Guild Wars 2

Sontaran.5904:

What is the Teef guild? I main a thief and it sounds interesting.

I too would like to know. Ive been maining a teef in WvW lately

It’s like a large scale PvP…but with more custom set ups with mixing stat sets and consumables. Large world where you could find a fight, pouncing on an unsuspecting enemy while he is trying to solo cap a camp, or seeing dots on the map and knowing that theres a squirrel there about to take a point. The adrenaline of going in a 6v10 and coming out victorious.

WvW is a place where peoples true class potential can really shine.

Also, dropping arrows from an AC on the faces of many and watching 4+ ppl drop at the same time is awesome.

Wolfric.9380:

Najten.2418:

I’ve been on teams that managed to turn 210-420 “lost cause” to a 500-489 victory so yeah, never ever quit. You do your team a big disservice by even assuming you’re going to lose. If you immediately assume a negative attitude, DC on purpose, or start moaning about “nub players” in chat, after nothing but a bad opening, you probably shouldn’t be PvP:ing.

If all players think and act like this the whole game would be much more fun and in a better shape. Reality seems diffrent ….

Yeah…you humans are funny. They want change, but don’t want to change anything.

Jim Hunter.6821:

saberz.2946:

Love how the only people complaining are the ones rhat cant fight a ghost theif. So when is anet taking away gyro that finishes people for engi? Or taking away that deadly gravedigger for necros? Or taking away stubs for days on warrior? Just curious. They nerf one class because people whined like little kids not being able to kill the ghost theifs. Y not nerf other classes as well and make it a fair line-up?

Seems to me the only ones complaining are the terribad players that were leaning on the ghost thief crutch.

+10 this…this guy gets it

There have been matches where 2 of our players quit due to the opponents having a 100 – 400 score. Us 3 that were left dominated the other team thanks to our mobile chrono and their portal/skill. Was breathtaking win of 500-497. It can happen despite being down a lot and down 1-2 members…gotta keep trying and adapt to the situation.

Xtinct.7031:

It is not the death of ghost thief, it is just the death of ghost thief trapper builds.

Well yes and no…most true GT’s rely on at least teh trap on heal trait. You dont NEED the rest as traps but that trap on heal is kind of the bread and butter. That will still reveal you now.

saberz.2946:

Anet can u give back the ghost trappers their stealth? Not our fault people suck against them. People whining because they cant kill them need to get good. I run a perm stealth theif in pvp and now i cant because people whining about notbeing able to kill them. in that case, you will take away engi gyro for stomping in down state right? take away grave digger OP damage from necros, warriors with that OP stun etc,. I mean, people complaining about not being able to take on trapper theifs is the exact same of what i am saying about other toons that i have that cant take on other classes becuase theyre too OP. people can whine just like I am but we did this work for our theifs and we get screwed.

Pretty sure you copied/pasted most of this from your WvW comment.

Knowing you play this build makes all the more sense. As someone once said, onlyu those that play it will argue it. To also quote my WvW post vs yours, this build is Toxic to WvW and in shed of this new light, its also toxic to the already toxic PvP. (Kinda funny actually as in the WvW thread, I pointed out your PvP toxicity before I saw this thread…nailed it)

I admit I played GT in WvW as a gimmick for a small period of time, got boring fast and learned to play a real build. A lot more satisfaction and pride downing someone using a real build than a fake gimmick one (inb4, my mallyx rev loves playing with ghost teefs, small effort, big payoff…tip for those that are looking for a nice counter play).

All this means is that you can either a.) Adapt and tweak the build or change it entirely, or b.) could complain on multiple forums. Imo learning to play a real build would be more rewarding as a player. If you need build ideas, look me up. I am maining a teef and can delete most builds pretty quick. Ill also help spar/practice until you get good.

saberz.2946:

Love how the only people complaining are the ones rhat cant fight a ghost theif. So when is anet taking away gyro that finishes people for engi? Or taking away that deadly gravedigger for necros? Or taking away stubs for days on warrior? Just curious. They nerf one class because people whined like little kids not being able to kill the ghost theifs. Y not nerf other classes as well and make it a fair line-up?

If I know there are GTs roaming, I take my mallyx rev and easily take em out with little effort. It has nothing to do with not knowing how to fight them, its about the integrity of WvW. I know if some peopl ewho left WvW because of the increased sighting (or lack there of i guess…seeing how thats the idea is to not see it). Very few builds even have a chance at it. With this nerf, they are coming back. Ghost Teefs were toxic to WvW in a general sense. Yeah you have other cheese/low skill builds (condi chrono…most berzerker…etc) but nothing compared to this.

Before you start judging those who either have issues, or who can fight them but are just sick of coming across them, maybe check some other facts and stop bringing that PvP toxicity into it.

/rant

Saw a “GT” yesterday…he clearly didnt get the memo. When he revealed himself from traps, he kept running. Got a whisper stating I was revealing him by hackign and he was reporting me. I asked him to report me for him revealing himself when i trigger his traps and offered him 1g to do so. I advised him to check patch notes. Needless to say, never heard back from him after (he blocked me)

I tried GT fior kicks…was fun for about an hour and that was pretty much it. Now I can finally break down my GT condi gear.

babazhook.6805:

Ghost theif does not need traps. It just needs to stack stealth. Pain Inverter, Caltrops, BA and the proc on heal runes for things like torment , confusion and fire will still exist and not pull the thief out of stealth.

Imagine if a DH trap or a Ranger trap allowed the enemy a FULL second to get himself out of that traps area when it was being laid while in combat. They would see their effectiveness plummet yet somehow it was seen as warranted for thief.

A bad solution .

Ranger had its fair share of nerfs to traps

Sarge shot Grif.6450:

I’m just ecstatic that I won’t ever have to deal with the ghost thief bullkitten ever again.

+1 to this.

Saw one running last night after patch…he obv didn’t read the patch notes as he was revealed himself quite often.

While I agree that seiging from SM could be…altered, however I think that seiging towers is ok from SMC but possibly not be able to seige (treb) Keeps.

Toxicity and rewards

This is great. The “revealed on condi damage” idea would only benefit my DPS build. I can’t be the only teef (aside from my senpai) who uses the Revealed Training trait? I Assume im the minority of those teefs that would welcome more ways to get the revealed debuff

I just want to note that yesterday I took my DPS teef and downed a condi reaper. Had I played a bit more defensively I may have got the pin (reaper down auto op lol)

There was even a condi engi a few nights ago I was farming on the same daredevil at their SEC

Now im not the best at teef as I am still learning but I imagine that if me being as condi squishy as I am can do it, its not OP.

Justine.6351:

I went roaming tonight against jq and tc with lolhammer rev, lots of power players still.

Im in the same match up and i def see more DPS than condi builds….this is especially apparent when JQ is spawn camping us like a bunch of idjits.

Jones.9756:

Logged in to bump this. Waiting 6 months for Anet to let us down again with another balance pass.

That is wrong…it’s for “Clarity of Purpose” lol

I am going to assume that i (a teef) am one of the only ones that wouldn’t really care of they remove stealth stacking. I don’t stack stealth and actually look for/thrive off of the revealed debuff (I love tripping a stealth trap)…but this is just my opinion.

Dimes.6024:

Dats pretty simple – when someone whines about solid stuff its l2p. Stop crying and making dumb topics

I wouldn’t call this topic dumb, just someone who wanted to understand something. FT does do good burn damage (and juggernaut stab reaaaaally helps in this CC world). There are rotations that will get you what you want for condi. Most stacks I got so far was either 15 or 16 and it melted my opponent.

As a warrior, I soloed SM’s lord with a smokescale and my dolly signet, and when i capped it, no tonly did 100 AC’s/Bali’s/Treb’s/Shield Gens/Cats all auto build themselves around it, but I was able to tame the lord as my own pet and everytime I took a step, my aura buff gave all my allies server wide perma evade and +100k damage unblockable piercing AA’s

Aeolus.3615:

@Menyus.4610, people failed to realize joke trhead i guess, at least is how ic it, has a guardian/Dh i support ghost thief (and i would bet it will become some new expansion stuff they will normalize and force thiefs to play the new stealth gimmick), gw2 is ment for people who never achieved nothing in mmo’s or due being to bad and need a gimmick push gameplay or lack of time to reach it.

So ghost thief is working as intended, and if in the hands of a good players will do much more, same has for all easy gimmicks out there.
Besides ghost thief should be blob meta, i bet it would reduce the figths and lag.
Thiefs only should have issues with dh trapper gimmickers, anything outside meditrapper is dull and cant do much besides tean leech ^^.

Oh… rverythign that stacks burn in a few keyboard bashing is a problem^^, did u ever tryed to “save yourselves” a whole team while being hitted by to aoe burn guards?

Still if Anet reduced the aoe lameness/cleave while on pvp gameplay, game would be much better, that would make some groups stopped being carried but game is about find something to be carried to reach your goal.

Until the GT blob meets a Mallyx rev blob…lotsa dead teefs then

I admit I tried GT and liked it…for about an hour. Just a gimmick build used by those that doesn’t know how to actually play a teef so they use that and think they are real teefs. Mallyx rev, HGH Scrapper, Condi staff necro all eat them. Ill jump on mine every blue moon for about 10-15 mins but in the end…I feel dirty playing it and swap back to DPS and kill things (also helps I feed off of the revealed de-buff…makes me stronger and hurt more on my DPS build where i need to avoid it otherwise)

Lahmia.2193:

apharma.3741:

Choppy.4183:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Warriors (especially adrenal health) needs the druid treatment. Nerf the kitten out of the base heal and make it scale decently with healing power. Also bring the range on arc divider down to at least 300, it’s ridiculous how easy it is for them to land it on random nearby npc’s to proc cleansing ire/adrenal health.

A big nerf to the base heal is the wrong fix. Adjusting the range of Arc Divider, along with reducing how many adrenal stacks a primal burst counts for is a much more precise solution to the problem.

Nerfing the base will kill most warrior builds, bringing it back to where the class was before the Adrenal Health buff (very little sustain). But doing those other two things would make Berserkers have to work harder to maintain the AH healing, nerf the melee threat range of Berserker greatsword, and keep the current non-OP builds viable.

As for double EP, all the blocks, etc., those can be handled through smart play, which includes staying out of melee range unless your build allows you to play in that space with blinds, chills, evades, etc. Cutting the range on AD to 300 (as you suggested) reduces the melee warrior threat range, and makes kiting classes in particular great for wearing them down.

I agree with this and he gets to the heart of the issue with berserker Vs core warrior where adrenal healing is completely fine.

Additionally I’d increase the cool down on headbutt, 20s for a stunbreak, 3s stun, full adrenaline and decent damage (seen it hit for 4k+) is far too good, make it 30s.

Anet’s justification for that is the self stun. Its sort of like necro corruptions; incredibly low cooldowns but they inflict yourself with something negative (though it can be easily got rid of – warrior stun breaks and necro condi transfer).

Self stun that charges your adrenaline fully so to instantly burst while you are stunned? Reduce the adrenaline gain by half so the zerker has to work for that primal burst and keep the healing sig the way it is. (BTW i dont play zerker or warrior)

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

How can you push more damage than in your previous vid? Most damage I gave from backstab is just shy of 13k.

Run full Signet Thief

Thats just being silly you silly goose. Full signet you lose so much for a bit of damage…I was also referring to his build in general…Only way to get it would be to replace bandits defense with power signet (but you lose your block). I personally ditched it for Imparing Daggers (the one that immobs cause…you know…if they cannot run then they is ded plus it adds a bit more damage)

OriOri.8724:

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

Imagine if Sentries (the ones that causes the orange dots regardless if you are stealthed or not) revealed players (cause sentries know they are there…i mean…hello… Orange dots). That would make them more valuable when fighting them (I use em for the dots atm…helps a bit)

If we went with that route I think it would only make sense to have each group of guards at upgraded objectives have a new guard that reveals players as well. This would reveal any roaming classes in stealth, while also presenting a clear target for them to take out if they didn’t want to be revealed.

Whilst I believe this as true…not as many GT will fight near tower/keep guards, hence suggesting at the random sentries. Even if the Radar balloon thingy did it as well that would be sweet (cause…you know…they too showed its regardless of stealth so they know they are there)

Imagine if Sentries (the ones that causes the orange dots regardless if you are stealthed or not) revealed players (cause sentries know they are there…i mean…hello… Orange dots). That would make them more valuable when fighting them (I use em for the dots atm…helps a bit)

How can you push more damage than in your previous vid? Most damage I gave from backstab is just shy of 13k.

Straegen.2938:

The number of people that don’t know I can see their pets… priceless.

As a very bursty daredevil, I love these people for making my job easier…I also make fun of my friends that do this in WvW.

AikijinX.6258:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbFEyC_iYS0

Here’s some demonstration of 1 Hits. Feel free to PM me for information

I still use my variation of this build (dash instead of bound and P/P instead of SB) and Ive one shot lots (usually 2/3 shot things). Very strong and consumables play a huge part in it.

For those who are complaining that Dire/Trailblazer is OP and that Dire would beat Marauder….etc…there is more to a build than stats. Dire isn’t OP and neither is trailblazer. Ive played many DPS and Condi builds (currently have 2 condi and 7 DPS builds for both PvP and WvW) and those builds that use full Marauder will usually out perform TB/Dire builds. Now before you keyboard warriors say anything, I stated "usually* as in more often than not. When I make my DPS builds, I always trait for some condi cleanses and gasp Learn when to pop them so I don’t end up using them early and screwing myself. Are condi’s OP…No…are they strong…Yes but so is Marauders. This is literally “and I cannot stress this enough as I do stress this often” an issue with people not knowing how to Adapt and learning how to fight them properly.

Im no “pro league” champ or anything, however as an avid thoerycrafter who has used/thoeerycrafted some of the “meta” builds before they were meta, I tend to observe when I do my build testing, adapting to whats weak about the build in play and adapt and make changes that keep the core of the build but help make up for the weakness.

The best thing I did when learning to fight something (and I can get ppl to confirm this) is to find a guildie/friend to play a class/build that is strong against yours and spar/practice. Thanks to this, I have had more success fighting epi/plague reapers while on my condi builds. This is literally a “git gud” thread no matter how you look at it, and one where people need to practice/spar vs builds with someone they know.

/rant

Ario.8964:

Azukas.1426:

Ario.8964:

I actually haven’t been hit with much flame myself but I’ve seen others get flamed in matches. I don’t know why people decide to blame thief but I just choose to ignore it. If they rage at me for playing it my response is “You got me nerfed here, enjoy the result”. Or you can just ignore them, practice, and make them eat their words when you play really well.

The problem many (including me) have with a lot of players who play thief are they just aren’t good at it. Ranked Season is not the place to practice your thief skills, and it becomes quite apparent in the middle of a match how bad they are.

Thief is truly a class that requires mastery of it to perform at a mediocre level. You have to be fundamentally sound just to stop yourself from accidently dying. No other class has that barrier of entry to play it in this game.

So when I queue and get a bad thief on my team in ranked season you’re kitten right I’ma harp on him/her. Go play unranked or hot join to learn how to play thief don’t waste the time of the other 4 players on your team if you suck. The worst is when you get 2-3 thieves and the ones that refuse to switch are the bad ones 90% of the time.

I’m sorry but that’s the way it is. Unless you are in top percentage of thief players I suggest you don’t even touch the class in ranked play.

Edit: As for bad thieves, I can see and justify completely the act of directing a bad thief or telling them how to best benefit the team if they’re bad but just saying “you suck go kill yourself” is not helpful to anyone. You can tell them they’re bad but at least give them something to work on specifically so we can better the playerbase.

^This,

If the player-base adopted this (ya know…the “don’t be a kittenwad” attitude), more people would stay/comeback to PvP. The Toxicity would be way less and the overall general skill would improve as would the health of PvP. I know losing frustrates some ppl but if you need to resort to acting like a salty crybaby and kitten and complain and have that snickers moment and whisper to the point that ppl can make you out to look like the tool you are with a simple screenshot of the chat, then maybe…just maybe… PvP isnt for you

Hell…even that kitteny pompous Helseth knew when to stop playing.

Imo I have seen ppl in the jp (groups of 4-5 enemies) and just me from my server (or me and a mate) and they don’t touch us and we don’t touch them. Kind of a golden rule, if you are not in the JP area (aside from the arena spot), no one attacks or hinders the others.

One time a solo person did attack me (when I was with someone) and I just kept going (told my mate to stand down) but they kept harassing us so when we were doing the section where you are climbing up through a well, we turned and knocked them off and they fell to their death (hit a beam near the bottom).

Saw them again, we didn’t do anything but they attacked so we wasted him. Never saw him since.

That was a “one out of 100” event. Ppl are usually pretty helpful and will whisper you if you look like you are lost.

Dovkan.3519:

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

Meh, still prefer this over GT tbh. This I can kill quick with at least 2 of my current wvw builds I run.

There’s no way you’d be able to kill this lol

Fight/spar enough perma evade thieves/DD’s and you learn how important timing and positioning is in fighting and beating builds like these

Xenesis.6389:

Yes please do, it would be funny.

+9000 to this (made me giggle at work a bit)

Months ago I tried GT, it was fun for the first hour, boring after but was fun to ttoll enemy zergs from time to time (and hiding in SM or other keeps and keeping them contested). There was 1 day recently where there were 2 GT’s running and spawn camping us (maybe 3ish weeks ago) and my map chat was not happy. Me and a buddy jumped on ours (mind you we haven’t played them much since we started months ago when we first encountered them and wanted to play them to learn how to beat them) and this is what we did…did our ghost thing, both placed a stealth trap (which counts as a trap for stealth purposes as we were running trapper runes) and waited as one of us played as the bait and got both of them to trigger 1 trap. 1 had a SB but not enough init to really get away so we went after them and downed/stomped them both. The first one must have though our (bait) was teh one that downed them as he didn’t down port when we were stomping him and our bait was DPSing him. When my buddy was stomping the first, I went after the other and caught up and we got him too.

We knew he knew there was a GT on him but knew that he didnt know there was 2 of us. he down ported and my buddy purposely revealed himself so he started autoing my buddy but where he didnt know I was there I got the stomp w/o him stealthing. They stopped spawn camping us (we waited for about 5-10 mins) and we haven’t heard anything in map chat about them for the rest of the time we were online.

TL:DR I was in a GT vs GT fight (well…2 GT vs 2 GT). Was fun times and sorta intense as we’ve never has this type of fight before so it was anyone’s game.

AOE’s and/or lucky/timed condi bursts. I play vanilla engi and I give them more than a run for their money. More often than not they either bail on me or I beat them (mind you they always come back cause they hate losing to someone who is willing to fight them)

Meh, still prefer this over GT tbh. This I can kill quick with at least 2 of my current wvw builds I run.

As someone who plays both condi builds (vanilla engi is my condi main), and DPS builds (Daredevil and Druid), I can see why people complain about condition damage, however despite the gamemode (PvP/WvW for myself), you must expect to come across anything and everything and learn to deal with it (Check the gw2 wiki for something called Condition cleanse and Condition Transfer…your welcome). My daredevil (who is my current WvW main atm) falls to condis fast, however like a real gamer, I learn to adapt, which is what people used to do in GW2 about 3 years ago before a “meta” existed. Now that there is this existence, people seemed to have lost their ability to learn to adapt and demand changes for everything and get angry and expect Anet to hold their hands.

Imo, if you don’t want to be a good gamer and adapt or learn to, and instead complain or demand changes, go find an NES and play Mario.

/honest rant and thanks you for reading

Ive actually been using a special build very recently and I see 11k backstabs and 15k heartseekers if certain conditions are met (ie i have 90% or more HP).

If something has 3k+ armor, thats a bit trickier to kill quickly as by the time I get them to 25% HP, they know how to dodge me and engage…not always successful but they do.

JayAction.9056:

Ruru.1302:

JayAction.9056:

Ruru.1302:

JayAction.9056:

Ruru.1302:

JayAction.9056:

Entenkommando.5208:

Hold on I’m confused…is this a thread about top250 or about silver builds now?

My op is pertaining to the top 250. However, people are free to share what they find is op at whatever level of play they are at.

Are you in the top 250 or have you played in legend since season 4? If so, you should be able to see how I came to my conclusion no explanation…

Meditrapper is far from cheesy. So is power shatter.

I’m ranked higher than you.

I main rev, and my ratings are from pure solo q.

Your in naru’s guild? I can assume that only means you are a worse performing guardian which means you’re probably not that great. Am I wrong?

I didn’t specify medi trapper, and I’m not even going to lie and say I know the specifics of that specific build enough to know what skills are slotted. That wasn’t the point I was trying to make.

You didn’t specify meditrapper, instead you generalized to the entire guardian class. I refuted it by providing a counterexample in meditrapper.

I play thief, dh, druid, rev, mesmer in that order. Obviously I’ll be a worse performing guardian than #1 on the ladder, lol. Also tbh, I didn’t even have to look at your rating. I know you are ranked lower than me because whenever I got queued into you, you were a free win.

Guardian has multiple specs in the class that perform better than the majority of specs available in game. If you can throw together something that doesn’t work that’s find and dandy. That means you’re good at making bad builds?

The only time I’ve ever been a “free win” is when I get team mates outside of plat and I’m solo Qing 1800.

But I mean if the best performing Rev NA is a free win that probably says something eh?

I do agree that guardians have multiple builds that could be considered cheesy (symbol and burn) but to generalize and say that the ENTIRE class is cheesy when they have a build that clearly isn’t is quite wrong.

Of course you’re a free win when you played random kitten like sword axe rev. You also aren’t “the best performing rev NA”. Wang, Ementon, Rev of Boa, Helio, (whoever rank #76 is, I recognize his account but don’t know his IGN). I’ll even throw in Pony Slaystation.

I trash all those people, especially Rev of Boa lmfao. Quit disrespecting me bro.

Pony plays thief not rev.

Ask your friend naru about me.

Whatever I play is meta. Even if it’s not meta

Oh gawd…another Helseth. You are too cute.

Minus the primers and despite the cost of the build upkeep holy kitten …2g per 30mins…primers def do help, this build hurts. I don’t have the full armor set recommended yet but the damage is real.

I used to have issues with chrono’s and daredevils, but as soon as I get the jump on them, they is toast. I miss my P/P for range burst and may look into keeping that instead of staff, but where I never use SB, it was…alien to me to use it during a fight,lol. You def need it tho for the mobility (unless you have a rev pumping out swiftness…which I was grateful for)

Should have a montage vs more heavies

ViktorAlgeheri.9825:

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

Is this vid up yet?

I asked about the video too, and he told me that he gave more clips to his editor.

Thanks for the heads up

Is this vid up yet?

+? on dev response

Buddy and I 2v2’2 2 ghost thieves not too long ago. Probably still on my twitch VoD’s if you wanted a vid.

ukuni.8745:

one time in WvW next to a tower i got pulled into the side corner bit of the tower thats kinda not level and it launched me over the wall, that was a fun day

And you were a mesmer and portal bombed the tower thanks to them right? That would have been epic.

I have been playing p/p engi for a while now, even brought me to legend in pvp. With all the new changed, this is what I am aiming to run (got most pieces, however dire will also work). You can swap FT for another elixir is need be (make sure to swap out Juggernaut if you do) The chosen elite is also preference, however I have most success with this one especially in an out numbered/out skilled fight.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalcTh+uYtWw+Kw6FL3FFYC+gBQ4EGQbm4B1D5AA-T1xCQBVU5HAeAAI7EAQl9HKo6PoUJY90DQKAIWDA-w

This is also a vanilla build as Scrapper doesn’t bring much to the condi table for engi aside from adaptive armor…which wont help as much as the build is kinda tanky. Function gyro is nice for stomping and moving on and sneak gyro is also ok (this will also help with stealthy classes), however I have downed many p/p engis/scrappers with this build (minus FT…I had Elixir U for the quickness condi bomb and projectile hate) so I seem to be swapping between these 2 pending on what I am about to run into (2+ rangers I take Elixir U, no pewpews I go with FT as I can stack an insane amount of burn…my burn rotation kills daredevils in 2 ticks).

Anywho have fun and if you are NA and want to spar, look me up.

Tried using the AED once. Was interesting, however hard to time when to use it effectively (especially in WvW/PvP)

bearshaman.3421:

To people complaining about their build being dead:

Guess what, change happens. Learn to adapt. The profession as a whole is better off than what it once was. Your previous build doesn’t work they way it used to. That’s true for everyone at some point. Balance patches change how things work. That’s the point. They are trying to change things to make the game better for everyone. It’s not about you and your one particular build. If you can’t adapt, then I’m sorry, but you’re gonna have a hard time not only in the game, but life in general. Nothing stays the same.

This was a good patch for this profession. Hopefully the ideas behind some of the changes will continue, and we will get even better, more efficient, and more effective. Time will tell. In the meantime, roll with it, and enjoy the ride.

Took me a while to get over what anet did to my perfect build when they took stun away from gyros. Still a bit salty but i moved on (now running vanilla as I find vanilla is better overall…but I miss my function gyro)

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

5,4,3 is a terrible scoring mechanic and it’s done nothing but create walls that shouldn’t be there. Example Tier 1 and Tier 2. Tarnished Coast has been gaining Glicko rating because of 5,4,3 although TC has been losing players and guilds steadily because of Tier 1 and their inability to produce the coverage of that Tier.

The difference between 5,4,3 and 3,2,1 is the amount of points awarded that gets plugged into the glicko.

Furthermore the scoring gives way to coverage imbalance. Thus, you can’t keep tinkering with the score because it’s directly effecting the health of our communities without fixing balance first.

The imbalance is obvious and it will continue to worsen. The rating every week will continue to float TC and because of this, TC will lose all its players because they are dealing with impossible odds.

This relink, Arena Net gave both JQ and TC 2 guest links, which does nothing but increase the odds of them potentially rising to Tier 1 by giving them a few disorganized pug communities while allowing the servers to get bandwagon to from their guest servers.

In fact JQ and TCs links don’t provide them coverage to deal with Tier 1 and doesn’t change their scenario.

Why is Tier 1 being avoided like the plague? Why does Tier 1 inevitably kill off server coverage and communities?

It’s because a few relink cycles ago, even after countless warnings to Arena Net about the opening up of servers, they choose to open Blackgate. Opening Blackgate created a mass wave of transfers enabling BG to stack beyond the point of the threshold allowed and well beyond the point of any other server. To combat this, servers then tried to buy guilds or stack to the level of BG. There is only one server who was able to pull that off and that’s MAG.

MAG pulled it off like no other. MAG didn’t just buy guilds, but they placed a mentality around themselves which even gained them individual players and a mass of pugs or militia forces from the servers around. Systematically creating something a bit worse than BG itself on a server that was once “high” status.

Now here we have two servers that can only compete with each other, while the third wheel suffers from massive demoralization and player attrition. Because of this the WvW meta for organized forces and pugs alike is to simply avoid Tier. In fact, even BG and MAGs guilds don’t like the atmosphere and some of them even feel as if they’re being forced to leave. Any T2 server that receives the “death roll” of Tier 1 is put on a count down timer before they themselves start to lose pieces of their community. 5, 4, 3 and the stigma of Tier 1 itself makes it so that even if that server losses badly or tanks they could still end up being stuck in Tier 1 for the foreseeable future. In Tier 2, no one wants Tier 1. Its something people avoid at large and because of this, there is no effort to create a rotation or balance or bail the third string out before it dies and losses all its coverage for fighting in a tier it shouldn’t be in.

Scoring at large doesn’t matter for winning. There is no competitive nature to see who is the victor. Winning in Guild Wars 2 is pointless. So why focus on the scoring when all it does it enable imbalance. Why consistently fiddle with the scoring and not be bothered with the balancing of servers when the only reason the servers care about scoring at large is because it decides the fate of their server and their tier.

To fix this WvW you need to start with the problems that have a cascading effect on other dynamics of the game first. You can’t fix scoring if there is hardly a competition. You can’t fix or “play test” scoring if no one is generally caring about it. Fixing and adjusting scoring, when there is little reason to care beyond that of your servers tier makes way for manipulation especially when the objective is not to rise in the Tiers but to avoid a said tier because of the imbalance presented in it.

Is there a TL;DR version of this?

Venom Share Medic Ninja

I fought something veeeeeerry close to this yesterday in PvP and again in WvW. Was on my condi engi in PvP and my staff/LB druid in WvW. The one in PvP played very well, however my condi sustain was too much for their cleanse.

One in WvW was also not bad, however all I had to do was camp staff for 90% of the fight, only swapping to my LB when the reflects/blocks were on CD for a quickness LB burst. They would then pop their block/reflect but i was already on staff by then.

It’s an ok build tbh but if ppl have fun playing it then to each their own.