Guild Wars 2

fluffdragon.1523:

Serious question here, as I’ve not looked at my settings in … years now, but was there ever or is there currently an option to toggle mouse-look mode?

Something along the lines of: “press [KEY] to make the mouse act as if right-click is always depressed.”

I could see that being really useful for people who find it difficult to adapt or have health issues that make holding down mouse buttons a pain. Likewise this could be a nice way for the OP to slowly break into things without feeling trapped one way or the other.

(Or we could finally get proper controller support, not like that’ll ever happen~)

Enable Action Camera. That said, because it’s basically permanently-pressed, tab-targeting is no longer a thing; you need to aim via the camera.

Ario.8964:

I like the evade on deathblossom because it gives power d/d a chance to survive in a frontal fight with d/p when it gets caught in one. If you wanna kill condi evade thief remove the bleeds from db and that’ll prove a better change over time. Condi thief already has p/d for those who want to play braindead stuff.

Agreed about power D/D. That said, they very well could just move the bleeds to Dancing Dagger to give it some value to P/D and rework death blossom to just be a better evade for both.

Most of the problem with D/D itself is that it lacks mobility and engage potential like D/P. Make DB a forward rush and D/D gets astronomically better (although not good enough for competitive play since CnD still sucks due to reliability and Dancing Dagger does next to nothing overall).

babazhook.6805:

A cooldown on the PI would simply mean Stability neutrailzes much of the trait. As is now you often have to burn off one or two head shots to peel off stability. There not a lot of interrupts in the thief tool set . This makes the true cost of a headshot higher than it appears.

If there a cooldown on the PI all that happens is classes with high access to stability become immune to it. If the enemy can reapply stability faster then it can be peeled off then damage on interrupt becomes next to impossible.

Needless to say this means classes with low stab access (including the thief) are more susceptible to head shots. In hame terms this means headshot spam largely a myth. It just not worth using against certain classes.

Not at all. You won’t get interrupt credit until those stability stacks are stripped, anyways. The trait works on interrupt, not on CC. So if you need multiple HS’s to peel stacks of stab as you do now to get an interrupt… nothing changes.

Basically, all it does is remove some of the over-excessive punishment to classes with no stab.

Which is why I said depending on matchup you pretty much can be pretty safe either picking HS or SS. Never headshot spam guards or scrappers, but against necros, other thieves, and depending on the circumstance, eles, the ability just goes full-on bonkers and quite frankly takes almost next to no mechanical skill to play well.

I’m fine with a skilled interrupt every so often being rewarded with a little extra damage, but in most cases of abuse there’s really no skill in terms of the interrupt. Fire/Air sigils proc on Headshot crits, causing an artifical inflation of damage and forcing heals and casts etc., which allows HS spam to be more effective as time goes on so long as there’s even a remote understanding of conservation of initiative.

Basically, if the thief doesn’t objectively suck, there’s very little incentive not to just use the ability in a favorable matchup. I’m all for the initiative system having no cooldowns and whatnot to adjust to a fight, but there’s a difference between maybe needing to use shortbow 5 twice to escape a DH pull or Heartseeker twice to take down a < 25% hp target and just using a single ability 4/5 times in between pressing 1 for damage. Take it as you will, but it’s bad design, like so much of HoT and post-HoT has entailed.

Well, they did actually nerf the venomshare traits/builds if you wanna get really technical as to nerfing traits, apharma. Power hasn’t seen any, although the ICD to stealth attacks has major implications for how players need to play the profession.

ID/Headshot spam is stupid, though.

Bigger picture is that it’s all Rock-Paper-Scissors right now, which is bad. Blocks/Stability > Headshot/ID spam > channel/cast-oriented builds with limited stab/blocks (a la necro) > boons/blocks. People screaming for balance in this way unfortunately I think are the cause, and it’s led to a very… boring game state where people pretty much just spam what’s most effective rather than playing smart.

My necro matchup between dodges is usually something like Headshot, Headshot, AA a bit, Headshot, AA, Headshot, stomp. Everything else, Shadow Shot with the occasional Headshot for a major interrupt. Half of the time it doesn’t even feel like I have other skills outside of map traversal.

Sure, I’ll bite. D/P meta Daredevil.

Silver 3/Gold1. The below scenario seems to consist of around 30% of the games I play. With just one or two competent players in mid it’s pretty much a steamroll as I usually don’t let the enemy hold more than point at a time.

How, on a thief, do I carry a game where my team cannot fight 4v1/2 against someone in mid and consistently wipes to one/two people, while the rest of the opposing team can split 2-2/2-1/1-2 far/home making decapping not very feasible for me without a very extended fight, and my team can’t take any others, either, unless I’m there to win it for them? If they also refuse to rotate into fights I start on sides, what do?

Is 50-70% of team damage considered okay? How do I get the top reviver as a thief since it’s typically the only top-player bonus I don’t have?

Zintrothen.1056:

My suggestions for D/P nerfs are:

- Lower AA damage in PvP only.
- Slash Shadow shot damage significantly
- Increase Headshot initiative by 1.

And now, to help make up for the drop in damage:

- Make extra initiative gain from Trickery baseline. Move initiative spent damage increase to replace it. Lead Attacks does too much for a minor trait.
- Move boon steal with Steal to a GM other than Sleight of Hand.
- Make 20% Steal CD reduction from Sleight of Hand baseline. Keep Trickery based Steal reduction.
- Make some changes to improve Critical Strikes line.
- Add a Stealth Attack damage bonus to Shadow Arts. Why is there no trait that boosts Stealth Attack damage? Critical Strikes has a critical strike increase for those attacks, but that’s a plain damage boost.

With a damage reduction to weapon skills, Thieves will need to get that damage back through traits and sacrificing the Trickery line, which is impossible to sacrifice right now because it’s far too powerful.

Or, instead of boosting damage, they could boost some other utilities or change some weapon skills to be more defensive and allow Thieves to work better in team fights and be able to do a different role. Who knows if that’s at all possible though at this point.

Uh… you should probably research thief a little more before proposing suggestions, JS.

Lowered AA would kill the thief. Too much defense in the game right now, and the stealth attack ICD has made AA the only viable way to deal damage on the profession. Even despite the fact it was optimal to AA beforehand, now the AA is the only thing the profession really has left.

I can’t disagree with SS, but ANet needs to do way more for the thief to compensate; it pretty much carries the entire profession in combat right now because all other weapon sets suck, stealth attacks have an ICD and are nigh impossible to land and disable even AA for the remainder of stealth time), and other skills on the kit cost too much initiative and/or don’t do enough damage to make an impact, while they often lack in defensive utility to let the thief safely eat the reveal. I’ve always vouched for SS nerfs, but only on the basis the rest of the profession gets changed, notably other weapons.

Head Shot doesn’t need to cost more. ID is the problem, it’s a Daredevil-only problem, and it’s dumb it has no ICD on its damage component. ANet keeps pushing for CC and interrupt builds as part of “skilled play” on other professions (which is stupid imho); with a higher cost, you’d see the thief at similar interrupt potential to an interrupt mesmer in terms of raw cooldowns, except with no other weapon skill access and less utility as a consequence. An ICD would cut incentive to spam on low/no-stability professions while still rewarding good use of interruption timing.

Even your “making up for loss of damage” isn’t correct lol.
- Preparedness is already a minor, so making it baseline and moving LA to the space it occupies because it’s “too good for a minor” moves it from a minor to a minor lol.

- Nerfing BT won’t accomplish much and buffs to SoH are needed if the steal cooldown reduction was made baseline or as part of core Trickery since the interrupt in most cases causes passive CC reflection into melee, usually getting the thief killed. There’d be zero reason to run SoH, and you offer no replacement trait for BT. In which case, if you move LA there, you end up with literally the same build except no daze on SoH lol.

- CS only sucks because it lacks utility because every trait line in the game now features a ton of arbitrary defense and utility with offensive bonuses. Sadly, as soon as you add pressure utility to it, it just becomes DA 2.0, if not superior. CS needs changes but it needs a lot of other professions to change first before it becomes usable without becoming OP.

- Nobody will take SA for stealth attack damage because nobody really uses stealth attacks anymore aside from P/D builds because they never hit due to the ICD on stealth attacks, and if the gain was made substantial, you’d invalidate CS as well because all it offers is damage, particularly targeted towards out-of-stealth critting/damage (Flanking Strikes, HK, etc.). CS + SA used to be a very viable combo but continued nerfs to power thief, the nerf to crit damage scaling via CS by a massive margin with the introduction of Ferocity, and continued power-damage nerfs + absurd defenses in HoT has made both lines kind of terrible compared to everything else on the numerical and conceptual levels. It’s not that these lines need buffs; they’re still very strong (CS needing only a few minor QoL tweaks to help the core thief), but the simple fact everything else is too OP comparatively (including Daredevil) needs nerfs to make them usable.

Turk.5460:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Clownmug.8357:

What’s with this “stand in black power” idea? Are there thieves dumb enough to use it so close to another player?

Since 90% of the thieves that run that build don’t have a brain people actually consider this to be a counter. The problem is it’s absolutely not a counter when you run up against a competent player that decides to run ghost thief for a laugh because they are bored as kitten of the terrible combat we’ve had to deal with since HoT.

If you’re not good enough to fight this build, or smart enough to figure out how, then just don’t deal with it and run in the opposite direction. Why waste your time trying to kitten measure in a 1v1 you’re not skilled enough to win, then due to lack of understanding, complain later on the forum?

There is no profession that can’t run away from this build.

Core guard and mesmer unless running and burning a very specific set of utilities can’t if the thief isn’t just straight awful.

Jim’s right, though. Unless the thief is just trash, standing in BP is arguably worse than trying to cleave.

Cheers.

I do suggest binding strafe to A and D (disabling rotate) and just using the right click + hold for camera rotation. I also highly suggest binding dodge, as Danikat mentions above, to a more prominent button (I think the game defaults this to C or something?). I moved mine to the Left Shift.

Because of the nature of GW2 being very action-oriented, I sincerely suggest learning your way away from it.

In the game I played previously, I did the same as you, OP, but that was because players had 30+ skills to manage and there were also six movement keys while left/right click both had functionality and none of these could be changed in the options.

It might feel weird at first, and you might even do worse, but the move to using keybinds makes gameplay so much more fluid and makes you perform so much better with an action-heavy system once you get used to it.

Fay.2357:

DeceiverX.8361:

Fay.2357:

DeceiverX.8361:

Server stacking is a hard problem to solve on the technical level, despite being doable. ANet’s unwilling to devote the resources needed to do so, so we get ineffective algorithms, instead.

Server stacking is not possible to solve when the community is so intent on destroying any possible solutions that Anet implements. The only way to fix stacking would be to completely stop server transfers of any kind. That would allow Anet to balance the populations appropriately. Obviously they’ll never do that because not only would that make a ton of people scream and cry about it, it would also remove their primary wvw revenue stream.

Data-driven AI and a big devotion to log file processing to create said data would solve it entirely and prevent any community intervention that lasted longer than maybe a few days or a single matchup. But that’s very laborious and extremely difficult to implement at that. It’d require a lot of resources which simply put aren’t going to be devoted to the mode.

What are you talking about? I don’t care how much data you collect and what you do with it, it won’t change anything. The playerbase isn’t trying to create balanced matches. They’re actively trying to create lopsided matches. If your system creates a balanced match, people will transfer to one server until it’s overloaded and wins in a lopsided victory. The only way to prevent that is to completely stop server transfers.

Or have matchmaking change who goes where so quickly that there’s no time to respond.

Put it this way, if pairings changed, and changed massively every week, even to a point to make winning servers be at a disadvantage, then you’d see transfer numbers plummet because the entire incentive to transfer/garnish free wins would be pretty much nullified because of a lack of consistency.

I.E., BG has a long-standing reign on WvW; use data collected at certain times of day and player behaviors to pair up servers to match coverage and mirror or exceed those numbers, and dynamically change the queues based on this data as well to enforce a fairer PPT match based on short-and-long-term player data. If BG loses, do analysis on transfer maps etc., and re-balance appropriately, potentially doing nothing. Re-kitten PPT spread at the end of each week also compared with a history of past matchups, and go from there.

Even things like common player behavioral patterns based on movement vectors, skirmish sizes, regions, guild runs by grouped player mapping, etc. are all able to be parsed and are currently collected and stored by ANet. I don’t think you’re fully appreciating just how much dynamism, analysis, and data collection would be needed to properly balance matchups, though, which is why I think it infeasible; it would require truly tremendous resources (which ANet ultimately does have, but it would be a huge investment) in comparison to the rest of the game to properly complete.

Otherwise, yea, you’re not really solving the problem of match manipulation without removing transfers, but that’s kind of a non-option for community and PR and general profitability reasons.

Or have the damaging trait (ID) have an ICD to prevent the reason people spam it meaninglessly to begin with, while still making it a good interrupt as it’s meant to be.

fluffdragon.1523:

Absolute honesty?

Reset the profession to pre-Specializations. We thus get back everything we had before when we were actually good and not just a stand-in for other classes that weren’t in the party.

Hate to break it to you, but the thief was way worse pre-HoT. Daredevil carries the profession so hard it’s ridiculous, even with the power creep on others.

Though I’d rather see no-elites than they are as currently. The game’s just not fun to play really.

Rev, like most things HoT, just needs a re-design from the ground up. It’ll forever be broken because numbers tweaks solve nothing for bad design tbh.

Though saying thief is the better duelist is a bit far-fetched depending on the context. I mean I guess off-point with unlimited space to 1v1 in, sure, but that’s not really indicative of PvP or the state of the problems about the thief.

Fay.2357:

SteepledHat.1345:

Godkitten , how much more do you wanna nerf chrono? When will you people be happy?

Well, we still had regular nerf mesmer threads in the pre-hot+pre-hot-traitrework meta where mesmer was utter and complete garbage, so the answer to that question is ‘never’.

Granted, the condition build is kinda busted, though it’s no fault of the mesmer itself really, but rather more generic problems (confusion DoT, etc.)

It suffers the same problems as thief; really busted OP elements surrounded in a shell of effective uselessness that cause the entire profession to hinge on poorly-designed if not very powerful things.

Though one could say that’s a lot of the game at the moment now with elites and the subsequent iterative nerfing the core specs keep getting/buffing of just stupid/cheesy builds.

Fay.2357:

DeceiverX.8361:

Server stacking is a hard problem to solve on the technical level, despite being doable. ANet’s unwilling to devote the resources needed to do so, so we get ineffective algorithms, instead.

Server stacking is not possible to solve when the community is so intent on destroying any possible solutions that Anet implements. The only way to fix stacking would be to completely stop server transfers of any kind. That would allow Anet to balance the populations appropriately. Obviously they’ll never do that because not only would that make a ton of people scream and cry about it, it would also remove their primary wvw revenue stream.

Data-driven AI and a big devotion to log file processing to create said data would solve it entirely and prevent any community intervention that lasted longer than maybe a few days or a single matchup. But that’s very laborious and extremely difficult to implement at that. It’d require a lot of resources which simply put aren’t going to be devoted to the mode.

The community will always be hellbent on stacking so long as the encounters keep getting less fun and the game more stagnant. The first is on the profession design team so we know it’s never going to be resolved. The second is just part of the vicious cycle of not having the matchups paired as the aforementioned.

Tarasicodissa.7084:

Thieves never got nerfed, it’s just that other classes got buffed indirectly by the current meta setup. Having 2 chronos allows you to have permanent (or nearly permanent) uptime on alacrity, which buffs other classes a lot, but thief gets almost 0 benefit from it because they use initiative instead of cooldowns.
Because of that, eles, if properly played, have better damage output, especially on large hitboxes. In reality, thief will probably do comparable (if not better) dmg in nearly any scenario, because it’s easier to survive and do your rotation. I’ve seen VERY FEW eles who can actually outDPS a thief.
Nevertheless, despite thief being perfectly viable for any raid situation, I would recommend you looking into a different class instead. Most people don’t really understand the meta or listen to reason, they just copy it blindly and will not accept a class into raids unless it’s commonly used, so you will have a hard time finding a group as a thief.

Only on the context of PvE for the power build. Otherwise every other build was massively nerfed for PvP.

Probably just conditions. Pin Down’s bleeding with some expertise or bleed duration will last well over 20s, for example.

Was gonna say, if damage prevention uptime is the problem, BF doesn’t need tweaking. Either Shield or CS does.

BF does fairly low damage unless heavily-traited, but that build is at best a 1v1 build and relies on core mesmer for the most part since it can’t afford chronomancer.

The best implementation of fishing I’ve seen done was in ROHAN: Blood Feud. Fair and could provide decent loot or sidegrades given enough bait, but it required a lot if skill, timing, and at times, twitch reflexes.

It still wasn’t really engaging and barely had anyone doing it. It’s a huge waste of resources, especially now, since the state of the game is so… well… bad.

apharma.3741:

Buran.3796:

DeceiverX.8361:

Lucius.2140:

Cant call a Hot spec/proffesion overnerfed, what anyone in search for good pvp should said its:

Good work on rev, now lets put the rest of meta builds on its level.

Hot need to be nerfed not the contrary, that includes nerfing revenant more, because its not on the same level as a core build.

Take my +1, sir.

Herald is bad, non-Glint Revenant doesn’t ever exist. You want every HoT specialization nerfed to the point that you wouldn’t play them? I’m fine with the class unable to compete in PvP, I main Guard and was useless most of 2015. But I’m not fine with a class being useless in every department in the game.

What many people want is for the elite specs to be reduced down to “just another trait line” where it becomes the defacto choice for a given play style.

So for example say you wanted to play a support ranger you would pick druid and its ability to heal allies, cleanse them and add some sprinkles from the core lines to protect them from damage or control opponent’s.

That is not what we have now is it? Druid is the defacto choice for any build you play whether it be power burst, bunker, support even most condi builds use it. This comes down to the way it offers so much for you to use.

And it’s that way for pretty much all elites because all elites provide very strong bonuses to either the core’s innate weaknesses all in one trait line, or buff something into insanity that just makes the “core” option strictly more useful/better than it was before. The lone exceptions are pretty much PvP burn guard since it just does so much damage, and warrior because the Defense line carries the class (and as such is probably the best trait line in the game).

Elites were intended to provide playstyle changes and new synergies, not improvements. Claiming otherwise is factually incorrect as ANet said repeatedly before HoT that the elites were designed not to provide more power, despite the name.

Those aren’t really problems, though. Those are tradeoffs by far and large like most other professions should have. Swiftness is also fixed for OH focus as it now stacks with other sources. Mobility’s just crazy power-creeped at the moment so not having 25%+ is a death sentence in most cases.

DE is hardly needed for clone generation if you play your weapon skills right and shatter/generate appropriately. It only suffers in PvE but that’s a mechanical problem with clones themselves and the mesmer is a mess in PvE anyways due to innate burst on MW.

Core mesmer’s condition cleansing > core thief’s.

Shatters AoE, GS line-cleaves with no DR, and sword has normal cleave hits. Again, this is another HoT problem where you’ve got everything cleaving for no reason.

It never needed the defenses in the core game, either; this is an HoT problem and not one exclusive to the core mesmer. Distortion + BF are solid weapon skills with uptime similar to core-game blocks on other weapon skills/profession mechanics.

The broken dynamic of mesmer is that it’s too strong if it sees buffs in its baseline fighting abilities due to Moa and Portal but otherwise is too weak or is limited to just being a Moa/Portal bot. In PvE its because its design features innate burst and its damage sources are killable as intended while most PvE encounters involve lots of cleave, therefore reducing its effective damage output without massive group support. You can’t raise its regular DPS substantially, though, because then it wouldn’t need to use clones as resources and could spam distortion while dealing major weapon damage, or its clones would just make it passive by letting it AA or do nothing and deal tons of damage. Its like of support in core builds also leaves it with no subsequent role in optimized groups. And that’s also a problem with raids having DPS checks.

Chrono, like Druid, Daredevil, and Scrapper, give the professions an excess of bonuses at next to no opportunity costs and make their respective core professions impossible to balance.

bigmonto.4215:

Another thing look at it this way, in other MMO, they raise the level cap instead. Would you try to use a lvl 60 rogue in vanilla WoW to beat a lvl 70 expansion rogue? Why don’t you try that and see how that goes.

At least in GW2 it’s not impossible.

Also IMO, HOT is well worth its full price, if you consider the continued updates, raids, fractal, living stories (new maps) Even pvp, stronghold aside, the 2 new maps in unranked is pretty fun.

The problem is that they publicly came out and said the entire intent was to not introduce any power creep and keep all core content relevant. This was said and repeated since the announcement of the expansion at PAX South. That was also a business decision, and one which made a lot of people royally kittened off. Basically it’d be like of Blizzard said they fully intend to allow the level 60 rogue to beat the level 70 one because they don’t intend to release more powerful skills or gear despite the level cap increase. These are two very different things; they also knew that advertising power creep would kill the game near-instantly as most GW2 players are not interested in a level-cap raise/power creep on gear/do not want to surrender their build to the meta.

PvP’s a pretty miserable experience if playing on core anything except guard (with the condi buffs) or warrior.

Ross Biddle.2367:

If you understood Mesmer, you’d know the broader problems with this issue, and why your suggestions aren’t really helpful.

There’s a recent thread on the mes forum that goes into a lot of what you’re raising.

As Chrono is currently designed, it’s the only thing holding Mesmer up at the moment. It does need redesign, but it can’t happen without a complete overhaul of the post HoT GW2, or a dramatic redesign of mesmer, clone and phantasm functionality. Atleast for the pvp arena.

Pretty much most professions right now tbh.

HoT created more problems by trying to cover symptoms and cover too many weaknesses. All of the content needs a tone-down to allow for the reworks the game’s core elements and then re-designing gimmicky or broken elite mechanics afterwards.

But even hoping for change is waste at this point methinks. There’s very clearly zero intent to fix it.

Sazdek.6830:

Helseth’s climb proved that by playing a good class with a good build and being generally better than the people in your ranking, you will climb. That’s all that it was meant to prove and it did. You can’t toss in the argument that “Well he didn’t play x subpar class so his climb is meaningless” because it just doesn’t apply to real life. You don’t play something not designed to do what you’re aiming for and then wonder why the hell your goal isn’t being reached. It’s like setting a goal of spending less on gas for a month while driving a Hummer.

Except it doesn’t. The whole point was to prove you could carry yourself to the rank you deserve, and the testing methodology used the method widely seen as already the most-effective way to do so. His choice of what to play allowed him as an individual to have a higher impact on a game than most other professions, which with such a drastic difference in skill, means a lot.

@Crash, that’s largely literally what I said in the other thread lol. People are just for whatever reason upset that I criticized the testing methodology used here, which like you said, featured great 1vX to let him impact the game more at his appropriate skill level. If he played and climbed using a build which doesn’t 1vX well/depends on team, then the entire myth of Elo hell would be busted since that’s literally what the argument is based on. Condi mes simply doesn’t address this, which is all I said to begin with.

I’m not fond of the existing rating/contribution system only because I think it favors some roles much more so than others. A thief playing perfectly for example will have an objective bias towards lower contribution in most cases if rotation is intense and constant decaps are required.

Some kind of exponential scaling of MMR gain/loss based on matchup scores would probably be best. If you consistently win games 500-10 with your losses consistently being 470-500, it’s pretty indicative you’re doing a kitten ed good job and don’t deserve to be where you are; much like how if you’re constantly in blowout wins/losses, it means you’re either up too high or are just right.

Vicariuz.1605:

DeceiverX.8361:

Not incorrect. You’re making assumptions about how I play is the problem, and again, are assuming rankings are a proper representation of the player’s abilities.

Realistically, it’s simply that I choose not to play a profession that is capable of carrying matches like the condi mesmer can. Power’s a step down but understandable for him of all people to play. It’s a handicap to prove everything is okay, without denying him the ability to carry a given game well enough to advance steadily.

As far as me, I’d love to see your thoughts on how solo necros can decide games on their own. Really, I’d love to. Please go make the thread in the necromancer section for the whole necro community to see, too, as maybe you can prove everyone wrong about the necromancer.

Basically, you’re indirectly confirming that most of the progression is related to profession/build choice which for 90% of all PvP games is out of the player’s control; a la randomness for who’s online for matchmaking to also potentially randomly-pick between.

That is, unless your opponents are strictly terrible, in which case, why are they all in the tier they’re in? It’s a direct contradiction to the point you’re trying to make.

I’m not assuming anything about you other than your ability to understand the system. Realistically, you are self imposing handicaps and complaining about the outcomes. I’m still trying to really understand how Helseth playing with ridiculous handicaps helps your argument, in-fact I think it’d support mine, because he would STILL climb the ladder. I don’t know what you mean by “prove everything is ok.” Care to elaborate?

If you are suggesting that an above average player can only advance in rating by playing “easy carry classes,” I mean it just wouldn’t matter how much literature I quote to you, you are just never going to accept that you are objectively wrong. As for Necros? Nos is rank what in NA? Why not watch his vods to learn the answers to your questions? Better yet, stop straw manning your failing argument and just let it fail.

Progression is ABSOLUTELY tied to build, if you are using a garbage build, expect garbage results. You can add any person you see to check if they are in a game or not, and make an educated guess on if they are queuing. It’s very easy to snipe queues with this population, just watch ANY top stream.

As painful as it may be, you’re just going to have to accept reality at some point.

You said it yourself in your post here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Returning-player-3/first#post6439930

that power chronomancer is fine when played by good players. Why is this a “ridiculous handicap” for the best mesmer player in the game? He still would have likely climbed and that’s the point: I don’t think you understand that my entire posting presence in this thread is about the mere fact that what Helseth did here shows nothing. I’m not trying to convince anyone “Elo hell” is real. In fact, if you look at the post I referenced, I actually said the exact opposite!

The thing is that again, like this thread and every point you’ve made, the evidence is circumstantial or irrelevant at best. Nos didn’t have to play through what people are claiming “Elo hell” to be (somewhere based on trend to be in the lines of high bronze to early-mid silver) because he started at a rank much higher. Simply stating that the necromancer can carry as a profession because there’s a high-ranked necromancer is asinine.

And if the power mesmer build is so kitten to be a “ridiculous handicap,” why even go to claim progression is tied to build? You’re not making sense. What reality do I need to grasp onto? I never claimed in this thread (or the one I referenced) that I deserve to be much higher up than I am. All I’ve done so far is criticized testing methodology, and yet you’re here defiantly claiming that I’m wrong because… I’m not carrying myself because I’m playing a profession often associated with the lack of capacity to carry games. I could be top 10 and you’d have no idea because I for one am not complaining about my rank placement – and it still wouldn’t mean anything about carrying games – but instead I am here to claim the whole notion of this thread is pointless.

Carry on. You’re clearly very happy just telling people they’re bad and deserve to be low-ranked.

Not incorrect. You’re making assumptions about how I play is the problem, and again, are assuming rankings are a proper representation of the player’s abilities.

Realistically, it’s simply that I choose not to play a profession that is capable of carrying matches like the condi mesmer can. Power’s a step down but understandable for him of all people to play. It’s a handicap to prove everything is okay, without denying him the ability to carry a given game well enough to advance steadily.

As far as me, I’d love to see your thoughts on how solo necros can decide games on their own. Really, I’d love to. Please go make the thread in the necromancer section for the whole necro community to see, too, as maybe you can prove everyone wrong about the necromancer.

Basically, you’re indirectly confirming that most of the progression is related to profession/build choice which for 90% of all PvP matchups is out of the player’s control; a la randomness for who’s online for matchmaking to also potentially randomly-pick between, since 9/10 players in every PvP game are added without you being considered aside from rank and rank alone.

A given Necromancer shouldn’t be carrying, that is, unless its opponents are strictly terrible enough to allow it to happen, in which case, why are they all in the tier they’re in? It’s a direct contradiction to the point you’re trying to make.

I want to make it clear that I don’t think of much regarding “Elo hell”, but am only stating that Helseth’s climb proves nothing in either direction.

Vicariuz.1605:

So what’s stopping every one from jumping on the bandwagon for such free wins based solely on profession? Ohhhhh right, cuz that has truly no basis in reality.

So… then you’re invalidating the fact Helseth is then any spectacularly good player by saying the wins he got were all free? Frankly your point here is based solely on what I said; if the state of PvP was any good and “Elo hell” a myth made up by bad players, he would have at least gotten out of it by playing non-optimally if he’s so good. In essence, the effort means nothing. Further, I also expressed why his climb would be easier if he waited a few days/weeks in another post I made several days ago due to the nature of Elo filtering. He waited, and confirmed everything I said. On the subject, I’ve yet to be proven wrong so far.

Which is why I don’t understand why he didn’t go power; it’s what he prefers to play, it’s what he is mechically better at, and it’d disprove everything opponents say relatively cut-and-dry.

Yet he didn’t, and the fact of the matter is we’ll never truly know why.

What’s stopping me from doing it? Well, I’d rather not play the game than be on the bandwagon, personally, and frankly, I’m also not as good as Helseth (what that means for rating is beyond me). I don’t see the experience as rewarding. When I want to be rewarded for playing well and playing smart within the confines of a match, I go play League. When I want to kitten around, I go to sPvP here since most matches are decided before they begin.

Forum PvP is way more fun than the current nonsense, anyways. Requires much more thought; responses don’t passively type themselves

Nah, WvW is dead.

It only looks like it isn’t because of the pairings. The lower-tier servers are even more-dead than before because they all stacked to T1, and there’s little impact because they just get more pairings to uphold their low populations.

The players who wanted good matchups/even PPT as a result all quit due to the explicit removal of small-scale viability and the blatantly terrible state of the professions making the combat itself not fun.

Most commanders still running are doing it either to troll, to get bags for their PvE endeavors, or because of some arbitrary nostalgia they’re clinging onto from the “good ol’ days,” and as it’s become very apparent, it’s waning fast.

WvW died with HoT, as was expected, predicted, and warned of months before it even released.

Server stacking is a hard problem to solve on the technical level, despite being doable. ANet’s unwilling to devote the resources needed to do so, so we get ineffective algorithms, instead. There is no simple solution to fix stacking when looking just at WvW. The real problem lies in profession design and balance.

The reason why people stack is because they want to win. Many people prior just wanted fights, winning being a bonus. That community that values the experience over the victory itself is simply gone.

Lucius.2140:

Cant call a Hot spec/proffesion overnerfed, what anyone in search for good pvp should said its:

Good work on rev, now lets put the rest of meta builds on its level.

Hot need to be nerfed not the contrary, that includes nerfing revenant more, because its not on the same level as a core build.

Take my +1, sir.

BlackBeard.2873:

Gaile Gray.6029:

This thread is a lively discussion. That’s cool. But please try to keep the antagonism dialed back. Maybe save it for the field of combat?

Are you suggesting gw2 players need to up their trash talk game?

Even Gaile is at the mercy of Helseth’s salt-mine if he were to get his post deleted, considering he probably has a majority of the PvP viewers left in the game lol.

Soothsayer.9206:

Anet adding HoT is a business decision – after all they are in business to make money and HoT, and subsequent expansions, are how they do it. HoT specs are meant to be better in some ways and do out perform core specs but this is by design as an expansion so that they can continue both to function as an entertainment provider and a as thriving business. if you do not want to get HoT you will be at a disadvantage but not impossibly so and you can still enjoy sPvP (as well as other game modes) if you know this going in.

I’m sorry but this is just naive, and blatantly untrue.

Anyone with any business sense in the MMO industry would not have released this expansion or would have waited a very long time to do so based just on the beta community feedback alone. And ANet was in no shape of need whatsoever to release one. ANet’s profit margins from the release in 2012 were so massive they’re still riding that revenue. It literally came down to a vocal minority whining about the lack of hard PvE/new maps/no expansions (why anyone would even actively want these I do not understand), and since it’s about PvE, ANet delivered.

Almost 70% of ANet’s revenue during the expansion-sales period on a month-by-month basis both before and after came from gem charges. The expansion sold terribly, was expected by analysts and players to sell terribly, had multiple PR nightmares before it even launched, and has factually caused large-scale disinterest in the game. ANet lost more than it gained by a very large margin due to it, so much so that even NCSoft administration has directly criticized the expansion as an economic waste/failure.

The irony of it all is that HoT was not sold to be a major PvE expansion but a functionality one (elite specs, raid tech, gliding, masteries, etc.), yet it most profoundly failed in a bulk majority of those while its redeeming facets were the PvE content that was even stated when it was first announced to be a minor player.

Basically ANet screwed themselves permanently with it by doing too much at once and not doing a good job. Colin quickly going to Amazon dodged a bullet because the expansion if not massively overhauled will straight-up kill the game as it has already started to, which would be a pretty big resume-killer without another major project/game in between looking for a new job.

@OP: Don’t bother, and don’t ever bother trusting ANet with your money again, either. Literally every single promise made about HoT was broken, down to the release of more legendary weapons.

And sorry Crinn, but aside from a few broken implementations, the state of the game’s balance at launch was by far and large astronomically better than it is now, where literally any build so long as it was founded in some sort of concept, worked.

Still dunno why he went condi mes.

“Pro player picks best possible build to carry with and does well.”

Almost click-bait tbh.

There was a post made by Toker (that got deleted) which literally says he would quit the game if he didn’t make a living from it because of how bad the profession design is, and how he thinks ESO is a more enjoyable game to play.

When your champion players are outright stating that they dislike the PvP environment that’s been created explicitly from profession design, it’s pretty obvious that there are major problems with profession balance and design.

The skills and abilities are too mechanically and visually convoluted to attract any significant viewership and the gameplay at this point from HoT simply too terrible to make people want to keep playing to give a reason for people to watch.

NekoNoKoi.9137:

Ben K.6238:

Aside from running a few cleanses (which is compulsory in the current balance situation) ghost thief problems are easily solved by dropping a stealth trap and sitting on it.

I find it hilarious that people think a valid counter to ghost thief is ensuring you carry stealth traps and also at least 10 supply for the stealth trap at all times incase you’re unfortunate enough to come across one. No build should require you to carry certain siege and supply to have a chance at countering it, get out of here with that kitten.
As Offair said, any game studio or even developer with a brain would see the issue with this build straight away, but no, not our special snowflakes.

I hope it isn’t just Ghost thief which spurned this, as it’s nothing new. Any respectable gameplay dev would look at boons, and the nature of the elite specs in their current state and also immediately recognize the need to massively cut into them.

Balthazzarr.1349:

A simple raised wall piece at that spot would do it. It doesn’t have to be complicated.

It’s on the cannon spawn, so they’d need to remove the cannon which has some pretty serious potential implications.

YSIM is a great heal despite the condi meta and provides tons of life force. This allows you to pick up onslaught which is a huge damage bump. Blighter’s Boon with a sigil of Strength + Spite + CV is also a great pick, though, as you’ll be healing for over 500 per attack in more sustained encounters.

Generosity+Purity sigils + Suffer and OH dagger 4 are usually enough for me. Typically if you’re that flooded with conditions without running just a pure cleanse build you’re gonna die anyways, and DH slows will nullify any use you have with Shroud (especially if running BB) and macebow warrior is going to overload you with CC you can’t really do anything about, anyways.

Power reaper struggles hard against the heavies atm, as strong as it can be against thief/mesmer/engi/ele. Condi is much easier and much more effective.

As far as the thief matchup goes, you only can deal with them for a brief period during stab pulses from IT. It otherwise won’t be enough and it’ll destroy you regardless. It’s a dumb trait and there’s really no advice to give aside from not attacking which of course gets you killed otherwise.

morrolan.9608:

Man how easy is that. Why does anet not just shorten the leap a bit?

And nerf anything about DH? No way. This is golden-boy profession we’re talking about here, not necro or thief.

OriOri.8724:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

We are aware of this issue and are working on a fix for it.

Invisible Wall? Reducing the leap range on that skill?

Lol forget any skill changes. Broken skills don’t get re-designs, especially when it’s on guard/thief/ele.

An invisible wall would negate siege projectiles etc. and would also prevent people from jumping off/out.

Whether or not it’s overpowered is up for debate.

What isn’t up for debate is that the build is stupid, easy, and downright unfun to play against.

That’s why it deserves to go, along with all other source of stealth stacking, non-animation-locking defenses, immunities, passives, and excessive CC.

PvE’s roughly the same except nobody runs dungeons at all anymore, fractals got reworked, and 10-man raids were added.

If you’re interested in PvP or WvW look for another game. Profession design and balance is terrible. Pro players have expressed written complaints numerous times. Almost everything skillful in nature has been systematically removed or nerfed into uselessness. Build diversity is even worse than it used to be. It’s that bad.

OriOri.8724:

DeceiverX.8361:

Ross Biddle.2367:

ArthurDent.9538:

sophiewhite.3149:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Emdrix.6124:

I just want the dmg nerfs reverted.

someone kills a few golems with revenant “ZOMG ANET PLS NERF TOO OP”

Actually that was a warrior in the picture.

Hehehehehehe

Jokes aside, Rev is broken. Sure it’s damage has knocked it off the scene, but if not for that you’d still be facing it’s broken sustain mechanics. Fact is, if you give Rev back it’s damage, it’ll come back on the scene and kick other classes and their builds to the curb again. Again, as in, has already happened once. Suggesting we repeat the same mistakes again is just idiocy.

Rev doesn’t need a buff. It needs a redesign. Preferably not by the HoT guys who created that monster.

ANet doesn’t do re-designs. You should know better. The thief and especially the ranger are proof of this, whose CDI which was literally a community-based event to rework ranger consisted of ANet outright refusing to do the single-most-requested rework made in the entire game for all professions (pets) because it was “against their vision” despite being broken and mandating a redesign/rework on so many levels.

If it’s poorly-designed and not guardian it doesn’t get love, js.

While the damage nerfs were definitely needed (surge for 25k+ in WvW was super fun to be on the receiving end of /s), the profession is broken and subsequently doomed.

Speaking of CDI, why did ANet stop doing those? The newest post in there is over 2 years old. I do wish some classes were redesigned however.

Because they’re incapable of deciphering good ideas from bad ones to begin with, frankly, and anything involving a rework is clearly not on their absolutely enormous tables they have.

Romgaard.1965:

a warriors healing ( heal sig + adrenal health) is shut down, by dropping poison on him/her…
if it was that good, then why dont you see more warriors facetanking everything and their grandmothers?

Too bad the resistance uptime cancels out most sources of poison application’s healing cuts without massive, constant boon hate, which there’s no real way to counter reliably without just being able to remove all boons every 3s since removal is random now.

Straegen.2938:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Just had a ghost thief call me cheesy (lol) because I stealth trapped him. I guess me bending over and rubbing the dirt for 4 seconds wasn’t a big enough tell for him

That one wins the jackpot. A ghost thief calling some other build cheese…

Not uncommon. I get flak a lot from condi mesmers when playing my power reaper because it apparently does too much damage and I needed to land transfers for cleanses.

Ignorant people being ignorant at the end of the day.

Ross Biddle.2367:

ArthurDent.9538:

sophiewhite.3149:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Emdrix.6124:

I just want the dmg nerfs reverted.

someone kills a few golems with revenant “ZOMG ANET PLS NERF TOO OP”

Actually that was a warrior in the picture.

Hehehehehehe

Jokes aside, Rev is broken. Sure it’s damage has knocked it off the scene, but if not for that you’d still be facing it’s broken sustain mechanics. Fact is, if you give Rev back it’s damage, it’ll come back on the scene and kick other classes and their builds to the curb again. Again, as in, has already happened once. Suggesting we repeat the same mistakes again is just idiocy.

Rev doesn’t need a buff. It needs a redesign. Preferably not by the HoT guys who created that monster.

ANet doesn’t do re-designs. You should know better. The thief and especially the ranger are proof of this, whose CDI which was literally a community-based event to rework ranger consisted of ANet outright refusing to do the single-most-requested rework made in the entire game for all professions (pets) because it was “against their vision” despite being broken and mandating a redesign/rework on so many levels.

If it’s poorly-designed and not guardian it doesn’t get love, js.

While the damage nerfs were definitely needed (surge for 25k+ in WvW was super fun to be on the receiving end of /s), the profession is broken and subsequently doomed.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I’m still on the fence about this skill. I like to think I’m pretty fair when it comes to claiming something is OP, because I very rarely make that claim. I practice and practice and if I don’t see any improvements or, if after I’ve repeatedly tried to exploit what should be a weakness to no avail, then I’ll usually start to question the balance.

I know there’s a frame of vulnerability during the Vault animation and I know Thieves run out of endurance just like anyone else. But it seems no matter how much I try to predict and counter, there’s no reward. They just Shadow Step out of range, stealth, Steal or what ever other ability they have available to slip out of my fingers, which it seems like they always have at least one. It’s not so much the damage with Vault I have a problem with as it is that not only is it highly damaging, but staff abilities return Endurance for Initiative spent and Channelled Vigor grants Endurance. So between staff evasions and endurance bar evades, it’s a nearly endless cycle that you can’t rely on to pin them down.

I’m not going to ask for nerfs because I don’t think Vault in particular needs it. But I do think something to do with staff and the amount of evades it can provide needs to be looked at. I’m going to continue practicing but it’s rapidly becoming one of those things I’d just prefer to avoid if I can help it. It doesn’t feel challenging or enjoyable, it feels like a guessing game where they always have an ace up their sleeve.

For the most part you’ve nailed it.

The thing about vault is that even punishing and interrupting it doesn’t really do anything to the thief unless you run a build overloaded with CC and for any reason at all you’ve caught them with their pants down with no stunbreak available; they’ll just be down a vault’s worth of initiative (only 5!) and can re-use it again immediately (and again and likely/potentially again via Kleptomaniac). If you somehow manage to punish the thief on every vault he just resets because Daredevil and comes back in 15s to repeat the process while your interrupts are on cooldown.

This is a general HoT problem, though; almost no builds are punishable outside of the realm of just having a hard-counter-based build.

It’s the ability to spam some very imbalanced abilities (Headshot + ID, Shadow Shot, etc.) that force the rest of the thief to be weak in order to remain balanced generally-speaking. It boggles my mind how the developers can’t see this, and again, also haven’t seen this on other professions.

Is vault overtuned? I think its damage at 2.52 is excessive – there’s really no need for it to hit that hard; a drop to 2.0 or maybe even a bit less would probably not change that much aside from letting spamming bads die more often – but it’s not necessarily overpowered in concept alone. I disagree with any existence of being able to deal damage during defensive state (as well as how most professional PvP players feel and by the PvP/WvW community at-large), but that’s seemingly the direction ANet wants to take in order to justify “harder” PvE.

Simple: post (brief) thought-provoking, confusing, or downright strange meta-game thoughts about GW2. For reference with those who aren’t familiar, modeled after https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/

I’ll start:

Why does the thief’s head shot ability allow for the creation of pulminary impact damage?

BlaqueFyre.5678:

narcx.3570:

“Every attack should have a chance to be dodged.” – The Thief spamming Impacting Disruption.

Well seeing how Headshot has a big Precast and Animation….

No it doesn’t. It’s actually less of a cast than the DH pull and the only interruptable part is the prelim animation; (I.E. it’ll still fire even if CC’ed during the shot after the pre-animation which is less than 1/4s) otherwise it has zero cast time. It’s just the projectile is barely slower, and it’s not by much.

ID should just have an ICD put on it and the effect of PI should scale to crit with its damage lowered accordingly.

Another more discrete cause is the fact that because the roaming and havoc scenes are pretty much formally dead with HoT, the players that are in the maps are more likely to omniblob and therefore jack up the events fired in the fights.

Whereas before maybe you had a blob of at most 40 running on a map, the norm is groups of at least 40 to 60 because the 20-odd roaming/havoc players elsewhere in the map are no longer there and are firing more passives and proc effects in the ensuing ZvZ’s.

TL;DR HoT’s design decisions for WvW/professions brought in a double-whammy for invoking skill lag and made the mode worse.

FlOwMaKeRs.8623:

Dawdler.8521:

The ping of -90 might be your problem. With negative ping, you are actually getting data back from GW2 servers before you even sent the input. This make the client confused and cause lagg instead of normal lag.

Negative ping? Putting “-” I do not mean negative, if not lower.

I suggest using <= rofl.
The lag, assuming you’re referring to skill delays, is server-side due to terrible profession design flooding the servers with routines. It has nothing to do with networking and is pretty much solely a gameplay mechanic problem. Because it’s rooted in the bad profession design of the game it’ll therefore never be fixed.

Lol.

The absolutely asinine amounts of durability in the game are what’s causing the blob-meta and numbers game-winning to be exacerbated. The havoc scene died because of the slowness to the game and broken defenses so now everyone left is just a tank and there’s no way to effectively havoc as per before.

There’s literally zero reason to play anything as a damage build anymore because running durable is just innately better across the board in every area of the PvP formats.

Teniz.5249:

Adry.7512:

Hopes n Dreams about Expac 2

Well there need to be a first expansion before there can be a second…

Lmfao +1

All of my hopes and dreams died with HoT. I’m more hopeful of a private server of the core game coming out than any new content from ANet until HoT is nerfed and fixed.