Guild Wars 2

In addition to what others have said. I really, REALLY, think Unyielding Blast, the trait that gives Life Blast piercing, should exist to Life Blast by default. It’s a really good trait, but only because I’m basically required to have it if I want Life Blast to hit anything besides mesmer clones and the millions of pets that exist in this game.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Looks like records will be missing the games between hotfixes

I’m ok with this… I was against premades all day and it was horrible.

Seiishizo.7162:

The rewards
Replace hotjoin with a SoloQ without ranking
Currently new pvp players will see hotjoin as first thing they play. Which means they will get into a lot of 4v5 matches, people using autobalacing tricks and people of way higher MMR. This is not really fair. There should be a leaderboardless soloQ mode where people can learn there way around in pvp without all those downsides to hotjoin.

So… Basically you’d make Hotjoin again except with a queue… You are never going to find this happy balance land where all the newbies come together and learn at an equal pace. People will ragequit out of your nonranked queue too, you can’t fix it, and your suggestion is bad and would waste development time while fixing nothing. Just let Hotjoin be Hotjoin.

Guts.4967:

The gamescom LAN is an illusion to make believe chinese that GW2 is esport & competitive. It’s just marketing. Nothing related to e-sport.

For me ToL is completely bullkitten. It’s just a random e-tournament with virtual items as a crash price.

The 2 only events i remember from GW2 that really worth it were the 10.000$ PAX 2013 and the MLG 2013 ( was very professional ).

At least, bunch of players are going to meet in Europe, and that’s a great thing, but that’s it.

I agree with this the most. Seems like a move to simply dazzle outsiders.

Romek.4201:

style.6173:

How about remove ALL AI with the exception of ranger pets and mesmer clones???

+1

Also agree.

My friend has this bug A LOT but I think it’s only happened to me a few times. I do however have a “step freeze” often, which I hate immensely.

So I’ve been playing power necro for a while and consistently I have a ridiculously hard time with stun warriors. Ones that run main hand mace, off hand shield, hammer and so forth.

It’s not like I don’t know what they are doing, it’s just that I can’t seem to be able to sustain damage enough to bring them half health before I get locked down again or able to get distance. Their near constant stability, high toughness, great healing, condition immunity, and blocking makes them feel impossible to kill. Often I just say kitten it and go lich form to try and kill them quickly. Am I missing some sort of secret to killing this guys or is it just a fact they super hard counter power necro and you don’t fight them?

If it matters this is in regards to spvp not wvw.

While I think PvPer’s got completely shafted when it came to the old PvP rewards (materials and glory), moving forward I think these rewards are pretty sweet.

I’m actually able to level up another character in PvE/WvW now without having to do the INSANELY boring PvE that I would have had to do otherwise. I’m making way more money than before, and I’ve gotten 2 ascended items! I never had ascended items until now. I didn’t even know they had ascended armor in the game. I can imagine if you have all that stuff already the rewards suck. But considering I’ve been poor since this games release because I play so much PvP and no PvE or WvW I really like all this money I’m starting to accumulate. It also looks like I’m going to be able to gear up my new level 80 necro with arah gear just by getting those reward chests and tokens, something I would have never done. I might even play WvW more often because I will actually have decent gear in the near future.

I really hope they make the tracks bend with the new story stuff, so I can get the cool skins they normally had only for PvE players, or perhaps totally unique PvP ones.

Have NPCs always proc’d sigils? I’m pretty sure a flesh golem hit me with lightning strike earlier today. Is something bugged where NPC’s (in spvp) are doing way more damage than before?

I don’t think it is honestly. From experience, as I played it I’m always thinking that I could do ‘x’ better on ‘y’ class. You can be surprisingly tanky if you take soldiers amulet and have good lifeforce regen. But other than that I find the DPS only ok and too slow. Plus, I find you pretty much NEED piercing on lifeblast to fight in this zoo meta. I couldn’t even hit a kitten ranger because he spirits kept blocking everything. I really think that should be changed. I shouldn’t need piercing to hit a target through a god kitten petting zoo. Also, like someone else mentioned, against someone who isn’t terrible, you have to work pretty hard to kill them relative to what I can do on my other characters.

I’m more confused by the fact we need to tell them this is a bad idea. What the actual kitten.

Mrbig.8019:

Thief change would make PW less strong for ress control BUT totally broken in any other situation.

Steal-inf strike-PW would be unavoidable, full damage.

Inf strike-PW alone would be enough to eat 10 k + damage.

PW being broken is more of Ini regen related than stun or whatver else.

Moreover it would make protection injection totally worthless, and any thief would be able to kill engies with no problem, while actually engi is the only real counter to thieves ( overall, not only S/P).

How can a thief of your caliber even think about this dumb change is beyond me, immobilize is already stronger than any possible stun aside maybe for ress control.

PW balance is clearly off, and i really have no idea how to fix it without making it more broken or totally useless without redesigning it totally.

Yeah no kidding. Giving immobilize to PW would be absolutely insane.

Honestly, I’m at the point where I think they should just remove the stun. It used to exist to hold an opponent in place because the aftercast aspect was so slow. Now that it occurs very fast after the stun, the stun offers too much control. Removing the stun would add a lot more value to headshot too, which I think is a good thing.

AcidicVision.5498:

Vile.5678:

On a side note I think the immobilization on IS is too long.

The immobilization duration is both less than the cast time of the skill and 1/3 of the duration of attack frames.

It is one of the shortest stuns in the entire game.

Unless you are talking about the root on the thief for using the skill. We are stuck in place for nearly two seconds. That is quite a long time. I wouldn’t say “too long”, more like just long enough since there are staggered evades. The skill wind down is usually where the thief will get destroyed. Especially if she tries to use the skill again.

IS = INFILTRATOR’S STRIKE

Pyriall.5027:

Vile.5678:

I dunno about anyone else but when I played a kitten ton of S/P thief the easiest and probably most broken aspect was the auto-facing it did as it prepped for PW. Simply by pressing 3 it would face you in the EXACT direction of the enemy then all you had to do was shadowstep to them in some way. This means you don’t even have to know where your enemy is to get a successful PW off so long as you had them targeted.

Removing the auto-facing it does would be a great nerf imo. Especially considering you don’t even need to know where your enemy is to use any of the shadowsteps.

On a side note I think the immobilization on IS is too long.

Nice! Pistol Whip has an immob…no wonder!

I said IS as in infiltrator’s strike. /rolls eyes

I dunno about anyone else but when I played a kitten ton of S/P thief the easiest and probably most broken aspect was the auto-facing it did as it prepped for PW. Simply by pressing 3 it would face you in the EXACT direction of the enemy then all you had to do was shadowstep to them in some way. This means you don’t even have to know where your enemy is to get a successful PW off so long as you had them targeted.

Removing the auto-facing it does would be a great nerf imo. Especially considering you don’t even need to know where your enemy is to use any of the shadowsteps.

On a side note I think the immobilization on IS is too long.

Fair. And by fair I mean losing to one, or winning as one, I never feel cheated either way.

I’ve recently been playing my Guardian quite a bit again and my thoughts keep drifting to the idea that Guardians are really well designed and other classes should be more similar in regards to many things.

- The class is well telegraphed.
- Minion builds (spirit weapons) aren’t strong and can’t hid behind them.
- Burst isn’t instant and is easily avoidable.
- Burst damage isn’t ludicrously high.
- Trade off between good vitality or high toughness but not really both.
- Survivability is good but relies on dodges, blinds, blocks, and good utility usage aka active gameplay.
- Doesn’t have condition dumps or the ability to sustain a burst of conditions
- Elites don’t completely unbalance fights. I’m looking at you Supply Drop and Moa Morph
- Has CC but isn’t spammable and imo very easy to dodge.

I don’t know. Perhaps I’m bias because I’ve been playing so much recently, but Guardian really does feel like the least BS oriented class in the game.

On a side note, this is coming from someone who has played most classes significantly. Thief (1,752 matches), Elementalist (890), Mesmer (732), Warrior (731), and Engineer (310). To a lesser extent Necromancer (84) and Ranger (132) both which I don’t enjoy that much.

On a side note, the 3rd attack on hammer’s autoattack is painfully slow and probably should be buffed.

Luthan.5236:

Another suggestion: Turn them into gold boost. 50 percent more money(okay it really is silver) while having such a item equipped. But don’t make it possible to get more of these in the future.

Old players will have a bit more way to make money this way.

Yes this is much better imo.

I don’t want more glory as it’s becoming worthless in the future. I need a way to make gold so I can afford stuff. 15-25s a game is nice but it’s certainly not going to allow me to catch up anytime soon to those who play PvE.

I think S/P is going to be much more popular. I told my friend, that if they buffed PW after it got nerfed it would be popular even though it was stronger pre-stun nerf than it is now. It was just underrated by a lot of people back then because it’s brother S/D was the cool kid. Plus people who didn’t play it before think it’s really good now because it was “buffed” despite being pretty similar to the previous nerf.

I don’t necessarily expect it to be played well as I’m going to assume it will come with a lot of cheese PW builds that have no sustainability aka haste/devourer venom/etc.

Just a prediction though. I’m not sure how people will handle the IR change. It definitely takes a bit of adjusting to.

No guise we’ll spike teh glory economy. too dangerous

It’s fine.
Hotjoin gives 15s for winning 10s for losing.

I just wanted to say, as a long time S/P thief, the new PW is pretty solid.

One of the most telling things I heard on stream when they were going over the PvP exchange rewards for glory was the statement along the lines of:

“We don’t want people with tons of glory to just buy everything, we want you to put the time into it.”

So basically, because of skyhammer farmers we (your average non-exploiting PvP player) get kitten exchange rates. Apparently a years worth of playing PvP isn’t good enough time to be able to get reasonable rewards/skins and like you said, PvE players will walk in with everything PvP players were working for and more. The only good thing about the exchange was the levels you can get for PvE, which are very good imo.

It’s like time-gating time-gating.

Bomb/Grenade Condi Engineers in close combat as a Sword Thief (S/P or S/D).

For example:
In maps such as Skyhammer the side points are very compact and you can’t really shadowstep effectively and the bombs/grenades seem to blow up everything. But in general any close combat situation.

I’ve been playing thief a looooooong time, but these types of Engineers are just awful to fight every time. Unless I COMPLETELY outplay them it feels like a massive struggle as everything they do blows up the area applying every condition available.

I just don’t feel like I can get close to them without getting hard hitting conditions on me such as burning, bleeds, chill and poison.

I would ask the Engineer forum, but I’d probably get told to L2P or that Engineer isn’t strong. If it really is a L2P issue then I would really like solid advice on this.

Thanks!

I think most (if not all) S/P thieves just want the old 1 second stun duration back.

It’s funny though… After the stun change patch, I predicted Anet wouldn’t just simply revert PW back to it’s old state like everyone wanted. I predicted that they would instead do some “creative” alternative that kittening sucks instead as a bandaid. How right I was…

I can’t believe they are really going to go through with the sword 2 nerf though.

As someone who really, really, really likes experimenting with builds and other classes. All of them of course. Seriously, I’ve probably tried nearly ever build type (condition, burst, bunker, power, minions, etc.) for each class at least once. With the exception of Necro, on account I find it so dull to play. But even then I know what’s happening when I play against them and how to counter them.

Though I must say…

I can’t stand people who attempt to talk about balance when they only play one class or build. Most of the time it’s ignorance and unwillingness to learn, which frustrates me to no end.

But that’s just like, my opinion man.

I’m going to say Venom Share as well. Venoms in general have never been as bad people as people make them out to be but not on par with other FotM builds. Though I hated them ever since ANet made them fail proof, aka so easy a brain dead monkey could use them. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Venoms used to disappear from use after missing a shot by being out of range, which punished unintelligent spammers. Now they only miss if they are evaded or blocked. Under the circumstances of a venom sharing Thief and his allies, you simply cannot evade or block enough to survive even if they are being stupid and just spamming out of range and such. Also, on top of that, if you reflect the shots back at them, they aren’t even used on them, or on anything. It doesn’t use the Venom charges even though it really, really should.

So basically Venoms are brain dead easy to use and are used as pure cheese at this point. If you don’t have really strong condition removal you’re going to die very fast. Especially since immobilization stacks now (10-15 seconds of immobilization if shared).
If you play Hotjoin, you’re probably going to see a lot more of it, and it’s going to suck. Maybe also in Solo and Team play but I think it’s generally shunned right now by those players. It’s hard to say as Hotjoin is influenced by what is popular in Solo or Team, aka becoming FotM.

Why not revert Pistol Whip back to its old way before the stun changes? I have a strong feeling the .25 second after cast part isn’t going to make it worthwhile, especially considering it doesn’t even damage people who are moving in it’s current state. On top of that it costs 5 initiative, roots you, and only has a very brief duration of evasion. I beg that you give this a good hard look. Thank you.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Feel free to ask any questions if you have them here.

When can we expect the next balance patch?

Also, when will Pistol Whip be buffed (back to its pre-patch state) to compensate for the massive nerf it took?

Thank you!

Allow them to be swapped out like Toolkits on Engineer. Otherwise you sacrifice too much utility of your other abilities to make them worthwhile.

Any dev word on a fix for this? Or even an acknowledgment it’s a problem?

I retract my earlier statement. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I tested it.

I don’t think it ever made much of a difference. I tried it for a while (before change) and it wasn’t noticeable enough for me to want to run with it. So, I think you’re overreacting.

S/P is ridiculously good against the current meta of Necros. Coupled with S/D you can strip the boons and get back to pistol whipping them. Also using 2 (Shadow Return?), to remove 1 condition at a time is really strong. However, you really need a ton of initiative to support the playstyle. S/P is really good in general, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

I just wish I could get the cool skins without having to play boring as kitten PvE content. I’ve been trying to play the TP on the side of PvPing so I can afford a skin that I want but it’s not something I enjoy.

I think the biggest thing is for them to give worthwhile rewards they have to ensure it cannot be exploited and farmed through methods that are undesirable.

Leveling a PvE character would be pretty nice though, as I barely got my second character to 80 before I felt completely sick to my stomach and my brain started to ooze out of my ears from boredom. Yeah, I’m not a PvE person.

This is an awesome change imo. I hope they don’t increase the cooldown too much. But it’s going to be fantastic for landing my AoEs in a 1v1 fight, something staff ele desperately needs.

Also it’s going to be hilarious to see people fall over because they are used to just running through it without much of a consequence…

I totally want in on this. Invitation would be great.

skullmount.1758:

Vile.5678:

I dunno. I’m excited yet nervous for the staff changes they proclaim are going to happen. Ideally I just want to have better responsiveness, faster cast times for autoattacks, and better accuracy with abilities like Gust. Your Lava Font suggestion is a great idea imo.

Out of curiosity, where did they say staff changes are coming?

They said it previously on one of the GW2 twitch streams. Jon peters mentioned it again not too long ago. He mentioned that they are trying to make Elementalists fill the support role better in the upcoming patch. Also a change to one of conjure earth abilities to make it explode and cause bleed.

- I like your suggestion for Lava Font.
- The Chain Lightning change would be interesting, however I don’t think they would ever implement something like that. Not sure how I feel about it.
- Anything is better than Gust in it’s current state honestly.
- Unsteady ground might be a bit too strong if it applied torment (every tick?). I’d be happy if it applied a 3 second cripple instead of just 2.
- How much earlier are we talking about?

I dunno. I’m excited yet nervous for the staff changes they proclaim are going to happen. Ideally I just want to have better responsiveness, faster cast times for autoattacks, and better accuracy with abilities like Gust. Your Lava Font suggestion is a great idea imo.

It happens to me occasionally. It usually means the person is just nonsensically raging and nothing more. I usually ignore it and it subsides.

Imo Thieves are in an ok spot right now. I think S/P is highly under appreciated right now as it can destroy squishies with ease. I think S/D is overrated in the way it’s used in constant evasion, however the boon strip is excellent.

Venoms are an amazing condition dump as a P/D Thief. The proper use is dependent on a class you’re playing against.

I do agree that Warrior sustain is a bit out of control. The healing signet is very good even without investing into healing power. In addition, you’re going to have a bad time if you’re a physical damage build compared to a condition build against a toughness/healing signet Warrior.

Best advice I have is to just know what you’re up against. From there anticipate and react. Sometimes you have to accept that their build is strong against yours and it’s a fight that will end in you losing. Of course the players skill is a factor, but you should be able to figure out how they play within the first few moments of a fight. Also, don’t use everything on an attunement just because it’s off cooldown. However it really depends on what weapons you use as an Elementalist.

For example, I play Staff Elementalist.
If I go against something like an Engineer, you can almost guarantee they are going to open up with pretty much everything on their pistols within the first few seconds. Anticipate this and have Magnetic Aura ready. From there cast Erruption. Becauese of the reflection, most will attempt to dodge their own attacks (relfected back). Wait for this to happen (or don’t) and follow up with a Shockwave. If they are still in range of the Erruption they will be hit for a significant amount of damage. If they aren’t aware that you’re not a condition build they will freak out at the sight of 6 stacks of bleed and perhaps force out a heal.

Obviously there’s more to a fight than that, but that’s the general premise of what I’m talking about when I say anticipate and react.

On the other hand, if I fight a burst pistol/pistol Thief who is hyper aggressive I have a very hard time and there’s not much I can do once my Magnetic Aura goes on cooldown. I avoid those fights. Though it’s best to get distance and lock them down from a range with things like Static Field and nuke the area while they are stunned with Meteor Shower and see if they go on you.

I must say though, if you also play staff Elementalist it’s pretty much a uphill battle in 1v1 situations. I’d say positioning correctly and helping your team (usually with high AoE DPS) is most important with staff.

Personally I think it should just get an added passive to reflect projectiles. It doesn’t make sense why it wouldn’t gameplay wise and comparable to Thief’s Dagger Storm which is waaaay more effective than Tornado even with a hypothetical projectile reflection.

I actually play a lot of staff Elementalist in PvP and have my fair share of opinions on it. The honest truth is that in a 1v1 situation, you shouldn’t lose to a staff Elementalist, ever. They really have it stacked against them in 1v1.
- VERY sluggish attacks.
- Queuing abilities is like pulling teeth.
- Attacks outright missing because of how slow they are. Air 3 misses when it matters most or goes on a mini cooldown when the person slightly side steps (or not?). And like OP said, misses unless the person doesn’t move AT ALL.
- Very weak defenses. Unless you get lightning flash you’re an easy target. You can escape decently if you combine all your abilities such as using static field, frozen ground, and unsteady ground. You pretty much need mistform and lightning flash, unless you have the regen and condition removal to help but then you’re sacrificing a lot in other areas that are essential.
- Pretty much all the DPS a staff Elemantalist has is in it’s AoE circles, in which if you don’t stand in them (for a while), you take minimal damage. Which isn’t a big deal, but once again, like OP said, most people have enough sense to move out of them before they can do anything.

BUT… Aside from that I really enjoy the staff. I don’t want staff Elementalist to become OP or 1v1 gods, I just want some issues fixed that are a pain to work with. I kinda expect to be a support like role, but I want to at least have more of a chance of beating people in 1v1s.

tl;dr ~ Despite the complaining, the main things I would want fixed are the sluggishness (of all attacks) and that attacks missing for no apparent reason (air 3 and some autoattacks).

Yes! So much! I thought it was on my end but it happens so frequently and always on Skyhammer. In fact, it just happened now.

Edit: I tried to play pvp again, and it lagged out… On Skyhammer…

I’m really getting frustrated with how inconsistent shadowstepping works, either it be with steal, shadowstep, infiltrator’s signet, infiltrator’s strike, etc. At times I’m able to shadowstep through several walls whereas a bump in the ground will screw me over.

Over time I have a general idea on where this ability works and where it doesn’t but I still run into this problem quite frequently as a thief who relies almost completely on this mechanic (not stealth).

Is there a chance that this could ever be fixed/consistent? Or is it a “deal with it” kind of situation? I feel like they really need to streamline this so it’s just a straight up teleport rather than a gamble that doesn’t work properly within it’s own rules.

I’ve had a little experience with this but I didn’t mind. I get called OP more than I used to though, which was surprising to me since I left the game for a few months where Warriors definitely were considered weak by most.

I think the devs just need to know the balance of the game better. I don’t feel confident in their ability to balance the game and I don’t think they are confident either which is leading to issues and poor decisions.

Perhaps they should have a testing beta phase pre-patch to see how the balance works out during that time period and switch it back in case it’s unbalanced. This would be like a special instance where they go to another pvp zone and it would alter the skills and traits to the pre-patch balance changes. Then people could choose to participate in the balancing or not. This has greater implications of course, but I think it would be a good step towards balance and maybe creative solutions.

All said, it’s definitely not an easy job and a thankless one at that. Personally I like Warrior in his current state more than I have before.

I’ve recently started playing this game after a 3-4 month break and holy cow so many changes.

I’m still catching up on all the changes but my favorite change/addition of all is probably Cleansing Ire. This ability helps SO MUCH as a Warrior against condition spam, something that really was an issue for me before I stopped playing. This seems especially useful considering that the new thing is condition damage rather than raw burst.

Blindness causes some issues with this trait, however it’s not too bad, especially since I look for it carefully now.

I think this trait is almost a must have honestly, along with shout heal/condition removal. For better or worse I suppose.

I think this is a great change for Warrior in general though. Does anyone feel the same way about this trait? I haven’t lost 1v1 since I learned about it.

It took me exactly 20 JP chests on to get my first continue coin. I did these with my friend and he had 9 of them by the time I got my first. I’ve done about 15 more chests since then (total of about 35 chests) and now have a grand total of 4 continue coins, 3 more then before. RNG just really, really, sucks for some people, and I kinda wish they had some sort of safety net to stop it when it gets absolutely ridiculous for some players. My case wasn’t even that bad though, as I read someone doing about 30 JPs and not getting a single coin yet.

Any tips on how to run a bomb kit build? Like, dos and don’ts? Rules? How to? Anything really.

For me the hardest parts are just to land the bombs I place, as most people with any wit will simply move. I’ve tried using various things like slick shoes to keep my opponents immobilized but to not much success.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Ironically, the easiest class to beat with a condition Warrior is another Warrior. If they don’t have shout condition removal they relatively easy to beat. I think it’s fair to mention, outside of shout condition removal, Warrior has the worst/least condition removing abilities of the classes I’ve played.

The Superior Sigil of Doom has never worked for me in sPvP.