Guild Wars 2

@Henry: agreed on that, I was hoping the same, especially after I believe Grouch had said that a nerf of ~10% was likely. I guess that decision got changed somewhere along the road.

Actually the math regarding percentages above doesn’t give an accurate perspective, because you didn’t calculate in the base level 80 stats. It’s true that Celestial amulet will be buffed, to give an overall 13.14% stat advantage over someone using a 3-stat amulet. However, this an increase of only 1.01% from the 12.13% stat advantage that Celestial has today. This math was done with the assumption that all current trait lines give you 70 stats per point invested (50 + 50, but multiply that by 0.7 because only 7/10 of the stats that trait lines give you are stats that amulets can increase). Full math breakdown below:

Old Formula: Base + Trait + Amulet
Old Base: 916 * 4 = 3664
Old Trait: 70 * 14 = 980
Old 3-Stat Amulets: 3664 + 980 + (932 + 650 + 650) = 6876
Old 4-Stat Amulets: 3664 + 980 + (932 + 650 + 451 + 331) = 6988 (1.63% advantage)
Old Celestial Amulet: 3664 + 980 + (438 * 7) = 7710 (12.13% advantage)

New Formula: Base + Amulet
New Base: 1000 * 4 = 4000
New 3-Stat Amulets: 4000 + (1200 + 900 + 900) = 7000
New 4-Stat Amulets: 4000 + (1050 + 1050 + 560 + 560) = 7220 (3.14% advantage)
New Celestial Amulet: 4000 + (560 * 7) = 7920 (13.14% advantage)

This is actually one of my biggest concerns when it comes to support guard viability in PvP post-patch. If HP pools stay as currently announced, a cleric amulet guardian with Soldier runes will have an HP pool of about 12.5k, which is pretty low and susceptible to being bursted down even with good toughness. Two main solutions that I see would be to distribute the loss in trait line stats to base stats in PvP, giving everyone about 150 more of each Stat or something. That would bring support guard HP up to 14k with Soldier runes, which is still on the low side but bearable. Another option would be to bring back jewels, like someone else had mentioned earlier, and put the lost stats into it. I think this solution would be best since it would give everyone a small amount of additional build customization.

Morf’s right, shout elite = bunker/support gerd. Medi gerd needs RF to survive burst combos.

I guess with this update that it’s also possible there’s some sort of viable symbol support DPS build that uses shouts with 60660 but I doubt it.

00666

/15charrs

Because I’ve played bunker guard since launch and it was top-tier till the cele amulet patch (April 2014, RIP, never forgive, never forget). Go check out old VoDs on twitch/youtube.

It’ll be good in PvP, you’ve got a whole rest of your team for CC and movement-changing effects. Guardian shouts have always been fine in PvP, just overshadowed lately in the meta by other more broken builds.

FMW doesn’t edge out RF, it puts it on a golf tee and knocks it out of the universe. To say 24 second Time Warp + Fury is anywhere remotely close to being fair is a ridiculous statement. We are the new kings of Guild Wars 2, and as the great Duke Nukem once said, “Hail to the king, baby.”

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Keksmuffin.1450:

AH Guardian giving everybody arround him 25 stacks of stability would heal him for like 10k HP. c:

That’s not how AH works, or you’d be getting 15 heals per tick of empower rather than 5.

In other news, that’s actually exactly how AH+Empower works. One heal for ~72HP every stack of Might per person affected.

@Sube Dai Yeah, I was surprised to not see some significant changes to Engi. Still, a step in the right direction at least.

#SHIELDBUFFHYPE

that is all

It’s not true, though. If you play with it for a long time, you would see how powerful it can be, again because of its versatility. Even against the best players in the game, it’s had many uses. People don’t run around with perma-Stab, if you know they’re out you can drop it right on their head for an AoE CC at a critical moment. If you’re running through a chokepoint and you know the guy behind you doesn’t have any ports or stab available, you can block them off from crossing that point of the map for a full 8 seconds, sometimes that’s huge. Sometimes what you really need is the projectile defense to get off a team res. Or sometimes an enemy downstate body throws interrupts with a projectile, so you lay it down right on them to secure the stomp if your stability’s down. At times, all you need is a single tick more to decap or full cap, so you wait till the enemy dodges and you cast Sanct so that it finishes as their dodge ends, and they get tossed off the point for that moment. Other times you get crashed by 2-3 players at once and need to last a few extra seconds while your teammates are finishing rotating to you, and sanct buys you that extra time. Teammate’s getting trained? Drop a Sanct for them and then Empower + Orb of Light + pop it on them for a bunch of healing. I’ve played Guardian for over a year and a half at a high level and I can assure you that Sanctuary is as good as I’m saying, there’s a reason the meta Virtues bunker build had it locked in for all this time.

Also keep in mind, if you’re facing a single enemy with no stab, you don’t want to stand in the middle of the Sanctuary. You stand just inside the back edge of it on the opposite side from them, out of melee range and usually protected from any PBAoEs they can cast (like nades at their feet).

Sanctuary’s actually the best Consecration (still) for PvP in a tanky build. It extends our point presence better than any other skill we have (including our elite). The only two things I’d like to see changed is its radius, from 120 to 180, and for poison grenades and choking gas to be blockable. Otherwise I think the skill is perfectly fine as it is – high cooldown but insanely versatile in how it can be used. Counterplay is possible, but that’s fine considering its power level.

I don’t even think that shout build is the best Warrior build available at the moment, which is why I don’t really want to balance around it. Its damage is really bad, and it dies pretty quickly 1v2. I basically think it’s a consequence of the meta (condis abound, Balanced Stance gets Corrupt Booned) more than a reflection of what the best Warrior build is. Toning down cele and the other meta classes should be enough of a tweak here, I don’t think any class-specific changes are needed.

Rabid engi and carrion necro are about as condi-heavy as you get in this game. I played after the dhuumfire patch so I know what a condi meta is. The meta celestial amulet builds do get a lot of their damage from condi overload. Anyways, just that tweak to that trait won’t ruin ele, so don’t worry. It’d equate to about 1 less cleanse every 30 seconds or something on average, adding a Generosity sigil or Energy sigil to the build would compensate for that and then some. Just making the ele have to choose between defensive and offensive options so they don’t have the current option of “both” is a good thing.

Chaith.8256:

After OP’s nerfs: 3 Shout Warriors per team

Cool, bringing my zerker team! :P

SobeSoul.6910:

cymerdown.4103:

Booms.2594:

That nerf on ele will never happen since renerfing that trait will completely destroy it

Nah I doubt it, they just definitely have a little too much condi clear at the moment. I’d also be fine with them having to lose that trait and take Generosity instead of Doom or something.

Warriors can have more.

So why aren’t people proposing nerfs on their condi clear?

Removing condi clear is the stupidest possible nerf you could propose. Condi meta would be 100x worse than Cele meta.

The shout build is much more defensive than d/d ele, though. A warrior with those traits and soldier runes puts out an extremely low amount of pressure compared to an ele, it’s like comparing apples and oranges to be honest.

We’re already in a condi meta, honestly. The rest of my changes nerf the strongest condi classes, so ele’s clears can also stand a small nerf. It won’t wreck the class.

Booms.2594:

That nerf on ele will never happen since renerfing that trait will completely destroy it

Nah I doubt it, they just definitely have a little too much condi clear at the moment. I’d also be fine with them having to lose that trait and take Generosity instead of Doom or something.

Here’s my suggestions, slightly modified from the other thread (similar in a lot of ways to Tarcis’s suggestions):

General
Amulets
Celestial amulet: -20 to each stat (-140 stats total).
Runes
Nightmare runes – (6) Fear lasts 1s instead of 2s.
Balthazar runes – (6) Cooldown of AoE burn on heal is 30s instead of 10s.
Sigils
Might from Battle Sigil lasts for 15s instead of 20s.
Blast Finishers
Might from Flame Blast finishers last for 15s instead of 20s.

Engineer
Gear shield cd is 25s instead of 20s.
Magnet lines should be visible from stealth if possible.
Slick shoes – utility skill is 60s cd instead of 45, toolbelt skill is 40s instead of 30s.
Poison Grenades are blockable.
Incendiary Powder burning lasts 2s instead of 4s.
Overcharge shot has a tell animation and a cast time of 0.5s instead of instant and the self-cc is reduced in distance and duration by 50% each.
Magnetic Shield lasts 2s instead of 3s.

Elementalist
Lightning whip cannot be cancelled.
Drake’s Breath deals 2s of burning per hit instead of 3s.
Cleansing Water has a cd of 5s instead of 0s.

Necromancer
Reaper’s Protection fear lasts 1s instead of 2s.
Dark Path has a tell animation.
Doom fear lasts 1s regardless of range.

Thief
Choking Gas is blockable.

Guardian
Shield of Absorption can be used while moving and lasts the full duration if not cancelled (4s).

I think the above changes would be a good starting point and see how things go for a few weeks after that. Mesmer and Guardian are pretty close to being viable on a team, just a few taps to the other classes balance-wise would bring them back pretty quickly. It’s clear Ranger needs a little bit of help, but it’s not super clear to me in what way they need it. Something that would help them in a teamfight respect, probably.

@Aeroxe I think ranger is doing ok, they are currently overshadowed by Ele though. If Ele comes down condi Ranger becomes more competitive, entangle just isn’t great against ele and necro. Power ranger is pretty aids in solo queue though when people don’t hunt it actively just like zerk staff ele, I guess we need to decide how many changes should be based off solo q because I think there are worse offenders at the moment in that department (turrets, lich)

I think once Ele is more in line the number of aoe cleanses goes down and ranger viability goes up. Ele might need to lose a little cleansing somewhere, the number of clears proccing from regeneration is high atm.

Here’s my thoughts on current pvp balance:

Engi: Lower sustain a small amount and reduce cc.
Gear shield should be 25s cd.
Magnet lines should be visible from stealth, otherwise it’s a rediculous teamfight initiator vs classes with no ports.
Revert part of the slick shoes buff – utility skill returns to 60s cd, toolbelt becomes 40s.
Poison nades should go back to being blockable/reflectable, even if that would require removing the red circles. They make team ressing and point sustain very aids for guardian atm.
Incendiary Powder should either have a buff proc or lower duration.
Give overcharge shot a tell animation and a cast time of 0.5s and the self-cc is reduced in distance and duration by 50% each.
Shield 4 should reduce duration or increase cooldown, its mobile projectile defense in combination with gear shield is quite a lot of ranged defense on short cds.

Ele: slightly reduce sustain and burning application
Remove the ability to cancel cast lightning whip.
Reduce the burning application of drakes breath (maybe 4x 2s instead of 4x 3s).
Lower cleansing slightly (restore 5s icd to regen cleanse trait?).

Necro: fear spam OP
Reapers Protection and Doom fear durations reduced to 1s.

Overall: Reduce damage from celestial and might stacking
Celestial amulet gives 20 less stat points in each stat.
Flame blast finishers now apply 3 stacks of might aoe for 15s, down from 3 for 20s.
Battle sigil similarly applies its 3 stacks of might for only 15s instead of 20s.
Nightmare runes fear reduced to 1s.
Balth runes lower burning duration boost by 10%.

Pet Guardian requests:
Shield 5 is now mobile like Engi shield 4 and also lasts as long as the tooltip says (4s).
Cool Virtues GM traits!

Kthxbye

Chaith.8256:

cymerdown.4103:

Chaith.8256:

cymerdown.4103:

As for gw2 currently, you can play a melee tanky dps, a ranged tanky dps, or thief (debatable if thief is really better than either of the first two) — you’ve got about 5 builds to choose from and 3 roles.

Dunno.

I see more than 5 builds used between Cheese Mode, TCG, 55HP, The Abjured, and Dodge or Die, formerly the Absurd.

• D/P Thief (DoD, Occasionally CM)
• S/D Thief (TCG, Abjured, 55HP)
• Rifle Engi (CM, Abjured, 55HP, Occasionally TCG)
• Rabid Engi (DoD, Occasionally TCG)
• D/D Ele
• Staff Ele (55HP, but highly questionable.)
• Shoutbow War (DoD, TCG)
• Hambow War (Occasionally CM)
• Condi Necro (Abjured, occasionally TCG)
• Hammer/Scepter Medi Guard (CM, occasionally TCG)
• AH Bunker Guard (TCG, 55HP)
• Shatter Mesmer (55hp, TCG)

Sure, people play a lot of things. I’d argue that many of those aren’t optimal, though.

The sad thing is that the top teams on EU or NA run Ranger approximately never

Only because Genyen retired I guess at a certain point you just become old and washed up… not looking forward to that

Chaith.8256:

cymerdown.4103:

As for gw2 currently, you can play a melee tanky dps, a ranged tanky dps, or thief (debatable if thief is really better than either of the first two) — you’ve got about 5 builds to choose from and 3 roles.

Dunno.

I see more than 5 builds used between Cheese Mode, TCG, 55HP, The Abjured, and Dodge or Die, formerly the Absurd.

• D/P Thief (DoD, Occasionally CM)
• S/D Thief (TCG, Abjured, 55HP)
• Rifle Engi (CM, Abjured, 55HP, Occasionally TCG)
• Rabid Engi (DoD, Occasionally TCG)
• D/D Ele
• Staff Ele (55HP, but highly questionable.)
• Shoutbow War (DoD, TCG)
• Hambow War (Occasionally CM)
• Condi Necro (Abjured, occasionally TCG)
• Hammer/Scepter Medi Guard (CM, occasionally TCG)
• AH Bunker Guard (TCG, 55HP)
• Shatter Mesmer (55hp, TCG)

Sure, people play a lot of things. I’d argue that many of those aren’t optimal, though.

I think the complaints against the meta can be summed up pretty simply: there’s not enough build and role diversity at top tier. The more roles are viable, the bigger of a player base you attract since different people naturally just enjoy playing different builds. The fan base can also be wider, since people will root for the role that they like to watch/play. A lot of spectators get excited over the carries, since they often make the swingiest plays, but others do root for the support or the bruisers. You could also argue that the game becomes more interesting to watch since each player has a more refined role, and the educated spectators will want to see how well each person on their favorite team is performing at that role, rather than watching everyone all performing similar roles.

As for gw2 currently, you can play a melee tanky dps, a ranged tanky dps, or thief (debatable if thief is really better than either of the first two) — you’ve got about 5 builds to choose from and 3 roles. Personally, I only played this game above others because a diversity of builds was not only viable but desirable, and the role I most enjoyed was tank/support. If that stops being a viable option, there’s no need for me to continue playing.

By the way, none of this really diminishes the accomplishments of your team or makes them illegitimate. The five of you are, for sure, some of the best players to play the game, both past and present. Not a single player on the team has a major weakness as a player, you all work well together, and certainly deserve being the best team in the game at the moment. Good players will naturally gravitate towards the best builds, and there isn’t anything wrong about doing that. No need to defend yourselves so adamantly, just enjoy the spotlight and ignore the haters! Best of luck in future tournaments.

@ArthurDent: http://www.twitch.tv/jebrounity/b/595930973

Having played against all these rough boiz at one time or another, I can say for sure that there are some ridiculously good players on both sides. Both comps are fine, although the EU one certainly requires super crisp rotations to pull off. The difference here is that RIP practiced the heck out of themselves and really wanted to win, and they did. Great mechanical players with a bunch of practice equals a formidable opponent indeed. Well played!

I think it shows how tournaments with real prize structures can encourage players in all three regions to start taking things seriously and trying their best.

Grats boiz. Especially Chaith and Toker!

You can just go the meta 21614 build using hammer instead of scepter/focus:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-7s-g;1NFk30G3wF-90;9;494T4J1;309B;118-INW4I;1jzyvjzyv5BI

Or you can go something more synergetic with two-handers:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-7s-g;1NFk30G3wF-90;9;6TJJ;409B28-18-INW4I;1jzyvjzyv5Bu

Check them both out and see which you like best

@Teutos from reading the article, it seems that the system will replace your teammate (or however many from your party decline) with others from the queue as appropriate before the match begins.

Changes look great, only thing I’m a little concerned about is the 0 forgiveness policy as it comes to d/cs midgame. I think it would be best to allot each player a certain amount of disconnect time per game (maybe 1 minute) before they acquire any dishonor. You just really want to punish leavers and afkers, not people that have an honest short disconnect in the middle of the match. Other games manage to handle this gracefully so I’d imagine there’s some type of middle ground that could be reached.

Otherwise, I love the map voting implementation (the fact that it’s not a strict majority vote but instead a weighted random roll was a nice touch) and the per-class MMR. Can’t wait to try it out!

I’d say allowing up to a minute of disconnection per match would be a good starting threshold. Putting this live with absolutely 0 disconnects allowed is going to generate a lot of complaints! I like the ideal you’re going for, though.

It’s nbd, does suck that it’s unblockable but nowhere near as big of a deal for us considering the number of cleanses and invulns and dodges we get

Grats Abjured! Pretty sad that someone needs to be that much of a scumbag over a game tournament, I would have liked to watch those matches. Looking forward to the big showdown in China!

Eurantien.4632:

Acandis.3250:

Eurantien.4632:

How do you rate your shatter mesmer play?

INB4 ZERO GETS CUT

Lol, no Zero is great. He’s just too young.

I like ferox, pretty gr8 m8 8/8.8 nice guy too

Yes he’s got some Hugh shoes to fill but he seems more than Chapable.

So long Jon! Log in sometime and team q again!

Agree, it was gr8 m8. My mesmer will start off on a fresh sl8, guess it was f8. I r8 8/8 cya I’m about to go on a d8 can’t be l8 don’t h8.

Looks like a bugfix in the last patch for Shield of Absorption introduced a new bug: you can no longer access the full 4s duration of the skill. Once the 1.5s channel time ends, so does the dome. Anyone else experiencing this?

Anyone looking into this? I’ll bring it up on spvp forum as well.

Problem with soldier is that it only hurts two rough match ups for you: engi and necro. Need to roll zerker to have chances against these.

Yeah, celestial is probably about 200 total stat points higher than it should be right now. It should be reduced to the point where in the builds where it’s good it shines, but doesn’t push out entire classes from viability that can’t take advantage of the stat combo well. Seems like taking about 25 or 30 points off of each stat would be a good place to start.

It’s not generally going to be better than Purity, a free condition clear every 10s is stronger than it seems, it helps you save shouts for your team. The only time I would consider it is if I was going to use another meditation with the elite, which is pretty rare.

I can confirm that this bug exists, whenever the channel for shield of absorption ends, the bubble disappears instead of staying for the full 4 seconds.

I can say for sure that there are a lot of top players that don’t really take Solo Q seriously. The reason is because it’s hard for some people to take it seriously while also keeping their sanity. If I took every game of Solo Q seriously, the 4v5s, lolskyham and random crazy things other players do would drive me nuts. So instead, I relax about it and just play whatever build I feel like playing in it. Sometimes they’re good builds, sometimes they’re just things I’m trying out, and sometimes they are the worst yolo builds you’ve ever seen. A lot of other good players I know do the same, so you really can’t judge anything by someone’s Solo Q record, not to mention the crazy RNG team assignments. Lastly, some strategies that are cheesy work really well in Solo Q that don’t take a ton of skill, like being super tanky and pushing far, or running glassy AoE builds like power necro and glass staff ele. Some players run these strategies in Solo Q because it works well there, but it’s not very indicative of actual player skill and does not really work at all in serious Team Q games.

Pretty much was going to say the same as Harbinger but less eloquently. Zerker builds in general have a high learning curve, but it’s really the only way to be somewhat viable on dps guardian at the moment, we just have no support conditions to back up our great burning uptime. Every celestial build I’ve tried just falls short in some fashion compared to celestial builds in other classes like ele. Soldier damage is just too slow against condition builds. So zerker it is.

I recommend not reinventing the wheel while you’re learning, just pick a meta build and learn general pvp play till you are very sound on the basics, only then should you try making your own builds work. You’ll have a much better vantage point on the game by then and can make better judgments as to what’s good and what’s just terrible traitwise. Guardian in particular has quite a few useless traits and skills that aren’t really even in consideration when it comes to pvp (sup signets) and you will discover that as you go. Keep practicing and don’t give up! Good luck.

Top 3 Olruns NA:

1. Olruns bunker warrior
2. Olruns killshot warrior
3. Olruns MM necro
Coming soon: Olruns power ranger

Haha, well played my son

Lol, too many things wrong with this list, never mind the rating but the way you talk about strengths and weaknesses is inaccurate. If we use stats, you could think of it as there being DEX INT WIS and CHR. Dexterity = mechanics, INT = decision making and awareness, WIS = game knowledge and the application of it, CHR = team communication and leadership. Making clutch plays for example is just a combination of mechanics and decision making, with sometimes game knowledge or team communication coming in to play. Based on your stats, I would say your analysis of the player strengths are inaccurate for a lot of those players. Ordering is of course extremely subjective and prone to personal bias, so no point in arguing it other than saying I disagree on many fronts.

Yeah dude, that’s a pretty massive nerf to shield in PvP. Pretty sad day for shield guardians, hope it receives some love soon

Keksmuffin.1450:

People should stop bringing up the argument that every class could use Nightmare Runes. Other classes don’t have Terror and Terror Master which makes the fear-proc way stronger than on any other class apart from condi war with Distracting Strikes maybe.

Apart from that necro is far from being op. The passive fear-procs that people keep bringing up are gimmicks at best.

When I’m playing against these kind of necros the Nightmare Rune usually procs on the first Smite hit or something fearing me out of the necromancers range meaning that it’s just arround 2k free damage on 90s cooldown if I don’t just cleanse it with smite condi.

Reapers Protection doesn’t have the biggest range, I can usually pull them from max range and I’m not getting feared or I just insta cleanse/stunbreak it and burst them anyways.

Both of these procs are just one trick ponies on huge cooldowns that aren’t even doing that much most of the times. The only class I really see getting wrecked by these procs is thief, now that everybody is playing trickery steal which procs reapers prot and they don’t use much cleanse anymore. Most decent builds have tools to deal with these kind of necros tbh.

The biggest problem I see with this build is that fear is basically a must-cleanse condi. With the two passive fears on top of the two on-demand fears and corrupt boon, it adds up to the necro having 4-5 must-cleanse long CCs that they can put out in a 1v1, which overloads the condi clears of the vast majority of builds. Any trait that can automatically CC an opponent for 3.5s and deal them 3k damage is pretty strong indeed.

Good ideas, Rar. Wakkey didn’t raise no dummy. Seriously though, those small changes would add a lot more play to the Greatsword in PvP for expert players. As it stands, greatsword movements are pretty heavy-feeling and committal, which might be an intentional thing from the developers, but certainly hampers the viability of the weapon in top level play.