Guild Wars 2

Giving this my +1, just happened to my group. Same situation as Entropic describes where a carrier of the hammer fell through the gap near the arm nearest to the gate which leads up to the boss.

The hammer had vanished previously by someone who was blown off by wind, and wiping the group did bring it back. But nothing we could do worked the 2nd time.

I agree that axe has taken a huge hit in pvp. And as far as pve goes even then sometimes a mob will be dead before you can get off triple chop, or it turns it’s focus on you and you need to dodge away in the middle of your AA chain. Pretty aweful.

IMO they need to reverse some of that damage back across the board, and add something to eviscerate to make it a worthwhile ability. Perhapts a daze effect? .5 sec for 1 bar, 1 sec for 2 bars, 1.5 sec daze for 3 bars?

Daendur.2357:

stop reading when I saw “water” …

This is a valid tactic for players/classes that are weak against thiefs. Attack your enemy where he is weak, avoid him where he is strong. Basic strategy.

I tried the build out yesterday in spvp randoms and found it very fun and fairly strong. I’ve always been a big fan of the longbow in pvp/wvw/pve and I"m glad to see a build that really lets it shine. Coupled with the new control and burst damage ability of the sword we may have something here.

Great survey, after taking it and reading the results I seem to be in line with most people in almost every reguard. Most interesting to see that the community (of the 80+ surveyed so far) is split almost evenly 20%/20%/20% in wanting Improving game balance, Adding new game types (my choice) and Releasing a working ladder.

Thanks for putting this together OP. Hope we can get more people to take it and get dev attention. Much easier to read than a 10 page forum thread.

So, I watched the sotg, and I’ve read through this entire post. Facinating information.

I stopped playing GW2 about 3 months ago due to loosing interest after the december patch. I was pretty maxed out on PVE on my warrior. And had alot of fun running wvw with EMP on Jade Quarry (from what I understand one of the best wvw focused guilds on the top rated wvw server) and did a fair ammount of spvp, mostly hotjoins cause lets face it, good luck being any good with a warrior when your skill level is only so-so and it being tough to get a team together when you just play casually.

I’ve been watching these forums, reading dev interviews, going over patch notes, looking for a reason to come back. And i’ve yet to find anything compelling enough to do the trick. Sounds like they are inching closer and closer to having the tools to make spvp more enjoyable but I fear by the time it happens I’ll have lost interest completely and won’t even be checking the forums anymore.

But, until that time comes I’ll be keeping tabs on the game. And seeing that there are passionate players out there fighting for the changes the game needs to be more engaging and competitive keeps me hopefull.

I’ve seen you around OP. XD I guess going for a Legendary hammer forces one to find a build that works.

Grok, what you might be noticing is that if you start a normal whirlwind you might only hit an opponent with 1 or 2 of it’s hits while you move through them. However if you are using haste (or chilled, etc), which makes you only move half the distance, you spend more time with your opponent in the hitbox, making for more hits and greater damage. This also applies if your opponent has their back against a wall and you whirlwind into that wall. the wall stops your forward movement but you continue to spin in place and connect every hit on them.

Someone correct me if I’m wrong on this but I’m pretty sure thats how it works.

PCanineBrigade.4916:

Charr Male Thief
Charr Male Guardian
Charr Male Engineer
Charr Male Warrior
Charr Male Elementalist
Charr Male Ranger
Charr Male Mesmer

0___0

Main is Norn Male Warrrior
Alt is Asura Male Engineer

And my gf plays a Female Charr Ranger

Mackdose.6504:

YojimboJones.6243:

Rukia.4802:

There is a problem when you can gear up in WoW 50x faster than you can get full exotics in GW2.

For a game that isn’t supposed to have grind it sure has the most I’ve ever seen. So… from what I’ve gathered in the replies in this thread, as long as the journey isn’t difficult it’s considered casual? So even if it takes you months to get exotics that’s casual? Lol.

You MUST be trolling. Yes you get gear in wow fast, but Exotics in GW2 are the equivilent of maximum level raid armor.

And in regards to pvp LOL you don’t have to grind at ALL! It’s free of charge at level 2.

Give me a break man…. =/

Correction: Exotics are the equivalent to non-heroic raid gear in WoW. Certainly great, but not The Best™.

There are ascended items, yes, and those are a bit grindy to get. But as far as best in slot for all armor and weapons, exotic is the best. I don’t know why you would even try to argue this point. And for sPvP, exotic is, and always will be (as stated by anet) the best.

Rukia.4802:

There is a problem when you can gear up in WoW 50x faster than you can get full exotics in GW2.

For a game that isn’t supposed to have grind it sure has the most I’ve ever seen. So… from what I’ve gathered in the replies in this thread, as long as the journey isn’t difficult it’s considered casual? So even if it takes you months to get exotics that’s casual? Lol.

You MUST be trolling. Yes you get gear in wow fast, but Exotics in GW2 are the equivilent of maximum level raid armor.

And in regards to pvp LOL you don’t have to grind at ALL! It’s free of charge at level 2.

Give me a break man…. =/

I see alot of players, and even devs (J sharp) talking about how pvp is actually better than people think in terms of balance, but the playerbase is just lacking in skill/understanding of how to deal with specific classes and specs. The shorthand for this is “L2P”.

Allowing duels would go A LONG way towards educating the playerbase. “Hey, guild, I was wondering if there are any theives free to dual with me and help me figure out how to deal with theives in spvp. Point out to me what to look for in animations and common tactics I should learn to anticipate.”

Trying to L2P from hotjoin is like trying to learn to drive from destruction derby.

I think what alot of people are missing, which is the core point of this thread, is that the burst of those abilities (and auguably, all burst) is too high to make pvp enjoyable for casual-mid level players.

Hardcore players will not complain as much because by nature they learn to adapt to whatever game it is they have chosen to master. Also because they likely play on 5v5 teams that include a burst element so they are in effect using this “overpowered” aspect to their advantage.

But ask yourself this. If Guild Wars 2 is to continue to succeed as a tier 1 MMORPG, do you think it’s PVP will fare well if a new player goes into a hotjoin with his default pvp build and dies in less than 1 second to a theif? Or to a warrior with frenzy/100b?

Arena net has stated in interviews that they want to take steps to further educate players in pvp how to counter common strategies, but as long as the ability to insta-gib players exisits, it will always be an issue. It is my personal opinion that no mmorpg should have burst as high as this in a pvp system built from the ground up with the intent to be fair and balanced. In the mmos I have played, wow, gw1, sto, Aion, I’ve never died in less than 2 seconds from an opponent at the same level/gearing as me.

This isn’t Call of Duty, you should at least have a fighting chance even if an opponent gets a jump on you. Regardless of how “glass” your build is.

I like this idea alot, and it would be very easy to cancel out of by simply moving you area circle outside of range and letting go of the button, getting a range error.

Ironicly I would find this best on my Eng for grenades, even though evolverzilla seems to like the current system. I do feel a minor tweak like this could improve effectiveness significnatly.

StrickeN.8792:

Game is a broken mess then. Back to WOW all.

I actually play wow and gw2. Let me tell you that the only thing wow has going for it over gw2 is loads of extra content and features, which GW2 will get with time. Also better class balance (although you wouldn’t think so if you read THEIR fourms) which again, GW2 will get better with time.

Playing other games while I wait for GW2 to become the amazing game it has the potential to be.

We are supposed to have “housing” in the form of the home instance but there has already been plenty of complaints on this forum that it changes very little from level 1 to level 80. With only minor tweaks to player choice.

If they were to make things more customizeable they would probably do it in home instances. Although that does add the challange of having 5 different race areas to modify.

I think Anet is aware of this but it’s on the very very back burner

A nice little idea, I like it!

I think everyone who has done a fair ammount of pvp in this game can tell you that there are some big balance issues. I’m pretty sure if they introduced arenas tomorrow, in a week you would see all the top teams full of maybe 3-4 of the best pvp classes.

Mesmer
Theif
Ele
??? – probably anything that can throw alot of CC to set up for theif/mesmer burst

Without conquest game mode, we would see less necros (aoe not needed as much), probably no eng or ranger (yes they are capable of spike almost compareable to theif but lack survivability in glass builds) and probably no Guardian. ALthough they do still have strong CC ability and survivivablilty.

In short, I would hate for them to release arena before addressing balance issues. a 3 theif vs 3 theif arena sounds like a horrible thing to watch.

I agree with OP 100%, my and my gf just started playing WoW again. After a 4 year break for me, and soooooo many things annoy me about that game now.

The NUMBER ONE thing, is that if I am randomly exploring the world and come across some cool looking area, like an ancient ruin, summoning circle, huge boss looking NPC, I want to interact with it! At the very least, I want to kill it and get some loot. But if you are not on the requsite quest, which is possibly part of some lenghty chain, then DON’T BOTHER. Cause you will learn nothing about the area, get no loot from a quest npc, and achieve nothing.

In GW2 anything interesting you see you can usualy interact with in some meaningful way. And any sweet dynamic event that’s going on you can jump right into.

Also depositing collectibles is awesome, as well as having bank access at crafting areas.
Also down/upleveling.
Also…everything.

Only reason I hopped back onto WoW is that the endgame in GW2 is fairly lacking. Got an 80 geared out, ascended rings, got big into WvW but it can be a tad too repetitive. Also really gross class imbalance issues in PvP, mostly theives and mesmers annoy me to no end.

But yeah, in short, GW2 has ruined other mmorpgs. We will never have it as good as we have it here.

I have to chime in as this is one of the better threads I’ve seen. Thanks so far to everyone for your great input, Zoose, Jon, and everyone else (except the minor derail by an upset warrior)

In regards to transparency, the Anet team has gone a long way towards communicating with conserns from the playerbase. Doing state of the game interviews, posting extensive blogs, update videos, etc. But I can agree with the sediment in this thread that it would save alot of development time to bring potential game changes to the community first, to gauge reaction, before releasing them.

You can bet that if they previewed fractals and how they work, people would have brought up major conserns over ascended items (which anet came back and said it was a mistake to roll out the way it did) and also issues with not being able to reconnect to your group, and the progressive nature of the levels. That way the patch may have been held back a week or two but would have launched closer to what it is today. Much more polished and enjoyable.

So I play Magic The Gathering, and often stop by their main webpage to see what daily updates they have. And it looks like not too long back they had a “Game Dev Rumble”, where several groups of game/web design groups came out to play magic in a touranament at mtg HQ. Take a look at the 4th group down and see if any of them look familar. I reconize John Sharp, but am not familar with the rest of that group. Pretty cool that some of the Anet team plays mtg!

http://wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/1163

Daecollo.9578:

YojimboJones.6243:

howabout in place of might on the 25pt minor it applies 5 sec of regeneration instead? After all, what do you need more right after getting rezzed, power or hp? Although that seems slightly less flavorfull to the warrior class. But hey, we already have access to regen via banners so it’s not totally unreasonable. And actually pretty handy when ressing durnig pve boss fights or in wvw/spvp to help your team out.

And while we are at it, replace the 5pt trait with 4 seconds of protection when you start to rez, (for you and the rez target) can only occur once every 10 sec (to keep people from abusing to stack protection).

Put those two together and we become a pretty powerful battlefield medic.

The problem is, we already have regeneration if we are that deep in the line, so its pointless.

Adrenal regen is not the same as the regen boon. So they do not conflict, they effecitively stack. So my idea was to apply a 5 sec regen aoe just like the might is applied now. And even if people already have regen up it stacks in duration, and scales with +healing for those who like paying the healing shouts type build.

howabout in place of might on the 25pt minor it applies 5 sec of regeneration instead? After all, what do you need more right after getting rezzed, power or hp? Although that seems slightly less flavorfull to the warrior class. But hey, we already have access to regen via banners so it’s not totally unreasonable. And actually pretty handy when ressing durnig pve boss fights or in wvw/spvp to help your team out.

And while we are at it, replace the 5pt trait with 4 seconds of protection when you start to rez, (for you and the rez target) can only occur once every 10 sec (to keep people from abusing to stack protection).

Put those two together and we become a pretty powerful battlefield medic.

Ahhh hahaha! So good! Very well done. XD I hope someone at anet sees this and gets a giggle.

Every class is equally “viable” in wvw, as part of a zerg. Obviously some classes bring some pretty unique tricks to the table. Mesmer portal. Ele swirling winds. Theif yak ganking. But warriors are far from bad in wvw. Longbow is a strong tool for area pressure when fighting in the open and in tower/keep seiging. And building up adren to crack off huge killshots at 1500 range also helps in those group fights. Plus you are just as potent in melee as you are in pve/spvp. Just be aware of your limitations.

Everyone wants them, anet has told us that we wont be getting them probably for 4-6 months. shrug It’s nice to dream though.

Redscope.6215:

Oglaf.1074:

Well, there are still some odd skills here and there that technically fits into what they could classify as “problem AoE”.

Like Earth Shaker on the Hammer.

It’s targeted after all.

I would agree that some skills on the warrior may need to be looked at. Probably not Earthshaker but Combustive Shot comes to mind. The amount of burning I can stack on a target with that skill (by shooting through the field) is rather absurd to be able to do on my own.

That’s something I think needs a looking-over on its own time. Classes and weapon sets that can self-combo.

Arcing Arrow and Combustive shot are actually very strong skills, the warriors only long range AOE abilities. If they nerf those I hope it’s only the # of targets, because if they take away the damage or shirnk the radius that pretty much bones our only means of applying ranged pressure in WvW.

I almost exclusively run with mending. Honestly, when you compare the ammount healed, the cooldown, and the 2 condition removal it’s one of the best heals in the game for all around effectiveness.

I actually really enjoy that characters speak when using shouts and have a random chance to “proc” a voice clip when getting boons and conditions. Me and my girlfriend constantly joke and say things from the game. And yes do mashups of warrior shouts.

“ON MY MARK, SHAKE IT FOR GREAT JUSTICE!”

My world of warcraft characters are much more lifeless in comparison. Which is probably a good thing, in pvp in that game you get so many debuffs/dots/stuns/sleeps that they wouldn’t ever shut up!

Well you missed the Wintersday stuff, which by all accounts was well executed and very fun. As for sPvP updates and balance changes…come back towards the end of Feb and see then.

I second this. An easy way to boost pvp population with minimal work on Anet’s side I would think.

Levetty.1279:

Of course the fridge horror of this is that technically in the real world it would be the equivalent of having a Baby Human backpack, what with Quaggan’s being intelligent and all.

Quaggan, intelligent? …you play guild wars right? lol

Archonis.7249:

A lot of people play the Warrior, as they are one of the most forgiving professions at the moment. You can make mistakes and still pull out a victory.

I would place classes in their prospective categories as such:

Novice Skill Level – Warrior, Guardian and Necro
Moderate Skill Level – Ranger, Elementalist and Engineer
High Skill Level- Thief and Mesmer

People will probably disagree with this, but I am basing this off of forgivibility in combat. Those Novice professions you can make quite a few mistakes and still win, but the High Skill profession will punish you severely if you blow a CD at the wrong time and you will lose.

“forgivibility in combat.”

…you are joking, right? Warriors have more hp and armor than a mes or theif, it’s true, but last time I checked a warrior cannot stealth and casually walk away from a fight like a theif. And while mesmers may not be the strongest choice for PVE they are quite strong in PVP with lots of survivability and utility.

This should come as a real backstab to theives.

felivear.1536:

A piece of advice: in the future never mention World of Warcraft in a post because people will needlessly attack you. It stirs up a level of hate that American culture has developed over anything successful, i.e. Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, call of duty, World of Warcraft to name a few. It is probably the same on the World of Warcraft forums where you’re not allowed to talk about Guild Wars 2 because at the same time people are also defensive of their product. We name it fanboyism but it’s actually a natural human defect.

Wow is an MMORPG (the most popular, regardless if it’s the best or not) and so is Guild Wars 2. This means comparisons will be drawn, it cannot be helped. Same as comparing a Mustang to a Camero. Pepsi to Coke. Etc. If you can get past the fanboy hype and actually analize things for what they are, there is alot to be learned from observing the competition.

Darnis.4056:

Illusionary leap onto another person and still remain stunned, effectively making Blurred frenzy do 0 damage to the target as he is free to go….

It’s a 400 foot at max movement, and fails often and MUST be set up Prior to your well placed skull crack_ AND_ requires a second target.

Pretty sure Phase retreat does not break stun but only moves you as well, as there is a lag time before you are able to use skills again, long enough to GS 3/5 into GS2…

These skills do not stunbreak.. they are instants.. just like the other instant skills..
In fact steal can do the same thing, as it moves you to the second target.

You keep comparing a mesmer weapon skill on low(ish) cooldown to a class defining, F1 theif skill, on a longer cooldown. Not to mention steal is not intended to be used defensively, it is usualy part of setting up their burst combo. Using it defensively means yes you get out of that situation but now you don’t have your strong combo opener available.

Very different things, and only worth comparing to show how differently they function. You might as well be comparing it to engineer Rocket boots. But nobody would compare a mesmer to an engineer because one of these sees alot of play and is under the magnafying glass for balance, while the other sees only fringe play and requires a huge skill level just to perform…average.

I think I’m pretty qualified to speak int his thread as someone who just last week got back into WoW. (sorry GW2, your endgame is lacking and pvp has grown stale after 5 months) I’m not thrilled about having to pay a monthly fee again but the varitey of PvP modes available (plus the sometimes frustrating, always exciting world pvp) are just staggeringly more enjoyable than gw2’s ONE pvp mode. I guess you could say 2, counting would vs world, which is fun but…again after 5 months of more or less the same thing it’s grown stale.

I know their priority is private servers (which will cost gold/gems to use, BTW) and after that spectator mode and matchmaking. But after that please, PLEASE work on new game modes.

I think alot of mesmer players are missing the point of this thread. It’s not really calling for a nerf but more asking, “Is this working as intended? If so, is this fair?” Any skill that acts as a stunbreaker should say so in the tooltip. So that way when Devs come around to balance things out, it is clearly defined how the skills and traits are working. So they can say “Okay lets look at mesmer, they run utility stun breaks like just about everyone else, but wait some of their weapons skills can also allow them to escape while stunned? Hmm, lets reveiw this.”

Nobody is arguing that those skills are not flavorful to the class. Yes, it is obvious that mesmers are the master of illusion and confusion. Whenever you fight one there are 3 extra guys fighting you and each is shooting rainbows and butterflies. Very confusing indeed.

Just don’t defned that your ability which does not clearly state that it allows you to move while stunned, does. Ranged classes always have an inhearent advantage against melee classes. This is why you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. So at the very least the ammount, and frequency of escape skills at your disposal should be equal to, not greater than, the ammount of gap closers that melee classes have. Otherwise melee does not stand a chance in hell.

beren.6048:

Dedlaw.9130:

If this is legit then I wish to report Anet to Anet because of all the NPC’s in LA that just spam the same thing over and over. They were deliberately made to annoy people that’s why they repeat the same speech over and over….

Like “Creatures of metal and steel!” in the norn home city. Always makes me start running out of there.

CITIZENS!!!

Amos.8760:

This is a photo of my wife and I hanging around in LA.

Oh yeah – my wife is not a gamer…

LOL Priceless…. XD

Apollo.7389:

Well if you are the people that just come for a few rounds then go back to PvE then stop posting on PvP forums since you aren’t really serious about PvP. And with you reasoning of “they haven’t fixed the bugs yet”…well whats makes you think they would rework quickness than?

Argument invalid moving on to next thread. Sry.

Easy answer to people that want quick response would be…L2P

I do more than just 2 rounds of hotjoin. I was trying to enlighten readers of this thread that there are many types of player and many levels of player skill and core comabt mechanics should be balanced for the overall game experience. Telling someone to “l2p” adds nothing to the conversation.

Sit there and honestly tell me that quickness isn’t the single strongest effect you can have on your character, BY FAR. Things that are very strong, should be examined for possible tweaking. Or at the very least, have other less competitive abilities brought up to their level.

Apollo.7389:

You need to read what I just posted to this thread Yojim…look above your post.

Ah, I didn’t see your post as I was writing mine. So it seems like you are falling back on a “wait till they fix bugs and balance classes before calling to nerf quickness” But the sad fact is, we are 6 months into the game and many bugs still exist. And while I agree spvp hotjoin is a different animal than tPvP, free and paid, you have to realize this is the sPvP forum. And regardless of what map you join, we are all playing the same game. Many people wish for a quick few rounds of hotjoin to maybe complete their pvp daily and then go back to pve. To those type of players, hotjoin is the only pvp game they see.

It seems silly to only balance around paid tournaments. Anet’s lofty goals of making this game an esport people want to watch on the scales of Starcraft or League of Legends or even some FPS are far, FAR away. If even ever a possibility. They have said in the past that they weigh balance changes on pve/spvp/wvw and I belive this is the correct way to balance things.

It’s obvious to anyone who uses it that it’s over powered. Twice as fast means double damage. And there are already classes that can pull off impressive burst without haste.

They should increase the duration of haste effects and lower the speed boost to 33% to be in line with other boon effects. (swiftness, protection, poision). And possibly tweak the negative effects to compensate.

Randomly stumbled upon this JP while doing map completion for LA and I was blown away but how fun and flavorful it was. One of my most memorable moments from playing Guild Wars 2 so far!

I played GW1 for years, was following this game closely and playing since the headstart.

The story I found enjoyable. You talk about it being a “SOLID bad” but what are you comparing this to? Wow? GW2 is much better in this department. Star wars the old republic? Okay I have not played that game but from what I hear the story is very strong and likely trumps GW2 in this department. I found it to be enjoyable to the point where I was eagerly awaiting leveling up to start the next arc. Although I was dissapointed with the sudden shift in focus to Traherne and the new, linear nature of the story as opposed to the eariler, personalized part.

Combat is enjoyable to me, again you have to ask yourself what is better and what is worse in other games? Compared to GW1, having the ability to swap out utility skills out of combat is a huge boon over GW1. And the interface is clean and tight, unlike the massive bloated corpse of a UI world of warcraft has these days.
“When you use Mortal strike, (if you chose arms specialzation) then it enables use of your overpower ability, which uses no rage, nor genrates rage, also your overpower sometimes procs the use of another overpower and grantes your next heroic strike or cleave to deal and addtional 15% damge” ….excuse me what? You could call interactions like that depth of gameplay, I call them needlessly complicated skill chains.

The combo system in GW2 is magnificent, and leads to some exciting, on the fly changes in playstyle and rewards situational awareness.

The pvp…is growing stale. One game type, either 5v5 or 8v8. Not much to play around with there. Stale meta game with little room for innovation.

Can’t really speak to the economy as I mostly earn gold through dungeon runs, which has only alternated slightly since release.

All and all I give GW2 a 7/10, with potential for greatness if they had a larger team working on changes and fixes.

These threads move so fast, I ponder the usefullness of even posting in them. But has anyone considered that the problem with AoE is the conquest format? You need to be on a point to defend it, that point is about the same size as most AoE effects.

If there were team arena games, 3v3, 5v5, 8v8 (like Gw1) then AoE would still have it’s uses but be ultimately avoidable. Just look at the GY point, it is so large that no AoE can cover it and you can dance around those effects easily.

I would argue for more game types before nerfs on builds that explicitly are overpowered in only one gametype.

Very well done!

Awesome picture! Captures the mood perfectly.

I agree with this. Condition builds are always somewhat gated by the mechanics you mentioned. Although poision has the very powerful effect of reducing effective healing, which is certainly a factor when considering it’s overall effect.