Guild Wars 2

Good replies. I won’t think about how cluster bombing is not fun. I won’t think about 12% of box sales were in E.U and N.A combined. The european community righteously thinks it owns the game, they don’t stop to think 88% of gw2 owners lay outside of those area’s and don’t feel like playing at 4 am when most northern hemisphere countries are awake. As much as I like the idea of Tpvp, unfortunately 88% of us play on, what I like to call a world clock. I will simply close my eyes to the disturbing amount of particle haze and the odd tree that completely obscures my camera. I’ll ignore out of 8 professions that 5 of them are ranged and all have anti melee skills flowing like water from a fountain. I’ll turn a blind eye to bugged maps and gap closing skills that fire me in the wrong direction. I’ll smile at the excess of vigor and evading for immunity frames. I’ll scratch my head at why I’ve personally seen population numbers dramatically drop over the year..there must have been something good on tv or something.

Spvp is in the game. It was put there along side PvE and Tpvp..I can hotjoin instantly or wait for up to 15 minues for a single tpvp match, where I may get team destroy or pug team I don’t really know what I am doing. If it is in the game, either balance it or scrap it in favour of something that is more controlled, but to leave it, like i said, feeling like 8 pounds in a 5 pound bag is contrary to too many original promises, hopes and desires stated. To simply ignore the entire spvp aspect and expect player to rent server space for 50 euro a month so they can organise more matches that have less issues doesn’t feel like a true fix. More damage will come from good. I’d rather see something good so players will still be here 4 years from now as they are in gw1 8 years after release.

Renewed focus fails to reset all virtues at times. It seems highly likely to happen if you weapon swap while it is channeling.

Guardian leap of faith often leaps backwards away from target, or will rubberband horribly mid jump.

I understand balancing a game that has thousands and thousands of lines of code is not easy work. I understand, Like an job the staff do their best and have challenges regarding time frames, resources and all manner of things. I also understand this game was pitched at me near 4 years ago in gw1. It came with the cause, “It’s ready when it ready.”

I love you guys, and only people with a guild wars account can see this..but I hope this truly demonstrates the frustration a player can feel. I really do wanna play this game. ..but at times it’s like the game doesn’t want me to play..it just feels like 8 pounds squeezed into a 5 pound bag.

I understand your doing your best, and I would help if could, however I am not skilled in anyway to assist..the best I do is just give feedback with evidence so you know what the community is saying is actually real.

Regards.

I quite like this one to. Picked a side, started..got trapped in starting WP on my enemies side and then just fell through into water below. I spent the rest of the match leisurely swimming round and checking out what the map looks like from under neath.

I think we’ve all been here before, burst down in 4 seconds…why..because rewened focused didn’t work. (It is currently a listed bugged in the 720 pages of bugs. The good ol’ video card render particle haze collapse. Still though, only number 3 on my list.

I really like this one as well…7 players against 3..and that counts the guy on my team wearing no armour or weapons. Truly pvp a person can take serious.

To give an idea of what the pvp community is truly upset about.

I really like this first frame. In fact, that is why I put it number one of my picks. Half the team owned so bad they just gave up.

Play guardian. See how you like it then. All the defense in the world, but can’t kill a thing because it has been decided for you, that with that much defense your not allowed power.

Dirame.8521:

I talked about initiative affecting chill once. The retort I got was that the initiative used is shared between weapons therefore they would be doubly screwed if Chill affected their weapon skills.

I don’t agree with the Aegis change. I think it’s fine as is since there are multiple ways to apply it as well as multiple ways to block that doesn’t involve Aegis.

The regeneration change you suggest is nice. Similar to my suggestion only that I asked for boost to regen per unique condition applied. I also asked for Weakness to affect conditions, dropping the Malice stat down by 20% or reducing the duration of conditions you apply by 20%

Aegis has Multiple ways to be applied?..there is a few very limited ways. You make it sound like it is ubiquitous. It isn’t.

Retaliation is unfortunately too important to guardians. They move slow, attack slow, completely advertise their skills, their leap finishers and gap closers have a 70% chance of rubber banding or taking you in the wrong direction. Their signets are below average and slow firing, their ranged attacks are easily out walked, their meditations do drastically low damage in relationships to their cool downs, their consecrations are hugely expensive to use in terms of cool downs are not well designed, their spirit weapons do below average damage and sit on long cool downs with how quickly they can be destroyed (They’re also able to be conditioned.) To reduce retail would equate to nothing less than the guardian may have a chance if they stand still and so do their opponents. Play guardian for 150+ hours and see if I’m not wrong. They need retaliation so their slow moving, acting selves at least can post some form of damage.

second image of bugged map

Entering the map I got trapped on started point.
Then fell through map and landed in water I couldn’t get out of.

Agreed the hate is justified..in a node fight as a melee player I have a screen shot of me having 18 bleeds, 5 seconds of chilled, 9 torment, fear, poisoned, 14 stacks of invulnerability, blind and crippled. What makes it funny is that it was a 4 vs 4 map and 3 of the opposition were necro’s. If you can’t be bothered to do the math..i had 49 conditions either stacked or unique on me. For a melee player to hold the node or capture it, they must be in and they can’t fire out..for necro’s they can be in and not target anyone specific,..just place in and around the node. When in numbers they become too dominant.

Currently if a melee profession tries to attack my guardian/ranger/warrior/mesmer they can use retaliation or blocks that will cause some form of damage back or benefit. The condition spam classes have no down side to conditions. If, let’s say my guardians smite condition scales with conditions, and does 500 dmg for each condition suffered, from the above example I would cause 24,ooo dmg to anyone within 600 units of me. However it doesn’t scale, I will cause 800 dmg and that is it. This dmg can be mitigated by evading or toughness. This is the current problem with condition spam, it has no counter or risk/reward factor. The worst a person can do when spammed is clear a few of them and that is it. The necro can reverse some conditions back, but even then they have multiple skills that benefit from them carring conditions. To make the situation worse, all condition spam professions have superior rune of undead. It heightens condition dmg and increases toughness..and last I looked, condition spam professions weren’t lacking for HP pool..so where does one go from here?….to be very honest, another game until this one truly has resolved these issues.

I have the same issue. gw2lfg favours speed run/exp groups and usually is flooded with people wanting to do CoF P1.

engineer bomb kit= you don’t even need to target. Just round around in circles and spray fire bombs everywhere and then run off. I just had the pleasure of being part of spvp team where my entire team left. The opposition was 30 ranks higher than most people on my team. They consisted on engi, mesmer, necro, thief, ranger with longbow..traveled as zerg and destroyed everything through pure control and lockdown. By end of game it was 500-57..worst game I’ve played or seen. By virtue the other 3 members of my team left and were in starter armour, I’m guessing they won’t return.

The credibility of a persons post is directly relative to how objective it is and the manners used to present the info. By the time I had finished reading, “…Fix this, I don’t care how…” “..kitten this…kitten that…” I had pretty much decided your an kitten. People tend not to listen to kittens. I appreciate your passionate on some level and have strong feeling, but aggressive is aggressive and rude is rude. No one listens to blind fury, despite how deep the well of passion is that it came from . Just say’n.

High mobility.
Good assortment of stun breaks.
some what limited signets, but hey..they’re not guardian signets at least.
The most weapon skills use.
Access to multiple boons.
More than just situational elites.
Access to immunity.
Access to stuns.
…but we need all this and ranged…

If the elementalist had all this, and potentially 25 weapon skills and single target abilities at 1200 unit range,..their name wouldn’t be elementalist. It would be Jesus.

Interesting thoughts. To clarify, I agree with skillful play, but what we’ve pointed out is that with skillful play you are fairly often denied the skillful hit because certain skills do not perform in pvp as they do pve. Leap of faith has a high miss rate even if your standing directly beside your opponent and you are both the only people in the map. Zealots defense has a massive miss rate even when fired point blank in someone’s face. However, even if the stars do align perfectly for you and it is going to hit, the precast advertise is so overt it is extremely easy to dodge. A professions weapon skills are their bread and butter. They are skills that require precise honing so that when they are triggered within range and the opponent remains in range, they should hit. This is not the case for a handful of guardian weapon skills.

As to address your concerns that many people do not like they have to go with a condition based build,..well, that is more in the hands of Anet development. It was not the players who decide all but 2 of the ranger weapons will cause conditions,..or that every necromancer weapon causes conditions, or that passive traits grant condition damage when specific trait lines are taken to achieve other traits further down the tree line. These are concrete set into their weapons and trait allocations..it is beyond the player to change this and entirely in Anets hands to address.

Ultima.8673:

if they wont nerf necro this esportsthingy will be over …

and by the way it is stupid to let the best american team play vs the best european team. the best teams come from europe ….
i would say the best 3 teams in the world are european…

There is 2 major servers. U.S and E.U…You may find that considering only 12% of box sales were in U.S and E.U that the other 88% of people who purchased gw2 are just playing on E.U servers, but are in fact not European…like for example…all of Asia. So yeah, it stands to reason European servers are home to larger populations.

I agree with everything said. I think you have framed a lot skills fairly. Despite the flaws that have been pointed out, I don’t feel the guardian is unplayable so to speak. I think their design is still sound, and the idea for them and skills assigned are good, but they need tweaking(Their skills, as opposed to their concept.) for all the stated reasons above.

I have to fully endorse the spirit weapons aspect. They are by design a unique skill line to Guardians, but they feel so very under powered to use. Even in PvE, where foe A.I seems to recognise and hate pets, they get destroyed altogether to easily. In PvP svanir and chieftain destroy them with a mere sneeze.

Thank you for contributing fair constructive criticism to the thread.

“Hotjoin needs to go. Anything over 5 vs 5 feels zergish.” Anet has already responded to this. Hotjoin is 8 vs 8 because it is an arena type where players can come and go. If it is was 5 vs 5 and team lost a player, the advantage now heavily favours the full team.

Capture the flag being 10 vs 10. So once a player has captured the flag, what do the other 9 do? escort them back to base? What does the opposition do?..gank the flag bearer? This mode only invites true zerging and particle pollution. What happens if you hold the flag and are a thief? can you stealth?..can you shortbow teleport? Too many variables that could favour or strongly kitten many profession builds.

Dueling arena. These already exist. If you want to duel, there is plenty of free servers with no players that can be used. Anet has already admitted that the thief is, by design meant to be the strongest profession at 1 vs 1 encounters and meant, by design, to be able to control the pace of the duel. When one profession has so heavily been designed to excel at 1 vs 1 why commit to dueling? Before the arena has even been created there is a profession that already will excel at it more than others.

Being matched with people near your rank level. This is fine for rank0-30. However what about those rank45+ The amount of rank needed to achieve that level is greater than the combined rank to achieve ranks 0 to 30. Are there 10 rank 42-49 players able to play at given time? Eventually people will be needed to fill out the ranks. What if those same needed people aren’t interested in playing that game mode?..this highlights that although a good idea..it is not particularly viable.

Rewards..well, I am not entirely sure how the current reward system was designed and how it was thought fit to reward players. All I can say is that i remember when I went from rank 26 to 27, the chest I got was 3 dolyak finishers and a glory booster. I remember that clearly because I felt that was perhaps the worst reward I have ever seen given. So far in all my pvp experience (1800 points off ransacker.) I have not once used a finisher, or do I see others using them regularly. So yeah, rewards don’t give a sense of reward.

There is a category called players helping players. Perhaps post in that section.

To not make this too long, let’s just get to the crux of it. The guardian in PvP is fairly beyond, in terms of debate, one profession that can viably run builds. They have a tonne of strengths to them that i won’t cover, but having recently returned to Guardian builds for Pvp, there is some aspects of them that have already been addressed and mentioned by players, yet there seems to be little word back about what balance reviewers are pondering on this feedback .

The things I would like to mention again specifically;
The greatswords leap finisher (leap of faith) Has a lot of rubber banding to it. I am not sure if this is mostly due to ping differences, or server side issues of mapping what specific spaces are being occupied at what times. The skill itself is fine, but the rubberbanding does add a lot of hit/miss to the skill.

Also flashing blade in terms of gap closing seems fine, however when it is followed through with the next sword skill zealots defense, there is a noticeable stall between skills which only really adds to its predictability and ease of evading. It is in my experience a skill that can simply be out walked fairly easily.

Binding blade, although admittedly is a powerful skill that deserves a cast time and a certain animation, but in 1 vs 1 or 1 vs 2 it’s current animation is a tad overtly advertised to players and in particle haze is impossible to see. If it is connected to a player, then the guardian decides to walk off (Or get feared away) the pull/knock down effect is either nullified or it will still work despite the guardian being quite far away from the original binded players. It again seems to depend on the deus ex machina to whether it will actually pull them entirely to you, just knock them down or not work at all.

I think the guardian, despite having limited access to swiftness (Which is key to up close heavy melee classes.) is still in a good spot, despite the current meta heavily endorsing defense roles..but just a couple of it’s skills need some minor tweaks and this profession can be consider pretty air tight and the job done.

Perhaps If i could recommend anything would be that wards could be detonated for secondary purposes. What these secondary purpose would be I’d leave to better people than me to decide. Also consecrations, although powerful in their own ways, are highly situational and I rarely see them get used in spvp or PvE dungeons or otherwise. I do acknowledge that they do get some play in tpvp for reviving purposes, but that unto itself shows how limited their uses are and I believe, but can’t prove that the long cool downs do truly put players off using them. I would also quite like to see guardian spirit bow add a swiftness element.(You know..swift as an arrow kinda thing.) It currently cures conditions, but the guardian has so many condition clearing path ways there is no real reason to equip bow on top of it. A lot of the spirit weapons have fallen out of favour, and when traited for their use (Generally 30/30/0/0/10) The guardian HP pool with full soilder runes equal 12,450 hp. It seems a very large investment and compromise to just make them viable, but by no means powerful.(Or they can be destroyed faster than thief NPC’s and phantasms and turrets, or if nothing else up to 30 seconds, of which the cool down doesn’t start until they’re destroyed.) I acknowledge they can burn, contribute damage and knockdown and that this is enough to foil certain players perhaps still learning their professions and others that have no stability, but against more seasoned players they just don’t seem to have enough punch to be more than mildly annoying.

Considering Guardian is only one of two heavy melee professions, they kinda need to bring a lot to the table to satisfy those players who prefer that heavy melee style. I think the guardian does this fairly nicely, but with enough separation to not be confused with a warrior. However just little things tarnish what is mostly a well rounded professions in the pvp field. I heard in the previous SoTG that some of the guardian meditations were up for review, perhaps my 2 cents worth can help add player feedback, start discussion and give clear idea’s about possible future directions they could move in.

They broke the number one rule. We all know the beloved ranged, high evade professions now have to contest nodes in tight spaces where melee weapons work best and where if they evade in any old direction it maybe lethal. To boot, it actually involved that a very over used utility may need to be swapped out for,…you know…something different and appropriate for the map mechanics.

Like all other Tpvp maps, it has nodes, it has paths..so that makes it not suitable for tpvp, because you may get instakilled if you spend the entire game fighting on the edges or on top of panels.

Heaven forbid that perhaps a top tier player may have to abandon their preferred profession in favour of a more suited profession for the duration of the map rotation.

This how you make teams work. Coaches know who their pressure players are, who their wet weather players are etc etc and field who they think is the strongest team according to the situation. To make it fair between two teams of various people, the fairness comes from that they both play on the same field and to the same rules, not by making sure each team has the exact same number of players the same height, weight and experience.

This is totally digi generation thinking. Not even one week, let alone did one month pass, or even a day pass before people QQ’ed the heck out of this map before even giving it a reasonable period of time.

Champions take on all contenders. It seems the ‘champions’ in this game believe they are above certain maps, play styles and mechanics.

I find it laughable that it is even questioned who the play testers were. Anet is part of ncsoft, you know, the people who made Aion, league of legends, city of heroes and the up coming blade and something?..I’m fairly sure they have no shortage of people in staff who play games. You know, people who not only play games, they make them as well…if that is not enough to show they probably understand gaming better than most, than I don’t know what will. People make it sound like they got their play testers from some school in the suburbs where they don’t have the internet. They gave PvP a new map, they didn’t lay down their C.V to be scrutinized by various 18-27 year old’s who think they know better.

“Maps that carry a instakill mechanic do not belong in competitive play.”

Every time I hear this statement, it makes me visualize people playing the entire game either a) entirely on the edge of the map and take some time out from the ledge to play directly on top of the glass panels.

Woe be it that the endeared ranged, high dodge professions finally now having to deal with combat in small confines over nodes where they can’t evade in any direction for once and have their line of sight broken often forcing them to use melee weapons at times. heavens know we don’t want that.

I have to agree with the people who think the cannon can be fired too rapidly. The cannon itself is a little to easy to secure with CC builds because of its small area size. Any team member who can effectively control a small area now has near perfect vision of the map and can fire the cannon at will,..it poses too much of an advantage, when compared to treb. The treb you need to practice your aiming with and can usually only have a “Fair idea.” of where the ideal locations to fire it are.

All-in-all though, I am quite liking skyhammer, even though I am now where near fully understanding the map. Good job anet.

I quite enjoy pvp in all games. I guess you could call me a pvp kinda guy.

Tonight while learning a laurel, all the things that I have noticed about pvp in guild wars 2 just kinda came to a head. I think if a person is going to take the time to write about their experience that it should be objective and polite. The credibility of your comments is equal to both these points.

Playing as a full meditation guardian, which by and large is thought of as a fairly viable pvp build in this game I found myself in a smaller population map of 4 vs 4.

I entered the map and slowly headed towards my node, watching all my other team mates briskly heading off to their’s at a pace much faster than me. I know what I am playing is lacking for speed, but at least I have some fire power despite my lower speed and lower end HP pool.

I get to a node and I see 3 opposition people coming. I accept my build is not dazzling at handling multiple foes, but I see some of my team is coming to, so I hold out. Team fight is looking like its on the cards. I target the opposition engineer feeling they will probably be the most problematic.

I target them and as they approach, I just lose target. They never went out of range, in fact they were just getting closer to me. The target on them just ‘untargetted’ (If that is even a word.) itself

I try to acquire target again, and my screen looks like the 4th of July of particle effects. No problem, I have a target closest tab. Once I had targeted all the turrets, then flesh golem and then the binding roots..I was getting a little thwarted that I couldn’t see any targets in the particle haze, but also my A.I insists on targeting N.P.C pets.

No problem, back up..breath, relax..someone will appear..it turns out to be the necromancer. Ok, all good..i have a target..time to go to work.

I gap close in on them, and they turn my blind against me. Bummer, but no biggie.
I use flashing blade to try and prot a flame burst off my sigil..they simply dodged out of it. Annoying, but that happens.

I use judges med to gap close again, my burning is now flipped on to me. Good move necro.

I place up my three blocks so I can gather myself for a split second..the necro marks are unblockable.

I switch to scepter, melee ain’t working for me..I get feared away.

I throw away my evades now and use them to gap close and swap back to sword and get my first hit with 35% health left. They use their alt health bar on dark shroud and torment and fear me again.

No probelm, I cleanse my condition..now only the other 5 to worry about. Thankfully I can overt them all to boons. Unthankfully they all get turned into more conditions on me. Duel over. I am dead as dead.

I am beginning to feel every player in pvp has had these moments. I don’t mind it at all if this wasn’t usual, but I must have a dark star over my head, because it feels like de ja vu..I’m sure I’ve seen this before.

Not to give up I totally try something different. I decide I am gonna play full support. Not damage, not bunker..just a straight support. I have done it before and got by alright. So I spent the next few matches buffing might, reversing CC control on my team with stability, removing excess conditions, knocking players off of point, immobilizing high movement targets..generally doing all the stuff that won’t win me a fight, but my surrounding team mates can’t do this stuff for themselves. You could say my support was just filling in all the weaknesses in theirs. I noticed soon enough certain players began to target me first. I am not applying any sort of huge damage, or defense..just rounding out others builds with my own. We get to the end of the match and I have 65 glory. The entire match I spent my time doing very usable stuff. I gave my fellow thief and warrior 10 stacks of might, I placed a ward in the center of node to upset opposition traffic through it. Place wards to increase movement between nodes, immobilized that irritating ele a handful of times, contributed damage, released a dozen players from stun and/or CC control and cleared conditions on multiple people-multiple times. The 65 points just felt like I was being told ‘Support has no place in pvp..all your work garnered you the most meager amount of glory.’

Anyway, I am not gonna presume to tell you that this is right or wrong. It’s your product..your work..when it’s their bat and their ball..it’s their game so-to-speak.

This is just an account of my night in PvP over a handful of matches. I will let you read over it and decide if this is what you envisioned.

Also thank-you for the new pvp/pve rewards. I appreciate it.

Necro killed this game for me. Playing as a meditation guardian I just didn’t get a look in. It had an answer for anything. I gap close in, it turned blindness against me. I block with focus,..its marks were unblockable..I judges intervention in,..it feared me away..I smited condition, so now only the other 7 to deal with. I converted the huge condition stack to boons…had them corrupted. By the time I was doing damage..they swapped out to alt lifeforce bar and tormented/feared me to death.

It felted “balanced”. Pvp in this game has turned me off all of guild wars 2 in under 3 months.

I kinda know how you feel. Guardian has a low health pool, so if you get stunlocked and immobilized/crippled you have no quick means of escape.

However, you mentioned you tried playing a support role. I have been doing that currently for a while now. I found the power/meditation builds could do excellent damage, but your HP pool is really-really small and doesn’t hold well on mass conditions stacking.

Bunker builds are mostly for tpvp. They’re designed to hold a point while others arrive..if no one arrives, you will soon lose the point. (As is often the case in spvp.)

However if you play support the 8 vs 8 dynamic of spvp it is favourable. I use shield/scepter-staff. and usually get respectable points, sometimes top scorer, but the build lacks the satisfaction some people look for in, “I engaged, wasted and stomped that guy.” However due to how rank points are assigned if your applying AoE damage repeatedly you’ll still get awarded stomps even though you didn’t start the engagement, or finish it..you just contributed along the way.

Focus your position where your retail shouts, wards and might stack buff will get the most benefit. Target your immodbilize and knock back on high evasive people such as ele’s.

Always try to be around 2+ other players..this does pretty much make you a ganker..but we’ll call it the more polite support. Keep an eye on whose names your running close to and check the team list to keep an eye on their conditions. Use group stability on necromancers fear on point.

Playing this way I usually still get 160-210 points+anything from glory booster.

Avoid 1 vs 1..you can beat some people, but usually your just strong at defense and somebody else (Hopefully your team) will come along.

Playing spvp this way has actually made me enjoy guardian and spvp in general a lot more again. You’ve removed yourself from being a spike build, or a bunker..you’re just a high paced damage modifier.

Line of warding, shouts, shield knockback, well chosen weapon swap effects, AoE damage that buffs teams who pass through it make you a truly valuable player provided you have others around you.

I have found in spvp where I hang round and keep playing the same people over and over more or less that sooner rather than later higher ranked player (35+) soon target me first due to annoying wards and knockbacks and shouts that I’m applying in or around the node. It is a viable build, it’s just different to the regular high damage/high evade builds quite a few people like to play.

I see the 2 main problems here;
1) “When in the hands of someone skilled….”
2 “My main is warrior.”

Nuf said.

The 1x spvp team he is referring to is actually 2 people..and they may very well also balance gw1 as well as gw2…and I suspect they more closely watch tpvp than they ever stop to think about spvp.

Very accurate for Tpvp. However as long as Spvp and PvE exist, this analysis only applies to tpvp.

What has been said of guardian in tpvp is true..however playing guardian solo in spvp is a very different story. The retail shout is basically what allows them to even score points mostly due to how many professions can simply out run them if they choose not to engage them, and how easy they are to whittle down quickly with only 12,500 Hp when running 30/30/ 10 whatever else+ full dolyak runes.

Their strength is their weakness..excellent at support,..not so great when they’ve got no one to support.(Which spvp and PvE are mostly solo play game modes.)

The biggest shame for guardian is that there is no reward system for support only. In tpvp if you win, you at least get the 200 rank points..in spvp it not unusual to guardians only scoring mid order points ir wooden spoon. As you’ve stated, their too slow for roaming fast kills. Their HP is dangerously low when they spec full power/precision damage and are easily shut down with chill..and when traited to be far more tanky, their damage is ok, provided it is able to hit and not get dodged when the animations trigger broadcasting their intent.

Nice read though. Good to see others PoV.

Phaeton.9582:

There are people at 70, and the games not even been out a year.

You’ll just have to accept that you won’t get 80 without serious dedication. Although I agree the gap between the armor/title tiers is too large, the whole point of the system is that 99.99% of players won’t get 80 without a few years play time. It’s not pve.

You’re better off working on your build/skills in tpvp, as people will care much more about that anyway.

It’s not PvE…Anet intended legenadaries to be a very long term goal for a player to achieve over the coarse of years. 3 months after release legendaries were being sold on Trading post. This shows a lot of the systems are functioning differently to how they are intended. The last balance patch, the disparity between ranged and heavy melee, how certain classes only excel in one way despite all professions being meant to play any role only shows a lot of the idea’s for this game have not been implemented well. It seems gw2 thought they would retain mostly the same population numbers and longevity of players in gw1, even though this game is completely different to gw2 with only skills having name sakes to the original. If I were them, I ’d start reworking rewards quickly..a players life time in this game is probably 1 year max..unlike gw1 which held a stronger population over 7 years and rewards could be worked for and all armours simply purchased. Armour skin reward is just not proving suitable.

I just be happy if they pretty much just reversed the last patch entirely. A balance patch to fix and remove a balance patch.

I think it cute you took such time to write a constructive post that will never be read by anyone apart from players. Obviously the 2 people who balance this entire game are too busy at work with the next balance patch designed to create more viability of builds to stop and read forums. As we have all seen, those balance patches are thoughtful, well explained and not implemented under the hood with no footnoting.

Ok. Playing gaurdian…
Sword 1 = ok idea
sword 2=to good to waste on that
sword 3..self root and keeps you in blind field.

Greatsword..ok idea..even though they evade like I posted.

Hammer attacks once every 10 seconds..or so it feels..
mace attacks also lethargic and slow
scepter..sure, good idea..but their gone into stealth..

This is what I am referring to..if you catch the evade, block the back stab..your running on cool downs now, so close ranged is one option that will blind you..if you back up to use scepter, they swap to bow and blow the field for another stealth..

I just took the time to play this dagger-pistol/shortbow..in smaller population maps it is, just my opinion..altogether too simple and straight forward to just ruin a heavy melee class outright. I play thief rarely, so when I do pick them up and can achieve near 80% success vs and heavy melee..I find it hard to have faith that this was totally necessarily to make thieve’s viable vs heavy melee. Stealth and high evade was already enough..just say’n..my opinion only.

LeGi.3921:

Blind
The change to blind was really needed, as a thief I wasn’t caring much about blinds. right now I think that blind is good and to balance it, it should have a fixed duration for every application so you have the option to wait out the blind instead of removing the condition or to miss an attack. I think a duration of 2, maybe 3 seconds should be enough for that. When you take 3 seconds you can still savestomp 5 out of 8 classes.

Those two big changes really changed the game pretty much for us, but that wasn’t all what happened on our doomsday.

Conditionlineups popped up all over the place with a now pretty strong necro and the synergy with engineers. Before the patch you could counter conditions (what should be more sustained DPS) with coordinated bursts, but with the recent buffs to conditions and conditionclasses you cant really counter them anymore and the damage they deal feels pretty bursty too.

On a sidenote: Torment is fine. Its a good condition but probably better for meleeclasses like warrior or thief and not for necromancers. As a melee you want to punish someone for moving/kiting you and try to keep him at your place. A necromancer has already more than enough tools to kite enemys and deal damage to them. They shouldn’t have a condition that deals even more damage when you try to stick to them.

On top of the mentioned changes Ranger got deleted from competitive tPvP because the only viable spec (BM/Bunker) cant deal enough damage anymore to actually win 1on1 fights. The always strong Engineer on the other hand wasn’t touched too much (expect the R change) and the Necromancer rose to the new QQ target, but that for obvious reasons.

Here i am listing skills that are in our opinion too strong or not working correctly, i considered talking about skills that are too weak but i think that would be too much and even without those most people will fear the wall of text im writing:

Ranger
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spirit_of_Nature
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nature%27s_Renewal

We have two big problems with this skill. The first one is that you can put it anywhere on the map and activate Nature’s Renewal (NR) from an infinite range. For Example on Forest of Niflhel you can set the Spirit of Nature (SoN) behind the Keep and rush back to Henge to defend it and just trigger NR while you are defending that point. In our opinion the activation of FN should have a range. Say you need to be in a 900 – 1.500 unit range to the Spirit to be able to cast it.
The second problem is that FN has no Line of Sight (LoS) check. You actually can place it behind the Keep (bottom of the stairs) and resurrect downed Players at the Cappoint while the other team can’t do anything about it. It would mean that for the duration of the Spirit you can’t attack this point and that’s huge. On Battle of Khylo SoN is at least as bad as on Forest of Niflhel. In the “old” Meta Ranger was defending close or attacking far, so in most cases you don’t have someone on him all the time and you cant afford that someone is spirithunting all the time either. He can just set the spirit below the Clocktower and resurrect people that are downed inside it. Give FN a LoS Check (Spirit to downed Player, not Spirit to Ranger) to fix this, in our opinion, broken spell.

I’ll play thief..you play heavy melee. Your choice of any of the guardian and/or warrior builds you like. I will only play blinding thief. You tell me afterwards that you think blind is currently in a good place afterwards and it should be extended.

Fenrir.5493:

The problem is this games rely too much on bunker builds and the only thing that a bunker cant bunker is conditions.

This game is messed up since they decide armor dosent matter at all, so any light armor medium armor will have nearly the same damage mitigation than a heavy armor wearer, then they maked protection, aegis, regen and let light armor classes to bunker better than any heavy armor user wich has no sense, then people are runing bunkers because the game mode is to hold points, how do you hold points? with a bunker.

Armor should be important again and thoughness should reduce condition damage, also thougness should reduce the crit damage/crit chance then nerf protection maybe, or nerf all the bunker specs so they dont rely on boons to bunker, this changes will reduce and tone down condition damage and burst damage that needs to be toned down too.

Won’t this also adversely effect PvE dungeons? Do we really want to tone down all toons against dungeon bosses that have larger health pools and toughness than our entire team combined?

I thought I would post this one to the forums. Maybe there is something that is right under my nose and i just can’t see it.

I have done my rounds playing the caster classes now and have started on heavy melee. So far over all I am not too far achieving avenger title, however tonight I experienced something that really I just can’t think of any sort of counter to*Blind spam*

The thieve’s I was encountering were already fairly efficiently using;
high movement
high evades
constant blind spamming
regular stealth

I think I manage to take about 10% of their health at best.

I was playing full meditation guardian and could catch them in shadow refuge..could fairly predict when they were gonna attempt back stab and block it, the evades is when I used gap closers…but the Blind spam was just too much to keep shaking over.

As far as I can see this build just flat out ruins any form of melee. Surely anet thought of counter play to this?..

What is effective blind spam counter?

I have mentioned this. An option to turn of targeting NPC. If you want to target that bird, or turret or even binding root..you can,..but you have to do it manually. I think mesmer clone should be excluded from this list though as it is part of the mesmer game play to distract and confuse. Heavy melee relies upon hotkey target closest in AoE particle mash when you can’t see anything on screen briefly. It is super annoying to be on someone…FLASH…before you know it your now attacking some one’s minion,..not the target you just had 3 seconds ago.

Have you seen the top tier players? The only time I watched a match, one was in motley pink and blue, others were in starter gear dyed brown, some were higher tier and dyed pink, others in hall of monuments. It didn’t appear to me as if they cared about the armour. If what I have read is correct, they’d prefer gems or gold.

I enjoy 5 vs 5 matches more than 8 vs 8. However the anet staff have already given their answer to this, and to be fair it is a fairly good response. If the match was set at 5 vs 5, because of the casual nature of spvp of people coming and going that if a team lost a player making it 4 vs 5, winning is now heavily in favour of the team with the additional player. Much the same as in tpvp a team of 4 is very unlikely to win versus a team of 5. It is for that reason that numbers can go up to 8 per side.

How bout this.
You bring your PvE armour and stats into PvP!! Its only your accessories and rings etc that get disabled.

But what if I am not level lvl 80?..Relax buddy, it’s ok..you can create a pvp only toon that has access to anything you’ve unlocked in PvE!!

But what if there is some things i have yet to unlock in PvE?..again, it’s all good buddy, you can use glory to unlock any item in game for pvp created alts.

What If I don’t have enough glory?..well my son, you gotta get playing then. You can’t just pick-up any ol’ flavour of the month build off the net just like that. You now have reason to stockpile glory for times you wanna do that.

What happens then once I have unlocked everything?..what do I do with glory now smart guy?..again it’s all good, you can use glory to purchase other rewards that can have benefit in both PvE and PvP..if your PvE toon you’ve hauling butt with in PvP doesn’t have a certain item, you can purchase chests that provide you with a chance to get more rare items.

This sounds a lot like guild wars 1..exactly…why did they abandon that system. This in my mind is my biggest question of all…why did they abandon perhaps one of the better reward systems in M.M.O games?

I hope they address the many concerns players having regarding heavy melee professions. The guardian is in a better state than warrior, but that is only provided it is only required to operate in a small area. The functionality of roaming heavy melee just doesn’t seem to have much going for it. Naturally their is some individuals who excel at heavy melee, much the same as most people find advanced theory metaphysics difficult, but a handful of people find it easy…the point is a lot of heavy melee skills across guardian and warrior could really do with no aftercast and no self rooting and stronger target accuracy on gap closing skills.

Solo join in tpvp is toxic. That simple. We all know it has massive problems. You accept to be infuriated every time you join it. You know your at a disadvantage. You know your chances of winning are slim to nothing. You know many players expect you to run specific builds, and if you don’t they blame you for ruining the team. You know you’ll have quitters. Is is no one’s fault but the players if they choose to expose themselves to that. It is easy to say change it. Fine…good one..let them change it..but it hasn’t been changed yet, so why keep entering it until it is changed?

The best way to create change..let solo tpvp die. It is toxic to solo players wanting to enjoy the game. It is designed only for teams in mind. Let the mindless ganking of spvp die off as well. Play something else. The sooner the lines for these aspects of the game lay empty, the sooner development will happen. Nothing says to a company that has invested much into a game that it is not working as the game being empty with no player population wanting to touch it. Until then, if you know the this area of the game just doesn’t work for you..then don’t enter it.

1) Bigger maps. Much bigger maps with increased sandbox area.
2) 5 or 7 nodes. Not three that are in a fairly linear circle formation on the map.
3) Team benefits and individual reward with titles for actual styles of game play.
4) Glory gained from stomps is directly relative to the amount of damage you inflicted on them before downstate.

why?
The current map size creates chaotic mess zone area’s with AoE. The damage these area’s produce is one thing, however the mass particle effect blinds a lot of melee players. It Grinds many players video card render pipelines and many AoE animations over lap making it impossible for a player to discern what is what and where.

5-7 nodes on larger maps disperses the player population. Currently there is no significant reason to target any area of the map for any particular reason apart from that your team doesn’t hold it. If each node provided a team effect that encourages teams rather than pick off nodes one by one, to advance nodes in smaller splinter teams. Effects could include benefits like your teams projectile attacks now have 50% chance of piercing and travel 15% further. Your team holding this node decreases your oppositions healing by 7% and quickens your teams healing cast time by 20%. Each nodes provides a reason for why you want to hold it.

Each node has a under the hood courtyard around it. Finishers and stomps in the area contribute to a defender title. Each level of this title provides rewards that are actually sort after and/or useful. Not a RNG chest that gives any old item, finisher emotes etc. Area’s outside of node area’s contribute to roamer title. Engaging a node advances usurper title etc.

Glory gained from stomps is fairly casual currently. If I see a person in downstate and unload a mesmer iduelist on it, all it takes is that damage to ensure when they do get stomped I will receive full reward. If I spam marks on a area, I may not down anyone but usually 20-25 seconds my screen suddenly starts filling with full rewards. This would greatly help with players joining the gank. You can do so if you wish, but your final reward is going to be pathetic for everyone, because each of you only hold a smaller percentage of what damage was done. Eventually it becomes more profitable in terms of glory,.. you know..to go seeking your own glory through engaging nodes or players roaming or defending.

The amount of players per team reflects what points node generate. 8 vs 8 generates normal point accumulation. In situations of 7 vs 8 the smaller side generates 1/7 more points from nodes. So technically if a team is 4 vs 5..any nodes the 4 man team holds will generate 20% more points. This allows teams with leavers to still have a competitive chance. If another player joins, that 20% is now no longer in effect.

All teams are randomly generated in spvp. Too often you’ll see one side where their lowest ranked player is 23 and the oppositions highest ranked player is 6. The final score is usually 500-63. This is why despite me liking the idea that friends can play with friends, why this shouldn’t happen in Spvp..if one wants to play with friends that is what tpvp is for. However, I do agree that not all people want to now be forced to play competitively on a ladder. In most sports teams can elect to have a friendly match. the results affect nothing, but there is no trophy etc either..just bragging rights and enjoying the match is the result. There will be a reward, but it remains outside of ladder consideration and takes into account teams averaged rank per player as its deciding factor in match making. This would probably create a waiting period for matches to be scheduled and happen, so the team objective now has to have longevity and purpose so players feel they actually had a match rather walked in, got blitzed and now have to wait a while before having a another. I don’t think nodes would be appropriate for this game mode, however gw2 is optimised for this mode, so it would be tricky to figure out a mode that feels defined and enjoyable.

Just my 2 cents worth.

At times I truly think all heavy melee classes weapon skills need to be split. All of them are 600 range close gap. If your already in melee range it provides a different sort of hit. So far when playing with great sword builds across warrior and guardian I envy the ranger set of weapon skills. An auto attack chain that provides some damage mitigation/gap closer that is fairly accurate and has very helpful distance on it/a heavy hit/ a split skill that if used at range can be used and has a secondary effect if used up close/stun. It just kinda makes sense. When player ranger great sword I find keeping in viable melee range far easier..however the ranger doesn’t have any sort of true power build, so for all of it effectiveness the damage output isn’t competitive.

I have recently been dedicating a lot of my time to playing melee classes. After reading so much negative comments on them I had to see for myself.

The things I would change for both Warrior and guardian would be almost entirely under the hood changes.

1) Remove self rooting skills. Considering the melee classes hit range is basically 220 units, I think this is obvious.

2) increase their hit degree window. Currently the melee classes hit anything 180 degrees in front of them. With traits like death from above and strength of the fallen, these traits just don’t serve much usefulness. Change them to entry level traits that allow attacks to now hit in a 270 degree window around them.

3) Smooth out and increase the fluid action of gap closing. Currently on guardian and warrior the gap closing I’ve notice leaps you at your target, then you kinda rubber band back and then land beside them. Maybe this is because of differences in ping, but the issue of gap closing to ‘beside’ your opponent is a genuine issue. Especially when it leaves you both standing shoulder to shoulder.

4) reduce the mild stall at the start of some skills. If you use guardian sword 2 followed by 3 there s a clear stall in between the 2 skills. This doesn’t help again the self root sword 3 also causes. Sword 3 cone hit area also could be widened.

5) Vigor needs to be greatly reduced across the board in PvP. Utility skills that promote high vigor regen are fine simply because to make use of it, it needs to be slotted. However a lot classes get vigor as a secondary and third effect from very mild using of weapon skills. The general 2 dodges each person gets should be used wisely and not used as a crutch. It would also not hurt this game if in PvP evading still results in a glancing blow.

6) heavy armour melee needs a passive movement speed buff. It does not need to be on par with what squish classes get, but try just following the roaming golem using only auto attack. You can almost hear the Benny Hill theme tune playing.

Melee classes should have to work for their victories like any other. It shouldn’t be reduced to simply firing these skills in this order will create a chain that is near godlike to avoid. This is what happened in Gw1 with hammer warrior. They could catch you in a stunlock that was nothing more than triggering your skills in a specific order. They only needed to look at the skills, not the player on the screen. Hiowever in gw2 I think the idea’s behind the heavy melee’s are sound, but they just don’t gel as what they were thought to. Also there is some skills that just don’t figure. I am still yet to see what as a guardian with hammer I would want a skill that knocks my opponent back and right out of melee range? I can understand it would be useful to an opponent off a node..that is so situational-has no benefit for PvE-now doesn’t allow to continue your attack chain even though your successfully hitting.

I can only add this. I used my guardian with great sword in training area. I used only auto attack on the moving golem…there were period of 3-4 seconds+ I was just following behind him not able to make a hit..and that’s following that golem, let alone a player using speed buffs, evades, blocks and most importantly -attacking you-

I then moved on to the pistol thief. First of all you can’t target them with target closest. You have to physically click on them. In the time it took me to make 10 clean hits;
I had been evaded 4 times (With multiple evades in each evade.)
Blinded 4 times
Dazed 3 times
Stealthed once.

In order for me to make those 10 clean auto attack hits, I had attempted 30-ish contacts. This give me a hit window percentage of 30-ish %. Again this is A.I controlled and not doing the purposeful evasions of human players like dodging forward and thru you to totally negate all damage until you can turn 180 degrees.

After that I just gave up melee class.

The sole decisive reason thief remains the most viable melee class..high rate of movement speed applied in a permanent way. There was a reason in past games why casters got self rooted on long cast powerful spells. Instead in this game it is the melee classes with no perma movement boost that have skills that self root them.

If The developers didn’t see this as an issue, then I am not going to try and persuade them. I understand they gave gap closing moves..but they’re so buggy and twitchy they cannot be reliably trusted.

Re-roll..preferably a profession that features well in Tpvp or gets invited to state of the game. You’ll be happier for it.

EvisceratriX.1750:

I am even wondering if devs are reading these posts lol

I think so. However I also believe there is a need to know basis, and we don’t need to know. If they face book liked a couple of suggestions you’d get people claiming they were the brain child and probably at least one arrogant person wanting remuneration for the idea. I think the initiatives you stated out are all excellent idea’s. I would be happy to see even 50% of them get added.