Guild Wars 2

Seems I hadn’t reached the playable state but had been told I had, very odd but resolved for me!

I am currently downloading the latest patch iteration having been able to play with two the two previous updates on the February 9th update with no problems. I have already passed the point where the game is playable.

When I hit Play on the Launcher, nothing happens and the GW2 process disappears from my task manager. Is there any solution to this?

skarpak.8594:

this here is interesting.
group dmg meter based on janx.

did anyone tryed it out?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/42zxuo/tool_group_dpsmeter_based_on_jaxnx/

(so there is one to compare dps groupwide :P
…just in development atm as it seems.)

I have this set up and working. Its not particularly efficient. Every second I get a readout of what dps each player in my raid has averaged since the fight started. It helps me to see who we need to help and who can help those people, perhaps also places where classes aren’t particularly viable etc. A true damage meter would be much more useful though, especially one which we could split by phases of the fight. Needs someone to create a proper GUI off the data!

If ArenaNet are happy with this workaround for a DPS meter, then they should just release an API that allows us to build one for personal use, which has the option to share that meter to the squad leader or all other members. Each person also needs the option of whether or not to display that information. Problem solved and a great deal of people a lot happier.

Certainly though, a true damage meter for personal use is essential to most raiding environments, especially some of the fights enrage timers are designed to test group DPS.

There has been a lot made of DPS Meters in this thread and the threats it brings to the community. I for one am an advocate for a Global DPS meter that allows at least raid leaders to see how each party member is doing. This would also allow that raid leader to determine optimal squad compositions for the classes their team can play.

However, there’s a lot of ill feeling that this could lead to elitism, which I can understand. Frankly, I don’t have a problem with elitism, nor do I believe it is completely absent in this game.

The major benefits of a DPS meter though are benefits to the individual. The validation of the viability for classes testing different gear sets, rotations or trait set ups and even different weapons would provide huge weight to arguments for new builds. I genuinely believe it would help to improve build diversity (and overall balance if ANet were seeking it).

I can see no real argument against a personal DPS meter that is not shared server wide. Is there one?

All you lose is a traitline, and in its place you get a new traitline, often with stronger traits, 4 additional utility skills to choose from, a new elite, a new heal and access to a new weapon.

If that was everything they gave you they might have a chance of being balanced, because in an ideal world every weapon, slot skill and traitline has times when it is strong, times when it is weak, and are generally equivalent.

But it also augments class functionality. Engineers get free ranged stomps/resses, druids get a whole new healy supporty mode, chronos get a new shatter that lets them use a tonne of stuff twice, etc.

Only ones that could be perceived as balanced are reaper and maybe dragonhunter. Balance cannot be achieved in its current state.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

jonnis.2946:

rchu.8945:

jonnis.2946:

My wish came true!
.

the cycle begins. Now that two of my classes are nerfed, I will be making thread about other classes/builds too. What comes around goes around, always remember that!

I’m not calling for nerfs to any particular class. I’d like to see the entirety of the game turned down massively. I know its rare but my wish wasn’t actually to get Mesmers or Revenants nerfed, it was to have greater visibility on upcoming changes.

The trick to be mastered here is tuning everything down so that the game is:

a.) not boring
b.) equally demanding of effort regarding every class.

Fights lasting instants between opponents of near-equal skill = N.G.
Fights lasting years for the same = N.G.

I considered the game to be far from boring in the first year or so after launch and considered it to be demanding much more skill than it does now. I think massive tuning down would definitely help in this regard

rchu.8945:

jonnis.2946:

My wish came true!
.

the cycle begins. Now that two of my classes are nerfed, I will be making thread about other classes/builds too. What comes around goes around, always remember that!

I’m not calling for nerfs to any particular class. I’d like to see the entirety of the game turned down massively. I know its rare but my wish wasn’t actually to get Mesmers or Revenants nerfed, it was to have greater visibility on upcoming changes.

My wish came true!

Really excited for this, major improvement to the way balance is done. All the changes are nerfs and are being generally positively received which is excellent. Just hope the balance team take that attitude forward. Only QQing because people are complaining that not enough changes were made but I can understand why they were limited at this time.

Just saw this yeah, really really happy about it. There will always be toxicity but its only because people are unhappy there havent been more changes made, but I can understand that. I’m hopeful of this too and like to think this post had some small hand in that announcement, probably not though!

Pretty much everyone is agreeing that these are all good changes, and they are all nerfs. I understand why you haven’t made too many at this time. There can absolutely be a positive reaction to a nerf and I hope you take this attitude to balance forward (and end up nerfing everything back down to having limited boons, dropping condition output, limiting CCs etc).

What really excites me though is that you will be showing us previews of the new balance changes ahead of time, hugely positive for the game and will really help to improve balance and gameplay.

Sardath.8524:

The problem with discussing the changes are people like these.

Every single nerf and buff will most definitely get brainlessly bashed, mainly by people who have next to no idea how the game works(not claiming I’m an expert here). If the forum(or those specific posts) was moderated in a very strict way, to enable only constructive criticism, it could work and it would be a nice feature. Any mindless QQ/bashing/toxic posts should be instantly deleted, but it’s time consuming and many players will feel like that would be a form of censorship.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the state of PvP is fine, but it’s not trash or unplayable how others state and if the devs managed a state of relative balance post ele nerf, I’m fairly confident it will happen again.

I completely agree with what a lot of what you’ve said but I think the forum CDI’s have been by far the most positive and constructive posts we have seen on the forums. In general you see a lot of player frustration on a PvP forum post because people feel powerless. When they feel they can have an influence I think people are far less toxic and far more prone to think carefully about ideas before posting them.

I don’t find PvP unplayable in anyway, but I do think the current meta is holding it back. There is a much lower combat skill level required currently, largely brought about by passive defences, boon spam, cc spam and the general tankiness that results from it. GW2 used to be a game of high combat skill ceilings. This tankiness is also hurting the amount of skill in rotation, as most games now all three points are fought on and can be contested in 1v1s indefinitely in some cases.

I worry that the PvP balance devs are taking the game in the wrong direction and going further towards more powerful specs. That’s why I’d like an opportunity to contribute towards game balance, or at least to have some communication on what their ideas are for the upcoming balance patch. What do they believe needs to be changed etc

Quaman.9167:

Give everything except warrior and thief nerfs, so power creep slows down. The other 7 classes need varying degrees of nerfs. Something like DH or reaper, which are not in the meta, are still upgrades from the base class for the most part, and need to be toned down to their base classes level. On the other hand, bunker mes and viper rev need slightly bigger nerfs to their sustain and/or damage.

The main thing on most classes that needs nerfing imo is CC. Its a little crazy right now.
Either way, this bunker/boon spam meta needs to go.

I don’t believe we will ever reach a point where elite specialisations are balanced against base classes. Elite specialisations in general augment the base class with new functionality, offer an additional weapon choice, additional utility slots and the only thing lost is a trait line. In a lot of cases the elite specialisation traitline is one of the strongest on the class as well! The only elite specialisations that could reach relative balance are Guardian and Necromancer, as they lose things by speccing into their elite specialisation. On other classes, the elite specialisation trait line has to be far weaker than other options to balance against the fact that you gain additional class functionality.

Again, this is not a discussion about balance though.

brannigan.9831:

A balance patch after the season is not a positive development. There should be a mini one mid season to take care of the more problematic bs. These people are not even embarrased there so called pro league is basically made up of a couple classes/builds for the most part. There balancing failures are there to see by everyone and they just shrug there shoulders and tell us 2 months lol. If they adjusted things in a timely matter that would be a positive development because it would show they have learned. Its the same old bs with A-net fiddling while Rome burns.

Regular balance patches tied in with seasons I firmly believe to be a positive initiative. The problem is that currently I feel we’d need a huge balance overhaul to correct some of the issues in the game. I imagine this is why you’re suggesting more regular patches. What we now have though is a world apart from the seemingly random and highly irregular balance patches we used to have. I fully accept that balance isn’t in a good place at the moment, but given that we need to address that as a community to help the devs achieve a better state of the game. To do that, I think it would be useful for them to have our input, don’t you?

Kicast.1459:

Too much stab (patch on stab was obviously not sufficient)
Not enough cc
More condi needed
All other professions that are able to resist rev more than 30 sec must be destroyed. (bunker mes be prepared)
Spamming evade thief design to be reproduced everywhere…with more traps
More block evade support dps condi stab on dodge burst aoe moving 1200 range on 2 sec cooldown.
Rev desesperatly need some love…so much I honestly don’t see which change can make them half decent.
More pewpew for support..more support for pewpew.
More power creep to reach better challenge….and for love of God …please stop censoring your marketing team. So little appealing stuff on hot is really depressing

From a personal perspective I agree with you that the game is headed in a dangerous power creep direction, where the default response has been to bring other classes up to the meta classes level rather than the reverse. This has created combat which is less skillful, more luck based and worse for the game, both in terms of participation and viewership.

However, the point of this post is to see if we can get more clarity on what balance changes are going to take place in advance, rather than just another post flaming the current meta.

We have been told that there will be a balance patch at the end of the current season, before the start of the new one. This is a positive initiative and I can understand why balance is not being changed during seasons.

Given this, I think it would be really useful to have a CDI on the state of balance in sPvP, to get a general idea of the direction the community would like it to go, and the direction the developers plan on taking it. For example, is the community happy and are the devs happy with the current amount of stability in the game, how will this be changed if at all in the upcoming balance patch? Similar questions can be asked on condi application, CC, current amulets and runes, passive defence and many other areas.

I really think this would be hugely informative for the devs and the community alike, while also addressing a lot of the ill-feeling in the sPvP community at the moment.

I just don’t see how ANet will ever go back on the changes they’ve made to the point that base classes can be balanced to be functional without the additional things a lot of classes got. Take druid, you could play a full zerker Druid that never utilises Celestial Avatar, you’d be slightly gimping yourself but it wouldn’t actually matter. At that point if you didn’t use a glyph or utility then the traitline youve picked on the basis the traits are stronger. Certainly this could be true of a rifle scrapper build for instance.

I’m not saying it’s true in all cases, but to balance Elite Specs something had to be taken away in some way. Maybe you tie all specialisations to Utilities, again taking ranger:

Beast Mastery: Shouts
Nature Magic: Spirits
Wilderness Survival: Survival
Marksmanship: Signets
Skirmishing: Traps

This would better allow for balance, but this again isn’t possible on all classes. How do you work it for engineers say?

You could do the same thing with weapons, but then you start to pigeon hole people.

dank.3680:

You forgot quickness while ressing too, also 10% increased speed from trait .

You’re absolutely right, the quickness is what really wrecks it. I don’t consider the 10% additional speed overpowered as every class has access to it, but it increases the problem undoubtedly.

Being fair I said a slight tweak, I think its completely broken, there’s no counterplay to that res whatsoever. They don’t even need the feedback, if they have cooldowns up they can make both the resser and downed immune to damage, and get them up quicker than anyone else can. Maybe you can CC the downed? not sure

With HoT, we’ve seen elite specialisations introduced. Lets have a look at what you have to sacrifice for them and what they offer:

Sacrifice:
1 Trait Line

Lets assume this trait line is designed to be balanced to be in line with the elite specialisation trait line. In a lot of cases I would argue the elite specialisation traitline is one of the strongest choices for classes, but this really doesn’t matter.

What do you gain:
A new weapon choice
Access to a new heal, four new utilities and a new elite.

If this was all the elite specialisations offered, we might get away with it in an ideal world where everything was perfectly balanced. There would still be plenty of space for “base” classes in PvP.

However its not, the elite specialisations offer something else:
Augmented Class Functionality

Without losing anything, almost every class gains an additional tool for their kitten nal. Some of these admittedly, are a tad lackluster in comparison to others, but that doesn’t change the fact that they offer more than the base class.

Daredevil only gets an extra dodge, and additional functionality on dodges. All true, but again, all you lose is a traitline. Scrappers suddenly have a knew way to stomp/res. Berserkers have a new mode with new burst skills. Druids get a completely new form to use which has massive benefits. Chronomancers get a skill that lets them use any skill twice! Elementalist gets to overload its attunements. Revenant gets a new free button to use.

Necromancers and Guardians however, have their base class mechanic changed by the elite specialisation. This is the only way balance could have been achieved.

For me then, its no wonder that only elite specialisations have any place in the current meta and I can’t ever see that changing unless this changes.

Playing a Crusader Druid, I downed a Bunker Mes 1v1 easily, no threat to my health at all and done in less than 30 seconds. You may say he was a crap Mesmer, something I’d actively encourage as he’d had a go at me two games before for being bad (oh, the satisfaction).

There is clear counterplay to them. I think most people have a problem because the windows where they’re vulnerable are too narrow, but once you get them its a very easy fight, so I don’t mind that, just don’t get caught in the CC, i.e don’t stand in the red circles.

The one thing I would say though that makes them so powerful is their ability to res. Projectile destruction, and stability + distortion on the body is too kitten powerful, the one thing that could actually use a tweak imo.

The amount of power creep lately in terms of balance in sPvP has been nothing short of ridiculous. I long for the days when passive defence, CC, conditions, condition cleanses and stability were in far shorter supply.

Back then though, all the elder dragons were still alive. We keep killing the kitten things and as a result we’re becoming more powerful because of the magic in the world being distributed to the tyrians! This is a nightmare.

I am now fundamentally against the killing of Elder Dragons and want to form a group that support and save Elder Dragons before sPvP becomes unplayable.

Obligatory title bait

There’s been a huge amount of rage in the mists recently, some of it admittedly due to balance issues and the lack of a patch before this season, but largely due to people getting more into PvP and caring more about winning, which I actually consider a positive.. ish.

Some people are going about getting their league wins by tanking their MMR. Some may say the fault lies with Anet for designing a flawed system, it doesn’t really matter. To tank your MMR, you go into ranked games and ruin the experience for 9 other people by deliberately playing awfully or not at all. By doing this you lower your MMR enough to drop below your skill level, leading to an easier ascension to the next level.

This really hurts enjoyment of the game for a lot of people. I don’t agree with it but understand why you are doing it. However, there are a tonne of people out there like you. Please, take the time to make a party of 5 of you so that you can stop yourself ruining the PvP experience for others, its really not that hard to do and would really improve the community at the moment.

There are three skills with the Elixir gun Utility that are labelled as elixirs. The toolbelt Healing Mist and the kit skills #4 Acid Bomb and #5 Super Elixir.

Alchemical tinctures trait:
“Throwing or Consming Elixirs removes conditions from those affected. Your boon duration is increased”

Super elixir already removes 1 condition in its base functionality, this is reflected by the greyed out info in the tooltip.

Healing Mist does function with Alchemical Tinctures, despite the fact it seems you are not consming or throwing this elixir, rather venting it.

Super Elixir and Acid Bomb do not function with this trait, despite the tooltip labelling them as elixirs. I could understand if none of these worked as the definition does preclude them, but healing mist does work. Is this a bug or is it working as intended?

Hi there,

We’re a UK based team looking for one last player. Currently we’re looking to play a double shoutbow, cele D/D ele, cele rifle engi, thief composition.

We have the first three covered and the last two can be played by our fourth member, so we are looking for either a Rifle Engi or a D/P thief.

What we are looking for:
Good class knowledge
Know when to disengage (especially important on the thief)
Good movement
Excellent communication skills, you must be able to speak english, talk on TS and communicate bursts, when you are low health, numbers on a point, target calls, enemy movements etc.
Ability to take criticism and to provide constructive pointers to improve the team, we try to analyse each game after we play, win or lose

We are competing in AG and ESL weekly at the moment, having once come third in ESL, albeit via default! The only day we tend not to play at all is Wednesday, and we play in the evenings from 7pm-midnight mostly.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me in game via /w or ingame mail.
Alternatively message either of the following players:
Vexari.6358
Rahvin.6025

Look forward to hearing from you

Jae.5138:

jonnis.2946:

120 on each stat makes all the difference? Would you care to suggest a median that would be balanced? It seems clear to me that this is the current strongest amulet and that this stat total is the reason why

yea of course it makes all the difference. amulet is the majority of the stats in pvp and you wanna take away a quarter of it…. that’s even lower than the original stats for celestial, which was already considered weak…

Jae, one of the things I asked in my original post was what celestial was as I couldn’t remember (331 maybe?). I agree that 120 on each stat does make all the difference, but you didn’t address a stat value you would feel was balanced. I’d really rather have a constructive debate than shunning peoples opinions without any solutions though

This was my original question, assuming you meant amulets, I’d be more than happy to get back to it

I completely accept that every build is going to have an amulet that is best for it. I just think its noteworthy that three of the current meta specs, as going by http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki
which is reasonably up to date, all use the same spec. That to me screams either a lack of build diversity or an overpowered amulet. Since these builds do similar roles, it could be either

They absolutely do use thieves and med guards. In my opinion, those 5 are probably the current meta setup in high level teamplay. I don’t see how my post ruled out teams using those classes/specs

I’d argue that in the current meta setup, 3 of the players, Shoutbow, cele ele and cele engi are all cele. The other classes arent meta purely because the cele amulet isnt as good for them. I’m not saying we should delete it, I’m just not sure its balanced

120 on each stat makes all the difference? Would you care to suggest a median that would be balanced? It seems clear to me that this is the current strongest amulet and that this stat total is the reason why

It goes without saying that no one has played this gametype loads. I was going to gather a list of everyones perceptions of it, good and bad, and all suggestions of how it could be improved. No doubt there’ll be a CDI on this soon, so this would just be a good place to start.

I’ll start out by saying that I’ve really enjoyed the gametype on the whole. I think its not only a real breath of fresh air but that it really fits the play anything mantra that guild wars 2 has been trying to achieve and is a fun, engaging game mode.

Highs:
Decisions!
Everytime you accomplish what you were trying to achieve or die you have a huge number of options at your disposal to help your team. Do you supply run and create mobs, fire your treb, defend, attack, grab hero communes, support heros.

Diversity!
With all those decisions, there are a lot of different types of roles you seem to be able to play, which even in the first few hours I’ve seen lead to more build diversity

Clutch Plays!
Legacy of the Foefire has long been a favourite map for the Esports scene, largely due to the clutch plays that can happen with Lord kills! Now we have another game type that can have clutch plays everywhere, but the win condition may need some work

Lows:
Amulet Diversity
Its only natural that people continue to play the builds they feel comfortable on, but Celestial amulets do seem to be at the forefront again. I really feel this is because the total stat numbers for Cele are far too high (over 3000 compared to 2200 or so for normal amulets) and that this is a general pvp balance issue rather than an issue with the game type

Confusion
I’ve been dying for a more complicated gametype, don’t get me wrong. I actually do see this as a big plus in general. Currently though I’m experiencing the gametype effectively as a soloqueuer and it seems to me currently that it will be too difficult to coordinate in soloqueues at any point in the future as it requires a lot of communication. Once again, I do see this as a plus, and hopefully it will really encourage teams to form and the esport scene for the wellbeing of the game, but I have listed it as a low as, currently, it can be frustrating. Especially if all four of your other team members have no interest in defending at all!

Win Condition
There’s already been quite a lot said about the win condition when the game goes to the timer. Personally, I’d always prefer a gametype that was objective focused, rather than points focused. To see a game hit 15 minutes and my team win was nice, but when we hadn’t even got the oppositions second door down and our lord was on half health it seemed a kitteneesey.

Suggestions
Win Condition
1. Have the game decided by objective progress rather than points. In the event of a tie points would decide the game
2. At the end of the timer, the lords will try to attack each other, they both go to the central area and the first lord to die wins
3. At the end of the timer, any lord who has had both doors broken into will try to attack the other lord. (I.e if both teams are at lord, they both attack, if only one is, the lord that is open will go to try to invade the other teams base) If neither lords room has been broken into the game is decided on door progress/points

Supply Room Dead Zone
It seems that the supply room becomes a bit of a deadzone for combat fairly on in the game. Its right in the centre of the map and should really help to tie the two lanes together but doesnt fill its purpose at the moment. While I can see some people might suggest making damage block communes I imagine it works in the current way (only CC interrupts supply pick up) so that there aren’t stalemates in the centre for most of the map. Here are the suggestions I’ve seen on the topic:
1. Make damage interrupt supply pick up (already explained counters to this)
2. Reduce the supply to one pile so LOS is less prominent and CCs work more
3. Reduce the supply to one pile and place it in a pit so CCs work even more

Anymore suggestions please leave them in the comments below and I’ll add them to the list

I was just wondering if anyone knew if there was any justification for the discrepancy in total stat numbers between amulets? I really feel this is why Celestial is so strong on so many classes at the moment. Here’s how the numbers stack up:

Cele: 3066
Zerk, Valk: 2363
Ramp: 2244
Standard: 2232

You might say that not all the stats on Cele are useful for everyone. Engineers can use every stat well, Eles are benefited by most if not all, and Warriors also benefit from most of them in the meta specs for conquest atm.

But even if you take condition damage away, the Cele amulet still offers well over 2600 stats , Vitality, Toughness and Healing Power are useful to everyone in varying degrees, but a balance of all three is excellent for survival. For anyone that isn’t built purely for conditions, Power, Precision and Ferocity are all useful. This is a real issue in my opinion.

For balance, Cele Amulets would have 318 of each stat. I can’t remember if that is how they were before or not, but it does seem like they are too strong at the moment for build diversity.

This has mostly been highlighted for my by the introduction of stronghold. Despite a plethora of builds becoming viable, the vast majority still use celestial, regardless of the role the player is seeking to perform.

Have we had any kind of justification for the difference in total stat numbers? I’d also be interested to know why ferocity on Zerker/Valk gives a higher total stat than Rampagers?

Of course devs need to know if classes are unbalanced but try to be constructive!

What builds in particular, or attributes that you can find in a build have you found to be particularly imbalanced

Its the first day of a brand new game type being introduced to the community at large! Of course its imbalanced, if you find its too unbalanced to be playable then wait until they sort that aspect out!

From a personal point of view, two things stand out. The ability to heal (useful for lord, gate breakers, team fights, etc) combined with the ability to knockdown/stun/immobi. Both Engis and Staff elementalists have these to different degrees and so far I’ve found them to be the strongest in the gametype. But I can think of a place for just about everything at the moment! Even a really tanky build can work on wearing down enemy spawned heros while staying alive, can hold attention and suppot in a team fight. Its really opened up build choices!

I’ve been wondering for some time now if there are any servers that have really taken organisation to the next level. My idea of it is something like as follows:

1. Leader Guilds for each BG
This is the guild commanders would permanently represent, allowing for fast communication between everyone on the map

2 Small to medium sized groups
No group would be larger than around 20 members, allowing offence on many objectives at once. To counteract zergs, the commanders of these groups would come together. This could even go further, with groups of 20 have pre selected splits of 5s or 10s to take smaller objectives

3. Organised defence
Scouting, roaming and defending would all become part of the same parcel, and would be organised by 2 or 3 different guilds on each server. Every offensive group would also be expected to know how to defend using siege placed by these guys

4. Rotas
You’d have certain times in the day where you’d be expected to play. This doesn’t just mean a well established night and low peak daytime crew, but also set guilds in the evenings

From my perspective, if someone could get the people together for this kind of operation, move to the lowest tier server to learn the ropes, and organise it well enough they would eventually completely dominate the highest tier of WvW

Thoughts? Am I over simplifying it? Is the only reason this hasn’t been done because of the effort it would take?

I’ve been doing some calculating in WvW and discovered that currently, Robust is only giving 6% additional health where 7% is listed. Also, it seems that tuning crystals and other such buffs are not affected by the bonuses for killing guards or for borderlands bloodlust. These bugs are of course very minor, pretty much not worth mentioning even! But I was wondering if there was a reason for any of it, Thanks!

While I admit this is an issue, its also unfair if you can use 1 second of invuln, and then get the cooldown back 4 seconds later.

However, I can’t see any reason you would want to dodge while you are invulnerable, dodge immediately afterwards if needs be, but if youre getting caught in that split second you timed your invuln very badly.

I’ve started playing an staff Elementalist lately, naturally taking the trait Blasting Staff. It seems to me that the AoE circles when youre targetting a spot with the skill only show up as being the original size, not the increased size. This isn’t a major issue, but given all the work that has been done to help players understand the game in the tooltip side of things, I would have thought this would be quite a high priority fix.

I’m yet to test whether this affects other abilities (Necro marks for example) so confirmation on that from other players would be good. Is this something thats being worked on?

I’m currently playing the following build having just got back into PvP:
Build

I was wondering if anyone had any tips for playing this build. I dont struggle to stay alive really at all, but feel my damage/support could perhaps be better.

One thing I’ve learnt is that following my first need to go defensive with attunements, I’ll always Geyser first in water attunement and dodge. Then I cast Healing Rain before I swap to Earth attunement, in which I can use both the dodge and #2 blast finisher in this field. That coupled with ether renewal basically means I can use these two sets of skills on cooldown, along with projectile reflections and area denials where required, I.e lightning 5 and earth 3/4. and thats pretty much all I do. It seems to work and I seem to be winning games but I barely ever get into Fire attunement.

Naturally the damage is going to be low, but I was also wondering about tips on positioning, how in the fight do you typically try to be. While I can survive on the point fine perhaps I could do more fighting from off it? Are there any classes you look out for as major enemies (Shatter Mesmers/ Boon rip thieves seem the main culprits here)? Are there any changes you would suggest for the build that I run? I have heard of people using frost bow quite a bit and picking up good damage even without an offensive amulet.

Be interested to know what people come up with!

Hi there,

I’m looking for a guild or group of people that run a dungeon chain everyday for gold, possibly that also runs some fractals. While I have a guardian, ranger and engineer at 80 its my Elementalist than I plan on playing. I have a full set of exotic gear with ascended rings and amulet, and I’m working on the rest!

I was always a PvPer, mostly on my Ranger, but the gametype grew stale and the numbers dwindled so I no longer have a team. I then started to WvW on my Engineer as a roamer, and still spend sometime doing this in my WvW guild. I’m relatively new to many dungeon paths as a result, but learn quickly and feel I can pick up this side of the game very quickly. As I still play with my WvW guild and have a world event guild too I cannot promise 100% representation.

I run a Scepter/LH build with a focus for maximum might stacks for the party. I’m a native english speaker, am happy to use TS with a microphone and my play hours vary but I’m on most days at times that vary between 12 noon and 3am GMT.

If you think I’d be a fit for you please get in touch, preferably by ingame whisper or mail to jonnis.2946

I still had 36k health when running around in the open world. I had to get those stacks somehow. Another pointer towards there being a maximum health cap though as it didnt increase here. Check the 34k health in the hero panel

I was running around on my ele leveling in EoTM when I noticed I had 26k health. Not quite sure where it had come from but didnt think much of it. Figured it was just scaling. When I died however I found I had 11k base health.

It seems that the applied fortitude stacks apply before scaling happens, so the 250 vitality from my now account bound world points gave me 15k health!

I decided to put this to the test with a warrior, since they have the highest base health. I went into WvW at level 2 and had 22k base health. One stack of applied fortitude took me to 34k health, but oddly the other 4 stacks didnt further increase my health. Is there a maximum health cap in GW2?

Is this working as intended? A bug?

In a perfect world we’d have well balanced matches against well structured teams class wise. I understand that’s nigh on impossible to achieve. This isn’t about all that though.

I was queueing up for solo queue the other night and I’d been in the queue for over 9 minutes. Having had comparatively shorter queue times but given that it was late I had left it that long. At that time I decided to leave the queue, and rejoin.

I got an instant queue pop. Which I just thought was really odd. Just wondering if anyone has any idea why that might have happened?

Seems like having two support guards for the near 100% stab uptime is generally recommended?

Kayzi.9752:

Hey that’s great to hear! And you’re absolutely right, it is less interesting. The original SPCA comp was guard, engi, thief, mes, ele. Everyone usually plays whatever they want, which is fun, because we get to test the strengths of lots of different comps. It does get interesting sometimes, especially when Mugi and Yam both run their glass longbow rangers. xD For fighting against skilled opponents, however, a boon strip shatter Mesmer is a must (plus extremely fun to play).

As luck would have it the guy I’ve been roaming around with at the moment is a shatter Mesmer. I play an Engineer which is why I’m keen on the idea of including one! Could switch to guardian though.

Vi Au.8341:

It really depends on what tier you are in. i find that the higher the tier there are more heavies and they are more organized than what was shown in the vid. it was a really good vid, really well play but high tiers are 90% guild groups hammer train so you may need more mobility/stealth than what spca proposed

and you might consider more dps in the OP proposed team set up
my rule is 1 pure support per party

I’m in tier 2 on the Gandara server. I agree that we’re not going to be able to take on a guild group on any moderately high tier, but I think any composition would struggle with that. This is more for dispatching unorganised groups that are a bit all over the place.

In terms of dps I actually don’t consider the Ele or Guardian to be running support there. Yes some of the traits are relatively defensive but they actually have relatively high damage gear on, full zerker just wouldn’t work for me in this kind of composition. I don’t think GW2 is an either or in terms of support, both these classes provide some support to their allies without sacrificing too much damage from what I can see.

Maskaganda.2043:

the most successful overall 5 man group setup we tchuu came up with was 2 healway guards, 1 power necro with wells, aura sharing d/d ele and a hammer warrior. other setups are better at some other times, tho.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=NefteepGLCI#t=80
ignore first 1:20 unless you want to see a 5 man group getting portal bombed by 20.

regarding the OP, healing engie doesn’t really bring much to a 5 man group. sure, it heals reasonably well, but the damage is minimal and outside of blasts it provides little boons to the team. I think a healing tanky staff ele works better than a healing engie, but both are second choices to guardians.

condi necro does work, but you need to build your team around it and babysit him alot.

and everyone saying 5 of x class is wrong :p

I presume you saw Rackin Stackins stuff on SPCA? They relied on their Engineer quite a lot for heals and I do genuinely think Engineer provides more direct healing than other classes. I wouldn’t consider the Engineer a main source of boons, other than regeneration, as I said most of that comes from the Elementalist/Guardian, but they’re also able to be damage dealers. I’m yet to try any of this out yet though and its all total speculation, so I look forward to giving it a go.

I won’t be taking a condi necro then! Totally agree on 5 of x class being wrong, mostly because its dull! 5 Thieves would definitely be annoying though, but yeah, thats not the kind of thing I’m looking for. Great vid btw! Seems like a zerker Necro is your primary source of AoE and then you have heavies running around protecting him for most of it.

Thanks all for your responses!

Kayzi.9752:

For destroying unorganized zergs: two support guards, two zerker well necros, with lich form, and an aura sharing ele. We don’t run it that often, but when we do we consistently wipe groups 4 – 6 times our size. Proof is in the sig.

Its actually SPCA’s stuff that inspired me to do this as you can see! I find it a lot less interesting as a comp, but it certainly seems to be very effective. Will bear it in mind

No 5 man party will be able to take down a truely organised zerg, but what do you guys think the optimum 5 man team is for taking down enemies are general WvW gameplay? For me they need to largely be bunkery characters who can hold their own in a 1v2 situation, while also offering a lot of support to their team mates.

This is what I’m looking at at the moment, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it:

Engineer, Healer
The groups main source of healing, providing full uptime for regen at over 362 healing per second, provides huge condition clears with fumigate and healing mist on elixir gun. Also the chief combo man, water fields, fire fields and smoke fields and tonnes of blast finishers to boot.

Elementalist, Auramancer
One of the main boon providers, gives tonnes of protection from auras and attunement swaps. Another provider of combo fields and finishers (especially with the staff in the bag for the godly lightning field) and provides auras to allies that stun/chill all foes attacking. Also puts out decent damage and can set up aoe bursts using dodges in earth attunement.

Guardian, Healway
Based off the healway guardian but taking the emphasis completely away from shouts due to condi clears provided by other classes. Primary roles are ressing and stomping, along with large group heals in emergencies from elite. Provides good damage and can lock out enemies using wardings. Despite lack of shouts, another good boon provider, with an abundance of stability.

I think that these three classes supplemented with a mixture of warriors, mesmers and thieves make the best set up. I hate PU mesmers with a passion, and since we’d want the Mes to actually burst we’d use a shatter. It would be a fairly typical Hambow warrior, with cavalier weapons and trinkets and soldier armor, and a typical fairly zerker thief, with a bit more defence, maybe soldiers gear, zerker everything else. The mesmer and thief bring shadow refuge and mass invis which are of course hugely useful, and while the aim would be to build some support in they are mainly there to burst down targets.
Warrior

Am I overlooking Condition Necros? For me they just make too easy a target as they have little ability to escape. Are Rangers better than I think in this kind of scenario?

I’d be interested to hear thoughts from people that have done this successfully in WvW and how they managed it.

Cheers all

Me and a friend are looking for a few more guys to come along with us for some roaming in WvW. I currently play a support Engi and he plays a support Mesmer. We’re enjoying roaming around together, but get a bit fed up of being ganked by 5/6 people which is just a few too many to handle.

Ideally we’re looking for a staff elementalist with a mix of damage and support gear, a support guardian and one more player, possibly a warrior or a thief, any zerkers just go down so quickly that its probably best to have a bit of defence somewhere in your gear! We’re aiming for something similar to what SPCA used to do (Link if you havent seen them! worth a look!).

TS comms is pretty much required, listening and speaking. Otherwise we’re just looking for people who know how to play their class and want to try to stomp zergs!

If you want to get involved contact me (jonnis.2946) or Coulter.2315 in game.

Ah excellent, thanks for the info. Any chance you could give me a link to that thread?

Most of the Engineers damage (assuming they’re running the bombs/grenades that youre talking about) happens in AoE’s. They have incendiary powder, a long burn, and the pistol #2 hits quite hard, but otherwise to be getting damage from them you have to be close to them, or getting hit by all their nades.

For warrior I would suggest a condition based sword/sword longbow set up, theyre quite weak to conditions generally. Really though the way to beat them is to kite around and stay out of melee range, whether it be for the grenades or bombs. Cleansing Ire will also help you immensely when playing against the typical rabid spec, Warriors pretty much have the best condi clear in the game, able to get 3 every 5 seconds (theoretically), so they really shouldnt be too much of a problem for you whether youre playing hambow or condiwarr.

Supply crate its true is a very powerful elite in a 1v1 situation. hit a few aoes near the turret as soon as its down to get rid of them though.

here is an example

Alright, so I don’t really believe its underpowered, but its meant to be more powerful than it currently is! I’ve just been testing the heal in the mists, with a clerics amulet equipped. The first heal goes down as it should, but the cleansing burst only ever heals for 2520, regardless of healing power, despite the fact it says on the tooltip that it scales. I presume this is actually that it is meant to scale rather than that the tooltip is wrong, but it would be great to get this fixed.

I’m guessing youll be reluctant to do so, understandably given how powerful this skill already is. No problem of course, but if so the tooltip needs updating! Thanks