Guild Wars 2

I would wager the most toxic area is low-mid tier platinum since players there all hoping to be able to crack the top 250 or at least keep their rating in the highest “realistic” division.

Cynz.9437:

Thief has been getting nerfed almost every patch for 4 years now. We are kind of used to it heh. I honestly don’t remember when there was a patch that had any thief changes that made any sense (they butchered backstab so badly, it is useless in 90% of the time). Only thing they ever do is buffing condi or builds that from design perspective are just bad and need rework, not some % changes.

Thief and warrior are the most buffed/least nerfed classes since hot release by far. It has been quite a long time since thief has received a substantial nerf other than the whole second cd on stealth attacks. All the other classes have been getting hefty nerfs.

Worth noting that legendary opponents (the ones with the purple picture border) cannot crit. So if a fight only has one of those and nothing champion rank or below, the trait won’t do anything.

Nothing wrong with lords being solo-able, they are not meant to be challenging pve content on their own, just a bit of a meat shield that will die eventually if left undefended.

sophiewhite.3149:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Emdrix.6124:

I just want the dmg nerfs reverted.

someone kills a few golems with revenant “ZOMG ANET PLS NERF TOO OP”

Actually that was a warrior in the picture.

Rev is just the hardest class to play in pvp right now. Apparently for top tier it is still pretty ok, but for the vast majority of players they are just better off playing something like dragonhunter, or really any other class.

Agreed, nothing more to say.

Huskyboy.1053:

Dofty.9814:

phokus.8934:

Dofty.9814:

Huskyboy.1053:

I’m gonna double-check tonight to see if you’re playing DH, hard to believe an objective person would give this response.The current metabattle DH has 3 CCs, unblockable pull on spear of justice, shield 5, and unblockable LB 3, the latter of which is on a 10s CD. And yes Hunter’s Ward adds a 4th CC, but no good player is caught by that. Much more CC than most builds, since you’ll be able to use LB 3 at least 3 times in a node fight.

Meta DH also has 3 condi clears normally, F2 for 3 conditions, Smite Condition for 2 condis, and Smiter’s boon for 1 condition when a heal skill is used. Unless you’re absolutely terrible then you’ll be able to use your heal skill and smite condition twice each during a mode fight or a 1v1. Sometimes contemplation of purity is used against a condi-heavy team.

Unblockable? You surely are not playing a DH then. You can block it and you can dodge roll it.

EDIT: I know it states it on the tooltip but my Spear of Justice gets more blocked / dodged than anything else in the game. Might be a bug in fact.

The initial damage is unblockable.

He was talking about the ‘Pull on Spear of Justice’ that is 100% blockable my reaction was to his statement which I put in bold ;o

Yeah that’s gotta be a bug, feel free to report it. I’ve been pulled mid-dodge and have never blocked it. Also it’s not really productive to tell me that I can dodge it, that’s true of every attack in the game.

The pull is definitely unblockable, I use it all the time to rip chronos and revs out of their shield blocks.

Krysard.1364:

ArthurDent.9538:

5 spots, 9 professions. Average is all that is needed to be “meta”. Then there is the whole issue of rev needing more support than most classes which cannot be counted on at any level of soloq which ranked currently is.

kitten autocorrect, swapped necro for rev

They are in very similar spots right now. Strong offensive pressure in a group fight with poor 1v1 matchups and can’t roam alone safely because hard countered by thief.

5 spots, 9 professions. Average is all that is needed to be “meta”. Then there is the whole issue of rev needing more support than most classes which cannot be counted on at any level of soloq which ranked currently is.

Rev is in an interesting place in PvP. It is undoubtedly one of the more difficult professions to play but when mastered is downright average. This was the goal of anet according to the latest patch notes.

Guys dh is still underpowered at the ESL level when everyone is top tier and the whole team is on voice coms. Anet just needs to nerf Rev a bit more with slight buffs to dh now.

While I can agree that dh longbow is better overall, hammer is very strong specifically against projectile heay weapons such as the dh longbow due to the hammer 4 skill.

What about when both teams have 5 dragonhunters?

This really isn’t surprising given how quick and cheap it would be to get full ascended compared to the alternative methods. With that being said I would have preferred them reducing the number of shards per chest dramatically but allowing infinite repetition of full rewards to keep the carrot on the stick that keeps people playing actively. The season has been a huge leap forward with regards to infrastructure, the next thing I would like to see is reinstatement of team q which will require a higher population. Having the bulk of the rewards obtainable so quickly will hurt player retention as many will leave once shard capped.

Anchoku.8142:

From my perspective, Life Blast is not homing, Dark Path is even easier to dodge (provided pathing does not fail), and Tainted Shackles does not have a strong enough CC.

Life blast is homing and going to disagree with dark path being harder to dodge than deaths charge if you are trying to avoid the path of corruption proc. The release point on dark path is just really low for most projectiles, so it is easily missed unless used from a distance. With that being said reaper shroud 4 and 5 are way stronger than the death shroud counter parts.

Bardly.2571:

Hiya!

Been loving PvP and was really looking forward to these new changes. I think there is a little issue in the Bronze division that I’m not sure Anet, or even the seasoned PvPers are really talking about.

I read a post where people were complaining about MMR and most people were responding that based on your skill level you will be able to move. They suggested working on communication, and working as a team so that you can win matches.

The big problem is, that as the entry area, so many of the players either are awful, have no idea what they are doing, or are trolls. There is no way to differentiate who is on the bottom because they quit matches, or are running around naked, from the people who are playing objectively and working to improve their skills.

Because of this, and not being able to roll in to PvP on teams, it really does seem that it will get harder and harder to get out of bronze as time goes on and the caliber of teammates you have continues to go lower.

In other words, the bulk of getting out of Bronze is largely luck of the draw.

Yes, its the same matchmaking up high, but the people who are playing even in silver know enough about the game to listen to each other, be polite, not quit, and so on. So, the higher up you go, the better team you are likely to get. In an essence it will become a better test of your skill the higher you go since the skill levels of everyone in a match will be closer together.

But down in Bronze, you are sitting there with people who decide to go get a snack instead of play, and you play 4 men down.

Yes, theoretically at some point the axe should swing back the other way. . .but then it isn’t about skill at all is it?

I’m not sure what the numbers are behind the scenes, but it would seem to me that Bronze division might need to be smaller, or give greater reward for wins and smaller for losses or something so people who are playing consistently can move up even if they get hit with a string of 5 teams of people who are just there to grind ascended gear.

((And it’s been happening. . .it’s actually incredibly frustrating.))

Thanks ANET for all you’ve done! I love the changes otherwise and plan to keep trying my heart out.

The thing is that everything is just a running average so as long as you are better than most of the people around you, you should be able to advance. If you are striving to improve your game and getting better, you should be able to carry enough that you can win a high enough percentage of your games to improve. There will be lots of bad/useless players in bronze, however they will be on both sides, and as long as you can stomp the bads on the enemy team, you will win more than your fair share.

Consider the possibilities, if you actually are better than your rank says you are, then a team with 4 bad players + you should be able to beat a team of 5 bad players most of the time. Sometimes it might be 4 bad players + you against 4 bad players and someone at around your level, then the match is a toss up. It could also be 3 bad players you and someone around your level, against 5 bad players for an easy win. On average if you are better than the bads that surround you you will win quite a bit more than you lose and you should advance. Make no doubt you will still lose a lot, that is just part of solo qing in a competitive game. The only way to prove that you are as good as you think, is to get a statistically significant number of games that shows you winning more frequently then you should. Then you will move up the ranks until you are playing with people around your level.

Dixie Cougar.2415:

Ele was already so strong that I’m kind of baffled that it got a buff. But then I don’t have all the data.

The summary of the data would be that the things that were buffed were not used by its strong build, and will still not be used in its meta build after the patch.

chronometria.3708:

Dragon.8762:

Played a few matches with Rev, its still really good. Time to kill, honestly was just slightly reduced. Staff 5 eh, I never used it for damage anyways. Mainly used it for cc on people trying to res downed team mates, stopping a stomp from happening, or another evade.

A full staff 5 burst takes around 20% of the enemies health if fully connected. Combined with weapon swap hyro sigil burst and equilibrium just from one legend swap still deals a ton of damage, and accomplished within the matter of 2 seconds.

If a fully connecting staff burst takes 20 percent of enemy health, that’s terrible.

It used to take about half, now it takes about a quarter, no surprises there.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Huskyboy.1053:

Don’t forget their CC on Deflecting Shot, only a 10s CD!!

I knew I was missing one of them.

Don’t forget long bow 5, though it is easier to dodge than the others.

Why not just stick with Carrion still? I don’t see the need for the precision, you get some extra power for the autos when not spamming evades, and a larger health pool. Shorter duration condis but a bit more bursty with higher condi damage.

Crinn.7864:

Loboling.5293:

Please consider these two changes for global implementation.

Because the class with the highest DPS in pve obviously needs more dps buffs.

The high dps ele builds don’t use scepter, and wouldn’t use it after the buffs. If they did they would use it with lightning hammer so they didn’t have gut their dps using arc lightning, which would still be one of the lowest dps auto attacks in the game even with the buff.

It is a tricky situation to be sure. I would say generally most classes would rather keep the point contested rather than giving it up for free, However if your team seems to be struggling, it may be best to try and peel for them, since if they full wipe as often happens in soloq, you will be getting +1-4’d. Try to watch the team health bars, and the mini-map for downed players on both sides, to make a better judgement on whether they need help. Thieves would be an exception as their extreme mobility allows them to quickly and repeatedly decap unguarded points forcing the other team to waste much more time recapping, mesmer dropping a portal works similarly though less frequently.

That is not true, fiery greatsword, glyph of elementals, and tornado are worse otherwise people would actually use them over rebound.

Burn.5401:

Well since you finally ran power rev into the ground, it will be another full blown condi/bunker meta with mesmers reigning supreme. After skipping last season, I thought I’d try S5 and check out the changes but I’m forced to play classes I don’t even enjoy playing. /gg

I would anticipate a very heavy symbolic dragon hunter focused meta. Rev used to be their one 1v1 counter and it was a soft counter at best. Now they have no losing match-ups on side nodes, while still being decent in team fights with solid aoe healing and damage. Mesmer will hurt a bit, since it is hard countered by most dragon hunter variants, and their easiest prey, revenant, will be much less common.

Iain Ross.6903:

sophiewhite.3149:

Iain Ross.6903:

sophiewhite.3149:

deffinetly not revenant. really any class besides revenant.

rev will remain meta, even without the probable compensation as this is just a preview. Don’t be stupid.

the compensation is nothing. its a build no one runs. they are trying to make one build viable by making another kitten. instead of fixing the problems with the actual build. rev needed a nerf. not like this. rev was already weak to condis and all they had was pure power. every trait was meant to increase damage. why do you think that is?

I wouldn’t say it’s that weak to condis considering it has a winning matchup vs both warr and nec. Also, power rev will not be kitten, it will still be meta.

It takes a pretty good rev to beat a pretty mediocre condi war. I guess it just comes down to war just being low skill floor low skill cap. With that being said, I would be surprised if rev still has much chance in that matchup post patch, as precision strike was a massive percentage of their damage, with quickness boosted skull grinder being basically a one shot, they need to keep distance.

OriOri.8724:

Rarnark.5623:

Since season 2 things have been going pretty good. Gentle nerfs to overtuned classes and buffs to guardian/warrior/thief to bring them into viability. However, the last 2 patches you have completely kitten the bed. Nerfing the living hell out of druid condi clear/sustain and now completely axing revenant damage WITHOUT EVEN SEEING what the metagame is since the last lan.

Not to mention you announced season 5 yet THERE IS STILL NO TEAMS because you guys REFUSE to mention anything about the competitive scene/lans/cash prizing for god knows what reason. And even if there was a confirmed event people have no idea what comps to practice because you randomly just delete classes/builds from the meta game. Why hasn’t mesmer been touched as much as druid/rev>!?!?!? Honestly wtf.

It’s moves like this that make people lose faith in this game. shoutouts to everyone who put time and effort into this game to be let down. Shout outs to all the people rolling the dice trying to figure out what class to practice.

You’re better than this.

This is your problem. You expect ANet to “balance” based off of a player imposed meta. That is a bad way to go about balancing a game. ANet nerfed SotM because it was a skill that did everything, and Rev staff was intended as a defensive weapon. If you don’t believe me, look at https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Upcoming-Changes-to-Skills/page/3#post6424659 ANet tell you themselves. It was a skill that desperately needed a nerf of some kind, and nerfing its damage allowed it to still fit the design concept of the weapon for Rev.

Balance patches should be focused on what is over/underperforming. And SotM was overperforming for Rev. Did rev need some nerfs to other skills/traits? Probably, and its sad that that wasn’t addressed. But nerfing SotM was a GOOD balancing decision by ANet. It was just too good of a skill. In fact, now that ANet is finally starting to balance around what is over/underperforming instead of around the meta (even though its just barely a start in this direction) we might start to see better balancing come through in the next few iterations

Then allow staff to actually work as a defensive weapon. The 2 and 4 skills are both bad and would still be bad even if they didn’t cost any energy. The auto attack is also bad with completely negligible healing. And now the block is on a similar cool down to other channeled blocks despite having a significant energy cost and being 1 of only 2 skills the weapon is used for. Balance weapon kits as a whole there, is nothing wrong with 1 or 2 strong skills on a weapon set if the other 3 skills are fairly weak. There is a problem when you have 3 weak skills and 2 ok ones.

Saiyan.1704:

Emdrix.6124:

Chaotic.9742:

Sounds like a revenant main is throwing in the QQ towel a bit prematurely. Wait to see what happens before you flood the forum with complaints.

sounds like a Dh main who will keep facerolling his keyboard cuz the nerfs are pathetic compared to those of rev.

Yet Revs still beat DH ez. How about we don’t hop on that QQ train until the patch hits.

It is an even match-up currently, after these changes dragon-hunter face-rolls for the win.

Alright I give up on rev. I am already just about as confident on dragon hunter and druid with a fraction of the effort put into them it just isn’t worth try-harding it anymore.

Yep this will be an extremely dragon hunter heavy season 5.

I still love stronghold. Been queing it lately over conquest and it is just much more fun. The complain about being all pve and no pvp just really isn’t true. Unless the other team makes no effort to stop your door breakers then you will need to fight them off, which almost never happens. I typically get just as many kills per game in stronghold compared to conquest if not more.

My 2 cents on the subject is that it should be a reference but not the only reference. If it was the only reference then turret engis would have been buffed during their prime due to no use in ESL. It is definitely trickey to balance how much of balance is based off of high tier vs low and mid tier play. Ideally you don’t want specs where an average player can reroll, practice for an hour or 2, and perform generally better than they could on a long term main. That is what I would try to aim for with mid tier balance.

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Fun duels, but What will thievs do IF pi gets gutted? Seems that nearly all d/p thives do no is keep range and head shot.

Makes me wonder if it would be so even if rev had a heal skill that’s viable vs thief on it’s meta build.

That is the big thing, thief can kite other full melee builds such as various warrior builds even more easily than rev and pepper them with head shots. However they won’t be able to out dps healing signet with such a strategy. So they need to play more aggressively if they wish to get a kill instead of this super boring passive play style. The extreme strength of essence sap exacerbates this further dealing a ton of ranged damage with minimal telegraph.

Flame legion is better than scholar and strength if you don’t need the extra might and can’t keep full health for a large portion of the time. And it is really cheap.

I haven’t tested it thoroughly but I am pretty sure that sword 3 is a dps increase against a single target when you don’t have quickness. This will be most of the time unless you raid a ton and when you are not in shiro. At the very least it allows you to keep up high dps while evading instead of losing all of it while dodging.

Rev isn’t a great solo roamer for numerous reasons. For starters their biggest weaknesses are thieves and condi builds which both dominate the roaming scene. This is augmented by condi builds having access to dire and trailblazer stats as well as thieves not needing to worry about capture points at all.

Additionally Rev disengage is pretty poor unless you are fortunate to find some mobs in the direction you need to go. Even then the disengage is no where near the level of stealth heavy builds. So while you can still roam on Rev it is best to duo with something that can help you cover your weaknesses such as an auramancer.

Spartacus.3192:

Krysard.1364:

Threat metter is imo a lil out of date. quite surr the first time i saw it was during retri meta, and some classes have been nerfed
Invo rev wins against power guards, condi revs, has a fair shot against warrs if u can negate f1s, loses against thief, wins power scrapper and druid, loses against mesms, wins against eles, and proly loses against condi necs, but nec builds are still being tested, so im not sure about this one

When I played condi rev (Glint/Mallyx) I beat most power invo revs I met in solo q. With the Retri nerf (dodge nerf) its probably a lot harder now.

I don’t think the changes affect this matchup much at all. Typically condi Rev shouldn’t be getting hit by any hard cc’s other than sotm which will be interrupted by eye for an eye most of the time any way. Naturalistic resonance nerf hurts malyx Rev resistance uptime which means basically nothing against power Rev.

Salvatore.7841:

Didn’t they get a damage buff, for the loss of boon duration

No.

draxynnic.3719:

sephiroth.4217:

draxynnic.3719:

sephiroth.4217:

Most people I’ve met in game don’t even know Ele can unload an Air Overload that pulsates Immobilize. Once you start figuring out those “combos”, all of a sudden the class is a lot more useful than you thought it could ever be.

If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about, I’m not sure it’s worth the setup and fiddliness to actually pull it off. Cute when you do, though.

No it’s definitely not worth the set up outside of burn trolling or something…

Looks like I got it wrong anyway. I thought it was a matter of using Arcane Power with the Elemental Surge trait while in earth attunement, switching to air, and then overloading, but I was wondering if that actually worked so I gave it a try. Nope. Pulses blind instead.

Can use GoEP to pulse Cripple that way, though.

Reverse the order. Cast overload air then swap to earth and use elemental surge while the overload is still ticking. Air overload pulses I believe 10 times after the channel is done so plenty of time for imob spam.

Nope, there is a cap of +100% extra condition duration though. So once you get 100% duration, then just go all into condi damage.

He sounds a lot like the mad king with the changes, maybe just a Halloween special, don’t know.

Tomiyou.3790:

Iain Ross.6903:

Tomiyou.3790:

Huskyboy.1053:

Nobody can take you seriously when you comment stuff like this, Rev has some of the worst stability access after Thief.

What?? Ele, necro have 0 stability in their meta build (and non-meta things are straight up dead, so don’t even mention traits that give you stability). 0. Not a single stack anywhere.
And unlike rev, these 2 classes have very little damage avoidance, they just eat it all up.

Both necro and ele have stability. You should’ve said mesmer, which has 0 stab

Let’s see smart boy, where Ele or Necro has stability. Tell me where and I’ll tell you why you are wrong.

Ele has it on earth overload (trait not needed for that one), obsidian flesh while not technically stability, also gives all the same benefits and then some. Necro has it from reaper shroud 3 and chilled to the bone/plague.

If you consider a pro league player and a dueling specialist who has won several community dueling tournaments “mid tier” then you should probably look up what mid tier actually means.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

i main s/d thief and lack any of the stuff d/p can do so its still a tough MU, i do agree that the trait is stupid and there is no need for it, hammer revs are probabaly the biggst threat, even the AA can deal up to 3-4k, wouldn’t worry about trying to land the skill’s them selfs though. also the sword of had a pull dosnt it?

Off hand sword has a pull: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grasping_Shadow

Unfortunately it is a weird melee range pull where you strike the foe, then you shadow step back wards pulling them with you. So useless in regards to closing the gap. Off hand axe can be used with for an extra shadowshot like gap closer but then you have even less healing against the constant kiting at range, and no block other than staff.

So now that retri is dead what do we do against thieves. Right now they are just kiting me around just out of range of ps and ua range spamming head shot for 3-4 k pulm impact procs. Can’t close the gap since they will immediately reopen it with a single dodge, can’t heal since you can’t actually land damage, and staff 4 will just get interrupted by head shot spam, can’t just do nothing since head shot and escence sapps will eventually kill you even with out pulm procs, so what can I do?

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

It was bad design. Having skills that do not miss ever is bad design.

I would say the biggest design flaw was making a heal skill that does almost as much damage as it heals. It is a heal skill that should be it’s primary purpose. The other issue is having a now excessive amount of counter play for this skill compared to other heals. It can be interrupted like most other heals, additionally it can be dodged, blocked, reflected, blinded (need to test), or just kited and waited out. Even with all that it still heals for a low health to cool down ratio even if every charge lands.

SoI was op in both raids and wvw zergs. Not really hard to understand why when reading the old description.

Cyn.4901:

We had a long period of time were thieves weren’t particularly viable due to people not knowing how to 1 vs 1 on thief, but more importantly, the fact that they shouldn’t be 1 vs 1ing on thief. Thief’s job was decapping and pushing far, +1’ing with fast rotations, and sniping distant enemy team members in team fights. Thief benefited greatly from its mobility, and it needed that mobility in order to do the things it did.

Now, after many consecutive buffs to thieves, things are starting to get a little ridiculous. Thief used to counter necro and mesmer only, and that was fine because as stated before, 1 vs 1 was not it’s role. Since the numerous buffs, Thief now easily wins against revs, scrapper, maybe even some ele builds, while having an insane amount of teleports and easy access to stealth.

Thief currently has the best of both worlds: insane mobility, and insane damage. For both wvw and pvp, it has become broken. I’m not wanting the class to be useless, but here are my proposed nerfs: Short bow 5 reduced to 900 and 5 second CD. Unhindered combat swiftness and condition clear given an ICD of 5.

I understand it is important to the class to maintain mobility, and that’s what the profession is based on, but it really sticks out like a sore thumb when in pvp a thief respawns and in 5-6 seconds he’s at mid, kills you in 5 seconds, and then is off to the next point. In wvw it’s even more silly. A thief can just run into 40 man blobs and troll, blink 5 times and never get touched. Thieves are responsible for the endless tapping and desieging of keeps because again, it’s as easy as applying stealth then using 5 blinks.

Short bow 5 is already 900 range: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrator's_Arrow

Other than that I can agree that unhindered combatant should have never been added to the game. Pre hot thief was already the highest mobility class even without good swiftness up-time, and rather than helping thief in the areas it was weak, that trait increased their mobility to a level of complete absurdity. Now the only reason you fight thieves is because it is impossible to disengage from them, and the only reason why they ever die is because if they disengage to reset all day they will lose from point caps, just reinforces the old cynical saying of pvp = players vs point.

Agreed with op. Shaving off a few percentage points of damage or healing from certain skills is all that is generally needed to balance between game modes. Having different cool-downs on the other hand is simply annoying. It completely messes with your rhythm and timing when you expect a skill to be off cd because you have played with it so much in a different game mode but now it isn’t because of a split. It is never fun to always be watching your skill bar because you play different game modes. Kind of like how thieves hate that there is 4 sec reveal in pvp and 3 seconds everywhere else. The problem is even worse when skill functionality is completely changed.

For example if a skill has a blast finisher or evade frame in one game mode but not others You try to utilize that extra utility instinctively only to find it fail. Fortunately the devs have thus far opted against splitting skills this way so far. Balance patches change functionality and cool downs all the time which is fine since you have time to readjust in these cases. With skill splitting you need to always keep track of the differences in the back of your mind if you play multiple modes which is simply unnecessary punishment to people who play all modes regularly.

Ele died for me when it became good at nothing except for group healing.