Guild Wars 2

It used to work with dazes as well, not sure if that’s still the case.

As an Engineer, Heartseeker is simply not an issue unless you are being attacked by 3 at once. The skill does absolutely no damage until you are below 50% health. Only does it become mildly threatening at that point, and only flat out dangerous at 25% health. Seeing as how you can use a healing skill to stay above 50% for quite an extended amount of time, dying to heartseeker spam implies that you were hit by a lot more then just heartseeker spam.

The only way they are going to get you that far is with a some powered up backstab combo. It’s easy to dodge or avoid. The heal can even bring you back out of the danger zone from that. Heck with just an ounce of tank in you, you won’t even be in danger after all of that anyway.

As for those pretending that extra button clicks require skill, that’s just simply not true. There is a lot more involved with the Elementalist and Engineer due to managing more cooldowns, but that’s not even what you all are talking about. That is the only place where the skill comes in, and that only happens in prolonged encounters. You can learn to shuffle in key combos via any profession and that takes very little practice. The vast majority of skill in this game comes beyond the practiced combos that are available to every class because in a good fight these combos simply do not work anymore.

I mean, I can tell you my basic combo. Freeze Grenades, Poison Grenades, Smoke Bomb, Incendiary Bomb, Confusion Bomb, Poison Volley, Static Shot, and Blowtorch. That’s actually not that complicated, due to muscle memory. It’s easy. That doesn’t require it to have skill. The point is, spamming skills to me is no different then a skill combo in other professions. Yes, the professions themselves are a bit harder due to other factors, but in no way shape or form is a skill combo difficult. .

Bull’s Rush is particularly easy to dodge. With Frenzy it’s a bit more difficult, but still doable. Not to mention, a stun break at that point will save you from most of the damage and many instant cast skills can be used to mitigate the damage beyond that while knocked down.

I’m much more concerned with a Shatter Mesmer who can pull their combo every 12 seconds then a 100B Warrior who can do theirs every… 60 seconds? Thieves aren’t really an issue either, it’s just people are getting bursted within the initiative window because they have no health.

Supply Drop is not underwhelming at all. Elixir X and Mortar though, are pretty terrible. Elixir X is partially terrible because Rampage is terrible, but Mortar is absolutely useless. Well, I suppose if someone in WvW forgot to bring a ranged weapon you could give the Mortar…. but that’s such a silly situation.

The problem with the Mortar is the I can take the Grenade Kit and nearly triple the damage output with an extra 100 range. Arguably, the utility on the Grenade Kit is better too.

It could be planned, we just simply don’t know. All we can do now is request for it.

Eles don’t duel as well as other professions, and I think that leads to the opinion that they are lackluster. They need some changes, especially under dagger/dagger, but it’s not nearly as bad as it looks. They can absolutely excel in a 2v2 environment.

I agree that extra spice is needed too, and I think that can be introduced through subtle changes in some of the weapon skills and most of all, through the traits. Heck, some of the traits the Warrior has now should be automatic, such as the Longbow Range increase.

We just need to start treating the kits as a weapon. We should be able effectively apply sigils to them and take advantage of on-swap sigils as well. Probably take a fair amount of coding work though.

I actually use the same build in tPvP, since I function as a roamer for the team that can deal with bunkers and synergize with Epidemic. However, I honestly can’t play a build without high uptime Swiftness in open sPvP anymore, as mobility is what directly equates to glory in that environment.

I run a 30/10/0/30/0 build with Duel Pistols, Elixir H, Grenade Kit, Bomb Kit, Elixir B, and Supply Crate. Grenadier (XI), Short Fuse (VII), Forcefull Explosions (III), Hair Trigger (VI), Cleaning Formula 409 (X), Potent Elixirs (VIII), and Fast-Acting Elixirs (II) for traits. Carrion Amulet and Jewel, Runes of the Earth, and Sigil of Earth and Corruption for equipment.

First thing to be aware of, is it lacks a stun break. However, I can survive any stun into burst chains via Protection and 25k Health even if I’m caught completely unaware. Then again, I rarely ever get into these situations due to the 3 Blind abilities I have on rather short cooldowns. A little foresight, and you take almost no damage. The condition damage you deal is incredible, and in an AoE. You have a decent, not amazing, but decent amount of direct damage as well. Tons of damage that is hybridized into AoE, single, conditions, and direct coupled with high mobility and survivability. Great team fighter, great at killing objects, great at killing the lord (killing Kyhlo objectives can be problematic though, as your best spike is around 2k-3k damage and is delayed), and great at dueling. Pretty much my dream build. I can’t burst people down like people seem to enjoy, but I’ve pulled off with more frequency 1v2 fights as this Engineer build then I ever had as a Warrior or Mesmer.

To be fair, Grenade Kit is still complete ownage underwater. It’s just not as ridiculous as it was before. This isn’t a big deal.

Multi-Attacks do have an advantage, in that they tend to do higher total damage and have multiple chances to proc sigils. The Sigil cooldowns have softened that a great deal, but it’s advantage that remains withstanding nonetheless.

I don’t agree with a Flat damage type of deal. Retaliation I think should serve a purpose on bunker style builds, but it’s uptime and fringe cases of excessive damage need to be tempered.

I honestly thing it should be balanced around a maximum per second output to a single person. Maybe tweak the damage from what it’s at now based on that assumption, but Retaliation can get rather ridiculous when you are dealing with AoE situations and Multi-Attack situations.

I do believe the Warrior is too weak in the current state of things. That’s why right as the beta ended I changed to a Mesmer (and now, primarily to an Engineer).

They flat out should lose duels, as they have less “counters” to other classes in most situations. The problem is, the Warrior to me is the best profession in terms of being supported. They amplify better then any other profession in the game to me. So I’d be wary of overbuffing the Warrior in this situation as it could lead them to being too strong in a team.

Do they need fixes? Heck yeah. Their survival build needs a little more survival. Their condition damage build needs more condition damage. Their support builds need more support. But by how much? Not that incredibly much. This could realistically be done with just a few weapon tweaks and trait tweaks. No massive overhaul is needed.

The Sword bleeds need to be pushed to 8 / 12 / 16 stacks again on the burst skill. The Shield cooldowns need to come back down just a little. The Warhorn needs it’s cast animations to be shortened significantly. The Banners should drop a unique boon when dropped, and persist Regeneration without a trait. Many of the utilities need to be looked over to become viable again. The Longbow and Rifle need better hybridization of damage, and should be effective regardless of a focus on Power or Condition Damage. The traits need a good check up because a lot of them are severely nonviable.

This isn’t really that big of a problem. You can still weapon swap to attain 2 Phantasms every 15 seconds or so, instead of 12 seconds. The change is minor, and only really affects the Phantasm build in situations it was already countered in the first place. The Shatter build is nearly untouched by this change. Not to mention, 3 to 4 seconds (once you’ve reduced these cooldowns) are almost nothing in GW2 PvP.

While a Guardian can still maintain permanent uptime on Retal through Virtues, the AoE Retaliation is much more difficult to maintain. Which to me is a pretty good plus for now. Much easier to deal with using boon removal as well now. Instead of say 200% uptime, it’s closer to 100% now.

I’m also having it, but I don’t think the sPvP forum is the place for it.

The Greatsword rework on the symbol being less prevalent to me was actually substantial in comparison to that of the cooldown changes to a Mesmer. This may be because I view the Phantasm Mesmer spec as inferior to that of the Shatter Mesmer build, however. Phantasm Mesmers share the same category of Heartseeker Spam and Hundred Blades, which is not being very viable unless your opponent is severely ill-equipped to handle the situation.

These were not significant nerfs. Only the Guardian and Thief really received what I’d consider a decent nerf.

To be fair, the Phantasm (or Taugrim’s Legion variant) isn’t what could be considered OP in my book. Dying to Phantasm spam is akin to dying to Hundred Blades or Heartseeker spam. It’s completely your fault. What could be considered OP is the Shatter build, which effectively rips off all boons at all times and can pull off 10k+ bursts every 12 or so seconds while having plenty of extra defense due to the increased clone generation for defensive shatters.

It’s actually rather interesting, if you take it from the perspective of a glass cannon profession you find most of the common complaints more relevant. Still not in my opinion, a worthwhile complaint, but you can start to see where a lot of people are coming from.

To be honest, I think that the spectator mode should have the option of having a red and blue masking of the dyes. Beyond that, I really wish we could show off our dyes.

Downed state does not prevent the ability to pull off a 2v1. I don’t agree with the concept of letting opponents bleed out hurting sPvP. I do find the downed state abilities between classes to be imbalanced among a select few, however. In general though, I love the downed state in this game.

It’s a definite issue. It takes far too long for the game to realize that the server is full and you can’t join it.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

Full power in tpvp the most your getting out of Staff auto attack is 600-700 damage

Exaggeration. I’m done here.

This thread is becoming evidence why devs often stop communicating in other games. Mentioning you are keeping an eye on something doesn’t mean they aren’t fixing all the profession bugs… heck he even said nearly those exact words.

You are right, it’s not skill intensive. It’s instead, incredibly easy to do. That’s the part that astonishes me here. The only reason I’d agree that it’s not actually the compelling of gameplay, is that the typical users of these combinations put themselves at such a disadvantage when they fail that combat is flat out over. There is no challenge. Against good players the cat and mouse game is actually quite fun though. Taking Quickness always has the opportunity cost of something else you could’ve had, whether it’s a sigil, trait, or utility slot. Failing it is even worse then just dealing with the debuff, as you’ve often spent many cooldowns with nothing to show.

Well you guys are jerks for oozing sarcasm, even though I’d agree that it’s somewhat already known. The counter as a Thief is to wait to teleport until the last second. You can’t really react that, and it gives them the longest amount of time to survive anyway.

If they ever did remove the immobility of it, then I think they’d have to remove the stun/daze or whatever it is now as well, which kinda messes with it a bit too much.

Is it more difficult? Depends. You can often use your opponent’s corpse as bait. If you have a form of invulnerability then stomping can be an option, but for the most part it’s probably smarter to just use them as bait. It’s more then possible to 1v2, and even 1v3.

Without the Thief POV I think it’s really hard to accurately identify what is going on in mid. I think people are making assumptions on both sides here.

As a guardian, it’s important to bring Stability to deal with the downed state efficiently. You should clarify the rest of your post though, as it reads like a thought trail that is hard to follow.

Quickness doesn’t need nerfs, but a Thief does need Quickness for Pistol Whip to be effective either. Ideally you aren’t spamming the crap out of it anyway, in my opinion.

As an aside, I’d be curious which profession doesn’t have some way to absorb a Quickness burst. Honestly, I think the only one with a valid complain would be a Necromancer, and frankly you could still dodge the control in the first place.

Eh, seriously the higher in skill the two players the longer the fight. I’ve played glass cannon duels where they last longer then a minute. Especially in regards to burst builds, you skip the burst and you have avoided most of the game. The only time TTK is short in this game is when you are overwhelmed by sheer numbers or are caught by a burst combination. Most serious duels between two people of talent are pretty long (30 to 60 seconds), regardless of builds.

I don’t really consider the staff auto-attacks burst either. The only thing I said was “Their direct damage output with Staff and main hand Dagger is pretty good too”, and that seems to be interpreted by you as me believing they deal burst damage with staff auto-attacks. The only point of contention I have with your definition of burst deals with Lich Form. All you are doing is twisting my words to argue with me, when I actually agree that a Necro needs buffs especially related to power builds. I don’t even understand what you are trying to argue beyond how angry you are with the Necro’s current state. You have made several good points in this thread, but honestly you’ve completely discredited yourself with the way you discuss it. I’m not going to argue with you for the sake of arguing, especially when you can’t see your own exaggerations. Besides, this is all ridiculously off-topic now.

We are arguing over what we classify as burst, so I don’t think it has much to do with the topic anymore. I ran a Power Necro build last week (and yes, found it terrible in terms of viability, but I don’t think that means it has no “burst”, but that’s my opinion), and found the staff auto attack landing crits for over 2.5k. You are exaggerating here, and we have different definitions of burst.

They can be viable, but I think they are gimmicky akin to a Pistol Whip Thief or Hundred Blades Warrior build. Dodge the toolkit burst and you are fine.

teviko.6049:

@Ayesters

No, at least for rangers, it doesn’t.

I have popped a healing spring, seeing a thief coming at me I knew 2 things. One, I was going to get immobilized, and 2, I was going to get poisoned. Set my traps and sure enough ‘pop’ ‘pop’ goes my traps (he’s still in stealth too) I fire off my skills, and begin my dance and while I am still standing in the healing spring, I have immob and poison on me.

Nothing was cleared, and I of course, I died.

Only time this ever seems to work is if I get immob and they die, its still on me and healing spring is active

I shouldn’t have to be out of combat for healing spring to remove these two conditions (at least with poison, I ‘can’ be out of combat and it still won’t cleanse it…kitten bugged skills)

Well I think Healing Spring removes one condition every three seconds. If Poison and Immobilize were applied at the same time, there is no telling which one would be removed first. In this case, you were probably removing the Poison and not the Immobilize. It is last in first out algorithm, I’ve tested it and seen many other test it rigorously.

teviko.6049:

Ayestes.1273:

Lightning Reflexes and Shortbow 3 does work. You evade during the animation, I was doing it last week. You just don’t move position. Unless it changed recently?

Quickness and Stunlock is mostly a learn to play issue. There are select cases where it’s a cat and mouse type of game, but the final verdict always depends on the target. If they use up all their active mitigation defenses before someone has unloaded their burst, that’s their mistake. If someone is built for burst and doesn’t unleash it, you will win. I mean, I play a build lately (Engi, no stun breaks) that doesn’t even have any active mitigation once I’m caught with a stun-burst chain, and I still don’t have issues with it. You need to see it coming, you need to pick out the smart ones from the “omg cooldowns up spam buttons” variety. It’s actually not that hard, but when you do get caught with it, I realize that I myself made the mistake.

so..you evade a hit?? What about the other 27 coming at you??

If you can’t move, evasion is worthless. Only classes like engi’s, guardians and warriors have ‘evasion’ skillsin the form of blocks.

And all too often, if you are engage on one person and never see that bull charging warrior or thief come up behind you, its not a L2P issue, its a ‘DEV team needs to fix camera angles’ issue.

I don’t know what to to say here. If you are being hit with a multi-attack, then will avoid more then one “hit”, however vague that is. There are also a lot more ways to deal with it then just using your evades, I was merely pointing out that they do work while under the immobilize. Protect Me!, Signet of the Wild with the Trait, the Signet that pulls conditions, Healing Spring (?), and more could easily get you out of that situation. I’m sure there are other ways too, such as controlling your opponent during the situation with a daze, knockback, or knockdown.

The camera angle sucks sure, but I’m not sure how that deals factors in with a high impact to awareness unless you never pan your camera around.

As for it being a learn to play issue, I hate to say it but it really is. If you get hit by a quickness burst, you did something wrong. It’s not the bloody games fault, it was your fault in some form. Whether it be via build choice, awareness, reaction time, or something else… it was your fault. When I branch out and experiment with professions, I get nailed by these quickness bursts all the time. It’s not because the class has no way to counter it, but rather because I’m making mistakes as I don’t have the muscle memory down on how to deal with it. I had serious issues with it for the longest time on my Engineer, and now I quite simply don’t. I don’t even take a shield nor a stun break. It’s all preemptive mitigation rather the reactive.

I mean, I don’t even use Quickness in either of my builds. I guess I could selfishly care less if it gets nerfed. It’s not hard to deal with in its current state though.

I think you completely misunderstood what I said. I think it’s gimmicky, because of that cooldown. I don’t think it’s viable. The staff 4 and auto attacks do output a decent amount of damage, but I was speaking more the combination of using it with the dagger. I don’t think that’s viable either, but not because the damage output is low. I agree with you that Necro’s need serious changes and some buffs, but I don’t agree that they completely lack burst. It’s gimmicky and not viable in tPvP, but claiming they lack it completely is disingenuous in my opinion.

It does, if it was the last thing put on you. I’ll admit though, condition removal that isn’t instant kinda blows.

Lightning Reflexes and Shortbow 3 does work. You evade during the animation, I was doing it last week. You just don’t move position. Unless it changed recently?

Quickness and Stunlock is mostly a learn to play issue. There are select cases where it’s a cat and mouse type of game, but the final verdict always depends on the target. If they use up all their active mitigation defenses before someone has unloaded their burst, that’s their mistake. If someone is built for burst and doesn’t unleash it, you will win. I mean, I play a build lately (Engi, no stun breaks) that doesn’t even have any active mitigation once I’m caught with a stun-burst chain, and I still don’t have issues with it. You need to see it coming, you need to pick out the smart ones from the “omg cooldowns up spam buttons” variety. It’s actually not that hard, but when you do get caught with it, I realize that I myself made the mistake.

Honestly I’m not a fan of bunker engineers. I know there are some good builds out there for it, but I think Ele and Guardian are just simply better at it.

Honestly I think Teviko is experiencing something more like the build I use, which is 30/10/0/30/0 with Grenade Kit, Bomb Kit, and Double Pistol. Add on a Carrion Amulet and Earth runes. You simply light up your opponent with all conditions, blinds and evades to mitigate damage, and you have elixirs for condition removal and massive boon support. I destroy the conventional duelists such as a Thief and Mesmer with the build, and have permanent Swiftness to boot.

It actually sort of was nerfed recently, with the Freeze Grenade bug fix. Although, that’s not a nerf in my book. I don’t think it needs to be nerfed, but I can certainly compete with the so-called overpowered professions. Mesmers in particular are easy for me, but perhaps that’s because I play one on the side. Right now no one understands how the bombs work, so that leads to excessively easy wins.

Ah okay, yes the “front” keyword there threw me off completely.

Yes they can have hefty distortion time, but it’s not like they are unbeatable. I hardly play my Mesmer anymore.

I do play a condition build right now. I primarily play my engineer. In my anecdotal experience for tPvP, I do better as my Engineer then my Mesmer. Condition removal in my experience can be easily overloaded and then becomes useless leaving them open to my full damage. Direct damage can be harshly countered by the protection boon in general.

Burst applications of direct damage or condition damage can be countered by mitigation skills. Direct damage is often a whole lot more bursty then condition application, and thus is generally more vulnerable to that mitigation. Honestly, even when I am hit by a Bull’s Charge into Hundred Blades with Frenzy… I don’t die. 25k Health with Protection means I survive, and am now capable of dodging the Eviscerate. At this point I have regeneration and have just healed off a lot of the damage with my healing skill. In my experience, it’s extremely easy to counter burst damage. If you think 25k health with Protection is a tanky build, it’s not really. I have around 2k power and around 1.2k condition damage, with a Carrion Amulet and Earth rune combination.

Necros can have incredible power damage output in Lich Form. Continuous 4.5k crits is what I’d consider burst. It’s incredibly gimmicky though, moreso then 100B and the like in my opinion. It’s not really that viable, but I’d consider it a form of burst. Their direct damage output with Staff and main hand Dagger is pretty good too, their problem is related to other stuff. They have issues, but I think people exaggerate how drastic they are.

Aether McLoud.1975:

“excellent”. I don’t think it means what you think it means.

I’m glad we could resolve this with you attacking my use of language. At least I’m glad I didn’t take the time to go into detail, since I knew this would be the response regardless.

EnochDagor.6185:

0/20/0/20/30 is a death sentence. Seriously. You rely on too much chance and you give up all your toughness… pretty much any HS spamming thief will instagib ya.

Valkyrie’s Amulet gives you the Toughness. You do only have around 13k to 14k health however, so you are vulnerable to burst damage. However, the amount of self-healing, control, and mitigation it has on top of the incredible damage output shows me you don’t even understand what I wrote.

I know this will probably hit deaf ears, but you all should give it a try. It doesn’t have to beat Thieves 1v1, it’s a Roamer designed to support point defenders and duelists. The only Thief build it really loses to anyway is the Backstab one, and that’s only if you don’t see it coming. The rest of them are fights that are determined by mostly execution and skill. A Heartseeker spamming thief will lose terribly with blinds, control, and keeping yourself above half health.

Pray.9751:

if i were to tell my prof i’d just need another few days for “editing and translating and stuff” i’d get a mark 0 and that’s about it

you write your papers in LateX, not a hard thing to do but tedious at times and if you honestly try to tell us that editing a blog post is actually something hard to do you’re out of your mind

same with translation, first of all 99% of the people who play this game are fluent in english and translation a what 1 page (if that) blog post doesn’t even take as much as an hour

again it’s just excuses coming out of you

You’ve never worked in an office before have you? When you pass work along to others, things take time. Honestly, the anger at Jon over how slow it’s been makes sense now that I think about it. Very few people here have probably had office jobs. Could they be faster? Yeah, but it’s not unreasonable for it to take this long when you’ve experienced it first-hand.

You can use abilities that cause you to evade while immobilized. If they don’t specifically break the immobilize, you simply roll in place and are evading during that animation. You cannot dodge while immobilized. Many, many abilities remove immobilization above and beyond condition removal. Condition removal is also very effective as well, just remember that condition removal works on a last in first out system. Teleportation abilities also help you move around while immobilized. Immobilize can be used a lot like a stun, when your opponent is behind you. There is a lot of misinformation in this thread.

teviko.6049:

b) mesmers are immune to damage from the front

Nothing can make a Mesmer only immune to damage from just their frontal point of view. All Distortion effects are flat out invulnerability. You should really play a Mesmer, not that I’ll make any comments on their balance, but you clearly don’t understand how to play against one.

In a way, that can explain the polarization of hatred and uncaring on the forums about Quickness. The people that have the tools and experience to counter the bursts consider Quickness to be nearly worthless, meanwhile the ones that have been through the situation of considering themselves helpless while being bursted down absolutely loathe it. In my opinion, this is in part due to the communities preference at blaming the game rather then blaming themselves for a possible mistake.

Bunker Guards and Eles can be taken down with Engi or Necro condition damage builds. Thief and Ranger possibly, but it’s more bursty and full of multi-attacks, which makes them a little vulnerable to Retaliation and condition removal. It’s generally smart to 1v2 them though even in this case, as their roamer can often respond to the bunker in time due to the length of time it still takes to kill one. That way you end up usually with a 2v2 while the bunker is poisoned.

In my opinion, I prefer the Engineer as a Roamer and the Necro as it’s own bunker. A Bunker Necro flat out beats most other bunkers. It’s just worse in a 1v2 situation, though. The Engineer pretty much has permanent swiftness regardless of build, which makes it a good roamer. Honestly Engineer bunker builds are a bit overrated, but that’s just my own opinion.