Guild Wars 2

Sensotix.4106:

Mesmer will be in a really bad spot after the patch so please keep that in mind when you do your balancing anet

He’s being sarcastic.

My Shutdown Mesmer; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtVJ5YSyDmQ

You can catch the tips and tricks section at 13:37 which gives tips on how cool things to do with the shutdown specc.

What’s wrong with Spirit Weapons? They are the most functional of the Ai skills in the game and the only i can see wrong with them is that have a chance of getting AoE’d?

I think some of you have taken my concept and blown it into the stratosphere but hey, opinions are opinions.

@Chicago jack

Nothing beats Strider’s Defense when it comes to bad traits. The Mesmer inspiration trait actually has a tactical use. Combine it with “Mantras heal” and it can be a really powerful boost to a support Mesmer.

People have improved, classes have changed and people know how to play the speccs they have.
Your specc doesn’t have a lot of defensive cooldowns. You’re left too open without some sort of CC or Block/Invulnerability or stealth. You need one of those to make that build work just a tad better.

Lord De Galelly.9735:

Are engineers gonna be still the toughest profession to play with after this patch? Im new to engi and just made one and dont wanna be a fail at dungeons or fractals.

I think it best that you start learning to play your class.

Muchacho.2390:

Ugruk.4069:

This grandmaster traits were designed with pve in mind, dont get your hopes up that they will change them.

One of the devs even said that the mesmer one that gives distortion when you kill a target is good for pvp because “teamfights” topkek

Well the necro got some gm that are purely pvp oriantated. Boon removel is useless in pve so is regerneration in ds…

Regeneration in DS is very useful in PvE. That extra survivability is always nice.

All my juicy thoughts could be compressed into one single word; crazy.

But take a look and a gander at the vid and let me know what you think about what i think.

After the preview of the new traits on the ready-up stream, I’ve been scutinizing every single trait grading them according to their purported usefulness.

With regards to that, I’ve compiled a list of my thoughts and musings on specific traits

It’s a GM trait but it doesn’t deserve a 30 point investment;
- Strider’s Defense
15% chance to block while in melee*, does not deserve 30 points. I clearly remember a dev stating that a GM trait’s are generally build defining…. well, forgive me but, there’s nothing build defining about this.

- Lightning Rod
Interrupting an enemy strikes them with lightning and weakens them. *
The Ele has very few ways to interrupt and yet this trait sits as a 30 point investment slot. Where there’s another trait that it would synergize perfectly with (Tempest Defence).

- Elemental Contingency -Gain a boon when you are stuck, based on your current attunement, coodown; 10 seconds. Fire: 3.5s of retaliation; air: 5 seconds of fury; Earth: 2.5s of protection; Water: 3 seconds of vigor
I shall call upon the build defining argument again. I’m not quite sure what build this trait will be defining. It’s funny that a 30 point trait is less build defining than the trait that it would work best with (Fire’s Embrace) and that trait is actually in the Master Tier.

- Brawler’s Recovery -Remove blindness when you swap weapons.
This trait deserves the adept chair. I’m really not going to go 30 points into a line just to get this. My suggestion would be to swap it with Mighty Defences. At least that’s a trait that we could make a build around.

I don’t think this was the best possible execution;

- Strider’s Defence
The Ranger needs more builds and they get this? I am disappointed.
Once again I’ll re-iterate my suggestion;
Seeking Blade;
When you evade your next sword attack does 20% more damage and is unblockable. Single target, sustained damage. (If I recall correctly that’s what the Ranger is supposed to specialize in)
or

All Sword attacks apart from the auto-attack, reflects projectiles.

- Unholy Martyr
Nothing really bad about this one, just wish it pulled conditions from allies on activation of Life Transer so that you can better control it’s use and not inadvertently kill yourself by going into DS at the time your team gets overloaded with condis and you’re the one being focused at the time.

Are you sure you put it in the right place?;

-Force of Will & Communal Defences
I believe Force of Will should be in the Valor line and CD should be in the Honor line.

My Reasoning;
No 1: The GM traits of the Honor line are all focused on group support. Force of Will isn’t. The GM traits of the Valor line are all focused on Self Preservation, Communal Defences isn’t.

No 2: If Force of Will is in the Valor Line, you have a choice between, Sustained healing (Altruistic Healing), Burst Healing (Meditations) and a plain old large health pool (Force of Will).

No. 3: Damage speccs for the Guardian would benefit from this the most and most of these specs, spend more time dabbling in Valor than in Honour. If you want these specs to use Force of Will, then please, put it in Valor.

Anyway, that’s all the feedback I have for now. You can watch video version of my thoughts on each profession’s traits on my channel. Just click the link in my sig.

I agree with Obtena. You’re worried about nothing. Bunker builds will not go into Radiance or Zeal for anything. At most, you’ll see hybrid builds that make use of the burning or the Retal or both but nothing too crazy.

We haven’t yet seen the full scope of the changes so we have to wait till the patch notes come out, then we can really talk about what’s going to happen.

Yea it is a bit boring to have my char just stand there. Just didn’t have anything new to show with regards to gameplay for the ele and Mesmer.
Next time I’ll just add old gameplay then.

Hey guys! In my latest video I take a look at the new traits for the mesmer and give my thoughts on their useability and whether some of them even should be GM traits. Take a look and leave a comment.

Hey guys, in my latest video I take a gander at all the new traits and give my opinion on how useful they could be/ how well they work and whether they even deserve to be GM traits. Take a look and leave a comment

I’m satisfied with this trait (because I find it fun to run around nuking people who don’t understand my build) and I feel since this trait is here, Anet might have changed Kindled Zeal.

Calculation wise, Kindled Zeal is a bit less damage than Amped Wrath even when other conditions are involved so I see no case in which people would pick KZ over Amped. Unless there’s a new condition that the Guardian can apply that no one is talking about.

Inspector Gadget

Bobomber

I’m going to reiterate what I said in a different thread in the Spvp forums. Strider’s Defense is a really bad trait. It does nothing for the Ranger, absolutely nothing to improve build diversity, absolutely nothing to make them more viable.
And once again I pose the question and the suggestion I did in the other thread;
My question is; why isn’t this trait something else? Why is it this? Isn’t there something better they could put here? Isn’t there a better idea?
My Suggestion; Strider’s Defense is changed in functionality or changed completely and given a different name.
- Functionality change; Projectiles are deflected when you use sword skills (not including auto-attack)
- Complete overhaul; Strider’s Defence is now called; Seeking Blade; When you evade, your next sword attack is unblockable and deals 20% more damage.

Zach.3264:

Huh? Did you mean to paste the same link I did on original post? :O

No I did not lol. It’s been edited now

All i know is, do 1k damage per tick on a burn? Sign me up. I also calculated that this new trait is better than having Kindled Zeal, so KZ may have been modified to do something else.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vUAQNAR8dlsApZoVCxdI8DNRYV4fVPiX9Aw1DF6wGC-zUCBoOERz0CJjkGi6Am8AITqIas1gFRjVJjIqWpELAACAzcmzcmzcmlCYRpRA-w

My build. No stun breaker. Mostly because I like to live dangerously. But you can replace the signet with SYG if you so desired.

It would have survivability and good damage. Not the same durations and damage you have but my build wouldn’t need to hit the person to kill them.

The EU/NA BTESL GvG Tournament ended yesterday. If you missed it, you can catch up on all the action on youtube or you can just click the links below for a selected few.

Semi-Finals EU:
55HP Monks vs LSE
Match 1: http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech/c/3930615
Match 2: http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech/c/3930602
Match 3: http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech/c/3930584

VotF vs Civilized Gentlemen:
Match 1: http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech/c/3930556
Match 2: http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech/c/3930527

Finals EU:
Match 1: http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech/c/3930464
Match 2: http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech/c/3930452

Semi Finals NA:
Good Fights vs Groundhouse Gaming
Match 1: http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech/c/3937034
Match 2: http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech/c/3936991

Scrub a Dub vs Apex Prime
Match 1: http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech/c/3936936
Match 2: http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech/c/3936915
Match 3: http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech/c/3936896

Finals NA:
Match 1: http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech/c/3936839
Match 2: http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech/c/3936808

Congrats to the winners and thank you to all the participants/viewers. It’s been a great tournament and I had fun casting it with Jebro.
I do hope that you guys had fun watching and participating, and hopefully next time, the entire community will join us in the next tournament when it is finally announced.
Thank you all once again and I’ll see you in the mists!

fishball.7204:

I think the problem with decap engineer in general is the insane survivability by combining several key traits. By changing some of the traits around to make them less bunkery they would be killable much easier since most decap engineers sacrifice a lot of defensive stuff like Toolkit to decap.

In addition to AR, the protection on crit and reduction to damage when stunned and so on all stack and creates a situation where an engineer can have 25% hp yet be tankier than a warrior. Perhaps moving some traits to Grandmaster level would alleviate some of this? Or maybe increasing the ICD of the protection on crit trait?

I disagree with making points bigger simply because a bunker banner warrior would be the new ‘decap engy’ if every point was like the center of foefire.

You don’t want to overnerf the abilities that the build has. Give it one weakness and that should be enough to put it down.

Josh Davis.6015:

So, let’s say we wanted to look into decap engineer, where would we start? I’ve heard a few different opinions on the topic, and I have a few opinions of my own as someone who has played against decap in top 100 rated solo/team arena games and also played the build myself.

In the same way that it was difficult to look at the September ’13 Hambow warrior and point out a single specific key to its strength, I think decap engineer is much the same.

I think it’s important to understand the areas in our game where decap engineer is strong, and then go from there:

• Conquest
  • Situations where communication is difficult (solo arena)
  • Against teams that have difficulty rotating appropriately

So, with the above in mind, what are some ‘low-hanging fruit’ type of suggestions for changing the way decap engineer works, without affecting existing builds unrelated to decap? That is to say, suggestions that would not require significant amounts of development time to implement.

We’ve already seen a few threads on PW, so I’ll focus on decap for now. ^^

It’s not about looking for a key to it’s strenght, it’s about creating a weakeness where it seems there isn’t one.

Change Automated Response and you will see them drop to condis.

Guys! Listen! I exist you know? The best condi guardian in the world!

http://intothemists.com/guides/3250-hit_me_with_your_rhythm_stick

Finals for the NA Tournament Begin Now; http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech

The BTESL GvG NA Tournament begins now! http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech

Personally I don’t think Strider’s Defense is worth GM trait, in fact I think it’s the worst idea they have come up with. After all the shouting and the screaming about passive play, we get this bomb dropped on us.

I commend them for what they’ve done with some of the other traits like Stone Heart but this is just a major stinker in a field of mostly roses and 1 possibly rusted wheel.

My question is; why isn’t this trait something else? Why is it this? Isn’t there something better they could put here? Isn’t there a better idea?

My Suggestion; Strider’s Defense is changed in functionality or changed completely and given a different name.
- Functionality change; Projectiles are deflected when you use sword skills (not including auto-attack)
- Complete overhaul; Strider’s Defence is now called; Seeking Blade; When you evade, your next sword attack is unblockable and deals 20% more damage.

Finals Begin now! http://www.twitch.tv/bloodytech

No. From what the announcement schedule looks like, it’s a no.

Forestgreen.7981:

Acrisor.8097:

Yeah… let’s make Elementalist a healer with 25% more healing and only 2 healing spells (with cooldown 20 and 45) for Staff.
Awsome choice and great imagination.

Or you know evasive arcana that’s on a 10s CD.

And blast finishers.

Lordrosicky.5813:

This HAS to be broken. No way a necro can do anything against a mesmer after this patch. It will be easy mode for the mesmer. Seriously. And funny the two classes this OP trait doesn’t hurt = thieves and warriors because you can’t interrupt their heals or most of their skills (thieves skills don’t go on cd when interrupted).

gg

Edit: this is why they should have a PTS or actually tell us the huge changes. Because we know instantly how broken some things will be.

Edit2: to me the necromancer trait seems very very strong too. We shall see. At least it is something. Some changes. Even if they are broken I can put up with it. Change = good

There’s nothing a necro can do to me now if i run full interrupt spec with mantras. It has nothing to do with the patch.

For those moments when you’re fighting a Condi war and you want to reflect some bow attacks. Or just to troll decap engies or grenade engies.

Nah pistol whip is what annoys me when i play burst. Warriors, i just out run them.

You’re still getting gold. And what’s so wrong about waiting 4 weeks?

Rickster.8752:

And the problem of decap engis is mainly solo q. It literally does make solo q unplayable which is why alot of people quit it. There is no counter to having to 2v1 someone to succeed

Its a matter of the build you are playing. The builds that people play today cant handle them too well but there are certain builds that would make these engies wish they didn’t even try.

Did someone say Guild vs other Guilds?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/events/ESL-BloodyTech-GvG-Tournament-21st-22nd-March/first#post3770677

#shamelessplug

#createthefuture guys

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/events/ESL-BloodyTech-GvG-Tournament-21st-22nd-March/first#post3761289

Swagg.9236:

It should just stack in charges like defiant. As should stability.

I’m not sure if you’ve actually thought this one through. Do you know how effective that would become?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/events/ESL-BloodyTech-GvG-Tournament-21st-22nd-March/first#post3761289

Hey fellow WvWers,

Bloodytech is having another GvG tournament this month in collaboration with the ESL and we would definitely like to see some good WvW guilds get involved and show people how to play as a coordinated team.

We currently have a grand prize of £240 for the winning teams on EU and NA and we’d like to see something other than the regular faces of SPvP jump into our tourney.

If any of your guilds are interested in showing the players of this game how to coordinate like pros then check out the rules and sign up below;

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/events/ESL-BloodyTech-GvG-Tournament-21st-22nd-March/first#post3760572

#createthefuture

Bloodytech and ESL are hosting another GvG tournament for GW2. If you missed out on the last one, don’t miss out on this one.

The prize money has doubled and we want the competition even fiercer this time. So sign your guild up and get ready to do battle.

Check here for more info; https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/events/ESL-BloodyTech-GvG-Tournament-21st-22nd-March/first#post3760572

Impossible. Thief’s mobility comes from weapon sets. The only way to nerf that would kill the theif’s viability.

BlackBeard.2873:

infantrydiv.1620:

-Decap Engineer: A spec that is based around shoving your enemy off point and forcing them to 2v1 you due to the fact that you are incredibly tanky and have Automated Response. Totally against the spirit of PvP/Conquest in general. Arenanet should create a special mode calling Engi Sumo wrestling, ban these guys from normal pvp, and send them there. They can even have their own leaderboards.

That’s funny! There was actually a skyhammer golf tourney a few weeks back. Maybe that should be a thing (making the best of a terrible situation in both skyhammer and decap/cc spam engies).

Engies showed up and you wouldn’t believe who won….

Mesmers.

silvermember.8941:

Sephil.3971:

eleshazar.6902:

I think GW1 had even more customization than GW2 and that game was balanced amazingly.

GW1 had way less customization on the stats front. But a huge amount more in skill choices.

The comparison stops here.

And GW1’s balance was completely broken btw. It was ok until factions, then it got bad, and then it got even worse. Why? Because they added too many skills instead of making the old ones useful.

+ GW1 was a full scale cooperative game, everyone had a specific role, and GW2 went on a solo scale, which means that even though a good team with a lot of interactions is great to watch, just force them to split them up and if they are bad in 1v1 or 2v2, they’ll just lose.

TL;DR: don’t compare GW1 and GW2, the games are completely different, and GW1 was NOT well balanced.

Guild wars 1 had a lot of copies of the same skills but weaker or broken. Out of the hundreds of skills only very few were either terrible or OP, guild wars 1 only advantage was that everything got nerfed to the ground every single month, unlike this game where apparently reducing a skill by 8% is suppose to be a nerf.

All I know is when the sigil changes happen, I’ll be packing Sigil of Doom to really lay the hurt on those Wars. I’m also expecting nerfs to Beserker stance. If that doesn’t come, I’ll just take my ball and go home.

Whit.2385:

I’m confused why this topic is getting attention. The solutions are essentially an overhaul to the core of the game.

The reason I’d assume is because a few people think an overhaul isn’t required. What is required is a tweak to the existing mechanic.

You mention GW1. Rose-tinted glasses would tell you it was the best thing since sliced bread, objective views would tell you it was pretty much the same only that balance changes came much faster.

garethh.3518:

Luke.4562:

ANET be careful on what you can take for good to balance this messy game!

They haven’t listened to the forums about anything notable… ever.
So no worries.

Anyways, they literally don’t have the manpower to do what people talk about in most cases. All they seem able to do is tweak balance numbers and shoot out alpha versions of features every 6~ months. Yeah, I didn’t say playtest because I think their time actually playtesting is abysmal or in the hands of a bad test team.

So…
They can’t make good patch notes.
They can’t make good features.
They can’t make good maps.
They can’t listen to the community.
So what’s left?

Hope.
That’s all they can bring to the game, and talking about concepts in the future is the best way to attempt to do it.

Your statement is unfair and blind. If you actually read the forums you’ll know that quite a few of the actions made by Anet have been based off of player feedback. The only problem is, when things go wrong everyone blames the messenger not the guy who sent the message.

I can list a few things that I personally have discussed on these forums and have been translated into patch notes. So when I see your claims of “anet not listening to anything we say”, all I can think is; you’re just being bitter.

Reikou.7068:

Personally I’d say remove customization from PvP altogether. You queue with a class, when you enter the match, you pick a preset build for that class (With everything from Traits/Runes/Sigils/Weapons/Skills all preset and picked for you,) and roll with it.

Devs can then just balance these presets and it would be much easier to do.

Yay for build diversity!!!!!

ThiBash.5634:

Dirame.8521:

I don’t believe that numbers is what makes this game unbalanced. I believe that creativity is what makes this game unbalanced.

It’s not the raw numbers, but rather the relative difference between them. Ultimately, which duels are the most fun? Those with evenly matched opponents, or those where 1 player is taken out instantly or 1 player is undefeatable?

Take my post in its full context. Numbers alone will not fix this game. Take your example, change the way the burst or the way invulnerability skills function and you could have a more cerebral game.

I don’t believe that numbers alone is what makes this game unbalanced. I believe that creativity behind skills is what makes this game unbalanced.

Changing numbers will not change Automated Response, changing numbers will not change Dhuumfire, changing numbers will not change the thief’s ability to keep spamming the same button because he knows that he can’t be touched, changing numbers would not fix everything that is wrong with this game.

In fact I don’t believe the numbers are that inflated. At most it’s a bit of a hinderance but the main factor is in the way things function or are executed. For instance, if the thief worked on a combo system, we wouldn’t have 2 spams or 3 spams, we’d have combo spams that can be seen and countered. If the Warrior Beserker stance, blocked only a few conditions it would be a skill that could seen and countered. If Automated response did something totally different, that would be a lot more skillful than what we have now.

Anyway I hope that Anet bring the rain, else this town will become a desert.

Rickster.8752:

This game takes no skill.

Does anyone want to argue that it does?

The game is based on spamming skills and on abusing whatever is the most OP mechanic. A skilled game existed in the old days before the power creep took over.

Then if you wasted your steal or got caught in the open you would die on your thief. If you spammed all your necro conditions into condition removal then you would have a hard time reapplying them. If you wasted your time warp then your team would struggle to win the fight. If you wasted your warrior burst you would get owned.

Now what?

Bunker guardian – the ultimate skill-less spec. Based around passive healing from AH which just keeps you alive when casting skills. Completely brainless and the ONLY spec that I can personally run at a resonably high level after literally 5 games (and no pve or wvw) on guardian.

You can claim that you’re good at guardian but really, only very few people are TRULY good at guardian. In this case, I’ll see it before I believe it.

Rickster.8752:

There are others that take no skill. Fresh air ele takes little skill. Go into air and ping a guy, get some crits. Yeh not really hard to play. Phantasm mesmer and minion master are two of the most brainless specs also.

I wouldn’t put ele in this. Any player who can last longer than 5s to condi spam as an ele in this game is getting a thumbs up from me.

Rickster.8752:

So in conclusion. If you want to get a big ego about being “best players Eu/NA” then really I wouldn’t bother. It just makes yourself look like a fool. This game takes ALMOST no skill. The game has been dumbed down to such an extent with all the highly powerful and low risk builds. Those who succeed most are generally people who just try the hardest to succeed at all costs either due to specs or team comps. They have got the least bored with the mindless spam, and so are able to bring themselves to concentrate during matches. In reality winning in this game proves very little with respect to skill. So next time you win a 1v1 or a 3v3 vs some other players then just consider that maybe you didn’t really prove so much and that maybe they had just given up with this skill-less game. Or you just won due to spamming skills.

In conclusion, you’re just a tad ragey.

LoneWolfe, 100% of the people in the world can bring out statistics from thin air that don’t make any percentage of them right. If you wish to challenge the opinions of the people vying for a thief change then let us here your point of view rather than trying to discredit their opinions with this post that is shakey at best.

Now, this is not to say that the core of your point isn’t something to be considered it’s just, you went about it the wrong way.