Guild Wars 2

Condition is so kittening cancer it’s beyond ridiculous. I literally build my characters around condi denial and yet in some games when 5/5 enemy players are condi it’s still not enough. So dumb.

Oh yeah, of course the trinkets are great. But I was quite surprised to find that the Ascended Armors and Weapons were so expansive now… Especially since they were available for only shards beforehand!

I’ve ran some calculations after finding out that you can only get 3 marks per season (pretty dumb if you ask me).

I’ve used the Heavy Gloves as calculation point (since they all cost pretty much the same, with the armor being more expansive in both scenarios).

pvp
3 each rare ingredient (claw, fang, etc.)
450 mithril ingot
6 lump of mithrillium
3 Spool of Silk Weaving Thread
3 Spool of Thick Elonian Cord
60 iron ingot
30 steel ingot
60 darksteel ingot
3 glob of dark matter
30 bolt of wool
15 bolt of cotton
30 bolt of linen
30 cured thin
15 cured coarse
30 cured rugged

craft
1 lesser vision crystal (easy to get)
Exotic Insignia (1g)
5 globs of dark matter
20 crystalline Dust
4 spool of silk weaving thread
3 spool of thick elonian cord
2 lump of Mithrillium
40 iron ingot
20 steel ingot
40 darksteel ingot
80 bolts of wool
40 bolts of cotton
80 bolts of linen
60 cured thin
30 cured coarse
60 cured rugged

So through PvP… basically you save on some of the basic ingredients, but you trade 1 Spool of Silk Weaving Thread for… 3 Lumps of Mithrillium and 450 Mithril Ingot ! That’s a lot ! Honestly I feel like with the added Ascended Shards, it’s simply not worth it. Not to mention that in day-time, since you can only craft 1 ascended material (Lump of Mithrillium, etc.) a day, it takes 6 day to get your 3 marks, whereas it only takes 4 days to get your crafted glove.

The only situation I see it being worthwhile is to get those rarer prefixes like Celestial and etc.

Thoughts?

By the way… I haven’t played in a few months. Don’t I remember them being simply bought for gold and ascended shards?

That’s assuming anybody uses dagger in sPvP, which nobody does.

Third time getting disconnected since the new update. Never happened before, so definitely not on my side. What’s going on?

Yeah Capricorn is a good map but Coliseum is very meh.

I’ve been using Valkyrie amulet, in combination with the +50% crit trait in Shroud it works exceptionally well.

Keep in mind most warriors these days are running Berserker amulet so yes they will do a lot of damage and the endure pains/blocks are annoying, but they are fairly easy to burst. I play one but also play other classes and have no problem fighting other warriors. It’s mostly a matter of timing – dodging their bursts, saving your defensive abilities for Berserk mode and spiking them after Endure Pain is gone. Also most of them run Signet of Might (I don’t) which leave them extremely vulnerable to CC.

Ithilwen.1529:

There isn’t the population to support a separate team queue. Back in the day there were solo arena and team arena.

Sadly, the decisions made since that time have reduced population considerably. A team queue would need to be the only thing available to get enough players to support it. That, in turn would freeze out players like myself, unlikely to get a place on a good team.

Such elitism would reduce pvp population still further and be destructive to the game.

I certainly agree that as of right now it may not be ideal to have strictly solo or 5v5 queues. However I do think that Anet needs to address this issue swiftly or I feel like the downward spiral we’re already into will only accentuate and there will be no competitive scene left whatsoever. Weekly tournaments seems like a good way to bring attention to PvP and stimulate the scene so to speak.

Shaogin.2679:

Not to mention, the best way to practice for these tournaments is to play together as a team against other teams prior to the tournament, and we currently have no feasible means to do that because the only place that allows a team to queue (unranked) will likely have you facing off against solo players.

It truly is ridiculous that you can not queue as a team in a game mode built around 5v5 team matches in a game genre that is all about playing online with your friends.

Also, the only way to evaluate a player’s mmr is not pure solo queue. The only real way would be through a 1v1 dueling mode. Anet themselves have already stated they can not accurately judge an individual’s performance in a match. Solo queue rating is a guess at your mmr based on the rating of your teammates and the rating of the enemy team and whether you won or loss (though rating gain/loss is your rating vs enemy team rating). And guess what, this same exact system would still be in effect for team queue, because it is still 1 team of 5 vs another team of 5.

One last note, if Anet ever wants to see an increase in teams competing at the pro level, they would be wise to put in a proper team queue.

A few things on this:

I think rating as solo player in a 5v5 team environment is almost impossible to be 100% accurate. It gives a general idea, sure, but we’ve all had games where we carried the entire team to victory, and vice-versa. Also, true player skill in this environment in my opinion is not just how you can win 1v1’s (since that also bows down to classes/builds), but your general awareness of the match as well as your ability to support and peel for your enemies. Knowing your role as a player, depending on the class you are playing (a necro will not play the same as a warrior or druid). So, really, there are multiple ways for a player to shine and these all depend on the rest of your team as well.

I think, really, it goes down to this phrase you said (and which I also mentioned in my OP): “It truly is ridiculous that you can not queue as a team in a game mode built around 5v5 team matches in a game genre that is all about playing online with your friends.”

All in all I truly hope Anet is aware of this and is working on something for pre-arranged team-based competitive PvP. The PvP scene is dead right now and that is truly a shame because I feel like the PvP in his game is very well-built.

Shaogin.2679:

The biggest problem with team queue has nothing to do with population size, it is entirely due to the fact that there has never been any incentive to play team queue.

Absolutely agree with you. I think it’s really sad that the PvP in this game is almost entirely based on solo play. It’s an online game where you can’t even play with other people competitively! That doesn’t make any sense and to me is by far the biggest downside to PvP in GW2.

Sure, I admit the pvp population is quite low. But what if Anet organized a full-team tournament every sunday or something, during the season, which would award teams gold, gems and/or Ascended Shards everytime they won, possibly with something else for the teams that make it in the top positions? Pretty sure that would attract a lot of people, would be fairly simple to organise and would bring interest to the competitive scene which tbh seems completely dead this season.

I know there used to be Academy Gaming tournaments, but they seem to be gone now. What happened to them?

Wolfric.9380:

Agree but there are two potential Problems:

1.) Lack of full Teams resulting in very long Q times or teams with huge skill diffrence in the team Q.

2.) Duoing with a friend is a very good thing bringing players into pvp and also making new friends by finding a partner. While its hard to build larger teams most manage to duo and thats more fun then just solo. Removing that might lower the pvp playerbase and the social aspect leading to a more toxic environement.

So its not easy …

Another possibility would be to make weekly weekend tournaments during league seasons. Not limited to a certain number of teams, matched using median/average team rating, with rewards etc. That could be a pretty fun/interesting way to bring attention to a more competitive side of PvP.

I’ve been playing GW2 since its open beta, on and off admittedly, but never taking breaks longer than a few months, doing pretty much strictly nothing but Conquest PvP. I have recently came back from such a break after being frustrated with the state of balance. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much when I decided to give it a try a few weeks ago, I mostly had time to kill. But I was quite surprised to see the game was in a much better shape – probably the best shape it has been PvP-wise since launch. The matchmaking system is better, the balance is solid and the reward system is also really good. Very encouraging to play.

However there is (still) one main problem with PvP right now. League system is based on solo/duo queue. From the start, I have been a strong supporter of a team-based league system. I thought the guild ranking system that HoT brought would be a step in the right direction, however I don’t even see how it has changed the game at all.

There are two main consequences of the solo/duo queue. First of all, newer players who have never played as a 5-man team (like it was before) are extremely selfish, think not in term of team-play but rather in term of their own performance. This leads to teams where people play like a bunch of headless chickens, running in all directions trying to pick fights, zerging the enemy points without caring about defending our own, or the bigger strategy and positioning.

Secondly, it creates overall a system that is both frustrating and does not encourage community. Pretty much every single game I’ve lost, there’s at least one person (sometimes myself, I admit) that will lose it and start throwing insults at a certain player or even at the whole team. This creates a very toxic environment where players instead of trying to improve their own playstyle, will blame others. Unfortunately, instead of working as a team to figure out what could have been done differently, people will start to insult themselves, sometimes even blocking eachother, etc.

I believe this issue would be very easy to fix and would present a tremendous improvement towards the entire PvP scene in many, many ways.

Quite simply, use two different queues for solo and team queue. Solo queue would only be for solo players (no duo), similar to how it worked back then. Team queue would be this time only for 5-player queue. It would only match against similar 5-player teams. Undoubtedly, you would have to provide significant incentive to take the time to find 4 other players: better rewards, better ratings, etc. But I strongly believe this would go a long ways in improving both the quality of the players as well as the community environment the PvP scene seriously lacks.

What I got from this story: typical average player goes from Ruby to Legendary by switching to Revenant. Duly noted.

Well it’s reassuring somehow to at least see that I’m not alone in this boat. You see I’m not really concerned about pretty titles or fancy wings. I play this game as a hobby, to change my mind and because I actually like playing PvP. Nothing forces me to play. I don’t care about a few losses here and there or not acquiring Legendary tier, in all fairness. It’s just extremely frustrating to lose so many matches in a row, all with pretty much no chance at all. Some people say “get better” – however, it seems in many cases, it doesn’t matter how well I rotate, how many 1v1’s/2v2’s/2v3’s even that I win. If the team you’re paired with is completely overwhelmed by the other team, there’s absolutely no fun in that. Only frustration.

Got to last tier of Diamond with about 75% win ratio or so. Stuck in the last tier for about a week, doing win/loss 50% pretty much all the time (actually got literally to 1 point away from Legendary, lost 499 – 501). Now yesterday and today… Played during different sessions (morning, afternoon, night, this morning). Ridiculous. The worst part is those games were completely lopsided. I’d say 75% of those losses we never even stood a chance, the matchup was completely rigged. Last game, for example, 2 team mates died within 5 seconds of the mid fight being started. They just ran in the opposing team, died & that was it. And the one game I actually won, we completely dominated. Seems this far in the season, at the high tier of Diamond, fights should be a lot more even. Something is clearly kittened up.

Condi necro is pretty stupid at the moment, so is condi thief. Condi rev as well… looks like still 100% condi meta.

I play as power on my necro (always had) and I didn’t see much change from last patch thus far. Still seems alright.

Vapour.7348:

Thanks for this resource.

I thought what he said here just hit the nail:

ArenaColin

In regards to balance – balance is NOT driven by our PvP Pro League, the pro league is a marketing effort that has almost zero impact on our dev team.

Drawing parallels between the two is at best disingenuous.

Basically he’s saying the dev team could care less about what occurs in the pro league since it’s only marketing effort.

Let’s repeat that again:

In regards to balance – balance is NOT driven by our PvP Pro League, the pro league is a marketing effort that has almost zero impact on our dev team.

Didn’t play for 3 weeks, balance so kitten, no fun at all. Came up here to check if it had been changed: nope. See this quote: going to uninstall now I guess.

Cya. Too bad since I actually quite liked some of the new stuff HoT put out. But this game is flat out unenjoyable now.

I just think it’s dumb ANet replaced the pew pew Ranger with a pew pew Guardian… similar status pretty much. Big damage, easy to play, yet easy to counter with a good team play. I don’t play my Guard too much but when I do, I still play it vanilla. Just a lot more fun. Just wish they didn’t make elite specs that much stronger than vanilla specs…

The problem that I see with Crusader amulet and why I guess nobody uses it is that it has too much toughness and not enough vitality. This amulet is way too close to the Cleric’s Amulet to have any real purpose. We need a solid offensive/healing amulet, with something like:

1200 power
900 healing
560 precision / ferocity
560 vitality

Just wish they would let us use some sort of customization heh…

Would be great to be able to have somewhat balanced stats instead of like 55% crit on marauder. I’d trade in 20% of that for extra vita/toughness etc.

Wtb Zealot amulet + 2x soldier rings. That would be sexy.

1200 power
~600 precision
~600 healing
~400 toughness
~400 vita

But yeah in general I am quite tired to see these all-or nothing amulets.

I played reaper for a little bit with Spectral Mastery instead of Vital Persistance. It was only viable because I could get Life Force so kitten quick with triple Spectrals, but it was definitely viable.

Pretty much the must-have elite for bunker guards in PvP now. I personally think it would still be very strong on a 45 sec cooldown and would continue to use it.

Zeal:
*Zealous Scepter: add 20% reduce cooldown on Scepter (currently the only weapon without cooldown reduction trait)
*Move Binding Jeopardy to Radiance Adept, replace with Perfect Inscriptions.

Radiance:
*Move Right-Hand Strength back to Grandmaster trait (this is definitely the strongest trait of the line, why it is an Adept boggles my mind) – in place of Perfect Inscriptions.

Valor:
*Make Strength in Numbers a Minor trait in place of Courageous Return. Put Glacial Heart in Master Trait. This would make up for the loss of 300 toughness from the traits and grant Meditation Guards some much needed toughness and party support.

Honor:
*Increase Shield of Absorption from Protective Reviver duration to 2 second, like on the actual skill.

Virtue:
*Replace Glacial Heart with Courageous Return.

Why some of these traits were moved in the first place, like Binding Jeopardy or Glacial Heart, I really have no idea…

I like this idea a lot. I definitely think the new amulets/stats are far more to blame for this ridiculous jump in damage. The traits don’t seem to be ridiculously over the top even if you can get 3/5 full trait lines now.

Amulets + 2 rings would allow for great stat combinations.

This elite is so good they could nerf the cooldown to 45 seconds it would still be awesome. Running Staff/Greatsword in PvP/WvW and it’s just absolutely perfect. Love it.

Teckos.1305:

Zealot or RIot!

Yes also !

Mostly would like jewels back.

The problem is not so much the Vulnerability rather than the amount it applies. If you’re using your heal skill, chances are you’re getting focused. Getting 10% more dmg after using your heal skill, which to boot it has received a 15% cooldown nerf, is a kittening slap in the face. Not to mention that it also is our only viable heal in PvP. What a kittening joke.

I would also agree that Axe is not a great weapon, however the notes on the scepter, staff and off-hand dagger couldn’t be any more true.

Scepter as a whole needs to do much more damage. I think its abilities are great in design, they are just too weak in damage.

Staff is good, but I find myself switching weapons as soon as the cd is ready. Its autoattack is decent for staying at range while building life force but as a power necro #2 is pretty bad and autoattack doesn’t do much damage. Dagger is the only viable weapon for power necro to actually outdps another class (staff provides utility & burst).

Axe needs a skill chain on #1, ie: hit once, hit twice, large hit + 5 stacks of vuln (8s). #2 and #3 are good I believe. Although, again as said in the OP, dagger is the superior melee weapon. Maybe increase range to 900?

Necromancer as a whole is an extremely punishing class. You can absolutely wreck anybody if they are not careful, but at the same time, start cc’ing them and they will drop like a fly. That’s exactly why they are not seen at all on top tier teams / tourneys (except for Nos), because good players know how to counter them. The same can be said about Rangers.

I would gladly give up some of this downstate damage for increased utility and/or ways to avoid damage adequately. The reason most power necros take this downstate trait is very simple: we spend more time than any other class in downstate mode, so it seems like the best way to somehow take advantage of it.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

The wells can be placed inside Ring of Judgment, on top of a corpse, or on an Immobilized foe. Those are the main ways to make sure that damage goes off.

Or my favorite… on top of myself.

Just allow people to duel in a designed area, problem solved. Improve your 1v1 skills while waiting for queue ! win/win

Hmm definitely didn’t think about this. Could indeed be interesting. I’ve been playing power for so long and it seems I’m slowly getting more & more annoyed at how it’s only really good at melee, definitely might look into condi/chill necro for the future…

1s cooldown, 8s duration on might.

Excellent feedback. Pretty much agree on everything here, but especially on the rated queue. Full 5 & pug queues need to be different, with full 5 rated Q giving better slightly better rewards (or perhaps let that be the only rated queue).

Also, implement the dishonor system.

style.6173:

Thoth Divine.8642:

It’s been 5 months now, since december 2014, that dishonor was disabled. You said you wanted to “test it” and reactivate it “soon”. That never happened. It’s completely ruining the PvP experience, with people not even caring anymore. It’s 10x as bad as it was last year and it was already pretty bad. Seems like every other game is a 4v5 or becomes one after one team starts to lose.

Stop kittening around and put it back in.

I’m wondering what your MMR is. I don’t have anywhere near the number of 4v5 as you do.

Probably in the top 25% or so.

Just today, 4 games, 2 ended up as 4v5’s (one my team, one the other team).

It’s been 5 months now, since december 2014, that dishonor was disabled. You said you wanted to “test it” and reactivate it “soon”. That never happened. It’s completely ruining the PvP experience, with people not even caring anymore. It’s 10x as bad as it was last year and it was already pretty bad. Seems like every other game is a 4v5 or becomes one after one team starts to lose.

Stop kittening around and put it back in.

Yeah the shouts are quite underwhelming.

“Your Soul is Mine” would be good if the healing was on par with other heals.
“You are all weaklings” needs to do more than that. It sounds nice on paper but practically peaking I can’t see why you would use this over another utility (ie: wells).
“Suffer!” Would be pretty sexy if it did more damage and had a shorter cooldown.
“Nothing can save you!” is the only one that I would actually consider using in PvP. It’s a decent offensive/defensive ability. Still, I think Spectrals and Wells are superior in this senario, but I I’ll definitely try it out.
“Rise!” Could be interesting for a Death Nova / Lifeforce MM kinda build, but that’s a little stretched I think.
As for the ultimate, “Chilled to the Bone”, its casting time is too long. It basically stuns you for as long as it stuns the enemy. I can’t see anyone using this over Lich, Plague or Flesh Golem. Maybe for some PvE somewhere but I don’t PvE so really I wouldn’t know.

If by “Active posts” you mean they/we (I also play guard) got 3 posts within a few minutes and then nothing else since then, yeah, I guess that’s right. Doesn’t change much though.

I’m ready. Bring it on, ANet ! Let’s see what you’ve got.

I want to GS / Dagger lifesteal blood necro.

Well, my predictions were true ! But to be honest, combining 3 of these trait lines will be so kitten OP that I don’t even care

Yeah if we get some sort of bow it makes sense for it to be based around support/burning/cleansing. Could be interesting. Hambow Guardian incoming? Haha.

Shield abilities are 90% fine. I’ve been using Shield a lot since they reduced the cooldowns and to be honest it’s a great off-hand.

Simple way to make Shield better:

1. grants aegis on allies and blinds on foes
2. remove channeled, bubble lasts 3-4 seconds, blocking all incoming projectiles, heal area when shield fades.

Done. Shield is 100% great control/support off-hand.

We can all theorycraft together on how exactly that will affect the game but the truth is it all comes down to the actual numbers. I am really eager to see what this compensation looks like. I do remember that watching the Guardian specialization preview, he had 21k HP, without the +300 vit trait. My guess is he must have Soldier’s amulet, but if he did, that means the numbers are about equal to what they are now for a full Vitality traited Guardian.

Which brings me back to my original point in my post above. They mentioned that stats would only be slightly compensated by base stats (from 926 to 1000) while most of the compensation would come from items. For PvE and WvW this is not an issue as you can mix/match your gear and get exactly the stats you are aiming for.

However for PvP this is a much larger issue. If the system doesn’t change, you will be stuck with whatever stats are on your amulet. Previously, you could always trait to enhance what purpose you wanted in your group. For example, someone using Celestial could trait for a little bit more DPS or HP or whatever. With Soldier’s you could trait to get a bit more Precision, with Berserker’s for a little bit more Vitality and Toughness, etc. Without some form of stat customization, the amount of viable builds will drop to an all-time low…

Yeah, I REALLY hope they bring some sort of customization back. What was great about trait stats is you would trait according to something that you wanted to do. For example, as a Guardian, if you put 6 points in Honor, even with full zerk I could still have 300 healing, which allows for at least some basic support role. Or as a Medi Guard with 6 points in Valor, you’d still get around 2.5k armor which makes your 15k hp just a little bit harder to plow through…

I’d like to see an Amulet + 2x Rings selection choice. Would allow for much more possibilities and customization.

It’s a stupid build that shouldn’t even exist in PvP environment. AI builds have no place in competitive PvP. I for one am glad the build is dead – just like Spirit Ranger and MM Necro.

Suggestion: keep the healing tome, make it a consecration, scrap the dps tome and make a new DPS elite.