Guild Wars 2

We are not at the point where conditions are balanced, but necros are hardly the source of the problem. Bohlsheet like condition warriors, bomb/nade engis, clone spamming condition mesmers are far worse than a necro simply because of how unavoidable their condition spreading can be.

Most of a necro’s animations are clean and very telegraphed. (except for casts on marks 2-4). Same with rangers for the most part, even the spirits have very clean, obvious animations.

I still think conditions are very viable.

more than a week after reset and we still see this… seriously, how far up the leaderboard are you putting new players? It’s not the first game that I’ve had this morning that has been ruined because I’ve had at least one rank <10 not knowing how to

• play his class
• play conquest
• know what any other classes do
• know the map mechanics

In the very near future, there needs to be better barrier of entry, there is absolutely no reason someone this clueless should be anywhere near the top 1000 in the leaderboards.

Jayne.9251:

Spoke too soon, a few faceplants, lol.. Need to figure out how to work vs the 5 team gank squad I’ll get there.

What I don’t get is people leaving the match half way through. Do they get penalized? Or are they bailing to prevent a permanent mark on their record?

If you’re talking about solo queue, they get penalized. If you’re talking about hotjoin, they just leave cause they mad bro.

The meta is created when high tier teams come up with a way to counter other teams. If it is effective, it becomes meta. Part of the reason we have been stuck in this kittenty meta for so long is because all of the top tier teams left and all that was left were mediocre teams playing around with the exact same meta that was left by those that came before them. There has been no theorycrafting in this game since spirit rangers and hambow warriors were discovered.

Walorx.5129:

The issue is, if someone has never seen nor played GW2, do you think they would understand what is happening as the game progresses? I can say that I’ve played this game at the highest level (maybe not successfully, but been a part of it nonetheless) and I still have a hard time following what is happening in team fights because there is such a plethora of effects. Although there are shoutcasters that do a good job entertaining us, they simply cannot cast properly because of how the game is. If you recall from previous tournaments, I believe it was Grouch and Blu (don’t quote me on this) that had literally nothing to say during a team fight because they couldn’t tell what was going on and proceeded to joke about how the game was such a petting zoo. Unless they change something major, I don’t see this game going anywhere :/

I’ll be honest, the game was much easier to follow (and had much more potential as a competitive game) before all this AI bohlsheet came into play. I don’t think the game will go anywhere until AI is removed entirely from SPvP. If I wanted to fight AIs I’d go PvE.

Edit: By AIs I mean any character whose entire behavior is not directly controlled by the summoning player. This includes:

• Ranger pets
• Necro minions
• Necro jagged horrors
• Mesmer phantasams (particularly in phantasmal fire&forget builds)
• Guardian spirit weapons
• Ele minor & major elementals
• Rock dog

Walorx.5129:

No one can cast the game WELL. They might be entertaining to watch or hear, but if they aren’t providing enough information so that someone who has never played the game before can know what’s happening, they aren’t doing their job. Unfortunately, the game is very unforgiving to shoutcasters because of the “slow non-risk, high-reward” meta and an overload of particle effects and very hard to see animations. An example of a game that is shoutcaster-friendly is League of Legends. This game is easier for shoutcasters to cast because EVERY skill is easily identifiable and if you were to play a replay (which happens often in tournaments), you can tell a play-by-play of what happened and why it turned the fight in ones’ favor. GW2 just isn’t made to be “esports” because no one can cast it or even watch it and understand what’s happening.

I disagree largely with this. It’s true that we don’t have any good casters, but the experienced eye can easily tell what’s going on. It just so happens that all the casters in the game started casting because they couldn’t play the game at a high level so they turned to casting for success instead (sorry, but it’s true and you know it).

It is also true that particles are out of control and AI is dumb, but the lack of casters isn’t because the game is hard to understand—because it isn’t—it’s because there’s no interest in casting because the developers ignored PvP for so long that many people quickly figured out that the game wasn’t gonna go anywhere anytime soon.

If/when the competitive scene rises (l0l) I guarantee we’ll see actual casters that understand the game mechanics show up.

flow.6043:

So you would force every necro to run an off hand dagger…

And I disagree on the finisher, I’d get rid of the second one because it allows for less strategic gameplay. Without the first you’d no longer be able to pre-cast a self beneficial combo from range.
Also, if you precast a mark without a field, it’s rather unpredictable which field will end up on the mark when it actually triggers.

And removing either one of them would not only be a big nerf, but you’d end up in situations where the mark doesn’t trigger a blast finisher at all, even though the mark came in contact with a combo field at some point. And that would certainly be unintended, ergo: 2 finishers are not a bug.

Firstly, I wouldn’t force anyone to do anything with my proposed change. It would be a balanced mechanic, why should I benefit from an AoE mechanic when I’m not even in the AoE?

Secondly, why would you precast such an important mark? Unless you’re fighting a 100% power comp, there’s no reason to cast this just to get 1 blast finisher out of it.

I don’t see the removal of 1 finisher as a big deal, especially when you shouldn’t be using such an important mark unless there’s an enemy around.

flow.6043:

Just out of curiousity… let’s assume one of the finishers really was unintended, which one would you get rid of? The placement or trigger finisher?

I would get rid of the placement trigger. It doesn’t actually cast any effects until the mark is tripped anyways.

Also, necros already have other excellent ways of condi flip/cleanse so I think it’s more important to restore ally cleanse.

Self cleanse > ally cleanse.

I think SPvP is more about teamplay than anything else, and while you do rely on your teammates it’s nice to be able to help them too.

Acandis.3250:

• Remove the double Blast Finisher bug.

Why do people insist this is a bug? It just has 2 finishers…

It makes no sense that a skill should have 2 finishers >.>

Quick background about myself, I am predominately a PvP player, and have spent over 90% of my time in this game in SPvP playing every class. Lately I’ve taken a like to necro and mesmer. So here are my thoughts on the latest ninja nerf:

Whilst necros can still have huge impact in teamfights, I feel that their overall “team support” has been kitten by this nerf alone. In order to help cleanse conditions off allies now you must either pray to the RNG gods and take Plague Signet or force your entire team to sit in Well of Power for 5 seconds letting the enemy team bombard that small area for that duration, hoping you’ll clear 6 conditions that won’t be reapplied in half that time. I do agree the skill (Putrid Mark) needed a nerf, but I think the wrong aspect of its functionality was hit.

My proposed ideal functionality is the following:

• Transfer 3 conditions from each ally in the mark’s area to the enemy nearest the center of the mark when placed. Do not transfer any conditions from the caster unless he is also inside the mark’s area.
• Remove the double Blast Finisher bug.

That way, necros still have viable team support against conditions and Putrid Mark is adequately nerfed.

I’d like to hear what you guys have to say about this.

Personally, I feel like it’s the wrong way to go. It will give veteran players with a lot of glory a big advantage over casuals. The new heals are gonna bring a lot of unbalance into the meta.

They took our land, they took our jobs!
Now they’re taking our ranks, kitten this kitten!

…lol

Justin ODell.9517:

What do you guys thing we should do in the meantime while we continue to work on the new server infrastructure, matchmaking, ladders, etc.?

All I want to see is a ready check before queue pops.

The following are requirements not suggestions, for the new ladder system.

• Queues need a ready check. This will drastically reduce the amount of AFKs in games. It is beyond me why something this simple hasn’t been implemented in a 15 months this game has been active. Seriously, it’ll take any of your coders 5 minutes to spit the 50 lines of code this will take.
• Unranked Queue needs to exist! Especially now that there will be a ladder, there needs to be an unranked mode were people can go blow off steam and relax without having to worry about their spot in the new ladder.
• Barrier of entry for new players! Again, with the new ladder, there needs to be a simple system so that new players don’t just get tossed into the ladder and throw games for others that already know how the system works. (Suggestion for how to do this below)
• Solo Queue needs Duo Queue. Adding duo queue won’t make it so that people only wanna duo queue, it’ll make solo queue more fun. People sometimes like playing with 1 other friend just to know there’ll be 1 less kitten in the game.

Barrier of Entry Suggestions: Instead of removing ranks altogether leave rank 1-20 and only rank 20s can queue up for Ranked play. This doesn’t have to be a hard grind to 20, it can be the exact same progression. The point of this should be to force players to at least get used to how the game works in SPvP, whether they play conquest, deathmatch, or whatever other gamemode you guys are adding. This way they get used to the dynamic mechanics of their class in PvP in unranked play where people will just be kittening around anyways.

/discuss

Whilst having your long term plan revealed is a great step in the right direction, that alone is not enough to keep the population from bleeding out in the short term.

There are a number of things that need to be done in order for the current (and the future) PvP system to be enjoyable.

1. AFKs need to be taken care of. There’s an easy solution for this, add a ready check right before the queue pops, if not all 10 players accept, boot the AFKs from queue and restart the search. Simple yet efficient.
2. Balance needs to be rolled out faster. The last 4 major balance patches let hell lose and very little (if anything at all) was done to alleviate the issues that you created, so people just left. You need to immediately recognize if a change you made is greatly affecting gameplay and hotfix it immediately. I can already tell you the Dec10 patch is not going to be rainbows and unicorns, you need to have the balance team on standby ready to rollout hotfixes. We do not want to play a broken game for months.
3. Lastly, please for the love of everything that is holy, remove Skyhammer from solo queue. It’s a poorly designed conquest map with many disincentives to play properly. It gives great advantage to a few classes over the others and forces players to not only adapt, but to play dumb unviable (in conquest) builds. It’s not doing anyone any favors by staying in the solo queue rotation. ~80% of the community wants it gone! (consult poll for proof: http://strawpoll.me/737903/r)

Mainly I want to see you guys stop ignoring your community and working things out not solely as you see fit.

cuge.5398:

Not suprised at all, how can a pvp channel stay alive when the pvp community is almost all gone ? or what is left are casuals….

A number of people—myself included—have mentioned numerous times that we would stream again when Skyhammer is removed from solo queue. Over 79% of the community hates the map and is for removal.

At this point, its just ANet management hurting themselves by not listening to the majority of the community.

I’ve played LoL since it came out and saw it go through many of the same problems we are now. I hope you guys are paying close attention to they way they’ve dealt with those problems and hopefully implementing similar fixes.

For example, there was always a huge problem with AFKs in queue because there was no check after the queue popped. So what they added was a neat little popup that says “your game is ready. Accept? Y/n” AFKs are kicked from the queue if they don’t respond within 30 seconds.

It’s a very simple fix that immediately got rid of 99% of AFKs in champ select

Jackums.3496:

No more screen clutter.

And adding an enemy endurance bar will just make GW2 PvP even more simple than it already is. “Watch the bar. Mash your burst when it’s low. Win.”

The unpredictability of dodges is part of the fun. Having to set up a burst and force your opponent to burn up their evades before initiating it makes for far more interesting gameplay than having a visual cue that tells you you’re free to faceroll away.

This man gets it.

When you consistently win matchups that counter you, whether it be 1v1 or 1vX.
When you consistently make plays that turn teamfights around.
When you can actively keep track of your CDs, the CDs of allies around you, and the CDs of enemies around you.
When your foes tremble at the mere mention of your name.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Who is going to shoutcast it?

Bry & Grouch

cymerdown.4103:

No need to get personal, you just disagree, so that’s fine. I personally like it when more information is readily accessible to both sides in games — I’m more of a Chess person rather than a Poker person (outplaying with both sides having information, as opposed to outplaying one another based on partly or completely hidden information). Endurance in this game is something that matters a ton in combat, but is hard to anticipate on a lot of builds due to varying levels of endurance regen. There’s so much to communicate about on a team in this game, putting more information into the game’s UI and out of your mouth allows you to spend more of your talking time about other things rather than these invisible bars that everyone is mentally keeping track of. But like I said, it’s a difference of opinion, and we can leave it at that, I’m not sure what made you assume I want the feature because I’m bad at keeping track of dodges or making calls for my team.

Not getting personal, I’m just saying as a support class, it’s your job to be calling CDs and keeping track of them. Really it’s everyones job to do so, but it’s typically easier on any bunker since you’re not usually being focused on a proper teamfight.

That being said, the information is readily available. It’s not hard to tell what type of build anyone is running based on their gameplay. And yes, that includes sigils and vigor uptime.

cymerdown.4103:

Imma let you finish, but Enemy was the best DPS Guard of all time. OF ALL TIME

False.

Harbinger.8637:

Yes please. It’ll add to the skill cap. Right now people just spam dodge, not using it the way it’s suppose to.

It’s easy to play against people that spam dodge. Just time your burst. Bads will dodge every time they have 50 energy. Just count!

Obsidia.5127:

Yeah I had this a couple of weeks ago and posted it on here.

It reminds me of the time when my SoloQ ‘Go Now’ button turned into a HJ ‘Play Now’ button and was taking me to random HJ servers.

When isn’t solo queue reminiscent of hotjoins?

Batmang.5421:

I almost forgot to ask. Whens the couch interview?

I can get you in contact with Shan for that one.

To Bear, you got rank 1 using my build. I’m coming for you.

Dardamaniac.1295:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztVMib1T4T4

LOL best response ever. Kudos!

So there I was, on a lonesome Thanksgiving Thursday, playing my share of solo queue for the day…

I log my mesmer, queue up, 5 seconds go by.. BAM Skyhammer.
“kitten,” I said to myself…
As I accepted my fate, I pressed Go Now and I cupped my balls for warmth before my match started.

The match starts and I head over to A while my friendly teammate, slowly trotting behind me, states “go B”. So I go B.
Already regretting my decision to not go AFK, I get to point B burst some warriors wailing at my teammate and I get ready to rotate.. BAM Forest of Niflhel.

I stand still for a second thinking to myself “Is this a dream? Did I join a Skyhammer hotjoin by mistake? No way, I kittening hate this map, I would never do that!” So I keep playing, ignoring the ever too familiar popup, whilst spamming Wait, thinking its just a bug and I won’t be dragged from my fellow comrades.

One minute goes by, countdown still at 1 minute.
Two minutes go by, countdown reappears at 33 seconds. I start getting nervous.
I inform my fellow teammates that I got a pop for Forest, and I ask in mapchat if anyone else got a random pop. No answer.
5…
4…
3…
2…
1…
I get ported to Forest with an entire new roster, and against a different roster as well.
I silently bid my Skyhammer comrades good luck, and I thanked the almighty Elo Gods for pulling me out of that dreaded map that is Skyhammer and letting me play a real map.

I would like to thank Justin O’Dell, Joshua Davis, and the rest of the ANet staff for the kind Thanksgiving present and pulling me out of that kitten map.

Happy Holidays!

This tale was inspired by real events.

glaphen.5230:

You mean just like the thief signet but better? I guess that’s one way to fix the off hand axe and break the meta further. Healing signet is fine as it is, nerfing it to please whiners should only come with huge buffs to the other heals.

LOL being able to heal yourself for 400+hps with 0 healing power is not “fine,” it’s dumb. Healing signet was perfectly fine before the buff, it was the best heal to take for bunker/support builds. Just like Mending and Healing Surge were better for DPS builds.

The fact that nobody will even want to take anything to Healing Signet is a clear indication that it is overpowered as kitten.

On a sidenote, I actually like the idea that is proposed and giving it more active play, rewarding good mechanics.

ronpierce.2760:

Acandis.3250:

That kind of thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place. The OP skills/traits need to be nerfed, not buff other kitten to power creep level.

Blood fiend is just a bad heal all around. That’s the thing. Blood fiend has almost never (if ever) been in a good build. Always completely outshined by Consume Conditions. I was just stating all the downsides Blood fiend has in comparison to the signet. Based on all the drawbacks over a course of a game it probably heals for 2/5 the healing a signet will. OR less. Not even an exaggeration.

Yes, but that speaks to how OP Consume Conditions is (because it really kittening is).

I don’t disagree in your saying that Blood Fiend is super weak, but the fact is MM necros are already pretty strong, and simply buffing BF without nerfing the rest of the build to compensate would put that spec in a dangerously OP pedestal.

That kind of thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place. The OP skills/traits need to be nerfed, not buff other kitten to power creep level.

Should not be allowed into ranked play.

Laserbolt.6731:

It would be set at the start of the match.

log into the match late.

I don’t think the trait is as strong as you guys think it is. In my opinion, we will only see this trait be very strong in bunker builds where a large HP pool along with large amounts of toughness. It will help glass cannon builds a bit, but the fact that you have to go 30 into earth for it makes it a bad option since you’ll drop a lot of sustain that keeps you I’m the fights when you are not above 90%.

It’s a bad addition to the meta, but it’s not overpowered like many of you seem to think that it will be.

Amen brudda .

In no particular order of priority:

• Set up automated weekly tournament
• Add Duo Queue to Solo Queue
• Reduce conditions in the game significantly
• Rework traits/utilities/elites
• Nerf AI heavily in PvP. Seriously, if I wanted to play against AIs I’d PvE.

wrong way son.

This game needs less conditions not more.

From an SPvP point of view the tome elites are rarely used. In fact, I can’t remember seeing one used in competitive play since March.

Tomes are extremely underwhelming since they have extremely low CDs, very long, easily interruptable casts, and very obvious animations.

I like the idea of making it a separate weapon choice, similar to how Engineer kits work. I think the best way to implement that would be the following:
(Template: Skill Name | cast time | CD | mechanic)
Tome of Courage – instant | 15s | Summon a tome that replaces your weapon skills with powerful healing and support abilities. (Utilities are disabled while using the Tome—Virtues are still available).

• Heal Area – 0.5s | 0s | Every time you cast this, consume a Heal Area stack. Can only have up to 10 stacks. Passively gain a stack every 4s while Tome of Courage is in your skill bar.
• Purifying Ribbon – 0.75s | 3s | Same behavior but add ally targeting, so you can have the initial Ray hit an ally first for better condition cleasing. Right now it’s very RNG.
• Protective Spirit – 0.75s | 15s | Same behavior.
• Pacifism – 2s | kitten | Remove 1 boon, daze for 3s and apply Aegis to all allies in the AoE range. (Blockable by Aegis or any other block).
  • Boonrip Table: Stability, Protection, Might, Swiftness, Regeneration, Fury, Vigor, Retaliation.
• Light of Deliverance – 4.25s | 180 s | Full heal and cleanse all conditions of nearby allies (Max 5).

These changes would allow Tome of Courage to be a strong pick, but not extremely overpowered so as to overshadow Renewed Focus. It also makes it not feel like an absolute waste if you are CC’d out of it (like any good player will do to you if they see you pop a Tome).

Tome of Wrath – instant | 15s | yaddi yaddi yadda

• Conflagrate – 0.5s | 0s | Similar behavior Heal Area but damage enemies instead.
• Affliction – 1.25s | 15s | Change to AoE instead of projectile. All enemies in the AoE range are crippled, weakened (5 stacks) for 10s.
• Smiter’s Boon – 1s | 15s | Same behavior but increase duration to 10s.
• Zealot’s Fervor – 2s | 30s | Same behavior but increase durationo to 15s and 5s accordingly.
• Judgment – 4.25s | 90s | Remove 1 boon, knockdown foes for 3s. Allies gain Might (2 stacks) for 5s for each enemy that is knocked down by the effect. (Blockable by Aegis or any other block).
  • Same boonrip table as Light of Deliverance.

Lastly, the Elite Focus trait should reduce the cast times of these abilities by 20% and increase the maximum number of stacks the Guardian can hold from 10 to 15.

To be perfectly frank, I don’t think it should be a current concern of the PvP team to be creating more maps. A new game-mode (Deathmatch) should be far simpler to accomplish.

With so many unbalanced features in the current SPvP system, I don’t understand why you devote so much of your time to new maps when the current ones are not in a good state.

Forest of Niflhel is probably the most balanced, and it still has its own issues.
Legacy of Foefire is just a complete snowbally mess of a map.
Battle of Khylo would probably be the 2nd most balanced, but there is still the question of how to balance Trebuchet, when some classes clearly have an impossibly ridiculous advantage just by being given the high-ground so simply.
Temple of the Silent Storm has the potential to be the best tournament map but there are too many problems inherently wrong with its design. Snowbally buffs, uneven side obstacles, and ridges overlooking middle point that give certain classes a huge advantage over others—to name a few.
Spirit Watch can be fun, but mobile classes/builds have too much of an advantage and can just cheese their way to victory.
Skyhammer. l0l

So please, for the love of all that is holy, stop devoting the few resources that you have in the wrong projects.

Solid breakdown. Though this in an inherent problem with the mechanics of the game and the way many of the traits have been implemented. In order to fully fix the problem, the entirety of the following would have to be reworked:

• Passive application of conditions
• Passive removal of conditions
• Type of conditions available to each class
• Amount of condition application available to each class

ANet is going the wrong way by giving the wrong classes more access to condition removal, rather than notching down conditions in every other class.

Gunlaugr.2716:

I don’t know why this map is still in solo queue. It is evident that the vast majority of players do not enjoy it. You don’t even need to make a poll to know this if you play soloQ. It is the map most players complain about before the match starts.

I’m aware of this, but ANet staff wants numbers not just “my conjecture”. So this poll is to show them the bloody numbers and hopefully we can get it removed from solo queue for good.

Even after the changes, it should only be put in hotjoins.

dragonkain.3984:

Yep, go check winners and finalists of all recent tourneys. Engineer not included.

I don’t think you should take the comps of current “top teams” seriously. Engis are still a top tier class with huge teamfight presence.

candlecan.9827:

So I might be mistaken, but I believe I heard grouch saying that there were some slight modifications to the map to pave the way for a change down the road. Thinking logically, I dont think A-net is going to throw away one of their maps into hot-join. I currently agree that this map is incredibly not fun to play but maybe these map changes in the near future will make it bearable. In A-nets defense, the changes they made to Temple of the Silent Storm were pretty amazing and made the map tournament viable. I am willing to trust that this can be done again (well maybe Skyhammer will never be tournament viable but I can see it being playable in solo-q)

Keep in mind when they released Temple, they put it into hotjoin only for months before releasing it into the Queued/Weekly rotation.
And instead of doing the same with Skyhammer, they just went balls to the wall and have made us endure through this way past what we should’ve.
I don’t disagree in saying that its a fun trolly map, but why should people trying to compete for “ranking” have to put up with such a sorry excuse for a competitive conquest map.

To clarify—because of title length constraints: I think Skyhammer should be removed from the Solo Queue rotation and left only in hotjoins. I also think this should’ve been done 1 week after its release (but that’s besides the point).

http://strawpoll.me/737903

/discuss

Nova Stiker.8396:

Josh Davis.6015:

We’ll be reducing the maximum amount immobilize stacks in the near future.

Or just change it back. The game was DESIGNED with ONE stack of immobilize in mind.

Not five, not four, not three nor two, designed for just one.

Stop adding/changing mechanics without considering the entire game! (AHEM torment)

This man… I remember the days when it actually took skill to maximize the time you kept a target immobilized. It’s like the made it reeetard proof to land and now everyone gets punished.

brannigan.9810:

One of the dumbest ideas ever.

Krayiss.4926:

Next you’ll ask for them to remove fear stacking. After that you’ll ask for burning duration to not stack, when does it all stop? They either rework all the stacking because its not fair to make only 1 skill not stack and leave all the others.

Bring more condi cleanse or reroll imboa kings like the rest of us

Fears don’t stack.

Very good point. Though I still get excited when I see big numbers.

It does matter because if they make it too high theyre being matches with veteran or highly skilled players. I don’t know the numbers on the actual MMR scale but from experience I could tell that the newer players tended to drift towards the 75% (i spent a week in that elo) so they should really just be put closer to that, in my opinion.

Secondly, the values should be normalized and not wiped entirely. As to what the actual value should be, I don’t know. I don’t know the ins and outs of the current distribution.