8v8 is more susceptible to FotM, but that isn’t e-sports. 5v5 is more about e-sports, and sorry to break it to you but skilled players don’t generally lose to HB, PW, or HS. FotM works in 8v8 and PUG tournies, but I doubt it’ll go very far in competitive matches. Just look at LoL. Tons of FotM champs there, but you don’t usually see them in tournaments unless they are -actually- good champs.
First month of release isn’t generally a timeframe that e-sportsdom would be considered. There are still numerous bugs to work out, as well as balance changes. Most people can’t see passed their hatred for balance issues and downed state, so I think most would say no, it doesn’t have a chance. They’ll be right if ANet decides not to fix anything, but what are the odds of that?
Isn’t skill what’s supposed to matter here? My point is even if they are less than half as skilled as you, you still can’t win 2v1 because of downed state.
I don’t want gear carrying me through 1v2s, 1v1s, or anything else, really. I do want my skill to matter more, though. Currently in GW2 1v2 is very much possible, and I’ve “won” 1v3s, downing all 3 enemies. But downed state messes it up one way or another. Either you ignore a downed guy and he revives, or they do enough damage with downed state to bring you down at which point you can’t win. Or the ignored guy just spams rocks and whatever CC to swing it in his teammate’s favor. It’s especially frustrating when an enemy with no CC suddenly has one on a relatively short CD because of downed state.
Or instead of sending 3 people to kill the guardian that isn’t a threat, send one person. Either they spend long enough to burn through his CDs and kill him, or the enemy reinforces the guardian in which case it should be an easy cap at the other two points. On a condition build retaliation doesn’t do enough damage to kill me, and I can essentially 1v1 the Guardian until he dies or is reinforced.
Just some food for thought.
It kind of is on ANet for allowing easy to play, effective builds like Pistol Whip and Heart Seeker spam to exist, isn’t it?
This may have some merit, lol. Anecdotal, but both times I’ve had a PUG with double+ guardian vs. 1 or none, we took 1st place. Even against pre-mades.
Personally, I think retaliation is the main culprit behind Guardian bunkers being a little over-the-top. They spec heavily for tanking, but then reflect damage back at you. Why do your own damage when you can use THEIR damage?
That said, I don’t think penta-guardian would be effective. Condition damage and mobility tend to screw them over pretty hard. I have been wrong before, though.
I fail to see how downed state prevents teams full of burst builds. That don’ make no sense.
If a burst team is coming at you, whether it’s 2v1 or an outright zerg, you’re dead, and going to be stomped. If it happens to be 2v2, then they’ll focus on player at a time if they are reasonably coordinated. Then you’re dead, followed swiftly by your teammate. Burst builds are also not the end-all-be-all as they tend to focus so much on damage, that once you work out their combo it’s easy to counter (100B, HS, Pistol Whip for starters). That’s the real incentive to avoid fielding them too heavily in competitive PvP; they tend to be gimmicky, or based around long CDs (Haste, Frenzy, Bulls’ Charge) so they won’t even be that effective in a teamfight unless they have their combo up.
The reality is, downed state does nothing to prevent burst builds as most of them include quickness anyway which makes stomps happen faster.
Stability would have been a huge boon in that situation (hah!). Next time coordinate a little better. Utilize your CC to prevent a res, or stability to get a stomp. Guardians are also pretty susceptible to condition damage, and you can swap stuff in the match when out of combat – items included.
I just dislike the self-revive feature, really. Get rid of that and the rest of the downed skills become less of a problem. You won’t be forced into stomping a player unless his teammates are going to revive him. Even out downed skills, get rid of self-revive and I think a lot of people will at least stop hating the system.
Derps is just trolling. Many people find the amount of NPCs and turrets on-screen at any given battle to be too much, including me. I see these threads regularly.
I lol’d.
I play a condition Thief and a Sword Ranger and I eat most Warriors for breakfast. It is significantly harder on the Ranger, and quite a bit more CD reliant, but not impossible. Most times I kill Warriors with only losing 5k HP or less. Those gimmicky builds are extremely easy to counter. Learn how to use condition removal (immobilize is a condition, btw) and stun breakers (they break knockdowns, too), and dodge. 100B is the easiest thing in the world to outmaneuver.
Downed state skills are a little imbalanced, I’ll give you that, but unless the Warrior pops Vengeance (which will kill him shortly after anyway) you should win the downed state battle as a Ranger with pet res (when it works).
HSS spam is easily countered by dodging. Pistol Whip is a little harder, but you didn’t even mention it so I’ll move on.
I dislike downed state in general, and I definitely hate the damage in downed state. Annoying at best.
Your only real valid point so far: Mesmers illusions should dissipate on down or target down. As it is, if you get downed by a Mesmer, or even with just a Mesmer illusion on you or two, you have no chance to revive unless a teammate intervenes.
Go watch Alpha Collective’s Zomoa. He plays an elementalist and very often wins 2 and 3v1s. Elementalists have a low skill floor.
Rangers get 2 invulnerabilities (Protect Me! and Signet of Stone with Signet of the Beastmaster) as well as 6 seconds of quickness on a pretty short CD (Quickening Zephyr, the quickness on pet-swap 5-pt minor trait).
Yes, higher skill cap, higher skill cap.
Show me these tremendously played elementalists and I will be able to show you why we are in a bad place.
I think we can all agree thieves are top tier at the moment. A well played thief is practically gg unless you have specific counter builds for them. Just know, they can and are frequently, shut down though. Warriors are harder to “shut down” when played well.
Sounds like a L2P issue. http://www.twitch.tv/ac_zomoa/b/332476562 Zomoa does a 2v1 around the 1 min mark in this 3 minute video and wins very convincingly. He’s also an elementalist.
Mouse has it right. GS was nerfed so bad Sword AA does more damage, and attacks faster, with a built in cripple and short gap-closer to boot! No reason at all to use a greatsword.
I’ve been complaining about Signet of Renewal a little here and there. It just flat out sucks. The fact that most of our utilities revolve around our pet would be fine if the pet were reliable in the least. They are not, likely will never be (they are AI,kitten, so rework our utility skills.
Signet builds require a 30 point investment to be viable, too. That’s just a huge, glaring issue. Every other class can use a signet build, and just trait to make them better while we have to trait to make them work at all. Kind of lame.
Most tPvP Rangers are using a shortbow condition build ATM. I run sword/horn, sometimes sword/torch just because I like the playstyle (and greatsword sucks) and do reasonably well with it. I do fine in 1v1s provided I play correctly.
Elementalist doesn’t even get an interrupt like us. They get Mist Form which has like a 10 or 15 sec CD. You’ll rarely, if ever, get to use it, and you run so slow the enemy just follows you and finishes you off anyway. Elementalists have the worst downed skills, Rangers are second.
If you’re considering rerolling to Ele for PvP, Bast, you might want to look at their forum. They aren’t in the best place, ATM. Mesmer is another story, though.
I solo cap Ruins on a power built Ranger. I don’t run glass cannon, so maybe that’s why I don’t die to sharks. Though I don’t have any problems dealing with the sharks themselves, I do find them to be more than a problem if the enemy even has one defender on Ruins.
The one game I decided to defend ruins, only 3 people came to cap it. I 3v1’d with shark help, won it no problem, and at 480 points (after sitting there for the entire match only getting to fight once) I got autobalanced. Honestly, it was lame all around.
Tip about defeating downed Mesmers: the one that appears with a big red arrow over it is the real Mesmer. It’s also always the second one that appears. After I realized they have a giant target over their head in downed state, I stopped being frustrated by their downed skills. Worse than ours once people realize this, but still not as bad as Ele.
PvP is a major cluster kitten, and I fear the future if it remains this way.
in PvP
Posted by: Animosity.5231
Agree wholeheartedly. Probably my biggest peeve with the game ATM. Balance issues, bugs, etc. all that will be fixed given time, but not being able to tell the different between the cast animations really hinders skilled play. Currently, it’s just more about chaining your CC together for as long as possible instead of timing it to make the best use of it.
Except with Haste that .5 stun is more than enough to lock someone down until they’re dead?
Gigawatt, let’s say that my stability, and stun break are both off CD. Thief runs up, hits PW, I pop stun-break, he just PWs again. Wasted stun break. Let’s say I pop my 80 second CD, 6-sec duration stability. He dodges twice, pops stealth, my stability falls off, he PW spams me.
You don’t have to be caught without your CDs to die to PW thieves -every- time, and that’s the problem.
Only one I really agree with is the Pistol Whip. Two buttons to win most of the time. One class doesn’t have enough stun breakers to deal with it. You need a long duration stability (Rampage as One, for instance) to do anything against them. But I’ve been saying this is more of a problem than HSS for a couple of weeks now.
Phantasm build – yes they do a lot of damage, but they are AI, and phantasms are pretty squishy. LOSing the duelist/warlock if you’re too far away as a melee causes it to run right up to you; kill it, then kill the Mesmer. You have more tools at your disposal than just your traits and skills. Every other phantasm is melee, so just kill them. Bring a condition removal, and use windows that phantasms are on CD to put the hurt on the Mesmer.
100 Blades is only powerful if the Warrior catches you off-guard, or you didn’t bring any sort of condition removal, stun breaker, stability, or immunity or they all are on CD. I bring all four, and just tear those glass cannon warriors apart. Many times I’ve killed a warrior and only taken 2-3k damage from them in 1v1 situations.
That said, -every- game has gimmicky classes and specs. Problem with gimmicky builds is that they are so simplistic that if they aren’t blatantly OP they are easily countered.
I played Ultima Online for over a decade, starting in ’97. That game had zero end-game content, but you made your own fun. You did what you -wanted- to do, and that was reward enough. If I wanted to spend a few hours in a dungeon? I could. Want to go stealing on my Thief? Ok. PvP? PK? Yep.
“End game” came with theme park MMOs, maybe starting with Everquest? Not sure, been a long, long time. I find that having the ability to jump into anything I want to do to be far more incentive to play than any pixel rewards, personally. We didn’t need that stuff back in UO and DAoC days. DAoC had minimal “end-game” content, and all of it was pretty much optional until later on in the game’s life.
My point is… Just do whatever the hell you want. Enjoyment should be your incentive. I also find that without the subscription looming over me it’s a lot easier to just do thing for enjoyment. I’m not looking for content, rewards, or progression to make my subscription money matter to me.
(edited by Animosity.5231)
It does make a good grandmaster-tier trait, but Warriors get the same sort of 6 second invulnerability without needing a 30 points investment.
I, too, find Necros to be ridiculously easy to kill. I don’t have too much trouble with Mesmers, but then again I did sacrifice a lot to get as much condition removal as I have. Took the pet removes conditions periodically trait, Signet of Renewal, Healing Spring (though it’s a given) just to deal with them because, like you, I found them to be ridiculously powerful against me. I like the change it brought about, but I do feel I have to invest far too much for unreliable removal.
Signet of Renewal is OK, except that if your pet happens to be out of range, or dead when you activate it, it doesn’t work. Pretty kitten stupid, IMO. Healing Spring suffers from the fact that you have to stand in the circle, or shoot through it (I think this removes conditions correct me if I’m wrong) which isn’t exactly feasible with a Warrior or a Thief sitting on your face. The trait one is stupid, too, given its cooldown, and the fact that it’s only one condition removed for a -major trait- slot. I’ve only been running it for a day or two, and will likely swap it out for something more useful.
Just making the signet work like every other class’ condition removal would go extremely far in helping us.
Three is only useful in a situation where both you and an enemy are downed in a 1v1 scenario. Makes for a free win assuming it doesn’t bug out and the pet actually starts healing you.
Two buys you an extra second and a half at most. Never once has bought enough time for a teammate to revive me or anything.
Of course this is from a PvP perspective.
Signet of the Beastmaster is the only reason I went to 30 in MM, and I hated doing it. It makes no sense to me that in order for a signet build to even be -viable- we need a 30 point investment. Everyone else gets their signet actives for free, and pretty much just specs to reduce the CD.
Stick to 5v5 where the particle effects aren’t nearly as bad. You can solo queue in free tournaments. I do have the same issue as I’m used to identifying a person’s class based on their look, but you eventually get used to checking the icon displayed near their portrait.
If you insist upon 8v8, then just avoid zergs and stick to roaming solo looking for other roamers, assaulting trebs, or stealing bosses.
I tend to just go by the red names, just like in every game, ever.
Seems to work fine.
This. I actually enjoyed seeing what color schemes or styles my enemies came up with, and targeting them based on the name color was more than adequate.
I only PvP, yet I’m loaded with dyes that are pointless for me to use. Kind of sucks.
The messages on the side refer to final blow, the points are awarded to whomever did a certain amount of damage to the target.
You can play with your friends via tournaments. We will continue as well to improve the ability to play with friends in pickup games, but it will always be somewhat limited because we do not want large groups of guilds pub stomping the pick up games.
So, why then are guild 5-mans allowed to pub stomp randoms in free tournies? Sounds like a contradiction to me.
Maybe, just MAYBE when paid tournaments are out this will stop, but I foresee quite a few “troll” groups going into free tournies with premades specifically to pubstomp unless the same system is applied.
Winning doesn’t exactly mean much in 8v8 – even in terms of glory gain. The win bonus is like 10-20 points, but if you just play selfishly, get top kills, objectives defended/captured, bosses or trebs killed, etc. you’ll get far more glory win or lose.
Otherwise, 8v8 doesn’t have a win:loss column, nor a ranking system other than the Play Now button which uses accumulated glory (not an indication of skill, only time investment), so just play, play selfish, and farm glory. If you want to take wins you deserve, solo queue in tournies.
That said, I feel your pain. Held ruins on Capricorn for the entire match once, at 480 points it autobalanced me. Pretty much when I decided teamplay and playing to win in 8v8 just isn’t effective, or fun.
Post is a complete waste of time. Nothing is valid.
If you speak of your own post, then you’re right. But I feel the pubstomp in free tournies due to PUGs vs. 5-mans to be extremely vaild, for starters.
You can have a revive mechanic WITHOUT downed state, guys. You can still promote teamwork without having jarring, annoying systems like downed state that reward poor play, and/or punish/don’t reward good play.
Agreed with all of the points the OP makes. Need more game-types, and 8v8 really shouldn’t be here. It’s not even a good way to practice for tournaments or anything else since it’s just a zergfest. I don’t really understand its place in the game. That said, if you want 5v5 you can solo-queue for tournies, but then you run into guild 5-mans that just stomp your PUG’s face. Isn’t that why they let parties get autobalanced in 8v8?
And you miss the point of the thread. Ranger utilities are lackluster, and this is, in part, because we have so few good options to choose from. If you want to build around a pet, you have more options, but it’s by default less effective than building around yourself. The Sic ’Em vs. QZ debate ends when you realize that pet effectiveness is secondary to player effectiveness, so taking Sic ’Em over anything else is going to be subpar, and this reduces the amount of utility options we have.
If the tanking part is irrelevant, then who cares? Ignore it. My main point was that building around a pet is subpar in almost every circumstance except in PvE where building a tanky pet can be worthwhile. I acknowledge it has a use, and I said it as a preemptive response to the people who build that way.
So, using different u-skills for different pets is most effective? Gee, who knew?! Only problem is, it doesn’t matter. If you shave 1 second off the kill-time on a golem by using one u-skill over another, focusing benefits on an unreliable, easily-killed, easily-kited, buggy pet is still less effective than focusing your u-skills on yourself. Taking Sic ‘Em over QZ just isn’t smart, and there isn’t a trait that let’s Sic ‘Em grant you the effect as well, while QZ affects both of you. No matter how you slice it, in most scenarios, pets only account for 40% or less of your total damage. Increasing your damage is far superior than increasing their’s for that simple reason alone.
In short, any utility skill that only benefits your pet in terms of damage is a waste because it is more efficient, and effective to build around yourself instead as you are more reliable. Stuff that makes your pet tanky is really only of benefit in PvE, as in PvP tanky pets aren’t reliable, and don’t typically bring anything good to the table.
A lot of Rangers have seen, and reported, this bug, including me. Has nothing to do with interrupts. Join an empty server on Khylo, hit the clocktower, drop your traps, and watch as they disappear into the ether.
Of course everything is counterable, but once you compare difficulty of a build, to the difficulty of the counter-build, you start to see glaring issues.
Let’s take Pistol Whip thieves since you already used them. PW stuns, and does excellent damage. They get locked into place during the animation, so dodging is a viable option – until you consider the stun. So, how do we counter this? Bring a stun-break! Oh, wait, they can use PW 3-4 times in a row. Get caught in one when the break is on CD, eat them all. Ok, so take stability! Most stability abilities last only a few seconds. A thief can dodge a few times, pop stealth, then PW spam again. Little effort on his part, but you’re required to use up multiple u-skills, having them off CD, and have to play well in order to counter it. The effort to counter it far outweighs the effort the Thief puts in for the most part. Sure, once you catch him without stealth, and you have stability, he’s probably dead, but that requires a specific set of circumstances as opposed to a specific counter-build or strategy.
Kasama has got it, and don’t forget you can use the sword’s 2-skill similarly to the shortbow skill. Spin, hit it, spin, hit it. Huuuuuge leap.
But no matter how you slice it, we have to work to get even the tiniest amount of mobility while thieves, engineers, and even warriors have it pretty kitten easy.
Warriors can Bull’s Charge, Rush, Whirlwind, Savage Leap, get a tier-1 major trait that increases movement speed with melee weps (doesn’t even need a u-skill like ours). All of them are far, far easier to use than spinning around, and leaping all over the screen or sending pets to attack far-away targets, etc.
I play a Ranger, and I feel bad doing this to other Rangers, but hey, I like to win.
It is a huge flaw, though.
I really hate how Ranger u-skills are designed. If you’re interested in a signet build, you -have- to dump 30 points just to have them affect -you-. That’s a little ridiculous in my eyes.
Traps are incredibly lackluster. I pretty much only use them for some immobilize/cripple.
The shouts are meh. The fact that pets die so easily, especially in an AoE-fest, completely shatters their viability. Protect me! might be good if I thought for a second my pet would be alive AND in range for it to actually work more than 10% of the time.
The guard this area command is useless as well. Despite our crappy u-skills all around, almost anything is better than this. This should have been a base pet command, IMO.
Love the sword, but that autoattack gets me killed a lot more than I’d like. Not exactly sure why this hasn’t been fixed considering how long it’s been a problem.
Greatsword, I think, was a little over-nerfed. Maybe I’m remembering incorrectly or something, but it does slightly more damage than the sword, but with much slower attack speed. No real reason to use it especially since Sword/Horn is amazing.
It’s particularly a problem when some classes have tons of CC against classes who don’t. Pistol Whip, for instance, does incredible damage along with a stun, and it can be used a few times in quick succession. Dunno about you guys, but I bring stability, and a stun break with me, and it’s just not enough. Assuming it isn’t already on CD from a previous fight, a Thief only has to stealth for a few seconds then continue the Pistol Whip spam.
Then there are Warriors, and Guardians, and Engineers. All of them can have ridiculous amounts of CC on a build. Other classes struggle a bit more in getting any kind of CC, especially if they are bringing stun-break, and a condition removal with them. Think it needs to be evened out a little more across the board.
IF you want the downed state removed, the solution is easy, play a different game….this makes GW2 combat unique and it is an important part of pvp as well as pve.
It makes it unique for thieves and mesmers.
For most others, you buy yourself 1-2 seconds before being finished off.
The ele may as well just die.
Too true. Let’s just go through a few scenarios on a Ranger, m’kay? I get downed defending a point, I interrupt with my awesome AoE interrupt skill! Oh, it bought me a full second and a half. I’m still dead. What’s the point?
I have a close fight with the guy on the enemy treb, he gets me down first, but because of my awesome rock-throwing arm I manage to down him, too! Too bad he isn’t a Ranger because I’m just going to throw rocks while my pet revives me. Easy win despite him likely playing better pre-downed state. Punishes the guy who outplayed me, but because I have a stronger downed skill I win the fight over all. Stupid design.
Attacking trebuchet, I down the guy who then downs me throwing rocks! I use pet revive… Oh wait it’s bugged and decided not to work at all this time. I outplayed him pre-downed state, but he can still throw rocks and down me. This punished me for outplaying an evenly matched opponent in the best-case scenario, and still punishes me in the worst case.
Defending a point 2v1, I manage to down one! I focus on the other guy, but wait what’s this? The guy I downed is back up! I die. No matter how this turns out I’m being punished for playing better than my two opponents. If I manage to down one, I will either die while stomping, or die after he revives himself if I ignore him. If I manage to get both down, I’m probably going to die to rocks being thrown at me. If I get one downed, then go down, as soon as I am stomped the downed guy revives. Now I’ve given up points, and gained nothing.
Then let’s not forget stuff like downing a person, then sending the pet after them to prevent them from reviving, but very slowly killing them. This essentially is griefing, and keeps them out of the match for a long period. Stupid design as it practically promotes griefing. He’ll die either way, but keeping him downed for as long as possible is more favorable than finishing him.
Let’s look at Elementalist: Gets downed, he dies. Gets down, but is able to pop mist form before someone stomps! He runs away with an enemy hot on his heels, and dies. Pointless.
Downed state doesn’t exactly reward good playing, promotes griefing, and rewards poor play with imbalanced downed skills. Balance the skills, remove self-revive in sPvP/tPvP AT LEAST. Otherwise, just remove thekittenthing.
(edited by Animosity.5231)
They allow parties to be balanced onto different teams to prevent pre-made stomping.
You don’t even need to target it, just spam your 1-skill and it’ll die quickly. Don’t know why you’re QQing about a CC that only lasts for 1.5 seconds against a competent player.
The annoying part is it seems to trigger on damage taken, including fall damage. Very annoying when dropping off a spawn point in sPvP especially when you just used your swiftness to get to a point faster.
Currently there isn’t a plan I’m aware of to keep parties on the same team. This prevents pre-mades from just coming in a stomping faces with their enhanced coordination. If you’re looking to stay on one team, you’ll have to join tournaments.
BTW, when one of you joins a game you can right click their portrait and hit “Join in PvP” to all join the same server easily.
Ranger Sword 1 will cause you to be locked on target, causing it to be unresponsive to dodge commands, or other ability inputs. Hazardous to your health.
Downed skill Call Pet or whatever it is (the one where the pet revives you) seems to be a little wonky. The pet always comes to you, but doesn’t always begin reviving you. Even switching pets (to ensure you have a live pet) and multiple uses of the skill don’t fix the problem. Also pretty hazardous to your health. Seems to happen randomly whenever I use it, and even when switching pets before activating.
Not sure if this is intended, but horn skill 4 will stop applying damage if you become obstructed, even after you’ve finished channeling. I expected it to work like a DoT.
Pets need to be far more responsive in their F2 skill use. I shouldn’t have to repeatedly mash the button in order for the regen skill on fern hounds to go off. Pets also shouldn’t have such long cast-times on their abilities if they’re supposed to be used for utility and in clutch situations. Terrifying Howl, for instance, is best served when you go down to buy time for your team to revive you instead of actually being usable in combat – at least in PvP.
Pet footsteps occasionally become ridiculously loud. Seems random, fixed by swapping pets.
Also, can we get a fix for that God-forsaken network error bug when joining PvP matches that’s been here since betas?
Well, this explains the headaches I’ve been getting while I play. I get headaches often enough that I just assumed they were my usual ones, but I notice I get them after about 30 minutes on GW2.
I really hate the camera inertia.