Guild Wars 2

Thiefs are perfectly viable if played properly, 2 thieves however on your team is usually a problem and the reason thieves should have secondary professions they can roll to.

Mesmers not viable? Mesmers are perfectly viable and beat alot of professions in the 1v1 while bringing good utility and decent damage in team fights. Honestly I feel like I have most influence on matches while playing a mesmer.

Warriors/DH’s are in my opinion not viable, altough DH’s can work at lower levels of play I guess.

Once the match making system decides you are bad you will not get out of it, unless you team up.

The amount by which most matches favor one team are ridiculous and the fun is gone. It will settle in future is not good enough cause most players will be bored with losing by then. That in itself will also hurt the good players once they do not get any attention for the mode.

Azukas.1426:

Keadron.9570:

How exactly is coming to the elementalist forum, saying they’re fine and anyone who disagrees is suffering from self entitlement syndrome in any way constructive?

Obviously the devs aren’t the greatest at balancing and coming together as a community to demand/suggest proper balance would be a boon for overall health of this game.

Now since HoT betas (not gonna even delve into the comments or whining during the DD cele ele era) ele players have been predicting trash tier for thier class. As a player who’s only interest is overall game balance I’ve had to wade through pages and pages of this while getting shouted down on trying to get overall balance achieved.

Meanwhile the entire time the ele class has never been in danger of not being meta.

I had hoped after the last round of “OMG ele so unviable now” being once again disproven we could get serious discussion on regards to game balance. The problem it seems though that being the most OP class to ever walk in this game has lead to a sense of self entitlement. I was hoping it was gone but I’m starting to think it’ll never leave now. Sad really

First of all, if ya wanna talk about balance you need proper insights and understanding of the game.

Post HOT ele wasnt meta in pvp at all, mesmer was way better for support and ele simply hard countered DH and Reaper, which made it a popular popular pick in ranked. However at the time in pro league the most succesful teams did not run ele. It was in fact in danger yet most players in ranked did not realise this, in the same manner that you yourself apperantly did not realise it.

Now after the big balancing patch you cannot pick Druids/Guardians/Mesmers for support. Yet there is still a need for support especially with the current itteration of reaper and thus we are seeing cleric ele at every team.

As for balancing, I dont see why you would consider Ele OP, other professions simply need a buff to their support qualities. Reaper might need some slight shaves to it’s condition pressure. Ele’s give up everything to be effective support characters and they lack damage/mobility and guess what, they do great at just that, support so they are on every team.

Most ele players expect to deal damage, yet they cannot bring damage builds in serious matches. The only problem is your lack of insight and understanding of balance.

epouvante.7392:

Hum if you want to show all the scrapper possibilities we can make it for all professions you know?
- reaper, spamming a lot of condi, nobody could dispel continuously a reaper: chill, weakness, snare, fear, bleed, burn, torment, vuln. Have an overpowered dps, and condi burst at the same time. Stun option via the elite, mignion assist. A lot of corrupt, transfert. Survivability up via death shroud spamming.
- thief, hum the thief. Evade evade evda evade, cc, 3 shot good bye. And it´s not a joke we have a good thief in our team , when he pop behing you he spam the dagger #1 and it´s over.
We can continue like this for quasi all professions man.
For info, the bulwark gyro is easily killable. Boons could be easily corrupted. Cc via #5 hammer it´s dodgable. A hammer scrapper is kittable without condi snare and the gap closser (#3 hammer ) is on 12 sec now…
If you talk about 1v1 yes the scrapper is strong but in pvp (mainly 2v2 or 3v3) it´s not the same. When you face 2-3 guys gyros are useless.

You cant cause other professions don’t have as many options as Scrappers do, see the list you put for reaper and thief doesnt even come close to the options scrappers have. The amount of damage they can deal while being able to stay alive is ridiculous. Unlike scrappers other professions have weaknesses, scrappers with their phlentora of options dont have real ones.

You cant hold m down, with 2 stunbreaks and plenty of disengage options while also having stability if they trait for it, it is not gonna happen. You can’t reliably power burst m cause they have blocks/evades/stealth gyro/bulwark/Toolbelt skill on bulwark and they will regenerate. Weak to condi? No sir you have plenty of removal skills. Kite m? How exactly? They have plenty of skills to hold you down, EG auto ( not much dmg I agree), swiftness options , cripple and hard CC to hold you down.

They win or stalemate any profession on side points and in term of team fights they bring loads of utility with gyros. elixers ( Moa / Transform), damage and interupts.

But hey, I dont mind if scrappers do not get nerfed, having plenty of fun on mine owning. The only thing most scrapper builds lack is true ranged damage, hardly a weakness people can take advantage off in conquest.

archmagus.7249:

Yeah yeah yeah… Go back to playing your thief.

We got our nerfs. We’re very weak against conditions; any even moderately-good Necro can defeat us with condition spam. Mesmers are really strong against us.

Also, engineer/scrapper is by far the hardest class to play. If you spent an equal amount of time playing each class, you’d be the worst at engineer.

Scrapper hardest to play? Not in pvp mate, it is actually a very forgiving profession in pvp with lots of options, they have plenty condi removal/2 stun breaks and 2 very strong cc skills, they can swap some utilities around like bulwark/gyro/elixer B/Elixer X, depending on the match up. Additionally they do have access to stability, through elixer B and a scrapper trait. Finally they can pair this up with decent damage all while being able to survive for a long period of time.

Scrappers are very strong and could use a nerf to the Survivability/Damage ratio. Also you have a very competitive condi build in pve. Though I would prefer a nerf to pvp damage only, it is not like a nerf to power damage would affect engineers in raids/fractals.

Ya experiencing difficulty cause you think like a power spec with certain burst combo’s and set ups to land hard hitting skills.

Thats not how ya play Mallyx rev, as a general rule of thumb if ya landing skills resulting in many different conditions ticking without them getting cleansed while staying alive you deal enuff damage. Problem is ya prolly landing high energy skills before opponents used their cleanses.

So use shiro /low energy weapon skills in mallyx/ auto attacks without getting a high profile. Then when cleanses are wasted bring the condi bomb. Which is something like UA, fire field, enchantment and demon form.

Except for sigil swaps and energy/stance management there is no trick or guide.

To the topic starter, the current situation is not OK for ele but people have had their fill of seeing ele dominate for a year. With the removal of celestial and the diamond skin nerf, Elementalist should have gotten a complete overhaul. Afterall, arenanet doesnt want a jack of all trades yet at its core elementalist still is designed as one!

Especially reapers make life miserable, and the match up is incredibly frustrating from a ele’s point of view.

The solution? Reroll to reaper, scrapper, herald or daredevil. Next balance patch the roles might be switched, you will see reapers whining and you can reply like: Run away from tempests.

Mesmer and Ele are trash tier if these are all the changes. Instead of spending time on ele they will just give us cele back.

Compare ele to scrapper/revenant/guardian/reaper/chrono in terms of defense and offense and its easy to see why ele is done.

Played a bit of core thief 3 days ago, almost forgot how good thief is vs necros. I would not worry about reapers to much with thieves getting back.

Locuz.2651:

DutchRiders.2871:

In no competitive sports or play carries are rewarded, the previous gw2 system did reward carries. Guess what innate to pvp is competition.

Youre mixing things up. Im not saying the old system wasnt bad, it clearly was. Im saying there are better ways to fix this issue (like implementing a wow ladder type of mmr system).

The carries we where talking about wherent system related at all.

The ones happening in gw2 were and I am glad they fixed it. A ladder system is something for next season but I can see how I misunderstood.

Locuz.2651:

Gaaroth.2567:

I think people didn’t get the meaning of the fix.
Division counts as 50% of your score in the matchmaking (other 50% is MMR)
While queuing in party your “division” was averaged between the other of the group (that’s why people used to party with ambers, so that in the end they would count as 2 sapphires, o rubies).
No the party average is the highest division in the party (amber+diamond = diamond).
Other stuff hasn’t changed.

In the future tho they’ll give more weight to the division (i guess) and probably make some adjustments in pug vs premade scenario.

I think you dont get that other ppl do get this “fix”.

Id say its a bad thing, since all the non abusive mixed groups are basicly kittened. They will get matched vs far better teams than their average teamdiv/skill.

DutchRiders.2871:

Like you would get matched up with the abjured. Anyways I really like the patch, every match has been a breeze vs other diamonds.

In fact i would. Im at the higher end of the MMR spectrum/leaderboard (was top 7 on my old US alt pre dec 14 patch etc) If i would q with ppl from the PvX guild i was in it would be a disaster. They struggle and get 1v2ed vs random ruby players let alone vs top end players

The game still considers team MMR and honestly teams like the abjured hardly queu up together, they would be in q for 2 hours. So I doubt you would fight the abjured, if it is 1 of the abjured and you are similar MMR the system is working.

Do you think its fair that a skilled player like yourself gets matched up with an average emerald/ruby team cause you queu with amber friends ?

Locuz.2651:

Gaaroth.2567:

I think people didn’t get the meaning of the fix.
Division counts as 50% of your score in the matchmaking (other 50% is MMR)
While queuing in party your “division” was averaged between the other of the group (that’s why people used to party with ambers, so that in the end they would count as 2 sapphires, o rubies).
No the party average is the highest division in the party (amber+diamond = diamond).
Other stuff hasn’t changed.

In the future tho they’ll give more weight to the division (i guess) and probably make some adjustments in pug vs premade scenario.

I think you dont get that other ppl do get this “fix”.

Id say its a bad thing, since all the non abusive mixed groups are basicly kittened. They will get matched vs far better teams than their average teamdiv/skill.

Either they step up, split or go unranked the solution is easy. Lemme ask you this, if you play with a group of friends mainly, how is it possible 4 are Amber and the other is legendary? Clearly you did not play that much with them. As such I would suggest to the legendary to do what he did most of the season, group up with different people or soloq.

Locuz.2651:

Balthalzar.6243:

There isn’t issues with ladder system/mmr because no one cares that people get carried. But the only reason WoW’s system works is because it is incredibly precise in that it waits until you get very close MMR’s. WoW has a higher pop thus they can sustain this type of system. If GW2 had this system you would see too high of queues, and then people would complain about that.

The flaws i see are mainly this. One – it is based around 3v3 and a high population. Two once you have a low population you begin to see the same issues with the WoW mmr system (ie 2.1k facing 1.8k) basically it would be an improvement but most of the same issues would be present just in different forms.

Carries arent system related. Carries and boosts will happen if the reward system excludes some of the more prestigious rewards from 99.50% of the community. There is nothing u can do prefenting abuse like that.

Longer queues are fine as long as the results are quality matches.

By making the system worse just makes the size of the community drop even more. Its super counterproductive and shows a clear lack of long term vision.

In no competitive sports or play carries are rewarded, the previous gw2 system did reward carries. Guess what innate to pvp is competition.

Locuz.2651:

Astralporing.1957:

You think that ambers/sapphires being matched against legend because that legend grouped with 2 ambers (who weren’t real ambers skillwise to begin with…) would result in increase of popularity? Dream on…

Yes since everyone who queues with someone from another div is an abuser right?

This patch stops abuse but makes the game unplayable unless your entire team is the same in terms of skilllevel and div. AND ppl will get crazy number of pips vs mediocre teams since they have 1 good player.

Do you think its fair u get the same number of pips vs the abjured as u get vs a random mixed div guild team with players varrying from legend to amber?

Like you would get matched up with the abjured. Anyways I really like the patch, every match has been a breeze vs other diamonds.

Also division doesnt matter, what matters is the level and quality of your plays, in any competitive league people of similar lv group up. When you group up with low lv friends in a league thats bad for competition and should be punished.

I play both scrapper and condi revenant, from my experience scrapper has a favourable match up both vs power and condi revenants. However not alot of scrappers seem to be experienced at the match up and as a result they tend to lose the 1v1.

Scrapper has to much sustain and CC bombs for revenants to deal with, try to match stealth gyro with their UA ( so it cancels) and go for CC/dmg if they are not on shiro. Always make sure to cover your bomb with poison in case they go for the shield heal.

Good scrappers will counter a revenant. Reapers while dangerous and deadly if you make a mistake, are from my experience not a counter.

Have played most of my league matches on either reaper or mallyx revenant. As a Condi reaper even before the resistance nerf I did not mind 1v1ing a mallyx revenant. The chain cc you can throw on a revenant as a necro is real. Now in teamfights that is were mallyx revenants still are broken.

Wesley.5749:

@aidenwolf This is honestly my circumstance:

• I used to play the game at a competitive level (this is my ESL history)
• I quit the game when HoT came out so that I could focus my attention on getting a job
• I got a job and now I’m back playing the game and my friends and teammates are high tier while I’m low tier.

Please explain to me how I am “gaming the system”? I shouldn’t be allowed to play with my friends and own teammates just because they played leagues like 6 days before me? Are you just complaining because you do not have good friends?

@ Cynz Look, I agree that a 5man vs soloqers is very dumb. I’m a strong advocate for seperating the Qs. We had gone against several 5man teams, but anet’s matchmaking put us against soloqers. Not my fault.

@Power Bottom tell me about it man… Happened again today. Friend DC’d and returns to game, and we all get punished.

If you have played in ESL then you sure don’t need randoms to tell you how playing with 1 emerald and 3 diamonds/1 ruby results in easy matches. So I kinda see how some soloqers in this thread are skeptic about the story you guys are telling. To be honest you guys, even if true of intent have gotten many ez matches and basically free pips, when you lose some pips due to a dc you come here asking pips to be returned. Now personally I don’t doubt that you simply are not as invested in gw2 as your friends when leagues were introduced, and as a result you are lower tier. Alot of groups actually are in this position, I regurarly queue with 1/2 friends and sometimes when guildies hear us having fun and winning a couple of matches in a row they want to participate. As a result we do feel the matches with such guildies are a lot more in our favor.

Needless to say dcing and losing pips needs to be adressed, or is it more accurate to say the way pips are rewarded should be adressed in general. I do however not agree that you guys should get your pips back, at this point all pvpers that have played a considerate amount of matches have been victim to somebody dcing and as a result losing pips.

The only reason people actually fail chak gerent after recent fixes is dps. And with full pug map we got most bosses killed in 2nd burn. How is that a hard dps check ? And mind you scar was 2nd to kill after nuhoch.

The only real advantages of mega guilds in TD is them creating new maps in which every player participaties in the events.

Just wait till most players start being more responsible for the dps they bring. The event is fine.

Yasi.9065:

Druid has most heal and dps boosts. Both tempest and ventari lack:
- grace of lands dps boost
- glyph of empowerment
- spirits dps boost (currently bugged, but hey, maybe anet will fix it this year)

Tempest and ventari ‘might’ be on equal footing as a druid in regards to heals, but neither Tempest nor ventari can offer those unique dps boosts in addition to it.
Tempest has aura share and fury with it, but that’s already filled by revenants. Ventari… I dont even know a single unique dps boost that could be provided by it.

Have had positive experience with both druid and tempest healer. Tempest gives more defense, auras, and practical heals. Druids have limited large aoe healing.

Then again I also had positive experience with blasting waterfields on greens and not using a healer or tank.

Bottemline alot of specs and set ups work just fine, you just need a chill group who puts a little thought in the encounter.

Run Lightning-Earth-Tempest with Dagger focus, plenty of active mitigation and still okish damage, soloed some champs with it fine. Have not had to many problems in the new zone especially when you get familiar with the mechanics, for boss fights I run staff fire/lightning/tempest ( large hit boxes and all). The staff build doesnt work very well when facing large groups of enemies, you get picked out and 1 shotted by snipers for example.

I do agree with some other posters that for the risk eles should get more damage with dagger focus or dagger dagger.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

gavyne.6847:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

/sigh

(Silver platter) here yah go. The whole game unlocked for you. Enjoy.

Would you call having access to a lvl 80 character “the whole game unlocked”? No? Then I wouldn’t consider gaining access to the elite specs that we paid for “the whole game unlocked” either.

The actual game is playing for masteries, raiding, dungeon running, WvWing, PvPing, farming for mats, and map exploration which was always an optional thing not a requirement.

I would rather have access to the elite specs that I paid for, so I can go ahead and enjoy the rest of the game at my own pace, on my own time, when I want to. You know, the Guild Wars way. To the OP, yes today’s news is a buzzkill to many. People who enjoy PvE and map exploration of course are ok with the news. But for the rest of us that prefer other parts of this fine game, it was a buzzkill. It soured my mood 3 days before expansion launch…and here I was hyping and getting excited about it before we were slapped with this info.

Which by the way, the same info players have been asking clarification for weeks and months ago. People already had expectations that they could play their elite specs on day 1. And bang, 3 days before launch we’re slapped with this awful news. Buzzkill indeed. My hype & excitement now is filled with dread. Because frankly, running around unlocking hero points is not what I consider fun. Nor is it having to do it 11 times for my 11 characters.

You get the all core traits unlocked by dinging 80. You get the ELITE traits unlocked by playing the game. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have to play the game to unlock elite traits on all my level 80s.

People who enjoy PvE and map exploration of course are ok with the news. But for the rest of us that prefer other parts of this fine game, it was a buzzkill

It’s unlocked in PvP automatically for HoT owners. You can unlock in WvW just by playing in WvW. So this part of your complaint is not valid.

It is unlocked in pvp for wvw, pve and pvp players alike, the difference however is that elite specializations are not unlocked at all for a pvp player that occasionally wants to run through heart of thorn maps with guildies or battle in wvw with his favourite elite specs. I hope they add a way of getting your hero points through pvp for those players.

Personally I have plenty of characters that occasionally I use in wvw/pve and only have 10% world completion. Barriers to switch game modes are bad game design in my opinion.

Purple Miku.7032:

To be honest, I just play ele a lot less.

Ice bow isn’t worth it in most encounters now honestly, and arcane wave is only chosen because there’s hardly anything else worth taking.

Ele really needs some improvements right now, it’s had too much taken away from it in the past year without being actually given anything good.

Not saying that the nerfs weren’t justified, I’m saying that the fact that D/F and scepter+LH builds in PvE are both completely trash and obsolete and staff’s playstyle is really lousy when conjures aren’t added to the situation. It’s just not very fun in PvE anymore for me, nor does it seem worth playing. :x

I think ele was in a great spot before the june specializations update. It had the most trait diversity, it didn’t deal a broken amount of damage, and required a decent amount of micromanagement (arcane lightning and the lack of burning precision meant you had to care about when using flame burst on staff to make sure you had the 10% damage modifier up before a meteor shower/ice storm).

This is spot on, to much options/playstyle/fun factors of what used to make ele fun have been taken away with nothing in return, all for balancing purposes. Leaving useless skills ( FGS/Most glyphs) and traits behind and overall making ele alot less fun to play.

For content where we do need stuns and if a thief is on my team I will still use frostbow. Otherwise LH/Arcane shield/Arcane Wave/glyph of power

Mweh sometimes you get an unexpected phone call/door/dc. Cant do to much about that except putting the match on hold till a replacement is found. Ultimately I think dishonor is a fine mechanic to target frequent leavers and the replacement road is not very feasible.

The biggest group of afkers/leavers willen do so because the opponent is much better or team mates are in their perspective incapable. This would be solved by better match making, I think leagues will help but in the end every match making system is dependent on a large player base. Promoting pvp and better tutorials for beginners could definitely help but ragers also must understand they are scaring potentional pvpers away.

Well dungeons always have been a convenient way of making gold and a little bit to rewarding but at the same time, does SW ( Chest farm is cheesy) really offer more risk? No it doesn’t, but new content gets preferred over older content and focus has cleary been shifting from dungeons to SW/LS/Fractals/Raids. If they truely want to promote it, nerfing dungeon rewards goes a long way.

If you look at wvw and pvp those do not even come close to the income dungeons offer to speed runners and alot of other activities in PVE also do not generate nearly the amount of gold dungeons do. From this perspective, does it really make sense to have outdated content that is on a dead end, which has received little attention since launch to be more rewarding than fractals/Living story updates/Raids/Open world maps.

I hope this opens up resources for more fractal/raid/map updates, quite frankly the dungeons have failed to deliver in gw2 ( admittedly due to arenanet ), but at the same time fixing dungeons and updating them might be to consuming at this point. Better move on to fractals/raids.

I do not doubt arenanet can fix dungeons and let them fulfill the same role as fractals/raids, but at the same time I think the bad name dungeons in gw2 have and the costs/resources it would take to fix them and bring new dungeons in existence compared to frequently updating fractals/raids, makes the latter more profitable for arenanet.

In essence most players that queue up are looking for fun duels and team fights, once in a while I like throwing players off the map and drop m dead on the floor but more often than not I’m not looking for that type of play. At the end of the day these maps do not belong in a conquest queue where most players are looking for capture the point type of play and 1/2 players who enjoy skyhammer/court yard/spirit watch get paired up with them.

Pre patch me and some guildies already discussed the traditional ele’s position:

- Require stationary targets
- Low sustain
- High burst damage, less sustained damage
- And you kinda need to camp fire with staff

Now future raid mechanics might require more AOE/burst and we might see more use for the DPS ele.

The ridiculous burst currently in meta which kills bosses under 15-8 secs without them doing anything and the ease with which you can pull it off ( stack some might + ice bows) is because of ice bows. Would have preferred a rework since we have once more only useless conjures.

Against a necro you want to burst in when you get your chance and play it safe ( kite/los/stuns/stances/stand in his hitbox) when he’s in death shroud.

Powermancers you need to dodge and get out of wellls.

Several points I read alot about stronghold but did not have any trouble with this weekend were the snowballing effect and the rushing strategy being to effective.

Snowballing:

Won several games where we fell behind with them at our lord and their outer/inner gate still up. Also lost a few where we definitely did feel the snowballing effect.

If the enemy breaks through your inner, and you get a 5 vs 5 and manage to wipe them ( which is quite possible) the split your team uses after that and how quickly you send people away during the fight is crucial. In the defending lane you want 3/4 members to fight enemy players and capture the mist hero while 1/2 others switch between summoning some doorbreakers/archers/mist hero and rejoing the defending lane if needed.

In my experience the deciding factor whether you can turn it around depends on your teams ability to fight a outnumbered fight in the defending lane and the mobility of the players summoning npcs / switching lanes.

Rushing:

Defending is worth it even if they rush, condis eat doorbreakers and if you manage to kill them ( quite possible with condis) they are stuck without supplies and are at a deficit. Haven’t been in one single game where rushing flat out won the match this weekend and rush attempts also happened less frequently.

Fun factors: I really like it when you turn the game around or have a really close match and get that important mist hero, lord stomp or deciding save.

Improvements: I think the mode could use some more incentive to really fight other players and scenarios where commiting to a fight is rewarding. At the end of the day heart of the mists is about pvp and not pve/pvd.

Ithamir.5928:

As the title suggests, I ask to undo the nerf to Mirror Blade. It was never the issue. It was in the game long before the specialization patch and was never complained about.

The real problem was the Confounding Suggestions & Power Lock combo. Especially when done from stealth. (This is NOT what this thread is about. Please do not discuss this matter here)

Therefore, it’s a hard and unneeded nerf to a long standing trait; Illusionary Elasticity. Which we were promised to get as baseline. Basically removing it for one skill only.

Moreover, in order to get the maximum number of bounces to hit your target, you had to literally stand on your enemy. For a mesmer, the most vulnerable profession in my opinion, it’s very risky. High risk for a high reward tactic, like the mesmer should be.

To summarize, the mesmer main role in pvp is to burst. We can’t sustain in fights for a long period of time, we have to be quick and nimble. In order to achieve that, we have to take risks. This nerf hurts all that, without addressing the real issue. All power mesmers are negatively affected by this nerf, those who use mantras and those who do not.

I disagree, any profession is more likely to died in close range combat, mesmer is not unique in this regard. From my perspective mesmers have alot of options to safely get out of harms way after the burst and disengage, hence thieves and mesmers being pretty much the only real viable burst professions.

Mirror blades is what made CS, Powerlock, Blinking in close range and bursting from stealth so strong and frustrating to deal with. Getting outplayed and downed with a shatter is way less irritating.

Also just played a few games on my mesmer, it still hits like a truck. Personally, im more fed up with the mantra mesmer being nerfed :S.

Two main reasons I ’m not hyped, with the second reason being based on expectations:

1 Warhorn skins are simply ugly. In a game where aethestics are quite important this one is huge for me.

2 If it is a traditional off hand and doesn’t incentive bursty pvp builds and more skilled play imma be dissapointed.

Fastest way is to do both, pve for the cheap armor pieces and pvp for the weapons + expensive and armor pieces.

If you want different collections running several dungeons a day in pve is better.

As far as unique skins: fractal skins, the dream skins ( ta), sunless skins and several LS rewards are unique to pve. On top of that you make more gold doing pve.

Well first of all, I do not feel like in general pvp mesmer was completely unviable, maybe at top tier but almost nobody plays at that level.

Second of all, I myself have played mesmer quite alot, im ashamed of playing this profession in pvp and will refrain from doing so until they are nerfed one way or the other. The amount of engage/disengage, teleports/stealth/dmg and stuns are way over the top.

Since stronghold have been using the same build pretty much, I disagree with thieves being bottem tier. Any type of condi damage or focus means death in conquest though.

If I play DA+CS usually I will go for improvisation, I love that trait and the options it opens. Thrill of crime and bountiful for me are no brainers.

I think the breathing room PU gives to a mesmer and time to pick a correct decision feels like a little bit to much, especially if you consider decoy and torch 4 are rather convenient ways of entering stealth. It is a little kitteneap when on a mesmer you can kill somebody and than stealth for half a minute to get away.

Overall whether I play with my own mesmer or whenever I duel another mesmer on my guardian/elementalist/thief I tend to have a lot more fun than pre patch. Just the sheer duration of mesmer stealth feels annoying when you play on lets say an elementalist/warrior.

I’m quite pleased with the mode, however it could use some tweaking. Currently I feel the skrit bombers are just way to effective at taking doors down. After those doors have been destroyed nobody even bothers with supplies and it becomes a boring battle who rushes the enemy lord down first.

^^ From my point of view cele builds exist because thiefs pretty much limit any zerker option :P.

Still think they should do something about thiefs unmatched mobility and buff some other spike builds like Fresh air ele’s. Also I don’t really get why hard counters still exist in game? It’s boring and frustrating, and it’s not like you can avoid fighting your hard counter if it’s a thief in a 5 vs 5 game.

Subdue.5479:

Manasa Devi.7958:

DutchRiders.2871:

My experience and opinions in the guild are quite the opposite, you log in and get the usual rewards just for starting the game up (seriously what extra effort?).

I’m not getting the rewards I consider the usual ones. All I get is more laurels and other stuff I have plenty of.

DutchRiders.2871:

Do not feel like doing a daily? No sweat you already got the general rewards (laurels, mystic coins, experience)

Scraps I don’t need or want.

DutchRiders.2871:

Rewards like pristine fractal relics, rare gear and pvp reward progression are great incentives for the specific activities of the day. These rewards were definitely not attainable through daillies in the old system. Again rewards for no effort compared to the old system.

Not interested, I got plenty of all of that when I played the specific content in the past.

DutchRiders.2871:

The only thing you might struggle with is completing the daily in PVE for AP, which admittedly I really do not care about personally.

And that’s just because you already get what was originally the reward you cared about for them for free when you log on.

DutchRiders.2871:

However doing specific activites will definitely give a better sense of achievement, than for example completing your daily dodger or killing 50 monsters/ambient creatures.

Yes, standing on the roof of a building in the Black Citadel or harvesting some plants in the jungle is so much more fulfilling. Maybe if I were a dog.

“Ugh. Darn you a.net! How dare you give me 10 ap for completing three trivially easy tasks when I was perfectly happy getting 5 ap for completing those other five trivially easy tasks!?”

Also, really it’s enough with the sarcastic dog references. Daily dodger, reviver and all the other generic dailies were no different than the vista viewer.

As a player who enjoys pvp, pve and wvw I simply think the current rewards when completing daillies are more sensible. You will finish a reward track or that shiny fractal back piece faster if completing the corresponding content when it’s a daily option. I assume not every player has sufficient amounts of rares, pristine fractal relics or ecto’s. Furthermore log in rewards are now back loaded instead of the awkward monthly system that was in place which is another reasonable change.

You can still play however you want if you do not limit yourself. The only difference is you won’t get your AP , if you really want the AP you can choose to get it though. I get my 10 AP under the current system more easy and often then under the previous system, differences in playstyle.

The tasks and rewards need some more refinement, the system is fine though.

Banrigh.5932:

For someone that plays absolutely NO WvW or PvP, the new dailies were a great disappointment. There are only three choices per day that can be done in PvE.

I also dislike the fact that you HAVE to do all of the ones (regardless if it’s PvE, PvP, or WvW, or a mix of the three) for any of them to get ANY points. I have only been able to get dailies done ONCE since the change because of this. I can’t stay up all night. I have to be up at 5am to get ready for work, therefore I go to bed at 10pm. That’s just not enough time, unless I log on as soon as I walk in the door when I get home, which just can’t happen. I have pets to care for, dinner to make and eat, and other things that occupy some of my evening time.

@Lishtenbird had some good ideas for improvement. I really agree with his idea of them being more generic…. like gathering ANYTHING in one area. I can do with that, but having it as one specific item (plant/ore/logs) in one specific area makes it a pain in the butt.

Vista Viewer = LAME!!! As someone who maps the entire area as I get to them, this makes it so that I’m doing something I’ve already done….. multiple times.

Exotic Crafter = what if a player hasn’t gotten to that level in any of the crafting professions yet?? That means it’s one less achievement that they can even attempt to do.

Mystic Forger = again, lame. I had to put in some weapons I had saved in storage for a low level toon so that I could complete the dailies the ONE TIME I’ve actually finished them.

Daily Fractal = I don’t do Fractals. I do PvE only. I don’t consider Fractals to be PvE – they’re dungeons. Totally separate thing imo. AND you have to have a group, not something you can do alone.

Event Completer = events in a specific area is somewhat difficult as you have to be in a specific spot to see any regular (non-meta) events that are nearby. You can’t just look at a map and find an area that has an event happening.

World Bosses = doable, as long as you have a group. My squishy light toons can’t kill Champion or higher bosses alone.

PLEASE rethink these changes…. everyone I have talked to about it is EXTREMELY disappointed and upset and even kittened off about these changes. They aren’t really workable.

My experience and opinions in the guild are quite the opposite, you log in and get the usual rewards just for starting the game up (seriously what extra effort?). Do not feel like doing a daily? No sweat you already got the general rewards (laurels, mystic coins, experience)

Rewards like pristine fractal relics, rare gear and pvp reward progression are great incentives for the specific activities of the day. These rewards were definitely not attainable through daillies in the old system. Again rewards for no effort compared to the old system.

The only thing you might struggle with is completing the daily in PVE for AP, which admittedly I really do not care about personally. However doing specific activites will definitely give a better sense of achievement, than for example completing your daily dodger or killing 50 monsters/ambient creatures.

I like the new daily system, dailies feel like an accomplishment somewhat and remain accisseble.

You log in, get your rewards and start doing whatever you like ( more freedom ). You don’t need to do dailies unless you are an achievement hunter, people really liked daily dodger and condition applier? The PvP daily rewards are especially welcome. You now get rewards for the content you play, makes sense. Hitting world bosses ? Here you get a free rare item.

How can daily gatherer and condition applied actually be fun? I really don’t get some people.

While I do feel you cannot simply release LS next week, I’m quite dissapointed with the current schedule. Especially if you consider last 2 episodes were pretty much build ups for the finale, some people were looking forward to the next weeks episode. Overall I had hoped Arenanet would be less ambigious about what they are currently working on, and issue the release dates of LS more timely.

If there is a schedule, why not release it in advance? Also consider the fact that this break happens to be just after 2 build episodes and a mid season break as well? The last 2 episodes took only about 1 hour each? From a story point it makes no sense.

To recap: -Unexpected break,
-vague comments about releases after the delayed episode
-Previous 2 episodes were very short in playtime
-Especially seeds of truth had filler/stalling type mechanics: couldnt skip cutscenes on replay, more RNG with the organs ( especially the bladders ….). We have been doing the exact same foothold and breach events without any changes to spice it up since silverwastes was introduced in order to get the lumiscent set.

Overall is it really that surprising some players are not content with the pacing of LS?

1 Update the reward system, challenging content and innovative play should be rewarded, boring easy gameplay (trains/zergs) should not yield more value then lv 49 fractals.

2 Focus on different types of content both easy and more difficult, open world/dungeons/fractals/pvp modes/raids.

While I like LS 2 better than LS 1 as a story, dry top and SW ain’t cutting it for replay value nor are the rewards. However I highly doubt developers etc didn’t know this already. New content is probably in conflict with the current business model, and I don’t blame a company for wanting to make a profit.

The dulfy website + the gw2 wiki have quite some gearing information. Most relevant:

Step 1: choose the prefix / stats you want, in general for pve berzerker/soldier/knights. These also work in WVW but you will have to mix the stats to suit your playing style. If you want the popular celestial stats for wvw roaming, start with full celestial trinkets (Ascended) and mix them with for example soldier weapons + armor.

Step 2: Get the currencies you need, use the wiki to check where you can get the desired stat combo’s. If you go with berzerkers or soldiers you can spend your wvw badges + a small amount of gold to aqcuire exotic gear ( make sure you buy the level 80 stuff). Otherwise hit alot of dungeons in pve to make both gold + tokens or gain tokens/gear through pvp reward tracks.

Trinkets: It’s relatively easy to obtain ascended trinkets: Use laurels for the amulet, guild recommendations for the earrings, and pristine fractal relics for ascended rings. If you really want trinkets right away buy the best you can afford from the trading post. Only the ascended back piece is a little bit more work so buy the best you can afford.

IMPORTANT: Do not buy identical ascended rings or ear rings, ascended gear is unique, meaning you cannot equip two identical pieces at the same time. Let’s say you would like to equip 2 berzerker rings, get one with a offensive infusion slot and one with a defensive infusion slots, so you can equip both.

For runes/sigils, it depends on your funds and build, since you do not seem to have a whole lot of gold nor experience with different builds do not go for the expensive ones. ( the popular strenght runes cost 10 gold per piece).

Optional: If you don’t like the looks get a nice looking skin + transmutation charges which you can buy with gems or obtain through pvp + map completion.

I really don’t see the problem, the main rewards from chests are silk, t6, shards , ascended materials and cores. The amount of gold generated is minimal. From that perspective active farmers and players not participating all will benefit. Only people playing the TP might lose some value, that is a big question though.

Achievement hunting is always more efficient when the content is fresh and people are actively looking for the achievements. The first day people left forts to grind AP , I did not notice one post worrying how the map should be played. In case of silver wastes its even more of a non issue you can defend a fortress and kill the champ with 5 players. Personally I got silver and gold , copper husk , and the troll on a shovel farm map. Go with 5 friends,guildies or interested players problem solved.

Older content does not get played , again it’s natural , everybody wants to play new content. Finally if you want to enjoy the meta events join the organized maps.

So let’s say we nerf rewards, players will go to the next best alternatives. Meaning daily dungeons , boring world bosses and upscaling orrian events. Prices will go up , the zone will be desolated in a week and the mordrem champions will still give bad rewards.

Obviously with next episodes rewards and content will expand, I think the meta event will and should play a bigger role from that point onwards. Additionally it’s no coincident chests drop so many cores, silk and tier 6.

I will agree rewards are usually not balanced though and is a repetitive and structural problem of the game though.

D/d is a strong class for both team fights and 1vs1 on point in conquest mode. It offers offensive power, mobility, and sustain but lacks the burst of a true spiker, the mobility of a thief and the tankiness of certain bunkers. It is not very difficult to play but still offers alot of variety ( which I enjoy). In contrast Ele spiker builds however are very difficult to play, and require a very good team, if you can get a Ele to spike though, he will wreck the enemy team .

Engineers also have alot of options and by simply picking another utility skill ( different kit or elixer) they open up a whole set of solutions. Once you get the muscle memory down for the different set ups they are stronger for a beginner though.

My first main character also was an elementalist, in pvp I also play a shatter mesmer and engineer.

Engineers can tweak their utility skills and change their effectiveness and playstyle tremendously. They simply have a larger pool of options compared to an elementalist, in the end dagger dagger skills no matter what trait/utility/gear set up will remain the same. However if I decide to pick an elixer gun over the toolkit my options will change ALOT.

The typical spike guard will build might during the fight through blocks and crits, their heal (blocks every attack while active), aegis (1) and focus (3) skills can block. Do not waste skills on the heal, since it is easy might for the guardian. Most will run sigil of rage, the quickness on crit will turn them in unavoidable killing machines, so be prepared to pop a defensive utility. Since they lack stability and can be kited pretty easily while at the same time having very low health, wait for your oppertunity and seize it.

Every greatsword attack is easily telegraphed, unless you get stunned/immobilized or caught of guard, in which case you should pop a defensive skill, remove the shield before it explodes, and dodge the follow up / get some distance. From that point apply pressure till the guard runs out of defensive skills and finish him off. It can take quite some time with all the blocks/healing and the occasional renewed focus.

Watch out for the retaliation buff and do not expect to finish of a guardian with utilities off cooldown anytime soon.