I find that engy does most things better then the original classes.
Engy is better at rampage then warrior
Engy is better at invisibility then thief
Engy is better with tornado a elite skill ele cant use.
You have to feel like Anet is running out of ideas to balance things or they are saving it for the next expansion.
If the engy gets lucky enough to get rampage, sure it’s a little better, but that’s a 50% chance of happening…
Engi is not better than thief. Especially after the sneak gyro nerfs. Also, any engi with sneak gyro won’t be bringing elixir X, so that’s a pretty irrelevant point.
I hope for more nerfs to ele and thief, so other classes are viable for dps roles in Raids.
Thief is still 2nd fiddle to ele. Only reason to ever bring a thief is if you don’t have anyone capable of playing ele.
But as long as thief maintains high dps by turning off your brain and auto attacking, they might as well just nerf it into the ground and be done with it.
So…here’s the thing.
For their to be something other than a druid healer, you need more than just another class that can heal well.
Since rangers deal pitiful DPS in their most damage-oriented builds and deal even less when they fill up with all the damage buffs that groups want them for (spotter, spirits, glyph, etc.), they will never be taken unless their terrible DPS is offset by their buffs (which it is). However, if you’re going to take a low DPS class just to get their buffs, you might as well have them heal and if they’re healing, you don’t really need anyone else to heal (for most bosses on most comps).
This is why eles have continued to be unpopular as healers in raids, even though they can technically heal better than druids.
As it stands, the best I could expect for healer diversity would be if revenant became a good enough healer using Ventari with a build that could maintain boons on the same level with the current meta rev build. In this case, you’d still have a druid with all the same buffs, but they would just run a DPS build.
This is all correct, I just want to add that the level of support buffs that druid provides in raids is completely insane compared to every other class. Even if in the future class a got a healing elite spec, it wouldn’t be able to compete with druid unless it were given comparable traits and skills. Just Grace of the Land and Glyph of Empowerment give a 26.5% damage boost to all affected allies. That alone makes them better for DPS support than every class besides chronomancer. And on top of that they have spotter, frost spirit, and sun spirit.
If you like healer ele/rev/whatever then more power to you, do what you want, but there is nothing in the game that is even remotely close to being as effective as a druid in terms of DPS support while providing a reasonable level of healing. This is why many groups run a 4-4-2 comp which brings 2 druids even though only one is needed for healing.
Yea…agreed. This is one of the reasons I abandoned ranger. When the game released, it really looked like it would be ranged pet DPS class. Fast forward to 2016 and ranger is now buff bot that transforms into a healer periodically with terrible damage that’s at least less terrible than other classes when they go full healing.
Not to say that this is a bad thing, as it’s something I know some people really enjoy, but it’s a far cry from what it looked like it would be when the game released and it’s definitely not my cup o’ tea.
So…here’s the thing.
For their to be something other than a druid healer, you need more than just another class that can heal well.
Since rangers deal pitiful DPS in their most damage-oriented builds and deal even less when they fill up with all the damage buffs that groups want them for (spotter, spirits, glyph, etc.), they will never be taken unless their terrible DPS is offset by their buffs (which it is). However, if you’re going to take a low DPS class just to get their buffs, you might as well have them heal and if they’re healing, you don’t really need anyone else to heal (for most bosses on most comps).
This is why eles have continued to be unpopular as healers in raids, even though they can technically heal better than druids.
As it stands, the best I could expect for healer diversity would be if revenant became a good enough healer using Ventari with a build that could maintain boons on the same level with the current meta rev build. In this case, you’d still have a druid with all the same buffs, but they would just run a DPS build.
As an elementalist it’s the second season in a row I’m going to skip.
Or maybe I’ll try facerolling elementalists to death on other classes for practice.
Why did you skip last season? Eles were great last season.
Eh, it’s no big deal. I guess now you may have to pay attention when stealthing instead of just spamming backstab.
This.
Question is: Why do thieves have to spam backstab/why could they spam backstab before? The moment you can answer this will be the moment you do realize this was an unjustified nerf.
You have the question wrong: Before the nerf, why wouldn’t you just spam backstab without thinking? There was absolutely no reason not to since in best scenario it lands and in worst scenario it doesn’t and you try again immediately afterward while also likely removing an aegis or blind.
Now there’s actually a tactical moment of decision not only for the thief, but also for the person being attacked by the thief. The thief has to watch the target more closely and the target now actually has a reason to use a tactical aegis or AoE blind when they expect a stealth attack. It makes the game more complex in a good way.
Eh, it’s no big deal. I guess now you may have to pay attention when stealthing instead of just spamming backstab.
It is if you play D/D, where the only functional skill in stealth is backstab.
This is why the change is so stupid; it nerfs our weakest set even more than it was already underpowered.
I’ve given up.
D/D was crap before, so I don’t see why ANet should care about breaking something that was already broken. And with D/D, you’re more likely to get screwed over by a block/blind preventing your CnD, wasting initiative than a backstab that you can try again a second later without any resource loss.
So, despite the balance patch, I haven’t seen any reason for groups to really change much of their raid comp. Ele DPS was nerfed, but it still seems like they’re still the best class to fill for any non-support role outside of some condi fights where you may want more necros.
Because of this, I’m wondering if anyone believes differently or if anyone is running anything different in their raids?
Anyone shuffling in venom thieves? Healer revs?
I haven’t tried the new story, nor have I tried the new PvP map, but here’s my take on the changes:
The good
- Eles definitely needed to be brought down a bit in DPS within PvE.
- The /gg commands are nice, but the choice to apply finishers to yourself was genius. Well done.
- So happy to see new emotes added. Hoping to see more of these. /facepalm is great.
- Baseline venom share was a good move. Not sure if this makes venom share good enough to be meta, but it’s still good, directionally.
- Glad to see a new PvP map. Haven’t tried it, but it looks great. Love the open feel.
- Glad to see spirit shards available for excess XP.
The Bad
- Ele rotations definitely sound a bit clunky, but it’s hard to tell if that’s really so bad or if eles are just salty about a damage nerf (even thought they’re still DPS kings).
- Engis are still crap for raids. They’re technically viable, but only get taken into groups out of pity or because the raid leader can’t find a decent player of another profession.
- Thief still has a terrible rotation for staff PvE.
- Eles seem to be hit hard by cleric removal. Not sure that this was necessary. Last meta wasn’t too bunker heavy.
- DH changes don’t seem to matter for PvE. Still seems like they just camp hammer for best DPS.
- There’s still no class that can range DPS like an ele and ele nerfs don’t seem to change anything aside from lowering group DPS.
I’m probably missing a lot, but that’s what’s on my mind at the moment at least.
Pretty much the same thing you see on MetaBattle, except you take DareDevil over SA (i.e. DA/Tr/DD).
I’ve only done some basic testing with less than perfect gear, but it seems to still perform under power staff, but it’s definitely much better than it was.
I expect thief to be fine (or at least not worse than it was). Backstabbing when your target is blocking now requires thought, but with the removal of cleric’s amulet, enemies just got squishier.
Yes, you were able to win every single fight against a staff thief because of a 1 second passive fear, but you never will, ever ever again.
Yup, pure fact here. No knee jerk hyperbole. Nope nope!
Nothing changed, but maybe thiefs finally have a chance of getting into raids (dps diff is smaller now, and dps spike of ele is now more situational (big hit box, longer cooldown on Meteor shower (33% cd reduction now 20%)), + lava font nerf. D/Wh stays in dps, but was very close already to thiefs. I’m curious if thiefs will get raid spots now.
D/Wh has lost dps too. Pretty sure thief out dps fresh air.
But at least tempest give more support at your party.Thief has more party support now too. Venom share…
Well…the venom share is nice, but break bars rarely seemed to be an issue for groups.
And how much DPS did D/Wh fresh air lose? Because staff thief lost a pretty much flat 5%.
Condi thief did get buffed…but I don’t expect it will surpass power builds.
I’d be honestly curious to see what sort of DPS a condi mesmer could make in a raid setting with these patch changes.
No change. Nothing changed about that build in this patch.
- The Prestige: The number of burning stacks have been increased from 1 to 3 stacks for 3 seconds.
- Illusionary Mage: The recharge of the mage’s attack has been reduced from 5 seconds to 4 seconds. Burning stacks have been increased from 1 to 2 stacks, with the duration reduced from 6 to 3. The missile velocity of the mage’s attack has been increased by 33%.
And just to clarify, I’m just curious, even though I know that mesmers won’t suddenly be viable as condi with this or anything. =P
I’d be honestly curious to see what sort of DPS a condi mesmer could make in a raid setting with these patch changes.
Eh, it’s no big deal. I guess now you may have to pay attention when stealthing instead of just spamming backstab.
Venomshare is now worse then before the patch. And even before VS Thief was subpar because Viper Necros and Burnzerkers exist
Dont bother until they look into the Leeching Venoms mistake
Care to elaborate? Cuz everything seems to point to straight up buffs.
Now you run DA/Trickery/DD and get the same baseline venoms from before along with all the extra condi application that comes from the trickery line.
Is it actually good enough to be considered meta yet? Not sure. Will need to see DPS tests. However, I don’t see any reason it would do less DPS than before.
They removed the Might you get for using the venoms. It actually buffed your own venoms and the party, making it a decent way to stack might in zerg. But they took that away, making venoms weaker overall.
Oh, rofl, you’re talking about WvW. Yea, the might change means absolutely nothing for raids.
Good luck with balance in WvW. =P
Would be interesting to see what the “meta” engi condi build does for DPS now. I don’t expect anything huge, but it does seem like a net positive for that build at least.
Venomshare is now worse then before the patch. And even before VS Thief was subpar because Viper Necros and Burnzerkers exist
Dont bother until they look into the Leeching Venoms mistake
Care to elaborate? Cuz everything seems to point to straight up buffs.
Now you run DA/Trickery/DD and get the same baseline venoms from before along with all the extra condi application that comes from the trickery line.
Is it actually good enough to be considered meta yet? Not sure. Will need to see DPS tests. However, I don’t see any reason it would do less DPS than before.
Wah. Why the medic gyro hate? Is it because it’s not healing turret?
Passive Elixir S → Dodge while casting Medic Gyro = TOO STRONK!
Rumor is the patch today will nerf staff power DPS by nerfing the auto attack, but condi builds will get buffed from venoms going baseline.
I’ve beaten a few on my thief 1v1 using d/p.. I don’t know how skilled they were but I beat them.
If a scrapper tries to go offensive against D/P, you can beat them, yea. However, scrapper can generally just counter thieves by going full defensive and just spamming EG autoattack.
If you just mean solo in open world, then yea, mesmer is fine. There’s really no wrong choice with that decision. If you mean to solo dungeons or something like that, then it may not be the best choice…
Last season was definitely the most balanced in terms of meta builds. Guardians were a bit underpowered, but that’s about it.
Just an FYI OP, when you see someone use the term “most balanced season” what they mean is “had the most classes represented at one time in PvP history”. In other definitions of the word “balance” you’d laugh.
XD
Welcome to MMOs.
And yes, this pretty much means that there was no single OP class that teams wanted to stack and that you could build a strong meta team with a number of combinations instead of having to run a very specific team like in seasons past and aside from Dragonhunters, there was no class that you wouldn’t want on a team and even DH weren’t so bad that you couldn’t make them work.
It’s a far cry from thieves and warriors in past seasons.
(edited by Dahkeus.8243)
I stopped playing before HoT came out. I was burned out. The HoT pricing issue, a wave of Mesmer nerfs and a few other annoyances (reflect removing stealth) were just bonuses. My character felt weak and I was bored. I’m looking to give the game another go but first I’d like to know where my character stands.
I’m a one-character kind of guy. My gear is all ascended pure Rabid (CONDI, prec, tough). The specializations were Illusions, Dueling and Chaos. I played the annoying PU stealth style because I enjoyed the freedom it gave me. I regularly partook in fractals, PvP and WvW.
What am I looking at in terms of needing new gear and do I need to pick up a new build? I want to stay competitive in all areas of the game.
HoT is half off right now and Chrono is one of the most fun elite specs. Just shell out the cash and get the upgrade. Gliding alone is worth it.
If you’re looking for a competitive build, head to MetaBattle.com. It still has the best builds, but there is a balance patch tomorrow, so it’s all subject to change.
However, chrono has been one of the best classes in both PvP and PvE since HoT released. I don’t really WvW, so I can’t speak for that, but there was a pretty solid shatter roamer vid posted on reddit earlier today, so I assume it still does alright there.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4uh74q/shatter_mesmer_roaming_montage/
P.s. If you do decide to stick without HoT, check out the vid below for an idea of how to play competitively in PvP with a core build:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-IACGTF3gw
Last season was definitely the most balanced in terms of meta builds. Guardians were a bit underpowered, but that’s about it.
You will need the latest expansion to be competitive, just like most games out there.
Population is down a bit since so many people finished getting their legendary wings. If it weren’t for this, matchmaking would probably be better.
But the balance patch is tomorrow, so everything is subject to change.
Hmm, even if it is combining elements of other fractals, it’s still to early to dismiss it as just a copy of other fractals combined (although that won’t stop trolls/cynics from doing this). There’s still potential for this to combine the mechanics in a unique way and at least it’s not something that can just be steamrolled by stacking in corners and AoEing down mobs.
It should be interesting to give this a shot.
Heavy condi — think mace warrior kind of condi.
Yes, that’s what I was talking about. If elixir C, the scrapper can win. If not, the war should have the upper hand.
Even with purge gyro or elixir c, the warrior can SPAM that condi.
Only if you don’t dodge buttblows and skullgrinders. Otherwise, it’s manageable.
Not sure I have a top/bottom 3, but directionally, I think most meta builds could be left alone for the most part, while balance focuses on this increasing build diversity by buffing weak weapon sets and traits. Examples would be P/P on thief, scepter on ele, Axe and GS in necro, everything but hammer on engi, etc.
Heavy condi — think mace warrior kind of condi.
Yes, that’s what I was talking about. If elixir C, the scrapper can win. If not, the war should have the upper hand.
Druid
lol
That’s a stalemate at best.
Pretty much this. Maybe mesmer though.
Regular condi like condi war shouldn’t beat scrapper if they run the Elixir C variant. If they’re running B or something else, it’s probably in the warrior’s favor.
Just buy HoT?
Honestly there may be many reasons why you can’t / won’t but is that not an option?
^ This. And the reason is pretty much that there’s just not enough other people out there who don’t have HoT.
Consider that matchmaking would have to take the entire PvP population queueing at the same time as you, reduce it to people who don’t have HoT, and then apply all the other filters it currently has (i.e. MMR rating). You’d wait forever to get a queue pop and even if you did have enough other non-HoT people online queued to get a decent time, you’d be matched with people everywhere on the spectrum from total noob, to very skilled.
Also worth mentioning, but Chaithh streams on Twitch pretty regularly and has a lot of videos of past streams. He’s an engi primarily and plays for Astral Authority (fomerly known as Abjured), which won the last World Tournament Series.
On his streams, he also explains his actions and answers questions from chat, so it’s a great resource to learn from.
Agreed, Scrapper is the way to go for a tanky bruiser.
I am a pvper (yes I’m invading you and your pve bubble) and I love pvp in every mmo that I’ve played but I raiding in wotlk in wow, and I really loved it in hindsight. I really want to try raiding in this game, but I have around 20 g at max. I know I need ascended weapon and trinkets, but I never leveled up my crafting (oops!) so how am I to get the gear? I have all exotic atm, so is that enough to raid with and down a boss or two? Thank you in advance.
Step 1: Pick a class/build to focus on. Learn what stats you need on your gear, which weapons to use, and what runes/sigils to use.
Step 2: Convert your laurels into ascended trinkets.
Step 3: Get exotic gear for anything you don’t have ascended gear to fill.
Step 4: PvP, run dungeons, or do whatever content you enjoy to earn gold and buy whatever you’re missing. PvP should be fine to earn gold if that’s what you like.
Step 5: Find a good guild or group of people who are skilled, but are also friendly with new players. This can be tough, but if you can prove yourself as someone who’s friendly, willing to listen to advice, and willing to pull your weight in researching boss fights before you show up to the raids, this can be done. Just don’t be that person who shows up to their first raid ever, but doesn’t know anything about the encounter. A quick google or youtube search can find you everything you need to be prepared.
It’s pretty much the story of every pug group in any MMO ever.
- Pug leader wants to make a group with a high group of success.
- Pug leader has to invite strangers.
- Pug leader cannot tell how skilled or experienced the strangers are.
- Pug leader has many choices.
- Pug leader asks for potentially arbitrary proof of achievement/gear/items from large pool of strangers to narrow down their options.
- Players not selected by pug leader decide they hate the pug leader.
- Players who are new to content have difficulty finding groups since most pug leaders want to increase their chances of success.
At the end of the day, people making groups only have so many tools at their disposal to vet any potential group members. In an ideal world, these group leaders would ask questions that tap into the players knowledge of encounters instead of just asking for links to gear if they truly want the best players or we would have more group leaders that were willing to risk success chances in order to teach new players, but reality is what reality is.
And sometimes leaders of pugs are just as bad/foolish as the type of players they try so hard to exclude.
Aereniel en Dahkeus, if they will progress s4 like s2 and s3 you both be happy but not much of the pvp player base will be left over i wish you luck when both sitting solely in legend waiting for a match.
Who says we want S4 to be just like S2 and S3? All we’re saying is that S1 was worse.
Playing all classes to some extent is definitely good practice for learning how to handle fights in PvP.
However, as said by others, if you solo queue, then you’ll definitely want to learn how to play a second class as a swap if you just happen to get queued with a team that has a bad composition. Ele is definitely the safest swap to learn as a backup.
Generally you’ll want your team to have:
1 primary mid fight bunker – ideally this will be an ele, but could also be a druid.
1 mobile roamer – Revenant, thief, or mesmer fill this role.
3 DPS/Team fighters
Depending on the other team, you can get by without a mobile roamer or you may even want to have some classes that excel at fighting side nodes (warriors, druids, mesmers, etc.).
Because of this, the need for having a swap will depend on what class you play as your main.
If you play a thief, for example, it’s very, very important to have a swap since 2 thieves is a major handicap (not impossible odds, but improbable). However, if you play an ele or druid, you may rarely need to swap.
Engi, necro, and warrior are also currently relatively safe professions to play without a swap available since they work well regardless of how much class stacking you have in on your team. Engi is probably the safest of those three.
And of course, all the advice from me and everyone else could easily be thrown out the window, depending on the next balance patch.
Season 1 was terrible both in terms of match making and profession balance. The rating parity in match making made the season the definition of grind with absolutely zero skill required to progress through divisions. Every player slogged away in his/her MMR bracket, and thanks to the safety pip mechanic basically the entire player pool could reach legendary as long as enough games were played. The most absurd aspect of S1 was that it was actually easier for players with low MMR to climb divisions, because they could play with and against low-level players all the way from amber to legend. There was no skill progression as people grinded their way up the divisions. You could reach legend and not meet a single ESL-level player on the way. And don’t even get me started on the Stronghold pip cheesing, which devalued climbing even more.
Profession balance was similarly absurd during S1. Fresh off the huge power creep of HoT launch, bunker mesmers, revenants and necros ran rampant, and the meta was all about stacking as many cheesy passives as possible. The Pro League was especially sad, as matches were often decided by who could get the first two-cap and bunker their position to a sleep-inducing victory.
Meta-wise seasons 2 & 3 were an improvement over S1, even though there is still far too much residual power creep from HoT specialisations, and build diversity continues to be extremely feeble. Match making however has clearly improved from S1, and it is now impossible to reach legend without meeting at least some skilled players along the way.
Overall, I feel that positive progress has been made from S1 to S3, but the progress has been slow and marred by facepalm moments especially in terms of profession balance, which is still dominated by silly passives and low-skill spam.
^ Best summary I’ve seen. Well said.
Also, I believe the change to prevent solo Q players from facing full 5 person premades was put in after S1, which reduced the whole argument of Solo Q being at a disadvantage of premades.
I think the biggest challenges awaiting S4 are:
– Lack of build diversity
– Profession stacking in Solo Q games unbalancing matches.
@ RedZebra: The question wasn’t just in terms of matchmaking. Go back and read the OP if you’re confused.
S1 had plenty of imbalanced games, even if it did get worse in S2 as part of the move to the tier system. However, it also made the early tiers of the season a total slog fest.
It also made the early tiers a LOT slower for a lot of players with higher MMRs, so there was a lot of inconsistency.
Honestly, I think S3 would have been the clear winner for a lot of people if there was enough activity in the population to allow matchmaking to tune better matches since it had better rules and logic put in place.
“video is private”
lol Dahkeus look behind the exploit. Maybe you just look at far you got s3, for me s3 was best but certainly not the best mechanics. S3 was a dice, if y were lucky y were in the good team if not sry. S1 had at least some correlation with mmr of teams, not the best but still there was some.
I got just as in far S3 as I did in S1. Diamond in both.
S1 had a lot more 4 v 5s and bugs where those 4 v 5s would result in pip loss. The class balance was also atrocious in comparison.
(edited by Dahkeus.8243)
S3 > S2 > S1
No idea why people are saying S1. S1 had people cheesing the matchmaking to get to high ranks and bunker rezzmers.
It’s like people are completely blind to all the mistakes WoW made by creating different raid difficulties…
Warrior is a very solid choice for any aspect of GW2, really. In PvP right now, it’s a top tier spec as a condi-based brawler. In raids, everyone wants 1-2 as a might-stacking PS build. In dungeons, people also love having them for the might stacks. In WvW, it’s still a great choice.
Warrior is easily one of the most reliable choices in the game if you’re looking for a class that’s relevant in end game content. Just be aware that all of this, as always in any MMO, could change with a single balance patch.
Honestly, kiting at a distance and auto-attacking is one of the best ways to kill a condi spam thief.
I had one of my best win percentages compared to all previous seasons and blew through the tiers relatively easily.
but I ended in diamond since I didn’t have as much time to PvP and got stuck in a 50/50 W/L for the last tier of diamond on the last day of the season.
Oh well. =P
Just bought new character slot and made a thief.
After trying it out on my new computer, i can say that AOE is real problem for thieves. That aside, how have i ever killed any of them? I am killing people 1v1, 1v2 and sometimes 1v3, if they lack AOE. Used to be guardian main, but i can’t even compare these two. If Anet aren’t going to nerf thieves, then i found my new main.My question, though, how other thieves perma-dodge everything and why other thieves don’t view that as broken?
Thieves can easily be defeated without ever being killed. Play against a team that sits a druid on home with a condi war rushing far and you’ll see. =P
There are no NPC pirates in this map that interact with players. The secondary mechanic is a periodic 4th capture point (“The Bell”) that awards increasing team score.
There was probably some confusion because once the bell is captured, there is an awesome sequence of cannons blowing up the pirate ship. This is only for flavor, though.
Sounds cool. However, I actually kinda liked the cannon mechanic from the old Capricorn map. I think it did a good job of not being so telegraphed that it wasn’t worth using against skilled opponents while also being limited enough to not be a role you do the whole map.
Is this gone entirely?
Looking at condi damage is great for a grin, but doesn’t really mean much in terms of overall performance. You can easily just zerg-follow teammates to rack up tons of damage and kills while losing the game or just get really high numbers in a game where you heavily outmatch the enemy team.
Making smart rotations, CCing enemies at the right time reviving allies, and knowing when to go or not go for secondary objectives can mean a lot more to helping a team win than damage alone.
P.s. Don’t play like the condi ranger I faced a few games back who desperately tried to 1 v 1 me when I was on Necro by dropping all their traps on me at once while my plague signet as up and ready unless you just really want to see how many condis you can stack on yourself.