Guild Wars 2

We currently have nine classes, but what if we take some of their skills away but add three more classes that will take some of the skills? It would redistribute power to the new classes and add diversity though a potential weakness is homogenization and interchangeability. This would be done in such a way to raise the skill floor and ceiling since each class would have fewer resources than before, meaning less room for mistakes in PvE and PvP. This would also be together with buffing core Tyria mobs to HoT levels AI, skill, and power wise (within the context of their respective leveled zones of course) but that’s a topic for another thread.

Tl;dr: simplifying current classes but adding more classes to increase diversity and spreading out the powercreep giving the feeling of reducing it seems like a good policy.

The Ele will lose access to his attunements and instead get access to a one handed sword* and have three attunement slots instead of four. The first is your weapon set while the other two are fire abilities that you’ll have regardless of your weapon equipped. The fourth slot is your pet’s skill so in a way it’s ranger light. Both non-weapon fire attunements focus on damage, utility, CC, and cleansing. Fire Overload can still happen and can even be improved to expand its AoE field.

I might axe some of the healing though since adding too much would defeat the purpose of denying the water and earth attunements. AoE damage (power and burning), the awesome pet, and reveal are the big themes with a minor in cleansing. If the pet seems to make things way overpowered it’s no big, it could become a ranger pet instead I’d totes main ranger just for that awesome pet!

Traits:

• Minor adept: Gain pyromancy and swords. You gain a fire lion as a pet. It would have red fur and a fire mane and tail tip.

• Major adept 1: Applies reveal to anyone within 150 unit radius of you. Cooldown 30 seconds. Potentially underpowered as a stealthed ranger pet or minion could trigger the proc or potentially overpowered.

• Major adept 2: Apply vigor to nearby teammates whenever you swap to pyromancy set 2.

• Major adept 3: Your pet applies an extra couple stacks of burning on his attacks.

• Minor master: Your pet deals more damage.

• Major master 1: Your pet’s search and rescue (if slotted) expands to 900, up from 600.

• Major master 2: Bright meteors apply reveal for an extra second and apply weakness.

• Major master 3: Healing skills increased by 15%

• Grandmaster minor: Gain might when swapping pyromancy skillsets.

• Grandmaster major 1: Every stack of burning you cause stacks more regeneration and vigor duration upon allies.

• Grandmaster major 2: Your pet taunts foes upon you or him being critically hit. Cooldown 45 seconds for the proc.

• Grandmaster major 3: Fire overload’s radius is bigger. Also grants stability upon casting.

Pyromancer sword abilities:

• Autoattack: slice-slash-crippling strike

• Sword 2: flashing blade.

• Sword 3: Is basically blurred frenzy being an evade and attack in one but causes burning too.

Anything but warhorn (since elite specs can’t and shouldn’t be stackable) can be offhand but you’ll only have access to fire attunement’s offhand skills. Sword/dagger will likely be recommended while staff and main hand scepter and dagger for other builds.

Pyromancy set 1:

• Autoattack: Fire small fireballs from your hands. Similar to thief pistol autoattack in damage modifier and rate of fire.

• Blinding flame: causes reveal and blindness within the targetted radius.

• Purifying flames: heals conditions off allies (two conditions every second) and applies burning to enemies. Lasts three seconds with a cooldown of 25 seconds.

• Lava flesh: Just like obsidian flesh. Character turns red (I’ve seen red characters from boxes of fun so the effect for the telegraph is already in the game).

• Walls of fire: knocks down the enemy for 0.5 seconds (3 seconds in PvE) everytime they try getting out of or crossing the circle. Is intended for hard zoning (as opposed to soft zoning with a skill like fire or air overload where the character can cross, but take damage or need to consume a resource to safely do so) and situational. Cooldown 40 seconds.

Pyromancy set 2:

• Autoattack: Like ride the lightning but with a fire leash instead of lightning.

• Bright meteors: Just like meteor shower but applies revealed to whomever it hits.

• Reflector flame: creates a reflection field so hostile projectiles get reflected back if fired from the outside. If hostile projectiles are inside the field they’ll be destroyed. 30 second cooldown.

• Burn baby burn: Causes an AoE daze plus burning. Is basically the Druid’s Lunar Beam with burning added with a fire magic flavor.

• Healing flames: Heals allies nearby and grants a fire aura to all nearby allies (five max with priority going to players, then pets, then NPCs). Is basically a copy of wash the pain away with a fire aura at the end and fire graphics.

The fire overload charges when you’re in your weapon set, just like tempest.

Pet skills:

• Search and rescue

• Ferocious stalker: The pet stealths and pounces upon the ele’s target with a rapid attack plus evade like the smokeskelk’s ability. As usual causes burning because he’s a lion made of fire! Hello!

• Maneater: each attack causes lifesteal for the pet and ele.

Utilities:

• Fire boarding: Ride a tidal wave of fire and surf away. Is basically just eye of the storm with a sick telegraph. Since you won’t have access to tempest in this spec I thought this made sense. Unlike Eye of the Storm however the skill is completely personal so you won’t be able to tactically wait for two of your teammates to get CC’d to use it (if you didn’t need to use it before for a disengage). If you see an ele surfing on lava just remember the lava itself is safe but the ele has superspeed. Not a subtle tell but the game needs to be a wee bit better at telegraphs across the board for all classes.

• Flames of time: Slows and damages foes while granting alacrity for allies. Since chill isn’t appropriate for a pyromancer I otherwise copied well of recall from Chronomancer.

• Procession of fire: like procession of blades but rains fireswords in the area instead.

• Flameward step: lay a mark somewhere and when the enemy steps there it causes revealed, burning, and becomes flamward pursuit. Basically the thief’s shadow trap with a pyromancer flavor.

• Elite skill: Avatar of Fire. Become an avatar of fire and gain stability, might, resistence, and protection.

Avatar of Fire abilities:

• Autoattack: punch.

• Roundhouse kick: knocks down your foe for two seconds.

• Volcanic rupture: lava bursts forth from the area the AoF ran past. Is like surge of the mist in that the character simply runs forward, but instead the ground opens up immediately behind them.

• Pet toss: Throw your pet at your foe, causing confusion and bleeding.

• Don’t know what to put here.

I suspect the elite spec isn’t quite balanced but what changes would you make to it to bring it in line? I don’t like powercreep and may seem OP in places but other classes would be given nice goodies too. He’s also locked out of his typical elemental attunements so he has to sacrifice earth, wind, and water weapon abilities.

*Or shortbow but I haven’t thought of weapon skills for that yet.

I think I know your problems, some of which were addressed here:

1.You have no defensive stats.

2.You didn’t dodge the big attack, suggesting you didn’t see it. This could be related to lag (the graphic didn’t catch up with the practical effect) or the visual data not uploading to your VRAM for whatever reason. If the visual information isn’t there then it won’t be visible on your screen leading to a seemingly invisible attack.

If anything I hope they buff core Tyria to HoT levels power wise, skill set wise, density wise and AI wise.

You’re in the minority. Most people love the scaling system. How fun is it exactly to rampage through 90% of the game one-shotting everything while facing no threat whatsoever?
The answer is none.

In a single player game that’s fun as long as you know there are zones appropriate for your power level. Superman in My Little Pony or Adventure Time for example would trivially overpower content where his biggest challenge would be not accidentally violating his no killing policy whereas Superman in official crossovers with Marvel and within his own comics and the Justice League faces real and credible challenges, sometimes from creatures stronger than himself such as Doomsday and Darkseid.

Ghotistyx.6942:

There is no synergy in concept or mechanics.

In the rough draft I had survivalist as it’s closer to the thief concept for a healing spec but ultimately changed it to priest. Apart from weapon skills is similar. In hindsight a priest sneaking around for assassination (even if it’s a secondary role behind healer) does sound silly but mechanically in SWtOR Scrapper works very well as an energy based healer (energy is basically initiative) and is basically a WoW rogue with a blaster and heal spec. On the other hand a tough and rugged survivalist used to exploring tough environments like the Outback, Siberia, or Amazon aren’t known for using scepters.

Maybe a mobility based initiative healer with decent burst damage is better off as a whole new class? Then they could spec for healing, burst damage, mobility, or cleanse. But the problem there is it adds a whole new level of powercreep and messes with the armor weight distribution symmetry. Then again somethings have so many tools we may as well break some current classes down and create three new ones. Then that creates new problems with potential homogenization.

In some fighting games you’d have like 40 characters but different stats and movesets to avoid redundancy and even if movesets are identical stats can be different like Ken being a more mobile and less tanky version of Ryu. The idea behind such a breaking up of classes and creating more wouldn’t be to make everyone good at everything but to make everyone able to do everything, but in varying degrees and frequency. One will have more and/or better CC while another has that with cleansing or conditions, but in varying degrees. This creates a sense of adaptability for content by not being locked too hard into a specific role. One should typically stay with their role but dish out a decent heal in a pinch if the dedicated healer needs some help.

Link.1049:

I do use stealth and shadowstep. As for being on a team… I tend to roam because we tend to have 2-3 people on any given map at any given time. As for your reasons for me dying… great to see you over my shoulder…oh wait you’re not. A ranger can send his super fast pet across like half the map which can follow you through a stealth and shadowstep— instadown. I’m getting one shot since patch by classes that historically can’t do that, like ele’s, and necros.

You aren’t intended to be one-shotted even by the ele’s themselves, those very strong skills are either to bait interrupts or zoning. If you see a lightning or fire overload field then try using shortbow from a distance especially autoattack and poison field. Hey, they wanted space from you so welcome to it. The previous doesn’t apply to earth overload however, which grants the ele a reflect and therefore projectile hate. A well played thief can still be a tough matchup for a tempest at least a dagger/focus mender’s one. Steal is an instant daze teleport so that’s a very important consideration while stealth by its very nature denies information of the thief’s location and staff, dagger, and sword skills from stealth are great. Both classes shouldn’t be caught dueling but it can happen in certain circumstances. I frequently roam and decap as a tempest because I find myself on teams that don’t know to decap nodes or over rotate and someone on the other team has the sense to try avoiding a fullcap for mine. I usually bail if I can’t make progress however, better to concede the node than die. I have better luck against dragonhunters, some druids, necros, and the occasional mesmer on tempest than other classes. I have defeated some warriors but I’ve seen some amazing warriors (even last season) that made me disengage as their management of defensive cooldowns was simply incredible.

Here’s mine. Dyes are crushed bone on the boots, amentity on the blues, electro pink on the pink (metal accents on Braham’s leg armor are fling dye as it’s pink and metal), gold accents are golden sheen, and the dye channel for the sleeves are a pastel citrus since it was the closest dye I could find to creating the illusion of a sleeveless look. The gloves were a bit of a challenge to get a bracer look and the hands and arms look way off from each other but I’m closing the gap between them.

It’s still off but from a distance the sleeves would look like arms rather than sleeves since the color is almost there but not quite. I’m satisfied overall with the look but can’t really decide what skirt I want for her: pit fighter, Braham’s, or the Honor of the Waves one so I’m switching between them. They’re all different armor pieces so I’m not wasting invaluable transmutation charges. The Honor of the Waves one would be better as one connected piece instead of two separate cloths but is fine.

Edit: I’d really love it if the game could have some of that nice loading screen and hero panel lighting!

I originally thought of survivalist since thief is supposed to be a mundane and his weapon was rifle which would be melee offense (hitting people with the rifle since the “ammo” is for healing) but healing range via skills two, three, and five and two was like druid’s solar beam but with initiative cost (doesn’t heal the caster) but couldn’t find a logical explanation for spraying medicine hurting some people while healing others. It could logically work if it’s a heal only and does no damage (however minor). The traits and utilities are otherwised unchanged except as far as skills related to scepter and thematic naming are concerned. In other words fugu pool (wow I was in Super Adventure Box too long!) becomes reason to faith. Besides it’d be odd for a skill implying poisoning (where the daze and confuse would come from) to not actually inflict the poison status effect.

Anyway, here’s the priest. I changed the name from faith healer.

The thief will lose his steal ability and in its place will be An AoE pulsing heal skill that can be traited to remove conditions as well. Stealth may play a smaller than usual role for thief but is still thematic. Unlike daredevil only gives two endurance bars. This is to ensure daredevil remains competitive and the idea behind this spec is giving thief an option to be a healer. Taking core stuff away like steal also ensures power creep stays in check. Elite specs cannot be stacked.

Traits:

• Minor adept: Lose steal and gain circle of prayer. Can now equip scepters.

• Major adept 1: 20% of your precision converts to healing power.

• Major adept 2: Someone mentioned that the precision stacks like sigil of perception was out of place here. I want to do something with mobility and healing here instead.

• Major adept 3: Stealth grants a boon (don’t know which one yet I thought vigor but that’d be way OP and we must remember why old feline grace was gutted while regeneration seems OP too and quickness and resistance are certainly out of the question…maybe fury?)

• Minor master: Grant yourself and nearby allies regeneration whenever you successfully evade an attack. Cooldown 15 seconds.

• Major master 1: Remove an entire stack of a damage condition for you and one random nearby ally whenever you crit (with players receiving priority so you won’t cleanse a bone fiend if the necro is nearby). Cooldown 30 seconds to avoid condition specced opponents becoming invalidated. Was originally any random condition but would be too OP if it cleanses the really nasty stuff.

• Major master 2: Gain quickness randomly upon healing. The proc has a 45 second cooldown.

• Major master 3: Healing skills increased by 15%

• Grandmaster minor: Gain 1.75 seconds of superspeed upon being revealed.

• Grandmaster major 1: Stealth improves healing and gain movement speed while in stealth. Does not stack with Shadow Arts.

• Grandmaster major 2: Circle of Prayer now cleanses conditions once every 1.35 seconds. Circle of Prayer’s cooldown reduced to 40 seconds.

• Grandmaster major 3: Healing power is now a minor damage modifier where the extra damage is 1/5 of your healing power. So if you have 1,000 healing power it’s as if you have an extra 200 damage power. Does not convert healing power to power but rather adds damage in addition to it.

Scepter abilities:

• Autoattack: Melee range with the third attack in the chain granting a tiny amount of healing comparable to druid’s staff autoattack (solar beam).

• Scepter stealth skill: Causes three second reveal and daze to your opponent. Dagger is recommended for offhand if you intend to use this skill as there’s no leap finisher in the weapon set.

• Scepter 2: A stronger wider version of the druid’s solar beam that costs initiative. The idea is to do it twice or three times which will do some damage to foes (power scaling will be weak-average to avoid it being OP while it scales well with healing power) so it compliments a burst healing roamer well I think. A marauder daredevil would still superior as far as +1 damage and mobility goes.

• Scepter 3 with dagger: first attack is a dodge while the second cleanses a condition. Initiative cost equivalent to sword/dagger 3.

• Scepter 3 with pistol: create a light field and fire a confusion shot that heals nearby allies. Was originally daze but if thief is using pistol then pistol 4 is already a daze and two daze skills would be silly. I imagined a 1.5 second charge time for this skill and higher initiative cost than pistol 4 so I thought it was balanced.

Utilities:

*Reason to faith: Creates an AoE field that dazes and confuses whomever crosses it and adds two confusion every second. Three second trap and intended for zoning purposes (creating spaces where it’s unwise for a foe to cross into) such as creating unsafe rez or stomp spots or to discourage people from going up stairs towards a side node in Khylo (making them either wait it out or consume a resource to avoid damage).

• Chest slam: Slam a book of Lyssa onto your foe’s chest knocking them down. Lasts 1.75 seconds in PvP and four seconds in PvE to account for how veteran and especially elite creeps have way more HP than players. More of a placeholder skill as too many sustain abilities would require the quantity of them to be taken into account when balancing.

• Witch’s bane: Creates a trap that grants condition immunity for three seconds for the thief while the victim is immobilized. Like shadow trap but with the resistance boon. The resistance I feel is thematic to the class’s theme because necromancers who excel in condition damage are basically witches.

• Basket toss: Summon two NPC’s of random races and genders to immediately rally a downed player by tossing them in the air granting the rallied player (not the thief) one second of stability the whole time. The toss animation is very short yet clear as the formerly downed player is performing a stunt and flipping forward. Has a 120 second cooldown and can only be used within 50 units of a downed player so 1/6th the range of search and rescue. Does a standard rally so they’ll be only half health or in PvE their health will correlate to their downed penalty as usual.

• Elite skill- Chant and cheer: grants pulsing quickness, fury, regeneration, and resistance (though that one stops pulsing before the others) to nearby allies while curing one condition on them. Basically strength of the pack with different boons. Be ready for an influx of female Asura thieves because of this skill as they do peppy and cheery very well! :D

Bonus: Dove themed legendary scepter to compliment the theme like Nevermore compliments Druid but that’s a whole other post.

I originally posted this on Reddit and decided to make some changes based off some feedback.

Jarwel.9180:

“Due to time constraints we’ve decided to cut Jormag from the game. He’s just not central enough! We have to make hard sacrifices and GW2 can continue along just fine with only 5 elder dragons”

But…Jormag’s life of looting needs to end! :D

I hope the Inquest will play a strong role in Jormag’s story and we get to fight Jormag twice: original Jormag and Inquest enhanced Jormag after they kidnap him after the player defeats him and give him ceramic armor (heatproofing) and inject different magic (not “magic” as in “that stuff that handwaves bad writing away” but as an energy that follows consistent laws and rules within the fictional universe) into him to enhance his powers. Poison would be his weakness and they’d inject some Itzel genes into him to do away with this weakness. Heat is too obvious for an ice dragon so…yeah, poison. Making poison his weakness would give a good reason to keep the Itzel (who are based off poison dart frogs so hugging them would be very hazardous as a real life poison dart frog has enough poison in one drop to kill 20 humans) and Nuhoc (Itzel allies) relevant to the next expansion.

Ticky.5831:

Agemnon.4608:

Blaeys.3102:

I think that is why they called it tribulation mode rather than hard mode.

Tribulation means to go through suffering or pain (which I think they accomplished with the mode) – so the warning is right there in the name.

Remember, SAB was never intended to be serious content. It’s an homage to old console games that started as a bit of an April Fool’s Day joke by a developer in his spare time.

That’s it?! Tribulation Mode is a work of art requiring memory, judgment, and excellent fine motor skills. The next expansion’s map needs to take inspiration from Tribulation Mode and have exploring those areas as difficult and in the same way, but more difficult overall because you’d have new enemies slightly tougher than the ones in HoT areas. You’d even have narrow landing ledges and trampolene like world 2-stage 2.

Imagine what the developers could do with expansion maps? You’re dodge jumping to a ledge and narrowly make it, then you perform a tight dodge jump around the corner…only to be confronted with the next expansion’s equivalent of shadow reapers and mordrem tormentors? And they’d respawn too.

What does this rant have to do with the message you replied to?

It’s just that such an amazing level design can come from one guy just messing around and how there’s so much potential the main maps can achieve regarding level design and overall challenge. .

Blaeys.3102:

I think that is why they called it tribulation mode rather than hard mode.

Tribulation means to go through suffering or pain (which I think they accomplished with the mode) – so the warning is right there in the name.

Remember, SAB was never intended to be serious content. It’s an homage to old console games that started as a bit of an April Fool’s Day joke by a developer in his spare time.

That’s it?! Tribulation Mode is a work of art requiring memory, judgment, and excellent fine motor skills. The next expansion’s map needs to take inspiration from Tribulation Mode and have exploring those areas as difficult and in the same way, but more difficult overall because you’d have new enemies slightly tougher than the ones in HoT areas. You’d even have narrow landing ledges and trampolene like world 2-stage 2.

Imagine what the developers could do with expansion maps? You’re dodge jumping to a ledge and narrowly make it, then you perform a tight dodge jump around the corner…only to be confronted with the next expansion’s equivalent of shadow reapers and mordrem tormentors? And they’d respawn too.

Temple might be a little better but the other maps are horrible: Forest with creeps that enable clearly inferior teams to comeback and maybe even win, Khylo (which is otherwise fine and maybe even good) with trebuchets and camera issues at mid, and Legacy has more space (which is great), no camera issues, and AoE fields/traps are easier to avoid at mid while still contesting the node (also great) so less mobile classes have that weakness more pronounced (unless a Mesmer portal is off cooldown.) Lord needs an obvious buff however and I agree with nerfing the points he gives.

It’s only “bad” when combined with a low player population and the inability to lose divisions.

Just remember, you can do it! There’s a certain technique to much of the jumps. The absolute worst part was the icy floor with the spikes in world 3-stage 3 because on icy floors you start off slow then go fast then takes much longer to slow down. Of course that part is hard since you’re surrounded by instant death spikes, have poor traction, and said poor traction will still get you even if you know when to run when the blower walls open up.

There are boomboxes, but I’m disappointed there aren’t any tribulation mode cloud themes he has some of the best music in the game :(

Maybe a third boombox with his themes are in order? ^_^ And a SAB assassin (the ones who wear karate gis and throw shurikens) mini while where at it.

Memory, there’s your “bubble vision”. You remember a trap is there so you go elsewhere.

Same here. Right at SAB world 1-stage 3 in tribulation mode too.

Same here. Right at SAB world 1-stage 3 in tribulation mode too.

I was grouped with a diamond and the opposing team had one too. We won the first game but lost the other against the same team:

The opposing team had an emerald so you could say that the second game was an upset for them and near the end of the Forest win I even prepared bodyblocking the creep but we got the kill anyway.

NeXeD.3042:

Agemnon.4608:

NeXeD.3042:

Ellie.5913:

Furious.1283:

Eater of Peeps.9062:

ronpierce.2760:

morrolan.9608:

ronpierce.2760:

This is very simple, its not a reward track. It’s a rank system, and technically works. Sapphire/Ruby should have your most average players with a close-to 50% win rate in that division, making it hard to work out of, but not fall too far back, too.
.

Up to ruby it is actually essentially a reward track.

Yes, I realize early parts are like a reward track. I think that is their attempt to make it “somewhat” fun for everyone. But that doesn’t mean everyone “deserves” to have Legendary. I feel the way it is set up is actually very generous… It’s still prestigious to get to Legendary, but most people can at least make it to ruby if they put in the time and effort, so they can at least wrack up some of the smaller rewards. That’s perfect if you ask me. The problem with Leagues right now is entirely entitlement, unfortunately, the game has pushed that entitlement because “it’s a casual game” and “everyone can be a hero”. They finally added ONE thing that pvpers can use for a little ounce of prestige and PVErs and entitled solo-quing casuals feel they MUST be able to reach legendary or it shouldn’t exist at all… I hate to come off as harsh, but why?

The only valid excuse/complaint I see currently is that the PVE legendary back piece isn’t in the game yet. And I agree, that’s annoying, but beyond that, it’s ONE prestigious thing in the game… Just let it be…

I play pvp not for the backpiece – couldn’t care less about it. This response doesn’t sound harsh, it sounds pompous.

To be at legendary in seas 2 is not something u should feel particularly proud over and be so snobby or elitist over. This is the one season in rpvp when ur win actually seems like it doesn’t mean much – u rode the win train to glory – bfd. How much was due to your actual skill and how much was due to coding – pitting you with winning players against losing players – seems like a glorified fun fest for you and misery for those caught in the losing train.

For you to really feel elitist and proud, and for someone like me to actually admire you, I would suggest this gameplay – 100% solo que, totally random match-ups on both teams. No ability to ts or coordinate or reroll or mod/manipulate. Individual wins/pips are then matched up and the people rise to the top – is it a grind? Perhaps But it is then much more indicative of your personal skill and if ur in the No.1 team then, composed of only players who are also at same win/pip total, then I will admire you then and you can feel free to lord it over everyone.

Until then, I would suggest several things:

This system now promotes team IWAY type of play and everyone saw what happened in gw1 HOH after iway became the only way to play – it was the highway for everyone else and it was a ghost town long before the game died;

Modesty and humbleness would serve you well, as you just sound like an elitist who doesn’t really deserve it and you prolly got there by gimmicks, or riding coding designed win streaks so w/e;

Deliberately tank your win/loss mmr rating – get it really low on purpose – then carve your way back up to legendary – stream it and prove it – you claim you’re where you are from skill alone, so do it – prove it. If you’re as good as you say you should easily be able to sail thru to legend or certainly diamond before seas 2 ends, even if you start today, just be sure your win loss is about 46% or lower when in amber. Once you do this, and prove it (stream it), then you will have my respect. However, I would genuinely like to hear what your experience is like in doing this – was it fun? was it demoralizing? did you get better? was it frustrating? did you feel like your personal skill served you or helped clueless teammates? did you like playing pro level better? did you like playing like a pro with noobs who said you don’t know how to play (cus they will). Just curious.

Otherwise, maybe you should think about shutting up, cuz u know not what you’re talking about – ur only spouting off from the preferred coding win train and it doesn’t sit very well with many of us who got fed into the machine for reasons having nothing to do with our personal skill levels.

Its funny that you think its prestigious to be at the top with your backpiece right now. I don’t covet it, and I’m not sour grapes. Gratz to you that you got it and that you feel the way you do about it – that is sincere. However, my gaming experience in pvp has been ruined. So I hope it was worth it to you. And I’m truly wondering why, of all things, you should feel prestige about it – I don’t think anyone at the top, given the current coding and winning begets winning and losing begets losing designed system, should feel particularly proud of their winnings. If it were me, I would be kinda ashamed (imo) cuz I would know that my quick wins doomed some players to a hell that they may never be able to carve out of ever (especially if anet doesn’t reset mmr or redesign the system) – and believe me, that hell is not fun. Not fun. Do you hear me? Is it getting thru? Its not fun – and this is supposed to be a fun game for everyone . Fun = you know, a game. Fun. This is not fun! But how nice for you! Surely there must be a better way for you to prove ur mettle as the fantastic player I’m sure you are, and for me to still have fun doing something I used to love in a game I used to love.

I couldn’t have explained it better!

This is NOT fun anymore, very frustrating and I would agree on not being able to form teams. Let legendaries reach their ranks alone, it would be fun to see.

As far as matching is concerned, I am almost always placed with people that are learning and the outcome is obvious.

I have less than 24% win rates which makes me hate this game profoundly.

I don’t know if everyone realizes it yet but if you are a solo player your only purpose in pvp these days is to keep a steady supply of people for premades to farm so they get quick queue times and have fun farming noobs and the few unfortunates who get thrown in with the team of noobs. And the creators know this they made it that way on purpose , so either enjoy getting farmed or just quit like I have.

I’ve got like a 80% win rate in solo q right now. guess my job is to farm premades.

sounds like a skill issue to me.

You sound really good. I’m stuck in Ruby despite this:

Or maybe that’s the expected area Rubies are supposed to be.

im really not that good…. but neither are most of the other people playing this game.

no idea what that number means… is that your ping?

That’s reaction time, you need to click when it turns green as fast as you can. Lower is obviously better and the lower the score the better reflexes you have for interrupts and activating combo fields.

Spoiler Alert: the video originally aired on MTV before we were even born.

NeXeD.3042:

Ellie.5913:

Furious.1283:

Eater of Peeps.9062:

ronpierce.2760:

morrolan.9608:

ronpierce.2760:

This is very simple, its not a reward track. It’s a rank system, and technically works. Sapphire/Ruby should have your most average players with a close-to 50% win rate in that division, making it hard to work out of, but not fall too far back, too.
.

Up to ruby it is actually essentially a reward track.

Yes, I realize early parts are like a reward track. I think that is their attempt to make it “somewhat” fun for everyone. But that doesn’t mean everyone “deserves” to have Legendary. I feel the way it is set up is actually very generous… It’s still prestigious to get to Legendary, but most people can at least make it to ruby if they put in the time and effort, so they can at least wrack up some of the smaller rewards. That’s perfect if you ask me. The problem with Leagues right now is entirely entitlement, unfortunately, the game has pushed that entitlement because “it’s a casual game” and “everyone can be a hero”. They finally added ONE thing that pvpers can use for a little ounce of prestige and PVErs and entitled solo-quing casuals feel they MUST be able to reach legendary or it shouldn’t exist at all… I hate to come off as harsh, but why?

The only valid excuse/complaint I see currently is that the PVE legendary back piece isn’t in the game yet. And I agree, that’s annoying, but beyond that, it’s ONE prestigious thing in the game… Just let it be…

I play pvp not for the backpiece – couldn’t care less about it. This response doesn’t sound harsh, it sounds pompous.

To be at legendary in seas 2 is not something u should feel particularly proud over and be so snobby or elitist over. This is the one season in rpvp when ur win actually seems like it doesn’t mean much – u rode the win train to glory – bfd. How much was due to your actual skill and how much was due to coding – pitting you with winning players against losing players – seems like a glorified fun fest for you and misery for those caught in the losing train.

For you to really feel elitist and proud, and for someone like me to actually admire you, I would suggest this gameplay – 100% solo que, totally random match-ups on both teams. No ability to ts or coordinate or reroll or mod/manipulate. Individual wins/pips are then matched up and the people rise to the top – is it a grind? Perhaps But it is then much more indicative of your personal skill and if ur in the No.1 team then, composed of only players who are also at same win/pip total, then I will admire you then and you can feel free to lord it over everyone.

Until then, I would suggest several things:

This system now promotes team IWAY type of play and everyone saw what happened in gw1 HOH after iway became the only way to play – it was the highway for everyone else and it was a ghost town long before the game died;

Modesty and humbleness would serve you well, as you just sound like an elitist who doesn’t really deserve it and you prolly got there by gimmicks, or riding coding designed win streaks so w/e;

Deliberately tank your win/loss mmr rating – get it really low on purpose – then carve your way back up to legendary – stream it and prove it – you claim you’re where you are from skill alone, so do it – prove it. If you’re as good as you say you should easily be able to sail thru to legend or certainly diamond before seas 2 ends, even if you start today, just be sure your win loss is about 46% or lower when in amber. Once you do this, and prove it (stream it), then you will have my respect. However, I would genuinely like to hear what your experience is like in doing this – was it fun? was it demoralizing? did you get better? was it frustrating? did you feel like your personal skill served you or helped clueless teammates? did you like playing pro level better? did you like playing like a pro with noobs who said you don’t know how to play (cus they will). Just curious.

Otherwise, maybe you should think about shutting up, cuz u know not what you’re talking about – ur only spouting off from the preferred coding win train and it doesn’t sit very well with many of us who got fed into the machine for reasons having nothing to do with our personal skill levels.

Its funny that you think its prestigious to be at the top with your backpiece right now. I don’t covet it, and I’m not sour grapes. Gratz to you that you got it and that you feel the way you do about it – that is sincere. However, my gaming experience in pvp has been ruined. So I hope it was worth it to you. And I’m truly wondering why, of all things, you should feel prestige about it – I don’t think anyone at the top, given the current coding and winning begets winning and losing begets losing designed system, should feel particularly proud of their winnings. If it were me, I would be kinda ashamed (imo) cuz I would know that my quick wins doomed some players to a hell that they may never be able to carve out of ever (especially if anet doesn’t reset mmr or redesign the system) – and believe me, that hell is not fun. Not fun. Do you hear me? Is it getting thru? Its not fun – and this is supposed to be a fun game for everyone . Fun = you know, a game. Fun. This is not fun! But how nice for you! Surely there must be a better way for you to prove ur mettle as the fantastic player I’m sure you are, and for me to still have fun doing something I used to love in a game I used to love.

I couldn’t have explained it better!

This is NOT fun anymore, very frustrating and I would agree on not being able to form teams. Let legendaries reach their ranks alone, it would be fun to see.

As far as matching is concerned, I am almost always placed with people that are learning and the outcome is obvious.

I have less than 24% win rates which makes me hate this game profoundly.

I don’t know if everyone realizes it yet but if you are a solo player your only purpose in pvp these days is to keep a steady supply of people for premades to farm so they get quick queue times and have fun farming noobs and the few unfortunates who get thrown in with the team of noobs. And the creators know this they made it that way on purpose , so either enjoy getting farmed or just quit like I have.

I’ve got like a 80% win rate in solo q right now. guess my job is to farm premades.

sounds like a skill issue to me.

You sound really good. I’m stuck in Ruby despite this:

Or maybe that’s the expected area Rubies are supposed to be.

Paulytnz.7619:

Agemnon.4608:

I’m trying tribulation mode and I was thinking why not make more of the main game like that? You need to be careful yet accurate.

The main game, you mean outside of SAB? It’s already there – Jump puzzles which is what SAB evolved from to become the ultimate JP.

I mean in new open world maps in the next expansion needing skills that that to unlock waypoints and points of interests and advance story mode. Jumping puzzles are off to the side so they aren’t exactly “main” but are in the main world.

An unranked sPvP map that takes place in an area like Tribulation Mode stage 1 area 1 would be cool. When people talk about PvE they really mean PvC (Player versus Creep) but Tribulation Mode is true PvE (as in the environment itself is the obstacle) which can mesh well with PvP if done right.

I sometimes see big blowouts like that in Ruby. I can’t imagine what skilled freaks of nature could cause that big of a blowout against people good enough to reach legendary where even a 50 point difference* between winner and loser is a big deal.

*Unless it’s Foefire and someone gets Lord then a big spread doesn’t count as much since you could be 450-600 and Lord dies when both are at 450.

First thing I noticed was no one switching to support. Two Revenants are great whereas three are just redundant especially faced with condi classes. At the very least I’d likely switch to Mallyx (if I remember lol!) confronted with two Necros and a Mesmer. Ideally however one should switch to support and everyone should have at least some proficiency with a support class.

Loved how you opened on mid, minions can be a real pain and those ones take some damage from the Necro even if the Necro gets a direct hit. Considering there are three people on the team with UA and Precision Strike…yeah, they gotta go. There’s dogmatic thinking going around saying don’t target creeps but blood fields steals life and is squishy, flesh worm offers the necro an escape and is squishy, Mesmer clones can be shattered meaning if they don’t go you get more confusion or they get more alacrity, and Druid pets are a big part of DPS and needed for search and rescue but one could play around it anyway then cleave the rezzing druid, can’t search and rescue again for another half a minute.

After mid was lost you went for water fall, I probably would have too then a 3v1 landed on top of you. I hate that and by the time you team came it was too late.

At the end it is discovered that you were full Legendaries going against three Legends and a Diamond! That is quite an upset for them especially winning 366-500. You were doing great at the end but by then it was too late.

Edit: Looked at the second link and yeah, definitely should have switched to Tempest.

I’m trying tribulation mode and I was thinking why not make more of the main game like that? You need to be careful yet accurate.

The amount of health restored by any healing skill is doubled. Cooldown duration is reduced by half.

In PvE that would actually be a great change so long as enemies change to accommodate it to increase difficulty overall. This would give the game more well needed challenge and also by implication up the pace.

They’re releasing nunchuk legendary daggers (purely nunchuks, “dagger” classification is a purely mechanical one so we can have nunchuks without creating a whole new weapon category and the balancing complexities that would go with it) and a three section staff as an alternative to Evermore…April Fools! :D

Not even Batman could swing a sword like that 100 times within that timeframe.

‘The price money is payed by marketing budget, not development money’. With stuff like adblocker, it might actually be good to pay less for advertisements, and more for tournements.

What’s wrong with TV ads? Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, and MTV have big audiences.

The game still needs more mechanical polishing and balance before they’re ready to advertise for real however.

The problem with the same balancing for PvP and PvE though is the gamemodes are radically different. Let’s say you have this class that’s great in small scale fights with lots of single target burst and CC, but high end PvE is filled to the brim with high HP bosses with CC immunity. A 4 second stun may be great against a creep with lots of HP but against a relatively squishy player such a stun would be very overpowered. The mechanical differences are vast enough to justify separate balancing.

What do you think of this idea but for Guild Wars 2?

https://dotacoach.org/

Requirements for coaching could be as follows:

-Vetted for teaching skills (just because a top player is skilled at the game doesn’t mean he is a good teacher for example)
-Have achieved legendary
-Decent tournament results.

The PvP team has been working hard to take PvP from where it was at launch to where it is today (seriously, think about it) and the marketing team has been keen on supporting them.

You mean mostly fun, balanced in a rock paper scissors kind of a way, and with fewer skills so reads and cooldown counting were more manageable to the current state? Of course launch balance was’t perfect (warriors and thieves were excellent while elementalist was underestimated on the tier lists usually)

It’s more or less my job to try to figure out how to replicate that growth as much as possible

To offer up some constructive criticism I will use other games as examples. Why is the Street Fighter series the best competitive single player video game series of all time? Because of its excellent balancing and principle of parsimony. Skills are there strictly because they need to be and no moves serve a redundant function. Sure you have subtle differences between seemingly similar characters (such as slightly faster and squishier Ryu AKA Ken) and some OP characters slip through (in certain tournaments for example there was a gentlemen’s agreement not to use Akuma) but the overall mechanics are consistently tight and reads are easier to ascertain due to clarity.

Since the potential for a 5v5 bout exists in Guild Wars 2 this means reads need to be manageable and reducing visual “noise” isn’t as good as increasing cooldowns on AoE stuns or even adding visual cues to promote intelligent skill usage. I’ve seen mesmers use moa hiding among the chaos of big mid fights and obstructions such as necromancer minions and other players.

Chill is also way too accessible and plentiful given how powerful it is. I’ve seen 10 second chill stacks and that’s quite gamebreaking if you’re on a class that doesn’t have a ready cleanse handy like daredevil and tempest (both need to trait for dodge to cleanse chill). Conditions across the board need looking into as they seem too overtuned and due to duration stacking can even lead to passive play after they’re applied.

I was going to dedicate a thread to this but have just remembered: in Street Fighter 5 there’s a character called Fang who can inflict poison. The poison here can still promote skillful gameplay as you need to be proficient at zoning to keep the poison from washing off the opponent. If you hit Fang you cleanse. This is skillfull condi gameplay that requires playing a keepaway zoning game. Not sure how it can apply to Guild Wars 2 but it’s a step in the right direction.

On Reddit some people said they prefer using necro because it doesn’t require as good reflexes to be good. This is something worth looking into as all classes should have a reasonably high skill floor while still still being playable for the novice.

As grateful as I am I still want the pony finisher.

It’s actually a true game breaking bug and it needs immediate attention. Too bad it won’t get it.

It is quite gamebreaking but we should use workarounds as we find them.

It’s a bug and I even defended the other team by noting that it’s a bug and they likely aren’t hacking.

As to dealing with the bug:

https://youtu.be/GZNWGhkIPYw?t=2m20s

Should have saved the staff 5 for the rez (he had a druid backup so I knew it was coming) but on the second down I had to phase traversal to ensure I’d be near the hitbox then I tried stomping, couldn’t, and had to cleave.

Felt good about beating the Mesmer later but only did so because staff 2 chained crits.

Chaith.8256:

Sadly being told to kill yourself or told that you’re garbage, or even to go pick flowers, or collect rocks (both are new ones) if you’re in Sapphire is pretty much everyday if you play a Warrior or Thief casually. Probably a lot worse, actually.

I don’t think the people ingame know who OP is, or are targeting her from the forums. I think there are just naturally lots of crap humans in the toxic Sapphire dump.

The absolute worst I’ve ever said in /team was “Can a warrior/thief(if more than one thief) please switch?” after going on tilt with a massive losing streak while getting warriors on my team for all those losses and knowing that necros being OP (at least one on the enemy team) and warrior being underpowered (one on all my games for that day) wasn’t coincidence. Yes I myself could have played better in those games but you have chat ragers, AFK’ers, and others who aren’t constructive.

Then I cooled down, got a warrior on my team again, and my tempest and the warrior hit far at start since warriors are better in small scale fights. The enemy team all came to our far but we won that fight and eventually the match anyway. Sometimes you just have to work with what you’re given to the best of your ability.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Fay.2357:

Next time, restrain yourself to be more polite, and send the uncensored screenshots to Anet. They take cyber-harassment VERY seriously, and those people will get banned.

No they don’t. Don’t give false hope to the guy. There was one guy in reddit that made an alt account, spewing racial slurs and whatnot in map chat for days. He didn’t get banned. He posted his findings on reddit. Some dev responded to do damage control but yeah. I don’t know what you are talking about.

Also ANet can’t really make a firm judgement call on this. After all, it’s a competitive game mode. It brings the best and the worst in people. Some people get very emotional. You can’t ban someone for being passionate about your game …

Also there are certain laws in Europe, that prohibit banning over foolish reasons. No the EULA absolutely has no weight in court. Unless you are truly cancerous you can’t have your service blocked by law. EULA is not considered a contractual agreement as much as big time publishers want you to believe that.

Ask any German around these forums and you’ll know.

Law is a funny thing. Might explain why rich people don’t go to jail. Did you know that video recordings have exactly 0 weight in court too? I was shocked to find it out too.

I actually encountered that guy a few times. I told him to cut it out and told him he could get banned for speaking that way to appeal to his self-interest (tried appealing to basic decency at first but that didn’t work) and the “rocket” spam was annoying but others were just laughing it off. I thought he was just some joker kid who didn’t know the context behind just how awful those words were.

Meh, it’s just the nature of gaming in general. It’s too bad you had to deal with someone like that. I’ve been called every name in the book from either side from trash to hacks, just ignore the haters and stay on the correct path.

If you want we can practice dueling sometimes, I have some Arena Tokens saved up from doing the Glorious Reward Track. I have all classes except necro and mesmer so I have lots of classes but only really use tempest, herald, and druid this season.

Ithilwen.1529:

It may amuse the posters here that I just came from a match in which I tried out an old school phantasm build. I was flamed and told that I was playing an “op bull…” class and “easy moad” (sic) by three daredevils. We won by a few points, though I died several times, trying to improve on pressure.

The daredevils it seems were annoyed that I dared to play a Mesmer in their presence and focused me.

You have a cute character ^_^

Anyway, Mesmer is just a perfect storm of annoying and hated mechanics rolled up into one:

-Moa form denying your class mechanics for 10 seconds

-Portal so slower, less mobile classes have that one weakness mitigated for fast convenient access to your node

-Big confusion and torment stacks, both conditions deal extra damage for being active.

-Stealth shatter bursts

-Cooldown resets.

So don’t take it personally if you get focused.

I like Mender’s paired with sigil of transference on staff. Off the principle that teammates can’t do damage while dead healing power’s importance is apparent. It’s still important to dish out some meaningful damage so Mender’s seems ideal. Also we have to remember that weapon swapping has a cooldown so swapping between attack and healing has a window that must be accounting for. CA form also isn’t just good for healing and cleansing (although it’s still great) but for cleaving downed and rezzers with CA 1, 4, and 5.

Here’s that other duel with a Mesmer I told you about, the 4k is uploaded and the music to game volume ratio is better here:

https://youtu.be/GZNWGhkIPYw?t=4m40s

The entire video is instructive in my opinion but that part is specifically a 1v1 against a chrono. I carelessly tried UA when I was getting LoS’d though but seemed to dodge most of the important stuff. At start the DH we had went for beast but really helped us finish up in the first middle bout.

Some strengths:

-Standing near our druid for the heals (I main one this season with the rev being a close second but with a hostile druid reading a friendly vs hostile black hole can be hard the red circle is too subtle)
-A decent feel for timing for dodges and interrupts.
-Know to use staff 4 for blast finishing combo fields (might from ele fire fields, stealth and thus target washing and quick repositioning from smoke fields, etc.)

Weaknesses:
-Poor sense of timing for UA (Line of Sighted multiple times, used when signet of stone was popped and I even thought aww crap when I saw it)
-Poor sense of respawn timing (had I known the mesmer could reach beast that fast to steal I would have gone mid but needed to make a split decision instead of just chilling indecisively between beast and mid which would have certainly been weak I saw a friendly just died there so I deduced beast would be better)

to tell you the basics, wait for him to pop all his defensive stuff, then use all your burst. before that time, just deal a bit of dmg and prepare your burst for the right time. then you will need to make sure he goes completely dead after his elixir pops and he goes invul for a few sec..

Thanks man. The last step is usually the easiest since I have a feel for that particular skill though the occasional thing where the screen freezes then gets faster isn’t fun when you finally stand near them to pop a stun. I have an easier time PB-shotting as druid for the finisher.

Step one however is very tough since I don’t have a feel for scrapper cooldowns and when I do unleash bursts they’d heal it all up though that’s likely bad timing on my part.

I think a cool leather armor legendary shoulder piece would be like the Stalwart shoulders but with parrots on them who squawk and occasionally say memorable Tybalt lines ^_^

Yes, the parrots should have dye channels. They’d occasionally fly around the player too.

eduardo.1436:

and I want the boxing gloves! Why not give us BOTH on the last day! Please Anet? :)

People wanted Bunny ears they got them
People wanted Wizard hat they got them
People want Aviator Sunglasses
People want Boxing Gloves

Aww just for one day :( I want them too! I was also around when the wizard hat was free but didn’t pick up the bunny ears since you couldn’t wear them in combat back then so I bought them this time around.

I’m really grateful for just the llama finisher even though I also bought the chain whip sword and bunny ears from this sale too. If no Aviators and boxing gloves it’s no big, but if yes it’s a big in a good way.

I said this in a previous thread and didn’t think it sounded rude or awful. Sometimes we just don’t sync with certain classes.

I’d also put a one daredevil (yes it would control for elite specs) limit on such a filter. With settings like these here’s what I’d check:

1.Base classes-All off.
2.Berserker-Off
3.Daredevil-1
4.Dragonhunter-1
5.Chronomancer-1
6.Necromancer-2
7.Herald-2
8.Scrapper-2
9.Tempest-1
10.Druid-1 or maybe 2.

This way I won’t have any stacks of 3 on my team and my own class would count towards the filter.

Now I’ve seen some great warriors don’t get me wrong but I’ve seen lots of great thieves. I remember a forest game where a daredevil kept stealing beasts and harassing far diverting attention away from mid (I was druid) and even though I could only see the match from my PoV I knew he was the real MVP even though I had top score (Mender’s and search and rescue tends to rack up both big damage, healing, and rezzing numbers) the daredevil was simply awesome.

Now I don’t play Mesmer but at around 12:34 of the video your shield mostly whiffed and only interrupted because the guardian got careless. You also wasted your shield 4 move when it’d be better to save it for a big burst like the traps. You were also clicking your moves which is very slow and inefficient.

Why not have little pink Kodan by playing an Asura, equipping the “outfit” (which would look like a member of that species instead of a suit) and using an electric pink or fling dye? Or we can have an outfit modeled after Sabrewulf so we can be ferocious werewolf people. The glowing eyes would be a dyable part and the fur, shirt, and pants too.

I’m sure the devs themselves wanted to put out new legendaries but there are decisions that are outside of their control.

I want lion and elephant themed legendaries. It’s nice we’re getting something tiger themed but I already have a legendary shortbow.

I was in a team of nearly all rubies and a diamond versus a team of nearly all rubies and an emerald…now logically my team should have won but the enemy team got by with a very close upset.

I wanted to do a far and home split with an occasional teasing of mid but we had at least three who would hit mid and I didn’t want my team outnumbered there.

Why am I saying this? To tell you that upsets are possible (even if I was on the wrong end of it that match) and to hang in there.

Chaith.8256:

fedegf.6534:

And btw most of them, like Caithe and such, they’re teenagers, so whatever, it’s ok.

What the hell is this post. Lmao. So much wat. You think I have any pride in my casualwars2 ranked queue badge, yeah, nope.

What can you learn from what is said here? Top players think on such a higher level that they don’t even care what other players think. Keep in mind that a legendary badge and title is the ultimate prize during leagues.

In other words what Chaith basically said was the play and execution and refinement of skill itself are the true prizes while the symbols are merely symbols.

Mortifer.2946:

I wonder how I can kill 1v1 good condi duelist mesmer on my power shiro revenant…. there is just no way I can kill them. That kittening confusion is impossible to remove since he gives me like 6 other conditions before that.

What am I supposed to play Ventari tablet or what? the hell with this balance

You need to watch for tells and use dodging skills at the proper moment. Keep in mind they always have access to utility skills whereas half of our skills are locked behind a CD wall whenever we legend swap. I hear you on the confusion part and I only have a slight plus score against dueling Mesmers mostly due to confusion stacking. The rare times I switch to Mallyx the gap is even bigger in my favor but with resistance and leveling the playing field with burn confusion spam of my own in addition to a heal that consumes conditions I don’t know if it should count.

I have a video just uploaded where I beat a Mesmer in a duel and I can skip ahead to the relevant part. Now it’s just in 360p and no one wants to see such a pixilated mess so I’ll link it when the 4k option becomes available. It’s a ranked match too. The entire video is instructive but that part is specific to your question.

In another that’s already uploaded I was beating another Mesmer but got ganked by a revenant. I even used a dodge skill when I saw the moa tell.

That particular part of the video is here while the other still needs to process:

https://youtu.be/d3_KHyqUisc?t=2m20s

The music might be too loud depending on your settings (I now since play the music quieter while recording) so you might want to turn down the speakers.

How can I actually kill a good scrapper instead of just stalemating them as a mender’s druid or dagger/focus tempest or marauder revenant?