Guild Wars 2

zinkz.7045:

saying 5 mans did not win significantly more against non-5 mans does not mean much, because lower down in MMR you may get a lot of 5 mans losing, because they are not so good PvE players who queued as a 5 man that then get put up against better players who queued solo/duo, but conversely at a high MMR you may get a really good 5 man that wins 80% of their matches

That’s not exclusive to premades though. Low MMR solo’ers lose a lot, and higher MMR solo’ers win a lot. (which is how they became high MMR in the first place)

Unranked has the best handling of premades because premades get a MMR bump, and in unranked MMR is allowed to work freely without pip range restrictions.

I honestly think Anet planned on testing duo/solo only in season 5 regardless, they just did the poll so that they could justify it.

However I’m a little concerned that they backed themselves into a corner by promising a vote at end of season about whether the solo/duo should be permanent. Making that promise leaves them with no out if the season goes to hell. (I doubt allowing groups will ever win regardless of how poorly solo/duo only ends up)

morrolan.9608:

You need to log out, go to the page and log back in when prompted.

This

Note: I had to do it a few times before it worked.

Saiyan.1704:

I took it as,

A: [Solo & Duo]———[Team Queue]
Or
B: [Team Queue] (one big pool)

Surely it would be how I interpreted?

Err my understanding is that there are no plans for a team queue if A wins.

It redirects me to my account page.

Supreme.3164:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJARWnc0Adbid2AG1A0biFvBjqDECmAxJwH4FcqBEASAA-TpBGABAcIAS7IAkwFAohHAQ/lBcb/BA

Why GS? I love it, nightfall+death spiral+grave digger for massive cleave during teamfights, I start from distance with wells to build some LF, drop then a darkness well followed by gravedigger, when the well is over..drop nightfall and continue the aoe assault, if the enemy still standing: F1-5-4-2

Recommendations:
Psig should be swapped for “suffer!” since suffer just straight outperforms Psig with Augury of Death, and you don’t have Spite for the siggy trait anyways. Granted you honestly don’t even need a utility condi clear if you are taking staff and consume conditions on top of those sigils of yours.

Well of Darkness is bad, and should be replaced with Well of Corruption or Well of Suffering. Well of Darkness only really works with Chilling Darkness which requires curses. Well of Corruption on the other hand works extremely well for rez denial.

Foot in the Grave isn’t getting you much. Shroud #3 gives you stability in shroud already and stun breaks are depreciated in this meta due to meta builds focusing more on interrupts rather than long CC.
————————————
The fundamental issue with your build is that you are overestimating the usefulness of blind fields (nightfall and Well of Darkness) The problem with blind fields is twofold.
-Blind fields don’t affect ranged builds that can work from outside them.
-Most melee builds have the tools to bypass blind fields. Warriors and Mallyx revs can ignore blinds with resistance. Thieves can simply disengage from the fields. Power Revs can use sword#2 and facets from outside of the fields, and can use sword#3 to ignore the blind field.

Besides if you really want to get the most our of blood/soulreap/reaper you ought to take advantage of the sage amulet for a condi + leech build which will net you better utility, better sustain, and better pressure.

I do believe you don’t need a video to see the kind of dmg I do…am I right?

I’m guessing really low.

So basically the OP wants necros to have guardian’s virtue mechanic. Because that is essentially what is being outlined.

No, I’m sorry, but no. I’ve said it in other threads and I’ll say it again. Necros should not be turned into wannabe guardians just to appease a meta that will change.

Shroud creates unique gameplay, if I wanted guardian gameplay I’d go play a guardian.

Supreme.3164:

MM reapers have tons (kittening tons) of sustain and respectable pressure so yeah you’re kitten right with your opinions, if you play an amulet with no toughness on a class that can be easily trained..then prepare yourself to cry a lot.

MM necros really don’t have that much sustain, they also don’t see any play at higher levels of skill because of how irrelevant they are in terms of their effect on a match.

Also necros do run defensive amulets. Every condi necro build is going to be in either Wanders (560 toughnesss), Carrion (900 Vitality) or Rabid (900 toughness), with the odd blood necro running sage (560 vitality, 560 healing power)

The fact of the matter is that necros get far less sustain even when using defensive builds than other classes do.
For a necro to be self-sufficient sustain wise, it has to take both soul reaping and death magic, at which point the necro has mediocre utility, and bad damage output.

There is a reason that the ESL teams pair their necros off with a rez scrapper.

The sustain necros can have can be crazy with the right gear, like eles they strongly depend on stats therefore you need to go soloq well prepared and you must know when to switch between MM reaper and normal corruptmancer.

There is literally 0 scenarios where going MM is actually a good idea. MM has poor mobility, poor burst, poor teamsupport, and mediocre damage.

If you have a team with 2 dh and a druid for example, then yeah you can afford to go corruptmancer and sit on the sidelines but when your team lack any resemblance of meat shield..then you must know how to change

Corruptionmancer performs vastly better against DH than MM does. DH simply cleave out MM’s minions too fast.

…why does every necro get access to a second HP bar for simply being a necro?
…why does every mesmer get free dazes, iframes, and confusion sources for simply being a mesmer?
…why does every ranger get a free npc minions for simply being a ranger?
…why does every thief get a free shadowstep for simply being a thief?
…why does every revenant get a free in-combat utilities swap for simply being a rev?
…why does every warrior get a free 6th weapon skill for simply being a warrior?
…why does every engineer get a extra 5 utility skills for simply being a engineer?

GW2 uses asynchronous class design. This is how these things work.

Yes release a balance patch immediately so that we can immediately complain about how terrible it is and demand another balance patch immediately

The “but condi isn’t affected by toughness!” argument is old. If you actually sat down and looked at the amount of condition damage being put out by condi builds you’d realize two things:
1) condi builds do 20% to 30% of their damage in power damage
2) the condition damage deal is lower than what power builds do in power.

Condis aren’t affected by toughness and prot because if they where they would have pitiful damage output.

Also Soldiers is higher DPS than Dire because condi builds are dealing 20% of their dps in power damage and dire does not have power on it, while the 1200 power on Soldiers affects all of a power build’s abilities.

Ganondwarf.6852:

There are no dragon corrupted skritt. Yet there are skritt everywhere there are dragons

YES I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE THAT NOTICED

balancing for 1v1 is functionally impossible without homogenizing the classes.

The reason soft and hard counters exist is because the gameplay differences between the classes lead to certain advantages over other classes.
A good example of this is how trap mechanics and shadowstep mechanics work give guardians a innate advantage over thieves that they do not get over other classes. Conversely the evade nature of thieves give them a large advantage over classes with low attack rates.

To achieve 1v1 balance you would need this.
-standardized amount of evades and blocks
-standardized attack speed
-standardized damage output

That not how any of this works.

Elite specs are dominant because they where all designed to fix fundamental flaws in the core class. (much of the core traits date back to pre-launch development)

The gulf between metabattle and well-crafted non-metabattle builds is minor to non-existant. The entire meta-or-bust idea comes from the fact that people like talk in absolutes.

If I give a teammate the retaliation boon, does the damage from that retal get added to my damage total or his?

tbh something should be done with transfers. A lot of the population issues in WvW come from guilds metagaming the WvW system via transfers.

Supreme.3164

The benchmark for burst/dps build is Fresh air anything else is vastly OP, whichever you play …it’s OP..period, coming here complaining about other OP specs…only show your bias.

So wait the benchmark for “balanced” is a gimmick build that wasn’t even viable pre-HoT?

Might as well balance the game around p/p thieves.

BurrTheKing.8571:

That last part is really important. If you’ve ever spent time in dueling servers you’ll find that almost any single build can be beaten. There were some absurdly powerful builds like the old D/D Ele and Shoutbow Warrior – but even they were beatable with the right spec. The problem is that the game mode simply makes some builds better than others. A specialized duelist isn’t as good as a build that can sustain itself for ages on a point while doing decent damage (in the case of Rev good damage and some good team support too).

You’re right that any build can be beaten in 1v1, but the reason it doesn’t work in 5v5 has nothing to do with points.
The reason counter builds don’t work in 5v5 is because they are often countered by other builds.

Lets say hypothetically that X build counters Y, that Z counters X, and W counters Z.
X can’t counter Y if Z is around.
Thus X and Z can’t be meta at the same time, and X and Y can’t be meta at the same time.
However X and W can be meta at the same.

An example of this is how Aura Elementalist completely shut DH out of the meta, while at the same time the counters of Aura where shut out by the comps usually run with Aurashare.

Muchacho.2390:

And to name the biggest one, it is the interaction between healing and shroud. Honestly a from that a profession assumes as often as necros do with their shroud shouldnt prevent healing. I can understand that they are hestitatent to change it because simply allowing all healing while in shroud would change the balance drastically. But it is frustrating that regneration (a boon necros actually have good access to) wont do anything half the time not to mentions traits like Parasitic Contagion and blood bond (though in the case of blood bond i think it is a bug since the SoV active works though shroud).

Allowing personal leeches in shroud might be interesting.

Honestly If I where to make a change to necro it would simply be access to vigor. The nerf to Sigil of Energy hurt.

Jeknar.6184:

Sith Lords are Lords despite being male or female. I guess the same applies to Keep Lords.

Sith still use Lord/Lady on names. “Sith Lord” is a rank. The conversational title is still Lady for females.
Ex: Rhea’s proper rank is “Sith Lord Rhea”
However she is referred to as “Lady Rhea” conversationally.

This doesn’t apply to GW2 unless we are to assume that “Keep Lord” is a rank and not simply a title. Even then “Lady” would still be appropriate.

kdaddy.5431:

Crinn.7864:

kdaddy.5431:

I have serious question about the game, helseth clearly the best mesmer in the game with 200+ ping 1 vs 3 Anet, why are they matched up with him?

Because Anet knows Helseth is a streamer and probably intentionally rigged it to be put against him.

Anytime Anet is using their “official” accounts it’s going to be for some type of PR stunt. And PR stunts work best when done against youtubers and streamers.

I have to disagree with this, in season 1-2 i saw Anet staff running a premade. Heck they had a name for the premade and had anet staff as the title as if it was a guild.

I was with some other people and every time we saw them we destroyed them. Now take away the fact they were Anet and it becomes a little joke about beating the people who make the game and take a second to realize we were doing the same thing to everyone else that week.

In season 1 they had to know MM was bad, in season 2-3 they gave the legendary players what they wanted which was a fast way to get there. Yet they havent given us a real PvP leader Board and have not given us a real ranked game.

I’m not saying any of that is false, I’m simply pointing out that the reason Anet’s scrub team played Helseth was likely because Anet specifically rigged it so.

Something for me to add is they might be playing on there own time, yet they are playing unranked? I believe the season is going since they were talking about it which brought up a few things in my head.

Unlikely. If they where on their own time they would presumably be using unmarked personal accounts, not their official accounts.

TheDevice.2751:

You don’t even know if “metas” are cyclic. You’re just saying stuff just to say it like some professional game analyst which you are not.

Uh have you actually played this game? We’ve had a different meta for every season, and that not even counting the preseason1 where we had a meta a week.

No it’s not “cyclic” in the sense of A>B>C>D>A>B>C>D but to believe that Necros are somehow locked out of ever being meta again is stupid and flies in the face what the metas have done in the past.

I enjoy playing necro, and I don’t wan the class turned into a guardian wannabe just to suit a temporary meta.

Ragion.2831:

so the reason for smaller cap points is to shorten the duration of the fight? You understand that some classes are better at fighting on smaller cap points than others right? and that is a huge problem since the matchmaking doesnt take profession mix into account

You have just basically said that shorter fights are more important than classes fighting on an even footing. You are saying, it doesnt matter if two (even 3) thieves are staring down a multi DH, multi condi war comp it doesnt matter as long as the thieves die quickly without wasting time bothering about contesting. This is why people have a problem with anet devs.

Lol im done.

The problem with longer fights is longer fights changes how the rotation games works. If the fights take too long then rotation becomes devalued and strategy turns to simply taking home and bunking mid.

A example of this is 3point maps in SW:TOR (back when it had 8v8 ranked) where that game’s more difficult capping system meant that teams simply take close and contest mid, and the team that capped their close first wouldn’t even need to cap mid. Thus winning simply became about getting the first cap and the rest of the match was just for show.

Thieves would actually be less useful with large nodes because with large nodes the gameplay turns away from rotations and towards bunking. And thieves strength as always been in rotations.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Then nerf the passives to the point it’s crazy NOT to use the actives

The passives bad already. The f3 passive is 1 aegis every 40 seconds. The f2 passive is 84 heal. The f1 passive is 2sec of burning every 5 attacks.

You have to realize that the old virtue’s actives where just as bad as the passives.

This is why ascended gear and food are not in sPvP

Yasha.5963:

But like nearly everything concerning HoT specs, it is difficult to understand why they are so strong.

Because they needed to make them strong enough that people would use them actively. Otherwise they would end up like the old virtues (and a number of classes signets) and just never be used as to not put the passive on cd.

There is nothing wrong with necromancers. We simply don’t do well in spike metas, which is what this meta is.
We do extremely well in bruiser and bunker metas, which is why we did so well in season 1 and 2.

The meta will change as it always does and we will be fine again.

kdaddy.5431:

I have serious question about the game, helseth clearly the best mesmer in the game with 200+ ping 1 vs 3 Anet, why are they matched up with him?

Because Anet knows Helseth is a streamer and probably intentionally rigged it to be put against him.

Anytime Anet is using their “official” accounts it’s going to be for some type of PR stunt. And PR stunts work best when done against youtubers and streamers.

sephiroth.4217:

I get wrecked by pistol/shield burn engies quite a bit.

There is no such thing a shield burn engi, because taking shield means you don’t have blowtorch.

Shield engi is probably the only weapon in the game that is truly never taken, every other weapon in the game usually has some niche builds that use then. Although I suppose some warrior offhands never get taken (like offhand mace)

Sins.4782:

You will see an engineer with a shield about as often as you find actual hackers in PvP.

Bro engi can’t use shields. That’s just a myth. L2p

:P

I think small cap circles are cute and adorable, and I just want to hug them

Lucius.2140:

• If they start at same time and its time to burst in the rotation: i will block the burst that way i will take the lead, breaking a tie.

No, because if you took the time to block his burst, you just interrupted your own burst. He can then block your burst and now you’re back to square one.

In a symmetrical 1v1 you can’t actually get ahead if the other person is executing optimally, you either fall behind or match them.
Of course thanks to the great randomness of PvP a truly symmetrical 1v1 between top level players almost never happens.

• If one start first and its time to burst but the enemy its trying to “break” by blocking, then i will not burst , will wait and then burst or change to an unbloackable atack xd.

Then that person isn’t playing optimally. Optimal playing assumes the opponent is going to use his unblockable siggy at a appropriate time.

If i can kill an enemy faster by waiting or doing something other way i will do.

You misunderstand what I mean by “optimal.” Optimal rotation is the rotation that kills the target the fastest.

You are talking about outplaying the opponent. If we are to assume in this hypothetical duel that the pair are both playing properly, then outplaying isn’t on the table.

EDIT: when I say rotation I’m not talking about static PvE style rotations where you do the same button combo for any and every enemy. I’m referring to a theoretical dynamic rotation that accounts for the target’s class and DcDs.

My arguments are theoretical assuming perfect play.

Boon visual cues should only show in combat.

2cents

Lucius.2140:

Thats for two main factors:

- You can predict a rotation, meaning you can easily survive the burst and get a time or create a time to burst.

- Theres not one optimal way to deal with all the players. The strategy (not rotation) will depend of class, build and skill level. A good player will be able to change its style/strategy at the midle of the fight and you will need to change yours also.

As a reminder: The easier way to connect against an enemy that knows how your class works and the combos its to do out of the boxes atacks or have as many as posible so you are not predictable (in other words if you expect the same burst atack all the guys that start with a meta build learn, you will get killed against anyone that knows their class).

Its the same principle as starting the same way every time, you will be countered. Also if we talk about rotations with lazzy low level play, you can create a counter rotation and kitten the other guy lol.

Repeating the same combos and start its part of a rotation (not the only one, since its the use of them as a set timing (not adjusted one) in a predeterminated sequence: Like casting 3 illusions and do shatter inmediatly to only get blocked by a war shield instead of waiting for it to end and then shatter.

Your points are only valid in a asymmetrical 1v1 (a 1v1 between different builds)

In a 1v1 between identical builds (like the OP’s video where both where power revs) you execute the optimal rotation because if your opponent does anything less than the optimal then they lose by default.

The only time breaking the optimal is the proper play in a symmetric 1v1 is if you are behind and need to pull a wild card to win. Of course in the majority of 1v1s, one player attacks ahead of the other, rather than both at the same instant.

apharma.3741:

. The game has become mostly a rotation game where you run in, do your rotation and then bug out if you’re not winning.

Oh so it’s like every mmo in existence.

Every build that has ever existed has a optimal way to go about attacking another player.

In theory most high level 1v1s should actually look like that, however in real 1v1s one of the players usually alphas ahead of the other player resulting in the late player having to break rotation to defend themselves.

Ubik.8315:

Maybe make it so you can flip a point if you outnumber the other team as well.

That wouldn’t end well.

If you could cap points by a simply number advantage, then the obvious play would be to stack bunkers and play the rotation game. After all the best way to hold a number advantage is to not lose anyone.

non-solution. The Core profession mechanic line on some classes is more important than the elite, and on other classes the core profession mechanic line isn’t as vital.

Also you’re misunderstanding why elites are always taken. Elites are taken because if a build wants to use any of the new abilities, or any of the new profession mechanics, then that build absolutely must have the elite.

If you want elites to not be mandatory then HoT abilities and weapons should be unbound from the elite line.

This thread is missing the point of why AB multimap is bad.

GW2 doesn’t give out much raw gold, rather rewards are given in form of loot and mats (or rather crap loot that is converted into mats) that can them be converted to gold via the TP.
AB multimap has dramatically increased the supply of mats, this is causing the value of those mats on the TP to fall dramatically. Since the metas all give the same types of mats, AB multimap is actually decreasing the value of other metas by driving down mat prices.

If AB multimap isn’t stopped we are going to reach a situation where the gold return of non-multimapping will be reduced to the point where multimapping becomes the only viable method of gold farm.

We are already seeing the affects of multimapping economically too. The price of HoT salvage items such as discarded garment have plummeted from a couple silver to 50 bronze or less. Ectoplasm’s value is decreased. The increased wealth of early multimap adopters has driven up the price of gems.

The market is reforming itself around AB multimapping, which means that people that don’t multimap are discovering that they do not have the buying power that they used to have.

Every ESL is the worst ESL ever

It’s nice to see that the clickbait threads full of aggrandized ignorance are the ones that get to stay on page 1 for days on end while the useful and productive threads don’t last half a day on page 1.

Valkyrie staff thief isn’t exactly hard to play either.

Making gross generalizations about a class(es) is silly.

Spartacus.3192:

you can still keep that stuff out of pvp. the players have given many suggestions such as instead of just choosing amulet (Zerk, Marauder, Mender etc), we should be allowed to choose from those same stats but for Weapons, Armor and accessories so that we have 3 places we can choose stats. That way we could choose Marauder weapons, Zerk armor and even Valkyrie accessories (for example). Still simple enough but provide more flexibility.

You wont get wvw dire perplexity mesmers because dire and perplexity runes don’t exist and I don’t advocate that they do.

Except I could create Dire stats by mixing carrion and rabid. Sure it wouldn’t have the full defense stat count of true dire, but the effect would be similar.

The thing you have to realize is that greater flexibility is greater power.

Jeknar.6184:

Honestly, I would prefer seeing the core specs being buffed instead of the Elite ones being nerfed.

buffing core specs buffs elite specs. Every Elite build includes two core traitlines.

The reason elites are always taken isn’t even because of the traitline either, elites are always taken for the new class mechanic (continuum split, reaper shroud, celestial avatar, berserk mode, etc) The elite traitlines themselves are honestly underwhelming for a lot of classes.

After all what is better, Mesmer with 4 shatters, or Mesmer with 4 shatters and continuum split?

Spartacus.3192:

Jourdelune.7456:

darkaheart.4265:

i understand not all amulets can be added but what about the sigils? except the on “kills” one.

this is one of the reason i dont play pvp. it feels like a whole separate game.

Man, I would give anet 1000$ gems store each year to have a propre PVE stats system in spvp.

Many would do.

Not sure why they thought it was a good idea to dumb spvp down like this. Save and Load build is not that hard to implement.

+1

I guess its because ANET thinks pvp players are dumber than WvW/PVE players. Why else would they have a game where you can design your own setup in some modes but in pvp you have strictly limited choices.

And yes I know all you people will say “easier to balance” but let me ask you, has pvp been balanced in your memory?

More like Anet doesn’t want all the ridiculousness that occurs in WvW to happen in SPvP.

Seriously the last thing sPvP needs is Condi builds with Dire stats, perplexity rune mesmers, or minstrel druids.

We used to have way more runes, amulets, and sigils in sPvP, however they where removed for very good reasons.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Arguably the best thing anet could do is just get rid of trees.
Players get to choose;
3 x grandmaster traits.
3 x master
3 x adept
6x conjunction traits.

They can choose from any trait line tree to make a specific build for their play style.

Dude the amount of power creep that would do would break the game.

Creating builds should be a pro/con thing not a “pick all the pros”

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

everyone is equal now,…so in a demented kinda way, it still works. It would be Survival of the fittest, not survival of following a meta.

That’s not how it would work. There would be a meta and it would be even more locked-in than the current one.

It would take people a day to figure out the god combinations of traits, and they would be up on metabattle and the forums in less that a week. Within two weeks it would become fairly apparent to which classes had the strongest god-builds and viola the meta is established.

All your system would do is increase the discrepancy between meta and non-meta builds.

tbh if berserk could be used without taking the berserker traitline than core warrior would honestly be stronger than berserker for every power and bunker build. (berserker traitline is still good for condi builds since it is a condi traitline.)

Sadly the fact that the new profession mechanics are tied to the elite spec means that all classes need the elite traitline to be competitive.

If you are just starting on thief I’d honestly recommend a Valkyrie staff build, simply because it’s gives a margin for error and is a great introduction to thief. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAWVn0MBNOhVOBmOBkmiFYCzLNcGaDaJgAQGY+DOCbhA-TZRBQBjpMAAuAAa4IA8gHBAA3fAA

Metabattle thief is a terrible build for new thieves because it requires you to have intricate knowledge of all of your abilities and combinations in order to accomplish anything at all.

Almighty Dervisher.6720:

Crinn.7864:

Switching to DX12 wouldn’t magically unlock all of DX12’s functionalities. To take advantage of DX12 fully a game’s engine has to be constructed around DX12, simply converting to DX12 would bring little gain while at the same time resulting in years of bugs.

Anet’s had a long time to fix their engine. A long, long time.

Taking advantage of DX12 functionalities is beyond “fixing” the engine. It’s more like rebuilding the engine ground up, and doing so would massively disrupt development for a year or more while also introducing massive amounts of new bugs.

Also Anet has been working on the engine, the 64bit upgrade for one, and a cursory look at the Heart of Maguuma maps reveals advancements in shaders, texture/geometry fidelity, and animation.

Zok.4956:

However, if you see the big picture, a real switch to utilize the features of DX12 would require a lot of changes and optimizations in the game client that by themselves would result in a much better client performance/speed. But A-net as a company does not want to put effort and ressources into this.

Switching to DX12 wouldn’t magically unlock all of DX12’s functionalities. To take advantage of DX12 fully a game’s engine has to be constructed around DX12, simply converting to DX12 would bring little gain while at the same time resulting in years of bugs.

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

why not metabattle? i look at necromancer and corruptionmancer is at 100% everyone and the signetmancer at 93% why is everyone refering for signet when in metabattle it shows corruptionmancer being better. which someone like me who plays necro agrees.

The basic problem with GW2 meta is that it’s not actually possible to definitively determine the optimal, so what people do is make a set of assumptions and then judge builds by those assumptions. Those assumptions are not always true.

Metabattle’s staff have a set of assumptions and biases that they use when determining what builds will be posted. The players that are most active on the metabattle boards are also generally players that agree with metabattle’s staff. Those of us that don’t agree with metabattle’s way of doing things just aren’t active on the site and our voices are unheard.