Guild Wars 2

I’m guessing its the supreme endgame node gathering build. With on demand quickness and 5s CD out of combat teleport it is only matched in effectiveness by harvester thief. I could be wrong though, if not, harvester rev has not been buffed.

It does seem like PoF specs have high risk compared to HoT specs (minus guard and mes). Fewer evades, blocks, less mobility in general.

I do have concerns about weaver though as it might end up d/d on steroids.

The strategic element may have decreased since HoT launch but the game still has some reactive gameplay. This is more apparent in duels but in teamfights and WvW you often dodge pre emptively expecting some nukes.

Some builds are also more forgiving due to passive out-of-jail traits.

To compare it with other games, while I havent played WoW, I did spend a few months on black desert online and blade & soul. Because of their pure action combat, those games had even *less* reactive gameplay than gw2. Animations are faster and you usually rotate out i-frames while hoping to cc combo your enemy somehow.

If you have slower reflexes, you are limited to fewer classes but can still do okay.

The skill required in the cele meta was not a result of cele stats themselves. It was because defensive skills were fewer along with cc. Key skills needed to be timed well to outplay. Now builds are so much more forgiving, and passives are stronger than they should be.

That said, bringing back cele may not be the worst idea for build diversity. The 3 stats amulets give 3000 in total so 400 or 430 per stat might be reasonable (excluding concentration and expertise). This might be too strong for some PoF hybrids that have good might generation. But then again, boon hate is increasing too.

As most of you know, before the specialization system we had 14 trait points to spend (i.e 6-6-2). Since then we got 4 more points and traits have been greatly improved. It seems with the next patch core traits will be buffed further.

Going back to the old system can reduce the amount of passives. Elite specs would still require full investment and the rest of the 8 points could be spent freely. One concern i have is that with every skill powercreeped to do too much, classes that rely on traits to sustain would have a hard time and would require to buff their active defenses.

Thoughts?

People need to stop preaching doom and gloom before we even beta test. There is a high chance some energy costs will be reduced, skills may be reworked. Maybe kalla GM trait will help with energy recovery somehow…

Honestly simple commands that exist in MOBAs etc. should be enough. I mean shortcuts for stuff like retreat, need help etc. but more applicable to conquest.

Mace 3: should work like warrior mace 5 or torch 5, the leap makes it clunky.

Staff 4: Lower cast time

Sword 4: It has a 1/4s cast time before blocking and is thus rarely interrupted, no other block skill (except dh f3) has a cast time afaik. Should be fixed.

Sword 5: It’s weird but an okay skill. After the minor buffs to it I highly doubt they’d consider a rework.But if it was on the table i’d say either make it a ranged pull like ranger axe/chieftan throw or engi tool kit. Or make it port us back even if it misses, which would boost mobility with about face. Esentially its half phase traversal and would make sense after they increased its energy cost by 75%. Even without a rework, this skill can be of more use to renegade. i.e sword 5 > weapon swap right after shadowstep to cancel pull > shortbow 3 (7x torment) you also now have 600 range between you and the enemy which you otherwise couldnt gain without riposting shadows.

hypehype.9047:

I might be dropping rev due to the new thief spec, it is bad enough they always focus rev for the easy kills but now they have a spec that gives them bonus for tracking players.

and i wonder how renegade’s mobility will be affected without herald? they say elite spec is a different way of playing a class, that may be ture for the other professions, but it is certainly not for rev, no good rev build does not have glint in use due to its low cost energy skills and boons.

this expansion could be the final update that kills rev.

You have to remember nothing is set in stone, many skills were reworked/nerfed/buffed from HoT beta to till its launch. However post HoT balance was very infrequent and I hope they don’t make that same mistake again.

Also, people seem to have a hard time wrapping their heads around the fact that not every spec is suitable for every area. Kalla is clearly a pve legend. Shortbow also lacks the elements to make it great for pvp. Any meta ranged weapon has some sort of skill that helps kiting (evade / soft cc). We havent seen the traits yet but so far the spec offers:
No mobility, condi cleanse, stability, stunbreak (except heal). But that is fine, because if it did it would invalidate herald and once again people would complain. Assuming the traits will be decent you can still make a shortbow build with mallyx and shiro.

Kratosz streams PvP quite often, you can also find his past broadcasts on the channel
https://www.twitch.tv/xkratosz

Supreme.3164:

akaCryptic.2389:

I don’t think any class is borderline OP or UP. I liked the balance this season, removing passive traits and minor nerfs to reduce powercreep should suffice.

Warrior: Reduce adrenal health by 20%. Increase the healing power scaling by 30%. Make primal bursts trigger 2 bars of adrenaline instead of 3. Remove 1 condi from mace primal burst.

Guardian: Make F1 pull not pierce. Reduce passive and active burn duration from DH F1 by 15%.

Revenant: Make cleanse on legend swap remove 2 condis instead of 1. Reduce staff 4 cast time by half second. Increase damage on staff 2 chain skill by 20%. Reduce shiro heal cooldown from 30 to 25. Nerf sword autoattack by 5%. Reduce sword 2 cooldown by 1 second.

Thief: Make pulmonary impact blockable and dodgable.

Elementalist: Increase burning duration of dagger fire skills.

Engineer: Increase the cooldown of bunker down trait by 1 second. Not a balance change but add AoE circle to acid bomb.

Mesmer: Increase the cooldown of distortion by 5 seconds. Buff staff 3 by making it damage point blank aoe on target like engi pistol auto. Fix sword 2 stowing exploit.

Necro: Seems fine, maybe minor cooldown increases while adding some boons.

Ranger: Seems fine. Perhaps lower the boon duration on shouts.

Elementalist: Increase burning duration of dagger fire skills.

C’mon man! you didn’t even try, may as well not suggest anything XD

I really like how things are except the passives. Anet is happy with powercreep spam meta as well. I’m just being realistic here. Anet wont make eles a DPS class all of a sudden, at least not until the next expansion.

They just need to tone down the uptime (cooldown or duration). All the excessive CC came in after HoT.

Ex 1: Pre HoT meta ele had 1 shocking aura on a 25s (?) cd. Now meta ele has up to 15 with sharing, from 3 different sources.

Ex 2: Guard hammer 5 was a simple but strong skill when used correctly. Now guard has the same skill with 4 more rings from 1200 ranged with damage?

Ex 3: Berserker mace burst. It is just as bad as revenant staff 5 pre nerf. It is packed with 4 conditions, high damage, blast finisher and daze on a 3s CD? Okay.

+ to the top and hopefully stickied.

I just wish it was made after the season ended, was really looking forward to finally make a team.

As beat said, decay increases your volatility so you can also lose more as well like -40. They should remove this, it’s how some people (like me) managed to surpass their true MMR. Sure I also could have lost more, but got lucky with a 6 winstreak & 1 loss. +5 points became +20 while -25 loss only became -35. Obviously my data is limited but you get the picture.

Crinn.7864:

akaCryptic.2389:

Crinn.7864:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

345 games and lost 68

A 83% winrate means there is some sketchy bullkitten going on.

No, nothing is going on. He is one of the best in the game and Duo queues with the best. It’s expected and balanced out by their rating gains (+1 / +5) and losses (-20 / -35).

It would be sketchy bullkitten if some nonamer with 20-1 score was #1.

83% winrate means that the matchmaker is failing.

Likely he isn’t getting the matchups he should be getting because of the low queueing population on EU, which leads to runaway rating inflation due to the MM not being able to find him proper opponents.

That is correct. Population not big enough. Queue time could be probably longer to seek better matches. But in addition to this, ability to Duo Q is also a contributor to that 83%.

Crinn.7864:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

345 games and lost 68

A 83% winrate means there is some sketchy bullkitten going on.

No, nothing is going on. He is one of the best in the game and Duo queues with the best. It’s expected and balanced out by their rating gains (+1 / +5) and losses (-20 / -35).

It would be sketchy bullkitten if some nonamer with 20-1 score was #1.

skylink.4972:

10 games in a row i get 2 – 3 thieves + rev + w/e(doesnt matter anymore right?) while enemy team got perfectly META team. Why is the matchmaking like this?

Because the algorithm doesn’t care about your class, if it did queue times would be huge and it would be way too restrictive. People should be rerolling when needed and multiclassing should be encouraged.

Would also like to have an explanation why i dropped from rank 110 to gold 3 after 12 lose streak while 80% of matches are 500-100/200.

Too many possibilities, your skill level definitely hasn’t changed that quickly. Most would just explain it by “luck”. I do think it is harder to climb now though since legendaries s(m)urf in plat waters.

Why does your amazing matchmaking code think I can beat someone 550 rating above me?

The algorithm is limited by the population. If I am queuing and there is nobody is queuing from top 250, it will match me against the next best players. The rating gain/loss sort of tries to balance this (i.e if I beat low plats i get +4, if i lose -30, vice versa for the opponent). I do believe that the queue times can be increased in favor of better matches.

Why are top players not playing between themselves? Why are they more likely to get placed in the same team vs full gold/low plat team?

They ARE playing between themselves if they queue simultaneously. The second answer for your question is basic statistics and probability. 50 people in legend, 500 people in plat. Matchmaking suffers from lack of population once again.

Are you seriously rewarding pve players in pvp mode more than pvp players?

This is indeed amusing. The real pvp’ers don’t care much, if at all about the ascended. It did serve a purposes though:
Encourage PvX ers to spend more time in pvp, this would reflect on their data as “Season 5 has seen a 200% higher participation compared to S4”. So they can make things seem better, how the “competitive scene” is getting bigger.

I believe S5 has overall been successful although there has to many adjustments.

To be honest duels these days take way too long especially when players make next to no mistakes and kite by doing jumping puzzles. It is not hard to stalemate against meta ele engi ranger warr guard. Mesmer will beat you, thief and necro rarely pick duels, you will lose most.

It means those classes are where they want them to be. 3/9 balance achieved kappa.

Im guessing this is NA? Also keep in mind some are alt accounts.

In EU there are around 50 in legendary. Personally I don’t think it is too small. The number will probably increase too.

Sagei.1980:

I already reported an abusable 100% crit rate, does this needs to be put here too?

What do you mean? Taking invocation traitline gets you to +90% crit which is not a bug.

On the other hand I’m still amazed at how many bugs remain. My personal top 3 most hated are:

Sword #3 randomly failing without providing evade frame and going on cooldown
Shiro Teleport randomly failing while consuming energy and going on cooldown
Shiro stunbreaking with delay while taunted

Exedore.6320:

The argument for solo queue is basically this: “I want to win, but I don’t want to coordinate or use teamwork in a team game.” If you don’t play to win, then don’t cry about losing to someone who does.

• If your team comp isn’t good, then switch or ask someone else to switch! Group queues have players who already bit the bullet and played something to help the team even if it wasn’t their first choice.
• Know your role. If you’re not good at solo fights, don’t run out solo. If you’re a support, stay glued to someone who needs it. If you’re a thief, don’t try to take every 1v1; only take the ones you know you can win. If you’re not fast out of the gate with good sustain, don’t push far alone at the start.
• Focus/assist, chat, map pings, and basic map awareness are all tools you can use. If your team is staggered, call it out. Call incoming with numbers or ping before the fight starts. Coordinating before the match starts helps a ton. I rarely see PUG teams do any of this. In my experience, voice comm doesn’t improve this for most group queues (coordination in-game is not strong enough); they’re just not shy about communicating.

That’s all good but ranked is supposed to represent skill while the social aspect is only secondary. Voice comm is esentially a huge advantage.

One solution that wouldn’t kitten off both sides would be to have the same number of duo Qs on each team. So 2 2 1 vs 2 2 1 would be fine whereas 2 1 1 1 vs 1 1 1 1 1 is not fair.

Is it to much different than a 3 man team? Might as well make it a pure solo Q cause this half measure still benefits people that pair up.

I haven’t posted here in a month! Just finished editing this and I know some of you will enjoy it.

https://youtu.be/8vIsbFLzLFU

I know the topic will come up eventually so I will keep it short. Don’t worry about the nerfs, rev won’t be underpowered. It will just require more effort.

Rukia.9860:

Doesn’t compare to my hidden trapper thief build, I 100-0 full teams all day br0 trust me I aint a doctor but I play 1 on tv.

Found Dr. Drake Ramoray

The meta build may not suit your play style and is there for a reason. It fares well in most situations compared to other variatons like retri power or condi hybrid. In the long run it would be in your best interest to get used to kiting, rotating blocks and evades while having one finger on stunbreak at all times.

When fighting against (condi warriors) you have to watch out for a few things.

1) Under their health bar you can see when they are in berserk mode. They will also be lit on fire when its active. This is when you want to be very careful as one mace burst will make you waste a lot of cooldowns. It has an obvious animation though. They also have a trait that ignores the killing blow in berserk mode and healing them instead so if you can, wait till they are out of it before finishing them.

2) Watch their weapons. When they are on longbow you can be very aggressive as the only lethal skill is #5 and they have to burn big cooldowns if they want to mitigate your damage. While they are on mace shield, they can block some of your damage while posing huge threat in form of stuns and condis if you are in melee range. You want to kite and use your ranged abilities from 300-600 distance. Look out for their shield block so you don’t waste your sword burst to give them might.

3) Watch their UI for stances. They may have resistance which will render your blind useless. They may have endure pain up which will ignore all your damage except for lifesteal (devastation GM or shiro heal) and burning from facet of elements. Just kite out or CC during this time. The first time you get them to 50% hp this will automatically trigger so expecting that, don’T blow everything at start. Knowledge is power my friend!

My axe and shield are usually on my warrior and I’m lazy to fetch them.

Ragion.2831:

That being said, all were 1v1 situations which isnt realistic either. A thief can jump from one point to another quick enough to +1 unseen and leave whenever it wants.

A 1v2 against good opponents will basically be cycling blocks and evades with occasional burst attempts and revealing. Not much point in commenting on such footage. It’s true that fair fights don’t always happen in spvp, but there is wvw and dueling servers as well. In any case it’s good to be prepared.

Finally had the time to make this vid after the mesmer one was well received. It’s a comprehensive guide covering counterplay possibilities from both thief and revenant perspectives & gameplay with commentary. If you got questions don’t hesitate to ask here or on youtube.

More or less https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/228799/threat_meter_template.png

When coupled with retribution, yes it will give stability given the internal cooldown is ready. Though it isn’t as useful as one might think because you still won’t be able to get out of rings like guard hammer #5, longbow #5 or static field, unless you evade some other attack before you pass the line. Not so rewarding for fast reflexes.

Cecilia.5179:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

I am testing a Corruption/Devastation/Herald Toaming build using Sw/Sw with Mallyx and Glint, slowly piecing the gear together using Mara and Commanders

Sounds like it has 1 stunbreak. Not sure it will fare well.

I was gonna say this as well. The build will still struggle in a 3v3 scenario while having poor mobility. Retribution grandmasters are all pretty crap right now, but the stability nerf was needed and it wasn’t over the top, here’s why:

In the past, only a dodge roll could proc this trait, meaning that there were cases in which you were heavily focused and had to double dodge which meant less stability uptime. However now it’s on “evade” so skills like shiro stunbreak, sword 3, staff 5, hammer 3 can trigger it as well. That said, an ideal condi setup in my eyes would include sword axe + mace shield/sword, herald corruption retribution, glint mallyx. Axe will somewhat compensate for the lack of shiro. Now, invo devas zerker rev is still superior, but condi may shine in the future with the right buffs to mallyx and retribution GMs.

P.S: new vid #5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZvCnO4w9RE (:

Even before the nerfs, hammer wasn’t meta in pvp. Not cause it lacked damage, but for a ranged weapon rev had limited kiting ability. All the projectile hate didn’t help either. I suppose making shiro teleport ground targeted would help hammer indirectly. Though it would need some minor nerf such as increased cast time or cooldown.

Boon duration, shiro heal, and stabilty nerfs were all fair. Retribution is still alright but all the grandmaster traits are awful. I’m just surprised they fixed 0 bugs. Like you “fix” shocking aura interaction with unrelenting assault which to be fair was proper counterplay. But refuse to even acknowledge the 6x confusion proc??? Even a lazy solution would have been fine like gain 1s of resistance. It will still be my main, but I’ll play more warrior and thief for a while.

They root you if they hit when you are stunned. If you are running retribution keep an eye on your stability to lower your chances of getting rooted. If not, then you must react fast to any cc by using a stunbreak. When you are on shiro, to play safe don’t drop your energy below 25% until your legend swap is ready. That way you will always have a stunbreak ready. Don’t forget, rev has a really high uptime on evades/blocks, if you die prematurely from a non-condi source, it means you misrotated. Takes a bit of time to get used to all the micromanaging.

ryandeniszorro.6735:

This is all great , but, how the hell u can deal with condi heavy opponents ? Main reason i completely left reve out of my roaming sessions, is coz its unable to parry classes like condi thief or condi mesmer.

cheers

Gonna quote myself:

" It’s weak against condis and that is what makes power rev balanced as opposed to OP. Only cleanses are legend swap and staff 4 which have 10-15s cooldowns. Sometimes i run saffron bread (-20% condi duration) and in pvp I mostly run rune of leadership. In wvw one can also run hoelbrak or melandru runes for -40% incoming condi duration.
I get completely rekt by condi mesmers, with condi necro, condi warr and condi thief it can go either way but they do have an advantage. Best you can do is cycle blocks and evades to not get hit in the first place. I actually fight quite a few condi tanks in my first roaming video but its not as entertaining to watch as fights take long. The most watched videos are glass cannons, especially montages like thieves 1-shotting people."

To add to this, I made a vid on how to duel against mesmers which includes some tips other than “use your cleanse wisely”. You’ll still lose most fights though, no build should be unstoppable.

Not a bug, many profession skills look different while moving.
see: asura ele dagger fire #2

Well for leveling anything works but if you want to put out most damage:

Get a main hand sword + off hand axe
Second set could be staff (just another melee) or hammer which i would recommend (aoe + range)

Unlock shiro and then dwarf. Shiro has quickness+superspeed and a teleport while dwarf has a lightning combo field which u can use a blast finisher to gain swiftness.

For traits unlock invocation and devastation first.

And obviously stats are power precision ferocity in that order of importance. Again, you can play a healer condi tank as well but this setup kills stuff faster if thats what u want.

Rev has decent pve dps but its unique contribution comes with herald elite spec in terms of boons. Though anet likes to balance things every few months so it can get weaker or stronger.

rchu.8945:

great video, awesome skills.

Just curious, is will a sword/shied + staff work with your build? Or sw/sw just give you more offense options?

Yes shield will work as well, simple trade off between CC and sustain. In fact shield is much more common. I like to go more offensive.

Also, just released a new roaming vid, thought you guys would enjoy:

Hesacon.8735:

mental bandwidth

Found my new phrase for “I don’t care”.

About the topic, I think making it aoe would be a good change as axe lacks proper cleave.

Hexinx.1872:

I never understood why the guild hall is so large, like huge…

That reminds me, everyone gets terrible FPS there too compared to non-HoT maps and wvw BLs. But I suppose optimization is a harder issue to solve.

Edit: grammar

It’s been some time since my last post but I didn’t forget your request :P. We all know how difficult it is to handle condi chronos with meta power rev.
The video includes some detailed explanation about rev and mesmer skills as well as duels with commentary. Obviously most of the info on this video can also be applied to dueling other classes as well. Don’t hesitate to ask any questions.

vana.5467:

For folks who want a little more space, we want to let you know that we already have an upgrade for a second, larger arena for bigger battles in the works.

Don’t worry, fam. It’s on the way..

Honestly, even if they fixed up the arena to be OS-equivalent with easy access, I doubt it’d see much use considering how terrible combat is now.

… I agree there are bigger issues like the passive meta, but a different team is in charge of that.

It’s been almost a year and although the arena allows us to fight people from any server, many problems still haven’t been adressed. It would be cool to know if devs are even planning on improving it. Here’s some stuff I’d like to see:

- Bigger arena (80% of OS?)
- Different floor for guilded hollow. It’s too bright and distracting even on low settings
- Retaliation and Confusion values adjusted from pve to pvp
- Fix new instance every 2 minutes (literally takes +10min to get people on same instance)

What else?

musu.9205:

Dirame.8521:

Hehehe, it’s funny how you guys come out of the woodwork after you watch the WTS. Really, Warrior is fine. I believe it was some of you here who said Ele is bad because no team is playing it and all of a sudden Eles were being used in every team in this WTS. Wow, I wonder why… cos they certainly weren’t buffed in any of the recent patches.

So if YOU guys are the ones saying Warrior is bad and needs a buff… yea, I wouldn’t believe you even if you gave me a million pounds.

Thieves don’t need buffing, Warriors don’t need buffing. In fact, if you don’t see a Warrior replace Necros in the next WTSs, I’d be very surprised.

well anet just need to nerf rev , and war and thief will become much more viable .rev is just too good for its damage + mobility + sustain + cc . its like combined s/d thief + hambow .

Exactly this. The community hate nerfs to their class but buffing others is just an arms race at this point. As a rev main, I’d like to see slight nerfs to sustain (block/evade uptime) and boon duration (f2). Unlike thief and warr, revs have terrible condi cleanse so any huge nerfs would destroy the class alltogether.

This would cause some problems for pvp/wvw. Even now revs are one of the strongest professions, such a change would further buff their boon output and sustain considerably. Imagine if thief had its initative pool or regen increased.

A. Yes thief is harder to pull off than other classes.

B. I disagree that meta builds ruin the game. You say its not surprising and therefore boring. But when I encounter some SB + LB ranger in wvw that is using a “creative” build it is not any more entertaining to fight. Weak spec = no challenge = boring. Meta builds will always exist, and you can play its variations to surprise the enemy without hurting your performance. For instance, when roaming i run invoc rev with dual swords and some people I dueled said that they didnt expect sword OH / didnt know animations. Or pvp where I go wanderers ammy and curses instead of carrion spite signets with my necro.

Hopefully the next elite spec will have support talents like this because mobility and support is where necros cannot spec into atm. I like the idea though, creative.

Stability is strong enough, and still has reasonable counterplay unlike last year. The problem is the over abundance of AoE CC. Dazing traps and shocking aura were the biggest offenders but you dont see many eles these days.

When you put it that way, it would indeed hurt the sustain. I still think unavoidable things like this are bad design so I’d be ok with a change. Though if it is nerfed, it would require compensation of some sort (CD, numbers or unblockable).

Anyone keeping count of guard threads?

Just like any other mmo, we also have a “flavor of the month”. While DH is easy to play, overall its not good enough to make it mandatory for ESL teams.

DH can be quite frustrating to fight against of you are a thief or mesmer, and I do think its sustain and cc need a bit shaving. However DH is just another result of HoT powercreep and most classes can be a pain to deal with.