Guild Wars 2

I’ve gotten some consistent dodges and interrupts so I think my mechanics are at least decent. If you burn too many offensive cooldowns you’re just going to get dodged and be left with weak pokes.

Not 2v1’ing is good but you need to have escape options to get away. I look at the map it’s how I knew that necro was downed lol! Should’ve looked at healtbars and + 1’d the necro’s fight with the warrior then 2v1 the ranger. Still, I feel awesome beating him even though he kept going down quickly. I don’t think that’s his main or he got overconfident and ran berserker’s with a vanilla spec. For the most part we outplayed their team but the warrior carried them especially by soloing lord. Warriors are a mixed bag either they’re way easy to deal with or you’re really going to be in for a fight against them (applies to any class).

I like to look for trouble areas in the teamfight and offer my support there.

I have to agree with Ubik. At around 7:15, there were 3 or 4 of you guys just sitting mid, and you had the far point capped, but unguarded. In addition they were off respawn. A rotation there would have secured you the game. Also are you using water attunement for damage….?

I wanted to go far but was afraid of the respawners running us over and didn’t want to leave teammates hanging after seeing some head home. But if I went I’d overrotate but by then far was getting decapped and mid was hit. I duel decently on the build but feel stronger in teamfights. The water autoattack gives some light healing and inflicts vulnerability meaning my other teammates’ damage output increases as the vulnerability stacks go up. I primarily use water for chill, triggering combo fields, some healing, and interrupting big skills or especially rezzes since rezzing is very committal but will camp it for autoattack since attunement swapping is a commitment. If swapping to air is a judgment error and I just realize it then swap to earth then air will be on a cooldown, locking me out of those skills in case I’d need them in that window.

b. Fodder vs. matchmaking
The matchmaking balances teams in a way, that there is a winner team and a looser team.

I agree, SoloQ tends to have loose matchmaking as far as class comp goes.

This is the game that made me decide to take a few days off of ranked PvP.

Especially weak was the 2v2 lost at far and I tried healing the necro but he popped shroud before I could heal his base health.

The video has no audio but I did use eye of the storm when I saw teammates knocked down or immobilized. From the dodges and interrupts I’d say my reaction time is decent but knowing when to disengage or rotate something I should work on especially with Lord involved. I didn’t want to leave mid hanging but really wanted to go to base when our base was attacked.

Pyriall.1683:

Eater of Peeps.9062:

Actually, ppl quitting the game is a very big deal. Its called end of gw2 if attrition gets too great. Then the game dies and goes bye bye just like gw1. So sad. So sad that ppl think players quitting cuz of bad pvp design/catering to pro leagues is no big deal. I mean really, I guess nothing is a big deal ever. Certainly not entertainment. But it is a game I loved and I wish anet would wake up and fix it before its fatal.

What do you mean catering to pro leagues? This game 100% caters to casual gamers who cannot handle any depth to pvp combat. That’s why there are so many passives, to protect the casual gamer.

I think it needs to take some pages out of Street Fighter’s book and keep skill based gameplay the primary focus. Boons and conditions were created within the context of turn based cooperative tabletop RPGs. There’s still only so much fat they can cut however since lots of traits revolve around passive procs. Replacing them with something that supplements active play would be good like a designated proc this upon interrupt or evade (internal cooldown to avoid abuse).

I don’t mean simply dodging to proc something since that’d be silly but actually formally evading an attack. They could even break it down to evading projectiles has x effect while dodging melee has y effect to account for how much harder certain things to dodge are than others (both procs would share a trait and cooldown). Rapid fire and overloads are easy to dodge so of course their procs need to be lesser whereas point blank shot has a quick swirly light animation near the arrow head you need to catch while the stealth shot has a smoke trail.

Jourdelune.7456:

We did ask to get a special bundle of SPVP into a “single small download” that could get REVIEWED on PVP / MOBA website and could be freely given on STEAM. (STEAM is a lot of new players potential)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/sPvP-needs-its-own-business-model/first

Many pvp players will stop downloading 20 gigs for a 2 gigs game.

They need to adjust their model of Buy to Play versus let’s unblock HoT specialization (with a free rotation weekly on spec) like most PVP/MOBA where you can unlock new hero.

Since you can buy and download Guild Wars 2 directly on the official site itself putting it on Steam seems kinda pointless. Steam’s interface and formatting is a higher quality however.

Banning TS is unrealistic since it’s a third party program.

Let’s say I take a week off, how much lower if at all will my MMR be? Equivalent of losing a game per day?

Rigante.2470:

In terms of one class sticking out as the most glaringly powerful I actually think we are in an ok spot right now. 3 or 4 classes are still not particularly useful though. I would recommend playing scrapper, revenant, tempest, or reaper. Chrono or Cond Berzerker not too far off. Avoid the rest (thief, ranger, guardian).

Why avoid Ranger? It’s one of the best carry classes because it has good healing and decent attack via the Mender’s Amulet and has a low-mid skill cap relying mostly on situational awareness and tactics. Longbow and CA form also has good interrupt potential while staff can cleanse movement impairing conditions to teammates you aim it at and staff 3 is a good blast finisher with healing. Staff 3 means you can do an AoE stealth if a thief uses pistol 5 to cleanse targetting temporarily.

insanemaniac.2456:

Astralporing.1957:

insanemaniac.2456:

thus, by waiting for everyone better than you to get ahead of you, you can get easy matches and play catch up later and have your progress and your legendary.

It didn’t work that way in season 2, as you’d need to wait for longer than the season’s length. Why do you think it would work now?

i had several friends play a little at the start of s2 and get stuck and i told them to wait a few weeks and come back to it. when they did, they streaked to ruby/diamond.

it did work that way in s2. if it didn’t for you, idk what to tell you.

Typically losing is an opportunity to learn from your mistakes so you could do better the next time around. However, with a Glicko/Elo/whatever system in place in a team game your teammates are going to get worse while your opponents will have a higher average rating. With this information we know that losing carries some risk to it and the more you lose the more you’re going to lose. Since there are more bad players than good you’re more likely to get bad players on your team until you reach a certain point. Another reason we need division loss is so bad players can’t chill near the bottleneck. The more you lose the more likely you’re going to have such teammates.

Tl;dr: hedging one’s MMR against likely further deflation by waiting seems like a good policy so the people that keep beating you rank away while those holding you back get their MMR deflated enough to not get on your team (hopefully).

Lost three close ones today. Oh well, Overwatch is going to be fun for the next week.

Zelulose.8695:

Agemnon.4608:

Zelulose.8695:

Well perhaps they should open up donation boxes for balance fixes they want to do but don’t have the funding for. Roberts Space Industries uses this to develop content. It would also mean that if no one wants to meet the goal for a certain fix they wont receive the funding.

The problem with that is the public doesn’t always know best. People wanted raids, they got raids, and raids were the worst thing to happen to the game because balancing takes raiding into account, which impacts PvP balance. I say separate balancing.

This isn’t the player base voting on what to balance. This is a safe guard. The developers complain they lack the funding for their desired balance fixes. So we give them the funding. No more excuses. If they want to change something the players have fun with or think is balanced the players wont fund it most likely. That’s what I’m getting at.

But shouldn’t buying the game as well as gems be put towards the balancing budget? PvP balance is the most important aspect of the game due to its competitive nature and integrity on that front needs improvement and maintaining. I think Street Fighter 5 deserves to win game of the year due to its outstanding gameplay and balancing. Zangief needs a buff somewhere, but otherwise the balance is perfect.

In Guild Wars 2 however you have mechanics like trebuchets that can circumvent a player’s relatively low skill. While trebbing does have some skill the cap is far lower than any of the classes. This means if the opponent has a team of 3 guildies and one is Amber then the Amber can still get in big damage and zoning that puts even a pro league Tempest using an air overload to shame. That’s just one map however, but what of the classes themselves? If there’s a 3v3 at mid and one group has lots of condi and you have much less cleanse and dodge then you’re pretty much going down.

To balance the condi powercreep more classes need more access to resistance (make it an effect like alacrity). Make Facet of Light grant four seconds of resistance through a GM trait or something (or take Mallyx instead of Shiro, but let’s be real…), make resistance part of Strength of the Pack, make Diamond Skin grant five seconds of resistance upon using a healing skill, and thief and warrior already have some good cleansing and resistance options. Lots of classes have projectile reflects so it’s only fair that at least equal counterplay be given to condis. Cleanses alone aren’t enough since condi application is far more consistent than washing .

Zelulose.8695:

Well perhaps they should open up donation boxes for balance fixes they want to do but don’t have the funding for. Roberts Space Industries uses this to develop content. It would also mean that if no one wants to meet the goal for a certain fix they wont receive the funding.

The problem with that is the public doesn’t always know best. People wanted raids, they got raids, and raids were the worst thing to happen to the game because balancing takes raiding into account, which impacts PvP balance. I say separate balancing.

Archon.6480:

This is interesting to me. I find this season to be the most balanced yet. I’ve had several very close nail-biting games. The system still stacks higher MMR players on one team, but the spread is bearable. I feel like I can effect the outcome because the skill levels are all pretty much the same.

That’s usually the case this season but today I’ve just been getting exalted legends consistently on the other team so it’s probably best to wait it out before they tank my MMR. The way things look today the more I play the lower my MMR will get meaning less of a chance to make Diamond this season.

insanemaniac.2456:

Argon.1563:

Zuko.7132:

The tier system is meant to put u where u belong, if ur having close matches and win about 50% of the time thus staying where u are it seems like u reached ur appropriate place

In which theres no point in playing any more, which is counter-intuitive design considering this an MMO, where the whole point is to keep players interested through opportunities for progression.

this system has progress designed into it. it is a race to legendary. the very best players get there fastest, but the walkers can make it too by grinding, because the system is flawed and is nowhere near zero sum.

thus, by waiting for everyone better than you to get ahead of you, you can get easy matches and play catch up later and have your progress and your legendary.

It shouldn’t have to be that way though. Due to the game having stakes (MMR = the more you lose the more you’re going to lose) people need to take the system into account for queuing. Let’s say you want to read a certain book on your own time. You may ask yourself, “What can I learn from this?” and naturally go through it. However, repeat the exact same situation in a classroom setting where grades are on the line and now instead you’ll ask yourself, “What’s the best way of optimizing my score?” which doesn’t necessarily involve learning per se but memorization and different formulas. You know the “importance” of specific dates or X proper noun attached to Y verb.

If the system favors waiting then wait, preferably with reliable teammates you know understands the basics and uses good builds and most importantly understands 1v1 matchups and when to rotate and where. It’s bizarre that people view a league system as a progression system but the player himself needs to get better to advance and top leagues should be reserved for good players. Matchmaking is much better this season than last.

sephiroth.4217:

1. Invisible shoes
2. Electric Guitars.
3. Some sort of Automatic chest/bag/container opener so I don’t need to open a box that has a box that contains a bag.

1.Is already in the game, you need to defeat invisible mushrooms for a chance to get them.

2.I agree.

3.The overflow would be unbelievable and sometimes I like saving bags if only for psychological reasons because if you have 250 scratch tickets you feel like you have a better chance of winning than with only 10. However, unlike real life scratch tickets that cost money and the “winners” within the 250 likely won’t be enough to break even you’re getting paid in scratch tickets that have guaranteed prizes. Nearly always small prizes, but because the tickets (bags) are free you aren’t losing any gold.

I took the liberty of making a salty flowchart. If any of these conditions are met then I feel salty.

My progress is awesome!!
Started at emerald and….. here I am!
How can this be fun? Is it worth it to keep trying?… NO! … absolutely not!

No, my progress is awesome. Started in Emerald and I got Sapphire yesterday. Yes, it is worth it to keep trying. Now however I’m rubbing elbows with the Diamonds who are starting the season late or who couldn’t advance due to better Diamonds and Legends beating them so I’ll wait maybe a bit more until it’s just other Ruby tier players in Sapphire.

I’m going for an Alis from Phantasy Star Generation 1 look (wings and bunny ears my personal touch) for my revenant but can’t seem to find the proper leg armor for her and pit fighter seems best so far. I’m going for the game rather than the box art’s aesthetics so if the face and armor shades look too different that’s why. Zodiac Leggings look promising especially since the Phalanx boots cover most of the legs and I can make my guardian weird and glowy as a bonus.

Less than that. When the leaderboards were up I was at 91%. How do I know that isn’t good? Because I tried stomping a DH when the other team had two thieves and didn’t account for the possibility of getting interrupted with steal. The second time in the match the scenario happened I wizened up and used black hole to account for it. I also miscalculated when a scrapper’s reflect would be off cooldown and used a skill a tad too late so I had to switch to staff and disengage back to mid knowing further attempts to take the node from the scrapper would be bad for me. The longer a fight goes the better off the scrapper is as they have lots of abilities so something will likely be off cool down on top of their good passive defensive procs. Not saying they’re OP just tough to take a node from especially if they pass the technique check. If they fail the technique pass then you can safely engage them again, if they pass then you know you’re in for an unfavorable repeat of burst and disengage.

I beat teams with three warriors (at least one of them was very good though I keep getting stuck anyway and did some psychology things to keep me the healer pivoting between lord and home since lord means they win) and a couple days ago three eles. You just have to put your mind to it.

Some close wins I had a disconnect and most of the losses were either due to trolls or others disconnecting.

emkelly.2371:

Do you know what his build is? If i could look at it i may figure it out. don’t know if i could beat him but i could likely figure out what he’s doing

May as well try figuring out how to beat Mayweather in boxing or Carlsen in chess. Even if you figure out what Toker’s doing he’ll just adapt and exploit his superior reaction times even if we take psychology out of a fight. But with it he’ll likely get you to do certain moves at bad times opening you up to a secure burst and deduce when you’ll likely try disengaging and save cooldowns and energy to account for it.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Agemnon.4608:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Tengu land is kind of odd. It stars in LA,and borders on Caledon. But there is a human port right in the middle of it where the wizards tower is, it has moved from where it was to around where the temple of tolerance was. I’ve given up on trying to compere the 2 game maps, the seismic changes to the maps should have killed everyone. Things do not change that much naturally with out a loss of a lot of life. Mountain ranges appearing from no where, sinkholes swallowing places, Ascalon city, Temple of the Ages, the dwarven village in Loners pass that was in dreadnoughts drift.

Is the wizard a Tengu by any chance? A story arc right there could open up the Tengu being playable. Let’s be honest, if there is going to be a new playable race it’s going to be Tengu due to some infrastructure for them being in place, sharing meshes with Charr, and being highly demanded.

We know very little about the tower. In GW1 there are 2 people trying to get into it. One is a necro when the “Villainy of Galrath”. The architecture looks human. So I don’t think its Tengui

A human could have built it but a Tengu could occupy it currently. I think introducing a Tengu member of Destiny’s Edge would be cool. He (and it should be a he considering 2.0’s current ratio) would be a necromancer modeled after FANG from Street Figther 5. Imagine this guy but a Tengu with the hat, sunglasses, and robe refashioned into a GW2 artstyle.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-05-20-one-of-street-fighter-5s-greatest-mysteries-solved

BrotherBelial.3094:

Tengu land is kind of odd. It stars in LA,and borders on Caledon. But there is a human port right in the middle of it where the wizards tower is, it has moved from where it was to around where the temple of tolerance was. I’ve given up on trying to compere the 2 game maps, the seismic changes to the maps should have killed everyone. Things do not change that much naturally with out a loss of a lot of life. Mountain ranges appearing from no where, sinkholes swallowing places, Ascalon city, Temple of the Ages, the dwarven village in Loners pass that was in dreadnoughts drift.

Is the wizard a Tengu by any chance? A story arc right there could open up the Tengu being playable. Let’s be honest, if there is going to be a new playable race it’s going to be Tengu due to some infrastructure for them being in place, sharing meshes with Charr, and being highly demanded.

Same here, and it typically happens in sPvP.

Ohoni.6057:

the game will never have balance or build diversity so long as there is a metabattle site available and elites spec. the site pulls ppl into playing 1 way and eliminates build diversity. remember we are dealing with sheepl and not ppl. as far as the elite specializations go, i like to see them completely nerfed into the ground, but that wont happen. anet values money over the quality of the game.

The metabattle site is not a problem, it is a symptom. The problem is the poor balance state that makes metabattle right. If Metabattle were the issue, then that would mean tons of other builds would be viable, and people just wouldn’t be using them. In that case, clever players could be playing these equally viable builds and crushing “meta build” players because those players would be too used to fighting the metas and not know the right tactics to handle these oddball builds.

Instead, the fact remains that meta builds are typically much stronger than non-meta, and while you can tweak them slightly and still do fine, many build set-ups and even entire classes are completely noncompetitive. That is what needs to change, not that there is an awareness of which builds are better than others, but that some build ARE better than others.

Metabattle builds come from the research of pro-players. They may be flawed human beings but as far as the game goes they’re less flawed than the rest of us. Still, there could be excellent, not so obvious builds they’re overlooking. Even under Power Shiro I noticed the lack of Eagle Runes under the Strength Rune alternatives! While no one is disputing that Strength Runes are great Eagle Runes build up invaluable bonus damage through crit, ferocity, and doing more damage to an opponent under 50% health. Why no Infiltration Runes for warrior? Is it because they’d be too engrossed in attacking they’d likely just undo the stealth proc anyway? What’s wrong with critical strikes for thief or Harmonious Conduit and Mender’s for elementalist? If Viper’s ele with Balthazaar Runes was so bad then how did I manage to stay in the game long enough for a top two score during the off season with top condition damage done (I know score doesn’t really mean anything but in this context it implies I stayed in the game long enough) traiting fire, water (for aurashare and cleansing chill and burning on dodges like my main tempest build) and tempest? With Lightning Flash and Eye of the Storm (carried over from my main build, which is the metabattle build with Mender’s, Harmonious Conduit, Sigils of Transference and Rage to heal and get overloads off faster, and the water dodge trait) I have some good stunbreak and disengage.

I was able to hold a point vs. a necro and some other class for 15 seconds on a node before dying. You just have to optimally manage your blocks and staff cleanse and hope you get backup. It takes adjusting to the nerfs but revenant in the previous season had a very strong opening. Their opening is still strong but the attrition potential is even weaker than before.

It’s hard to cope with the big spike in getting worn down. When everyone is at 100% (everything off cooldown, full endurance, healh, and resources) revenant is very strong but as the fight drags on the revenant gets weaker as the net energy loss with cooldown alignments means fewer usable skills at lower health. You need to manage your energy and abilities intelligently but even so there’s a negative overall trajectory since autoattacking for too long allowing a positive growth trajectory is impractical as you’ll find heals and rezzes worth interrupting, meaning something is going on cooldown on top of energy expenditure. Then they still might secure the rez as even everything you’re throwing into the interrupt isn’t enough and a stomp attempt is certainly too slow relative to the rezzing speed and downed player’s health.

Faux Play.6104:

I think they need a player karma/rating system. Where people who intentionally do stupid stuff or afk end up getting punished. You can report them for “botting”. However, there is not a visible punishment for it. Maybe they do get punished eventually, but I’ve seen people afking for multiple matches in a row. I’m not going to test it with my account, but it you seem to be able to troll ranked matches without any consequence.

I’d love to see Duhem come in and nuke afk people. Would do wonders for the game. Right now the biggest issue with sPVP is peoples attitude. I literally played vs someone complaining in all chat that they never were on a team where they were carried in all chat and they were going to quit trying. They were on a revenant and kept trying to cap our home, and got killed every time before they made the statement.

Then you’d be introducing Reddit’s problems into the game. You could get downvoted there merely for stating an unpopular opinion as downvoting is merely low effort disagreement. People would abuse the karma system like they do on Reddit by voting down people for not switching classes or running a weapon set they don’t like.

My teammates and I were just discussing this. We thought there should be a kick system. 4 votes to kick after the match starts (if your team is losing by x amount…say 100) and the offender gets loss of match and 15 min dishonor. Your team has to continue 4v5, but that was probably the case already.

The toxicity and abuse would reach unreal levels. And the process of votekicking will enable an obvious window where the other team’s attention is elsewhere and if you’re on the chopping block you could announce to the other team some of the kickers’ locations to help them snowball even further after the vote and 4v5 windows are gone. Then you could find yourself being thrown into a hopeless game after someone else was kicked and still lose a pip. The power to give other players dishonor shouldn’t be so casually handed out. Do you want some spiteful 13 year old to have some power to dishonor you for no good reason? You could be playing your best game but make some modest rotational mistake (or even do a correct rotation that’s perceived incorrect by other teammates) and get voted out or they might not like your “lore breaking” outfits.

I say just add a report for AFK option where they can look at your character positioning history to check for false positives (and therefore false reporting) or if it’s legit AFK’ing. If your coordinates in a map don’t change for a whole minute for example then that would be a decent case.

Tempest – Its elite trait line has no real defensive traits which led to the tank/support auramancer being the only viable build in PvP

As someone who typically mains tempest during the offseason and this and the previous season I’ll have to say that the lack of defense stems from its great versatility. If you buff defense enough to make air and fire traits viable then there’s no tradeoff. As it currently is tempest is the best class in the game due to its team support, utility, and AoE zoning. You can bait an interrupt with a fire overload or save it for cleaving rezzers. Even if you aren’t specced for condi the burning from d/f fire skills and the overload will help get in some damage on running targets. Air is better for a wider area and icing on the cake for securing the win at a team fight. Water needs proper timing and positioning since you’ll get interrupted out of it very easily but once you get that down the class is simply overpowered.

Daredevil – This class lost its duelist nature because it had really low defensive abilities compared to the abilities of other classes. The extra dodge, bandits defense and bound as a combo finisher allowed it to see some play but only as a decap class because the defense of the better elite specs for a while rendered its burst and run play useless in a standard match.

The defensive capabilities are great but active. Sw/D 3 and staff 3 and 5 have built in dodges on top of the three regular dodges. Let’s use a druid as a benchmark: there is signet of stone, bristleback, and longbow. With staff and initiative you have enough evade frames for each of their burst and SoS is on a long cooldown and steal can interrupt a CA heal.

Why not kill off Marjory instead? Destiny’s Edge 2.0 is already over represented with human females. I might not like Canach but he’s male and sylvari so he balances things out somewhat. Taimi would be a terrible character to kill off because she’s too cute and an Asura, same with Zojja.

I think scrapper is at the top while revenant and guardian are at the bottom. Revenant has excellent opening potential but the longer a fight lasts or as more people engage the revenant will have a net negative growth in energy and cooldowns resulting in poorer performance. Guardian doesn’t need any comment. Thief has hit and run potential via stealth so they have some staying power.

Scrapper has lots of kits, gyros, and hammer has shield, reflects, and CC and between hammer and elixir gun there are lots of skills they have.

There were some close games this season so far. The first game we were lucky enough to have a Primordial Legend (despite that we were still close) and the second I was lucky enough to make it back into the game just in time after a DC. I was really mad at that too since we had a comfortable lead and I DC’d when I ran home and was about to rez our DH.

In T5 Emerald however the dream seems over as I lost two in a row yesterday but lots of Diamonds from the previous season are still in that pip range to keep us down.

Rebound.3409:

A ranked system in which your personal skill is 90% effected AND decided by other people. A good judgement of your personal skill i say and the only deciding factor which dictates where in MMR u are and what ppl u party with..ultimately how many losses u get.

Let’s take an example. I keep hearing this “git gud” thing on the forums. Let’s do an experiment. If i go on and join teams, intentionally afking, theoretically if i have 4 good ppl with me they should win right? Let’s see the % of those wins. How much “guder” should they git if 1 person in their party is a net loss…either afk or just dies constantly. Is that still a way to judge the other 4 people’s skill?

While I’d love a 1v1 ranked league it would in practice simply boil down to scrapper vs. scrapper at the highest levels.

Because sometimes they have a comp that’s way more suited for team fights. When I see lots of necros and guardians for example I know to hit far. If someone announces far I’ll usually go far. Last season we had a warrior and I was on an ele and I called far and asked the warrior to go with me. We won that match.

In my experience 90% of the time when me and one other team mate go far at start we get there and kill the guy before he has it capped then we cap it.

In mine lots of their team lands on far as we’re capping defeating the purpose of hitting far to begin with and disengaging to decap mid would leave the team -1. Sometimes these fights work in our favor but it’s an uphill battle. Sometimes the guy doesn’t even die before backup arrives especially if an engi is capping.

Tahlie.4259:

Can we get medium armor (specifically for female Asura) that’s not a trenchcoat, and is sleeveless? Simple request. :P

I just don’t think it’s really thematically fitting for someone like a Thief or Ranger to be running around in a giant trenchcoat, as it’d get in the way. Something form-fitting with short sleeves or none at all would be nice though.

My Asura female has Viper’s armor. Gloves are Inquest.

I agree. Male characters and female asura (who wear male skins most of the time) really could do with more variety.
It would be nice to have an option for bare arms in particular. I’ve got a charr with a really nice fur pattern, a norn with cool tattoos and a sylvari with bioluminescence and none of them are able to show it off because it ends up hidden under their clothing.

If you have the proper dyes you can almost get a sleeveless look on some armors.

I’ll address some of your points:

• The pace is too fast: it’s mostly about muscle memory and reflexes, and almost nothing about depth and strategy*

Yes reflexes matter as they should, but the strategy comes from using your skills from what you perceive to be the optimal time. Too many players throw the baby out with the bathwater leaving themselves vulnerable. What is a noob you may wonder, a noob is someone who doesn’t grasp the core elements of his class and doesn’t fully explore the class’s concept.

• Too many things happen at the same time: absolute insanity in cluster fights, absolutely unplayable for a new player; too much information, too little clarity; almost impossible to learn and improve, because there is no time to gain any awareness on what is happening.*

This is another dimension of skill, to boil the seeming chaos of the fight into its most basic parts! Why does Abjured/Astral and other top teams consistently win their games? Because they grasp the battle’s essence and have a firm grasp of the multitude of complex dynamics that can and have occurred. It is up to you the player to make things clear! Look at the chaos and be a dynamic force that tips the advantage in your team’s favor!

• Balance between classes is an absolute aberration*

I’ll have to agree here, Elementalist can do decent damage while cleansing, aurasharing, healing, and has an answer for pretty much everything. Engineer is also a top tier class. Thief and Warrior on the other hand lack such tools, but still bring useful functions to the table.

As to your question the Metabattle Tempest build but with Mender’s in place of Cleric’s, Sigil of Transference, Eye of the Storm in place of Feel the Burn, and Harmonious Conduit in place of Invigorating Torrents. Mender’s will give your air and fire overloads better zoning potential (to discourage enemies being in those spots) and cleaving rezzers while Harmonious Conduit makes your overload successes more secure.

Burn.5401:

OriOri.8724:

I don’t agree. If players are stuck in the same league all season then its for a reason. Not everyone is good enough to reach Legendary, or even Diamond, league. Its just a fact.

He is talking about the beginning of the season and he has a good point. If people have to wait a month to even have a chance at progressing, they’re very likely to just quit. And no I’m not saying that everyone is entitled to progress, I’m saying that if 90% of your playerbase is stuck in Sapphire for days and probably weeks that means something’s not right.

If the bottom 40% belong in Amber and Emerald then something isn’t right when 90% of the playerbase is Sapphire indeed. Upper Emerald through lower Ruby should correlate to LoL Silver.

I just hope maps don’t get destroyed in the process, they always seem to be worse looking than the old versions.

Interesting. Could be just because they also go after ley energy, or it could confirm the small theory that chak might be the DSD’s minions.

Chak do seem sorta out of place but they’re some of the best creeps in the entire game aesthetically (due to their alien nature) and mechanically (fights have the perfect balance of fair yet challenging against the vets).

Meanwhile, the leylines could also be suggesting Jormag has moved toward the Woodland Cascade.

I think Woodland Cascade will be to a future expansion what Silverwaste was to HoT: a zone leading towards the expansion zones where we’re lead there by the living story.

I don’t think that’s the case. I think you simply run into stronger opposition as you rank up. If you’re top dog in Emerald you’ll be at Sapphire’s low end for example especially if you consider that Legendaries and Diamonds were seeded there.

mrauls.6519:

Nice! 499 to 500. Haven’t seen a score that close in a while. Nice monitor btw ;)

I was out of the game during the snowball process too and then they caught up :( When I disconnected we were 350-430 I think but don’t have a screenshot for the timeframe. Thanks, 4k makes a big difference and I have less clutter enabling me to see more of what’s going on.

Very good so far. In my first revenant game in over a month I managed to win despite me disconnecting and I desperately tried getting back in, first time failed but second time I made it through. I ran home to help a DH, was going to cleave the downed and rez the DH, but disconnected before I could do that. I don’t have a screencap of that scene but this happened at mid just before that.

Here’s my winstreak. Things are going good so far but people who made legend and Diamond are seeded in Sapphire (hopefully most have gone up to Ruby or higher Sapphire by now) so I’ll likely not be able to keep it up for long but I’ll try. I miss search and rescue but there’s rarely anywhere safe within 600 units.

gebrechen.5643:

Overwatch won’t be a balanced game and it will be full with cheaters and hackers. Why? Because it’s Blizzard. They never had a game with good balance and without cheaters running wild.

They have big servers with insane double precision compute that an average person can’t even afford and on top of that they have sophisticated software for dealing with such things. They’re upgrading to Pascal Tegras too so their FP64 and other computes will soar to new heights.

Overwatch is awesome, I am looking forward to playing it more but to pretend that its balanced is just too funny. You can find a ton of tier lists already for the game and in the pro scene there is a definitive best comp as of the last tourney. Dont for a second think you will find the wonderland of everything equally balanced over there.

It’s a new game so of course it’ll be overpowered. From my limited beta experience McGree and Lucio seem overpowered due to Lucio’s passive speed and healing boosts and McGree’s fast and accurate six shooter.

If you’re talking about a pro scene then they could make anything look good.

Harper.4173:

Agemnon.4608:

Forestnator.6298:

TexZero.7910:

Please speak for yourself. You might end up frustrated and confused, but lets be real here. To think all new players are mentally deficient is a bad way to go about setting precedence for “balance”.

It’s not about new players beeing mentally deicient (why that offense?), it’s about making a system much more complex for people who play multiple classes and multiple modes. Alot of people here are just playing one class and only PvE. They don’t see this issue and I just wanted to point it out.

TexZero.7910:

Balance should be done around the high end of every mode of play. Yes, this increases the “burden of knowledge” but that ultimately creates a healthier state as people have more information as a whole.

“Druid is now only dealing 19k dps instead of 20k, letz kick them all from our raid group” is a really childish attitude. I am not sure if Anet should balance something around this attitude…

A difference of 19k instead of 20k is actually huge over a long period of time. At 19k DPS over a an hour that’s 68,400,000 DPS an hour whereas 20k is 72,000,000 damage per hour.

Still, are they even counting pet damage towards the total?

Splitting skills for PvP and PvE seems to be fine for most of you. It may not be an issue if you only play PvE. It also may not be an issue if you only play PvP.
It is indeed an issue if you play PvE and PvP and both with multiple classes. The required skill knowledge increases drastically and ends up frustrating.
Also remember how confusing and unclear this will be for new players.
Don’t think in that limited mind please: just form your point of only playing one mode.
Every class got big nerfs and big buffs already. Get over it and adjust your build.

The split would just effect cooldown times and damage modifiers. They’re the same skills but made fairer for both modes.

I am a player that plays all 3 game types – PvE, PvP and WvW. I understand that each game type functions differently and requires different builds, gear and that your character behaves drastically different based on these factors and others.

New player or not – understanding this is not some hidden secret – it’s common sense.
If you don’t understand that things work differently in different game modes and that you should have different builds each oriented towards that mode you are a bad player.

Anet should not cater to you – they should instead instruct you to understand that you need to have builds and set-ups for each different mode. In other words – they shouldn’t equalize the game so that your bad build is equally bad everywhere. They should make you improve.

Ruining the game for everyone just because some people are bad isn’t the right solution.
The right solution is for the devs to place in-game systems through which people find out they’re bad and that provide incentive for those people to improve.

I’m for a split, I was just quoting someone who disagreed with it and told them why a split wouldn’t be hard to implement. I think PvE should be balanced around WvW stats but sPvP has its own damage and cooldown modifiers. If a boss or creep seems too stong due to balancing around WvW then the boss or creep should be adjusted accordingly. Players aren’t the HP sponges that elite mobs and up are while mobs also follow a predetermined script so we know PvP and PvE need a split. If you got a dragon whose HP puts an aircraft carrier’s HP to shame and has a couple of one shot AoE’s then he obviously needs a different skillset and stats to deal with compared to fighting other players.

Or introduce a challenge mode where you need to be a top 200 legendary to qualify for. Challenger would come with its own special titles, skins, and achievements.

If you play like an emerald you should be in emerald. However, since rubies start off in emerald you should rank out of it naturally with time.

You were up against three of the best bruiser spec (scrapper), one best overall and healing (tempest), and one best decapper (daredevil) that can hit hard. Looks like a tough comp especially since your side looked very condition heavy while scrappers and tempests have some good cleanse.

Fivedawgs.4267:

Has anyone beat This is Balanced yet? I have tried going all tanky, and I still can’t beat him.. how is his build any different from what everyone else runs?? He I the only revs who is killing me in 20 sec.

Have you guys had any success against him?

Even if you lost 2v1 against him there’s absolutely no shame, the people who are capable of defeating him in a duel with any class can be counted on one hand and even then he’d still be better overall than them (even Daigo loses some matches and if Daigo played this game he’d be able to 3v1 on any class against three low legendaries and below).

• Not to mention that warrior applies much more dangerous conditions than the necromancer.*

I don’t agree. Chill drastically lowers your skill recharge time while poison reduces healing effectiveness. Burning and weakness are still nasty conditions however.

It seems okay so far:

And to Silverstone: you did great considering you had emeralds on the other team.

Forestnator.6298:

TexZero.7910:

Please speak for yourself. You might end up frustrated and confused, but lets be real here. To think all new players are mentally deficient is a bad way to go about setting precedence for “balance”.

It’s not about new players beeing mentally deicient (why that offense?), it’s about making a system much more complex for people who play multiple classes and multiple modes. Alot of people here are just playing one class and only PvE. They don’t see this issue and I just wanted to point it out.

TexZero.7910:

Balance should be done around the high end of every mode of play. Yes, this increases the “burden of knowledge” but that ultimately creates a healthier state as people have more information as a whole.

“Druid is now only dealing 19k dps instead of 20k, letz kick them all from our raid group” is a really childish attitude. I am not sure if Anet should balance something around this attitude…

A difference of 19k instead of 20k is actually huge over a long period of time. At 19k DPS over a an hour that’s 68,400,000 DPS an hour whereas 20k is 72,000,000 damage per hour.

Still, are they even counting pet damage towards the total?

Splitting skills for PvP and PvE seems to be fine for most of you. It may not be an issue if you only play PvE. It also may not be an issue if you only play PvP.
It is indeed an issue if you play PvE and PvP and both with multiple classes. The required skill knowledge increases drastically and ends up frustrating.
Also remember how confusing and unclear this will be for new players.
Don’t think in that limited mind please: just form your point of only playing one mode.
Every class got big nerfs and big buffs already. Get over it and adjust your build.

The split would just effect cooldown times and damage modifiers. They’re the same skills but made fairer for both modes.

Cynz.9437:

ironically thieves: interrupts, stealth, mobility, couple dodges will do it

I’ll agree (especially sword and dagger with its cleanses and traiting for condition removal upon stealth) but the encounters tend to be very long and a waste of time usually. It’s better to look for empty nodes to decap then flip a bi… umm “kitten” to +1 a fight or elsewhere if you can’t conceivably full cap.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Does this mean that the mursaat have the means – which requires divine magic apparently, according to A Study in Gold – to do this?

I don’t know that the two are close enough to say they need the same process. By context, the Forgotten is talking about doing what the Seers did last rise, whisking away all the free magic in the world into their rock. What the Mantle are doing are sacrificing captives and draining magic from their- souls? deaths?- one person’s worth at a time. They’re using the same medium, yes, but in radically different ways.

And where the Seer’s bloodstone process seemed to contain the magikittenil the gods played with it, the Mantle’s shards are leaking enough power straight back out to change the weather and invent the Red Templars.

@Agemnon Nah, that’s never happened. Don’t think ANet’s heard of the trope.

That is why we must put our excess prisoners in Asura lands. The Inquest are always up to no good but don’t want anything to do with dirty humans. They’re lying low however so we know they’re preparing trouble down the road too. But I’ll be there…vigilant…stoic…and be the hero Tyria doesn’t deserve, but the hero it needs.