Guild Wars 2

Hello, I’m Shiiroi.

I played many games and especially competitive PVP games. I have never been a top player or anything but I always managed to do pretty well and get to some middle-high ranks.
I started GW2 a few months ago beacause I was looking for a PVP game that will have a little more action.
I’m currently phoenix rank / sapphire. So I’m far from being a pro but I manage to do alright.
If I write this article it’s to give a fresh point of view from someone relatively recent to the game (about 3 months) but at the same time, someone who isn’t a total noob to PVP.

So from what I’ve experienced, I have been both really happy and disapointed by GW2.

Most of people that has been playing for years don’t really see it anymore I guess, but the gameplay is really enjoyable. It’s way faster than most MMORPG or MOBA and have a mix between action and teamplay.

On the other hand, I feel like the meta and the way the game is played is really… bad.
I mean okay the current meta is borring. Bunkers everywhere holding points and stuff is quite…
But I know the meta is this kind of game is changing often, HOT was a big patch and it’ll take time to adjust.
But still, from what I read online there is many things that have been unbalanced and this from waaaaay before HOT.

The current problem with the game and the way ANET treat it is that they made a game with a LOT of possibilities, but the way it’s balanced allow you, if you want to be competitive, to play it with a really short array of possibilities.
When I started to play I was like : Woaaa, look at all the builds possible ! There is 8 (now 9) classes, but each of these classes have so many different gameplay possible.

So that is why I was so amazed with the game at first. But then, big desilusion : ANET wants us to play about 4 classes and each of theses with a really defined role…

So on a game that should encourage to try out different builds and experience all possibilities, you end up with a really defined meta and get bad results or flamed by your team if you wanna try something little bit different.

If I’m saying all this, it’s for ANET to realize that they will NOT make it to eSports or anything if they keep on acting the way they do.
I just started a few months ago and they are already loosing me. And I mean, I really loved the gameplay from this game. It’s one of the greatest action MMORPG I tried. But seriously if ANET keeps on doing this, they will fail.

If they want to have any chance to become a good game, and maybe one day get to eSport they need to take a break, sit around a table and seriously discuss how they can change the thing.
I mean it’s not because they finally nerfed Bunker mesmer that it’s gonna change it all. I mean that was a good nerf, but that was 1 nerf out of so many they need to do. They shouldn’t be thinking about, how to balance the current meta. They should be thinking about how to balance PVP. I’m hate when the meta is driven by the devs. The players should be leading the meta by creative ideas and testing out different things. But in order for this to happen, it’s a whole work that need to be redone. They need to make every class viable and check for each class what are the traits that are useless / too strong etc… And there is also the weapons, why do you always have to stick to a few weapons by character when there is so many others that could be totaly cool, but that suck because they lack of power. For instance, I’m mostly playing ranger, and I would love the shortbow to be a viable weapon, but it’s not. Same problem with the utility, there is only a few utilities that are used for each classes and the others are run by a bunch of “hippies” that try to play different.
Of course one of the biggest problem right now would be to balance the elite classes. What I was expecting from the elites is that they would be able to give the classes some other possibilities and not COMPLETLY ERASE the core class. I mean there is still a few players that have been playing their classes for so long that they keep on going with it, but if you look at the overall meta, the new elites are completly dominating.

So for me the game won’t be good unless they stop doing a few changes to make the meta better, but do a big patch in which they will do some up and nerf on all classes.
I know it’s a really big work that will take a lot’s of time, but hey, they said they won’t do any patch until at least january, that will let them some time to do so.
And plus, the community is totaly willing to help. If the devs would mind being a little closer from the community they could just open a special thread in each class and let the players sum up what changes they would like to have to their classes. If player and devs works along it would be way better and more healthy for the game.

Sorry if my english isn’t perfect, but I’m not a native english speaker.

Thanks for taking time to read me.

Yeah I think that idea would be pretty nice ! The problems with banner is that if you want to use them you need to carry them around… And that’s not so good during a pvp match.

Yeah but I’m having a lot of fun with this build

I agree that some balance need to be done. The actual meta were bunker just sits on points tanking forever is just soooo boring.
The Rev kit is just way too strong. It feels like Anet decided to bring all sort of super strong mechanics from the game and put it on one character : Damages, evade, block, resist, high mobility, unblockable attacks, HUGE condi damages… I mean one character can’t get it all.
Bunker mesmer is just so boring right now. I mean I wouldn’t mind having some more tanky character and take time to get them down, but bunker mesmer isn’t even this. It’s just that you can’t hit him… So that feels really BS.

On the counterpart, buffs and nerfs must be seen really carefully.
I am actually really scared that because of all the crying they overbuff thief and it gets the new meta.
I mean, I hate bunker meta, but a meta where thief would be OP is even worst.
You wouldn’t be able to do kitten because everywhere you walk a kitten thief would come out of the shadow, one shot you, run away and cap the points.
I mean, thiefs totaly need to get some buffs, but be carefull how you do it.
I don’t want thiefs to become the master of the game.
I feel like a really simple burst that maybe could get them back in the game would be to give them a little of unblockable. They could actually kill those bunkers and it would change the meta.

Of course it’s just some hypothesis, and we’ll have to see how it goes.

Hey guys,

First, TheHeretic, what you said might be interesting but doesn’t apply to me as I’m focus on sPVP so racial skills and so doesn’t apply there ! But thanks for the tips anyway

Otherway I wanted to give a little update on the build for those who followed. I’ve been playing around with it a lot during the week and I tested many things. I still have to test again and see more things but I got a pretty good thing atm that works fine (saphire rank with this build).

So basically I have two version of the builds and I’ll post it here :
- Krait Wanderer : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAsYVjEqQJLWzCusAVLWMEM4s6YNtyEAGdlumOQqrFUyK6C-TpRAABAcIAA5BAsfZAKOCAecCA6Z/BA
- Mad Viper : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAsYVjEqQJLWzCusAVLWMEM4s6YNtyEAGdlumOQqrFUyK6C-TpRFABM8AAab/BzLDAwRAogDBgCnAAA

So to explain the strong points.

KRAIT WANDERER :
- It is the build that will let you stack the most bleeds, it has really good sustained damages and you can easily get about 30 stacks on an ennemy (more crit than viper).
- It is a little more tanky thanks to the aditional toughness.
- On your elite you’ll stack a few conditions, allowing you to “survive” better against condi cleaning.

MAD VIPER :
- It has little more hybrid damages than the other build. Allowing you to fight better the diamond skin’s ele and other condi tanking character. Well you mostly deal condi damages but still about 1/3 of your damages will be direct damages. And as a bonus you’ll deal a decent amount of damage with the sword basic attack.
- The elite skill is amazing for stacking bleeds thanks to Mad King. It becomes super powerfull in teamfight because the ravens will crit a lot (you get about 50% crit with viper + fury that you gain from your survival skills).

I tested both the builds at max damages on the invulnerable golems and I calculated the damage using a legal damage calculator. Both builds deals about 4K damage per second. The max stack of bleed I could get (I had to use agony sigil) was 56. Of course you will never get that much in a real fight because there is no ennemy that will just stand there letting you stack that many bleeds, but I often get 30 stacks.

TIPS AND COMBOS :

- I use Sharpening Stones as often as I can. It has a 35 sec CD and last 30 sec. Meaning you can prepare it before a fight, get there use your five stack of bleeding, keep on attacking and get back your five stack a few second after. It will stack 10 bleeding that deal about 1K each, which is pretty good for a utility skill.
- Your main combo is to activate the Elite, then Quickening Zephyr and spam your shortbow skills to stack a great amount of bleeding and let the ennemy bleed to death.
I also often engage a fight by using the Crippling Talon skill from dagger and then swapping to ShortBow.
- During a fight you’ll be about 80% of the time with Shortbow equiped. When an ennemy come close, or when you need to dodge a lot of damage, swap weapons and use the sword and dagger’s evades to survive for a while. With this build you got 4 evades : Shortbow 3, Sword 2 and 3 and dagger 4.
- I’m most of the time using sharpening stones, because in the current meta where everything and damages comes from conditions, you’ll need a little extra damage to get them down and aditional condi removal. But if the ennemy team get a more bursty comp, you should swap Sharpening Stones for Signet of Stone.

GOAL ON THE GAME :

- Most of the time you’ll try to aim for little fighting ongoing at some points. You can get there, land your full combo and let the ennemy bleed to death.
- The builds works not too bad in teamfight as your arrow pierces and your elite is a great AOE immobilize / bleed and other condis if you picked Krait.
- The build do quite alright in 1V1 even if it’s not the main goal. If you get into 1V1 situation try to take down the ennemy quickly but if it start to last too long (bunker mesm, etc…) you’d rather run away and get where you can help the most.

1V1 SITUATION

- As I was saying this build is quite alright for 1V1, it’s acutally better than longbow in my opinion because it has more sustainable damage where longbow has a good initial burst from far, but get weaker when ennemy come close (even with GS).
- You can fight most classes and do quite alright, even if some of them will be a bigger trouble. The most annoying thing you can have is a tanky diamond skin ele. If he plays alright he’ll manage to keep is HP over 90 % and as our build is mostly condition based it’s really hard to get hime under the 90%. But usually they don’t have enough damages to kill you quickly so you should rather abandon this fight.
- If you fight against a malyx rev, it’s pretty tough because he can keep resistance for quite a while. But you can still beat it. Actually, while he is on malyx form he’s mostly gonna attack and ignore all conditions you put on him. In that case you can just stack a lot of bleed and when he has no more energy or swap back to shiro he’ll die super fast even if he use Crystal Hibernation.
- Reaper is a little tough because they are quite tanky and deal a lot of damages. It’s actually way easier to kill them during a teamfight when you come from behind. In 1V1 against them, don’t use your burst combo, but keep your survival skills as condi removal. As soon as he stack 2 condis on you, use QZ or SS to remove it and keep on using your attacks. Watch out for is Plague Signet that can send back conditions to you every 24 sec. You can actually beat them but it’s a really tough fight. You need to make a really good use of condi removal skills. If he land a condi burst on you (more than 5 condi), it’s a good time to swap to astral form, clear condis, heal a bit and go back to DPS.

CONCLUSION

Overall this build has pretty good DPS, it really shines when you can come in a little fight and quickly take down an ennemy.

Of course this build isn’t the most OP build you can get, I just like it because it changes from the basic meta with celestial druids…
I’m not a pro and if you have any more tips I’ll be happy to listen

Well right now I’m also trying mad king and viper. I ended up fighting a few diamond skin ele and with the wanderer / krait I have so low direct damage and as they heal pretty well, I can’t get them under 90%, meaning I can’t stack condi on them. So I’m testing out mad king / viper, or maybe sinister for the extra crits.
What do you think between sinister and viper ? Basically sinister will allow me to stack more bleeds thanks to the higher crit chance, but viper makes the stacks last longer and I get around 50% crit with fury on (basically all the time due to skrimishing line and my utilities).

I’m having an issue since a few days, I dunno if it’s due to HOT, but possible. I’m playing from asia and my ping as always been a little bad (200-300), but that is still playable. But since a few days it went up to 600 which is way too big, for PVP at least.
I checked on other games to see if it was due to my connection or if it’s GW, but other games work totaly fine, so I guess something happened with the servers…

Oh I don’t think people should stop playing warrior or thief. It’ll come back at some point, the meta is changing everytime.

To Iao :

Yeah that’s almost the builds I have, I’m still testing out amulets between wanderer, viper and rabid. Rabid gives a little better survavibilty. The increase power on viper add a little of damages, but not so much as short bow have really low damages so I am still hesitating, plus you are really squishy. Wanderer is basically a rabid with less toughness but little better crit and condi (thanks to increase duration ). For the rune, mad king works better with viper due to the fact they are both power based as well as condi, but with rabid and wonderer I tend to like the krait more, and it also deal multiple condi on my elite which is a nice bonus against condi cleansing. I also think Light on your feet is overall better, but in some situation quick draw is nice too.
I’m testing out with sword dagger on the other hand at the moment for more survavibilty (evades) because overall the build is quite squishy.

But yeah overall it’s similar to what I’m doing atm
Btw as I have you on my friend list (I played the sniper warrior when we met) we can test or play together if you want !

To Natzo :

I think your build is working better in PVE, and I’m more PVP oriented. The spirits aren’t so good in PVP due to their lack of mobility. I understand it’s nice because you can stack some good burn with bristleback’s ability but it will probably be tough to use well in PVP.

Alright, I’m gonna try that, it looks good
Thanks for the tips guys.

Hey thanks for the new builds, I’ll try those too !
I actually found a fun build aswell. I’m still trying to tune it so it’s far from being perfect, any suggestions would be welcome.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAV3YjEqQNL2yCOsAVLWMEM4s6YNtyEAGdlum3VwqFUxUFA-TZRAABA8AAo4KAUWZge2fo7DCAA

I’m still hesitating between quick draw or Light on your feets. First one is pretty good on 1V1 situations, but the piercing arrow and extra condi damage is nice during teamfights.
I’m also testing for the sigils if I should go full bleed (agonie ) or use also torment.

For the amulet, I’m testing also things such as wanderer, sinster and viper. I like rabid for the moment for the extra toughness.

I agree that all team aren’t good, and that’s what I said earlier. Not all team are better than soloQer because they might just be a bunch of guys from same guild. But if they are used to play together and/or use teamspeak it gives them a HUGE advantage. I mean in soloQ people tend to play differently than in team.
Team people that uses teamspeak can just say, they need help at that point or ask for a rez and get an overall better coordination.

Malpractice, if you found an effective build in the current meta, could you share it with us ?

For the moment the only warrior build that actually do well in the meta in my opinion is the gunflame berserker.

With that build you can actually kill most ennemies super fast and even those tanky mesmers, reaper, etc…

As a counterpart of this build, you are super easy to kill if a rev or something like that decide to focus you…

I don’t think there is any need to troll OP…
He probably have trouble with the current memser build and that’s understandable.
The chronobunker that is what OP is probably talking about can be a real pain in the kitten .
If you really have problem against it, I suggest you try to play it to understand it’s weaknesses. Obviously it can’t have all that you said on the same build. Usually thoses bunkers will have none invisibilty for instance, because it can’t fit in the build.
Also, thing to know is depending on the class you play, some other classes will be a trouble.
For instance, if you play the gunflame squishy warrior, you’ll actually burst down those tanky mesmer, but then the same warrior will be totaly destroyed by dardevils because they won’t be able to land a shot and so on. Every class as it’s counter and I realized while playing different classes that sometimes some classes can be a real counter, but then you play an other class and you reckt them.

The problem with chonomancer is that it’s really hard to kill solo, but then it will also have difficult time killing you as it lacks of damages.

In the current meta bunker mesmer are bothering because they can just sit on a point and stay there tanking a lot of damages.

If you play against a more bursty mesmer, you have to know that they aren’t so invulnerable. For instance, if you see them playing with stealth, they won’t have as many dodges and invulnerability so you can actually wait for the moment they appear and burst them as they get out of stealth.

There is different mesmer builds atm and you just need to know how to play against each. But this is the same thing for every class. You won’t play the same against a bunker guardian or a trap dragonhunter.

Hey guys,

Thanks for sharing the buils, I’ll try both of them and see what I like.

And don’t worry even if some of the things doesn’t go as well as wanted in the meta, I’ll just try it out and see what I like. I just wanna play shortbow a bit for a while because it seems fun and changes a bit from the current meta on ranger/druid.

Thanks again for sharing your builds guys, that’s great

Alright, I guess that’s a real issue…
Well we’ll see what they’ll do about it with the time…

Hey guys, so basically everything is in the title.

Does anyone have a good shortbow build that would work in the current meta ?

I think revamping guard should be nice, but I don’t think they will allow the pet to capture points, that sound a little bit OP.

Currently guard isn’t really powerfull, the only thing which is actually nice about guard is the possibilty to stack swiftness and regen (using the adequate trait.). I think guard should be kept on a low CD.

But I also think a few changed should be made, because right now the only use is the stacking as I said. So maybe little things such as either while on guard your pet will pulse protection as you said, or maybe next attack when out of stealth could deal more damage, chill or something…

Hey,

I just want to ask why does Anet allow guilds party and solo players to be matched against each others on the RANKED mode ?
I haven’t seen anything like that in any other game. And the reason is quite simple : it’s unfair.
I mean some teams aren’t better than random players because they are just a bunch of people from same guilds that decide to go on ranked together. But some others are playing often together and use teamspeak which gives them a huge advantages and makes the ladder unbalanced.

So why couldn’t guilds and party with more than two people be separated from random solo player ?

And by the way, they said it’s because too big visuals affects the play on PVP. But I think it’s gonna do the opposite.

Look let’s say I’m playing a ranger, I see a little elementalist and I don’t see his earth aura, I send in knockdown arrow and realized I just knocked myself down !

Great way to “improve” PVP…

Anet could do a simple thing to make everyonne happy : Allow the player to choose the impact of visual effects. Quite easy to make a button with low – medium – high or something like that, allowing the player to decide if he wants to see all the effects or not.

Thanks all for the answers, I wasn’t expecting that much. There is a few trolls but I saw there is also a lot of people that actually tried to help so I thank you a lot.
I already improved a bit against daredevils thanks to your tips, but I still need some training. I will keep on the work until I have no more problem with them.
I also created a thief so I can try out it’s skills and understand them better.

Many of you also seem to confuse Druid and Ranger. I’m not playing Druid, so when you say it’s easy using AOE / Daze / conditions, etc, I can’t.
I don’t really have a define build those days because I keep on changing it and trying different things in order to adapt. I’m usually running something like power survival, but I’m trying to tune it up a bit.
I’ll try the druid line to see if it can help, but I don’t feel like playing full druid.

Again, thanks for the help, I’ll try to learn and improve from this

I think a first improvement step would be if we could at least dodge during overload. I’m pretty sure this functionallity wouldn’t require too much work from the devs and wouldn’t completly change the balance of the game, but it would at least help us escape a focus or dodge a big burst without having to stop the overload.

Thank you Iohanna, I’ll try to ignore the trolls.

I guess dardevil is less of a problem for more constant AOE damage dealers which seems to be the new meta. But as you say, for the type of character I play, daredevil is quite hard to touch.
I’m gonna try to learn the animations and timings of this class and maybe adapt my builds to have a more consistent damage output.

I know lot’s of classes have reflects and blocks nowadays and ranger is bit less powerfull but I still like to play it. But even like this, for most classes, even if they can reflect for a while it leaves big windows of actions in the middle. I have hard time to adapt to that constant dodging style from the dardevil. I guess it’ll take some practise !

Thanks for the tips again !

First no need to be agressive…
And then, I started 2 months ago but I still played a good amount of time during those 2 months and doing alright on PVP.
If I’m talking here it’s because I am looking for tips on how to improve and not just complain… If you aren’t happy just don’t answer and ignore me but I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to ask for some help there. I actually got a few answer for instance the post from Cogbyrn that actually helped me and that will help me to improve.
So I totaly disagree with you : it’s not because I lack of experience that I shouldn’t ask for tips on how to improve, that’s actually how you get experience usually, by learning from others.

And Snow, I see your point, for instance when playing tempest I have no issues with dardevils because I have a lot of AOE. But when playing a ranger it gets really tought to land your skills…

Yeah BeepBoopBop that’s why I asked this here it’s was to actually Learn To Play, thanks for the obvious and useless comment.

Personally I am always there when the game start and I never leaved a game on my own but as I said Anet doesn’t have server in asia so it’s not my fault if it’s sometimes buggy for 30 second or a minute…

Thanks a lot Cogbyrn for the tips ! I’ll try to do that and maybe I should play a bit thief myself to understand the animations better.
I can’t understand thief is maybe weak in the current meta with all the AOE from DH, ele and others, but it’s pretty efficient against ranged classes such as ranger.

For the builds I tried different builds but I’m usually running something close from the power ranger build from meta battle. It’s working well in general but dardevil is quite a problem.

Hello !

So I have a huge problem atm, I don’t understand how to deal with dardevil with some classes.

I’m mostly playing ranged class such as ranger and I don’t see how I’m supposed to face dardevil.

With the bound trait this guy is just PERMANENTLY dodging. Meaning I can’t land a single hit on that.

I find it quite OP but I don’t see a lot of people complaining about it.

I find DH and dardevil the most 2 OP things since HOTS but for some reason I find dardevil even worse. It’s just impossible to land a shot against it. And if by any luck I manage to CC it for a second it will just break stun and then start dodging again.

And I mean every of his dodge hit for at least 2K.

So I get it’s OP and I dunno if anet is gonna change this yet. So until then I just wanna know how do you guys manage to deal with that kind of things.

Hm First things rangers aren’t immortal… They have a signets that can make them take no damages for a few second and have 60 sec cd. But most classes have a way to tank damages for a few seconds.
And at the moment I find ranger actually weak compared to all the new classes… Druid is powerfull and I would understand you saying something about it but ranger is so easy to counter right now. Just a list of things that can counter it :
- Dardevil : Perma dodge, ranger can’t land a single hit.
- Chronomancer : Block, evade, block, evade….
- Reaper : quite tanky and lot’s of CC, putting the ranger in difficult situation because he can’t run.
- Dragonhunter : PERMA BLOCK and have way more damages atm…
- Scrapper : block and reflect a lot !
- Tempest : can accumulate so many earth armor that the ranger will basically kill himself trying to hit him.
- Warrior : maybe not the best against ranger but depending on the build he can also have acces to reflect.

This dishonor system is dumb. It’s supposed to punish bad players but instead it does it for player who accidently have a problem. I play from asia, and as Anet doesn’t have server there I sometimes have a dc. Since the new dishonor system I have those 12 min waiting time everytime. And I just disconnect for about a min, and most of the time i spend dc is because I have to load back 2 MAPS !!

On the other hands there is still trolls that can go afk for 5 min during the game and have no penality… Just saying.