Guild Wars 2

Nerf HGH? I don’t think anyone even runs that anymore. I think people just see grenade engi’s and assume they are HGH.

Lol this wasn’t even the balance patch. This was just a small patch to implement the Dragon Bash. Come back around June 28. If there are no balance changes by then, you might have a legitimate reason to complain.

If you hit cleansing burst as soon as the cast time to plant your healing turret finishes, the burst and water field will activate immediately, otherwise, it has a delay. So i usually just spam my healing ability key until the cast finishes and then use blast finishers. It works the majority of the time for me.

An HGH engi is going to be super squishy, so dont let him stand up on a ledge and rain grenades with no pressure on him. Also retaliation is a very good counter to grenades. They take 3 hits of retal for every ability they use. And if you can give aoe retal, then that is multiplied by every player they hit.

The majority of the “skill” in this game comes from other areas besides actually using your characters abilities. You have to have timing, positioning, coordination, and map awareness. You have to have knowledge of the other classes and know what cd’s they have and haven’t used. You have to keep track of boons and conditions so you dont heal when you’re poisoned and try to cc when they have stability. This is just to name a few things.

Performing combos and damage rotations are such a small part of the actual gameplay that it really doesn’t bother me that some builds are easier than others to execute with.

I think the downed states are actually in a pretty good place right now. The only class that concerns me is the ranger. With a wolf, a ranger has 3 interrupts and the downed 2 ability will come back off cooldown by the time the wolf uses his knockdown and fear. Once the rangers pet starts healing, you better find some stability and stomp fast. I’m not saying it’s OP but it’s definitely strong.

I dont think the ability to secure a stomp needs to be completely balanced between all classes. Stomping is a team effort and some classes may be stronger than others. You just have to take that into consideration when forming a team.

A lot the weapon traits give hidden bonuses that aren’t mentioned in the trait itself or the tooltips. I believe the mace trait makes each critical hit with the mace cause weakness. There’s a few others but I can’t remember atm.

So the stronger bowstrings trait is probably working as intended. Anet just needs to list it in the trait.

Yes signet of rage is easily countered and it sucks when you realize that a thief is s/d right after you pop it. But on the other hand, signet of rage has an extremely short cooldown and high uptime compared to most other elite skills.

Reloading.3260:

I thought this was a mistake when I first saw it in notes.

Anet dev says keys are for turning, left mouse is for skill clicking, right mouse is for targeting. Deal with it.

Did a dev really say that or are you just joking? Thats breaking two of the cardinal rules in pvp. Might as well go for the trifecta and make the “s” key unable to be remapped so we can backpedal as much as possible..

I hope you were just joking.

I think Grouch is a great caster and is very knowledgeable about the game. There is a lot going on at one time during a match and it is easy to miss some of the little plays that are made.

As for missing the boss rushes, I’m not sure about the first one but the second one (PZ vs Academy) was very easy to miss. PZ rushed the boss with only two players very early in the game because they were pretty confident in their ability to recapture the points they lost while killing the boss.

I wonder if the problem has something to do with new players starting out with like a 1500 hidden rating as some systems do this. When they start playing games, then their rating will go up or down depending on their skill.
The problem with this is when you have a solo queue. Someone who actually plays at a level of around 1500 is going to be matched with newer players a lot.

I’m not saying this is what’s happening, but it could be one possible explanation. I’m not sure what kind of system a-net uses, but with a solo-queue, hopefully it starts everyone out with a rating if 0.

What if the new condition was like an Unstable Affliction from WoW. A condition thats just used to cover your other conditions and has a negative effect if it is removed, like maybe a fear or daze. That would mix things up a bit. Make other classes think twice about speccing into passive condition clears which have become standard in most builds. It would make guardians and eles think twice before spamming condition clears on their teammates during a teamfight.

Of course this would need a pretty decent cooldown because Condi removal is a big part of this game.

Yeah I have to agree with some of the others. Its probably a population problem and not a matchmaking problem. And I think matchmaking goes off of your rating and not your spvp rank.

I actually like ELO or similar rating systems. It keeps the rankings from being dependent on who’s played the most games or who’s got the most wins. Time played is no longer a factor. The only thing that matters is the ratings of the players you beat and the players you lose to. So far I have no issue with the current leaderboards except maybe not having seasons or rating decay. So people dont achieve a high rating and camp it.

I think its some kind of ELO or Glicko rating. I dont think your win percentage matters too much. It all depends on who you are playing against. You could be 0-100 and in last place, but if you all of a sudden start beating the rank 1 team, you will climb the leaderboards really fast. Thats why some people with only 13 games played are at the top of the leaderboard. They joined a good team and beat some really good teams, so their rating sky-rocketed.

But also, your not likely to get matched up against a high rated team if your team is low rated. Unless there is just not many teams queuing.

Motoko.2875:

Please don’t try and make GW2 PvP look complicated. The gamemode itself is terrible. The downed state is terrible. You trying to make it exciting is just sad at this point.

Please don’t try and make your opinions of GW2 look like facts. I’m sorry that you think everything is terrible but that doesn’t do anything to support your argument.

I’m not saying that GW2 is a complicated game, but the down state does add an opportunity for teamwork and quick decision making. Why try to make it even less complicated?

It definitely adds a layer of complexity to the game. Should you try to rez your teammate and make yourself a sitting duck to get bursted? Or should you just just try to stomp an enemy so your teammate will rally? But if youre too late the enemy will rally. These are quick decisions you have to make in the middle of combat and they can make or break the fight.

Also, if there was no downed state, everyone would just play burst builds and try to spike enemies down as fast as possible.

I’m all for giving players more options but I wouldn’t want this in the tourney rotation. I play mmo’s and not mobas for a reason. I’m not a fan of pve mob farming in pvp. Foefire and Forest have enough for me already.

I would be perfectly okay with them adding something like this in hotjoins or custom arenas though. That way I could opt out if I wanted.

KarlaGrey.5903:

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Common Misconception: Ranger F# skills
You can still use them when downed even though they are not in the GUI. So yes, you can interrupt with your #2 skill and then wolf fear and then command the wolf to knock down your opponent then switch pets to something else and so on and so forth. (OP imo)

Stop promoting broken mechanics that are likely to be a bug even.

I’m pretty sure those are intended mechanics. Its no different than using your pet while your stunned/cc’d. The players is downed, not the pet, so take advantage of that.

Now whether it’s op or not is a different story. That annoying wolf.

Khylo is my favorite as well. The trebuchet is a legit side mechanic. It can be devastating or it can hinder your team based on the other teams strategy. I think most teams use the trebuchet now but I remember a time when teams, like TP, didn’t use it so they could play 5v4 on points because they were confident in their teams ability to dodge it.

Rerroll.9083:

Amelia Knox.9362:

As Hawke said, you start ressing Gw2 community, hoping for a Signet of undead and not a illusion of life

Dont worry, we will rally from LoL

#esports

Nice!

Its not too bad. If I want a 5v5 I pick a 5v5 server that has less than 10/20. If I want an 8v8, I pick one that says less than 16/20. I usually get right in the match first try. I never join as a spectator and wait until someone leaves.

Hahaha. Thats awesome. Yeah I wouldn’t recommend the axe offhand in tpvp. I was just having some fun aoeing whole teams down with the burning bolts in hot joins.

The build performs very well no matter what offhand you use. I played a couple tourneys last night and won both even against one premade team. At one point i got stuck defending a side-point against a bunker engi and after a long battle, i came out victorious. My survivability was ridiculous for still having 3k power and a high crit chance.

They need to make it where you lose double the rating if you leave early. So it would be more beneficial to the person to stick it out in a losing match instead of just leaving.

And if someone has internet problems, they will lose more rating but they will be able join another game instead of getting locked out by a deserter debuff.

@Redslion
Props to you for that build. I played it today and made a few changes to suit my playstyle. I dropped For Great Justice and picked up the precision signet so I could occasionally use the longbow f1 on a point and get my adrenaline right back to full for the damage and crit.

To make up for the loss of fury from FGJ I took the fury and vigor talent in the first slot of the arms tree. I like to dodge a lot so vigor is good for me. I need to test how much it actually price with 3k armor and 25k hp though lol.

The mace offhand is definitely my favorite, but if your looking to have some fun in a hot join, try the axe lol. Drop the longbow f1 then use whirling axe for some nice aoe dmg and burning.

My guess is that the people/person responsible for designing new maps are mostly artists and work completely independent from other pvp designers. So if they want to release more maps, let them.

daweed.6520:

Ant.3415:

What MMO is better than GW2, especially for PVP? None I dare say.

If by PvP you mean close quarters zerging then you are 100% correct…No game on the market today can match that.

On the other hand if you define PvP as a place where tactics and skill are more important than bunching up and rushing the opposition to a corner…then GW2 has failed to deliver.

No offense, but I only see what your describing in hot-joins. Play tournies and you will see tactics and skill.

redslion.9675:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAT8ZjcOxwJPCPMRCE8BN0UoIuMoipQpoNsDA-TsAA1CnIKSVkrITRyisFNsYZxmAA

I’m trying this build.

My dream is to unify sustained damage with high survivability.

With sword, you get 27% + 5% sigil + 9% heightened focus + 10% blademaster+20% fury = 71% critical chance. Not bad for a toon with soldier’s amulet.XD

And you can maintain 5-8 stacks of might on average. And you have +25% critical damage. Not the highest you can get, but pretty significant.

With sword autoattack, you deal around 4k damage on heavy golem (2600 protection) every 1.5 seconds. It’s around 2.7k dps. With leap and mace knock down (which deals 2-3k damage) enemies have a hard time getting away from you.

This without considering bleeding.

With longbow, your autoattack deals around 1k damage per hit. It’s really useful for finishing retreating opponents. And Arcing arrow can deal 6k damage on lightest targets, making an excellent burst for cleaning up teafights.

I’m still unsure on many things, like whether putting Valkyrie or Soldier amulet, or whether using For Great Justice! or Banner of Discipline, but right now I like this build. Maybe only because it’s different from the others I saw.

A power sword and longbow build. Interesting. I like how you can still get a decent crit chance with the sword while having a lot of toughness. That seems to be the trade-off with most builds, you either get toughness or crit. I’ll have to test the damage when i get off work.

Retaliation always felt like more of a warriors boon than a guardians. I understand why guardians get easy access to regen, protection, and aegis because of their lower hp pool. But why do they need to get retal too?

Oh well. It sounds good in theory. Big crits, 3 low cd cc’s in one weaponset, boon hate, perma-weakness, and attacks that can’t be blocked. It screams bunker-buster but probably wouldn’t work that well in practice.

Yeah I agree somewhat. I tried it with a soldiers amulet, but the loss of crit hurt a little. The maces swing so slow so they really depend on the burst crit damage. Maybe since you can have fury from sig of rage up for most fights it will still work out.

I only played two tourney games last night with this build. Had amazing success with the it in the first game. Even had one guardian ask me why I hit so hard. Then I got completely dominated by a premade the next game.

Warriors just dont have many options so it was fun just trying something new.

I was bored last night and decided to make a build with two things; the new boon hate trait and with a weapon set hardly anyone uses. This is what I came up with:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQRBJTxG2IoTMcwjuDTcABpQLADjiiYIUPmD7YDB-TwAg0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1MKYByWhJEA

(You will probably have to copy and paste it into your address bar.)

So my thinking was to build on the Destruction of the empowered trait by adding every +%damage I could get my hands on. I even used the +5% damage on my mainhand mace even though something like the sigil of fire might have been better. But the maces hit surprisingly hard. The first two hits of the chain skill would hit for 2k and the third hit could reach close to 5k. And you can keep weakness on your targets permanently, which helps out a lot when fighting bunkers.

I chose sword/warhorn for my other weapons. The sword so I can leap in and out of combat and the warhorn for swiftness, vigor and to keep me from getting rooted. The warhorn 5 is also great to start the fight with after leaping in because it gets the initial weakness on all your enemies, then the mace will keep re-applying it.

Your only survivability comes from the mace block and vigor + sig of stamina. So you have to run away with the sword leap and the warhorn 4 a lot.

Tell me what you think. Love it? Hate it? Worst build evar!?!

Rangers have by far the best downed state. I think people forget that they can still command their pets and use the pet’s abilities while downed. If then enemy doesn’t have any stability or invulns, i can almost always rez myself in a 1v1 fight. Pull out the wolf and let him knock down the target and then fear him.

I think down-state is pretty balanced at the moment except maybe the warrior. The warrior 3 ability is awesome in downed v downed fights but it’s almost too risky to use in any other situation. You can’t cap points while using it and if you dont get a stomp off, you will die and rally all of the enemies that are downed.

It would be nice if A-Net would design a map designated for this. Nothing fancy just a large circular arena with a few pillars on the outside. You could even throw a capture point in the middle so you wouldn’t have to change any game rules. Ive noticed that middle point brawls are pretty popular in CA’s anyways.

It wouldn’t have to be balanced or used in a tourney rotation. Just something for us to mess around with in custom arenas.

Spectator mode is not a medium for the public to watch your tournament. Its is a way to have an outside party shoutcast/stream/record your tournament so the public can view it (including non-GW2 players).

@Garethh

I stand corrected. I’m not a big fan of mobas so I did not know that. That was just the only reason I could think of why they would limit the number of spectators. Oh well, the spectator mode still provides a great opportunity for shoutcasters to stream player run tournaments, which is more important to me than spectating random games in the browser.

I feel that the spectator slots are more for shoutcasters during player run tourneys or for teammates/guildmates during scrimmage games. They probably dont want the spectator mode to take the place of sites like Twitch because it’s important to promote a community/fanbase outside of the game too.

In my opinion GW2 is a lot more interesting to watch than LoL. I dont see how LoL got so popular. Players have like 5 abilities and there’s a lot of npc farming. No thanks.

I dont know if this game will ever get into an E-sports circuit. But there’s definitely potential now for the pvp to develop a solid community and playerbase. Anet just needs to look at what becomes popular in custom arenas and build on that.

Did you just come from fighting someone else and didn’t get fully out of combat before engaging the ele?

Oh well. At least it gives players a way to have tournaments with shoutcasters. I guess I will be going to Twitch to do my spectating though. And the more I think about it, thats probably what the devs wanted and what’s best for the game. You can’t build a community if everyone is just watching the matches in-game.

Parisalchuk.9230:

Most likely those arenas will be password protected to stop from griefers joining or people joining to learn builds. Tournaments and leagues will also most likely be locked with a shoutcaster allowed to join and stream the games.

It was my understanding that they could password protect it to keep players from entering but still allow public spectators. I could be wrong though. I’m still at work and haven’t got to play yet.

I can see that coming in the future, but that doesn’t mean that the spectator mode is worthless right now. You can still spectate some of the top teams scrimmaging against other teams or you could watch player run tournaments, which I’m sure people are planning on organizing them.

I used to watch your stream back when the game first came out. It was pretty entertaining, especially when the GuSo dude would hop into your skype/vent and do some random voices or beatboxing lol. (I think that was your stream anyways.)

I’m glad to see that you’re back and trying to bring more attention to the game. I look forward to watching some of your content.

Jordan.6157:

Did you read what I said? Using pets as meat-shields hasn’t gone back generations in MMOs because as far as I know guild wars 2 and tera are the only ones that have the type of combat where you hit what your sword touches etc.

Other MMOs such as WoW you hit what you target and you can’t miss/ wont swing if you are facing the wrong way. You only have to be in range. Your sword actually most of the time is swinging far away and your still hitting.

I hope you can understand

I understand what you’re saying but that is what makes GW2 unique. I like the fact that things are considered projectiles and they can be intercepted by other players or pets instead of their intended target.

And the builds that you mentioned are tanky builds that hold points. They achieve survivability through using pets as meatshields, but they also sacrifice damage.

With that said, my screen does get cluttered with pets at times. Sometimes I wish they would do away with some of the random pets like rock dogs.

Its hard to measure TTK in this game. I’ve had long drawn out fights were I just end up leaving because we can’t kill each other, and then I’ve had fights end in seconds after i failed to dodge or counter the enemies burst. I think people stack toughness and think they should have enough passive mitigation to survive, but this game isn’t like traditional mmo’s. Active mitigation has a larger presence and fights can last a long time with proper dodging and defensive utility.

This was a great idea Xeph. My only question would be (sorry if it’s already been mentioned):

Do they have any plans to revamp the current tourney system? The spvp population has decreased significantly and it doesn’t really support the current system. Long queues are a problem, especially for NA players.

I don’t really miss WoW itself, but I do miss 3v3 arenas. It was easy to get a team together, queues were quick, and it was some of the most intense and competitive gameplay i have experienced. I love GW2’s gameplay, but if another game gives small scale arenas a shot, i will probably jump on the bandwagon.

I really like the idea. I dont know what the ability would be called or how it would fit in with the ranger theme, but it would give rangers some valuable utility to bring to a team. Even thieves can teleport back to a trap that has been triggered.

Roll a trap ranger and dont worry about stealth. Stand in your traps and watch a thief die trying to attack you. Even when a thief does manage to down me 1v1, they usually go down too. And rangers are awesome downed fighters.

I really can’t stand MOBA style gameplay. Thats why I’m playing an mmo. With that being said, i wouldnt be upset if they added it as long as i wasn’t forced to play it. More options could attract more players, and I’m always down for that.