Guild Wars 2

To OP: I also play on Desolation and I have been doing the Quaggan events alone, but it would go faster if I had a friend. Want to join my roaming group?

Ayna

The Krait are now harder and you just cannot stand still and face tank them all. But the events are still very much soloable.

Wolfheart.1938:

I’m sorry Deniara but what you are asking is not to play ->half<- of the classes, and that just isn’t realistic. I happen to play a Guardian for the simple reason that I like its playstyle and apparently for some weird reason that makes me less skilled in your eyes? Just so you kno, Engineers are pretty proficient at WvW.

Let me clarify this before I go to bed:

I also have a guardian and I can honestly tell I suck playing it. I am a person with small kids and loads of work. I obviously cannot be on the same level with most of you guys, who play 8 h/day.

I am not stopping any player to play the professions they want to play. But it is obvious that there are balance issues when it comes to WvWvW. And sadly WvWvW seems a low priority for Anet.

I would love to see more variety. Seeing countless of mesmers spamming spatial surge and mirror blade, thieves trying to execute the C&D + steal, BS, HS combo etc. over and over again gets a bit boring. Unique builds are rare.

I would honestly enjoy to see some (not all) of the most overly used skills, weapons and professions getting mild nerfs, despite this would obviously hurt some of my 8 characters. I would very much like to see the least used skills, weapons and professions getting some buffs and many of the currently broken traits getting fixed. Anet surely must have billions of lines of statistics, so they can do it. But after 6+ months waiting, I still haven’t seen any major skill update concerning all professions.

We were promised this big update 1st on Jan, then on Feb, then March… and what did we get? Very small changes.

PS. And engineers are proficient at any part of the game. They just require more key presses to do the same.

Luffy.9365:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Kids know the truth. SFR and VS can only win with superior numbers. No hard feelings, because the game is built like that. The only big problem with the huge numbers is that annoying lag.

Oh and real players play warriors or engineers in WvWvW.

So you think that SFR needs more ppl to win against Deso? Do you even think that Deso has more quantity and quality WvW guilds?
Your last comment ,isnt even worth, to be discussed……

It is a fact that SFR and VS have more active players than Deso in WvWvW this week. Hey, I have the outmanned buff. Even my 4 year old son can see that. And all servers have plenty of both good and bad players. Lots of random people and several good organized guilds on VS, Deso and SFR.

>95% of my deaths occur when there are bigger numbers against me.

You can call me weird, but I have a sense of honor and pride. I don’t want to win in easiest way. I feel shameful if I use the overpowered aka “cheap” professions in WvWvW, namely: elementalist, thief, mesmer and guardian. Tried D/D ele in WvWvW and it felt too easy. And I have less respect for players who are using them. I know many of the players, who regularly use them, think they have skill. And some do.

Genev.2450:

If you want least used professions, surprised you didn’t mention Rangers, a friend joked once i was easily recognisable because there’s about 2 Rangers in the entire BL, and that’s generally what I see as well :p

At least according to my observation rangers are not that rare. I see them everytime I do WvWvW. Synced ranger barrage, combined with other ranged AoE attacks has been a regular VS tactic (it is a very legit tactic and nothing bad about it).

I don’t have official statistics, but according to my observations engineer is the rarest profession and necromancer comes second. I am talking about WvWvW now.

Elementalists, thieves, mesmers and guardians are everywhere. And everybody knows the reasons.

Please make it account bound! What are the reasons to make it character bound?

Commander title should also be account bound.

Once again Anet decision to limit variety in game. It seems the Anet developers are doing their best to have as little variety in the game.

Developers should understand this:
Limiting player player options kills fun.
Less variety = less fun

Read my profession selection guide
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Profession-Selection-Guide/first#post1557692

Blackhat.4016:

Thanks for you answer.

To be honest I did not think about the auto attack thing. If I play my elementalist I rarely use my auto attack since all the other skills are stronger and there are always other skills to use. Because this this a beginner guide you are absolutely right though, an auto attack is really important to start dealing damage.

Same issue like the auto attack thing. I never use the signet of air.^^ I always have perma swiftness since it is no problem for an ele to maintain it. But you are right again, this is a beginner guide which means signet of air makes sense.

I don’t know about the last argument though. Staff eles for example have a huge amount of combo fields (I think the most combo fields for a single weapon in the game) which you need to use in the right situation and D/D elementalists can be played super fast too (which also requires skill combos).

To sum it up:

You are right. Engineers most likely require more key presses.

You are right. Elementalist requires 2nd highest amount of key presses. Elementalists also have a large selection of combo fields. But I absolutely suck playing Staff elementalist. I get trouble in melee range (I know staff is meant to be used from distance).

Everytime when I play my engineer and TeamSpeak is on using voice activation my mates complain that “you are killing the keyboard” and I need to reply “No, I am killing the enemy invaders in WvWvW” :-P

Hecksa.7140:

Just so you know, RG didn’t really have a raid out tonight. Sacrx wasn’t online, so although a few players went out and played a bit, but there wasn’t really anything official going on. You might have seen some RG players leading pugs, playing solo, or grouped up together or something, but tonight doesn’t represent our normal way of playing. We’re just out trying to be somewhat useful to the server when our leader and half the guild are offline.

That is true. I didn’t see Sacrx. I would recognize that big Charr anytime. But thanks for the fights. I was once again without any team, as the guildies were doing Arah explorable mode and tpvp.

Our guild [SCCC] yesterday merged with Jump to Victory [JV]. We are both international guilds. I am our WvWvW officer (not a commander, I am like 90 gold short of that). Recruiting is on. I want to build a 5-man roaming team, which does daily WvWvW. Any profession is welcome, but I am particularly looking for other engineers and necromancers. I want to show people a way to play the least used professions.

I used to have very high respect towards Red Guard [RG], when I was on Blacktide. Now seeing them play exactly like French PUGs against us with [VG] and using cheap professions like thief, mesmer etc. and getting beaten by just a dozen Desolation guys. I was like what had happened to RG style. It looked now like VS style!! Well, lots of loot bags for us. Finally endless SFR zergs got us while I was salvaging my full bags from loot.

My 4-year-old son, who was watching me play WvWvW, commented:
“Daddy died because there was too many enemies”

Kids know the truth. SFR and VS can only win with superior numbers. No hard feelings, because the game is built like that. The only big problem with the huge numbers is that annoying lag.

Oh and real players play warriors or engineers in WvWvW.

Nice fighting against a lone engineer from VS at SFR BL this evening. He wasn’t killing any of us though and hiding in a tower. But engineers are so rare, that I always compliment that some others also play them! VS fights have now been much more fun, so my hats are today off for the VS guys.

Warrior’s other weapons need to buffed to the level of the greatsword. Now people are using 1-handed sword mostly just for for sword #2, mobility. This is a clear message for the developers: mobility is more important than they thought. Superior mobility usually wins in pvp and WvWvW, even if the damage or the armor would be slighty weaker. Doing skill balancing by hitting the test dummies in Heart of Mists is not enough.

An easy way to buff the least used weapons: decrease the cooldown and maybe slightly buff the effect (e.g. slightly more damage). Warrior’s needs more ways to remove conditions as currently Crowd Control owns warriors. Most people never use the healing signet’s active effect as it heals so little, 3320 points at level 80. If healing signet would also remove a condition, it would still not be overpowered. These minor changes would not make warrior too overpowered in pve, but offer more versatility into the builds.

Some warrior traits should be reworked. Currently the traits greatly favor spear and greatsword:
e.g. forceful greatsword gives might on crit hit using GS or spear, plus 20% faster skill recharge = too good to be true and reason #1 for warrior’s selecting GS
Slashing power and dual wielding are both master level strength traits. The first gives 10% damage increase for greatsword and spear, while the latter gives 5% damage increase when wielding offhand axe, mace or sword. They both should give 10% increase.
Last stand major trait is not that useful, because it activates balanced stance after the player has been subject to dazed, knocked down, stunned etc.
A list could go on, but I doubt Anet developers are reading these forums.

I have been doing quite a lot of solo roaming with my warrior in WvWvW in euro tier #1. It works so and so. There is no room for error. The smallest error on your side and you are dead as warrior lacks tools of disengagement. Similar type of roaming would be 10 times easier with a thief or dual dagger elementalist, due superior mobility.

5000 range kill shots are a bad idea. Kill shot is already powerful enough. Warrior is almost okay. Just that the least used weapons and utility skills would need some love, at least reduction of the cooldowns. And warrior really sorely needs ways to get out of the combat when things go wrong.

Just clear few things out: I have nothing against French people. We are a multi-national guild. One of our guild officers is also from France. Last week I was hosting a French colleague (in real life) and he invited me to his place for a visit. Same things for other nationalities. I have been to Germany 5 times and I have several German friends. I had last week nice time with my German colleagues who came to Finland, my home country.

Desolation is that at moment lacking coverage, people and sometimes also coordination. We got plenty of skilled people and we are trying to build things up. If it means going to tier #2, I don’t mind.

I always try to fight in a fair way:
- no exploits e.g. placing siege in invulnerable positions
- no abuse of broken consumables (like Skale venom, gears, which were removed)
- I don’t use cheap overpowered professions, like mesmer, thief, guardian or elementalist (I however play them all in pve and sometimes pvp). Well, one night I was roaming as a D/D elementalist just to see how it was. Even though she was severely underleveled, undergeared and had wrong traits and everything, it was way too easy. Currently engineer offers the best challenge = most difficult to play
- No dancing on corpses or otherwise inappropriate behavior
- If I see an enemy player roaming alone I start to attack, not waiting for any people help me. I love to have 1-vs-1, but those are still pretty rare in WvWvW.
- I of course contribute to the big fights, taking on the Stonemist keep, smaller keeps, towers, sentries and most importantly: supply camps.

Ayna / Séal Cub Clubbing Club [SCCC]

Ofunk.8097:

A simple question for all players of Desolation, I’m really curious, if you look at the score, why focus Vizunah and sabotage your last chance to stay in T1 ?

Don’t you think, logically and obviously, your best shot is to focus SFR to hope don’t be overcome by Elona ?

I just hope you won’t have a bad taste in your mouth soon when you’ll realize you’ve just help another server to take your own place

Simple reply from a Desolation player:
From my point of view both SFR and VS are attacking at us at same time. Probably because we have the outmanned buff, thus making us an “easy” victim. Last night I saw SFR and VS zergs passing each other and concentrating their fire at Desolation. Obviously we need to attack both. When I see an enemy player I think I can kill, I don’t think about server ratings, I try to kill him. Simple as that. And of course having supply camps and strategical keeps and towers is goal #1.

Right now with SFR there might be a bit less of this 2 vs 1, because now I saw this only once. When Elona was still in tier #1, I noticed constantly that VS and ER zergs passing each other like best buddies. And both attacking Desolation together. This is probably a legit tactic, making a treaty between 2 worlds. I am not claiming there was such a treaty, but it really looked like that from my point of view.

Anycase. Keep the good fights going on. I like that VS and SFR are now both fighting in the open. More fun fights for all.

Once again I was without any team, because guildies were doing Fractals. But I got so much loot bags that I need to salvage stuff in the middle of the fight as my inventory got full. Last night 105 kills and 4 own deaths. Bring on more cannon fodder!

Ayna

PS. I am now the WvWvW officer of my guild: Séal Cub Clubbing Club [SCCC]. We got 38 very nice people, doing daily dungeons and other activities together. I am our most active WvWvW player and I play warrior and engineer in WvWvW. I want to recruit people to make a 5-man man roaming team, prime time 7 to 10 pm GMT, Eternal Battlegrounds or Borderlands. Your experience doesn’t matter as long as you can follow orders and you have a level 80 character with decent equipment. We have of course TS and guild upgrades. Our guild member’s ages are from 16 to 45, most are over 30. So if you want a guild with smart friendly mature players, send me a message.

Blackhat.4016:

I would say engineers and elementalist need an equal amount of key and mouse presses (kits compared to attunements) but the fact that elementalists feel a little stronger for pressing the right keys makes them a little easier to play.

Same input when it comes to key/mouse presses
-> a little more damage/survivability for elementalists
-> easier time for elementalists compared to engineers afterwards.

I have a level 80 elementalist and engineer. Elementalist was my 1st character, but I enjoy playing engineer more due the challenge. It of course depends on the play style, but I would say engineer requires more key presses:
- grenade kit has no auto attack and every attack is ground targeted, thus every attack is a mouse button press + key press
- there is no passive speed boost like signet of air, but instead you need to stow a kit every 5 seconds to get swiftness with speedy kits traits
- great engineers (I am not claiming to be a great engineer) can do really and fast combos (engineer perhaps the largest amount of self-combos)

Fay.2735:

Love the idea of a beginner selection guide except I don’t entirely agree with your summary of the mesmer profession. I would’ve made it more like this:

Melee damage: * *
Ranged damage: * *
Area damage: *
Support: * * *
Survivability: * * *
Mobility: * *
Beginner friendly: *
Weapon of Choice: Greatsword or Staff & Sword + Pistol (Focus for WvW only)
Essential utility skills: Blink, Signet of Inspiration, Decoy, Mirror Images (In PvE swap last two for nullfield and feedback), Timewarp

Most of mesmer abilities are about surviving, you survive by hiding behind clones, using CC’s, teleports, stealth. So I would definitely put three * * * in survivability.

That said I would definitely not call mesmers beginner friendly or even average, they are hard to master and don’t really come into their own till they have access to higher level traits. Not to mention to play one well isn’t easy. We have lots of survivability but to use it effectively is another matter requiring impeccable reflexes, timing and skill/utility management.

I would also recommend putting staff there as a good choice because it gives a lot more added survivability for newcomers than a greatsword does. It’s kind of more a personal preference whether someone prefers condition/support or power playstyle.
Utility is a bit trickier because it depends a lot on whether you go for a power build, condition or support build as well as whether it’s pvp or pve.

I would say signet of inspiration is a pretty safe bet for a newcomer as it gives boons passively and when used copies your boons to those around you. Blink is very much a must for newcomers it’s great for stun-breaking and getting out of trouble much easier than portal or veil would.

…

You can see why I would put only one * for beginner friendly. It’s very complex to fully get your head around the profession and get the best out of them.

Excellent reply. I agree with you on the skills entirely. Decoy is not that useful in a dungeon, but in many dungeons feedback would be better. Same for blink etc. But I decided to select just 4 all-rounder skills for each profession. Thus many good skills were left out for other professions as well.

Staff is a great weapon for pve, but in settings like WvWvW, it tends to be a bit weaker than the greatsword because the staff auto attack animation is so slow, making it very easy to dodge. Notice that the weapon choices don’t necessarily reflect what I would play myself, just my observations what seems to be the most popular. According to my observations greatsword is the most commonly used mesmer weapon.

I disagree about the beginner friendly aspect. After playing warrior in spvp, mesmer felt like the easy mode turned on. Mesmer is also easy choice to do pve. Like you said, those illusions give amazing survivability. And with staff + signet of inspiration you can have constant boons on yourself.

I decided to have just one rating, beginner friendly, instead of talking about skill floor and skill ceiling. Let me explain:

Professions like warrior and thief have a low skill floor. It doesn’t take much skill to have passive healing from healing signet, charge at enemy mob using whirlwind attack and then use 100 blades. Same for thief instant stealth and heartseeker spam.

Mesmer and elementalist are both examples of professions, which have medium skill floor. Elementalist has more weapon skills than any other profession. Mesmer has some mechanisms, like shattering the illusions, which take some time to understand.

The warrior, unfortunately, lacks complex skill combinations (e.g. almost no combo fields). Warrior has a relatively low skill ceiling and I feel it is currently the underdog in spvp. Good thieves are rare in the game, but I would say thief has a higher skill ceiling. Not that many thieves have mastered landing backstab everytime perfectly and using steal perfectly timed with the cloak & dagger + steal + backstab combo. Very few thieves know how to use all different stolen skills effectively.

Both mesmer and elementalist have also high skill ceiling. A great elementalist player knows the timing of the boons, auras, combo fields and finishers. It takes quite a lot of effort to master all the different utility skills the mesmer has.

Engineer is a profession, which is difficult to begin with and I would argue it also has the highest skill ceiling. I find myself doing much more key and mouse presses when I play the engineer, compared to any other profession. Thus I keep my original rating, that engineer is the only profession, which is not beginner friendly at all.

Thanks for your kind comments. I hope the forum administrators will make this a sticky thread, as this topic seems to be common.

I might someday (when I have time), write another concise guide on the following topics:
- Race Selection Guide (analysis of racial skills, beginning areas, personal story paths)
- Quick Start to WvWvW (10 most important things)
- Very Quick Guide to Dungeons (Good dungeon paths and builds for beginners)

Yours, Deniara / Ayna

SPOILER ALERT

That sounds like an Orrian deadeye or Risen eye pads or how you call them. They look like a tentacle like pod with a large eye on its top. They do crazy ranged damage. Their machine gun fire can take down most level 80 characters in a second.

The final mission, Victory or Death, has been nerfed to the ground in the last patch, except it also has such eyes. Anet developers love one-shotting their players. Well technically it is a not a one shot, but a dozen plus fast attacks in a row, but the effect is the same.

Your best choice is to kill them using ranged attacks (preferably 1200 range) and dodge.

Can I ask what is the profession of your character?

Teknotronic.8263:

So I tried to do this quest 6 times last night (stopped after 3, repaired equipment and started over)

Things I noticed;

If you wipe and choose “restart from checkpoint” you run back into the courtyard and all the NPC’s are still dead, yet the mobs are still in full force. So restarting from checkpoint is almost entirely useless.

I didn’t notice this the first 3 attempts, but when I came back fresh on the 4th attempt I had all NPC’s alive and well, huge group of us run into the courtyard and were doing good, taking out a couple groups of mobs. Then all at once (with no red circle notification anywhere) ALL of us instant down. All the named NPC’s and non named NPC’s my character (mesmer) and my girlfriends character (guardian) instantly dead and had maybe half a second of downed time before finished off.

So I checked the combat log. Hit by Unknown with Explode for 6000+ damage. Couple more of the same thing in a row, all of them in the thousands.

Restarted from checkpoint, went back in fought for a bit and kaboom dead again. Same Unknown/explode/tons of damage thing going on.

So maybe the mob level isn’t the main problem? Anyone else notice this?

I think those are caused by Risen Plague Carriers. Those fat undead run towards the enemy and then explode doing huge nearby AoE damage. You better kill them from distance or dodge roll.

That is why I used the Spirit of Nature to mass revive all NPCs. Warrior has a similar elite skill, Battle Standard, but it has longer cooldown. Unfortunately mesmer nor guardian have anything like that. For that mission I would recommend the mesmer to go with as many clones/phantasms as possible (use traits to get skill cooldown to minimum, I was also running 3 signets to get max health and max boons). Constantly detonate your illusions and summon more. That is how I did it. There is a tanky build my mesmer is using and I did that mission with her. By the way I use: staff, sword/torch, mass invisibility as elite (torch #4, prestige, also gives stealth and then explodes AoE, blinding and burning all nearby foes, very good with sword against mobs)

I hope this helps!

First of all:

1. If you want fast damage, hammer is not the best choice. Hammer is more about crowd control and a warrior with greatsword is most likely going to dish out a lot more damage in a rapid burst. You have to understand that many of those fast-damaging GS warriors are glass cannons and lack the crowd control hammer offers. They also die very easily. Hammer + rifle is a solid combination for WvWvW, but I recommend it for running in a group. Warrior is not that great for roaming alone in WvWvW. Yes, I do it all the time with dual sword warrior, going alone to places like I did last night (and didn’t die a single time), but I am a crazy player. Rangers were never about fast burst, but they have the superior 1500 range with longbow and harpoon gun with “eagle eye” master trait. Rangers are very good underwater and perhaps you should try underwater combat in the Borderlands of WvWvW.

2. You can purchase an exotic set from the temples of Orr using karma. I recommend the complete Lyssa set for warrior from Cathedral of Eternal Radiance at Malchor’s Leap. The complete 6 armor set costs about 240k karma points. If you don’t have that much karma, do a lot of group events and tag along with the zerg in WvWvW, plus always complete your dailies. Doing a daily should give you 5k karma. In roughly 1 month you should have enough karma for full exotic armor set. Rares are almost as good as exotic. The stat composition (power, vitality, precision etc) matters more than few points of difference in amount of thoughness etc You can buy rare jewelry as cheap as 3 silver from the Black Lion Trading Post. Rare level 78-80 weapons also sell very cheap. So get your rare set now, don’t wait for exotic.

3. Make an engineer and play it to level 80 with soloing the pve content and completing the personal story (except last mission Victory or death where you need a group). Why? After playing all 8 professions I would say engineer is the most difficult and also among the most versatile. Try out of the different kits, traits and so on. It will teach you to be more creative and become a better player. Warrior and ranger are so easy professions that you can pretty much mash the buttons to get past the content, but with engineer you need to learn the game.

Also my profession selection guide has good hints what utility skills to choose for each profession:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Profession-Selection-Guide/first#post1545673

Mudfin.4637:

Good stuff. Good read thank you

One really small thing for the new players. Under Guardian when they say Tank I believe they meant beefy with defense. Yes, you can wade into the fray and survive longer than the others, but playing it like a traditional tank would be limiting yourself and fairly hard to do successfully.

I fully agree. Tanks in the traditional sense don’t exist in Guild Wars 2. You need to dodge and you cannot face tank forever. Still I would say it is easier to tank with Guardian than let’s say Warrior. Both have high armor and guardian actually has much less hit points to begin with, but all those boons generally give guardian much better survivability.

I adjusted the guide accordingly.

Thanks for your suggestions. I have been updating the guide accordingly. More feedback is welcome.

Hey!

I have just made a profession selection guide to answer to your question:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Profession-Selection-Guide/first#post1540116

Ethics.4519:

Pretty darn good. Everybody is going to have different opinions, but overall it’s a pretty solid guide for beginners.

The one thing I would like to question you on is giving necros a ** on aoe damage. Necros are kings of AOE, only bested by maaaaaybe the ele. You can easily rack up tons of tags in events and wvw by using staff wells and death shroud.

You are right. Thank you for pointing out my mistake. I edited my post to correct the guide.

Of course everybody would also have their own list of utility skills for different situations and builds. I decided to select just 4 utility skills for each profession, even though some professions have a lot more good skills to choose from. I tried to select such skills which would be useful in both pve, spvp and WvWvW.

Profession Selection Guide (Part 2)

Continuing from above message

Thief
Melee damage: ***
Ranged damage: **
Area damage: *
Support: *
Survivability: **
Mobility: ***
Beginner friendly: ***
Weapon of Choice: Dual daggers, shortbow
Essential utility skills: Shadow Refuge, Signet of Shadows, Caltrops, Shadowstep

Thief offers one of the highest burst damage in the game, while at same time being able to become invisible (stealthed) at will. Thief can also do short ranged teleports (shadowstep). Thieves are often squishy, but this is more than offset by their amazing ability to get away. The combination of fast high damage burst, extremely mobility and stealth, makes thieves the most hated profession in the game.

Why should you play a Thief? If you want to surprise kill your opponent fast and then get away easily

Elementalist
Melee damage: **
Ranged damage: ***
Area damage: ***
Support: **
Survivability: **
Mobility: ***
Beginner friendly: **
Weapon of Choice: Dual daggers, Staff
Essential utility skills: Glyph of Lesser Elementals, Mist Form, Signet of Air, Cleansing Wave

Elementalist is perhaps the closest to the traditional mage / wizard. It can change between the four elements (air, earth, fire, water) at will, giving it more versatility than any other profession. Elementalist is the master of area damage. It has great mobility and durability. It can also heal and buffs its allies and summon elementals to attack its enemies.

Why should you play an Elementalist? You want to blast your foes, heal your allies and move fast like a lightning

Mesmer
Melee damage: **
Ranged damage: **
Area damage: *
Support: ***
Survivability: ***
Mobility: **
Beginner friendly: **
Weapon of Choice: Greatsword, Sword, Focus
Essential utility skills: Signet of Illusions, Portal, Veil, Decoy

Mesmer is the master of illusions. It can confuse its foes and avoid damage, by swapping places with a clone, which looks like itself. The illusions automatically attack enemies, until destroyed. Destroying the illusions can great a powerful spike. Despite being a light armor profession, mesmer is great at soloing group events. Mesmer has perhaps the two most powerful elite skills in the game: Time warp and mass invisibility, which grant quickness and stealth to its allies. Mesmer’s portal skill is essential in the current meta.

Why should you play a Mesmer? You want to confuse your enemies and let them attack your clones instead of you

Necromancer
Melee damage: **
Ranged damage: **
Area damage: ***
Support: **
Survivability: ***
Mobility: **
Beginner friendly: **
Weapon of Choice: Staff, dagger
Essential utility skills: Signet of the Locust, Plague Signet, Epidemic, Spectral Grasp

Necromancer is the master of conditions and undead. It has the ability to summon undead allies aka minions, but they are rather weak and many necromancers don’t use them. Necromancer has the unique ability to enter a state called death shroud. It is basically another health pool. Having two big health pools and ability to drain life from its foes gives necromancer great survivability.

Why should you play a Necromancer? You want to be different and make your foes run away in fear and suffer

---

I will probably update this guide if there are big changes to the professions and skills.

Please bear in mind that English is not my native language. And I don’t claim to know everything about the game. Comments and questions are welcome!

Profession Selection Guide (Part 1)

After completing the personal story many times and playing all 8 professions and doing quite a lot of WvWvW, I decided to make a guide, which would help players to choose a profession.

Explanation of the guide:
Ratings: * = the worst, ** = average, *** = the best
Melee damage = closer than 300 range damage output
Ranged damage = ranged damage output
Area Damage = Area of Effect damage output
Support = skills and traits to help your allies, crowd control
Survivability = avoiding death
Mobility = Ability to move fast, teleport, hide in stealth, leap
Beginner Friendly = How easy the profession is to begin with
Weapon of Choice = most popular / easiest weapons
Essential utility skills = to help players to choose efficient utility skills

Warrior
Melee damage: ***
Ranged damage: **
Area damage: **
Support: **
Survivability: **
Mobility: **
Beginner friendly: ***
Weapon of Choice: Greatsword, axe, rifle
Essential utility skills: "For Great Justice", "Shake It Off", Signet of Stamina, Banner of Discipline

The classic heavy armored warrior is a very easy profession to begin with and very popular in dungeons and other forms of pve. Warriors are very good at dishing out melee damage and their heavy armor gives them decent durability. Warrior can support its team using banners and shouts. They are not very good at getting out of combat situations, which puts them at huge risk in player-vs-player.

Why should you play a Warrior? You want the ultimate macho character and be in the front line, smashing many enemies at same time

Guardian
Melee damage: **
Ranged damage: *
Area damage: **
Support: ***
Survivability: ***
Mobility: *
Beginner friendly: ***
Weapon of Choice: Greatsword, Staff, Scepter
Essential utility skills: Contemplation of Purity, "Hold the Line", "Stand Your Ground", "Save Yourselves"

Guardian is the mixture of classic healer and fighter, aka "paladin". Guardian can burn its foes, get regeneration and block attacks using its virtues. While guardian lacks in mobility and ranged attacks, it is perhaps the best profession for tanking, but nobody in Guild Wars 2 can tank like in some other games. Due its superior support skills guardian is very welcome addition to any team.

Why should you play a Guardian? You want good survivability and ability to buff and heal your allies in many ways

Engineer
Melee damage: **
Ranged damage: **
Area damage: **
Support: **
Survivability: **
Mobility: **
Beginner friendly: *
Weapon of Choice: Rifle, use one of the following weapon kits
Essential utility skills: Elixir S, Grenade kit, Tool Kit, Elixir Gun

Engineer is a versatile profession, capable of doing a lot of crowd control, buffing its allies and doing area damage. Engineers have a unique feature called kits. Equipping a kit replaces all weapon skills and each utility skill gives a specific toolbelt skill, potentially giving engineer using many kits more skills at same time than any other profession. This versatility comes with a price. The slight lack of direct damage and the complexity of the profession make engineer the most difficult profession to play efficiently. Engineer can create turrets, which automatically attack enemies, but the turrets are usually easily destroyed. Many consider engineer as the weakest of all professions and certainly it is the rarest.

Why should you play an Engineer? You want quirky fun and challenge

Ranger
Melee damage: **
Ranged damage: ***
Area damage: **
Support: **
Survivability: **
Mobility: **
Beginner friendly: ***
Weapon of Choice: Longbow, Shortbow, Greatsword
Essential utility skills: Signet of the Hunt, Signet of Renewal, Signet of the Wild, Quickening Zephyr

Ranger is the master of single target ranged damage using its bows. Rangers are also great underwater. Rangers can create large variety of traps and they are always with a pet, which can not only attack enemies, but also provide support, depending on the pet type e.g. Bear type pets are great at soaking up damage, while the ranger can safely attack from range. Rangers can always have two different pets equipped and swap between the pets at will. Ranger is a good all-rounder choice, unless you want fast burst damage. Being jack of all trades, rangers aren’t particularly good at anything (except long distance damage), making them not that welcome in dungeons.

Why should you play a Ranger? You want to attack your foes from range, place traps to hinder foes and have an array pets to assist you

(continue in next message, part 2)

There seems to be a down scaling problem, which is affecting all forms of pve. This seems to have started like 2 weeks go and was supposed to make the low level content more competitive for the high level characters. I think the new algorithm assumes that a level 80 character should have a full rare or exotic level 80 equipment set and then downscales the player based on that if she/he enters a lower level area or does personal story steps below her actual level. But this algorithm is bugged:

- yesterday I was doing Retribution with my ranger, level 71 back then, scaled down to level 59. It was difficult to as hell (I explain in another thread, where people complain Retribution being too difficult how I did it). I can tell you it was really the hard mode in pve. Notes: My ranger was underequipped with level 65 green items mostly, but also some level 55 blue stuff. I redid the mission after buying and crafting her appropriate level stuff. The cheapest level 70 exotic weapons cost around 35 silver. Eased up stuff a lot!
- I have been doing level 1-50 areas with my level 80 engineer with full exotic set. She is balanced semi-glass cannon with a lot of heals (8 healing skills!) and CC (5 CC skills). Going to level 1-15 areas is especially funny. I can kill almost any enemy with simple rifle #5, #3, #4 combo or an entire mob (even 8 enemies) using grenade barrage. Champion boss goes down in less than 10 seconds. I am of course using food buffs. I have around 3000 in attacking power at level 80. At level 80 my grenades do pathetic damage, only 254 for attack #1. It takes a long time to kill anything. Yet, at levels 1-15 the damage is like 50 points. Get close to your enemy and multiply it with three (grenadier grandmaster trait) and combine with food buffs = insta gibbed low level enemies. Just like my thief can also instagib anything at low level using power build and dagger #5, steal+mug, #1 and #2 combo. Downscaled thief at low level = super fast kills :-)

Summary: do not play with underequipped character when you are downscaled.

Ayna Wise and Ayna Micro

I did Retribution yesterday with my ranger. I failed the first time, which is funny considering I have done Retribution already 4 times before with other characters. I was considering it to be easy, but clearing the courtyard was ridiculous. I usually consider pve too easy. My first time in Arah exploration mode I was like is this Lupicus supposed to be difficult? Now I experienced the pve hard mode, which was more difficult than soloing the Orr temple group events alone. There was a never ending army of risen. My only area attacks were entangle (elite), barrage from a long bow and then axe in my hand, not fast enough to kill all Risen. The problem was that ALL the NPC allies were dead before the court yard even began and kept dying if I revived them.

I then restarted the mission and chose Spirit of Nature as my elite. I made sure no NPC died before the courtyard part. I used spirit of nature to mass clean the conditions and revive all near by NPCs. I also had signet of renewal, brown bear (F2 skill) and transfer stunned, knocked etc to pet as my condition and CC removal. I was also using potion of undead slaying and foodbuff which gave me regeneration on top of signet of the wild and troll unguent. This made the courtyard part easy. I didn’t die, but thinking about it. Most professions don’t have anything similar to Spirit of Nature, so they are probably stuck there right now.

Ayna Wise, Norn Ranger 73 now
(yes, I did more missions and map areas yesterday to level up, gonna get her to level 80 very soon)

To put the limit to 25 was a big mistake. 25 is obviously too high number. Why did not Arenanet communicate with the community before doing this change? Was it even suggested by anyone here? Do Anet developers even play their own game on the outmanned side or on a low population server?

It seems Anet is failing even the very simplest forms of communication and logic.

And when they make “improvements” like this e.g. like the new & “improved” culling, they cannot even revert back to the original behavior. Extremely sad.

Well, the kit refinement buff was expected and it was also expected that the patch would be bugged. A lot of engineer stuff has been bugged since day #1, reported here or using the inbuilt tool. Yet this “big” update didn’t fix most of those issues. What was unexpected the overpowered builds or traits of some other professions were not addressed at all. And what was expected: no explanations or reasoning.

Reroll as a thief, mesmer, guardian or elementalist. That is what the Anet skill “balancers” are playing!

Arkham Creed.7358:

Funny how you imply my lack of skill, but you’re the one asking for a direct damage buff. I’ve never had any problem with DPS personally.
Further if you’re attacking walls in WvW with a profession skill instead of a proper siege weapon you’re not doing your server any favors.

I am playing all the 8 professions. It is clear that engineer auto attack are subpar compared to others. Thus a minor buff to kit, engineer rifle and pistol attack #1 would be logical. Engineer is the rarest profession for a reason. But the big balance update was today. Not much changes to any profession or skill balance, which of course was hugely disappointing. I liked the elixir gun #5 buff and flamethrower fixes.

I don’t understand why attacking enemy, who are defending the walls without a siege is not doing my server any favor. I kill enemies like that or prevent them effectively defending their walls. Of course I have been building siege (I always carry each siege type blueprint with me). But building siege requires supply from others and I usually run without any team. Sometimes the supply is low and our side is outmanned heavily. Capping supply camps is of the 1st priority. But I am not a commander. I cannot capture enemy controlled supply camp alone if they have a duo thief or mesmer + thief team roaming nearby.

If you want changes to grenade kit #1, please suggest it as an option (turn on from menu to make it auto-targeting).

Excellent post by Geotherma.2395. I wish there would be more posts like that. More communication from Anet!

Thumbs up!

Dante.1508:

I have 9 level 80 characters, i’ve spent over 1700 hours in this game, i have 0 Legendaries and i do not care at all about new content, sure its nice to get new stuff but the game is suffering for it…

I care about rewards right through this game being bias and obsolete (mostly due to Ascended and the failure that a tiered/gated system brings, my opinion) but still the loot is bad through 99% of this game..

I care about unbalanced gameplay and classes, warriors owning dungeons thieves and mesmers owning wvw etc… Consumables and exploits breaking wvw Engineers and rangers not being fixed after 6 months!

I care about a Trading post that’s the most poorly run thing i’ve ever seen, disgusting antics designed to screw over the playerbase left for too long..

And i care about bugs broken traits, stupidly hard dungeons for no reason and the list of broken game breaking things that i deal with day in and days out, and its not just me…

Content is the least of my issues in Guildwars 2..

Excellent post and describes my point of pretty well. I couldn’t care less about special events like the Winter’s day, but I care about doing pve and WvWvW (pvp is dead). I have 8 characters (one each profession), but I haven’t invested as many hours to the game. So far I got only three level 80s, but several are level 64-68.

I think it is futile to blame casual or hard core gamers. A really successful game needs both:
- casual gamers are the majority, but they are more likely change into another game
- hard core gamers are the ones behind many guides and web sites, which the casual gamers are also using. They promote the game to their friends, thus expanding the gamer base

Most players fall in between. World is not black nor white, but shades of gray. Neither type are the problem. The problem are people who are trying to find exploits and then abuse them. People who try to sabotage the group work of others are a problem. The people who use bots are a problem. Winning at any cost seems to be a major problem in WvWvW, examples: use of consumables, placing siege in locations where it is invulnerable, night capping, staying in stealth forever by hitting the enemy wall. A referee system might partially solve this problem, but most of these problems could be avoided simply by programming the game so that they are not possible in the first place.

From Anet’s point of view the biggest importance is of course money. I think in the long the best income comes via the gem shop. In the MMORPG world, especially free MMORPGs, most gamers don’t pay at all or pay very little. Most of the income comes from gamers called “whales”. Each whale might spend several thousands on a game. Thus in order to be financially successful, a free-to-play game should appeal to whales. Blaming the whales or making their life feel miserable is a really bad thing.

From my point of view, the biggest problems are:
- game balance issues (certain professions and weapon combinations and skills being so good majority uses them)
- lack of rewards (especially in WvWvW or defeating champions, totally illogical treasure drops)
- the Anet developer’s lack of communication

I have suggested this before: Anet should reward its employers for each good post by on these forums. Maybe give them $50 and a badge of good communication. Let the people know about your plans, tell us why there is a delay.

Neither casual nor hard core gamers like bugs or enjoy repetitive game-play, where only few choices are feasible. More variety is better for both groups.

Please don’t blame casual or hard core gamers here. Some might classify me into the latter group, but I am happy to teach a complete newcomer into the secrets of WvWvW or show how to do a dungeon run or help to do some difficult skill points or vistas or reply the silly questions.

Deniara

I hope grenade kit #1 won’t become auto attack above ground, because it would remove so many tactics. Now you can run into any direction and spam #1 at other direction freely (yes, it requires skill). Auto targeting is fine underwater. The grenade #1 attack should do a bit more damage and grenades should fly a tiny bit faster. That’s it.

When is the next build coming up? I am in Euro tier #1 and I constantly see enemy players using these consumables, mainly skale venom, which were supposed to be removed.

Why to keep players waiting? Anet, do things faster, because such minor thing like removing few consumables from WvWvW surely cannot be a huge technical feat.

Please don’t do this suggestion. Reasons:
1. You can kite, move, even run through an enemy mob or run away and spam grenades at your enemy, because they are ground targetable. Yes, it requires skill.
2. This allows you to attack non-targetable locations e.g. enemy castle walls

I however agree that engineer would need some beginner friendly choices. I have been playing all 8 professions and I think it is general opinion that engineer is among the weakest professions and by far the most difficult profession to master well.

Ideas how to make engineer more accessible:
- slightly increase the damage of the auto attack for all kits and weapons. Currently they do less damage compared to other professions. The lack of easy sustainable damage is a huge hindrance.
- make the weapon animations / projectiles faster. Currently grenades travel really slowly. Enemy sees the red circles and even in pve it is difficult to hit moving targets from long distance as you need to guess where the enemy is moving and calculate the slow travel time of the grenades. Elixir gun attack #2, Elixir F travels so slow, it misses 90% of the time. It also seems bugged (not bouncing as the skill descriptions says).

After a minor damage buff to all kit and engineer weapon #1 attacks, engineers would see some more popularity, but still would not be over the top nor overpowered.

I have been doing quite a lot of Citadel of Flame (CoF) speed runs with thieves in our team. And I have also doing other dungeons with guild thieves. Thieves can quickly do a lot of damage, but tend to die more often than other professions in CoF. Mind you: most CoF group consist of glass cannon warriors + mesmer.

I usually do dungeons with my warrior. She doesn’t have that high armor (2.7k) or health (21k), but I rarely die in fight. I might die to some insta kill traps / environment objects though.

My own thief hasn’t yet hit level 80, so I haven’t done any dungeons with her. I solo play everything. So far soloing the map areas, personal story or even soloing some champion bosses hasn’t been a problem with a thief. You can either solo kill the monsters fast with dual daggers or use sword or caltrops + clusterbomb to damage several at same time. Hide in Shadows + Shadow Refuge + Shadowstep gives amazing survivability. If the fight seems to be going wrong, you can always reset it by teleporting to safety or hiding in stealth, without incurring armor repair bills.

I think the problem with most thieves in pve is that people don’t understand:
1. Thief is one of the easiest professions to begin (warrior is even easier, engineer is the most difficult to begin with)
2. Thieves however have quite high skill ceiling, meaning it takes quite a lot of practice to be a good thief (Engineers have even higher skill ceiling, making them the most difficult profession). Most thieves never hit this level. I have seen way too many thieves trying to face tank as much as guardians or warriors. In my opinion, this is not the optimal way to play a thief.

There are some good thief dungeon builds posted to this forum, so I won’t repeat them.

(continued from above post)

5. Better rewards
- players should be rewarded better, this is extremely important for motivation
- give players more titles, which they can show e.g. a visible title after completing personal story “Savior of Tyria” or something like that. Players like the brag about their accomplishments
- current treasure drops are not logical at all. Implement more different treasure drop tables per each opponent type
- legendary precursors should be dropped once per encounter after an epic battle against a really really difficult champion boss (he should be much harder than Lupicus). Thus one player contributing to the defeat of such epic boss gets a precursor
- currently using a level 80 exotic geared character gets better drop by killing the mobs
in level 1-15 area than defeating a level 80/80+ veteran or champion fully alone!! If you kill a champion level 80/80+ boss alone without any other human player help you should get much better rewards. Now it simply is not worth the trouble. Blue or even green level 80 items are worthless for most level 80 players.
- spvp / tpvp should give rewards which benefit pve as well e.g. Black Lion Keys
- WvWvW rewards are way too low, compared to e.g. doing dungeons

6. Fix WvWvW
- This is the true crown jewel of GW2. Give it the love it needs! Right now, not tomorrow.
- Revert to original culling, until you find a better solution. The new “improved” culling is killing the game
- Remove Jumping puzzle from WvWvW. Make it a separate map. JP should NOT give any badges of honor, but blueprints are okay.
- Remove WvWvW from world completion.
- outmanned should give thougness and health boost for the outmanned side NPCs, structures and players
- Remove AoE 5 limit cap from skills which target enemies (but keep it for those skills which buff/heal team mates) to give more viable strategies against
- Introduce mechanisms to reduce the effectiveness of zerg ball (current meta) e.g. if there is >N own team players nearby then your effective attacking power is reduced by X % or you get a % chance to be dazed
- remove consumables from WvWvW (at least the totally broken consumables like skale venom, gears etc)
- automatic looting in WvWvW e.g. after each kill the badge of honor is instantly transferred to you just like Laurels
- tiers changed per 24 hours instead of 1 week
- winner moves up and the last in tier moves one spot down to avoid fighting same opponents week after week

7. Reduce the excessive burst damage
- This had lead to the current boring glass cannon vs bunker meta, we need more balanced builds for variety. This is also yet another casual gamer unfriendly game mechanism
- The excessive burst, especially in WvWvW (consumables, ascended gear) can lead to incredibly fast deaths even when the player has over 2500 armor and high health.
- No single fast attack should do more than 3k damage, no single slow attack should do more than 6k damage (slow attacks are more easy to be dodged, avoided and countered)
- The overall damage (amount damage over longer time) is okay, keep it as it is (please don’t get me wrong, I am NOT asking for a general damage nerf)

8. Introduce spectator mode
- For both pvp, dungeons and WvWvW. You could learn a lot by watching how top players play in WvWvW, pvp and dungeons!

I probably forgot a lot of good things. I am sure that after these changes some people would complain and adjust, but most people would be much more happy. We would have a growing, happier vivid player base. More for casual gamers, more for experienced hard core gamers.

Instead of just complaining we can try to suggest changes to the problems. Asking Anet to completely change the game mechanisms e.g. add energy, make XXX weapon, won’t be happening, but I think the following changes could be feasible / rather easy to implement and would make the game better. One the key principle in my suggestions to make the game more accessible. A highly successful game needs a large player base, thus it should be accessible also for casual players and new comers. Another principle would be allow more variety in tactics and strategy to cater the needs of hard core players:

1. Balance the professions and skills
- analyze what professions are most widely played (based on hours spent / spvp matches played) and which skills are most widely used. The most widely used professions, weapons and skill are most likely ones to be overpowered, thus some of them might need some minor nerfing e.g. reduce damage, increase cooldown, minor tweaks. The least played professions, least used weapon combinations and skills are probably most underpowered and thus might need some minor buff e.g. reduce cooldown, increase damage.

2. Fix broken traits and skills
- A lot of traits are simply broken (not working at all), especially the engineer traits. These have been reported many months ago and still no fixes. Make them work according to the trait description or at least adjust the description to match the current state
- balance the skills and traits e.g. minor traits from different trees and professions should have roughly same power. Now in worst case a grandmaster trait of one profession (adrenal implant) is exactly same as the minor 5 point trait of another profession (natural vigor). Each profession has max 70 trait points. It is not balanced design if one profession can get exactly same effect with 5 points vs 30.

3. Fix Stealth
- several ideas to choose from:
- give each profession either a trait and/or skill to see stealthed opponents. E.g. engineer’s utility goggles would be logical skill for this and ranger’s spotter major trait could be reworked to see stealthed opponents
- any damage over time (burning, bleeding poison) should make a stealthed player visible
- any AoE damage should make remove stealth (if you stand in a cloud, you won’t be invisible)
- introduce at least 3 second delay, before a person can enter stealth again
- make stealthed character semi-transparent, just like a person who has consumed omnomberry ghost. You can see him, but you you still cannot target him with 1-target skills
- not to make the huge thief population completely angry give them more useful utility skills besides shadow refuge, signet of shadows and shadowstep

4. Fix teleportation
- give each profession skill or trait to prevent / deny teleportation e.g. teleportation doesn’t function within certain radius or pointed enemy player cannot temporarily use teleportation skills. Most players would still opt not to carry such skill or trait.
- introduce a 1 second delay of no actions right after teleportation
- remove it from WvWvW (why to have castle walls if you can teleport into enemy keep)

(continued in next post)

I agree with Eagle.3574. Excellent three posts by OP. Really worth reading & thinking. I think Red Falcon.8257’s reply was rude and not constructive at all.

The thing is: the moment you say something bad about thieves, mesmers, elementalists, stealth or teleportation, people who abuse them get defensive and all logic is thrown out of the window. End of sensible conversation.

GW2 shares the mythology with GW1, but game-play wise it is very different from GW1. I feel that GW2 is more FPS style than most MMORPGs.

No doubt GW1 had much deeper game-play, especially pvp. From pvp point of view GW2 is like GW1 for dummies and people in a hurry.

I teach game design and programming at university. One of the principles of good game design is that every important game mechanism should have a counter. Now both stealth and teleportation lack hard counters. There is no way see stealthed people (aka “see invisibility”) nor to deny it (“invisibility purge”) and same for teleportation. There is no skill, game item or anything e.g. to prevent teleportation in some area or prevent an enemy player of using teleportation skill (skill like thief’s shadwstep are instant cast and stunbreak, so even a stun won’t stop the thief from using it). Some people argue that chilling, knockdown, AoE dmg, channeled skills etc. are counters to stealth and teleportation, but they are not. They are general game mechanisms to hinder any opponent.

Gone are the days of GW1 where mesmers and necros could shutdown enemy with their hexes like diversion, backfire, empathy, insidious parasite. And ranger was ruling the open fields with many interrupts. Instead of 100+ different hexes (for players to recognize and learn), we have just conditions, which can be removed easily. The interruption meta game is also almost fully gone. Since there is no energy, there is of course no energy denial, which was very important in GW1. Knockdowns were also more frequent in GW1.

GW2 introduced some new good mechanisms though e.g. dodging. But you can only dodge once in a while even with vigor. Continued in the next post:

lLobo.7960:

You can still hit players in stealth.
Your channeled skills still hit (provided LoS and range) even if you loose target
Thief stealth can be countered with blocks/aegis/reflects/retaliation and a series of other working game mechanics.
You can take a thief out of stealth most of the time, mesmers and engis do all the time…

All in all, you should “acquire better knowledge to improve your strategies when performing on the game”, since you dont like l2p

It should be obvious from my signature that I play all the 8 professions. And despite not being in a party nor relying on my team mates I kill much more enemy invaders than I die myself (usually 1:10-1:15 kill rate in euro tier #1). You don’t need to explain me how the profession mechanisms work. I know very well that channeled skills like warrior’s rifle volley or greatsword 100blades will continue to hit the stealthed enemy if the enemy wasn’t yet stealthed when the attack was initiated. And AoE (if you guess the location) will damage the theif. But to call this a counter to stealth is a bad joke.

I can kill bad thieves in WvWvW. The moment I see them use their shadow refuge, I just spam AoE attacks there. This assumes the thief is so dumb that he doesn’t carry any stunbreak and literally stands in my red AoE circles for over 10 seconds (“learn 2 play” issue ). But the thing is: one fast AoE will not down a glass cannon thief with 13k-15k health pool. Good thieves have shadowstep: a stun break and 1200 range targetable teleport. If they notice that they are AoE:d during their shadow refuge, they just teleport away while still being invisible and then lurk away or use heartseeker to quickly jump away. End result: a good thief escaped and can come back half a minute later, while my stun break skill is still on cooldown.

Anybody who has played D&D or Pathfinder RPG at very high level (epic level) knows that teleportation (teleport without error, greater teleport, gate, dimension door) and invisibility (greater invisiblity) are hugely problematic spells and spell-like abilities. Basically so game breaking things that some Game Masters put house rule restrictions or make anti-magic common place to counter the constant teleportation spam and constant invisibility. If you can teleport into enemy’s castle, why to build walls in the 1st place? To partially solve this problem both D&D and Pathfinder RPG have hard counters to invisibility and teleport: teleport anchor (preventing teleport), anti-magic (preventing any magic), see invisibility, true seeing, invisibility purge and so on.

In most other MMORPGs a stealthed person becomes visible if he is subject to any damage or suffering from damage over time effect, such as bleeding. This is logical and should be implemented to GW2 as well.

Are you claiming that all these other games have inferior game design and that their game designers were not as smart as the geniuses of Arenanet?

I think Anet failed. Rogue was highly problematic in WoW pvp before the nerfs. Stealth was always know to be a fun killer mechanism in games. Game designers should have learned their lesson. Now it feels that this game has been designed by novices. They forgot all the good stuff from Guild Wars 1 and didn’t study the existing other MMORPGs properly.

If thief, mesmer and D/D elementalist would not be so easy “I always have a free get away card” professions, you would not see so many of them in the game, but you do see them in plenty.

Please see these great WoW videos. Notice similarities how thief players defend their “balanced” profession in these forums?
World of RogueCraft – Episode 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u55vHURPQSw
World of RogueCraft – Episode 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-KMOc_y7xo

Doomdesire.9365:

Columba.9730:

random smoke aoes are nearly impossible to see and keeps are huge places.

Theres a big red circle to help point it out for you. If you can’t see it and your only argument is “the place is too big!”

Then it’s a L2P issue.

I love it when thief players defend their profession with most ridiculous comparisons and use the term “learn 2 play”.

Stealth is utterly broken, especially in WvWvW. Stealth = unfun for all those who are not using it. WvWvW would be better with the stealth and teleportation mechanisms completely removed or reworked.

GW2 has game mechanisms similar to FPS game. Now imagine a FPS game, where there are several professions. One profession, let’s call it infiltrator, can become invisible when he wants and no enemy action can reveal him from invisibility. Even if infiltrator walks into a cloud of smoke or enters water or enemy makes him bleed like hell, infiltrator is still invisible. And enemy with a rifle cannot even target him. While he is invisible the rifle bullets just don’t hit him even if you guess his exact location. He also does huge damage, his attacks are blindingly fast and he can teleport as well, move 50% faster while being invisible. Then we have another profession, let’s call it soldier, who has better armor, higher health, but his high damage attacks are slowly telegraphed and very easily dodged. Would this game be balanced? Hell NO.

Worse for both WvWvW and pve. Please revert back to original culling as soon as possible.

I stopped playing WvWvW, because the culling just sucks so bad. I usually run alone, not in any team. First I see one 1 enemy and maybe 2. So I get tiny bit closer. Two seconds later a 20 man enemy zerg has overrun me and I am dying. It is not fun if you cannot see the enemy until it is close! The new culling clearly favors big zergs over solo roamers. I have tested it several times using a cheap trolling technique (sorry enemies ). I find a zerg on my side and then depart my zerg. I see 1-3 invaders. I attack them from 1500 range and then let them attack me back. I quickly run back towards my own zerg. Then I can see experience points flashing on my screen as my zerg overran them (so they probably didn’t see the zerg from my side). This is extremely stupid though.

Big zergs should NOT be able to roam stealth free. Come on, they make louder sounds than a herd of elephants. Anet, if you are not going to fix the culling, give us at least a clear audio visual indicator “enemy zerg nearby”. All these skill “balancing” stuff and culling “improvements” you do is just making zergs even more powerful. Also remove the 5 enemy target limit from AoE attacks, but keep the 5 target limit for own team buffs, so zerg balls cannot area heal and buff everybody too easily.

Because the outmanned buff is bugged (if you die outmanned disappears!) and absolutely useless, better tactics, luring enemy into a choke point and AoE is the only simple counter towards a much larger enemy zerg.

Flaunz.5273:

Deniara, was just about to say “hey! we DID end up in the same matchup now” and then I see you signature
I’ve been cheating on my engi for a couple of days now (have been playing Mesmer a bit) but reading all those replies again makes me want to go back to engi NOW!

Probably not. I have never played against [ICON] or Ring of Fire. Blacktide WvWvW was so dead, so I changed to Desolation before the free server transfers ran out. Quite a lot of good players from Blacktide migrated to Desolation and I think we will still see more people coming to our very highly populated server. Before you call me a traitor for leaving Blacktide: It was not fun to be completely alone in the Borderlands or just see one other human player on your side. Impossible odds. Now I heard Blacktide is trying to get their WvWvW activity up and I really hope the best for them. I still sometimes do some pve stuff with my Blacktide friends.

Despite the high population Desolation is outnumbered this week in WvWvW, especially in the Borderlands. 5-10 us alone with Visunah Square and Elona Reach zergs of 15-20 both attacking us at same time. Yes, both of them want to kill us so bad. Strangely I don’t see VS or ER attacking each other, but that might be just my point of view. I wish the outmanned buff would actually do something useful, like give more health and thoughness to the outmanned world structures, NPCs and players. Now trying to fight two different zergs at same time, both having more people than your side, is indeed challenging. Last night I got only 40 enemy invader kills, while dying 10 times. Really bad statistics.

Anycase keep the good engineer fights going on. We are still the rarest profession in the game!

Pickmansmodel.1298:

There is a trade-off between making SPVP exciting for casual players and making it an esport. Arenanet are committed to the later, and therefore most GW2 players ignore SPVP. That’s why the SPVP player base is so small, and you can’t find team-mates. It is what it is.

The e-sport thing won’t be happening. First of in order to have a e-sport you need to have:
1. A large player base (you need a more casual player friendly game to achieve this)
2. Enough game balance to have a lot more valid builds and counters to them (currently game balance is a joke)
3. Spectator mode (could be added later)
4. Proper rewards (ingame rewards e.g. Black Lion Keys to open chests, and money rewards for winning tournaments)
5. Good leaderboard system (built-into the game, past and current rankings and lots of statistics, ability to view recent top tournament matches)

Now all these things are missing.

Hugs.1856:

The population is low because the PvP integrates more elements from fps and rts than RPGs or our beloved gw1, thus failing to appeal to its initial target audience.

Let’s take a look at the following design principles:
- fps style combat with a restricted view to make camera management and observation a skill in themselves.
- fps style combat with a very fast paced game, where kills can be achieved in matters of seconds
- minor death penalty so that players have fewer reasons to play defensively but rather are encouraged to take bold actions.
- every skill should be visually understandable
- no more team carrier like monks or lead frontliner: every character should be able to be self sufficient with some room for specialisation.

While of these look fantastic from a designer standpoint, personnally, as a (mmo)-rpg player who was a huge fan of gw1 I can’t but be frustrated with the pace and the confusion of 5v5 pvp.

I have no fun with fast encounters: killing or being killed in seconds isn’t exciting, it’s frustrating. Even at the top of tournament play, team fights rarely ever last more than 1-2 minutes.

I like kills to depend on outplaying the other team with pressure, damage and shutdown being all perfectly coordinated rather than raw damage, skills being on cool down or quickness of reaction.
I like to talk tactics and builds during the fight to gradually overcome the opponent as a team rather than focusing on my own gameplay.
I’m not a massive fan of the high micro cap. Once again, I’d rather focus on builds, tactics and strategies.

The game is very complex and allows for a high skill cap, I have no doubt about that. But:
- the gameplay is too fast paced to appeal to traditional rpg players
- the ineligibility of team fights make it worse
- the freaking steep learning curve make it worse.

So either Anet works on the last two points and hopes the player base grows once people learn the game and are used to the fast paced gameplay. Either they realise they’ve gone over the roof with the offensive combat design.

Excellent post. I was also a huge fan of GW1 pvp, played it for about 2000 hours. My favorite game modes were Guild-vs-Guild (GvG), Random Arena (RA) and Team Arena (TA). For some reasons Anet deleted TA and gave us Hero Battles (HB) and Codex Arena (CA). RA and TA were always full of people, because it was a simple hot join (without waiting) 4 vs 4 elimination match. CA was never popular due the randomly resetting skill set, which changed daily. HB was never popular people it was about capturing points. That should have given already the developers a loud message: people like killing more than capturing points.

GW2 pvp and WvWvW have many elements, which make it bad for newcomers and casual gamers:
- excessive fast burst damage compared to healing and counters
- stealth = broken & unfun (stealth is fun only for those who are using it themselves)
- teleportation (GW1 already had issues with multiple assassins using teleport to the same target and release their attack chain to down one target very fast. They fixed this by introducing a delay after the teleportation. I think GW2 should have a 1 second inactivity delay after a person teleports)
- mesmer clones / illusions are confusing for new players
- no dedicated healers, nobody is babysitting for you, meaning that bad / new players are at huge risk of being constantly killed very fast, sometimes even not seeing who killed them (stealthed opponent)
- the downed state is totally imbalanced between the professions e.g. compare downed state of thief vs engineer

To make things even more sad, the person who is responsible for pvp game balance uses the word “noob” and term “learn 2 play” in an interview. Such elitist attitude should go, otherwise GW2 pvp will never be popular.

Boomstin.3460:

Stealth mechanics in this game makes me miss the standard stealth from other mmo’s. Whoever thought whailing empty air and trying to stack conditions to invisible targets that can easily cleanse them makes for fun and exiting gameplay needs to go back to working in McDonalds.

This post really made my day. What Anet doesn’t understand:
Stealth is fun only for those who are using it.

Fighting against stealthed opponents makes spvp newcomer unfriendly. And as long as we lack the masses, there is not going to be any E-sport.

NinjaEd.3946:

Deniara Devious.3948:

tom.7468:

And like someone have already mentioned if they get nerfed this will make other more defensive builds overpowered.

I am not suggesting to nerf the overall damage, just the burst. The overall damage would remain roughly the same. Please explain why defensive builds would become overpowered if the excessive burst damage would be toned down a bit.

Because then they would be closer to these burst classes while maintaining high defences. Shouldn’t see the best of both worlds in pve or pvp, and glass cannons generalyl don’t. Some builds do, but I hardly see crit dmg as a problem (especially in spvp, where it is capped really low).

I agree that in pvp the crit damage is capped due very limited set of gear (amulets), but I think your logic of claiming they would do similar damage is wrong.

Assuming that the stats would be balanced. Each player could spend up to 1000 points (note that in pve/WvWvW you cannot have gear which gives maximum points to all possible stats, you need to choose how you “spend” your points):
A tank puts 500 to toughness and 400 vitality and just 100 to power. Sturdy, but does very little damage.
A glass cannon puts 100 to toughness, 100 to vitality and 800 to power. Squishy, but does tons of damage.
A balanced character puts 350 to toughness, 300 to vitality and 350 to power.

Do you really think the tank would have the same overall damage if he spent almost all his points to defense? Nope. A tank would just be a tank, unable to kill anything, unless enemy stands still and even then it would take time. Tanks would still serve a purpose e.g. use siege weapons under heavy enemy fire or revive team mates.

tom.7468:

And like someone have already mentioned if they get nerfed this will make other more defensive builds overpowered.

I am not suggesting to nerf the overall damage, just the burst. The overall damage would remain roughly the same. Please explain why defensive builds would become overpowered if the excessive burst damage would be toned down a bit.

zen.6091:

Stomping crash course for all classes—

Tricky classes

Thief – Main skill teleport, just start stomping, then move to teleport location. Second downed skill is stealth, just wait for it to end at same location after a few seconds, and keep attacking in the meantime. If the thief happens to put down a shadow refuge right before they die, they will be invisible for 10-15 seconds. Make sure to keep spamming the area with AoE or CC, and wait there if you see a very low health thief go stealth under a log cabin animation basically.

Ele – Main skill mist form. Start stomping, follow, stomp. They can move quite far and through gates, and are invulnerable while moving though. Second skill is useless.

Mesmer – Main skill clone (and also short invis). Start stomping, first character to appear is clone, second is the real mesmer. CAUTION, downed mesmers can stack a ridiculous amount of confusion if you try to auto attack them dead. Always go for the stomp. Second skill also does a kitten load of damage. Make mesmer dead asap when downed.

Control classes. All can be bypassed with stability or invulnerability. All but guardian can be bypassed with stealth, unless someone else is stomping too with ranger.

Necro – Main skill single target fear, second skill pretty much useless.

Guardian – Main skill pushes all nearby foes back. Second skill can heal the guardian very fast to a rally, so get them down.

Ranger – First skill dazes all stompers, but it needs to be targeted (unlike guardian). Second skill heals the ranger very fast, so get them down.

Warrior – First skill single target KD, second skill rallies the warrior for 15 seconds. If they pop vengeance just run away, the job is done.

Engineer – First skill interrupts and pulls one target…to the engineer. Second skill is a blowout. By far the easiest stomp…poor engis.

Excellent summary. I just want to correct one mistake:
The engineer’s first downed skill, throw junk, is a 900 ranged attack, which inflicts a random condition on the foe. Not totally useless, but it rarely gives you rally.
The 2nd engineer downed skill, grappling line, pulls a single foe to the downed engineer. What a useless skill. When you are downed, you want enemies away from you, not near you. When I play a thief, shadow escape (thief downed skill #2), has saved me many times.
The 3rd engineer downed skill, booby trap, plants mines around the engineer. Pretty useful, but you die anycase if you get chance to use it.

And yes, engineers have the weakest downed state in the game. If you get downed, you die unless team mates come to rescue. Thief, mesmer and elementalist have the best downed states. And they are also probably the most common professions in spvp and far more common in WvWvW compared to engineers. Anet doesn’t know how to balance the game and doesn’t listen to its players.

If you want to stomp a thief, just spam AoE where he is or use ranged attack while he is visible. Quickly change target if he uses shadow escape. If he enters stealth during stomping, just continue to stomp (repress F), you will stomp that thief.

I like Jen Hale’s voice acting for the female sylvari characters, except for the argh growl. “For great justice” or “This rose has thorns and here they are” sounds just like it should be. The person who did the female Asura also did a wonderful job. Same for Thybalt Leftpaw (Order of Whispers).

That made me do two different sylvari female characters, two female asuras and select the Order of Whispers for 3 characters.

Despite I wrote that bunker D/D elementalists and guardians are overpowered in the current meta, that is not the core of the problem. The core of the problem is the burst. If the burst would be toned down, there would be much less reasons to play a bunker.

No bunker will survive forever or can protect an important NPC, let’s say a guild lord, forever. A bunker would be the last man standing on a losing side. Lots of conditions, life steal, knock down and knock back will eat any bunker. Smart people would rather play a more balanced build then and we would see more variety in the game. The excessive burst makes some people to play their counter: bunker. And thus we have only few builds: glass cannons and bunkers.

Nerf the burst and we would see a better, more varied pvp and WvWvW. Then tackle the broken game mechanisms, stealth and teleportation, which still have no hard counter. Calling AoE a counter for stealth in WvWvW must be a bad joke, especially with current culling. It should be no surprise that most players hate to see a completely invisible enemy down you in a blink (“unknown hits you for xxx dmg” <- not even telling which world invader was hitting you) or an invisible enemy stomping you. Now before some people start to write rude replies e.g. using the n**b word or writing useless stuff like “l2p”. I did yesterday, once again, over 70 enemy invader kills, while dying 4 times myself in euro tier #1. All own deaths due culling.

Most players would prefer fair even fights where you can actually see the enemy most of the time. The stealth issues, combined with culling (aka enemy zerg rendering only when it is right next to you), are making people to stop playing the game.