Guild Wars 2

Well maybe I’m not crazy then. I’m just trying to be reasonable here and I understand that 1 or even 100 people whining on the forums about their loss streaks isn’t much of a sample. But I’ve played PvP long enough to know something just feels off (more than usual at least…), so I was looking for maybe a dev to comment on this?

I’m not here to cry about the matchmaking, I’m just legitimately curious. I’ve been playing PvP for years, placed first on leaderboards, soloq to legend, played small tournaments, kept a pretty solid 65-70% winrate etc. I took a break for several months so I’m not saying I’m in top shape or anything, but I know what I’m doing. I went 6-4 in my placements, placed gold. I thought whatever I’ll just play for fun and rank up, but I can’t even win a single game. Most of the games I get are complete blowouts and I’m just really confused at this point. I don’t care if the people in my games aren’t good, I don’t care about my rank, but the other team just seems better enough that my teammates honestly can’t last more than 20 seconds in a fight. I’m just asking for fun, close games, that’s all. Is it possible to get some help on this? If you tell me that everything is working as intended, then fine. I’ve just never seen it this bad and I’m a bit perplexed.

SPESHAL.9106:

Josh Davis.6015:

We probably wouldn’t run a premade-only arena at the same time as there’s not enough 5-mans actively q’ing during a season to make the queue times reasonable.

Maybe it’s just me using common sense, but doesn’t this tell you something???

It’s also funny that you used the word “arena” in your reply.

Why design a 5 man conquest type league for ranking players if you can’t get enough 5 man premades? Why not design an arena style for 2-3 man groups? Why is the number 5 sacred for conquest? Why is conquest sacred?

What more evidence is necessary for something to change? Don’t you have enough information that shows getting 5 people premades to play conquest doesn’t work???

Whoever thought mixing premades and solo players would force more people into premades didn’t think things through. It may have empirically increased the number of PuG premades, but it doesn’t improve the game. In fact, it’s made things worse because the algorithm can’t account for the large delta in quality of premades now.

Again, it just seems like common sense. You want people to play 5v5 conquest, but you have tons of evidence showing that there aren’t enough people interested in grouping with 5 others (WoW also had tons of evidence for many years you could leverage too).

Instead of fixing that aspect, you decide to mix premades with solo players. This has created misery for solo players…super easy wins for experienced/synergized profession premades on TS…and made matchmaking impossible for an algorithm to handle.

You can keep fighting logic and shuffling matchmaking algorithms from each season all you want. As we’ve see for 4 seasons now, it’s not materially improving anything.

I really wish when they announced Stronghold that it was going to be a 3v3 game mode. I don’t think conquest as it is now would work in 3v3, but I agree that having a good 3v3 mode is one of the best solutions to revitalize the game in my mind.

I’m very curious as to why my win rate dropped almost 20% this season. I’m not the most recognizable player sure, but I’ve played PvP for years, participated in minor tourneys and soloqed to legend in season 1. I’ve consistently maintained a high win rate of at least ~60%+ in ranked queues for almost 2 years, getting matched with and against the top players. I’m probably in the 1% skill group. Now why is my win rate close to 50% this season? Surely there is some kind of mechanism punishing me/players like me? I’m not getting matched with/vs particularly skilled players or anything. I’m legitimately trying to understand, maybe I’m actually not very good and completely delusional? I just think that’s less likely when the difference is that big.

I still play warrior .__.

But everyone knows wilson is by far the best warrior of course.

Warlord.9074:

I take Discipline becasue 4 of my skills remove immobilize, clearing blind + 1 condi on swap is strong. I bet you didn’t know that Brawlers recovery always clears blind. Gaining adrinaline on swap and not losing all of your adrinaline when you land or miss a burst is pretty huge.

Unless u are blowing all of your skills on each set before each swap than you have a point. I never play like that. I will use maybe 1-2 skills on a weapon set then swap.

Yes, but I still think you are losing a very significant amount of condi pressure with the extra confusion, bleeds and weakness. The only thing that I truly miss from Discipline is Warrior’s Sprint. Everything else you can make up for with good gameplay.

I agree with most of the build, but I still don’t understand why Fast Hands is necessary at all. You don’t need to have 5 sec weapon swap for this build to work. I think going Strength instead of Discipline is overall preferable and gives you way more condi pressure. Using the right weapon set at the right time is part of predicting what your opponent is going to do. Here are counters to some of your arguments:

You take Discipline because…

-More survivability through weapon skills: Most of them are too high cooldown for 5 sec weapon swap to make a difference, only exception imo being Savage Leap + Warrior’s Sprint. This can be solved by more intelligent weapon swapping and prediction of your opponent.

-More survivability through Cleansing Ire and more burst spam: I take torch off hand to more reliably cleanse 2 condis while at the same time add more condi pressure through more access to burning (and fire aura).

Strength also offers survivability:

-Half a dodge gained on burst use
-Access to pretty good weakness uptime through Body Blow to negate burst builds
-Access to potentially a lot of confusion stacks which forces your opponent to not press buttons

In conclusion I think Strength wins by a little because the survivability trade is fairly equal yet you gain very substential condi pressure.

This is the build I go with now:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQRAsf5enMdAVhgdhAukCEliFjA7t4ucjuGBgNYODZEsC+AA-TphAAB6XGYjDCAAPAADOCAccCAIc/BA

-Torch gives you access to burning out of Berserk
-Shattering Blow gives you access to a low cooldown block when in sword/torch and it also fills up 1 bar of adrenaline so you can do combos like Head Butt > Berserk > Skulls Grinder > Shattering Blow > Switch to sword > Flaming Furry > auto attack bleed stacks for massive pressure.
-Traveler’s Rune compensate for the lack of Warrior’s Sprint and gives you 10% condi duration for all condis, not just bleeding.

Warlord.9074:

fixed for you. this build is viable. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQRApe8cnMdAVhgdhAmkCElilqADpA0ACAK9gYXO4d02antA-TphAABc8AAM4EAAwBBQ/yA8s/wGHBAA

Trying to make hammer work in a condi build is a waste of time. You are better off with sword/sword instead of hammer. You get a third block, torment, a 4th block flaming fury, burn dammage and bleeds, immob and better cripple spam.

Use Krait runes. It helps the sword and gives you more poison uptime and condition cover. You don’t need distracting stikes to make a condi build work and its weaker, sustain not taking discipline. Berskerspec simply doesnt work without fast hands.

I actually disagree that Fast Hands is 100% necessary for mace/shield + sword/torch or sword. It’s not a weapon switch combo dependent build, both weapon sets are perfectly good on their own.

This is what I’ve been using for ~60+ games: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQRAsf5enMdAVhgdhAukCEliFjA7t4ucjuGBgNYODZEsC+AA-TphAAB6XGgw9HM4IAAwDAYjDCAHnAAA

The only thing I miss from discipline with this build is Warrior’s Sprint because getting immobilized can kitten you over (and I guess Burst Mastery would be nice too), but I have very little need for Fast Hands. I do feel the need to take Traveler’s Runes to make up for the movement speed loss too, but you gain more condi pressure by going Distracting Strikes + Body Blow anyways.

I’ve tried to come up with like 10 different builds this patch, one of which is just about what you have here. The problem really comes down to having to sacrifice too much by ditching either defense or discipline. No matter what I would come up with, I’d have to come back to defense/discipline/berserker.

Now that’s just speaking of traits. Another big issue with warrior right now is sustain, and when you play a damage over time build and you lack sustain, it’s hard to actually win any fights when your stances get kited so easily. I tried condi shouts thinking it could solve the problem, but I’d still have very subpar sustain. Also there’s just no good amulet to make it work I think.

This is the most effective build I could come up with that would somewhat hold up against good players/some classes (mercenary amulet).
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAT8fnMdAdhgVhAukCElilqA7902antK9gYXOAZx1ACAA-TpBHwAFeAAE3fQwBBAwRAIwFAAZZAA

It’s just about trying to spam Combustive Shot on point, spaming fire aura, lock down an enemy with like Pin Down/Flurry > Head Butt > Flaming Furry and stacking bleeds faster with sword AA for super strong condi burst. It’s just really difficult to make it work against players who are on top of their condi cleanse since you don’t have many other condis to cover your burns and bleeds.

If they finally decide to make Fast Hands baseline, I think sword/torch+mace/shield condi build could work pretty well, but again, you just can’t justify not going defense and discipline.

Warrior doesn’t need as much as people think. It just fell behind because its mechanics can’t keep up with all the buffs and changes to other classes. A lot more classes have access to stealth, stability, chill, blocks, blinds etc… all things that make a warrior’s life miserable.

I think the adrenaline mechanic is just a bit backwards since berserker was introduced. It’s used for too many things for being our only class resource. There’s also the problem of: need to build adrenaline by hitting > all classes have too much kiting > can’t build adrenaline.

In my opinion, those are the changes I’d like to see:

-Defense trait line needs a rework to give us other types of sustain.

-Fast Hands needs to be base so we don’t have to go in Discipline 99% of the time.

-Adrenaline needs to build on getting hit as well, not just with Cleansing Ire, which would help with warrior being too easy to kite.

-Either Berserker Mode needs a rework to not be so taxing on adrenaline, or our class needs to not get punished so hard for using our adrenaline because of things like Adrenal Health.

-We need more skills that give us indirect sustain like blocks and not just raw regeneration that is easily countered by burst damage and poison.

-We need some boon stripping somewhere in our weapon skills or burst skills (torch maybe?) because some boons hard counter us too much (like the ridiculous abundance of stability when warrior is supposed to be the king of hard crowd control).

In summary, warrior is too all-in in general. We have to rely on landing a few skills perfectly through all the blinding, stability, weakness, blocks, chill, teleports, stealth, etc.. spam. All we have is Berserker Stance and Endure Pain. If you fail to do enough work during that ~8 second window you activate your stances, you have 0 ability to reset because all we have is raw regeneration. It doesn’t help that our only gap closer that works as intended is Savage Leap, all the others are either really hard to land when getting kited and with latency (Sundering Leap) or literally go the opposite way of your target (Rush, Bull’s Charge). Berserker mode is a pretty lazy design and punishes us more than rewards us for using it. I think it needs a rework along with how adrenaline works in general. Most of the changes from last patch were just either adding numbers to our current skills or reducing some cooldowns. There was not a single change that addressed the real problems warrior suffer from. My guess is because they changed so much about the core game that it wouldn’t have been a good decision to also rework warrior. But I hope they are looking into this for future patches.

If you are condi, it does a ton of damage if you land it all after a Head Butt, or like Flurry > Head Butt > Berserker > Flaming Furry. The fact that it doesn’t track well (like every warrior gap closer) really sucks. We already lack range counter pressure which is one of the big problems with warrior.

Forcing your game to be an esport on release is a terrible decision 99% of the time. It doesn’t work. Forcing your MMO to be an esport on release is even worse because PvP is basically a game within a game and it’s way more obscure.

Now you know what’s even more stupid? Forcing your MMO with absolutely no infrastructure to support a competitive community to be an esport on release. Now that’s kittening stupid.

Shoutheal shows promise now with the new amulets. I think you could probably run more damage runes like Hoelbrak. Also I strongly disagree with your sigils. I would take intelligence on axe and either doom or paralyzation or impact, and I’d put a hydromancy sigil on the greatsword.

When you stun yourself with Head Butt, it doesn’t trigger the Last Stand trait. Is this intended?

SlayerSixx.5763:

Balthalzar.6243:

IMO warrior will be alot better since it wont be such a bunker meta you know.

Funny, this is. People forgot that warrior never had issues with DPS in the first place. The bunker nerf and slight sustain boost sounds like it’d be enough to have warriors at least enjoy non-comp play, but they did say there was more to come.

That’s true. Warrior’s damage accross the board is on the higher end, and one reason why they used to be so good is that they could pair high damage with high CC. But other classes just got better and better and warrior never actually got anything new, to the point where other classes now do what warrior used to do but better. So warrior hasn’t been able to keep up at all.

ZilentNight.5089:

eksn.7264:

ZilentNight.5089:

Also the patch notes, that state you must complete “League Champion” is wrong and the title is not automatically awarded if you had already completed it prior to the patch.

Isn’t League Champion basically just crossing to Diamond?

To Complete League Champion you have to complete Legend once, i.e. gain all pips in legend and cross into Legend x2.

However, I think that may have not been the true intent, my guess is that Devs wanted players to get this title as soon as they reached legend Division, meaning they completed Diamond.

In order to complete it in 1 season you mean? Does that imply that Primordial Legend is a season 1 only achievement?

ZilentNight.5089:

Also the patch notes, that state you must complete “League Champion” is wrong and the title is not automatically awarded if you had already completed it prior to the patch.

Isn’t League Champion basically just crossing to Diamond?

Shovel Face.4512:

I highly doubt anyone has gotten to diamond by solo Q. It is just thoeorietically impossible. No matter how good you are, the matchmaking system will pair u with crap players. And I’ll make this abundantly clear, NO ONE IS GOOD ENOUGH TO CARRY A BAD TEAM. No one. I don’t care how good you are, when you’re in Ruby, THEY WILL PAIR U WITH CRAP PLAYERS. All the diamond players I know say it is impossible to get out of Ruby solo Q and that they usually had to duo or trio Q. Just throwin this out there.

This is stupid. I just came back last week after a 3 month break and I’ve been cruising through ruby purely soloqing with over 64% winrate. I’m 1 tier away from diamond with around 130 games played: http://www.gw2score.com/PvP/player/eksn7264

Yeah PvP isn’t very fun right now, yeah you run into premades, yeah the system can be gamed. But if you can’t soloq to diamond it’s just a learn to play issue.

Beserker has pros and cons, but I think other specialization have even more things that just happen to make warrior’s life more difficult than before. Reaper with tons of chills, chronomancer with slows, revenant with displacements, the list goes on. When you add all of those together in a fight, warrior gets absolutely kitten on.

Conclusion: warrior doesn’t work at all at the moment no matter how good a beserker build could be on paper or work against bad players. Don’t play warrior.

BlackTruth.6813:

Elegie.3620:

Aside from using it with a control skill or in cleaving down players, I also use it in double exchanges, against classes that have long bursts (e.g. GS guardian, Whirling thieves, other GS warriors…) – making sure Endure Pain or Rousing Resilience is up before the exchange.

We have a winner. Here’s one guy who ACTUALLY has an idea on how to land hits without CC.

Obviously depending on when you use it, HB with no CC can be used to bait dodges. If they dodge HB then you can land something else right during the time period where they are recovering the next endurance dodge.

Exactly that. I do it a few times in this old fight, even if I’m using mace/shield, I HB more often just to challenge his space, wait for him to commit to a Rush at the end, THEN do the actual Skull Crack combo: https://youtu.be/mK4HMnKlt30?t=179

Ele still better

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Sorel.4870:

As it was stated before, I think every profession is in a good place, with one particular ele build being over-performing and ranger still being a bit lackluster in team fights. If I had to rank the professions, I’d say the following:

1) Elementalist
2) Necromancer, Mesmer, Guardian, Thief
3) Warrior, Engineer
4) Ranger

Notice that every profession but ranger sees a lot of use in major tournaments. Anet: fix dd ele, give ranger a valuable, skillful team fight mechanic, and you’ll achieve your best balance so far.

I’d say this is probably the most accurate list. The balance right now is probably the best the game has ever seen, but Eles and Rangers are outliers. D/D Celementalist needs some toning down (in what specifically is a much trickier question, though) and Ranger needs a real teamfight presence. With cleanse spamming, sorry, but Entangle just doesn’t cut it.

I agree with this list as well, but I think the celestial meta was overall more balanced even if it wasn’t for the right reasons.

You can also sheath cancel the after cast of Mind Stab to recover faster.

I don’t think it would be nearly as bad as you think. I might’ve lowballed the cooldown by 5 or 10s though.

We’re in the same situation we were in before the cele meta, except it’s worse because other classes just got the better end of the buffs and changes. Before the cele meta, warrior was the king of point control with hambow, but now that cele eles are a thing, hambow just can’t compete (especially if you have to contest that point vs a cele ele, gl).

As it is now, warrior gets kited more than ever. We rely entirely on Beserker Stance to do anything at all. We had our 1 week of glory where people didn’t know how to deal with Rampage, but now you’re lucky if you get 1-2 good Rampages off per game. You’ll spend most of your games trying to clear blinds off of you.

The only way to make warrior not kitten that I can think of (short of a complete revamp of its mechanics), is to make warrior the class that makes it difficult for people to get away. That could solve 2 problems: warrior won’t just get kited to kitten and it would actually fill a roll that no class can do right now.

Imagine if we had access to things like: boon strip, taunt (warrior desperately needs taunt), super speed, aoe soft cc, true range hard cc, reveal (although this can be achieved through taunt), warrior would actually be a threat.

I think a lot of our skills need a revamp. Things like:

Beserker Stance (30s CD)
Stance. Gain super speed for a short time. Gain resistance for every condition you.
Super speed duration: 3 seconds
Resistance per condition: 1 second

Defiant Stance (30s CD)
Stance. Heal yourself. Taunt foes around you and absorb all incoming damage for a short duration. If you heal for more than 50% of your health, you become weakened.
Initial Self Heal: 1,853
Taunt duration: 3 seconds
Defiant Stance duration: 3 seconds
Weakened duration: 6 seconds

Frenzy (30s CD)
Stance. Gain quickness and might. Successful hits give triple the adrenaline but it depletes completely at the end.
Frenzy duration: 5 seconds

If they designed stances to be more like “gain a valuable property, but used poorly you will suffer drawbacks” instead of “kitten gain this immunity to something and then be useless for 60 seconds”, damage oriented warrior would already by in a much better place.

I’m looking forward to seeing what the specialization will be, but my hopes aren’t very high.

D/D offers WAY too slow of a playstyle for conquest. Some people say it’s because you rely on stealth a lot and stealth prevents point cap, but that doesn’t have anything to do with it. Thief’s primary role in PvP is very support oriented and most of the time you don’t want to spend more than seconds at any specific location on the map. You’re there to abuse the fact that you can +1 fights anywhere on the map faster than any other class and deny enemy points by decapping. In a nutshell, that is what you’re good at. Of course the class is way more complex and the difference between a good thief and a very good thief is huge.

Since D/D is very slow in terms of playstyle and achieves a purpose that is not desired or that is accomplished better by other classes, it will never see serious play in conquest mode. D/P offers some team support through AoE blinds, AoE stealth, cheap interrupts and is overall better in teamfights while S/D has slightly better mobility and shines more in smaller skirmishes. Both are good but I would say D/P offers slightly more.

TheFamster.7806:

Umm first of all unlike pvp, fractal actually takes money and time way more than pvp does. In fact all pvpers should be grateful that unlike other MMORPGS pvpers don’t have to grind best gear to even pvp, and then no level ups. Legendaries are optional, and only skins. Beside pvpers get legendaries and lots of gems from tournaments such as ESL, Aspect GG, and AG.

Basically pvpers don’t need to spend gold to progress, so why whine about it? If you want pve rewards while playing pvp, go beat the abjured, or grow up and start your pve grind.

Everything you said is either irrelevant or ignorant. We’re just asking for skins, not for gear.

Warrior has actually plenty of potential damage accross the board. The problem is that too many things prevent you from landing that damage.

We’re in the same situation we were in before the cele meta, except it’s worse because other classes just got the better end of the buffs and changes. Before the cele meta, warrior was the king of point control with hambow, but now that cele eles are a thing, hambow just can’t compete (especially if you have to contest that point vs a cele ele, gl).

As it is now, warrior gets kited more than ever. We rely entirely on Beserker Stance to do anything at all. We had our 1 week of glory where people didn’t know how to deal with Rampage, but now you’re lucky if you get 1-2 good Rampages off per game. You’ll spend most of your games trying to clear blinds off of you.

The only way to make warrior not kitten that I can think of (short of a complete revamp of its mechanics), is to make warrior the class that makes it difficult for people to get away. That could solve 2 problems: warrior won’t just get kited to kitten and it would actually fill a roll that no class can do right now.

Imagine if we had access to things like: boon strip, taunt (warrior desperately needs taunt), super speed, aoe soft cc, true range hard cc, reveal (although this can be achieved through taunt), warrior would actually be a threat.

I think a lot of our skills need a revamp. Things like:

Beserker Stance (30s CD)
Stance. Gain super speed for a short time. Gain resistance for every condition you.
Super speed duration: 3 seconds
Resistance per condition: 1 second

Defiant Stance (30s CD)
Stance. Heal yourself. Taunt foes around you and absorb all incoming damage for a short duration. If you heal for more than 50% of your health, you become weakened.
Initial Self Heal: 1,853
Taunt duration: 3 seconds
Defiant Stance duration: 3 seconds
Weakened duration: 6 seconds

Frenzy (30s CD)
Stance. Gain quickness and might. Successful hits give triple the adrenaline but it depletes completely at the end.
Frenzy duration: 5 seconds

If they designed stances to be more like “gain a valuable property, but used poorly you will suffer drawbacks” instead of “kitten gain this immunity to something and then be useless for 60 seconds”, damage oriented warrior would already by in a much better place.

I’m looking forward to seeing what the specialization will be, but my hopes aren’t very high.

This is how adrenaline should work: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Adrenaline#Gaining_adrenaline

Speaking from a PvP perspective, warrior is ok but easily dealt with by coordinated teams. Even if rampage does a lot of damage (probably a bit too much), there are countless ways to counter it much like lich (although rampage can at least cleave and doesn’t get countered hard by reflects). Also, when Berserker Stance is down, you’re suddenly not very effective at all. The change to mobility skills not being affected by soft CC is a huge deal, but overall warrior is sort of in the same state it was a long long time ago when most other classes had better things to bring to the team.

However, in soloq? Warrior is great unless you’re vs a good premade.

There might be a bit too much blind spam overall, but I think mesmers are a seperate issue at the moment and is mainly a problem for classes without good range pressure or constent AoE strikes. For example: the mesmer blinds on shatter > the clones go away > you can’t use clones to remove blind anymore > the mesmer kites you to kitten because the blind lasts the full 3 seconds. It’s also a core problem with classes like warrior who are extremely vulnerable to kiting when Berserker Stance is down or you’re not running longbow.

Once they fix the Blinding Dissipation undodgeable bullkitten, then we’ll really see if blinds are really that big of an issue.

I’m queuing solo.

This started happening only today. I’m getting Stronghold games even though I’m clearly only queuing for conquest as shown on the screenshot:

http://puu.sh/iVK1h/acffff9b79.jpg

This has not happen in like 50 games in the last 3 days, only today.

Maybe I’m just getting lucky, but so far my experience with the new matchmaking has been really good. Of course I get some heavy premades every few games (on my side or enemy side) and more often than not it’ll result in a bit of a stomp, but it hasn’t been nearly as bad as people have been saying for me. I would say with confidence that most of the games I’ve played were quality games for soloq. A lot of really close ones, a lot of great comebacks. It’s still very early to say, but so far it’s been really good. I’m also writing this post just after getting stomped by a 4 man premade 500-250.

So Justin, since this seems like a rare opinion, I’d be curious to know if I really am a special case.

If you don’t mind I’d like to add my stream to the list : )

http://www.twitch.tv/kapl0w
Noziro – Multiclass – NA

It would avoid situations in solo queue where you lose mid because a guy kills creature and the enemy team snowballs the game.

killahmayne.9518:

Against bad power based rangers, this build will wipe the floor with it, and perhaps if they are full zerker. Against tankier builds, it is a bit more difficult. The kiting ability of LB/SD is huge, it can be very difficult to land a skull crack, not to mention the evades. Even with 3K+ armor, you can still get hit with 2K+ auto attacks. A good ranger will give you a good run for your money so I think the difficulty varies a bit more than you believe.

S/F I feel like kind of falls in the same boat, an S/F Ele has LF, Arcane Shield, Obsidian Flesh, Armor of Earth and Mist Form. Those are 5 Defenses against your skull crack as well as blinds. If an S/F ele can cycle these cooldowns decently, they are a tough fight. Combined with as well their somewhat untelegraphed bursts. I think the match up is somewhat more even.

Against shatter mesmers, you kind of need to know how to fight one in order to beat one, and also playing one helps quite a bit. I find that the match is mostly 40/60 in the Mesmer’s favour, assuming equal skill level. The main thing you need to watch for is the position of their clones. If you are in melee range, caught in between 3 clones + the mesmer, the mesmer is probably going to shatter you and if you don’t mitigate it you will probably get bursted for 8-10K, almost half of your HP. You really need to watch for the clones in melee range, because it is easy to be focused on the mesmer that you ignore the clones. So at that point you have to anticipate it and dodge/block accordingly.

Also, destroying their clones is generally a good tactic, as long as you don’t get too sidetracked with it to the point that the mesmer themselves are dealing a lot of damage to you and you are not pressuring them at all. Shatter builds do not run clone death traits so it is usually worth it. Destroying clones = destroying their DPS, and indirectly their defense as they have to expend dodges to generate more clones. Whirlwind and Arcing Slice are perfect abilities for cleaving clones down quickly.

Main thing is to watch clone positioning, keep track of the defenses that the Mesmer has expended and continuously be up in the grill and pressure the mesmer. If you do these things, you do have a decent chance of winning.

The rest of your assessment of match ups I tend to agree with, for the most part. Celestial Rifle Engis can be tough fights, although generally P/S condi is more effective.

That’s why I did preface the matchups section by saying that it’s impossible to be 100% accurate when talking about matchups and opinions will vary greatly with personal experience :P.

Hey guys, I decided to write a guide on this to put all the information in one place, let me know what you think:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_r21aUPWL5vPNDHCqyRRX4yjF0DkmfUpAGSr6O09t8c

Hey killahmayne, I decided to put together a couple clips from my stream to show the potential of the build. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tMugRdNOio

Imho, assuming your opponent has similar mechanical skills, this build…

Is hard-countered by:
-Any mesmer
-Double stability DPS warriors (especially if they have Endure Pain on top of it)
-Condi rangers (Eurantien’s build)

Struggles against:
-DPS guards (can cheese and go Signet of Might to stun the heal)
-Builds that use +40% condi duration food in general (ie engis with Incendiary Powder)
-PD thieves

Goes even with:
-Condi necros as long as you don’t waste Hundred Blades on the Death Shroud
-D/D eles

Does well against:
-Most power-based builds like D/P or S/D thieves or other warrior builds
-Builds that rely on range for damage

Of course the skill discrepancy between players in WvW is so large and the nature of the game mode is so unbalanced that it’s hard to have a definitive opinion on the matchups.

killahmayne.9518:

eksn.7264:

I started using mace again when they buffed the auto-attack. I think it’s the most fun warrior build to roam with in WvW right now because it relies more on outplay. Here’s my take on it: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNApeRjMdUFaZHmhwJaAmgCdnnBTwx0OAUGFPBA-TFCCABMcEAiU9nxUCSlyPAeAA1pPIn9Hu4EAEAABgbezbuclbzSBwkyI-w

The missing sigil on the greatsword is a Sigil of Incapacitation which I’m still not 100% sold on but it’s been working well so far. I like to take Berserker Stance over Endure Pain mainly because it gives adrenaline and gives you a recovery option if you miss a Skull Crack. Also I think you’re underestimating the damage that mace mainhand can do, the mace block can crit for absurd damage and Skull Crack can still be used with only 1 bar for damage purposes. Another hard counter to this build is obviously double stab warriors, otherwise I agree that played well it can kill most things as again it relies more on outplay than gimmicks.

Imho, the necessary components of this build are (for roaming):
-Mace, shield / greatsword
-Healing Signet, Balanced Stance, Bull’s Charge (this one is debatable)
-Furious Reaction, Forceful Greatsword, Cleansing Ire, Warrior’s Sprint, Fast Hands
-Sigil of Paralyzation, Sigil of Energy

The rest is completely up to your playstyle. Here’s a template build if you want to make your own:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNApeBjMdU2ZZIciGgJoQaCOm2BgunA-TlACQAgHAw9EAAA-w

I agree with taking Berserker Stance, I often switch to it against multiple people who run heavy condies. I guess I should be more specific, the Mace damage isn’t very reliable. Counter attack relies on the person attacking you, and you have to be absurdly close to the person for it to land, the counter attack is slow and easily dodgable if they don’t move out of range to begin with. Skull crack does do alot of damage I admit but overall the damage isn’t sufficient enough on the mace to provide significant pressure, not like the Axe at all which is fine.

Bulls Charge definitely isn’t necessary whatsoever. Especially in the buggy state it is in right now. It’s alright for the gap closing, and dueling, but in many outnumbered fights you may want to opt for an extra stance.

Bull’s Charge maybe isn’t necessary but landing one of those feels pretty good! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlm7KbqtRYA

I started using mace again when they buffed the auto-attack. I think it’s the most fun warrior build to roam with in WvW right now because it relies more on outplay. Here’s my take on it: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNApeRjMdUFaZHmhwJaAmgCdnnBTwx0OAUGFPBA-TFCCABMcEAiU9nxUCSlyPAeAA1pPIn9Hu4EAEAABgbezbuclbzSBwkyI-w

The missing sigil on the greatsword is a Sigil of Incapacitation which I’m still not 100% sold on but it’s been working well so far. I like to take Berserker Stance over Endure Pain mainly because it gives adrenaline and gives you a recovery option if you miss a Skull Crack. Also I think you’re underestimating the damage that mace mainhand can do, the mace block can crit for absurd damage and Skull Crack can still be used with only 1 bar for damage purposes. Another hard counter to this build is obviously double stab warriors, otherwise I agree that played well it can kill most things as again it relies more on outplay than gimmicks.

Imho, the necessary components of this build are (for roaming):
-Mace, shield / greatsword
-Healing Signet, Balanced Stance, Bull’s Charge (this one is debatable)
-Furious Reaction, Forceful Greatsword, Cleansing Ire, Warrior’s Sprint, Fast Hands
-Sigil of Paralyzation, Sigil of Energy

The rest is completely up to your playstyle. Here’s a template build if you want to make your own:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNApeBjMdU2ZZIciGgJoQaCOm2BgunA-TlACQAgHAw9EAAA-w

So far the problem seems fixed on my side too, which is awesome. Is there a possibility to get compensation for not being able to play most of the game’s content for 2 weeks?

mrgn.9183:

eksn.7264:

mrgn.9183:

Can anyone who plays this game from the beginning can say that is this issue happening for last few days?

Can confirm. It’s been a week for me.

I’ve bought just a week ago, what a chance..

I’ve played since beta weekend 1 and sure I’d get a disconnect once every couple weeks, but nothing abnormal like this.

mrgn.9183:

Can anyone who plays this game from the beginning can say that is this issue happening for last few days?

Can confirm. It’s been a week for me.

I’ve already sent a support ticket but I’ll write here anyways.

ISP: Telus
Country: Quebec, Canada
Region: NA
Server: Sea of Sorrows
Error: 7:11:3:191:101 (as seen here: http://puu.sh/aB7Nj/4c0b979812.png)
Characters: All of them, for me it seems to be zone dependent.
Zones: Some zones work most of the time, some only intermittently work, some zones I can only load by guesting (sometimes those same zones won’t load by guesting either at certain times, resulting in a character being “stuck” in that zone). The only zones that have been loading successfully everytime in my case are WvW maps.

As mentioned in the ticket, I can also only login once every 2 or 3 attempts, althought I have no problem logging in the forums.

Is there any kind of compensation we can get for not being able to play the game for this long? I missed pretty much this whole living story and I can’t even play all my characters, it’s a bit frustrating.

Just force everyone to click the ready up button. If not all 10 players clicked that button, the game doesn’t start and you go back in queue, it’s that simple.

I’m talking about the fractal weapon BOXES (where you can choose the skin you want) that ANet said they would introduce to the game but ended up leaving it for fractal levels not available yet.

I love the new fractal rewards, but trying to work towards getting specifc fractal weapons is a real pain. They said they would add fractal weapon boxes but it didn’t happen with the patch. After 500+ fractal runs I have not received a single fractal dagger, let alone getting 2 of them to complete my look. On top of that, not a single fractal weapon has dropped for me since the patch, but 3 ascended weapon boxes. I feel like it’s a recurring trend with rewards in Guild Wars 2 where you never actually see the finish line to your goals, but rather just rely on RNG.

PLEASE ANet, we need fractal weapon boxes now.

It’s not just new players, I see this happen in top 100 soloq all the time. A lot of the higher ranked players don’t like to be told they’re wrong too…