Guild Wars 2

I see you’ve come over to the Toolkit side. Great.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqalIqiYnvSyF1LJyoCdGoC5lIF5nl95xbxWQIA-ToAAzCuI+S9l7LzXyvsfNWYKC

This is going to be my build.

I’m not going deep firearms.. your build is really close, man. But I think Firearms is just not good enough still.

I’ll still take the new Transmute, and good ol’ Backpack Regenerator, and Speedy Kits. Putting on Nightmare Runes pretty much makes up for the points taken out of Firearms.

I understand 100% Vigor uptime is important. What a lot of people don’t realize is that in team battles, there’s usually a great deal of swiftness flying around. Taking 20pts in Alchemy and Speedy Kits yields a 60% uptime of Vigor, but I’m sure that often we’ll be able to realize 75-80%+ uptime of Vigor in teamfights. I don’t underestimate this change, but I don’t want to knee-jerk my build.

Arkrath.1407:

Build Link:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqel0pyaHwy2F17ISIFS49B6hddXj4HF03DC-jECBYfIofBkKQIM7pIasV1FRjVZDT9iIq2auIa1SBwmyI-w

Hard to tell what I’m looking at here. Hm. Ok. A sustained damage Flamethrower build.

Here’s what I suggest.

• Drop Inventions. You don’t need Power Shoes, and the 15pt Minor won’t even recharge your toolbelt heal, with Med Kit. Throw 10 points into Tools for Speedy Kits, which is still far better than Power Shoes, and take your choice of Protection Injection, or Invigorating Speed. You’ll want that to survive the Hammer Train.

• Might stack well, or don’t might stack at all. Get a Battle Sigil so you get 6 might every time you swap to Med Kit to Proc Enhanced Performance instead of 3. Get better runes – run Hoelbrak runes and -40% condition food to reduce conditions on you by 60% across the board. Or get 2 Altruism, 2 Fire, and 2 Strength runes for insane, perma 25+ might stacks.

You like whatever utilities you like.. I won’t attempt to change those, but this is how I’d play your build after Dec. 10th -

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqyaHwy2F1LJyoCdGoH21dNiiKoffUQfPIA-jUCBYfIofBkEBgKIhZPFRjtCqIasKbYqXER1WzFRrWKAmUGB-w

Silentshoes.1805:

When I look at the weapons for an engi, the conditions seem quite low, compared to a necro, for example.

How does an Engi with condition runes build up all their conditions to kill someone?

Is it fairly slow process? Drawn out fights?

The Key is covering your burns, as condi. If you don’t play with Bombs or Rocket Boots, then P/P is pretty much a must. You simply need a reliable burn and Incendiary Powder, then you can go to town. That’s either 1) Blowtorch, 2) Fire Bomb, or 3) Rocket Kick. Become a ninja at hitting these abilities.

Playing with Nades is pretty key in order to cover all of your conditions properly, too. Get your burn up – Vuln, Bleed, Blind, Chill, Poison. Don’t forget that a pretty decent component of this damage will be power based, too. Even as a condi Engineer you still have 20%+ power damage component. A Staff & Scepter/Dagger Necro’s damage components are like, 95% condition, and 5% power.

My condi build of choice after Dec. 10th patch:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqalIqiYnvSyF1LJyoCdGoC5lIF5nl95xbxWQIA-ToAAzCuI+S9l7LzXyvsfNEZuA

ronpierce.2760:

That’s the thing; I wanted this event to happen post-Dec 10 just because it’ll effectively tone down Hambow, nerf spirit rangers at least a little bit (honestly, it doesn’t seem like it’ll be enough, though to fix the 2v2 Spirit meta), and thieves will be seeing some pretty big changes (not that thieves are OP but it would have certainly affected Caed and Tany’s win). I think our best bet is to just see what happens on the 10th, then re kitten the 2v2 meta then. We can even hold a non-winning event to just bring together some of the 2v2ers to test new comps for 2v2s and to see how old ones function post-changes.

Spirit Ranger needs some larger changes in small scale combat, I agree with you there. But I don’t imagine that the 2v2 Meta will change that much on Tuesday.

You feel that Dec. 10th changes would have affected Caed & Tany’s win? I respectfully disagree.

D/P Thieves won’t be seeing massive changes. D/P Thieves, however; will be seeing some 2v2 buffs. Base Initiative Regen is being buffed 33%, and Kleptomaniac is only being nerfed by (1) initiative regeneration on a steal, and Opportunist is only being nerfed from a 1s ICD to 5s ICD, while doubling the chance to proc it on crit. Those nerfs hardly equate to a 33% difference in base initiative regen.

D/P Thieves in 2v2 will be have significantly more initiative regeneration in periods when they’re playing defensively. Practiced Tolerance is being buffed from 5%-7% vitality conversion as well – in that trait slot, if I remember correctly Caed prefers it. S/D thieves are assuming significantly more risk after Dec. 10th, though. No more poofing out of bad situations every 5 seconds if you catch a CC. No denying that S/D thieves won’t be 2v2 champions.

ronpierce.2760:

MM is almost a necessity in 2v2 because of how terrible Necros are at dealing with CC and cleave. I play it because it allows me to sustain damage and focus on counter-control rather than spending all my time DPSing (hence why a power necro would never survive in a 2v2 match). Additionally, alone, a MM necro is actually terrible in 2v2. They have to build to synergize or the pets just die or aren’t effective enough. The real beast overall I’d say is the spirit ranger. We’d rather play MM Venom share but you pretty much can’t win in 2v2 without spirit raise (assuming the enemy has it), or you have to severely out play the enemy, which with the skill levels on both sides, probably isn’t too likely.

I think that other builds would be possible for Necromancer if the Spirit of Nature’s Removal raise and Sun Spirit damage wasn’t the golden standard for safe damage. My post agrees that Spirit Rangers should be the biggest focus of tightening 2v2 controls.

Edit: We will see on Tuesday, when Spirit Rangers take a 33% reduction in Sun Spirit passive burn duration, and 33% damage reduction to Storm Spirit.

link: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Updated-Nov-6th/first

ronpierce.2760:

This is why I wanted this to wait until after the 10th :S That comp is insane, and its already getting nerfed. But that’s okay! There will be more.

Your comp of Full AI Necro and Full AI Spirit Ranger is much more questionable in 2v2 PvP than the Hambow Warrior.

Build tanky, tunnel vision your survival/revives while Sun-Spirit empowered Minions & Ranger 1 spam eventually bring something down with a constant barrage of burning applications.

The Sun Spirit Passive A.I, the Minion A.I applying burning, and the Ranger 1 skill – you don’t really get a more ‘passive’ and ‘safe’ damage component than that.

I would Rather watch a Hammer/Longbow Warrior in a 2v2 than an A.I Necro. The Warrior is doing active damage, not attempting to milk Sun Spirit, and doesn’t hide all the plays with 5 extra nameplates.

Don’t feel like I’m attacking Minion Necros specifically. We should be up front with the real game ruin-ers in 2v2s, which are Spirit Rangers.. they’re the one facilitating all this passive condi application, passive healing, and ez-reviving.

Team Petting Zoo: A.I Necro/Spirit Ranger
Bubble-Gum-Girls: Hambow/Spirit Ranger.
Joo Binder: Hambow/Spirit Ranger.
Two Good for First: Thief/Spirit Ranger.
My Pet is Playing For Me: Hambow/Spirit Ranger.
Team USA: Mesmer/Spirit Ranger.

Ben & Jerry: Thief/Condi Engi (Elixir R)
You Won’t See It Coming: Thief/Mesmer (Illusion of Life)

I mean, representation in this tourney was as follows, even if it was a small sample size of 16 players:

• 37.50% Spirit Ranger
• 18.75% Hambow Warrior
• 18.75% D/P Thief
• 12.50% Mesmer
• 6.25% Full A.I Necro
• 6.25% Bomb/Nade/R Engineer
• 0% Guardian
• 0% Elementalist

= 100%

Edit:

So, let’s look at commonalities between all these teams to decide what to promote/ban to provide a viewable, active 2v2 tournament.

• 100% Representation of revive utilities in every pair. Some teams opted for double revive utilities. In 2v2 combat, this remained totally mandatory. 6/8 pairs Opted for Spirit of Nature’s Renewal, 1/8 Pairs opted for Elixir R, and 1/8 Pairs opted for Illusion of Life.

• Warrior/Ranger was the most common pairing, coming in at 37.50% of the pairs. There appears to be not a huge amount of synergy between professions – I believe it’s generally that Warrior and Ranger are both extremely self sufficient, tanky, high pressure professions individually.

• Sun Spirit milking pairs came in at 25% representation among the pairs. Mesmer/Spirit Ranger and Full A.I Necro/Spirit Ranger for maximum Sun Spirit procs.

^ Those 3 things are really the only patterns that I find may not be in the best spirit of 2v2. I’m not advocating they all be banned, but I wonder what everyone else thinks of them from a entertainment standpoint.

Silentshoes.1805:

Chaith.8256:

I wonder though, are you more let down that you aren’t getting rated solely on your good plays? Or is it actually the name of the Solo Arena really the thing misleading you?

Like many people, I get frustrated when I see the team I am assigned to not playing a reasonable strategy, and getting their tail kicked. Because I take a hit for something completely outside my control.

As I said, I need to learn the limits of what one person can do to help win.

Indeed, it is an age old problem with rated MMO game types that dates back to the very first pick-up rated game.

Unfortunately, I feel it’s too much a component of MOBAs & MMOs to ever get rid of – unless a next generation game decides they want to design around it. Kind of like what GW2 did with the Holy Trinity.

Thorquist.8126:

In other words… In the future, every simple cof farmer will get hands on everything pvp will have to offer? Because they won’t be obstructed by glory anymore. Or will there be any constrain?

No. This vendor that requires gold and glory is going away when the actual progression system comes out. Then you will have to PvP for unknown reasons to get the gear.

Sure you could construe it as misleading. But never has it been directly implied that you are being rated on your sole performance. It’s a 5v5 game type in GW2. Since this is up front with the player, it’s more implied that you will have to share the performance rating with your chosen teammates. Cooperating / carrying with your teammates is a big part of what your abilities are being rated on.

I wonder though, are you more let down that you aren’t getting rated solely on your good plays? Or is it actually the name of the Solo Arena really the thing misleading you?

So let’s be honest here, unless you were the only person on your team, how could you possibly be surprised that yes, your teammates affect your performance? Do you think that this is any different in the Solo Queues in League of Legends, SMITE, or any other PvP game? Yes, indeed, you can be in ‘rating hell’ if you keep getting matched with teammates you can’t carry, despite you perceiving yourself as being above that rating.

Not to worry, other players will come to the same realization as you have, which is that there is only a proportion of the outcome you can affect in 5v5 modes. And when players quickly/instantly realize this, there won’t be a huge reason to change the name to ‘random arena’ – I think that’s even more ambiguous. Is the map Random? Does this feature use MMR or are is the matchmaking random?

No point in nit-picking the name, imo.

Singer.8740:

Portable launch pads.

You can place 3x launch pads that you and ally’s can use to launch yourself between them.

So much win. But I feel it could get really annoying, and it would open up a lot of vertical movement exploits. “And the freaking Engineer put a bunch of jump pads all around the NPC we were trying to talk to!” LOL

RaynStargaze.6510:

Darnis.4056:

Even Fivegauge was condie last time I saw him..

Thats because power engi is kitten!

I’ve said this before, but honestly, right now I am skeptical of a ‘power’ or ‘condition’ meta. Right now we play in a ‘safety’ meta. Everyone who’s playing to win is running the safest builds possible that are resilient to conditions, burst, and have a healthy number of tools to revive/sustain your group. Power or Condition damage is irrelevant! Whatever’s a more complete build – teams have no reason to stack one or the other.

- Soldier’s Amulet Warrior(s), one usually with a Banner.
- Settlers Amulet Ranger(s), Spirits of Nature’s Renewal are ever present in teamfights.
- High Avoidance Thieves. I find thieves to be fine, especially after Dec. 10th. Requires a really good understanding of mechanics to actually be survivable.
- Clerics/Soldiers Bunker. Pretty much immortalized for Resolute Healer trait among other support, and reviving/stomping utility.

In regards to your comments about Power Engies, I’ll concede you need to be very focused to get the bang out of a Power Engineer you need. It’s user unfriendly for 2 things:

• You absolutely never go on auto-pilot with your damaging abilities. (Popular Necro, Ranger, Warrior abilities). Net Shot and Magnet are extremely unreliable, glitchy mechanics that you have to set up hitting your simplest basic attacks. Hip Shot is exempt from this rule (thank god.)

• Your survival as a berserker Engi is below average. Berserker Thieves, Warriors, Mesmers have better tools to deal with pressure, Power Engies have to GTFO when pressured. It’s a unique playstyle, but routinely is quite effective. The problem for beginners is that they have to focus on connecting with damaging abilities while focusing on GTFO’ing. Counter pressure as a Power Engi is hard.

Nobody’s denying that Power Engineer is flawless, otherwise you’d cross paths with more of them. But how well you overcome the disadvantages leads to how often you can do what Power Engies are good at: Insane downed body cleave, and the most lethal CC chains for when your team is backing you. A Power Engi with Slick Shoes can move a target from 1200 distance and start a CC chain that won’t stop until the target’s dead.

So, that’s the whole picture as I see it. Power Engies aren’t on ‘safety’ mode like most popular classes are, right now. You have to enjoy a little bit of risk and vulnerability, and playing a cautious way. If Engies had mechanics to deal slightly better damage while running Soldiers, it’d be different. And also what I like about Power Engi would be gone.

Are Power Engies ‘kitten?’

http://imgur.com/hD80s7f

Cero.5132:

How about we remove Coated Bullets as a trait, make pistols pierce by default and instead create a trait that makes pistol´s explosions actually an explosion that works with traits like shrapnel etc?

Also a good idea. That way Firearms Engineers don’t have to take a really bad trait in the Explosives Adept in order to get to Incendiary Powder.

I think that would successfully make Coated Bullets a far worse trait than it currently is. I didn’t think that was possible, lol.

How about Coated Bullets causes pistol shots to pierce, and increases the base condition duration on pistol abilities by 1 second.

BOOM (I’m so punny, didn’t even mean to do that), the Pistolier builds are back. 3s Explosive Shot, base, 3s Poison Darts, base, 3-7s Blowtorch, base, 2s Glue Shot, base.

^My favorite part about that idea is that Glue Shot and Explosive Shot would actually not be 100% forgettable.

Thedenofsin.7340:

To your second point: if team “A” swaps out against team “B” and wipes them, the only impact this would have is to marginally increase (if at all) the MMR of the professions that actually played the match, as opposed to the ones that queued for the match.

So basically, you’re saying for the team that was the victim of an exploit causing them to face opponents much better than them, don’t worry – they didn’t get much of an MMR gain?

You have to consider the public interest and well being at large when deciding the right standards.

Caffynated.5713:

This has to be a joke. You’re giving warrior MORE invulnerability? You’re giving eles a 3rd arcane damage skill to add to their all in burst? You’re giving phantasm condi bunkers a passive heal?

Does ANet even play this game? Seriously, everything you do is WRONG.

Healing Signet is a lot harder to deal with. It literally never stops. Defiant Stance is going to be a really short window where you do negative damage to the Warrior, cool fact, that allows you to stop dealing damage and stunt his healing. I doubt it’ll get much play over the OP healing signet that’s too good to activate in any circumstance.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Justin ODell.9517:

3) I’ve pitched the idea internally of having two MMRs, one account bound and the other per profession. Does any one have an opinion on this?

Does profession-bound MMR even need to be discussed? It’s obvious that’s the optimal solution. Why account-bound MMR exists in the first place is beyond me.

Easy there, sparky. I think there are definitely things to discuss.

@ Justin O’Dell, my opinions on profession based MMR

• 1) In GW2, it’s extremely easy to multi-class and have all of those classes at, or around your proper MMR. This isn’t a gear based MMO where your alts are all in poverty/welfare gear and you’re fighting an uphill battle. In conquest, mastering the specific profession’s mechanical skills are certainly important, however, skills such as cooldown management, proper rotations, and many of the ‘winning determinants’ are profession independent.

• 2) Deceptive MMR. 5 people get on professions that they’ve never played before and queue for team queue. They get matched up with the appropriately matched team, at their MMR level. Those 5 people then get on their mains and proceed to demolish opposing team with legitimately less MMR. For this to be a thing, you’d have to profession lock when queuing. And I don’t want that – I want to be able to make different picks if needed.

There are a few more minor issues, but these are my biggest two, in regards to profession based MMR. Especially my #2. But hey, if profession MMR was weighted very low, I would never say that diversifying the MMR determinants – effectively reducing the margin of matchmaking error could be bad.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Justin ODell.9517:

Laserbolt.6731:

Though some pretty dedicated, good players who are struggling down in the “percentages” might disagree about how good the matchmaking can be right now.

In every instance I’ve investigated players are being matched very well as far as MMR spread is concerned. You don’t need to carry a team, you just need to provide enough of an advantage to win. The other team is in the same boat with the same chance at team composition.

So you’re basically saying the system can make either team suck because it doesn’t have a line of code that can differentiate between a player with 100 hours in pvp vs 1 with 1 hours.

Great….

Hours in PvP? I’d say that metric is only valuable if your hours in PvP is less than 10. Until you figure out what conquest is, I think it’s a poor indicator of MMR.

Wolf.5816:

I feel there’s a lot of confusion pertaining to this skill, this isn’t an activated Heal, it will simply heal you automatically when your health drops to 1% either via condition or attack. Essentially you -will- not be able to be stopped when it procs. That is, if this is the actual skill being granted to us on December 10th.

So consider it a watered down Warriors Healing Signet that instantly activates putting itself on Cooldown when your health reaches 1%.

As long as it is off Cooldown, you -cannot- die.

Lol, no. There’s no way AED is not going to require the player to use it.

• It ‘lasts’ for 4 seconds. You put it up by activating it, and you have 4 seconds to die before it heals you a good amount. Not activating it makes you dead as hell. But we’ll find out for sure on Tuesday.

The new heals introduced aren’t even passive to the point of ‘never’ being activated, like the Healing Signet is. The new Guard & Necromancer heal? You will have to activate them and maximize them to survive – which can be countered by your foe simply not standing there like a training dummy. I think it’s too early on counting on the new Ranger heal to be a big PvP mainstay as well. Wait until next week until they actually get released before we talk about how to fix them.

Pizz.3698:

Chaith.8256:

I’m really worried that this heal will be often useless. In PvE, I can see myself needing Med Kit for fury/might stacking or Healing Turret for support. In PvP, there needs to be a certain level of condition removal. With a non-elixir heal, how are you supposed to get any condition damage? Can’t rely on Elixirs/Cleansing Elixir 409 that won’t fit in the build, and you can’t run Healing Turret as well.

If you equip this thing, you basically have a Mesmer level of Condition Removal, but none of the avoidance. Yikes.. it had better be really powerful.

The point of this heal is to let whoever’s attacking you get you down to 1% for the extra healing, so you’d only need condition removal if they target isnt dead after that 4 seconds (assuming you dont trigger it early) if not you could always carry Elixir C or trait for automated response.

inb4 Engi OP QQ threads

If you ran Elixir C and Automated Response you aren’t dying, remember. The strength of this setup is that your health is frozen between 0-25% and it’s very unpredictable when you’re going to actually die – Using AED would be a nightmare.

We’ll see how it pans out, but mark my words (lol), not a decent build will be able to run this in PvP.

I’m really worried that this heal will be often useless. In PvE, I can see myself needing Med Kit for fury/might stacking or Healing Turret for support. In PvP, there needs to be a certain level of condition removal. With a non-elixir heal, how are you supposed to get any condition damage? Can’t rely on Elixirs/Cleansing Elixir 409 that won’t fit in the build, and you can’t run Healing Turret as well.

If you equip this thing, you basically have a Mesmer level of Condition Removal, but none of the avoidance. Yikes.. it had better be really powerful.

Fury of Balthazar.2694:

Chaith.8256:

in Winter/Spring 2014.

lol good one

I could be wrong, I’m not trying to spout my opinion as fact. I sincerely doubt it’s going to take until next Summer .. but I kinda wish I didn’t speculate at all, now. Haha.

Save up some glory and buy all the sexiest rewards on Dec. 10th. This vendor will be in place until the complete overhaul comes, in Winter/Spring 2014.

Continue to have fun doing what you were doing. There hasn’t really been any explicit reward for PvP for quite some time now, after you’ve filled your PvP locker up in the first 2 months after launch.

gesho.9468:

Chaith.8256:

I don’t remember the last western MMO I’ve played without a Health & Resource bar on enemy nameplate, actually. I don’t think many people consider endurance to be ‘cooldown status’, to be honest.

it (endurance) is certainly not health/resource type asset. if anything, its much more close to a cooldown/resource on one certain spell (dodge).

It clearly has attributes of both. It’s like a resource in these ways:

• It’s presented like a common resource – being attached to the health bar and present on every character.
• It’s transient. It goes up and down very fast like traditional MMO’s ‘energy’ mechanics.
• It’s regeneration can be decreased by the condition, Weakness. Chill saps the recharge of cooldowns.
• It gets ‘regenerated’ as opposed to ‘comes of cooldown’.
• It has no explicit cooldown. You have to do many calculations and factor lots of transient boon uptimes & unknown variables in order to know the cooldown in seconds.

It’s like a cooldown in these ways:

• It can only be used for dodges, currently. (That would be a highly interesting mechanic to explore, ie: abilities expending endurance in order to fire.) The only thing that consumes this resource is a dodge.

alcopaul.2156:

Dodge is one of the good things that they added in this game. For in GW1, you will surely get hit by any kitten once youre locked and focused. the only way to negate that is by evasion/blocking which is basically negating damage without doing anything but clicking a skill. Dodging promotes spatial awareness and timing. You don’t have that in GW1. Endurance mechanics is ok and it should not be visible to other people how you manage your endurance or how is it filled or not. It will make things not predictable and formulaic.

For sure. Dodging is awesome, truly a great addition to the genre.

RoRo.8270:

Dat team balance

Sounds like troll comps.

Sure sign of a troll comp

• 1) Top right image – the team with 4 Warriors gets demolished 55-500
• 2) Bottom left image – the team with 5 Thieves and lots of kills loses 485-500.

Dey see we trollin’ .. dey postin .. the pics on .. threads in the sPvP forum

ronpierce.2760:

Belldandy.7284:

Low rank players keeping on capping then leaving the cap resulting to a fail team work because they still realized that getting a Personal highscore means that they are the best. This is why I hate mixing low ranks to those high rank players.

They need to just do away with those points so they stop getting mixed messages, to be perfectly blunt. Since they don’t matter anyways, just add new, comparable statistics.

Yep. The scoring metrics of ‘points earned’ given in the games cause more misinformation and ‘bad’ plays then they do ‘good’. In hotjoin I personally would like to see K/D/A information, as well as damage taken & caused. I feel like hotjoin is extremely casual, no-strings-attached mash up between conquest and a slug-fest. I feel that in it’s current iteration, Hotjoin is designed to improve player’s mechanical skill over time, not the player’s conquest skills directly.

In tournaments, I’m sure there should be scoring metrics that are more relevant to pure Conquest playstyle – “Revives, Stomps, Interrupts, Decaps, Secondary mechanic performance, Time spent on a friendly point” ETC.

Ezrael.6859:

What’s the line all the Necros keep posting on the forums?

“We’re not in a condition meta”

…

We’re not in a condition Meta.. we’re in a ‘low risk’ meta.

Tanky Support Guard. Clerics Amulet.

Tanky Hambow Warrior x2. Soldier’s Amulet.

Un-Focusable S/D Thief (Until Dec.10th).

Tanky Spirit Ranger. Settlers Amulet.

^This is the face of the current ‘low risk’ meta, in competitive tPvP.

The next popular professions in descending order:

Right now it’s not as favorable for trainable Necromancers, but very do-able of course, Necromancers are still chock full of amazingly broken goodness making them a popular secondary choice. You can run Engineer if you are, mechanically, a good player at escaping death – or become proficient at being the zerg target while running a Tanky Engineer. Engies are in a pretty balanced spot right now. Mesmers are not in a favorable position either, but do-able if you can find some way to deal with the S/D Thief. You currently can’t run Ele and get away with it. Between the S/D Thief and the Warrior Pin Downs, your Ele’s butt is done like dinner.

So yeah, there isn’t much of a bias towards condition damage as implied by a ‘condition meta’. That meta died when Hambow warriors started replacing some of the double Necros and double Spirit Ranger comps.

It’s all about playing a super safe build that nobody can easily train, while punishing the teams that don’t conform to this rule. IE: Train the Necro/Mesmer/Ele/Engi to the ends of the earth!!!!!!!!

Hilarious profession representation indeed. To be honest though, I’m really not surprised the side with 3 necros got pooped on. That’s a terrible comp to face 2+ power CC builds.

Other than that, though, what are you really sarcastically thanking A-Net for?

From a 350-500 match it’s obvious that you weren’t getting steamrolled and spawn camped every single fight. You should be making a sarcastic thank-you thread to A-net if you’re winning 500-0 or losing 0-500.

Judging from what information I have available it seems the SoloQ system in your case has worked fine, and the better team won?

I mean, I wish the system could guarantee every game would be 500-499, but whether the players are on their game or not is a huge variable. Savor the 350-500 games, they’re far from the worst..

cymerdown.4103:

Smiley.5376:

I think the best way to implement gold rewards in spvp would be based on the point difference.

The bigger the difference, the more points for the winners and less for the losers.

Example for TeamQ:

A bigger difference in points will then also become a bigger difference in gold reward.(2g & 1g) + 50s for the winners
When the difference in points is smaller, the gold rewards will be closer together.(1.70g & 1.30g) + 50s for the winners

This is a reasonable idea, although I think you still want -some- reward for losing in blowout fashion, even if it’s really low. For instance, let’s say you play Team Arena late and night and get mismatched against an all-star team. Not only is it not fun to get mismatched like that, but now you also get no rewards because they face-rolled you 500-0… not very encouraging. I also think it needs to be tied somewhat to your personal effort, because let’s say you AFK in Solo Queue and your team 4v5s and wins. You shouldn’t be rewarded for their efforts — there should be something there that notices you get 0 points and penalizes you for that.

I agree.. I think that a significant amount of deaths should qualify a player for rewards. It’s reality that some players will try their best and get 0 points when matched up against a very strong team.

The problem I can see with that is players that are set to AFK auto-run out of spawn and repeatedly dying, then getting a prize. I don’t want to have to explain to everybody: “Don’t touch the free kills auto-running into the walls, it’s only rewarding them!”

gesho.9468:

its very unusual for video game to give access to enemy’s inner status. cooldown status, etc. that’s players job to tracks.

I don’t remember the last western MMO I’ve played without a Health & Resource bar on enemy nameplate, actually. I don’t think many people consider endurance to be ‘cooldown status’, to be honest.

HELLruler.4820:

The only resource we have now are the points. Capturing, killing, reviving, and doing objectives gives you points
So if your teammates have around 80-100 and you still have 20-30, you are not doing well

They’re not doing well if they only have 20-30 pts? That’s a wrong assumption on so many levels. Points have never been indicative of ‘doing well’, and now they don’t equate to rewards so they don’t have any meaning at all.

I dare you to load into a PvP match tell the a point assaulter or the mid bunker with the lowest points that you think they are not performing well, and maybe they should seek some PvP tutorials. The stream of profanity directed at you would be so immense, I think you’d rethink ‘points’ indicating how well you’re doing, lol.

Basharic.1654:

I sense a touch of irony after getting to the bottom of that post.

Regarding the thread topic, the unpredictability of what the other guys is gonna do is half the fun. Figure it as best you can and take your shot. You know . . . like combat?

No one likes randomness because dealing with randomness is difficult, but it exists to emulate the uncertainty in RL combat. If you want predictability go to PvE.

Right now we have a nice balance of knowing what the profession you face can do, but not necessarily knowing what they WILL do. This is a good thing because it forces us to learn the player in the seat in tandem with the profession on the screen with a little luck thrown in. That is what makes PvP way more fun than PvE. Why on Earth would you want to take that away?

I don’t agree. When I bait 2 dodges and go in for the bursties, I don’t find it fun when the Guardian/Mesmer opts in for a triple roll. I find that infuriating. When I want Elixir X to give me Rampage, and I get Tornado – which seals my doom, I find that infuriating. When I wanted the old Toss Elixir S to give me invisibility, and it gave me stability – causing my death, I found that infuriating.

I think the ideal PvP environment which you visualize that’s full of surprises and counter-plays is pretty far from the reality of how Energy Sigils are used to throw a bit more random blanket avoidance in the mix.

For everyone in this thread saying Signet of Spite is only useful for condition focused builds, I respect that, and you’re entitled to your opinion, even it’s wrong. (Just teasing.)

But really though, take a closer look at Signet of Spite.

Passive: 180 power. Better for Power build.
Damage: Hits about as hard as Necro Staff #1. Scales with Power.
Blind: Not affected by condition damage.
Cripple: Not affected by condition damage.
Vuln: Not affected by condition damage.
Weakness: Not affected by condition damage.

Now here’s where it pays to be in a condition build:

(2)Bleed: Scales with condition damage.
Poison: Scales with condition damage.

So let’s be real here, a Necro who’s power or conditions, with 30pts in spite for similar duration is going to be just as threatening. There’s not much of an opportunity to scale it with power, or condition damage tbh.

HELLruler.4820:

Not even that, but players start demanding more and more from others. Play a MOBA and see the “blame game” when a team is losing.

It seems pretty difficult to play the blame game in GW2 without any kind of performance indicators. In MOBAS you get information like K/D/A ratios, total resources acquired, damage done, damage taken, etc.

As an MMO developer, do you purposely withhold information from the playerbase so people don’t get petty over the Ele on your team going 0-9 and doing no damage?

As they would say, it’s a slippery slope. But the line needs to be drawn somewhere. I think that damage taken & damage received would be welcome metrics. Not so much K/D/A stats for conquest, though.

Phaeton.9582:

Chaith.8256:

I don’t see that as being really possible.

Account bound is about as transferable as they can make it. For this to work, you’d have to be able to ‘gift’ the Tomes of Knowledge to people, and that seems like something that Arenanet totally didn’t intend, and would probably have more harmful exploits than helpful consolidation to multi-account users.

Yeah this is working on the assumption that the tomes won’t be the only reward offered ultimately for glory (understand why they would be account bound to avoid P2W in PvE – TMA I know!)

I am not certain if the Tomes of Knowledge will stick around, once the new reward system is in place. Without the Glory component, why would Arenanet allow players to directly buy levels for gold and bypass PvE, WvW and PvP?

Personally, I think that the new Glory Vendors on the 10th that will sell items that cost Glory and Gold will be disappearing after players have a chance to spend their Glory, so it can be properly phased out. This time period will be from Dec. 10th to whenever the rewards system comes out.

If anyone has any info to the contrary, I would like to hear.

I don’t see that as being really possible.

Account bound is about as transferable as they can make it. For this to work, you’d have to be able to ‘gift’ the Tomes of Knowledge to people, and that seems like something that Arenanet totally didn’t intend, and would probably have more harmful exploits than helpful consolidation to multi-account users.

ronpierce.2760:

Chaith.8256:

Jackums.3496:

No single skill should apply this many conditions. Even if it can be dodged in a 1v1, in a group fight, it’s almost impossible to watch out for while focusing on multiple enemies. I can understand something like Corrupt Boon “applying” a potentially large stack of conditions, but it requires your target to have the corresponding boons in place. Signet of Spite has no such requirements and its conditions have ridiculously long durations.

I agree that the base durations are a bit over the top.. same with corrupt boon. If you don’t have the option to dodge this, perhaps invest in some Lyssa runes or other means of dealing with a stack of conditions.

Corrupt boon was all we had against Lyssa and it doesn’t even hit stability anymore. CB is in a terrible state right now, don’t nerf it more! I’m not sure anyone even runs it anymore. :/

I think it’s a more inherent problem with Lyssa runes rather than Corrupt Boon .. I still see Corrupt Boon getting a decent amount of play. More than I can say for Corrosive Poison Cloud, haha.

JonPeters.5630:

I’m not sure how you interpreted my saying clutter is currently ok?

I did re-read your original post and I see you were saying you feel there was a success in keeping a de-cluttered UI, not a de-cluttered PvP landscape in general, like how I interpreted it. My apologies.

Jackums.3496:

No single skill should apply this many conditions. Even if it can be dodged in a 1v1, in a group fight, it’s almost impossible to watch out for while focusing on multiple enemies. I can understand something like Corrupt Boon “applying” a potentially large stack of conditions, but it requires your target to have the corresponding boons in place. Signet of Spite has no such requirements and its conditions have ridiculously long durations.

I agree that the base durations are a bit over the top.. same with corrupt boon. If you don’t have the option to dodge this, perhaps invest in some Lyssa runes or other means of dealing with a stack of conditions.

Let it die already.. what makes you guys think that everyone agrees we should spend effort tracking and rolling people’s rank back who participated in this?

You can’t exploit the current system for rapid rank point gains, as far as I’ve observed, so let’s just keep moving forward.

apt.9184:

Signet of Spite is the one of the most broken skills in the game imo. A range skill 0.75 sec cast time with little tele to it that puts basically puts all the condis in the game on you. I would not mind it that much if the cripple on it only lasted like 3-4 seconds not 10 whole seconds…..
That cripple also gives them so much more time to spam there scepter one which has no travel time and puts at least 4 condis that basically take half your health bar due to passive traits (since we need more passives in the game…). Also a 10 sec weakness.. really? Weakness hard counters dps builds. Necros really need to be looked at I would not mind it as much if there was some travel time to some of there skills, so I could actually dodge there kitten. Also the amount of condi transfers they have right now are ridiculous.

There was a recent update that put the bright green-yellow ‘Signet’ graphic appearing above the necromancer’s head occur when the skill starts activating, as opposed to the graphic happening when it actually hits.

This means that it’s like every .75 telegraphed skill now, as soon as you see the prompt, dodge, and it’s very easy to overcome. If you didn’t know they changed the graphic, then it should be like night and day for you to dodge it now, gl.

Ryan.9387:

Darnis.4056:

Hi Jon!
I’ll have to agree with 5G;
It’s hilarious to talk about Clutter when minionmancers/spiritrangers/Phantasms mesmers see play. PETTING ZOO META!

It would not be clutter if you could only see the endurance bar of one guy that you have targeted. Still I would much rather see Casting bars; or both.

Could just watch and internalize the evade bar.

" He dodged, he dodged again, no more endurance. SPIKE NOW"

The problem with this is the fact that Energy Sigils exist, endurance levels are very transient and no, it’s not reliable information to count dodges or see the endurance bar atm until that’s changed.

Gracious.4279:

hey, this is me female mind games.

If you know me chances are you either actually know me or you have a ginormous amount of hate towards me. I just wanna make this thread to say that Im addicted to guild wars pretty badly, and openly admit that. Im not new to getting trolled, or trolling others for that matter. But I just wanna make it clear that I do not at all run an OP mesmer build, contrary to very popular belief..

I understand hate towards mesmer because of clones and how much an advantage that aspect gives them. But if you think Im just a cheesy mesmer, let me explain what I have been running in all forms of pvp, for about 10 months now.

basic shatter build 20/20/0/0/30 main focus being to rupt skills for more damage, and plenty crit damage to go along with fury on phantasms and increased chance crit on mind wrack. I use GS, sword/pistol.

My utilities are Arcane Thievery, Blink, and Portal. I use Mass invis mostly, as my elite.

I wanna see some of you pro mesmers out there try running arcane thievery and then call me a cheesy mesmer, when 80% of mesmers are running decoy, veil, blink, and mass invis with buffs on stealth.

Im just tired of all the unconditional hate… can we please all just cool out? I wanna play at least 2 matches of hotjoin or tournies without someone hate mailing me. The only thing thats gonna happen is I send all your condis back to you in a 1v1, you die and get mad calling me a cheesy mesmer. Also, portaling out from a 3v1 to backcap is a good play, ask the best mesmer themself, Legend Supcutie.

Does anyone else use Arcane Thievery?

Why do you love yourself so much? Why are you making self-titled thread, implying the gw2 community has any popular opinions about ‘Female Mind Games’ the Mesmer? Addressing the haters? Why did you attempt to change the topic of the thread to Mesmer Utilities when it’s clearly about your e-fame, lol?

JonPeters.5630:

• UI: We want a glance at an enemy to provide the most important information possible and not be full of clutter. You can see first hand (skill effects) how clutter can detract from a game and this was one area where I think we succeeded in keeping clutter down. If we show endurance, what else do we want to show and how slippery is that slope.

I think it’s too early to declare the war on clutter a success, Jon.

^34s into video Observe the clutter in this competitive 2v2 Tournament Match. The plays? Buried.

^Observe Arken’s priceless reaction to the Pax 2013 Finals.

It’s not favorable or even fair for players or tournament organizers to outlaw multiple A.I builds in competitive matches, so the viewers of this game and the players don’t have to wade through 15-19 enemy nameplates instead of 5-7.

JonPeters.5630:

snip snp

• Technically: We want to limit the amount of information that your computer needs to have in order to play the game.
• Design: Once you start considering these two elements design comes in and has to make judgement calls about what is important. We have to weigh all UI clutter and other screen clutter, not just health only vs health + endurance.

-Jon

But back on topic, in regards to the reasons why showing endurance bars as information for players, and why this visible endurance bar would not be ‘high quality information’ I find this to be upsetting.

Whether the player is counting dodges, or is seeing an enemy endurance bar – if the enemy’s endurance can often spike, this makes the information quality low. Like I said, the player’s in the dark whether he’s imagining the enemy endurance bar or visually seeing it.

Whether the player can see the endurance bar or not, the things that make the enemy’s dodging resources completely unknown to the attacker, that also most often get used for random dodges more than not, seem negative to the game.

Outside abilities like Elixir R and Signet of Agility, which have significant cooldowns and should rightfully do what they do, I’d say that the Energy Sigil accounts for about 95% of the remaining bursts in Endurance that make the information about the player’s endurance bar volatile and of low information quality.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endurance

^As you can see, there’s nothing that makes the information quality of the endurance bar ‘low’ other than Elixir R, Signet of Agility, and Energy Sigils. (Runes of the Adventure underpowered, and Sigil of Stamina only usable in zergs.)

This leads me to my main point that if Energy Sigils granted 10% endurance regen each second for 5 seconds, or a similar change, the information quality of ‘Enemy Endurance Bar’ would be high.

As you maybe can tell from my position on the things above, I am definitely pro visible endurance bar. I think with minor tweaks, it will be a huge reduction (improvement) to the amount of intuitive guess-work and a reduction of the high learning curve for new players. At the same time, this is going to expose players that don’t manage their resources well, and the exposing of their bad plays will make it easier for players to smell it and punish them.

Jon, I think your priorities are bang on for what criteria that new implementations to the game must meet. If the bandwidth and computer needs can be accommodated (I can’t comment on that), visible endurance will definitely help players to make better informed decisions and cut down on the chaos. If Sigil of Energy could be altered as to significantly reduce how transient the endurance bar is, that would be even better.

Rednik.3809:

WTB client switch to all-human/norn male models with starter gear.
/thread

Wha? What’s your angle? Haha. Why do you want to see everything in starter gear :P. If you’re worried about PvP animation equality – once Asura’s size gets PvP normalized, with the ‘Team Colors" option available, there’ll be nothing preventing you from having your pong-balanced-experience.

shimmerless.4560:

Last version looks like an MGS villain 0___0 -likes-

Metal Gear Solid? What villain?

Hey guys,

I discovered something pretty cool that I wanted to share with the community! As many have noticed, occasionally there have been players that randomly sprout their Legendary Aura from having a Legendary weapon equipped in the PvE/WvW world.

It seems to be triggered on ‘transforms’, I’ve seen it get activated on death too – after being hard-revived. Here’s what I’m talking about:

http://imgur.com/9rUwwoO

^Here it is.

I learned that you can actually build up the Aura to transform into an even meaner looking dude.

http://imgur.com/wkIwDoP

^This isn’t even my final form.

But wait, there’s more. Eventually you build it up so pretty much radiate the light of 10,000 suns.

http://imgur.com/UxTj5Di

^This is my final form. Enjoy, haha. Maybe the grind would almost be worth it?

http://www.twitch.tv/chaithh/c/3323960

clint.5681:

How about you wait to the blog post comes out next week and stop jumping the gun.

tdopun.7439:

Sweetest combo for duels.

Tool kit shield (to get close range) -> Slick shoes (draw a tight circle around your foe) -> drop supply crate on their face -> Prep yourself for the following conversation: “Engineers are OP because ____” (aka: QQ’ing)

Lol, true. Let me add to this a bit.

Don’t just activate slick shoes if you don’t have a CC on your enemy. Real high chance that he will literally just move away.. and not get hit at all by your slick shoes.

Use Net Shot first, or Magnet (my favorite) first. Make repeated tight circles around your enemy, while you’re doing damage. While unloading your damage on him, crate in the last couple seconds if you’re also mad.