Guild Wars 2

As the top tier meta has evolved since the hotfix, Tempests are still being phased out, in favor of Chronomancers. Double, Triple Chronomancers will trend on NA.

Tempests are considerably easier to focus in coordinated environments, so much so that the overloads are easily negated and it goes down faster than anything in the current meta.

Yes.

If you buy a fresh HoT account, if you’re good, you can help your Ruby/Diamond friends hit legend much faster.

Personally, I don’t know many who would do this for others, most people who can’t get Q pops alone will party with real Amber/Emerald players and try to carry.

The problem is that leagues are still punishing players for raising their rating instead of that being the point, or measure of success. Leagues reward players for being MMR averse, and grind the most wins vs. whoever. Pips are pips, there’s no reward for getting good and shooting for the top.

Looks like a bug due to overtime

Edarkness.7543:

choovanski.5462:

post the build so we can guve some feedback

i would run cele or power, but I’ve not seen your build.

I run Nightmare and wanderers with this.

I would try the scapper build but I dont understand hammer. But I assume id have a better chance to win with it eh?

I switched back to Rabid & Balthazar from that build. But yeah to kill things you need to be able to use Incendiary Ammunition very effectively – patiently using it when you know they’re absolutely out of removal and don’t whiff charges when applying.

And heck, if you just use the same build and queue into Diamond Skin Tempests, Necros, etc, you kind of guarantee your build choice will suck. Condi builds are situational

Get stealth to counter the inevitable focus fire

You say you went up against a ‘high tier’ Amber player, that player that was severely undervalued by the game.

Undervalued players are undetectable by the matchmaking system. Commonly it’s a new league player, or less commonly an experienced player on a noob smurf account.

Bottom line is, the matchmaking system can’t accurately rate a ‘high tier amber’ player high enough. You lost two pips because the game thinks you lost to scrubs.

ArenaNet is apparently confident in the matchmaking’s ability to produce balanced games without any restrictions on who can queue with who.

/rant on

Maybe it’s time that a group is prevented from queuing if there is more than a 2 division gap between the most and least progressed? It would hurt the accessibility of the game, but might be for the best.

Personally, I absolutely hate the pip system.

I would rather your placement in the league be based solely on your MMR, or a measure closely correlated with MMR. Being highly rated by the game should be the goal. The goal should not be to farm noobs using noobs, as fast as possible for arbitrary as feck ‘pips’.

/rant off.

Hammer is not a great weapon if people aren’t committed to sticking their neck out. It’s very mediocre against retreating/defensive enemies.

It is great in PVP for point pressure, and beating down whatever is on point. It’s great for counter pressuring for an ally being charged by melee attackers.

If there’s no objective that your targets need to commit to (meleeing you, ally, holding a point) hammer can be pretty inferior to rifle.

However, against enemies totally unsusceptible to overcharged shot (most of the pvp meta) that’s an even bigger thing against rifle than the hammer’s drawback of having no ability to do good pressure while pursuing. If you run grenades I would suggest rifle for sure

Acid Bomb is probably about 30% of my overall damage… there’s no way dropping E-Gun is a sustainable choice.

There are good players who often play with other good players – also not yet in the divisions they should be in. It is going to take some time before they all do get to diamond/legend.

Those that are intent on screaming abuse & trash talking players will have to eventually come to terms with the nature of a grindy league that does not shoot you up in divisions fast enough when you beat other established league players.

Strap in, cause when season 2 starts, and everyone’s divisions are reset, it’ll be the same bloody path that strong players starting from amber division will carve, again.

Trebuchet, map hazards. Layered base defense, Stronghold. ‘Capture objectives’, temple buffs/Mist Essence.

Try stability to prevent stun locks.

How are you missing this stuff and only seeing ‘territories’

Your allies are very likely just bad/distracted, not trying. When you queue as a group the game rates you as much, much stronger, and unless you run a good class comp and communicate, then you’re fighting harder enemies without really getting the benefit of a team.

apharma.3741:

Chaith.8256:

• Well of Precognition becoming Distortion instead of Blur. This puts it in the invulnerability category, but reducing some counterplay such as warding effects, shocking auras.
• Temporal Enchanter (resistance and super speed) changed to only affect nearby allies.
• Mender’s Purity – 10 second ICD on Power Cleanse, like other ‘on heal’ minors.

In addition I find Countless’ suggestion on Chaotic Dampening I think is very reasonable.

• Well of precog change would be nice, would help bring some form of counter play to the well as others mentioned.
• Temporal enchanter gives super speed and resistance around the glamour, as far as I can tell it only has relevance with time warp in the bunker mesmer as few to any use the utility null field or feedback. I don’t feel this change is needed.
• Mender’s purity is the only thing keeping mantra of recovery relevant, the bunker Mesmer doesn’t use it and I hardly think healing with CS to trigger this is that game breaking.

Chaotic dampening going down to 2.5s would make it worse than elemental shielding an adept trait for ele. Shaving it down to 4s might be ok but I’d rather see runes of durability losing its boon duration as it is undoubtedly the strongest rune in the game.

I’d like to see the counters of boon corruption, unblockable CC/damage and condi overload become a bit more viable in the face of viper revenant.

Edit: EU bunker Mesmer doesn’t seem to run mantra of recovery.

Time warp, medic’s feedback, this combo gives significant resistance to everyone, including the Mesmer, when reviving.

Mantra heal is great for the sentinel meat shield build, it really negates conditions extremely well when the heal is backed up with quickness and alacrity, in order to load up on condition removal.

Personal survival is what needs to be reevaluated, in my opinion.

Yep, durability needs nerf/fix

You are, yeah. You get stage #3 wings at Diamond, and stage #4 and #5 wings at Legend.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Lol its horrible when it doesnt suit you? The whole celestial amulet thing is fine according to you people

Horrid when it doesn’t permit 5 of the 9 professions in Pro League.

SteepledHat.1345:

Chaith.8256:

Velimere.7685:

I’m still mad at you for stealing Morrigan from me in Dragon Age: Origins, but how would you propose to achieve such results? I agree with you, but I can’t see how it’d be done.

Come again? Haha.

But uh, yeah, I have a few personal survivability / bunkering reductions to target Bunker Chronomancers only.

• Well of Precognition becoming Distortion instead of Blur. This puts it in the invulnerability category, but reducing some counterplay such as warding effects, shocking auras.
• Temporal Enchanter (resistance and super speed) changed to only affect nearby allies.
• Mender’s Purity – 10 second ICD on Power Cleanse, like other ‘on heal’ minors.

In addition I find Countless’ suggestion on Chaotic Dampening I think is very reasonable.

Reducing the Bunker Mesmer’s personal 1vX survival back down to Earth while keeping their amazing utility and support throughout all game modes would be the best balance measure decision.

You really think it’d still see use after that. >.> I don’t care who you play for, the precog change alone would put it on the back burner. Perhaps that’s how your team would like it?

The Meta EU Wellmancer would be absolutely untouched by my suggestions, besides the capture point contribution removed on Precog. Good players could work around that too, by not covering the entire point with it in teamwork situations. This has been suggested a million times, bro.

Meanwhile, a 3 second precog invuln would not even fully decap a point even if the Mesmer was holding it 1v3, it’d still have a tick or two left.

What my changes would do is quite hurt the Sentinels Amulet, Mantra Heal, resistance stacking, meat shield variation.

There are more balance changes that need to go in as well (diabolic Inferno fix), amongst others. This is just a thread about Mesmers.

Also, predictable argument about having a self interest in Mesmers getting nerfed. One that assumes we don’t have the ability or plans to use them ourselves. You’re wrong on both counts. We’ll use them as well!

Velimere.7685:

I’m still mad at you for stealing Morrigan from me in Dragon Age: Origins, but how would you propose to achieve such results? I agree with you, but I can’t see how it’d be done.

Come again? Haha.

But uh, yeah, I have a few personal survivability / bunkering reductions to target Bunker Chronomancers only.

• Well of Precognition becoming Distortion instead of Blur. This puts it in the invulnerability category, but reducing some counterplay such as warding effects, shocking auras.
• Temporal Enchanter (resistance and super speed) changed to only affect nearby allies.
• Mender’s Purity – 10 second ICD on Power Cleanse, like other ‘on heal’ minors.

In addition I find Countless’ suggestion on Chaotic Dampening I think is very reasonable.

Reducing the Bunker Mesmer’s personal 1vX survival back down to Earth while keeping their amazing utility and support throughout all game modes would be the best balance measure decision.

The utility on Chronomancer is a good thing, the thing that’s needing to go is how the highest utility class ever, gets the highest time to kill 1vX of anything, without any kiting involved.

The nerfs in my perfect world still allow Mesmer to support as insane as it does, but not be the most immovable object. Support over hardcore meat shield

When diamonds queue solo, or together, there are no pops.

When diamonds queue with new to PvP friends, they get the second best team queuing. Every time. There is no way to get weak teams if you have any diamonds in party.

So many in this thread don’t realize this.

If you’re that much better than everyone else, enough to win against any team, even with an inexperienced player, there’s nobody getting un-deserved wins from doing this.

Try inviting amber players from the mists into your party, and see how it goes for you. . Maybe that’ll clear up any doubt that it will allow you to farm worse players easier .

If players are queuing with inexperienced friends, try queuing up with your full party and farming them, if you think you can.

While I appreciate the direct call out, could you stop linking your dead end, no-point topics to me, forever? Clearly it takes a mind like yours to see the irony you promised here.

Me removing Minstrel Amulet is satire that clearly flew over the heads of some.

It’s ironic because I was making fun of those who sincerely believe that pro teams have any input on this absolute horrid display of balance.

Photinous.4628:

Chaithh, maybe you can explain how you used the stealth gyro bug on stronghold minions to win games? Is this not an exploit? Clearly Grouch and Anet knew about this and yet nobody was punished. All of these ESL players defending their shameful actions is pitiful.

The heck? Why do you think it’s ok to call me out directly

Stealthing minions is a common strat. Like many players, I didn’t understand what was happening until it was disabled an hour later. It was a graphical bug only visible to the enemy team. When duo queuing, I heard the five man premade we faced squawking at me in map chat, but assumed they were morons because there was no visible glitch to me, and there was Sneak Gyro use on their side too. When I used detection pulse, it seemed to reveal all their stealthed minions.

Join the witch hunt if you like, I have zero need for shame, as I never maliciously played on it. Stronghold was killswitched almost immediately before the majority of players happened across it like I did.

Gotta love it. Everyone has their print screen & rumor spread button at the ready, when getting matched up against an ESL player.

nearlight.3064:

Dirame.8521:

I usually play what I think counters the meta and on very few instances does that include Engies.
In this meta, the only thing I see influencing a match apart from the current famous Engie build is a decaper engie with the ability to throw out unblockable CC.
There’s going to be a severe reduction in Necros the higher you go as well so you don’t have to worry about crazy condi pressure that much ‘cos even though Revs are crazy condi applicants, they still don’t apply as much as Necros in a single burst. So with the right timing, you could recap a bunker mesmer or Revenant whilst keeping yourself alive.

so…. unblockable as in blast gyro?

It’s only the tag that’s unblockable, the blast gyro itself is incredibly avoidable, blocks too.

Thanks for the kind words, guys. Certainly, Toker’s Thief and Nos’s Necro have suddenly overnight become the manliest forces of good in this meta.

We are a team who plays the strongest comps first, and basing our style around mechanical skill & snowballing second. Since bunker Mesmers were introduced, advantages from mechanical skill are greatly reduced, and carrying momentum is next to impossible.

So, like everyone else, we’ll be practicing the bunker comp, with the intent to be extremely proficient on that.

We are very unhappy about this, as expected, as some of us are quite attached to our classes and roles. Guardian, Warrior, Ranger, Thief, Necro, the list grows, the list of classes that are now handicap material in the wake of the developing competitive meta. The next 2 months are looking extremely dark for both the viewers and players.

Every pip farm team, every ESL team, all will slowly change their comps toward using double Bunker Chrono / Double Revenant, with small personalizations of course.

When I return to Rank Q after its matchmaking & queue time issues naturally balance themselves out, I’ll be able to hit Diamond – this is the division where you get the third tier of Wings.

I’ll assume that to obtain the fourth tier of wings, it should be maybe, legendary division, level 2?

For people who aren’t able to reach this level, my mental math expects reaching Sapphire or Ruby in both seasons should earn you the precursor.

StickerHappy.8052:

Here is the problem

Even in Emerald grinding is very hard, you HAVE to win 5 straight matches to ensure a safe tier spot. As a solo q player, How often will that happen?

Or winning 2-3 and losing 1-2 a few times. 5 Wins in a row is not the only way to progress, that’s kind of silly to expect..

Personal score doesn’t matter, to get pips from a loss you have to put actual points on the board.

Still only a small consolation prize for being outmatched.

This button is amazing, thanks for letting us regain control of our accounts for the previous <30 second lockout.

basz.6129:

Jump shot has invulnerable frames in the air.

It absolutely doesn’t have invulnerability.

Ron Cordova.9824:

Chaith, dunno if you’re still following this or brainstorming further, but I support anything to make (function) gyros feel less unsatisfying.

When I saw the trailer I was so excited and assumed that it would be something similar to what you’ve described here (I actually thought the “little orbiting robots” in the trailer would basically be engineer signets which granted a passive buff but could be activated to send the bot out to do something bigger— aka a signet).

I still think that’s exactly what the gyros should do, if you have them equipped, they zip around you, but I had hoped (again the dreams from watching the trailer) they’d be more party oriented e.g. heal gyro would be warrior signet’s passive with a much lower healing amount but pulsed out to nearby allies— basically in the style of engineer, taking mechanics (in this case signets) from a variety of different classes and putting a little engineer spin on them). Something similar to the snooze “+180 power” passive signets could be “+40 power to allies” with straight damage on the active, condi removal could be “remove one condi every x seconds from 1 ally nearby who has the most condis (possibly engi but not prioritized; keeps that RNG element anet seems to want engi to have)” with purge gyro (but not in AI form) on the active.

Yes, I think any of the above would be suitable mechanic switch-ups to the current Scrapper minor traits (Function Gyro, Decisive Renown, and Impact Savant).

Function Gyro is very strong in certain situations in GW2, there’s just not something for everybody.

official.7362:

i got an idea how about u respond to post that actually kittening matter to fixing ur k I T T E N game

What’s wrong with Evan theorycrafting boss kill mechanics. We’re all nerds here.

I think Dishonor grace period should be increased to 2.5 minutes. This should catch all the slow loaders and most modem/router resets. Being lenient to all those with good manners and best intentions to play should be a big priority. Need to extend the olive branch on this issue, so the game remains accessible.

One person unjustly punished creates a lot more bad will than 10 rage quitters not getting penalized.

I thought the most fair way to decide who gets credit if condition tick downs the beast would be to simply credit the person who had the biggest damage rolling for that fatal condition. So the player who can stack the highest, or have less stacks but superior condition damage numbers.

Edit for clarity:

The person who gets the neutral boss kill has the highest condition damage ticks for the last tick of whatever condition kills the beast. So if the Boss dies to burning, the game would credit the person who did the biggest slice of that last burning tick.

Alekt.5803:

Chaith.8256:

Revenant, Guardian, Ranger, Engineer, Elementalist, Mesmer, Necromancer – these professions are all going to be extremely powerful in the hands of a powerful player.

What’s not awesome is that Arenanet has gone against their balance philosophy of making core specs and elite specs on the same power level. The Elite specs, with the exception of Berserker, are all varying degrees of power ups.

I believe that this Elite Spec vs Regular Spec unbalance was probably caused by some nerfs on the Core specs between June 23 and October. For instance, Burning Fire (Might on cantrip) was probably over-nerfed and the trait now falls short in power. But this trait is surely good compared to the Adept Fire Traits (Looking at Conjurer… Why is it not combined with One with Fire…).

In my opinion, Anet should take the time to look through some of the least used Core Traits. I give Elementalist examples because I know them very well:

-Inscription only gives one stack of might on glyph use on fire…
-Conjurer needs to be combined with One with Fire and a new fire trait must be made.
-Serrated Stones is a joke.
And more.

Some elite specialization simply cannot be nerfed, it’s just some of the traits on the core that needs a breath of fresh air.

Good example, but lots of core specs weren’t nerfed just before the expansion released.

And if everyone uses Earth Magic for example, boosting or re-evaluating that core spec won’t even reduce the gap between non-elite specs, and players using the elite specs.

I’ll be interested to see how ArenaNet handles this.. no obvious solutions come to mind other than nerfbatting most of the elite specs.

Pre-Expansion we had Ranger which was separate from the top end PvP circles, and Necromancer pre-HoT is similar to the state of Thief now – only the best mechanical players, backed up by a strong team could hang with the other top picks.

Post-Expansion, we have a totally inadequate Warrior, and Thief on the verge of being worth.

So in terms of cross profession balance, things didn’t change a whole lot for the worse, just got shuffled around.

Revenant, Guardian, Ranger, Engineer, Elementalist, Mesmer, Necromancer – these professions are all going to be extremely powerful in the hands of a powerful player.

What’s not awesome is that Arenanet has gone against their balance philosophy of making core specs and elite specs on the same power level. The Elite specs, with the exception of Berserker, are all varying degrees of power ups.

I’d hope that playing Warrior and Thief soon won’t feel like a handicap for the average (or pro) player.

It’s totally possible to take PvP seriously. It’s ok to mourn for your Warrior, or your viability if you haven’t purchased HoT.

The competitive teams of 5 players will soon have lots to work towards with the impending league system.

Can we get a solo queue for everybody who’s not currently in 5-man player mode?

If Arenanet is so against solo queue, can we please get the proper tools for solo queue teams to fight back against organized enemy team comps and VOIP?

I’m talking about:

• Build templates, and a team building (comp discussion) phase.
• In-Game Voice Guided Commands – such as SMITE’s god tier Voice Guided System: http://smite.gamepedia.com/Voice_Guided_System

ReaperJr.5967:

As chaith said, it’s B.

I didn’t say that, and it’s not B, lol. In case anyone else is confused:

OP is more like asking: “So guys I made up this proc that gives resistance when struck below 25% health, when would the resistance kick in?”

And with those kinds of procs, they never kick in automatically when you reach the health threshold like scenario B suggests. You gotta’ be hit by a damaging attack while already below the threshold. EDIT: Conditions already ticking will not trigger any low health procs alone, you have to take an attack. So hypothetically, yes, condition damage would still take you lower than the threshold unless you got lucky and something hit you for little damage, precisely a sliver below the threshold.

But even if OP is asking the wrong questions to confirm how resistance works, it’s really just only when Resistance is on your bar, (whenever or however it gets there), the effects of conditions are ignored and you go about your day, until that resistance falls off.

The answer to your scenario totally depends on what mechanic is giving you resistance. It has nothing to do with Resistance itself.

FYI, the moment you get resistance, condition ticks happening while you have it are instantly negated, IE: In your scenario, any burning ticks that fall in that short window of resistance, their effects will simply be skipped.

So yes, if you get resistance during an immobilize or fear, you regain control and or movement, even while afflicted by the conditions.

Why assume no balance patch until Spring 2016? That’s a pretty extreme position. A patch between now and pro league seems quite likely, despite it not falling on the. “two weeks before” timetable as outlined.

Assuming the worst is understandable but in my humble opinion, a bit full on.

@Morwath

True shot still able to be blocked. It’s been Karlfirmed

The changes went right over your head m8, the noise that’s being spoken about is visual clutter, not audible noise.

The biggest illusion of skill is winning fights in which you outnumber the enemies.

If you’re trying to measure the value of your rotations & actions, you’re only ever creating value by outnumbering the enemy if you get kills fast and are able to quickly impact other fights.

Rules to make live by in order to create value:

• If other options are present, refuse to enter a fight that involves outnumbering defensively built enemies.

• Especially don’t be that person to enter an existing 1v1 fight as a “+1” if your build is built defensively, unless it’s to switch with your teammate. The enemy will not die much faster, and your ability to soak damage isn’t being used when you’re outnumbering.

• Filter out of a fight as you get kills so situations where you’re outnumbering the enemies by more than one player will never happen.

Lots of players have never even been vaguely aware of the basic rules of rotating, the game doesn’t introduce them at all. So it’s not really a surprise to me that this Dunning–Kruger effect is especially common in GW2

coglin.1867:

Now that you mention it, some of the PvP tournaments have been won by teams with engies with no kits and all elixirs

Not once, ever. Seriously, this has never happened. The guy has a point that in that the game seems to favor & rewards players who use kits. There’s not been an iteration of the meta Engi since the game launched that had zero kits and survived a competitive environment. Coming from an Engineer who has had a keen interest in competitive PvP Engi builds since 2012.

Curious if this happened to anyone else -

If you look closely, apparently, I have 32 games played with 31,153 top stats awarded. Haha.

bluesnacks.2301:

It’s affected by chills and slows which is annoying. It also needs a way to cancel mid use really badly.

There is, open a kit mid Rocket Charge and then drop bundle to stop the Charge.

Stow weapon should stop it however, currently it doesn’t.

Rocket Charge is affected by movement impairing effects which is a big problem (bug)

I wholeheartedly agree. Leagues are the perfect haven for premade parties, offering a haven for solo veterans and newbs alike is very appealing to me.

In my speculation, and nothing more, there’s an extremely high chance that the PvP team acted off of the Weekly EU Thursday cup.

Most notably, Vermillion vs. Car Crash finals.

I recommend you use the Re-Chat plug-in for twitch.

http://www.twitch.tv/jebrounity/v/23035369

3:17:00

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

’allo fellow Engineers, -snip snip-

At this point we’re not going to be able to change the elite specialization mechanic very much. There are still going to be changes to it with the possibility for expansion of functionality post-launch.

It does, think my Super Speed heals for like 560?

Tooltip is inert, not the actual ability.

choovanski.5462:

nearlight.3064:

Well on the other hand, almost all of the abjured’s builds from last ESL were nerfed, tempest was the only one that wasn’t nerfed. I mean blighters boon, adaptive armor/hgh and revenant mobility and sustain being a bit to a lot weaker certainly means that their comp isn’t being 100% biased from the devs as much as some people think, but that’s just my perspective as a filthy casual.

believing that anet are balancing PvP around wanting the abjured to win every tournament is insane. it’s just obviously not the case. if it was, then why was the blighters boon double glint rev synergy removed? Nos was an immortal God with that.

Quiet pleb, I’m Abjured and what I say goes.

Just kidding. It’s a pretty paranoid thought eh. Haha. Nobody talks about Blighters Boon synergies, Adaptive Armor, HgH. And that’s fine, tbh. Nos has adapted quite a bit already.