Guild Wars 2

There is no elo hell. If you can’t get into Platinum you are simply bad.

Almost every raid encounter has a role that consists of almost exclusively doing damage; usually the dpser without mobility/range/cleave (the guys who are not tempest) can reduce themselves to dps and a minimum of mechanics. Try those positions if you struggle. Even better with a class that has an easy rotation.

Just camp close. RIP thief.

No. Not at all.

megilandil.7506:

condi duration not matter much because: insane amount of cleanses== if not bursty not viable condis===toxic gamemode if 2 or more go condis and no cleanbots near(if cleanboot condi players disabled).

first step to fix condies is hardnerfing the cleanbots like ele, after this condies can be toned down to be a more strategic gameplay based in staking and sustaining stacks

First step is to buff the cleanses so power can 1v1 condi without an elebot.

Crinn.7864:

Dire doesn’t exist in sPvP

Yeah, that is the problem tho. You don’t need it for pvp because carrion just works fine anyways.

Condi builds are far squishier than power builds for every class except Mesmers.

Not really. They don’t have to care for cleanses when facing power.

Condi duration doesn’t matter in pvp because people just die in a couple of seconds if they don’t cleanse. One of the problems.

Once you duo with someone 300 points below you this starts happening.

Can we stop flaming each other for what classes and rank we have? I want to adress the condi issue by principle, not personally…

An if you are curious what I play: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ejm2tehldp2vlvd/04.07.17.png?dl=0

RedCobra.7693:

I play druid and I have no problem with these Overpowered builds you speak of. condi druid is a bit of a joke if you ask me. it has no sustain and little dps outside of using traps. which just make it even more susceptible to gank

Yeah, cause the best tank (who also needs nerfs) atm can withstand the condispam, the condispam is fine. rofl

Locuz.2651:

Its like complaiining about the quality of a mcdonalds restaurant…

McDonald’s in the US is a lot different from McDonald’s in e. g. Germany.

It’s getting annoying how everyone jumps towards condi builds. Can we please just nerf all of them. Make invuln and toughness affect conditions, cap them at 5 stacks and make it so you can only have 3 different conditions at the same time in pvp. Make it so the highest stack gets always priorized by cleanses.

And while we are at it reduce cc and boon spam.

The only thing I noticed is that you can’t chain-immobilize the earthworm in p1 anymore, which is kinda sad because it was a very unique mechanic and showed skill.

Reminding me of the good old days with the Mad King Chests. Keep this up. It shows quality.

A lot of suggestions here are terrible. What is correct is that GS needs buffs. It has to be once again the meta pve weapon for short fights and aoe. What GS therefore needs is more damage, especially on #2 and #4. Furthermore, remove the useless retaliation and give quickness on #4 and make it a fire field. Make the third autohit an explo-finisher. Increase range and projectile speed on #5. Up tether damage of #5. Decrease cd of #3 by 7 seconds and slightly increase range.

The delay on #4 and slowdown on #2 is fine, that’s the downside of GS.

Short: Simply more damage does the deal. Damage is way too low since hot.

For staff: Do whatever you want as long as you don’t touch #1 and #3.

Torch: Rework it completely. Make it the heavy condi cleanse option.

Sword: Remove root on #3.

Focus: Heavily decrease the cast time of #4.

I quit this game mainly because since HoT the balance is complete garbage. My main almost since release guard is realistically worthless (not needed/unoptimal, don’t tell me the joke utility of guard is worth for the dps loss towards an ele) in the only real endgame content, while eles are allowed to shine 24/7 with multiple builds all year like they are demi gods. I got sick of it for good. I’m a fan of pugging and understandably pugging is not possible unless you play ele as a dps, the only role that is fun.

I heared Halloween this year was another cash grab as well, seems like the future of this game is looking real dead.

At least a big competitor of this genre is looking to have a bright future again. They got problems with mages as well but it is not such joke severe like in this game with eles.

Razor.9872:

Excluding CC skill caps, trueshot and test-of-faith were pretty much the only skills to be nerfed. Albeit by a large margin, but many skills received buffs as well.

Yep, they just nerfed the kitten out of the only viable spells and gave completely kittenty stuff a minor, useless improvement.

Nope, this class must end just as thief. This class is even more cancerous than thief ever was.

No, stealth mesmer is just as cancerous as release thief (who got deleted bc of that). In other words, stealth mesmer needs to suck aswell.

Yes, it’s a joke how this broken class got actually buffed. Already most mandatory class for raids and meta BEFORE the buffs in conquest. Who the kitten is even responsible for the balance of this game?

Just fix stunbreak utility spells and make them affect breaking moa form. Exploit solved and balanced.

Aggrostemma.1703:

Same here!

I couldn’t care less about the LB2 nerf since I suggested something similar but +1 sec cast-time… What equals to -20% DPS from that skill alone.

What really kittenes me off is that sword/hammer/consecrations/signets/spirit weapons haven’t been touched…. Why?

They could nerf TS by 90 percent and I wouldn’t give a flying kitten about it because it was a cheap and skill-less nuke but why ignore the rest of the problems?

This Guardian balance makes no sense to me… I mean at all….

It’s not about senselessness. It’s simply lazyness and/or inability. It’s Anet.

Still no buffs, now we are just useless in pvp aswell. GG Anet.

Buff to mesmers, this is just rofl Anet.

Guardian’s class fantasy is being useless and slow, you fool.

cause balance kappa

“Sir, guard is already useless in raids/pve, unless you are in a nap noob group.”

“That’s only the beginning, let’s make him useless in pvp aswell, unless you are trying to stomp noobs in amber 5.”

“Nice idea, noob content should be guardians niche. But weren’t guards already non-meta for competitive play?”

“Defining weakpoints and adding weakpoints, my young padawan.”

Dinosaurs.8674:

I’m not sure where your impressions of guardian are coming from but it is actually a desirable class in raids, at least among the groups I play with. Let’s go over the raid bosses.

Vale Guardian: Permanent protection for melee team, can immob seekers from range with hammer 3, can block seeker movement with hammer 5, can knockback seekers with hammer 4, has amazing CC with hammer 4 + bane signet. We bring a guardian every time even if they’re not tanking.

Gorseval: Good here if you’re running a no updraft strategy, can use Retreat to block gorseval’s slam allowing you to DPS instead of dodge.

Sabetha: Permanent protection, she never walks out of symbol, can solo break knuckle’s bar. Can stop teammates from being kicked into flame wall with stand your ground or hallowed ground.

Sloth: wall of reflection and shield of the avenger great for stopping slubling projectiles. F1 pull can drag in multiple slublings if you aim it well. F3 can protect allies from spore shake attack.

Tres Bandidos: Reflect is nice, bane signet can break saboteurs from range

Matthias: wall of reflection removes invuln stacks, F2 great for getting to fountains and condi cleanse, can trait pure of voice for additional condi cleanse, gives protection to allies, can remove a huge chunk of the break bar quickly (very important in this fight, not sure why you undervalue CC) , can save allies from downpour and fire tornadoes with stand your ground, all his attacks can be blocked.

These are things that no other class could bring all together, and I didn’t even mention feel my wrath, which is actually one of the better elite skills in the game for raids, at least in the current meta where some comps may need it to maintain fury (and quickness is obviously good). I’m not sure what happened to you to think that guardian is bad in raids, but it has been my experience that having at least one guardian is extremely valuable in every encounter besides gorseval (and even for that it’s great if you’re doing no updraft). You say hammer DPS “isn’t the highest” but it’s actually pretty good, especially against a stationary target where it is only beaten by elementalist and thief.

And honestly I feel like you haven’t actually played salvation pass, because saying that reflects are not useful is flat out wrong. Reflects aren’t just useful, they are actually mandatory. As in you literally cannot damage matthias without a reflect, and as a practical matter you will never beat sloth without reflect/projectile destruction. Our usual comp for sltoh involves 6-8 projectile killing skills, so guardian is definitely welcome. Block is also stupid good against matthias and sloth, and so is stability.

One thing you are definitely right about however is that weapons besides hammer are not particularly good for PVE. We usually bring scepter/shield as offhand against matthias for some extra CC and for damage when you can’t be close to him, but that’s a pretty weak option.

So yeah I’m expecting no buffs to guards, except maybe to their weapons besides hammer, because guardians are actually pretty good.

What you just described is sth that almost any combination of chrono-tank + a dps can do better. Except perma-protection (which isn’t mandatory at all and only really usefull for bad groups).

Linken.6345:

Yes its such a bad class it can be only that class and still down valeguardian

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drS6JYuuKvY

Are you trolling, passive aggressive or just naive?

If last, being supbar at every single role is useless in this game unless you happen to run into 9 other people on a daily basis that like to do troll comps just for the sake of fun every single week. And you on your own must like being unoptimal aswell.

Guard is useless atm (unless you consider clearly unoptimal and easily avoidable builds (by playing other op classes) as not useless).

I play guard since like 2 years almost exclusively. Up until HoT guard was a class that was taken to almost all high-end content, especially in pugs. Yes, guard was almost constantly nerfed since like release, but the utility combined with decent dps always made him viable.

Then HoT hit and it seemed like a big: Let’s screw guard big time.

Why?

- Blocks are pretty much useless in raids.
- Reflection is pretty much useless in raids.

Already at this point the class is kinda destroyed, but it goes on:

- As a tank you do nothing but tanking, there is 0 reason to take guard as a tank over op chrono.
- As a dps guard doesn’t offer much. Hammer-DPS isn’t the highest and that’s pretty much it.
(- Heal-guard was always bad.)

Now, we all know that guard can do one thing that isn’t really needed: DPS/“Support”. “Support” basically just means perma protection, which isn’t at all mandatory and most of the time just more dps is better than perma protection from a guard. Yeah, you also got CC, but that’s nothing special.

In addition to that, we don’t got a good range option (scepter 2 cheese doesn’t work most of the time and is hence useless) and the burst from greatsword is useless because raid fights take long (especially with a guard, the irony).

Then, if you add up the nerfs of the past (lowest health pool, no substantial damage creep with HoT) and guard’s natural weakness (low mobility, no constant healing signet), you end up with something that you could describe as useless.

This situation is now frequent since 6 months. Since HoT, chrono outshines guard for tanking, all classes in dps (and druid/ele in healing).

TL;DR: You made guard’s core strengths (blocks + reflection) useless and did not give anything great as a replacement. No, not-so-great damage from dh isn’t a replacement at all.

Solution:

- Rework of block (everything dodgable should be blockable, create good damage when allies’ blocks activate as a trait).
- Health pool back to max.
- Reintroduce reflection for all projectiles (it was really really lazy to just disable it in order to balance out oneshots, really really lazy). Change it to absorption with much lesser cd and higher uptime + range if you still can’t program reflection properly (which is really really sad).
- buff to scepter (dps)
- buff to sword (dps)
(- buff to healing scaling)
- buff to greatsword autohit dps (a really good buff would make guard again viable as a dps alone)

I expect a big buff for guards on 19th. If that doesn’t happen I will probably just abandon this game. So much bad stuff happened in the past and I intentionally delayed raiding to a point when my main class would be viable. 6 months is already too long and I won’t wait 7 months.

Just got mine via buy-order for 300 gold. I’d suggest getting it while you can. Yeah, the prices may drop even more, but who the kitten really knows how much supply is there. It’s kinda impossible to predict the future of this skin since the supply is a big mistery.

It greatly hinders mixmatching. Especially for phalanx, since the chest piece is one of the best and most versatile of all heavy skins.

Sadly, they didn’t got rereleased in march.

Let’s face it, Warrior is meant for open world and instanced solo pve.

His ridiculous sustain + selfbuffs + great solo damage + tier 1ish mobility makes him pretty much the best class for just playing the game’s regular pve content with a chill (+ dungeons solo).

WvW is fine balancing-wise too, although I have to admit the standard zerk build is no fun at all and just feels worse compared to Guardian or Rev.

PvP and instanced group content isn’t/won’t be fine, but let’s face it:

As long as you can relax your way thru the open pve with GreatAxe, there is always a heart for Warriors in this game.

I’m a Guard main and just rolled a Warrior for playing solo pve when I’m feeling so. Guard is terrible in terms of solo open pve content.

And before you respond with, “every class can play open world pve”, sure, but playing Warrior is the most fluent and relaxing way to do it.

Just roll another class for pvp and alike, I had to do this stuff several times as well.

Short said, trying to mix for a new character I had to find out that the phalanx armor chest piece is the only good looking one in the entire game for my race and uses.

Plz just bring back all these skins you let disappear months ago. Back then, I was partly fine with it because I thought hot would bring new stuff to the table, but it didn’t at all.

There is almost no new armor and the ones we got are mostly garbage. Yes, the Naz’gul hoot is nice. There are a few exceptions but it’s still not close to be enough.

I’d buy the phalanx armor just for the chestpiece with real money. Get my 10 Euro.

This expansion sadly turned out to be a nightmare for people who want to customize their chars look-wise. Almost no [good] new armor and a bunch useless outfits.

Plz make this problem less crucial by rereleasing old armor again sooner than you might have planned.

Otherwise, I might stop the game because I can’t stand looking ugly [ingame].

Greetings.

Yes, dps guardian is so frail and that’s because blocks are pretty kittenty when being glassy. Two fast hits in a row = block first, die to second like a cloth holder.

There should be a trait like “for every berserker stat (strength, precision, crit), get x amount of health points”. This way dps guard gets his needed buff and tanky guards don’t get unkillable.

And there should also be a health signet like the warrior, elemental or thief has, which provides constant healing.

A load of fast hitting attacks aswell as constant mediocre unavoidable damage just kills dps guards, which makes them pretty kittenty for solo pve stuff…

<!!!> Please all read this, it adds to this issue by naming the most important aspect which wasn’t even mentioned in the starting post. <!!!>

Two things:

It is correct, that shadowsteps were always in this game and that they just lacked the red message, but, until the red message was introduced, teleports were actually teleports and not shadowsteps. Then they were changed to be shadowsteps with a wrong name. This is the misery, which I think was a very big mistake. And I’m especially angered about the fact you did not mention this change since it’s the reason for the frustration, not how shadowsteps work in general.

Second, instead of changing teleports to shadowsteps, you should check the map for exploits in particular and implement invisible walls were needed.

Turning almost all teleports into shadowsteps was the big lazyness concerning fixing possible exploits. The correct way would have been to check for exploits in particular but keep teleports as teleports. Hopefully, this will get reverted.

The current situation is extremely annoying, frustrating and I always think, why could somebody do this to this game?

Same applies to the joke that happened with not letting swiftness affect movement skills anymore.

Stop fixing exploits by damaging the combat system in an extremely crucial way. Start fixing exploits in particular.

Alternatively, upgrade your path calculator by 1000 levels.

For a way better game.

PS: I’m just so direct in this post because I love this game and want it to be better in parts which lack a lot!

I predict 50. Would be decently fair in my opinion. And I’m saying that as someone who did probably 500+ fractal runs in desperate search for specific skins, which never dropped. It’s just fair to say that you need to complete fractals 50 times to get a guaranteed skin. Everything below would be kinda mean against those guys who farmed since Fractur update to HoT. Everything above would be very hindering for new players.

Yeah, I was doing him in phase 3 with sword/shield and scepter/focus aswell as for a short time (after a failed os) with gs+scepter/focus.

But this also basically means, if you attempt a max speed oneshot and fail to burst him thru phase 3, you are kinda in a bad spot (unless Lupi gets really low nevertheless).

Thanks for clearing this up!

Well, I was taking a glimpse at the vids.

And then I realized I was doing it inefficient.

I thought you have to set the WoR on top of the arena wall, but you actually have to set it on the side of the wall in the upper half.

Then it’s pretty straight forward with Unscathered etc.

I guess it’s doable if you know how it works exactly.

Still, if this interesting feature gets taken out, I see no reason to run the dungeon solo with anything but warrior, which would be quite a shame in my opinion. Maybe disable os only if you are in a group of 3+ people?

And then again, I really like it when there are multiple ways to beat an encounter, including os.

Hopefully raids will offer the opportunity for the players to find out different strats to beat an encounter on their own and the devs will then balance those strats after they are discovered, but NOT remove them as a whole. As it was “promised” at TwitchCon.

And yeah, because I did os wrong, I had to learn all phases, including phase 3, so don’t get mad at me for not learning the boss in a whole.

Peace!

Is there really no way around energy sigils?

How do you survive Phase 3? I always run out of blocks/evades and then life. I use Greatsword/Scepter+Focus for Phase 1+2.

The problem is that all this life drain stuff requires two dodges and the guard has a pretty bad access to vigor, single blocks are pretty useless.

This leads to nothing. I’m out.

I did solo him yesterday, it’s just that a lot of stuff coming up here is wrong concerning mandatory details. Whether it’s hard or not is more or less a practice issue, but if you want to explain a newb how to solo Lupi as a guard, just telling “place wall and yolo thru phase 2 and 3” is just wrong/very incomplete. There is a lot of stuff to take care of, especially if you got bad luck. Of course, all this becomes easier the more you do it, but doing it the first time and actually figuring all these details out on your own takes atleast a substantial amount of effort.

Jerus.4350:

save you by placing the wall at the start of the phase and summoning your little buddies. It may not fully kill him but then you just continue with the tail end of phase 3.

This proves you never solod Lupi with a wall since the specialization patch without RNGesus, using the “place early” tactic.

Lupi can easily take longer than the duration of the wall until he does his AoE. And if the wall stops while his AoE is active (like in the middle), he will not get bursted into phase 3. Not to mention that he can easily target your “little buddies” and oneshot them, if you are not lucky.

Thief damage is even pretty low on d/p and d/d. The only thing thief got left is mobility, a bit stealth and mediocre damage which can only burst glass builds, almost no survivability.

Play a bruiser accordingly for one time in pvp and you will realize how bad thief is since the specialization patch.

Enlighten me if I’m doing something over-complicated, putting too much effort in it, but anyways, all this “press wall, yolo, win” is definitely wrong. Whether you have to add my stuff or other things which are not that hard, is up to debate, since this will not get solved until you stop doing this “I’m so good, you’re so bad” child attitude and actually contribute to the topic.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

• Try to understand the theories as to why this might be so, even if you choose not to agree. In this case, there are three main ones: artificial scarcity (also used by Apple, BMW, etc.), clutter reduction (since the UI doesn’t leave room for lots of stuff), and reward revaluation (players devalue that which is always available).

The thing is, everyone knows that this applies (I even mentioned it in the beginning post); the fact that it applies, is the reason I criticize, not anything else. – The fact that you have to use these cheap tactics, which are definitely not as relevant at Apple and Co. as they are in this gemstore. And the UI can be fixed by taking effort in fixing the UI, not just taking the items out, if you make an according stance on the issue.

• Offer ANet an alternative that meets their needs and benefits the entire community.

People these days… Read before posting, thanks:

I would be fine if they make it so a complete set of armory costs less than buying every single piece of it alone and if this specific offer would be timelimited, but the pieces alone must be available permanently, there is already only so less armor in the game and there won’t come a lot with hot (like 3 sets), you need every single one to properly customize.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Getting angry and calling people names might make you feel better; it’s not likely to catalyze action from ANet.

Because I “accused” somebody of fanboyrism in my argumentation since there is pretty clear evidence? Lel. Fanboyrism is how you think about stuff, not an insult. I even call myself a fanboy on specific stuff, although definitely not on this game, obviously.

Purple Miku.7032:

You can literally max range strafe left and right from a distance with scepter for phase 1 and get hit by nothing.

Literally no. The kiting requires serious knowledge since by just pressing left right you will die to the adds in a glimpse, sidestepwalking is too slow to kite them. You have to think of a perfectly optimated path where you can constantly hit Lupi and don’t get hit by the adds, especially when they stack up and reach you a lot faster then.

Purple Miku.7032:

placing a freaking instant cast WoR on top of the wall as soon as Lupi lowers his head to begin his animation.

Literally no. You have to go thru phase 2 if you are not lucky and he instantly does his AoE after transitioning, which has like a 33% chance to happen. So you basically have to do phase 2 in melee mode.

And even then the wall will not oneshot unless you place a bunch of units like with the oger pet whistle. So you have to melee Lupi until he does the animation, which takes like a second, and in this second you have to perfectly set the wall and at the same time use a bunch of consumables to summon pets (+ popping fury, deal with adds). Not trivial at all by the game’s standards.

And even then the wall might bring him only to 10% and you have to go thru phase 3, if you got bad luck with wall crits.

Purple Miku.7032:

I actually feel violated after reading this post.

You don’t want to know what I think about you.

Realize that oneshotting Lupi is only extremely trivial when you are in a group or have a lot of luck in phase 2 as solo.

Rauderi.8706:

I wouldn’t waste wisdom and logic on someone who tosses around ‘fanboy’ as a counter-argument.

I wouldn’t waste wisdom and logic on someone who reduces the argument of your opponent on one word, completely ignoring the rest, as a counter-argument, while at the same time not contributing anything new to the discussion.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Adrenalin.5719:

That is just a fanboy joke, right?

You buy your products when you need them. If someone finds a nice mix and one of the skins is a gemstore one, he will buy it, if not, not.

Fanboys have nothing to do with it. Creating an illusion of scarcity works as a business model. Anet isn’t the only business to do it; it’s a common tactic. When people see that an item is going off of the gemstore/going away, they’re more likely to panic buy.

The fanbourism is supporting these 3rd world tactics.

These are not even seasonal items or something special. The phalanx armor ist just a neutral looking heavy armor, not afflicted with any special event or season. No high standard company would do this.