matchups often become stale
- moving around to face different servers and play with different people is expensive
- currently there are too few players, and too many tiers
———————————————————————————————————
Server Alliances (Server + Server v Server + Server etc…)
Pros:
- Keeps server communities intact
- Allows different communities to interact without completely dissolving them
- Should fill out population some
- Is not technically a “server merge” but has a similar effect
Cons:
- Might force some conflicting communities together (language servers, servers with different WvW culture)
- System possibly easy to manipulate (tanking for a week to get a stronger ally)
—————————————————————————————————————————————————
Player Driven Alliances (Guild + Guild v Guild + Guild OR red v green v blue)
Pros:
- Should provide consistently full matches
- Gives players more control and agency over matches (this is PvP after all)
- would effectively delete server boundaries, making transfers meaningless
Cons:
- Complete dissolution of current server communties (new communities would form)
- System could be easily gamed by one or a few influential players
- Matchups would be fluid and unstable
- With guild system solo or small guild players would be effectively nomads
————————————————————————————————————————————————

Some of this stuff (and whether it became a pro or a con) is clearly subjective, but I tried to keep things as general and overarching as possible. Also all but the first system, we don’t really know exactly how things would turn out, so I just put down what I though would be likely to happen.

Personally i’m in favor of the second system (the server alliance one) because it provides a middle ground between what some people have proposed, and what we have currently.

Straegen.2938:

Chaba.5410:

I feel like you didn’t read what I wrote. There is nothing functionally different between a server and an alliance. The flaw is in the matching system that doesn’t “fill in the spaces”. There is no need to spend development time creating a new thing called an alliance when all that is needed is for servers to be paired into factions for a match.

How do you pair anything with a server like BG particularly when they are running full force? They can instance matches like EotM but that would obliterate identity.

A guild alliance will balance the population in each match and weigh the coverage issue by not stacking one side with all typical NA Prime players. This would also give holding an objective a point. Guilds will gain influence for holding and defending objectives rather than attacking them. Influence will be spent to upgrade their guild, build siege, improve fortifications, etc. The guild alliance model has been brilliantly executed in EVE Online. They don’t have the match system but the structure is very similar.

Personally, I would really like something like this. However, because of the system we’ve had in place from release, this game has a significant population of unguilded players who are affiliated with servers and not particular guilds. Many of these players have spent thousands of hours in WvW, and it’s beyond unfair to those players to completely skew the system in favor of guilded players.

Anet may decide to effectively screw over a portion of WvW players in order to make things more balanced and interesting for another part, however if they did, i’d be incredibly surprised. Ultimately if you want to discuss any sort of chance to WvW, it has to be a compromise that offers something for both sides.

Why not a simple “server alliance” system, wherein servers retain their current identity and separation, but are paired/grouped with other servers based on some formula or algorithm?

The problem on one side seems to be that some people (myself included) feel that there are not enough people to fight in any given matchup, while others want to maintain their sense of server identity. This would pretty much solve the problem of declining population, would not be presented as a “server merge” becuase the server structure is intact, and give players the chance to fight against and alongside a variety of different opponents without generating massively imbalanced matches.

As an example (I’ll use NA because the Tiers are more consistent right now), each week you get one or two allied servers based on their standing on the overall rankings, the number of man hours they actually put into WvW as a server, and some other factors, so you end up with:

T1:
Green Alliance = Yak’s Bend + Isle of Janthir + Eredon Terrace
Blue Alliance = Blackgate + Dragonbrand + Devona’s Rest
Red Alliance = Jade Quarry + Borlis Pass + Kaineng

(I just randomly grabbed 3 servers, 1 from the top, middle and bottom of the leaderboards, so these might not be balanced groups at all, but you get the point)

This division works well in EU where there are 27 servers (so 3 matches with 3 alliances of 3 servers each) however in NA, things get a bit messy. I think that it would be possible to conceivably match servers together in a balanced way based on manpower and coverage.

/sarcasm

what an incredibly productive and well thought out post!

So when does development on HoT “Wrap up”?

I know that in a couple of weeks we will have the first raid wing, and some legendaries, then after that we have the start of the big PvP tournament, and then probably a second raid wing and with some more legendaries that will probably occupy more time.

I simply have a hard time seeing a point where Anet is going to run out of things to do on HoT and begin really working on WvW. It makes me worried that by the time we see any significant progress in WvW, the majority of the community will have moved on…

So right now, from what i’ve seen in both T2 and T3 (and probably in lower tiers) players are currently crowding into EB for open field fights. Now, a lot of this probably has to do with EB being a “comfort zone” for a lot of players, where they can go and just do WvW as they know it, but I think it would be a fantastic Idea for servers to at least try out the new map for a night or two. Right now we have this vicious cycle where people go to the new map, then leave because it is completely empty, making it seem even more empty for anyone who comes in later.

Now i’m just a random pug, and I have no idea what kind of inter-server communication exists in each tier, but i’d like to encourage commanders and server leaders to try and set up a night or two where guilds head to the new borderlands and try and fill up at least one map.

Basically I’m holding off judgement on the new maps until I can experience them with large groups running on both sides. Whether those large groups all run together, or are split up into smaller sub-groups, the only way we can try out the map is by actually playing on it.

I’d love to know if it’s possible to have really good fights on the new map. How does the netcode hold up, do the new PvE elements significantly detract from fights upwards of 15v15 players? Is it likely or even possible to find consistent fights when the map is full or near full?

Again, I don’t have the personal connections to make this a reality, but i’d like to put the idea out there.

ChrizZcE.5981:

I love that HoT is basically the Dark Souls of MMOs. However challenging content is only fun if it is designed fairly. Often times I will get one shotted out of nowhere by mobs without any sort of attack animation or red circle on the ground. That´s when challenging becomes unfair and frustrating.

I also wished Legendaries were gated behind hard content. Whenever I see someone with a Legendary I immediately think that guy is a no lifer that only farms the Silverwastes everyday and possesses no skill.

Agreed, Personally i’m enjoying PvE in HoT more than I ever have.

They do need to fix some of the telegraphing/indicators for some of the mobs though. One of my biggest gripes so far has been with one of the hero points in Auric Basin, it was a mushroom boss, Champion Mushroom King I believe. Basically, he has this jump-headbutt attack that does a ton of damage and knocks down, but the red circle for it always appears right at his feet, while the attack itself usually directly targets you. If you are fighting him with 2 or more people, it’s impossible to tell exactly who he will go for because his attack direction isn’t properly indicated.

Hmm, that looks like it could possibly be an entrance to a future raid wing to me…

I agree with OP completely. Other than necro (which was pretty sub-par in PvE before Reaper) none of the elite specs are that much of an improvement over their standard counterparts in PvE. If I want to try an elite spec and play around with it, i go to PvP where I already have access to the entire thing. I’ve been having a ton of fun in sPvP with chronomancer, but I am just slowly working through the mastery by doing HoT stuff in general.

I will say that I’d love to have the elite spec available, and am of the opinion that 400 hero points is quite steep, but I also don’t feel that pressured into getting the specs, so I am perfectly content to take my time. A combination of some WvW and quite a bit of running around and exploring HoT maps has allowed me to make significant headway on them without getting frustrated about it.

A sentiment that I have heard from a lot of dedicated WvW players (and one that I share) is that the maps would be awesome if they were always full of players.

I really think that the maps are fantastically well designed. They are interesting, and nuanced, and complex. I do think however, that this complexity really tends to exacerbate the feeling of emptiness that comes with a lack of population.

Honestly, Imagine how things would be different if we had release level population (queue every map during prime-time for the top 2-3 tiers at least) on these maps, it would be absolutely amazing. Right now though, they feel huge and empty and a little sad.

I’m hoping that once people work their way through a good portion of the PvE content, things will come alive again. My sole worry is that a lot of people will never even really give the new BLs a chance, which will leave the people who do running around empty maps. I know that for a lot of veteran WvW players, it feels a lot like Anet has just given us the shaft with this one, but maybe take a break and come back, see how things are in two weeks or so when Halloween is gone and people have unlocked an elite spec or two and decide to WvW again.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

EvesDesire.2596:

Agree 100%. Chronomancer should be a trade, not a straight up buff.

Okay. So….what is Tempest trading?

I would argue that the profession mechanic that tempests gain is less impactful than continuum shift, and has less synergy with the rest of their skills. In addition, Whenever a tempest uses one of the new overload skills, it increases the recharge on that attunement. Current meta elementalist builds all rely on swapping attunements nearly constantly to gain the benefits that it provides, but a tempest can’t do this quite as effectively if they make use of overloads.

Now obviously if you decide to spec tempest without even using the overloads, there’s no downside, but you also gain nothing extra, so it balances out.

keenlam.4753:

First of all, Continuum Shift is very COMPLEX skill/mechanic. I remember, not sure if it was Ross Biddle or anyone else, created a whole thread dedicated to explain all the stuff about it for us mesmers. Imagine an average player who doesn’t even main mesmers and not willing to spend much time learning about it. So here lies the problem I think. Other new stuff other elite specs got are by far more straightforward.

As for your 2nd point, a lot of us have taken the blame on Alacrity thus far. I keep my neutral stance atm since everything is still changing like crazy… cough Gravity Well… cough.

Maybe you’re right, that the issue with chronomancer lies elsewhere.

However, I personally think that continuum shift’s complexity, while it might completely turn some players off of the class, will allow top players to do things that we as a community haven’t even considered yet. I think that continuum split could be one of the coolest, most versatile mechanics in the game, and I doubt we’ve even really scratched the surface of what it can really do. it’s mainly for this reason that I feel people are underestimating it compared to other shatters.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Mesmer, condition pressure, blinds and evasive targets. Mesmers are a pretty highly single target based profession. It’s difficult for them to fight things like Thieves because they’re constantly losing their target and they don’t have a lot of AOE’s or skills that don’t require a target to fight it.

I have to disagree with you a bit here, mesmer phantasms and illusions automatically re-target enemies that pop out of stealth, so a skilled mesmer should have no trouble keeping track of these targets. In addition, shatters are AoE, the key to fighting stealthy, elusive targets is to set up a clone surround on them, positioning your clones and phantasms so that no matter which way they move, the shatter still hits them unless they use a defensive cooldown.

Also, once upon a time, when thieves were an actual counter to mesmers, it was because the mesmer couldn’t really handle the pressure that thieves output, not because they had trouble targeting them. when mesmers got access to more defensive options while still being able to run offensive traits (IP becoming baseline was the big one) all but the most skilled thieves ceased to really be a serious threat.

The primary weakness of mesmer is that they are relatively weak when confined to a small area (AKA, on point). This is only something you can capitalize on as a tanky, point bruiser sort of class (guard, warrior, ele, cele necro). IMO mesmer is the unequivocally strongest “roamer” class in the game right now.

Also, condi pressure sort of screws you over. However, getting a good condition burn on a mesmer requires you to force that player to go toe-to-toe with you (ie, contesting a point) A good mesmer will simply burn you down with GS from range and then jump in to burst you down with shatters.

pretty much our worst enemies are classes like burn guardians and cele D/D ele, classes with both some measure of on-point sustain, and some level of condition pressure to force us back.

keenlam.4753:

Remember the old times when Anet said Chrono gets OH shield but also something amazing to compensate while other elite classes get new shiny 2h weapon???
So if we treat this statement as a rule of thumb.

Lets rewind the clock … to look at the class main mechanics of each profession (associated with F keys) as they were revealed, shall we?

Chronomancer (got OH)- retain all shatters, get a new shatter (no trade-off, got bonus stuff)

Dragonhunter (got 2H)- virtues replaced by new version (forced trade-off)

Reaper (got 2H)- death shroud replaced by reaper shroud (forced trade-off)

Herald (got OH)- Glint to be replaced one of 2 legends (trade-off, but optional, u might choose not to equip Glint as a Herald)

Tempest (got OH)- retain all attunements, overloads added (no trade-off, got bonus stuff)

Berserker (got OH)- berserker mode added on top of normal adrenaline mechanic (no trade-off)

Daredevil (got 2H)- no change to Steal mechanic (no trade-off)

Scrapper (got 2H)- no change to Toolbelt mechanic (no trade-off)

Druid (got 2H)- no change to Pet commands, added Celestial Avatar form (no trade-off, got bonus stuff)

So the rule of thumb breaks down when we get to the last 3 elite specs (thief, engy, and ranger), especially Druid gets 2H and bonus stuff for their main mechanic.
Does this mean the druid is completely OP and top of the food chain now? Not really.
Quantity wise, it looks unfair but the fact is, balance is more about quality.

Both Reaper and Dragonhunter got a forced trade-off but ended up totally opposite atm. Reaper is one of the best (if not the best) designed elite, while Dragonhunter still has a long way to go and needs lots of work to “please the crowd”.

---

tl;dr Number of new skills/toys doesn’t dictate how better a particular elite spec is compared to others. It’s their quality and synergy with the base class itself that plays a more decisive role.

This makes sense, and I can see the pattern here. To be clear, how do you think continuum shift stacked up against most of the new stuff that each elite spec got?

Personally right now, when I play my mesmer (in sPvP) I feel like i’m just teleporting around the map winning fights everywhere. This is especially apparent when you matched with a lot of new players because it feels like mesmer is probably the only class capable of pretty much carrying a team to victory if you are good enough. Portal allows you to basically be in two places at once, and even with base mesmer, there’s no class that you can’t beat in a 1v1. the tradeoff for that is that mesmer is not really capable of holding a point, even in a 1v1, we often lose the point in exchange for eventually killing the enemy.

To me it feels like chronomancer does everything that base mesmer does, we retain all of our mobility, have just as much (if not more) burst, and then chrono adds the ability to be incredibly strong on points as well with powerful wells, and a very potent block skill which (in contrast to an invuln like distortion) still allows you to hold cap on a point.

Embolism.8106:

Reaper and DH gain different (upgraded) versions of existing skills. Continuum Shift is not a different version of an existing Shatter skill. They’re apples and oranges.

Now, if you’re suggesting reworking Continuum Shift’s functionality into Distortion (on Distortion’s CD of course), I might be inclined to agree.

That sounds like a fine suggestion. I’m not trying to say that things wouldn’t need tweaking, I simply think that it would be an interesting balance method of balance to swap out a shatter. I would agree however that there needs to be some trait inheritance so that any trait that affects whatever shatter is replaced, would affect continuum shift so as to prevent completely breaking builds.

Also, while 4 of the 5 reaper shroud skills are direct modifications of base death shroud skills, the #5 skill (Executioner’s Scythe) is completely unrelated to the base #5 skill (Tainted Shackles). Therefore it’s not entirely true that no class receives a complete skill replacement.

Embolism.8106:

Why exactly do you feel the Mesmer “should” give up something for Continuum Shift when most elite specs don’t? Let’s take a look.

.

Berserker: Berserk mode changes burst skills, but outside of Berserk mode you retain your normal burst skills.

Dragonhunter: Virtues are different, but the passives are the same and the actives mostly build on existing functionality. Only real drawback is they have cast times.

Revenant: An always available Facet, no drawback.

Druid: Celestial Avatar replaces your weapon skills but, again, while not active you suffer no drawbacks.

Daredevil: extra dodge and dodge effects. No drawback.

Scrapper: better ressing/stomping. No drawback.

Tempest: using Overloads increases attunement CD, but you can just as easily ignore them and suffer no drawbacks.

Reaper: Completely changes your Death Shroud. You can consider this a drawback maybe, but given the melee is the Reaper’s thing I think every Reaper would prefer Reaper Shroud over Death Shroud.

.

Aside from Dragonhunter and Reaper no Elite spec takes away from the core profession, and even with DH and Reaper there’s a much stronger argument for them being upgrades rather than drawbacks (apart from DH’s cast time on Virtues, which IMO should be removed).

The reason I feel that mesmers should give something up to take continuum shift is because I thought that chronomancer felt extremely strong during the beta. In addition, The current placement for the continuum shift icon on the skill bar feels very out of place.

This is purely a suggestion, and maybe you disagree, but I don’t think that there’s a lack of precedent here. As mentioned, both reaper and dragonhunter lose previous profession skills to use the new ones. This makes the elite specializations more of a horizontal shift in the way the class plays, where they become better at certain things and worse at others (reaper is much stronger in close quarters, but becomes weaker at range).

Ross Biddle.2367:

The claim that there’s a problem is yours. Ergo the burden of proof is on you.

I agree that the burden of proof for any claim is on me, however disagreeing with an assertion that I make does not make that assertion a “flaw” in my argument. A flaw would be if I had some logical inconsistency that made it illogical, not simply that you disagree with it.

Ross Biddle.2367:

The only reason you gave for making this change was “to make Chronomancer and Mesmer feel more distinct (from one another)”. This implies that Chronomancer does not feel more distinct (or distinct enough) from Mesmer. Only Chrono feels incredibly distinct from Mesmer without even considering your change -_-u.

Chronomancer feels very distinct from mesmer in that it feels distinctly Stronger (In my opinion). I would like to see the chronomancer spec fall closer in line with the base mesmer spec so that there continues to be a reason to run both specs, instead of everyone just switching to chronomancer.

Do you believe that elite specializations should all be much stronger than their base counterparts? I was under the impression that they were supposed to be more of a horizontal change that allowed each class to do some things better while doing other things worse. If the elite specialization does not give anything up, then it becomes a direct upgrade to the base class, and the base class becomes more or less obsolete, this can only be bad for build diversity, and the game as a whole.

Now, I don’t intend to beg the question here. I don’t know for absolute certain that chrono is actually much stronger than base mesmer, and maybe it isn’t. I simply proposed one possible change that I feel could make the specialization more of a horizontal change, as opposed to a vertical one.

DaShi.1368:

Let’s do this for all the elites:

Warriors should have to give up their main hand weapon to use Berserker.
Necros can pick one of the new reapershroud skills in their death shroud.
Engineers can’t use toolkit skills as Scrappers.
Elementalists can’t use fire as Tempests.
Guardians can only have 2 virtues as Dragonhunters.
Thieves can only steal gunk as Daredevils.
Revenants can’t weapon swap as Heralds.
Rangers get 2 pets as Druids.

Some of these make very little sense in my opinion, as they don’t actually parallel the new things that the elite specializations receive. For example:

Warrior – What if instead of taking away the mainhand (what?) warriors could simply use ONLY primal burst skills, and lost the ability to use burst skills outside of berserk form. i’m not advocating that, but it provides a more direct parallel where what they gain is some different form of what they gave up.

Necro – Reaper is actually (IMO) fantastically balanced in this way, and a great example of what i mean. When you have the reaper traitline slotted, you lose access to your old death shroud skills in favor of a more reaper themed set of skills. Nobody complains about losing the old death shroud because the reaper death shroud skills are very different, and just as good. However, it provides a reason to stick with base necro, because the standard death shroud skills are already quite strong (life blast anybody?).

Engi – i haven’t really played around with scrapper, so I’m not sure how to comment on this

Elementalist – Elementalists are another one where they already have to give something up, when you overload an attunement, that attunement’s recharge is increased. This is a great balance mechanism that changes the way the class plays. Standard ele relies a lot on swapping attunements constantly while tempest benefits from staying in one for a period of time.

Guardian – Have you even played dragonhunter? because they already have their virtues replaced by a new set. In other words, they lose access to their old virtues.

Thief – Not really a big thief player, so I can’t really comment here, but only stealing gunk is both arbitrary and totally unwarranted.

Revenant – This is another one that gains something and basically doesn’t give much up. I haven’t played enough of the class to speak to its balance, but I agree that Herald could maybe use a second look.

Ranger – perhaps druids would lose access to the special skill of their pets, making druid a more support focused class that relies less on pets.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Let me point out the flaw in your whole argument. It’s right at the start so no one will miss it.

• Flaw: The assumption/assertion that Chronomancer should have to “give something up” as compared to base Mesmer.

Forgetting, of course, that the Chrono line is 1 of 6 trait lines that upon taking, means giving up one of the other 5 lines.

This is not insignificant.

There’s no precedent for dropping Distortion, or any other shatter for that matter.

You might not agree with me, but the assertion that chrono should have to give up something compared to the base class is not a “flaw” in my argument, it is simply an assertion that you disagree with.

If you disagree with it tell me why, instead of dismissing it out of hand as a “flaw”.

As for the “no precedent”, look at reaper, they lose access to all of their old death shroud skills and gain a new set. Look at dragonhunter, they gain an entire new set of virtues. There is absolutely precedent for a class losing access to previous class mechanics to gain new ones.

Let me just preempt this thread by saying that I main Mesmer in sPvP, so my goal with this thread is not cry “waaah, I died to a chronomancer, nerf pls”, I’m making this suggestion because I think that it could be a good way to both balance out chronomancer without destroying the great flow that the class has now, and also clean up the makeshift looking UI.

So, at the moment, Chronomancer has to give up very little in comparison to base mesmer. It feels like a lot of the elite specs have this issue right now, but the current state of the UI for chronomancer really seems to highlight this to me. Right now Chronomancer can more or less do anything that base mesmer can do, but slightly more effectively or with additional options. I think that one of the best ways to make the chronomancer feel more distinct from base mesmer would be to simply replace a shatter with continuum split.

as for which shatter:

-Mind Wrack should remain untouched as it is arguably the “basic” shatter.

-Cry of Frustration is probably the least useful shatter since the confusion nerf, so i wouldn’t mind it being removed, but I’m not sure that this really changes the dynamic of the class enough

-Diversion should also stay, as it is one of the core interrupts for any lockdown build, and removing it from base mesmer would destroy pretty much any possible “lockdown chronomancer” builds

-Distortion is a great defensive cooldown, and I think that switching this out for continuum split would actually make chronomancer feel like a very distinctive class compared to the base class. On the other hand, if chronomancer is meant to be a more defensive elite spec, then it doesn’t make sense to remove a defensive cooldown from the class

Basically, this all depends on what sort of vision the devs have for the chronomancer. I’m not sure exactly which shatter i would switch out, but I think that instead of nerfing traits or utility skills, the chronomancer should simply lose a base profession skill.

Thoughts?

I second this, I love being able to summon godzilla in GW2

I said this in the other thread before seeing this one but anyway…

I think that they should offer more in the way of customizing not just the hall itself, but the way we upgrade the guild hall. Why is it that tavern has to be first? why can’t we start by working towards the guild arena?

I like that the hall takes a minimum of 9 months to become fully unlocked, it adds a sense of progress and prestige to guilds that manage to reach that level. What I don’t like however, is that everyone is going to do it in the exact same way, getting one after another in the same order. The best way to make guild halls feel unique and fully customizable (MMOs are all about customization after all) is to let us upgrade them the way we want.

I can understand a wait time, a few weeks, even a month maybe, but two months is pretty insane actually. I think that they should keep the “9 months for the entire guild hall” thing, because it makes a full hall feel like an actual goal to work towards, but make it possible to go for certain things first. If a guild wants only an arena, they should be able to prioritize that and get it fairly quickly.

It feels like they are touting “customization” but they really only give us cosmetic customization, we have no real control over what order in which we upgrade our guild hall, which is really far more important.

Berelious.3290:

Other than the occasional FPS do any PC games even have VOIP? I’ve yet to hear of an MMO that has one.

Yes… Dota 2 as well as CS:GO (I know CS is an FPS, but it is a really big one) have in-client voice. It makes quite a lot of sense for any game based around competitive matchmaking, but very little for a game such as GW2 in my opinion.

Sorry OP, but clone death has never even been a good build, let alone OP. The reason that clone death works in certain brackets is because players are ignorant about it. I’ve played several different clone death builds, and by their very nature, they work by baiting the enemy into attacking you, if the enemy simply does not fight you, or fights you in a certain way, your build is going to do nothing at all.

Most mesmers (myself included) run very squishy, high burst builds which merit constant focus, while clone death plays on this by thriving when focused. More experienced players will immediately realize what you are running, and play arouond you accordingly. My guess is that what happened is that you simply found your way into a higher MMR bracket after the matchmaking change, and your build no longer works against more experienced players. The simple fact is that, to stay competitive, you may have to change your build and slightly relearn your playstyle.

Why lock premades out of unranked, and not ranked? Unranked is where guildies and I go when we want to queue up as a team and have fun, without totally screwing with the ranking system. Currently the matchmaking system is pretty broken, so there’s kinda no difference, but unranked should be the place where more unbalanced matchups happen.

It makes far more sense to fully enforce balanced matchups (e.g. no stacks/all stacks) in the mode that is actually meant to be publicly ranked. If you want a place where you can go, and only face solo players that are near your skill level, play ranked.

Now, personally, i’m all for bringing solo/team queue back, I think that things were much better that way. Enforcing solo queue on the current unranked queue mode however, makes no sense at all.

I would recommend not getting your hopes up for any of this happening as part of the expansion. WvW is already getting a new map, and it’s very likely that the (as far as I know) relatively small WvW team has had their hands full with the new map, and will not be providing any other changes.

Expect routine bugfixes and possibly some slight balance changes to certain aspects of the new map, but outside of that, I’m not terribly optimistic when it comes to 2 year old promises.

Sadaharu.9745:

While I get what you’re saying, it would really help if you can give me examples of some PvE content players do regularly at max level. Essentially I want to know if there are cool monsters that are actually challenging to fight or if it’s all just questing/exploring zones and doing everything one time?

Well, this is always a horrifically polarizing question, you either have people talking about how much of an awful grind endgame is (typically those people have convinced themselves that there is only one thing in the game worth doing, and they keep doing it over and over again until they hate themselves), and people repeating the classic Anet line of “all content is endgame” and “play your way” and all of that stuff.

Basically, as an example, many people who play the game regularly do dungeons speed runs once a day. With the current attainable level of gear, doing all 3 paths of Ascalon Catacombs (a level 35 dungeon) will net you a very reasonable 4.5 direct gold, along with probably 30-50 silver in loot, as well as 180 dungeon tokens, that can be saved up to buy exotics and skins. People also frequently run Citadel of Flames Path 1 for a decent amount of gold, and some dungeon tokens, as it is also very easy. These are just a couple of examples, with the LFG tool, it’s fairly easy to find people to run/speedrun dungeons with you, which is a sizable part of the PvE endgame in my opinion. There’s also fractals, which is a partially randomized, scaling dungeon that can net you some nice gold, items, and unique skins with a frequency dependent on the difficulty of the run that you’re doing (up to level 50 fractals, which are very unforgiving)

Like someone else said, there are also world bosses that each drop one guaranteed rare weapon (30-50s, with a chance to salvage ectoplasm) with a chance for an exotic, as well as spawning a chest that generally contains decent loot at higher levels. This is relatively horizontal, because world bosses range in level from 15 to 80, so you will end up seeing quite a lot of the game world just by hitting up every one of these bosses as they spawn. Sure, most of them don’t take a whole lot of concentration or thought, but most of them are pretty cool visually, and quite impressive until you’ve killed them about 15-20 times.

Basically, the whole “horizontal endgame” is fairly true to a point. Doing world bosses and farming dungeons, both low and high level nets you nice amounts of gold, skins, and items that can be used to get yourself to the highest tier of gear (forever hopefully) which is ascended. Once you are there, the game really revolves almost completely around getting skins. There are legendary weapons, which are simply very flashy skins, with ascended level, selectable stats. The nice thing about legendary weapons is that they require you to have at least tried out almost every part of the game (map completion, WvW tokens, dungeon tokens, skill points), the not so nice thing is that they also require a TON of grind. It is possible to buy a legendary, but this will generally cost you upwards of 1,000g.

Outside of legendaries, there are quite a few cool skins to collect, and a buttload of achievements to… achieve. Basically however, there is no designated endgame, what you do after level 80 (purely for PvE) pretty much involves going back to the rest of the world and doing everything else that you didn’t do before, or things that you did do, just a bunch of times. there are several zones and encounters that either require level 80, or are simply extremely difficult without high level gear, but in general, once you hit 80, the world is your oyster.

On the subject of grind, I would say that GW2 has “optional grind” in that you basically choose how much you want to grind. It’s very possible to just be a poor, undergeared nomad, and see basically everything that GW2 has to offer. Even the hardest content PvE content, high level fractals, are the exact same as lower level fractals in actual content (enemies, zones). However, if you want any of the really colorful shinies that other players have, i might take a bit of grind.

Muchacho.2390:

Polismassa.6740:

Games like League of Legends and DOTA 2 require you to have played around 100 games to be able to play ranked matches, and each of those matches takes anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes. Matches in GW2 are much, much shorter, so i don’t see why there shouldn’t be some sort of gating for newer accounts. Just make an account-wide counter of 10 unranked games (Abandoned games should not count, even if it is unranked) before an account has access to the ranked queue.

I dont know about LoL but for dota2 you certainly dont need 100 games for playing ranked.

I’m not sure when the last time you played was, but on my alt account, I have 61 unranked games, and my profile is still only level 8, I also have quite a few more wins than losses. You need to be level 13 to participate in ranked, so with my current win-loss rate, I will need to play approximately 117 unranked matches before I have access to ranked.

Atherakhia.4086:

One would hope there will be an enormous patch months before HOT comes out so they can bring all of the classes up to par and be ready to best compliment their specializations.

We have Rangers that are borderline worthless in PvP. Necromancers that are borderline worthless in PvE. Half the classes absent from the WvW meta. 3 truly powerful roaming options in WvW with the rest trailing behind significantly.

We’re a long ways off from HOT being a successful launch. Hopefully we’ll see an improvement in transparency and communication this year?

It makes little to no sense to put out a big patch in order to balance the game right before an expansion comes out that totally changes the meta anyway. I mean, say they balance the meta and get all 8 classes pretty much totally balanced, and then a bunch of specializations come out, 3 of which then become the dominant forces in the meta. All of the work done to balance the 8 base classes would have been completely worthless at that point because they would have all fallen to the wayside.

Basically, don’t expect anything else balance-wise before HoT. After it comes out, the meta is likely to completely shift one way or another; so if you don’t like the way the current met plays, well, you can be confident that it will probably be totally different pretty soon.