Guild Wars 2

Waveguider.6271:

Chaith.8256:

It could be improved on a bit, in addition to what poster above me said:

Without changing your choice of utilities, you’ll see a big performance increase by running Incendiary Powder. It gives you an immense damage increase for on the fly pistol poking. Mostly because pistol ranged attacks are naturally pitiful.

In the majority of your fights, its not going to be possible to repeatedly catch people in Fire Bombs (they are not standing still). This means you’re not able to realistically keep your most important condition going, consistently.

Here are the tweaks you should try on for size:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqelUUpEr9ZxkLseNCbBNqxI6NWlO+5GEgkC-TJRHwAV2fIwJAIZZAAPAAA

Also you need to use the overcharge ability on your Healing Turret. You blow it up without using the heal many times.

Thanks, I have heard of and used Incendiary powder in my builds before but with carrion amulets and basically 0 precision the effect would never trigger with the build
Running another amulet for that trait and a lot more damage would sacrifice a lot of survivability. In the video I died once because of a mistake (that asura was so god kitten tiny) but with Carrion amulet the survivability is high and damage isn’t too bad. When roaming if i want a damage spec I play intel burst rifle with high power and crits, this build is different and serves a different purpose.

You could totally get around the problem of no crit chance, and harness the power of Incendiary Powder if you simply ran intel sigil over Hydromancy..

Either run Rabid, which I think is more survivable, or run Carrion with Intelligence sigil, but you can’t be as near as good another Condi Engi who takes Incendiary Powder, no excuse not to!

Lordrosicky.5813:

A balance patch where clear outliers who pop up multiple times in winning teams are not nerfed is not a balance patch at all.

A lot of people won’t be happy until the blood of Engi/Ele is pooled on the floor and it will have to be removed from the comps. Fair enough, every profession should have their spotlight.

However, you’re straight up too dismissive of the changes we’re looking at right now.

Meta Engi/Ele/War are eating in the realm of 130/190/190 stat reduction, respectively.

That is a nerf that will help level the playing field with professions who don’t have overall as beneficial of might stacking options: (Mes, Necro, Guard, Ranger, Thief.)

With Ele Lightning whip sustain nerfed, Drake’s Breath nerfed, and Shrapnel Bleed duration nerf, these will be felt, and they will be especially beneficial to professions like Mesmer, I can’t see any reason to say literally, and I quote: “Not nerfed”.

You’re saying nothing has happened and yet last week:

Lordrosicky.5813:

10 magical balance steps

2, Remove ele lightning glitch which makes healing too high
9, Lower dps/burning of fire dagger no.2 on ele as it seems very strong currently

They did two of your MAGICAL balance suggestions verbatim and then hit Engi Shrapnel Bleed duration, battle sigil, and might itself.

I was expecting more Cele Engi nerfs as well as a 50pt stat reduction to Celestial Amulet, but don’t be too upset.

Lordrosicky.5813:

kitten give some other classes a try. I want the next meta to have 2 rangers/1 guardian and 2 necros in it. Then lets see what all the celestial muppets think about “balance”.

That’s happened. After the Dhuumfire patch, before Hambow, this is all PvP was.

It was the darkest days GW2 has ever known. Post-Dhuumfire almost everyone in the game will agree was the hands down worst.

It could be improved on a bit, in addition to what poster above me said:

Without changing your choice of utilities, you’ll see a big performance increase by running Incendiary Powder. It gives you an immense damage increase for on the fly pistol poking. Mostly because pistol ranged attacks are naturally pitiful.

In the majority of your fights, its not going to be possible to repeatedly catch people in Fire Bombs (they are not standing still). This means you’re not able to realistically keep your most important condition going, consistently.

Here are the tweaks you should try on for size:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqelUUpEr9ZxkLseNCbBNqxI6NWlO+5GEgkC-TJRHwAV2fIwJAIZZAAPAAA

Also you need to use the overcharge ability on your Healing Turret. You blow it up without using the heal many times.

Cygnus.6903:

You can try this build of mine, ‘The acrobat’;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNBMhNakpjyQ7CxKEORDkEUoH9MoEOGAFgyvo0B-TlSDwAvV/hyhAoyJAoryvFKBBpPAgJoBPAAJHBAa7PEA4AghHe4hHOZAW2CA-w

It is basically dodge spam might stacking warrior. You stack might via Sigil of Battle, Runes, SoR, Warhorn 5 and longbow 3 and sword 2 (combo with fire field) to get high amounts of power and condi damage. You already start off with 2400 power/700 condi damage with wvw and bloodlust stacks. Combined with 40% base crit chance and high fury uptime, 200% crit damage, you will reach high direct damage with a few might stacks. And you can start any fight with 3-8 stacks, to go up to 15+ which can easily be maintained.
You also get a sweet +50% duration on your bleeds, making sword auto quite painful.

On the survivability end, you get incredible amounts vigor. It is absolutely crazy. 4 stances (1 with the trait) gets you 24 seconds of vigor, along with 10 seconds every 20 seconds from warhorn. Off course, you won’t be spamming skills if you play correctly, but this is still an insane uptime on vigor for warrior. Sigil of energy for even more dodging.
Stances are better then shouts for roaming in my opinion, as the amount of burst on roamers is very hgih, and you need to mitigate that instead of heal it back up. That being said, double Endure Pain will avoid any gank, Zerk stance to get your adrenaline up and for that condi immunity, and balanced stance to save for a guarantueed stomp.

All the while retaining 700 healing power, ~2900 armor, ~26khp and extreme condition resistance through food, runes and Dogged March.

The build has everything you would need, although it lacks the raw mobility of GS. So don’t get caught out by a zerg and you should be fine with this.
Another weakness is the complete lack of hard CC. You can not interrupt, so you need to either cleave, have somebody else stomp, or pick another build. Although I generally like the cleave on this build, the playstyle may or may not suit you.

If you drop 2 points from Defense, and drop one each into both Strength and Arms, you can have 10%+ damage against bleeding foes, and do a ton of damage on your dodge rolls. You call it the acrobatic without that trait?

Simon.3794:

And like how engineers never needed to trait for any condition clear to be more then just effective.

It’s an intended profession weakness. As an Engineer, traiting into condition removal doesn’t allow you to counter condition builds better, it just provides a mutually exclusive, equally mediocre alternative to completely relying on Healing Turret.

Morwath.9817:

Chaith.8256:

Fortus.6175:

Cynz.9437:

and yet there is not a single person out there that wants more than 1 thief on team… but it is fine to have multple wars, guards, engis, eles, necros, rangers even mesmers on same team~

Flawed logic is flawed…..

So would you rather have a full team of 5 bunker guardians, or 5 cele engis, or 5 power ranger, or 5 necros , etc etc?!

Sigh.

I would you like to watch a football game with 11 goalies, or 11 trainers, etc….. They are both vital yet you dont see european leagues asking for several of them…..

Thieves are prevalent in ALL teams, every single one of them, throughout the entire history of the game since release, unlike other classes, which had literally 0% in some competitions, namely elementalists.

edit: I can see Im not the one using the football analogy xD

Except he wasn’t talking about extremes of 5 duplicate professions.

Having 2-3 Thieves or Mesmers is pretty extremely bad.

Having 2-3 more stackable professions would be better. Usually when you get 3 Thieves, the other 2 aren’t people aren’t even able to stand on point, creating a fully dysfunctional comp.

Get 3 Engies/Warriors/Eles/Guardians/Rangers and you can say, ‘alright, these pickup players probably won’t mass suicide at mid.’

It’s because Thief/Mesmer fill different role than other classes. However it doesn’t mean Thief isn’t OP. Imho game shouldn’t be balanced around class stacking, players shouldn’t be punished for switching at the beginning of match so stacking of classes at certain MMR wouldn’t be issue, since ‘good’ players should be able to play more than one class.

Also if each single winning team in tournaments has Thief, then it proves there is something wrong with Thief if having it is necessary to win. While Mesmer is rarely played (compared to Thief) and Ranger is close to not be played at all. Keep in mind that ‘solo q aka ranked arena’ =/= competitive team play.

Having a thief has not necessary to win, now, or historically. It has a role nobody else can fill so of course it’s represented well.

Some notable tournaments I’ve seen… Cheese Mode taking weeklies with no Thief, historically, Apex Prime being on top with their support teamfight meta (no Thief).

Fortus.6175:

Cynz.9437:

and yet there is not a single person out there that wants more than 1 thief on team… but it is fine to have multple wars, guards, engis, eles, necros, rangers even mesmers on same team~

Flawed logic is flawed…..

So would you rather have a full team of 5 bunker guardians, or 5 cele engis, or 5 power ranger, or 5 necros , etc etc?!

Sigh.

I would you like to watch a football game with 11 goalies, or 11 trainers, etc….. They are both vital yet you dont see european leagues asking for several of them…..

Thieves are prevalent in ALL teams, every single one of them, throughout the entire history of the game since release, unlike other classes, which had literally 0% in some competitions, namely elementalists.

edit: I can see Im not the one using the football analogy xD

Except he wasn’t talking about extremes of 5 duplicate professions.

Having 2-3 Thieves or Mesmers is pretty extremely bad.

Having 2-3 more stackable professions would be better. Usually when you get 3 Thieves, the other 2 aren’t people aren’t even able to stand on point, creating a fully dysfunctional comp.

Get 3 Engies/Warriors/Eles/Guardians/Rangers and you can say, ‘alright, these pickup players probably won’t mass suicide at mid.’

Phaeton.9582:

Let me add some perspective Chaith.

Lets say, hypotheticaly, that in the next patch they nerf celestial amulet, rifle engi and dagger/staff ele.

They then over buff necro, and it becomes ‘meta’.

Suddenly you find if they have 2 of these meta necro builds in 50% of matches, and your engi becomes unplayable.

So you decide, being as active as you are, to learn an s/f valks ele, another ‘balanced’ build that can deal with necro. However, with your suggestion there would be no way of predicting if matchmaking will shaft your engi with double necro. Furthermore, if one of them happens to run mesmer (with their deflated mmr from getting countered by every thief), suddenly even your ‘safe’ option has risk.

Only solution: run the meta necro; no one will risk attempting to predict and (soft!) counter this.

So many assumptions and moving parts to come to that outcome that players will flock to ‘uncounterable’ professions.

There’s a loophole preventing what you’re talking about from happening, and that’s the fact you can switch after the game starts for the time penalty of whatever it takes you, of course.

The idea is to herd the sheep away from counter-comping, but there’s only a few second time out for switching characters if the enemy team has 5 hard counters to your profession.

With the introduction of the new 60 second grace period for unranked and ranked tPvP, that essentially means that character swapping is back on the table.

I think profession locking is a good thing overall, provided that the matchmaking prevented a high frequency of duplicate professions per side.

That matchmaking feature was not functioning to the satisfaction of the playerbase. The matchmaking needed to be working as advertised to prevent being locked in to running 3 Thieves, for example. It’s good that it’s disabled for the time being.

Looking to the future:

• Potential abuse in unranked queue via voting Skyhammer and swapping to a Skyhammer build.

• Counter comping. Due to seeing the enemy professions & names on the scoreboard.

Suggestion

• Add feature to Custom Arenas called: Pre-Game Privacy

• Feature would hide the enemy team names & professions on the scoreboard with a key & lock icon, still revealing if they’d hit ‘ready’ though.

• Pre-Game Privacy would be forced in unranked/ranked tPvP, and of course optional in Custom Arenas so scrims and in-house competitions could function organically.

Quite simply, allowing character swapping, but not providing the tPvPers with information on their enemies – this will promote building a well balanced, functional comp, without the Build Wars 2.0 feel. All will be revealed after the 10 second game-start warning takes place.

Harbinger.8637:

Searing Flames is underwhelming, hardly any Guard will take it over something like Blind Exposure. Might is applied so fast in this meta, that stripping it every ten seconds isn’t going to do much.

If it actually strips might 100% reliably, it’s not underwhelming when you consider how much god mode you’re denying when stripping an Ele or War’s might every 10s so they can never go past 3-6!

This is all in theory based on Eura claiming it prioritizes might.

Eurantien.4632:

Searing flames prioritizes might…

And the crowd goes wild. This is like those times where everyone’s complaining about matchmaking and Justin comes in and tells them they have blowouts only once every 10 games.

Michael.9517:

the guy who wrote that article is a troll. If mesmer or theif is nerfed… they will not be played in competitive pvp ever… mesmer is almost not played already.

His nerfing of Thief/Mes proposal hinges on Celestial being over nerfed and everybody going back to soldiers amulet.

So basically it won’t ever happen.

uberkingkong.8041:

A wall of nonsensical gibberish

Let DoD choose who and what they would like to have on their own roster, please and thank-you. Are you some sort of PvP human resources manager, or maybe an esports matchmaker for Darth, Iuck, and Raplion? You just have so much to say about what DoD is doing wrong, when there’s surprisingly little tweaking to do.

Let me just say that DoD has a highly competitive Comp. The Abjured runs 2 Ele pointholders, and 3 Roamers (Engi, Necro, Thief). DoD runs 3 assorted War/Ele pointholders, and 2 Roamers, (Engi, Thief).

It’s a mirror comp with a minor adjustment of using a Cele Warrior over a Carrion Necro.

Zoose, Oeggs, Caed, Hman and Tarcis are all around being top 3 of their respective professions, or better.

DoD is clearly going to want to move forward, you can bet they’re going to make sure:

• Tarcis logs on to the game and plays instead of the sub. No opting to be the twitch chat cheerleader. (joking, but not really)
• They settle on main builds for the comp. (Caed S/D vs. D/P, Oeggs P/P vs. Rifle, rumors of Zoose practicing on Fresh Air instead of D/D.)
• They sharpen up their mechanics on these roles once decided upon.
• Really start drilling the execution of spikes and developing skirmish synergy.

Once you have the knowledge of the game and the right players to play what you want, all it will take to be the best is practice and proper execution.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Let me break down necro currently:

This thread has less to do with Necro and is more of a shot at balance devs that aren’t aware of long time top end PvP builds.

No jokes here, can I have your belongings?

Slim.3024:

Not sure what qualify as big cooldowns for fresh air. I also don’t see why given an invul and a 3-hit block that deals massive damage would not allow for at least one arcane ability with the last utility slot reserved for lightning flash.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Obsidian_Flesh

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Arcane_Shield

If you observe latest builds that Zoose and Phanta use, they’re opting to incorporate Signet of Air over an offensive Arcane ability and that is quite a bit better than relying on a 75s stunbreak to stay alive.

Slim.3024:

s/d isn’t s bursty and neither is d/p panic strike builds helps the build as well.

S/D Thieves being not bursty does not do glass Ele any favors, trust me. S/D thieves are a nightmare for Fresh Air Eles if they do anything the entire match except watch out for the Thief.

uberkingkong.8041:

Lastly, that website, still sucks, I bet you just added those timers because I really don’t remember seeing them.

Guilty as charged, I’m an ESL admin who is conspiring to make you look dumb.

uberkingkong.8041:

Also, I just want to watch the good games, how is brackets not set up yet?

The signups are still open, it’s impossible to make brackets until all the teams can be seeded appropriately.

uberkingkong.8041:

Whats up with all these people quitting? Especially when you got some pretty decent incentives, like $500 by winning a random tournament, that’s pretty good.

Are you motivated by these prizes to get better? The only players that truly seem to be motivated to answer hard questions and break their legs to grow an inch are Dodge or Die, everyone else just lacks the will

Slim.3024:

Air burst + just one arcane deals more damage than backstab with zero counterplay and long range. In fact you can perform this combo (and add a second arcane) while being knocked down or stunned.

We are talking burst that surpasses stealstabs, has no positional requirement and can be performed at any time. If elementalists played fresh air today with 6/0/2/0/6 d/p thieves, they would destroy them.

What you say about being able to disengage better is obviously true. Mesmers and thieves have better tools for leaving a fight. DPS guardian and fresh air s/f elementalists do however have the tools for staying in the fight longer.

You seem to think very highly of Fresh Air Eles, and perhaps it’s true they have a fighting chance in 1v1s against Berserker professions. However, bringing Arcane abilities doesn’t happen anymore in PvP if they are seen (Besides Arcane Shield). The benefit of their guaranteed Air burst is far outweighed by the fact that they get blatently outmanoeuvred by hit and run tactics, and have no choice but to rotate through big cooldowns.

With this in mind, in a conquest setting, the weakness to constant harassment and dependency on big cooldowns is the reason that Fresh Air is easily countered and turned into a liability.

Teutos.8620:

In contrast and as it currently stands, Berzerker builds are still almost exclusively used by two specific classes: Mesmer and Thief.

In the last go4cups alone we have seen FreshAir-Bersi-Ele and Medidation-Bersi-Guard on EU, Power-LB-Bersi-Ranger on NA in the Top 4 teams; the team with the Medidation-Bersi-Guard even won the whole cup.
Let’s wait and see what todays Dezember Finals will bring us.

This “instant gib” that’s near indefensible against a skilled Thief, I believe, is the reason primary why players gravitated away from using squishy builds and towards Bunker or Celestial alternatives.

Is it really the thief, that causes us f.e. to see only a few fresh air eles, or is it more the dominance of might stacking celestrial D/D eles?
Not to mention that DPS guards are very well off against thiefs.

or Phase Retreat in order to survive. […] or a comfortable 6 seconds on a Mesmer without using an Elite is a long time.

So a ähm, staff+ X/torch build? Haven’t seen one of those in quite a while

What we see in the Go4s are not good places to judge viability from. Unfortunately there are many comps and styles that are just not the best practice all-around, but people still want to play a certain way, even if it means never overthrowing the current meta comp.

And yes, thief does keep non-Guardian berserkers out of the meta due to their relentless gap closing ability, hard countering builds with an over-reliance on good positioning to protect themselves.

uberkingkong.8041:

I’m computer literate

I checked out that link.

Okay its sunday, but WHEN?

I went to the more information link http://play.eslgaming.com/guildwars2/global/ just shows me pile of bullkitten.

Whoever owns that site needs to make it perfectly plain and easy to notice that game x and date and time.

Not a link to another link to another link to another link.

Dang man. All the tournaments for the next 7 days are right at the top of that link, including times. Here’s what you do: Go to twitch at the specified time, and search for Guild Wars 2, and everything will be right in the world. You will see a channel, either Guildwars2, or Blu42, and it will have the most viewers. Pick that one.

And then if you can’t figure it out, try turning it off and on again.

uberkingkong.8041:

DoD has better chance than AG because its an engy meta.
Reason why Abjured beats DoD, because engy meta.

That’s an excellent analysis, playing with an Engi against other teams that also have an Engi is the reason why one team always wins. Cause Engi meta!

uberkingkong.8041:

Like I said, get my boy Darth Vanquisher and Iuck and wreck the Abjured win streak.

Yall should know by now you gotta play with whats OP.
This game aint balanced, they balanced the balance too much that it got unbalanced.

Iuck and Darth main Ranger and Warrior respectively. They’re not what’s OP, if anything, a already struggling (and retired?) Ranger and Warrior are going to be the weak links on any serious team.

uberkingkong.8041:

One other thing, is DoD playing at what they are good at?
I really hate it when I’m playing with Zoose or Ostrich and they go play as Zzoose or ostrich egggs. I feel more comfortable with Darth Vanquisher on my team rather than zoose or ostrich that’s how good he carries. Not saying hes better, but he’s good at carrying. If you good at carrying you a good player and should be on a team, a legit team with no weak links. DoD playing with another engineer will have better results than going with one of there warriors, all due to whats the meta. Zombify is good so he ok to have on that team too.

You couldn’t spot a weak link if your nose was pierced with one. Zombify quit the game, too.

uberkingkong.8041:

Caed, Zoose, Ostrich Eggs, Darth Vanquisher, and Iuck

Put those guys together, and they’ll destroy Abjured.

I don’t know who Wakkey is or what he plays, doesn’t sound like a necro.

Matter fact I don’t know Noscoc either, sounds like an engineer.

But someone like Magic Toker. I didn’t even know who he was until WTS. He wasn’t even in the Cruuk, Caed, Jumper X, etc top thieves.

You should be getting constant matches against Lux, Drunknpozzum and other top 25 leaderboard players.

Leaderboard is very good.

Something is fishy. Odd hours gaming, looking at other good players like Caed, Zoose, Ostrich Eggs, Darth Vanquisher, and Iuck to make sure they not online or not in hearts of the mist queing up same time your queing up to ensure you don’t take a loss from going against another strong team.

It’s pretty common knowledge now. Weekly cups are always on Sunday and they are advertised in big red overlay on the forums. Get it together, man!

They also have the schedule advertised on the launcher, here’s the link:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upcoming-guild-wars-2-player-vs-player-tournaments/

I say this instead of touching on your post, because I literally can’t skip 3 words without having to correct something. Needless to say, half of the players you idolize haven’t even played in a tournament since the Abjured existed, so you’re better off theorycrafting a conquest match featuring Chuck Norris vs. Napoleon

Read the schedule, and check Twitch.tv/Blu42, Twitch.tv/Guildwars2 at the appropriate times

xDudisx.5914:

-Corrupt boon
-Path of Corruption
-Spinal shivers
-Sigil of nullification
-Null field
-Shattered concentration
-Arcane thievery
-Mind spike
-Mind stab
-Phantasmal Disenchanter
-Throw mine
-Mine field
-Grim Specter
-Larcenous Strike
-Well of corruption
-Searing flames
-Bountiful theft
-Necromatic corruption
-Chill of death

Fixed those Boon Strip options in serious PvP for ye.

xDudisx.5914:

Healing is actually underpower. How many players do you see running clerics or magi in spvp? In pve they are non existent. In wvw also extinct. No healing does’t need a nerf.

My opinion is that support roles are ineffective in this game. Support roles are filled by players that build to maximize healing among other support utilities. The healing power scaling of abilities are kept in check as to not allow this support player to frankly, live forever.

What would be really cool, in my opinion, if there were more abilities that supported allies ONLY, or had a reduced effect on the user. More avenues of support for allies that scaled well and had relatively mediocre base healing, that would create a welcoming environment for people that want to build for support to flourish in.

It would mean players could see exactly how big the PvP playerbase would be, and make a bunch of judgements based on that. I doubt Anet would do that. They’re a fan of hiding controversial numbers.

Dante.8456:

thats only 20 (4×5) new skills . . no biggie

If Eles only had one Attunement. LOL. Times whatever number of new skills you come up with by 4, for 4 Attunements.

Sorel.4870:

The real problem for me is that celestial engineers maintain 10 stacks of might without blasting a single fire field. Fire field blasting is fine: it takes active skill, and can be countered. It’s predictable, and you can prevent it by using CC. I would reduce the might duration on strength/hoelbrack/pirate runes and/or have sigil of battle give two stacks of might instead of three.

I’m fine if Sigil of Battle and Hoelbrak/Strength were nerfed so only Ele/War could get any use out of them via natural might stacking on weapons, that’d be fine.

Engi wouldn’t be set back as much from a nerf like this. There’s hardly any synergy in running might stacking runes, if there’s no other ways to stack might outside of battle.

Rifle Engies would likely switch to either Balthazar Runes & Geomancy, or Pack Runes & Air Sigil. I’m already using Pack Runes on my main Cele Rifle build.

I’d be fine with it for overall class balance, but I doubt Anet would hit Battle Sigil like that, because for non-Engi/Ele/War who don’t often all have both high boon duration and extremely fast swaps, Battle Sigil would be a steaming pile.

tichorum.2415:

It’s a bug. Something that is not intentional by design that happens while in game, aka using a mechanic, is a bug. Abusing bugs is stated to be against the rules. Therefore it is punishable if ESL admins want to enforce their rules against this.

I’m not doubting there are other bugs that are being used that are punishable by rule, but this is the biggest issue at hand.

It’s good to differentiate between bugs, and unforeseen side effects of normal mechanics.

Bugs

• Some that come to mind: Confounding Suggestions suddenly causing Chaos Storm to stunlock, Riposte Bug causing high uptime of invisible projectile reflect shield.

Unforeseen usage of normal mechanics that sometimes require re-balancing:

• Unforeseen uses, like the 100nades mechanic I made a build around. 8 Nades sprayed in random directions – this has the unintended effect of a power nuke when used IN someone’s character model.

• Every ability in the game that can benefit in some situations by being cancelled via ESC, Stow Weapon, Weapon Swap. I use this feature to stop my Acid Bomb from throwing me backwards, cancel Magnet mid-cast to force my enemy to dodge all the time. This is literally no more of a bug than cancelling Lightning Whip is.

Lightning Whip is in the latter category, unforeseen uses. It’s then a balance issue like 100nade build was. The Devs didn’t intend for Engineers to have that much burst, and the Devs didn’t intend for Eles to always cancel Lightning Whip instead of completing the cast.

I had people telling me I was bug abusing as well when I was landing all 8 of the multi-direction nade spray from Kit Refinement. It’s called legitimately playing the dang game properly. Cancelling Acid Bomb, Magnet, Lightning Whip, Spatial Surge whatever – It’s on Arenanet to balance the abilities properly under the assumption players will use supported mechanics like stow weapon properly, at the right time. Finally, it’s being nerfed. Chaos Storm stunlocking people or perma projectile reflect, these are abused glitches/bugs.

Before everyone inevitably jumps down my throat for defending Lightning Whip cancelling or something, I’m glad it’s on the chopping block to be removed, I think it’s a positive. It reduces the advantage that experienced players have over new players.

Hope that clarified the difference between an exploited bug and unintended use through supported mechanics. Bugs = ESL Punishable. Unforeseen benefits from Stowing/Swapping/ESC on some spellcasts = Balance problem that should be discussed with the Balance team, not ESL Admins.

tichorum.2415:

So? Who cares? It’s a violation of the rules, therefore anyone breaking the rules should be punished. IT’S A RULE. Why have them if they aren’t going to be enforced?

You aren’t being disagreed with on the grounds that ‘rule breakers shouldn’t be punished,’ it’s more… ‘are they actually breaking the rules by using stow weapon?’

Getting additional sustain out the stow weapon feature is confirmed as unintended, but there’s no mention of the stow weapon feature being unintended for things like damage increasing Spatial Surge, or avoiding the Warhorn aftercasts. Heck, on D/D Ele you can avoid the aftercast on Ring of Earth by using Magnetic Leap after.

You can save time and aftercast on a sizeable list of skills by intelligently cancelling or stowing at the right times.

Banning players for weapon stowing sets a precedent that tournament admins can’t enforce.

IE:

“Oh and the Engineer on the Red Team used weapon swap to circumvent the intended big leap backwards from Acid Bomb and get unfair time to cleave the downed body, and it’s ALL OVER, Red Team Disqualified” #esports.

If there were mere TDM maps, that would only mean a bigger chance of doing that game mode. It needs polish before I can agree to that.

Individual timer respawn, I just can’t get behind that. Just a suggestion from the top of my head, if there were several time limited ‘bouts’ where all players exited spawn together, and didn’t respawn until the next bout, that would be a huge improvement for me.

Just let there be 5 bouts of 2:00, cooldowns reset each time so it’s always fresh and fair combat, not staggered spawn camp.

FrownyClown.8402:

higher tier players in pvp are known to run zerker ammy instead of cele.

Nope. Zerker Engi is very sub-optimal for high tier PvP, Cele currently is optimal under more circumstances.

Mrbig.8019:

I just can’t agree with this.

this game is won on capture points, it’s not a case the strongest professions are the ones with the strongest point presence.

if our 5 ele team is suffering the range they can just move the fight somewhere else.
2 eles will actually win every possibke 2vs2 so unless opposite team I running 4 squishies I see no way to win those fights.

and even if u win those fights, you’ll lose the game cos 4 squishies.

but u said it yourself: condition variety.

and here we go to what I said: ele lacks poison (engi aside reliable poison only has singke target confusion) and ccs.

those 2 are the real reason why 5 eles can’t really be viable.

but 3 eles + engi + x (another engi or thief or war ) is orolly not only viable, but also very very strong, we just need people to try it just to show how broken current balance is.

This is going further off topic so my last post on this. Our opinions are colored by different experiences.

Saying 2 Eles win outright win every 2v2 is in my experience a wrong assumption. Also playing for the point results in wiping, and losing the point if the Ele can’t do pressure, and sit idle on the cap against ranged opponents like Engi/Necro/Mes, who are either wiping out the Eles teammate, or the Ele eating damage on point. 2v2 is actually more deathmatch then conquest when played correctly.

3+ Eles in a comp I think starts detracting from the dream comp for how NA strats play out. 2 on point tanky people, 3 roamers, I feel is noticeably harder hitting than 3 tanky Eles.

It’s not because nobody has tried 3, 4, or 5 Eles. It’s a wonky comp that’s a lot lighter on killing power that most teams feel comfortable with.

Until Ele gets nerfed, there will always be optimally 2, because imo 2 point holders are optimal, and imo, Eles are overall stronger a point holder pick than Guard, Ranger, War point holders, with some exceptions.

Mrbig.8019:

Chaith.8256:

Mrbig.8019:

The only reasons why we don’t see 5 ele teams is mostly cuz they don’t have AoE poison, they lack strong CCs like engies and cuz there aren’t so many good eles around.

Interesting theory. Although I think the fact that 5 defensive Melee players with very mediocre burst would have struggles that far out-shadow a problem that Doom Sigil and Updraft couldn’t solve.

What struggles for example ? I’m genuinely curious.

The question is really off topic but a clan of D/D Eles trying to hunt Thieves and Mesmers up and down cliffs & terrain would be pretty futile after Lightning Flash has been expended. It becomes Kite2win against 5 melee professions.

Eles are overall the strongest conquest pick but a pure Ele 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4, 5v5 is something less good. Falling flat on condition variety, boon removal, guaranteed spike, it’s extremely hard for Eles compare to the destruction that a pick of professions from the pool of: Thief, Necro, Engi Mesmer can pull off.

TLDR; Eles can do most everything well individually, but if you look at the grand scheme: 4-5 thoughtful unique professions allow you to truly do everything in the context of teamwork and roles.

Mrbig.8019:

The only reasons why we don’t see 5 ele teams is mostly cuz they don’t have AoE poison, they lack strong CCs like engies and cuz there aren’t so many good eles around.

Interesting theory. Although I think the fact that 5 defensive Melee players with very mediocre burst would have struggles that far out-shadow a problem that Doom Sigil and Updraft couldn’t solve.

Eurantien.4632:

I understand the hesitation in wanting to ban unbalanced abilities in competitive play (by competitive I mean like WTS) but given that “balance” updates are few and far between it seems the only fair conclusion because the game is not updated as frequently as it needs to be in order to create a fair competitive environment.

I would also like to mention that I agree with Shockwave. Even though you don’t see 5 d/d ele teams rolling around you often see things such as 2 engis, 2 d/d ele, X. Which imo, is class stacking of the 2 strongest classes and I believe the only reason they have engis is because they don’t know 2 d/d eles that are available as most every team desiring to be competitive has at least 2 d/d eles.

I think 1 D/D Ele and 1 Shoutbow Warrior as point holders, 2v2 skirmishers, in a Cele comp works 99% as good. Double Ele Double Engi comps have SFA for revive utility, which Battle Standard and the tactics line brings some of.. We have Wakkey on Ele instead of War because his specific role is to 1vX, which Ele does better than War.

Timiok.1048:

And I thought exploding did nothing to helps healing?

Here’s what you do:

Double tap ‘Drop healing Turret’. The double tap is so you immediately queue the overcharged ability – it will instantly do the Cleansing Burst, and then you can detonate it using the toolbelt to blast an additional heal, if you’d like to support your allies or burst heal yourself.

Keep practicing. It’s just the fact that its unfamiliar territory and you don’t have the muscle memory to heal with healing turret, land grenades, prybar, various combos.

Focus on repeatedly landing abilities, time every ability as if it was your elite, and only work on increasing your actions per minute once you feel better about your accuracy.

Matchmaking right now is extremely mixed – (high MMR players with beginner teammates in order to even the score against partial or full premades), thats in my opinion the trigger on why GW2’s queued matches are seeing a rise in blowouts.

When new players aren’t playing solely with and against new players, and experienced players & premades get tossed in, it ain’t pretty.

Sometimes the premade/experienced members are evenly spread on both teams, but in my experience, this has proven to be unrealistic to attain every game.

Quadox.7834:

Josh Davis.6015:

It’s not intended behavior, and we will be fixing it.

Edit: (Specifically the ability to increase the healing potential of Signet of Restoration by cancel-casting Lightning Whip after the first half of the animation.)

Grouch if you change spatial surge (and remove air/fire) as well mesmer will struggle. alot. Please remember this!

Edit:

Interesting, so as we know, the unintended benefit from stowing Lightning Whip is specifically healing, which is now confirmed unintended.

However, there’s no specific mention of the unintended damage benefit from something like Spatial Surge. I don’t feel like Mesmer needs an adjustment down, but it does contradict the logic behind changing stowed auto-attacks.

Objectively, Fumigate could use a buff but not in the context of the Engineer profession right now, E-gun has its niche already.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

A LB/GS Ranger I’d argue is better than a Mesmer at the moment. Its ranged burst is unrivalled with a very small cooldown on Rapid Fire. Combined with area cripple, a ranged knockback and two invulnerability skills (Counter Attack and Signet of Stone) it’s still got lots of survivability. A Mesmer is still great but the casting times on Phantasm skills are long and Shatter cooldowns are also long. A Longbow Ranger can put out single target damage so much easier – it’s point and shoot.

Mesmers are closer than Power Rangers. Counter Attack and Signet of Stone aren’t really invulnerabilities..

What’s really the difference is that Mesmer has better damage avoidance through superior stunbreaks, multiple vertical teleports, and better ‘invulnerabilities’, the teleports doubling as horizontal combat mobility is the cherry on top.

Of course damage is easier to do by locking on to a target from 1500, and 2111112111112, that much is true.

If you are able to use Zerker, you’re able to use Assassin in WvW. If you have great critical damage, and your build lacks fury & high precision, Assassin could be great to mix in.

Booms.2594:

Anastasis.7258:

Chaith.8256:

Narcarsis.5739:

P.S. If they nerf sigils other classes will be hit harder than Ele and Engi unless they specifically target Battle/Doom/Intelligence alone.
-Caed

That’s just something we disagree on.. and your stinging disapproval and disappointment in me doesn’t bother me much, lol.

While you blame all the abilities that have been constant through all metas, I think the Bird of Fire’s suggestion of removing Celestial Amulet in PvP would be better for the game than messing with such things.

How you see that as being out of selfishness, I don’t know. Nerf Cele Engi. Nerf Cele Ele, Nerf Cele Warrior. Nerf Cele

Nerf it.

Pls.

And shut up with all this bull about defending my teammates or own profession. I seriously don’t care about what professions are on top, we will adapt. I don’t like Cele Eles and I have no qualms about playing Rabid if you are actually serious.

Just nerf it intelligently.

I want to play a game. We should look at you posts histories to find out if you really care about Cele engineer getting nerf my son.

+1

I whine a lot about people’s awful knee jerk butcher job nerfs that affect non-cele builds but if you differentiate those I think I’d win that game. The fact that no matter what ideas I attack I’m telling you that my underlying belief is that I believe Cele Engi and Ele are too good. Do you think I’m lying

Narcarsis.5739:

P.S. If they nerf sigils other classes will be hit harder than Ele and Engi unless they specifically target Battle/Doom/Intelligence alone.
-Caed

That’s just something we disagree on.. and your stinging disapproval and disappointment in me doesn’t bother me much, lol.

While you blame all the abilities that have been constant through all metas, I think the Bird of Fire’s suggestion of removing Celestial Amulet in PvP would be better for the game than messing with such things. We’ve all observed Ele and Engi being out of the meta while still having the same combination of attacks, and Eles having the same healing coefficients.

How you see that as being out of selfishness, I don’t know. Nerf Cele Engi. Nerf Cele Ele, Nerf Cele Warrior. Nerf Cele

Nerf it.

Pls.

And this argument you’re taking about my thoughts on what needs to be nerfed about Cele being only about my own team’s professions, doesn’t make sense. I am all for toning down Cele. I seriously don’t care about what professions are on top, we will adapt. I don’t like Cele Eles and I have no qualms about playing Rabid if you are actually serious.

Just nerf it intelligently.

insanemaniac.2456:

Chaith.8256:

We can only hope that all after casts get enforced. However, unless there was a patch that introduced this which I don’t know about, it’s been a mechanic since launch. I say on the grounds that years have passed with no statement or actions taken against it, it’s hard to define as unintended.

its like skritt bottles dealing 10% of the targets hp. that laid latent for 2 years until someone happened to try it on a tower wall and the defender complained on the forums. was it unintended? obviously. someone didnt code in an exception or something, and prolly didnt think about all possible targets. would we argue that its intended while its still active on live? of course. not hard to define as unintended.

It’s current status is being looked in to. Unintended vs. working as intended may also be over-simplifying the matter, too. Rarely do introduced mechanics play out exactly as designed, but the developers have to make the decision on whether it’s a negative, or positive for the game.

I personally think that the game would be better off without, but realistically it’ll just stew for a long time in the middle of the pile, as a low priority adjustment, as it has been.

Edit: To elaborate on why I think it’s best to not have this mechanic is because that way the professions can be more balanced at ALL skill levels, because you will only ever see min-maxers who push their profession using stow weapon to squeeze out that healing/auto damage. If the game is balanced top down, that could even slightly disadvantage the professions that can stow weapon effectively at lower skill levels.

Amir.1570:

Guess what though? Perma-vigor and triple cantrips can have a million stun breaks and still deal damage. Triple cantrips has always been that way, easy to play and hard to screw up. And people still defend that crap even today. Just a bunch of low skill players who would be scared to get their easy mode taken away from them.

Amir.1570:

Also, my other point is that a build, such as d/d triple cantrips, that was always stupidly braindead easy shouldn’t have an abuse-able bug that makes it even more broken. There’s nothing hard about 3 stun breaks, mobilty, and permavigor. Super-effefctive too. Yet you’re allowed to use bugs in live stream tournaments?

You repeat yourself on the unsolicited Cantrip rant again, I’m not sure why though considering it’s been one break-stun, not 3, for about about a year and a half.

Ostricheggs.3742:

Phantaram.4816:

It’s not a bug. Not considered by the developers? Sure. But that includes a lot of other stuff in the game too.

People have been using the same exact mechanic since the beginning of the game.

Direct your mad somewhere else and not at the players.

Phanta, I remember you asked grouch if this “trick” was intended or not on a bus in china.

He said it was being looked at.

Please don’t spread lies. There has been nothing similar to this in the game since day one. The level of efficacy for what it does as far as “cancelling” goes is simply ridiculous. If you believe that this bug is intended and is going to stay then you’re dead wrong.

It’s hard to defend it really.

I see where you’re coming from. ‘Being looked at’ isn’t conclusive of anything though, so I think it’s too early to call someone out for spreading lies in saying: “it’s not a bug.”. Nothing has been concluded yet.

We can only hope that all after casts get enforced. However, unless there was a patch that introduced this which I don’t know about, it’s been a mechanic since launch. I say on the grounds that years have passed with no statement or actions taken against it, it’s hard to define as unintended.

You think it’s not going to stay? Good, I don’t know how you can be so sure, but I hope that is the case too.

hihey.1075:

kokiman.2364:

You can basically admit that you exploit a certain mechanic and won’t even get banned?

It was pretty clear from basically every GW2 stream that any “high-level” DD Ele uses the stow weapon trick.

Still, I can easily point out who macros it and who doesn’t. Very few people DO NOT macro it actually. And I think this is an even better reason to look into it.
I don’t think increasing the cast time of Lighting Whip would be a bad thing to do honestly. This way, even if you stow weapons you won’t be able to get the double proc of Signet of Restoration. Watching D/D Eles going back to FULL HP in 4seconds after tanking a crit, Steal+Backstab combo is just ridiculous.

#balance #esports

Very few people do not macro it? This is false in my experience. I don’t know of any Ele who used a macro, especially when all it involves is tapping the stow button at regular intervals – easily done with muscle memory.

I know you like to think you have seen a lot of pixels, and can tell a macro user when you see it, but it’s clear you’re basing your claims on hot air, just to further damage Ele players reputation & create unrest. Not cool man. Nobody needs to macro tapping a single button at average intervals.

Rangelost.4857:

Of course. Players do everything in their power to make the game miserable, but let’s not blame them.

Actually, let’s.

If you find a player exploiting a bug, report both the player and the bug. Do not encourage other players to exploit the bug.

And don’t even think about replying “but everyone does it” or “ArenaNet doesn’t fix anything”. If you cheat to get on a cheater’s level, you deserve the same punishment.

So according to you, Stow Lightning Whip/Spatial Surge/Warhorn abilities makes the game miserable.

And we’re to antagonize/punish the players as we would do to what, teleport hackers or something?

I see where you’re coming from but it just accomplishes nothing and serves the community like I would serve myself by shooting my own foot.

Punishing players for using the stow weapon feature on aftercast heavy abilities… how could Arenanet justify this if they can’t even justify taking steps to close off the obvious loophole in the game’s physics?

Doesn’t make sense at all to take action or direct angst towards players attempting to use their professions at maximum efficiency – without the use of Macros, mods, or otherwise. Do we ban the people who dare jump-dodge on stream next?

tamzooka.5637:

Worst thread ever

This post should get a big “A:” beside it, because it’s the proper answer to the OP.