Guild Wars 2

Lachanche.6859:

What do you think should a glass cannon ele do during a team fight ?

Find some place with a good view on your surroundings and die. Corpse spy on farpoint FTW!

milo.6942:

Kultas Sunstrider.9218:

ahh this leaderboard..

I was rank 10-20 (i don’t remember) 5 months ago, then I stopped playing the game and today I decided to play a couple of games with some friends. I lost both of them, and guess what? I went from rank 131 (decay ownd me) to rank ONE!

how is this even possible? this leaderboard is so kittened up, anet!

i’m rank 1, kittenes, i’m the boss!

what happened was you lost to some really low ranked people, so the system looped back around and put you on top and them at the bottom. working as intended.

You know what I´m gonna do now, right? I will pull down every team I play with to cause the loopback to kick in so I am the top player MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Dude, be constructive. Ive bitten off ALL my fingernails writing this stuff WITHOUT trashing someone.
The unused professions are not buffed because of nothing, but because they are the counter to the meta at hand. Or they were unused before the meta reached the next stage, where those professions became the new counter.

Good Idea! Leave them PvE ers the super adventure box, don´t remove it. Instead add zone after zone when its done. 1. Everyone is CRYING to keep it. 2. It does not force so much “work” on you.
Heck, people would do SAB speed runs for the reckord time if it would stay
(The guildname S A B Speedclearing is taken tho ducks)

That is due to the imbalance occurring due to FALSE dev intervention. Look at my last post, ive edited a kittenload there.
The metas not being fun to play is a matter of skill floor/ceiling.
An other matter.
I never said the sense was good, it just makes sense.
There is a pattern.

Of cause I forgot guards, nothing happened with them.

Buffing mesmers is a bad idea, but the most likely behavior.

Paralysis sigill has to go. Either that or nerf warrior stuns directly, which would pidgeonhold them into using the sigills.

If everyone goes for the strongest build thats ok. As long as there is a not just THAT good one which counters the strongest by mechanic.

I am not talking forcing someone to play some way. I am talking of the development of the meta, which will very likely keep the guardian as a pointholder, this does not forbid that guardians can be viable offensively, just that they will keep their place as good bunker.

The meta is bad for elementalists and mesmers currently. And tell me one single comp which can cleanse only half the condispam around at the moment. Also I am talking about adaption all the time.
Thats my core point. People adapt, the meta rotates. Thats good. Classes get exclosed from certain phases of the meta -> cry on the forums. Counter gets buffed, meta gets nerfed and imbalance occurs.
Some balancing is necessary, but people are also interpreting stages of this rotation as imbalances, which is strongly related to one meta countering the other.
Now, the meta rotates slowly and it looks like a imbalance for a long time. Devs “fix” it and create a real imbalance, forcing people into the next meta.

The current rotation is

Glass
Bunker
Balanced
Condition
Control
Back

If the devs however had not overdone the necro balance we would not have this rotation, but active countering. " Oh, they are running a heavy condition setup" -> “Lets switch to control”
Balanced teams will have ok chances, extreme teams will have good matches against each other, will steamroll the setups they counter and be steamrolled by their counter setup.

The devs now started this rotation. And because of the imbalance occurring when they alter one meta they have to alter the next.

By this they keep the wheel turning. In a balanced game it would not matter if one setup is stronger then others, because countering > power of the setup.
Rock – Paper -Scissors.

The most stable chances are when you build for a mix. Having a counter for every setup, but also elements weak to the same setups.
On the otherhand counter switching chars can also be a valid strategy.

ahuba.6430:

I dont think SAB was made by the living story team. SAB 1 was made by a separate team, and they probably worked on SAB 2 ~~since the end of SAB 1 (guessing). So, maybe comparing SAB with the development of pvp isnt really fair

Well, how long was SAB in development? 4, maybe 6 months? Too lazy to look it up.
What has it got? Nearly daily “balance patches” tons of new skins, six maps with complex, engine breaking stuff in them, an total overhaul of a few maps based on player feedback about a week after release.

How long is PvP in development? A year since launch+ the ages of development pre launch and beta.

What has PvP got?

A terrible spectator mode.

Two odd guys who have no idea what they are doing and overkill balancing stuff to more imbalance and who go on an vacation when their game is in the most dire need for them.

Well now, what does all this tell us?

The meta has an – in its own way healthy – development. The problem is that the patches always fight the previous meta game and do this by nerfing it and buffing the counter. Now, by design the counter would have worked out ok, but with the patches the previous metagame becomes obsolete.
With the control meta this power creep has reached a level, I believe, at which it can no longer be countered. Maybe glasscannons will be able to eradicate the controllers before the control kicks in, but it wont be a hardcounter like in the previous cases.

My prediction:
Warriors healing signet will be toned down
Paralysation sigills will be fixed/removed/toned down
Warrior mace F1 will be toned down.

Mesmer will be buffed.
Elementalist will not be touched. maybe some minor buffs and the (obligatory) nerf each patch.

This will clear the path to the next stage which I expect: The glasscanon meta. Teams will build for heavy damage, especially with mesmers and propably elementalists if sword dagger thief gets toned down.
A guardian will remain in the teams due to the massive CCs incoming and the stability they can provide.
Moa openers will find use, but instead of a guardian warriors will be taken down with it.

Elementalists will, if they become viable choice, will run earth triat VIII (I think this is it) which gives two seconds of stability to the team on earth atunement.

Some weird kitten , me, will attempt countering the control meta with a 4 ele 1 x team, with elementalists running boonduration runes, 30 in arcana and said earth trait for permanent stability in teamfights and massive mightstacking/heal.

What can we/ArenaNet do to improve the current situation? Simple: There was a point in spring, where balance worked out quite well. I called it “Balanced” meta because people were running conditions, control and all sorts of things at that time.

We need to get back to that point and start fixing profession related problems. The way the meta is working now is, that a meta will be “overkillpatched” meaning there are reasonable nerfs which would fix the issues, and reasonable buffs to the counter.

Together it looks like whack a mole balance because the difference becomes too large.

Also professions, like elementalist and mesmer at the moment which belong to one meta, but not to the following ones are left behind. They get this huge nerf but in all the other phases of the meta they just lie there.

I hope this helps understanding whats going on in this game, and i hope even more that some important people read this and think about what I have said.

Glass Meta

Over the BWEs and at launch damage is reduced a lot. I know this especially about thief and elementalist.

Support meta

Bunker elementalists get nerfed. Guardian remains firm in his spot.

“Balanced” meta (1 bunker, not too glassy rest)

The Dhuumfire patch. Dhuumfire gets introduced, some where around this torment is added as well. Necromancers gain the ability to take down targets with conditions just as fast as a glasscanon might be able to.
Ranger pet damage nerf, weakening the previously popular beastmaster bunker builds.
Spirit rangers got buffed (I think)
Warriors are buffed.
I am not sure if it was now, but somewhere close the thiefs Sword dagger set was introduced. From this day on mesmers and elementalists are borderline unviable.

Condition meta.

Necromancers get a change, Dhuumfire is slightly tones down and mark average size is increased. Greater marks moved to master tier.
Warriors are buffed.

PAX (nothing happens) a warrior demonstrates his ability to hardcounter spirit builds. The entire event is an disaster. Spirit rangers everywhere.

(joke)Arenanet introduces the term “petting zoo” as an official term for spirit ranger- (end_joke)

Spirit rangers get changed. Cooldowns reduced and cooldown begins at spirit death.
This sounds like a nerf, but for me it seems more like a buff. Spirit rangers could presummon their spirits and instantly resummon them before this patch, but if both “waves” were killed there was a 60 second downtime.
Now the presummoning is no longer possible due to the inevadeable cooldown but in longer fights the ranger only has a very low downtime on spirits.

Control meta The continuous buffs on the warrior pile up and in combination with the demonstration of this professions power at pax it becomes the new meta profession.

What we know of the coming patch is, that conditions will be turned down and some warrior and elementalist staff skills will be buffed.

After tons of ranting, crying, cursing and even more of other stuff I will not utter here, i discovered that the meta development makes 100% sense.

In Betas everyone and their dogs ran glasscanon builds, damage was insanely high and the game was extremely fast. This was because of the game being new, in fact beta, and people liking to see huge numbers when first entering a game.

After release we had the bunker meta. Every team ran 1-2 bunkers and a more or less balanced mix of condition and power based damage.

Then, a long while after, came the condition meta. People discovered a necromancer was able to easily disassemble the, at this stage, very boon reliant bunkers.

Now the control meta is coming up, featuring super condition resistant CC builds. This is an result to the condition meta, which didnt feature a plenty of stunbreakers because the majority of skills was reserved for cleanses and more conditions.

Now, lets look at this in relation to patches, I will just reduce the previously mentioned metagames to short terms and add the (in my opinion relevant) patches in between.

Warriors are so ridiculously broken… Greatest problem is that if you attack anything that isn’t a warrior and blast it down a significant bit, it needs to pop a heal and play defensively. Eles didn´t need it when they were still useful, but they needed to go water atunement, loosing a large chunk of damage. If you blast a warrior he will just blast back, and his dmg is higher then yours anyway. While blasting his signet regenerates huge chunks of his health.
Condition warriors are just more lame…. ATM i have a hard time not insulting and trashing every warrior I see, because warrior = ez mode op noobkitten is starting to become a valid equation in my head.

I guess its an remain from when clonegeneration would break target.

Blast finishers. Also mashing the enemy necros face while being invulnerable helps the team a lot.
But I see your point. But dagger offhand is either too squishy and has no support or is unable to melt someone.
Only reasonable support on ele comes from staff (rofl, REASONABLE)

Scepter/Focus 0 30 10/20 0 30/20 Zerker ele. WAY better than this bunky stuff. Ofc you can run some crappy bunker cantripp stuff, but you wont kill anything with a brain.

I just love mashing face in nearly every 1o1/teamfight. Ofc this only works as long as the enemy necro/thief doesn´t see you… But a cantrip bunker dies nearly as fast, and has no chance of killing someone else. So….

The “become a tornado” thing is INSANELY awesome.
But why the heck can people hit and huge rotating dustcloud with swords and apply bleeds/poison it. Burn might make SOME sense, but the rest?

I think where we should learn from MOBAS is the idea of having to split the team to progress on multiple objectives. At the moment we have our three nodes, and no progression at all, meaning that if i wouldnt see the scores i would never be able to tell if its early, mid or endgame.
The idea of having all the points at the same distance to both team bases sounds good already. This forces more splitting, even if progression still is minimal.
Id like something to happen to spice things up as the game goes on. Increase of the respawn timers depending on how long you have lived or so would help with that.

This is why the game is so confusing/hard to watch for some in my opinion. You cant actually tell where the game is standing. There are no shifts of circumstances which could force a change of strategy. The only thing id like to take from mobas as of the state of this discussion is the idea of multiple objectives per lane. Both teams start out equal and have to push forth. When they get a objective captured/destroyed/whatever the next becomes unlocked or extremely more easy to do.

This would reduce bunking a lot, because you need the manpower to push further and not just get this one objective and hold till the end of all days.

Important would be that we get some kind of back and forth feeling to the map. So that you can “Push” into a direction, making constant progress. The problem with current capturepoint stuff is that we have three nodes which only have a 1 and a 0 state. (not counting contested/neutral tho, but you get the point).
Capturing a point has no long term consequences. It can be turned around in no time at all.
If you have a triple cap all you can do is wait for the timer to count the win.

Wouldn´t it be more fun if you could make this progress?
So that when you have one spot it “unlocks” the next one and you can push on?
This way you could – as a spectator – see how the match is going and an advantage will become more meaningful.

So old, and still so true.

But this game definitely needs a gamemode which offers progression. Node defense mode is just boring to watch.

Fun fact: Tornado is the only elite which looks elite (supply-drop may count aswell) but is at the same time the most useless elite in the game. Id go as far as to double the damage, make it an invul and replace the push with a pull or give an option do decide if you want to launch em of a point or keep em in your tornado radius.
Invul tornado wouldn´t even be op, as of people can easily avoid it.

This thread is toxic.

But what shall we do?
Experience shows that reasonable suggestions, logical arguments and good manners are inefficient.

People here are just gettin frustrated of banging their heads against a wall.
Now they want to tear it down.
I tried to stay respectful for quite a while, but now I don´t see a reason to.

Respect is inefficient → change strategy and see if it helps. Rinse and repeat until the correct method is found.

So many mistakes of the balancing team have been predicted and warned from by the community. Still they were implemented.

Ignorance has to be punished, its like with bullies in schools. After talking sense to them for a few years you notice you CAN NOT reason with them.
But how do you punish the ignorance of someone who is much larger, muscular and merciless then you?

Toxic threads are no solution, but I see why people do this.
They see no other way. They hope they can wake up the developers by kicking them over and over again.

How about a triple lane map with towers you have to destroy and a modified leveling system. At the end is some sort of HP overlord you have to kill with your team, resurrection timer increases as you level up.
We can have a jungle with buffs to grab and to gain experience and minions spawning and walking down every lane.

Just a weird idea and it needs loads of smalltuning to work with GW2 (mainly the leveling system) and how the cash thing works is another matter, but what GW2 conquest lacks and why MOBAs like Smite, LoL and DOTA are so successful is progression.
Foefire does it in a way, but not enough. GW2 conquest is just capping and holding. Rinse and repeat. Having such a MOBA layout would mean having phases of combat, people getting fed and active counterbuilding to certain specs.
It IS kinda copy cat, but it is fun so why not assimilate fun? Also it would stop this bunkering kitten, and condition meta would never be so mighty because you need to get quick kills. Conditions would work, but not dominate so ridiculously.

I know this isn´t a real concept and it needs tons of thinking-work to become reality, but gamedesigntechnically this should not be such a huge thing to do.

The progression would add so much depth to the gameplay,
“Oh, that thief is going full glasscannon instagibb, I might just put some toughness into my spec”

“Oh! This dude is going for ridiculous toughness, I need conditions to bypass that.”

“Oh! That´s some hardcore condition damage this necro is building, rather get some condition cleanse/immunity”

The list goes on.

Wow, everyone crying for focus buffs… And I can mash face with the current state of the focus 1o1 and even up to 1v3…
I will be so op if the devs come by and read this… oh wait.

Also don´t DARE change gale in any negative way, like that 1.5 second cast. We don´t need another dragonstooth!

If u guys don’t believe ele focus is a (in comparison) viable offhand choice WS me if you are on an EU server and we can beat each other up!

Nah, it would take anet another year of doing nothing else to get the colors working… And spectating would become even worse when you have this ridiculous multicolored pixxelclusterkitten. Only way to do this would be to have fixed places for every boon and condition, for example protection is in slot 3 and will apear there, even if slots 1 and two are unused.

If I were a dev I would have cancelled this vacation after seeing what an huge desaster pax was and how kitten ed everyone is.

On the one hand I think the rude tone these forums have gotten is bad, on the other hand: What are we supposed to do when we get slapped in the face day after day.

“Hey! We know how you feel, we know our game is unfun and were working on it! BTW were having an vacation and we like to watch movies.”

Throw your DVD player out of this window NOW and cancel that vacation. This is as if the captain of the titanic crashes his ship and goes on a niece vacation on some sunny island.
Then a month later he comes back to save his ship, guess what he finds?

Fix the largest issues, like S/D thief, OPmancer, Pettingzoo (ok, here you actually did something right for the 1st time since release) and stunlocking uber regen warriors who hide behind pillars in a 1o1 to let their regen save their butts.

Passion is cool, but fake passion isn´t. And either you just fake passion so people hang around a month or so longer, or you are so drastically underfunded that you should start some kickstarter project like “Save our sinking PvP”

[/endrant]

Sorry, but as an ex-passionate elementalist (and I mean truly passionate, like spending hundreds of hours trying to make a profession work which has been kicked down the stairs and abandoned by its creators) I´m rather stuffed up with how things are handled here…

GvG how you define it is not spectateable. Core issue is that commentators can’t comment pvp due to effect clusterkitten.

Make a difference between flame shield and flame aura. Fixed it!

Surprised no one has posted this yet. Im likely going to be banned due to making this public again. But I have to.
Its not really legal and the method used is outdated. For it to work nowadays you need to replace the “2” with a “3”.

Make gale AoE → One dude dodges, rest gets laid → phoenix → yay, I busted two people, number 3 who was my target is gone, but with 10%20%20%+10% damage I just successfully gibbed two people.
Also, for some odd reason noone has EVER dodged my gale. Not even random dodges. Even S/D thiefs. Its like they stop dodging for me to land it.
Gale is basically undisplayed (most of the animation is post knockdown, and its transparent while lines) so it definitely needs a high CD. 10 sec redux is too much. Anet has proven what happens when CDs get reduces too much.

Flame shield is really a joke… gimme unremoveable retaliation but really reflecting some damage (make it dps based on inc damage and not with some odd fixed value).
Nice suggestion there.
by the guy with the 10% thingy, tho 10% might be too much. In fact… Imagine a bunker ele with fixed 10% damage reflection… lol.

Focus is good as is. Its my favourite weapon, except for its fire attunement and the high gale CD.

Replace fire skills and – this might be crazy -

Make gale a small aoe, a little larger then comet. Or make it strike in a line. The only way a gust of wind can snipeKD someone in a teamfight is if it comes from above, which seems rather unnatural. Keep the CD but make the thing AoE (im looking at you grounded+ gale → phoenix!).
Fire barrier needs either some more damage or an larger aoe. Like double or triple the width, so it isn´t such a pain to combo into it with blasts.
Aura is just crappy.

Reducing CDs on earth is insane. The earth 4 CD is in my opinion actually too low and earth 5 already wins me most of my duels.

My 2 cents.

@Lycus

Scepter Focus. Good burst, good sustain with fresh air. You can be bursty, have good sustain and sustained damage. But with the equal skillevel thing you might be right. Tho I do win most 1o1s with my ele.
And if you consider helseth skilled, I have beaten him 1o1 on my ele once or twice while he was on his mesmer

Elementalist is really hard to play atm, but the profession is ok. only the meta is totally anti-ele atm.
When the meta shifts elementalists will be in a good place again I believe.

Nevertheless playing elementalist is rather unrewarding at the moment. It feels like (I don´t claim this to be a fact) when playing elementalist you have to massively outplay your opponent and bring a lot more skill to the fight.
It took me a while to get the trick, but now I am able to beat most people 1o1 with at least a 50% chance. It is possible, however it feels like I have to be much better then my enemies to have an even battle.

At the moment I am running Scepter/Focus with 0 30 10 0 30, fresh air. Zerker amulet and scholar runes. It takes time getting used to focus, but its the most viable option we have. We get good defense while only sacrificing a little damage. You can burst from range and snare people. Also you have a reflection and can give your entire team immunity to projectile attacks.
Focus feels very slow in the beginning, but you will learn to use the delays for more powerful end well timed bursts.

Dude, you know the eles left in EU are going more and more for zerker scepter focus, which works really amazingly well, but requires kittenloads of timing and skill?

S/F is in my opinion the most useful weapon set in the game for ele. Tho its funny that without a change to focus it seems viable. More like everything else got nerfed down to focus level…

S/D ele is old, S/F ele will pwn u all!!! Zerker amu, 0 30 10 0 30, scholar runes.
More survivability then mogwows valk and insane damage at range without teleporting into condispam mess!!!

Rangers are the most broken op thing in the tPvP universe, no skill/risk, high reward.
This is PvP forums, and the only thing likely to be nerfed bout rangers is spirits, wich suck in PvE anyway so calm down.

Thanks, Jon for the huge input you have given into this forum (even if only 30% of it have not been purged… but discussing this further will get me banned or infracted…)

It´s nice to get some hope. But the talk of game modes is a little late. What we need now is you to double, triple or more your balance staff. Bad decisions have been made which could have been prevented if more, watchful eyes would have checked the concepts.
Fact is that a two man team can not be expected to produce a healthy metagame.
It´s just too complex and multidimensional.

So please get – at least for a few months – more people to work on this, or every game mode added will fail.
The game in its current state is borderline unplayable and i don´t know a single person truly happy with it.

PS: Don´t listen to the GvG spammers. It´s not the wish of the real tPvP community but the wish of some overpopulated guilds which discovered WvW is not large enough for them. So they want to take over the mists.

DON´T LET THIS HAPPEN!!!

Make pvp f2p. Not worth more.
Sarcasm
You can still sell professions and utilities in the cash hop.s

Xeph should write a book. I like his language.

Id guess they are turning down server power for pvp.

NO and that xeph thing there is awesome

nearlight.3064:

Honestly D/D ele would be very bad against S/D thief due to the predictable attacks and boon dependency. A Scepter/Dagger ele in an air burst set up would be a better matchup against in S/D thieves and in Tpvp in general becuase lightning strikes are instant and can be timed in between evades.

I mentioned I´m playing S/D ele

Thanks for the constructive information and the lack of flame keep it going, many ppl out there are in dire need of some help.

Even tho it seems that indeed S/D thief is not beatable by an burst elementalist at equal skill.

Evilek, im not talking WvW. If you run soldier ele in tPvP you are useless. And telling me to run condi dmg (for me=become a noob (sorry, but I´m kitten ed of the current meta)) is an insult.

Then tell me, what apart from the obviously more op spirrit ranger and maybe a higher skill level stunwarrior can beat S/D?
I´m running scepter dagger.
Still, i cant burst something that has infinite evades. I have to wait for him to go offensive. But until then I´m dead.
Also I don´t only run ele, with mesmer its just as impossible.
full three duelist lineup cant hit more then like 3 hits (not volleys. HITS) And you cant shatter him if he has more then three brain cells.

Hello, I´m running a glasscannon elementalist in tPvP and on 1o1 servers from time to time. Now, when ever I loose to a evade thief he insults me and says I´m a noob for not beating him and that I have to time my attacks.

Now, how do you time your attacks against someone who can be 15 seconds “invulnerable” while dealing massive damage with a standard glass elementalist, only having two dodges and 1-2 huge burst combos with obvious animations?

Don´t tell me this game is not balanced around 1o1, I know this but when people call me noob for loosing such a 1o1 i get kind of curious. Also such a thief can basically charge thru teamfights without taking a scratch and still dishing out massive damage.

My current opinion of sword dagger on thief is:
1. Its terribly broken.
2. Having evade, unblockable boonsteal+highest damage ability of the weaponset on ONE skill with such low ish cost seems broken
3. The access to vigour and the abillity to infinitely teleport out of trouble is just broken.

This being said: How do I kill a sword dagger thief face to face. I´m not asking for a 100% win strategy, just for a way to have a 50% chance of winning at equal skill level.

Anet, just apologize to Helseth and make him lead of the balancing department.

This guy makes more sense then all the balance happened to this game since launch.

Tupi, our profession design is not contraditory. Its “jack of all trades”. You have healing, some defense, more or less single target damage and aoe damage in every possible build.
Dagger mainhand and Staff don´t have that much single target, but thats not my point right here.
Low health pool is totally ok at the moment, atleast PvP wise. There we only need a nerf to the condition meta and ele will be top of the foodchain. In PvE the only thing is you have to be a little skilled to be efficient with ele, and even then warriors are just better. But every profession has that problem in PvE at the moment. Ither buff the warrior or be the warrior. Or go home. Warrior has way too much damage for PvE at the moment.

Tupi, you can go full arcane and still instagib stuff with ele
However, your point is valid^^
Except ofc if your talking pve. From your description it sounds like that. In Dungeons noone wants eles. Except if they know you can do your Firegreatsword burst thing.

Ele has a place. If you are twice as good as the enemy team and have ridiculous dodge luck. AND if you either macro or (whats my case) can burn thru your burst combo so fast people insult and report you for macroing.
Ele just cant make any mistakes in this meta. Everyone else can. So the perfect ele might have a place. But a human one wont. At even skilllevel you are toast. If your far superior have a nice meal.

Gosh when I remember the times everyone said burst ele isn’t viable and I instagibbed a top mesmer by surprise because he didn´t expect me to…
Now it hasn’t been improved but is the best thing you can do.
What does this tell you?

Can´t talk wvw, but my elementalist (0 30 10 0 30) with zerker amulet, scholar runes and sigill of air on scepter can 1o1 very well, and it even gets easier on less squishy specs.
Just a few necromancers or warriors CAN cause problems. But mostly I will win.