Guild Wars 2

Has it been fixed for you without you doing anything? It’s happening to me now out of nowhere.

Same thing happening to me out of nowhere. Been working fine up till now. I tried running the client repair and that worked, but now when I try to login again it does the same thing.

Hammerguard.9834:

I agree with all that ladders/seasons crap but honestly, if Anet were to start putting the same number of premades on both teams what would the difference be between that and solo queue? Both teams are equivilant in premades and pugs and it would feel equivalent to a solo queue match. It would make matches more balanced while keeping the queues short.

I guess I wouldn’t really care if a 3-person premade on one team = 3-person premade on the other team + 2 solo queuers. That would even things out theoretically.

There’s some premades that aren’t bad because they are just friends/casual/pve-based, even though they’ll still probably be good with zerg, +1 and rezzing. The real demoralization comes when you see three, four or even five of the enemy team with the guild tag [tpvp] or [OP] or [HERO] or something that indicates tryhard pvpers. (Tryhard pvp guilds are cool and fine and good for the pvp population, obviously, it’s just solo players generally despite fighting them).

^ 100% that and the rest of Aereniel’s post. Lumping together premades and pugs does almost nothing good for either party. The soloqueuers get stomped (if the premade is decent), get frustrated and start complaining/stop playing. The premade gets an easy victory they didn’t really have to work for or deserve, so they may end up getting bored or won’t get better.

Soloqueuers don’t want to go up against premades and premades don’t want to fight soloqueuers. The exception here is casual guilds or friends wanting to group up, and I’d be okay with two people queuing together in soloqueue, but something’s gotta give to make pvp enjoyable for the majority (solo (un)ranked players).

Most modern and serious competitive games (think MOBAs and FPSs) have soloqueue because it works and it’s what most of us want. Solo queue needs to return if we want the average pvper to stop being jaded and start enjoying the spirit of competition again.

Yasha.5963:

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Celestial necros counter d/d eles (constant boon removal, transferring burns). Condi rangers, condi mesmers and condi engis are all capable of killing d/d eles on point, though those are hardly meta.

How do condi rangers conter d/d ele? That is the hardest match up for me when I play condi ranger.

Off topic but d/d ele is one of my hardest matchups for me too when I play condi ranger/condi trapper. You can bait water attunement and beat the unskilled ones that way, but in general they have more cleansing, more sustain and even similar condi compared to ranger.

Kuya.6495:

I agree with saiyan. People in this forum mostly complain about d/d eles and pu mesmers and also burning, but when you ask them about the classes they think need a nerf burn guards and burn engis rarely make the top of the list. They only seem to put d/d eles at the top of the list along with mesmers. The issue seems to be that d/d ele already had high sustain before the patch and after the update it got a damage boost with the burn upgrade. Making d/d ele high sustain and high condi damage. If that is the problem, then the solution is simply to reduce burn stacks on d/d ele skills.

Hell, burn guards are not even the meta for that class, so it’s weird to ask for a nerf when its damage is considered lower than a phys dps medi guard. For engi, i’m not sure what the meta is but i rarely hear people complain about them despite their access to burns.

This 100%, seriously.

If only burning damage gets nerfed, the underperformers of condition damage will take the brunt of the nerf. D/D eles will be fine; medi guards will be “fine,” as will rifle engis. Their specs will stay (mostly) the same. But burn guards won’t be fine; they rely so heavily on burning that they’ll either do enough damage to be viable or they won’t, there’s no inbetween because they have nothing else. P/P condi engineer will go from endangered to extinct—they used to pressure by applying everything but they can’t keep up with stacking conditions. Their couple burns will be even less effective than before and more rifle engis will take their place.

I really think burning is a case that certain specs make it overtuned, not as a mechanic in general. If it was generally nerfed, I think its damage should be spread over a longer period, not lowered. Or maybe give the true burn-reliant specs a trait that increases the frequency of burn ticks (to what it is now) and let the specs who have burning as icing on the cake deal the same damage over a longer period of time, which fits in well with their bruiser style of gameplay anyway.

Jasher.6580:

The OP asked for a spec that can… and I quote, “1 spec that can SAFELY 1v1 a cele d/d ele on point without losing it”

The answer to the OP’s question is Celestial Signet Necro…

but again… he doesn’t want to hear that.

The purpose of this thread is to highlight Elementalists as overpowered. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I think Cele signet necro is pretty much /thread for that question, you are right.

I think you should specify a little more what you want in a condi class in terms of playstyle. Burn guard and trap ranger can drop anyone in seconds with condis but they play quite differently.

That said…you can’t go wrong with mesmer as it’s a good dueling spec. But I would suggest burn guard is an easy to pick up but hard to master condi spec right now. You can have occasional faceroll burn burst that drops people who don’t cleanse quickly, but it’s not quite a one trick pony as virtue of justice can keep the pressure up nicely. It also brings team support and good panic cooldowns.

Trap ranger is more yolo but very powerful when people don’t know how to fight a trapper. Dropping spike+flame+viper is satisfying and hard to cleanse if you add immob + chill sigil + taunt + wolf howl. The burst CC chain you can pull off on unsuspecting people is hilarious. But to me it has huge issues with teamfights and sustain so don’t expect to fight outnumbered.

Shortbow ranger and condi necro are shadows of their former selves imo and I’d advise against it for now. Attrition condition can win 1v1s but not teamfights currently. All top necro specs (i.e. power) have a couple forms of condition transfer anyway if that’s what you’re looking for.

D/D cele ele is top-tier and it’s burn damage is great, but it’s not what most people think of as a condi class. You spend a lot of time not applying condis although when you do it can be very effective both solo and in teamfights.

Velimere.7685:

Celestial Signet Necromancer hard-counters Celestial Dagger/Dagger Elementalist.

Hard counter? That’s going way too far imo. They aren’t in a small closed space. The ele has great mobility and can disengage and reengage endlessly unless something goes really wrong. The necro can’t do that.

Hard counter to me means the necro would totally shut down the ele which isn’t accurate. But yes I’d say it’s a soft counter for boon-reliant specs in general. In a vacuum I think the necro would win most/all duels but conquest is so much more than dueling.

I personally don’t think rifle engi is in that bad of a spot right now. They can have great burst and great mobility/survivability (sometimes) and pretty good sustained damage. But I do agree on the point that they don’t have much of an identity right now.

I really want to see condi be viable on the level of power rifle, that would help a lot. Engineer should be one of the most diverse classes but no one is using flamethrower, no one is using bombs, no one is using dual pisols, etc.

I’d especially like if engi could be a viable hybrid, considering so many of their skills/kits combine decent raw power with bleed/burn/poison/confuse etc. Engi used to be good at applying a little bit of everything but now they can’t compete with burst condis. It hurts me to see all engineers running soldier/marauder rifle.

And this is personal but I dislike HGH might stacking now. The micromanaging is annoying and I’m not for classes being able to maintain 25 stacks of might.

It sounds like you might have been getting ganged up on a lot, making it seem worse than it actually is. A tank-built necro really isn’t going to be doing that much damage. Necros in general can’t burst outside of double well/lich form. And they certainly won’t do much direct damage (like life transfer) if “throwing conditions out left, right and centre,” unless they’re just transferring condis.

As far builds, probably 7 out of 10 necros you see in pugs will be using the standard power wellmancer build, though some will go minionmancer and be tanky. Very few are running condi now.

I think you need to fight more necros, especially 1v1 to see what exactly is consistently causing you the most trouble. You really shouldn’t be losing two thirds of your health pool in seconds unless you are caught in wells or taking lich form hits.

Also, if your team is zerging a necro, even if it takes awhile (likely then they are tank spec), then they a) won’t put out much damage/team support and b) you WILL kill them because they don’t have the cooldowns or mobility to escape focus fire. When in doubt train the necro because it WILL result in a kill if you don’t stop; they won’t escape like ele/mes/even sometimes warrior could.

Same here…except I also can’t access any of my dungeon reward tracks. Twilight Arbor, which I was working on now says “Temporarily available in 2 weeks, 6 days, 12 hours” while the other dungeon tracks aren’t even listed.

I am happy to hear others are actually happy with this too. Try to keep on topic…this thread is to show Anet we appreciate frequent balance and communication and want them to keep it up.

Personally patches like today’s will keep me happy as long as they keep happening regularly. Not everything was balanced but I think it was a step in the right direction, even though some of the changes were just bandaid fixes (rampage).

I’d also love it if Anet would post here more often and let us know they’re reading our feedback.

Anyone else feel the same?

Patchi.9061:

The balance patch was actually good this time. They did manage to shave off some of the most complained aspects of the game. However, there is still more to work on. Looking forward to the next patch and hopefully they would make more build diversities for engineers as for now its being shutdown heavily by the top meta classes.

Totally agreed. I thought this patch was decent and it’ll be even greater if Anet keeps up with the biweekly balance patches at minimum.

Rampage felt like a bandaid fix (meh), mesmer mantra cooldowns were fixed (great), engineer got some range increases for the already dominant rifle spec (condi needs the love right now imo), ranger got some fixes and slight buffs (I’m really excited about the torch buffs as miniscule as that is to many), but the lack of touching eles at all was odd which probably means they don’t know how to balance the class yet.

If Anet keeps this up I’ll be happy tbh.

As someone else pointed out, it was a custom arena for PvP dailies, not serious matches. If you ever wanted back in to that server you could talk with the owner, but for all intents and purposes you were violating their rules, which is why you were kicked.

People trying to get their dailies done like that don’t want others capping and killing and disrupting the flow.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Currently, Warrior is good at the following:

• Crowd Control – AoE and single target

They are decent at:

• Damage – Single target and cleave. Rampage is Great damage but if you know how to avoid/counter it then it’s not a huge threat. The build in my sig does have potentially high damage but only if you can land a full combo.

• Sustain – when built for it

• Mobility – but only on flat ground

• Condi removal – so long as you can land your burst skills

• Team support – but not really that amazing post nerf
  …
  Warrior NEEDS the old mix of support/sustain/damage with a side of CC to remain viable. The best hope for this imo is a revival of Hambow. If possible, I’d rather avoid bringing back the Cele Shoutbow snoozefest but I would rather Warriors have a place in the meta than none at all.

As a non-warrior player, I feel like warrior already has a good mix of support/sustain/damage and some CC; that’s what they’ve always been about. I am curious what specifically makes them not have those things right now?

CC with hammer, damage and mobility with GS, insane damage with quickness and rampage, insane survivability with stances. To me they seem like a class that other classes should be balanced like—a great all-rounder with game-changing cooldowns, but appropriately die without them when trained. I think other classes need to be like this, not be running around with insane escape/survivability/on-demand burst without long, appropriate cooldowns to keep the power creep in check.

Warrior has always been about that second wind, keep pushing on to victory, go berserk and defy all odds playstyle, and as an outsider they seem to be decent at that right now. Going back to celestial/shout bow is like saying warriors need to become more like ele and mesmer, but they don’t. Ele and mesmer need to become more like warrior imo.

As far as rampage: It’s either just okay or insane depending on the class. If you can disengage/invuln/blind, great. If you have low mobility (think necro) you’re utterly screwed. In some cases rampage is fine or even underwhelming, but other times it’s an unstoppable killing machine. I think low-mobility classes like necro and power ranger just need a way to at least soft counter rampage. Several other classes don’t need anything to be fine against it.

Substance E.4852:

Tied heavily to a caster weapon?

Confirmed: Vampiric Touch Ranger inbound

I would LOVE that. You brought back fond memories of some R/N hugs of death.

Yep happening in my conquest map. Logging off and hoping it is fixed soon.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Arcadio.6875:

They just confirmed on twitch that they removed the practice button, but did not give an explanation why.

I think it’s obvious they want to de-emphasize hotjoin because of how bad it is and get more people going into unranked instead.

A great way to get more people into (un)ranked again would be to let us play hotjoin/practice (or even pve) again while waiting for the 5+ minute long queues.

As long as 50% of the time spent in the game is downtime waiting for a queue to happen I won’t queue for pvp, simply because I loathe nothing more than downtime these days.

Being able to PvE would be great. Queuing during hotjoin again though I don’t know. It’s already volatile enough with leaving/join/autobalance, adding queue’ers in too would make it less fun for the hotjoiners I imagine.

You can. Open up the pvp page and click the server browser tab (third one down). All the practice option did was throw you into one of those servers.

I don’t know why the practice button was removed.

I’m not liking Stronghold either because it feels way too snowbally. If you get a bad start you’ll stay behind. If they attack your lord then you spend the rest of the game turtling until you lose because the map is small enough that your opponents can rez and be back attacking the lord right away. It for once makes staggered deaths bad.

Still need to test it out more before deciding, but something about it should change, maybe.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Reicta.2178:

Phineas Poe.3018:

I had success running this build yesterday:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-ZRw;2cPVv0l6cQ-x0;9;4jlm;0156056236;4Tw0;3l6Uwl6Uw0q

Maybe I’m missing something because I see these HGH builds often, but I don’t see how you’re getting much use out of HGH at all. I’m counting three elixir skills total, and none of them you’re going to be using on CD.

For longer duration stealth and shorter cooldown. HGH has more usage than just might these days.

I see. I figured it was not for might stacking but thought I would ask anyway.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I had success running this build yesterday:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-ZRw;2cPVv0l6cQ-x0;9;4jlm;0156056236;4Tw0;3l6Uwl6Uw0q

Maybe I’m missing something because I see these HGH builds often, but I don’t see how you’re getting much use out of HGH at all. I’m counting three elixir skills total, and none of them you’re going to be using on CD.

I am curious what kind of rotation in pvp you guys are running using FT+HGH+Jugg, especially those running quickness elixir.

I like FT but I still find it to be struggling with its identity. It makes carrion good though but still kind okittenward to use to me.

Arcadio.6875:

The button being gone is deliberate. When they accidentally showed off the new ui a month ago, it wasn’t there. They had enough time to fix it if it was a mistake.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Patch-added-queue-preferences-update-gone/

Personally, I think new players should be given a much better tutorial than the existing one and then go into unranked rather than hotjoin. The latter is a terrible experience that could turn people away from pvp.

I can agree with that. A good tutorial would be great. The practice button can go but players need to be made aware that the server browser exists or people will forget hotjoin exists at all (e.g. this thread).

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Just checked ingame, and wow the hotjoin (at least the practice button) is really gone…

I just hope that’s because of the stronhold pvp weekend, AFAIK last time they also changed the normal (un?)ranked queue into stronghold instead of conquest to test it.

I’d REALLY miss hotjoin. Not having to wait 5-10 minutes between every match is godsend when your playtime is limited.

You can still view the server browser. Just pick a server and it’s the same thing; practice “queue” just throws you into one of them afaik. But I’m hoping they’ll add practice button back anywho.

The server browser is still there. Practice mode not being there anymore I would hope is an oversight.

HGH rifle is decent enough, but absolutely bring elixir gun. That alone gives you three elixirs for boosting might (elixir gun skill 4 and 5, and it’s toolbelt regen skill). With that and elixir B and elixir F (heal) you can easily keep yourself at 25 stacks of might before engaging a fight.

You can do this with cele and still hit hard. I personally don’t enjoy the build though but might stacking does work.

Edit: I’m going to add that in my opinion rabid is bad now because our condi clear isn’t good enough to keep us from melting instantly to burning, which bypasses toughness.

Khenzo.2465:

Actually, this may sound like I’m calling them bad aswell, but I actually do think alot of people don’t understand why they are so dominant, some people seem to view these players as gods of the esport pantheon of the NA scene that rains down hellfire on any who dare oppose them.

Are they good? Yes.

Are they great? Yes.

But it’s because there is no other teams that really stick around long enough to grow to their level. Same happened with TCG in EU.

I really wish some NA teams could stick with being a punching bag for a while until they can actually challenge Abjured, the NA scene is so dead it’s on life support.

Or the Abjured can magically disapear, either works for bringing the NA scene back from the dead.

Well said. I just came back to the game after a year, so I was legitimately curious why all the other NA teams can have tense, close games but then get completely blown out of the water by The Abjured.

Like others have said, it seems that even if other teams have similar skill levels, Abjured just knows the scene and the game so intimately well that that they can outplay the competition by a large margin.

Very interesting to read your responses everyone!

Surprising no one, tonight’s NA matches went from close-ish to completely dominating when The Abjured showed up. What sets them apart from all the other NA’ers?

Reicta.2178:

It’s pretty fast but surprisingly unranked/ranked matches don’t go after it much in my experience.

Instead of making the Lord a damage sponge, what if the two casters had increased defense and were able to heal/buff the Lord? That way you couldn’t just train the Lord unless your team was capable of CCing. Small groups/solo you could CC the casters to interrupt the heals, while a full team could get away with tunneling the Lord (but leave all the points vulnerable to capture).

Just an idea.

It’s pretty fast but surprisingly unranked/ranked matches don’t go after it much in my experience.

Instead of making the Lord a damage sponge, what if the two casters had increased defense and were able to heal/buff the Lord? That way you couldn’t just train the Lord unless your team was capable of CCing. Small groups/solo you could CC the casters to interrupt the heals, while a full team could get away with killing the Lord (but leave all the points vulnerable to capture).

Just an idea.

Sagat.3285:

It’s also my favorite map but it doesn’t have it’s own queue,they are no build savers and it was badly introduced. SH is no excuse for deleting or ignoring it.

This. If GW2 had build savers I would be much more accepting of TDM as I could load up a build for it. Right now it just sucks if your team comp isn’t suited for it.

I liked it for a few games, but other reasons I dislike it include: Courtyard is too small; everyone either AoE spams in the “hallway” or camps spawn most of the time.

Games tend to be landslides too. One team will gain momentum at the beginning and keep it going and end up 500-50 or something. Or on the other hand, it might be totally stagnant if the teams are too defensive/bulky and no one gets downed or dies ever.

Overall, I really think a build saver/loader would do wonders. Many specs aren’t meant for TDM at all. Honestly if everyone just went full glass it’d be pretty fun.

OP edit: It turns out the four necros were all minionmancers from the same guild, to test how it would work. The three necros on the other team, not sure.

Maybe OP is playing a condi spec/class that isn’t bonkers right now. Not everyone can be a burn guard.

DavyMcB.1603:

zone.1073:

On the contrary, necros have decent diversity now. “Power wells” is vague, because there are different variations of wells. For example, I’ve been running a Celestial Dhuumfire build with siphoning wells (link and video in signature). Other necro builds use support-style wells like Well of Blood and Power, and forego the damaging wells all together.

The diversity is decent. It’s much more improved at the very least.

I also did a flight test with my specialized boon rekt necro the other day. It was awesome in its own right. Chill necro is also much better with chill>vulner trait.

As a necro main (50% of spvp games as necro, a lot of games), I’m always looking for new builds! I’ll check this out.

SlayerSixx.5763:

I wanna stab everyone who misuses troll.

@OP

I had a similar experience a few days ago, except everyone was mesmer or thief and I was the only guard. Needless to say, I walked out with 13 kills and just as many deaths. I must admit though, the incredible pace was fun.

Oh man that would be insane. So much stealthing and running away to reset.

PowerBottom.5796:

clearly very representative, very well done research!

And no, I actually feel it’s pretty diverse in terms of builds and classes and I didn’t notice any class being played too often, other than the ones from the daylies.

Thank you. I find it to be diverse-ish but the builds are usually the same.

Thanks for the responses Adamantium and Phineas. I will try those out. I had been running with bomb kit and flamethrower to try to pump out as much burn as possible, but it has felt paltry in comparison to what burn guardians do just in their opener.

Could you guys tell me what your rotation tends to be in fights to keep up the damage? I feel like there’s always so many buttons to click for condi and I never know what’s worthwhile and what’s not worthwhile to use.

You guys ever use pistol 1 for bleeds or is that subpar for you?

Edit: It turns out the four necros were all minionmancers from the same guild, to test how it would work. The three necros on the other team, not sure.

/s I kid, I kid. But I just came out of an unranked game (so the team comp was random) comprised of:

7 Necros
2 Eles
1 Ranger (me)

All the necros were power well or MM. I literally died, assaulted another point, came back a few minutes later and the same four necros were still duking it out at clocktower with no signs of slowing down.

Also importantly, since launch this was the first game for me without a single guard, thief and mesmer. With today’s burst it felt….refreshing, yet out of place somehow. Overall it wasn’t too bad, but only because I was playing survival ranger. If I had brought my condi engi I would probably have rage quit lol.

Anyone have similar experiences? How’d it go?

I’ve been a fan of pistol/pistol condition builds for a long time, but right now the build feels so subpar, but way too glassy. I lose most of my 1v1s against good players, necros are an instant loss, anything with sustain is a downhill battle, and my burn damage feels low compared to guardians right now.

Has anyone had success with a condi build in spvp? I don’t play wvw, but feel free to comment on that too.

Can you guys give some tips on using this build? I tend to suck majorly with rifle but other engis are bursting me to zero fast.

I just got out of a match on Skyhammer, where I used the skyhammer for most of the game, spamming it on points and getting hits most of the time. However, we lost, and someone blamed it on me for sitting on the hammer because “we lose a player and everyone can easily evade it.”

I’m asking for advice from fellow pvpers—is it bad to use the Skyhammer, or always good? How often do you use it? Let’s say no one contests it and you get free reign the majority of the time, worth it?

It’s fine with cooldowns, but I’d like to see stealth stomping disabled from cloak & dagger.

I’m not seeing how this buff is significant in any way…

Best case scenario, it’ll allow you to win a 1v1 when downed with the enemy sub-10% hp.

thewho.5841:

Reicta.2178:

I’ve definitely killed players in just a hasted Bull Rush+Hundred Blades combo.

It is a combo. HB warriors they have high burst but they cannot one shot anyone. With an example of a rifle warrior I was referring to the argument at the beginning.

Right. Technically HB can’t one hit, but the combo is so fast that I can down players with full health in under three seconds, while they are stunned. I’m just saying that the frustration can be justified.

I’m relieved that it’s only half a gig.

Thank you for the quick clarification.

I’m at 100 mb downloaded and the launcher says it’s at 0%….anyone know how large this patch is?

I’m at 100 mb downloaded and the launcher says it’s at 0%….anyone know how large this patch is?