Guild Wars 2

gebrechen.5643:

Wait, isn’t TC in Tier 1 to fight BG? All this transfering to TC happened just for this cause and now they hide?

TC lost as many people that joined, if not more. A lot of what was our core groups jumped to dragonbrand before the relink to attempt to stop the stacking to tier 1 non sense from happening. Now we have a shortages of people and no coverage other than EU/NA. I have noticed this week a lot of people are not on because they are either bored of the matchup and are not playing or left to other servers.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Treating others the way you would like to be treated is key. It’s not about honor or a sub set of personal values, it’s about making the game mode fun for everyone so you can all have those epic fights where you pat each other on the backs and say “good game!” If you’re always spawn camping, roaming in large gank groups that emote and pester solos or acting like hungry wolves trying to crack open a tower filled with a zerg half the size of yours it just becomes unfun for both sides. You can only farm easy bags for so long before it becomes boring and it gets lame a lot faster for the ones being farmed.

I like how clear and concise this is worded. I agree 1000%

Not here to talk trash or start anything, just wanted to say my perspective is very different from yours as a TC player.

In my eyes blackgate is a problem. The server is way too fat. Call it ogranzied, or what ever you want the fact of the matter is the constant omni or double blob that is twice our size is boring to fight. You blob so we have to blob, and we almost never have numbers to be even remotely close and if we do come close a second group comes out from around the corner. From there our only options are to respawn and hide being siege, or aimless feed you guys bags, and to be honest neither are enjoyable. Personally I prefer to roam small scale and keep your blobs guessing where our people actually are but that is just me.

In my eyes Blackgate is frankly a ktrain that runs on sheer constant numbers. It’s well known that no other server has as much coverage or players on it. Yes you guys are organized, but to be frank you outnumber us for 18 hours of the day every day. There is no way were coming close in that kind of match up. With th current structure of wvw blackgate needs to go a very large diet.

I do agree with the OP tho fights are what make wvw fun. However, this non sense about running away, you make it out that blackgate almost never runs, I see it all the time, there is lots of people that run to other groups, into towers, or siege and can’t fight unless they outnumber their opponents on black gate( I see it all the time roaming). I will reiterate again blackgate is not the only server that has players guilty of doing this; were totally guilty of it too. YB again isnt the only server that hides behind siege either. I’ve seen us all hide behind it and yes I agree with you at times it makes wvw slow paced and boring. The fact of the matter people don’t like being farmed as someone elses bag, that isnt new news and when they are they quit because its not enjoyable.

And that is exactly what a match up with black is; not enjoyable.

EremiteAngel.9765:

T1 is the place to be.
Most of the skilled fighters are in Blackgate.
If you want to roam with skilled fighters, join Blackgate.
If you want to fight against skilled fighters, join Tarnished Coast.

oh my world of kek.

To me this read:

Tier 1 is a joke.
Most of the cowards are in blobgate.
If you only want to fight outnumbered fights, join blobgate
If you want to fight against cowards and omni blobs, join the toast.

Trash talk aside… (sorry couldn’t help it) Roaming is pretty close to dead. The only good roams I’ve had lately are running off hours in bl’s. You’ve got people yelling at roamers for not blobing up, blobs chasing small groups to the end of the world, then the whole trailblazer/dire perplex cheese running around, oh and ghost thief, that’s my favorite fight.

I’ve run a front line thief, it is a challenge because we are entirely reliant on other classes for stability and resistance. At best you can become a front line that sets up picks for the rest of your group and disrupts large groups of people with blinds/weakness. All and all without support from other classes you can’t stay in the heat of the battle, your in, your out, which lends its self better to meta builds.

I ran a staff frontline build a while ago, that was centered around making picks with hook strike, disrupting people with cc/blinds/weakness, and crowd surfing via dodges & vault. It was pretty effective, and neted lots of loot. But ultimately it was useless for anything other than zerg play as it lacked burst to kill most classes.

I think S/D is fine. It’s costs are a little bit high but it’s a sustained and tactical weapon set. It’s our only weapon set that has condi clear, on top of good mobility, cc, and boon steal. It does lack burst, with the amount of control we have, we have really no issues getting our sustained dps out.

Comparing D/P and S/D I agree with another persons sediment here, d/p is an overloaded weapon set. It has stealth, movement, interupts, blinds, and good damage. The main offender for me is shadow shot. It does way to much for its initiative cost. It blinds, it teleports you to them, it’s unblockable, and it has a unusually high damage coefficient. Our similar skill is a 2 part 6 initiative cost for an unblockable, some evade frames and some boon steal. I think if they toned shadow shot down a little bit in the damage department or matched the initiative cost, both weapon sets would be pretty equal by filling the same role by playing an entirely different styles of combat.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

What has pvp and wvw meta to do with the topic of this thread? Nothing i guess …

Tragic Positive.9356:

And even at maths that ignores time used for dodge rolls and everything that would decrease your damage in real time combat – our DPS was bad. Without a doubt.
I wouldn’t dare people to bring you the numbers, because there are still people who do have them and they are not something you want to see at this moment.

Power ranger’s sustained dps is indeed not very high, i know. But is it really so much worse than most other classes (there is not only ele)? By much worse i mean about half of the dmg, like some here are claiming.

And then there is the condi build, which is imo quite decent (solo) dps wise. Better than ele? No. Better than some other classes? Maybe. I don’t know. But i would like to know. Because i’m a curious person and interested in this topic, even if it is not relevant for actual gameplay.

As tragic said we have burst. But very low sustained dps even in a selfish build. A lot of it has to do how weak our autoattacks (1 skill) are compared to other classes. There is also the issue of some of our damage modifiers are single strike only or gimicky. Additionally a lot of our skills are just weaker versions of other classes skills on lower cool downs. EG Skills like Warriors Rush compared to our swoop are almost comical in the damage differences yet the functionality is very similar and overall creates a low net dps.

The issue is we partially need to be in this state because of druids support. What we need is a dps elite spec, so that we can make the choice between dps and support. Right now, doing large increases on base ranger is also net buffs for druid, which could cause problems across all game modes. Not saying we don’t need buffs, but dps wise we cannot be in-line with the amount of support we provide.

@OP totally agree with you how uninspiring power rev is to play with sword. I really like to use staff, as its more reaction based play. 1-2k dps diff isnt too huge.

Also have you given condi rev a try? It’s not the most optimal as its ramp up time is extremely long, but does pump out good numbers(got up to 19k dps last time I ran a raid with mine) if you can get past the 25 second ramp up time. I personally enjoy how bouncy mace is on an asura. It’s rotation is a lot more involved too.

Burtnik.5218:

This game will always nerf something to joke state and buff something to op state. If you think they let war stay the way he is now then good luck. It will be nerfed eventually, when is up to devs.

I wouldn’t say balance changes are what has ruined the class. More or less bugs and lack of tools that haven’t been there since day one.

Here’s the thing, Raids are not hard. They are time consuming to learn the mechanics, but honestly, in some capacity, bosses like vg are easier than some the dungeons. We don’t need easier raids. We need people to open their eyes and realize what’s stoping them is they’re own mindset.

A lot of people that say they can’t raid talk them selves out of it. They make them out to be this big scary gear requirement(they aren’t), then it’s the time requirement, then it’s patients for other people and finally it’s those elitist kittens!… Please I’ve heard/seen it all. It’s a poor mindset and a inability to be open minded/flexible that stops most players from raiding.

As for being asccessible to casuals…. raids are casual, if you find other people that have that same mindset/time schedule. Personally I’ve never spent more than 3 hours on a raid in one sitting. Raids honestly are no different than how dungeons used to be for forming.

The guild I am in does pick up raid runs tuseday & thursday, with a training run on sat. The runs are whoever is on that wants to raid an hour after reset. It doesnt get any more casual than that(there is no core group either). If anyone is interested in learning runs or have experience and looking for a casual group on NA; send me an in game mail and I’ll send you an invite.

@OP Yes & No. Squads allow people to organize and structure group play. They are fine that way, the issue is the mindless drones that just jump into wvw and mindlessly follow a tag. Which has been there way before squads.

To some of the people going on that ktrains/omni blobs are good for wvw:

WvW is about fighting players for objectives. Large group fighting is intended and bound to happen. Which is the essence of wvw.

What a lot of people seem to confuse is large blobs/fights with ktrains. Ktrains have almost nothing to with wvw or pvp for that matter. They are about playing PVE/PVD/PVW as efficiently as possible. How can you even suggest that that is healthy or the essence of wvw.

Ktrains imho will be the death of wvw. Why?

• Because they force anet to balance the loot across the board of wvw, generally making it not rewarding in all other aspects.
• Ktrains pretty much don’t fight, they just passively go from objective to objective and only fight if forced to or have a clear number advantage.
• When a Ktrain dies it looses all it’s steam. Many players just up and leave because their free meal ticket is over.
• They are uninteresting to fight, there is no skill involved from both sides just mass amounts of spam. I cannot for the life of me ever remember a time I was in a pug blob and said, wow I/we got outplayed.
• They are oppressive. There is little you can do when outnumbered and the only two counters everyone complains about ( bunker down with siege, & counter train).
• When people decide its time to counter blob, it takes everyone out of things that are actual skilled/cordinated play, this such as scouting, roaming/havok, and supply management all go out the window because ktrain!

All the above that ktrains do, in wvw make it binary & one dimensional. Which is uninteresting and makes people quit. It hurts the rest of the game mode in so many ways. People know this, and it’s why EoTM is considered a joke of wvw because it’s all it is.

Swagger.1459:

Was it established before the vote that they were going to take the average of votes? No they did not.

Listen, nobody is stupid here. Either clearly establish the rules to the vote or don’t host a vote. You can’t be ambiguous and you can’t change the outcome unless it’s clearly stated that will happen.

Last vote was 70%, 5% shy of goal, but you didn’t see Anet change the rules on that one considering it was so close…

Waste of time voting process.

This type of stuff makes Anet look bad in the eyes of players. Anet can’t afford to burn the majority of voters on these polls.

It’s not an election it’s a poll. At the end of the day the poll is just feedback that anet can do whatever they want with; it’s not a mandate. To them it read, a lot of people find 1 month 2 soon, while large group find it fine. They compromised and found something in the middle.

Anyways I voted for 1 month, but figured this would happen. In all honesty 4week rotation is a bit quick, and I wished 6 weeks would have been an option over 2months. I think we would have had less vote split. Regardless I am happy with every 2 months. It’s a step in the right direction.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Now that’s a lot to be read here.

I personally think focusing on Pet Sharing boons, buffs, traits, auras and effects from it’s master should become priority.
Pets should simply have all the boons and buffs we have. At all times and at every moment. If we enter stealth – so should our pet (they are more of a harm than help currently). And since it was declared to deal a certain % of our damage – they should. It’s our source of damage. Just like mesmers’ illusions scale, so should our pets.
Once this is implemented – WHaO can just go and have it’s function completely changed. With this change – all counter-productive traits and unfriendly design will disappear, too. We wouldn’t need Pet UI this way since we’d know which effects our pets have from looking at our own.

We need our pets to scale with everything we do since 30% of our existence (dmg, utility) is rooted into them.

This a million times over.

this thread though….

I’ll be another person to lay down the gauntlet, both with core ranger and druid.

I think the sole reason you do well against rangers is because you play and understand the class a lot. You know what the mistakes and animations look like so you can capitalize on them. It frankly has nothing to do with how weak or strong the class is, you simply understand what to do against them.

Ranger isn’t the best class at any particular role or fighting style, but they are well rounded. Arguably more rounded than any other class other than engineer. Ranger in general has a low skill floor but a high skill cap. So yea you’ll see tones of bad people that pick up and play the class, and rarely you’ll see a good player. That does not mean that a class is bad.

Little bit late to the party… but I must say there are some really good ideas in here.

I really like the MDG trait change idea, I would actually consider picking up skirmishing in pvp/wvw build. It’s exactly what this trait needs. The retal bit might be a bit too much.

Steady focus, I am fine with the buffs for pets. I think it would be better if the modifier scaled with our endurance (5% per bar).

Refined toxins is fine. It’s more of a situational trait in burst builds.

In regard to zeypher’s speed. I use this a lot too, and I agree it feels out of place. I’ve always kinda wondered why there is not a cd reduction trait for pets that has some active play. What do you think about about on f2 use the ranger gets its current quickness and the pet gets 3 seconds of alacrity?

I know a lot of people are asking why even have this poll? I think it’s a good thing we having this poll because in many ways there are conflicting interests and the poll shows just that.

Some of us want easy ktrain farming, big blobs, big fights, big loot, easy wins every week. In order to do this you need to stack a server, and that’s exactly what happens with the top tier 1 servers. 3+ months favors this.

Some of us want fair matchups, prevention of server stacking and to see new faces instead of the same servers. Which monthly or sooner favors.

Personally I think that once a month is a great way to not totally alienate communities while at the same time prevent the serverstack/transfer to win mentality. I mean it will totally still be there but it will cost those people a 500gem transfer a month it will detour that mentality. If implemented the better skilled servers would climb especially when the scoring changes come.

I’d run something similar to what puck suggested. More of a costly build though.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQRAsf3YjEqQDL2yCmsAVLW4EM4W6Mtn6M4GAHumhVlKAUy0aA-ThiAQBeUZAP2fAAnAA2oEcDHBAxo0ze6C8nWBHq+DHeIAECYxaA-e

Serith.3712:

I have no problem with locking individual high population servers. But locking ALL servers above T5 is IMO a serious problem, it’s penalizing servers for doing well at wvw by cutting off their flow of recruits regardless of the situation each individual server is in. Anet is IMO cannibilizing the entire community of healthy wvw servers to feed a bunch of servers that died.

Eh that’s your perspective and thats fine. What I can see right now is anet trying to split up the population without having to forcibly scramble the entire community. Doing so would probably be suicide because it would destroy all the communities.

If you want to join into tier 1-4 currently you have to join one of the guest servers, and over time this will split the populations up eventually making the same stacking issue we had before, but in turn when we swap them around in the future it should balance the servers out each quarter. It’s a good idea. I do agree with on the lack of identity gives little incentive to improve. Naturally though those servers should improve by playing with better players and will increase do to people moving to them to play their desired tier.

Now as for the whole “my tier 1 server is dying we have no new recruits” tidbit I am fine with this for three reasons.

1. Most of the tier 1-2 servers are overpopulated. Some of the higher servers are literally obese with players and needs to go on a diet. Not for the sake of them losing, but for the sake of interesting match ups in the future. Locking out forces the servers into a diet and yes they will shed players.
2. The locketout also prevents guilds that are well rooted into a server from being bought out/jumping ship. When a well established guild up’s and moves, the community that’s left behind is always the one the suffer. Sometimes things like this destroy a server, or stack another server.
3. Lastly the whole server stack non sense is prevented. Severs do not have to worry about a group leaving and then following geyser of players leaving as well, or vice versa, you get a guild or two and then suddenly prime time is unplayable because of endless flow of new unwelcome guests.

These three things are some of the root causes of causing people to leave for good. I do not know of a single person that has quit because they couldn’t directly transfer to tier 1-4. In contrast I know many people that have solely because others have.

I watched half the video, mostly on x2 speed.

• I noticed a of what looked to be second guessing. You need to become more decisive in your choices. Going half in is often what gets you killed, vs going all out.
• Lots of walking around. Use that shortbow.
• To much emphasis on entering stealth and making nothing of it. If your going stealth you’d better be 1) disengaging or 2)engaging with backstab.
• Didn’t spot a single steal combo.
• Black powder is decent damage mitigation when people get in your grill.
• You basically never use your elite because your always saving it… Its an interrupt and a knock up in a fight which is often more than enough to get a down on a focused target. Another option is bassi venom.

briggah.7910:

tried t1. it was the closest thing to EoTM with unskilled blobs of players putting faces in doors and running from every fight that they didn’t outnumber the others 3 to 1.

I spy someone who transfered to blobgate at one point.

Teon.5168:

I know that a lot of Kaineng people love a lot of the action…..at the same time, many of us are just sick to death of the BG mega-blob. I see more of us running around in smaller TC & Kaineng led groups, creating havoc as best we can, engaging smaller groups and zergs, and avoiding the BG mega-blob as best we can. Score doesn’t really matter, so might as well try to not let BG have free bags. As long as it is fun, we’re out there…and most of the time, engaging the BG mega-blob is not fun. The only time it is fun is when we have the numbers to annoy and hassle the heck out of the mega-blob for awhile.

No, I totally get ya. I love the small scaling roaming, the fights, and kittening off the omni blob just as much as you do it’s why I still do go into wvw.

The issue is scoring does matter to me and, losing matches week to week, day to day just because another server has more numbers around the clock instead of playing better.

Your free to vote however you want, but you don’t have any place telling people what to think about maps.

Desert Borderlands is a failure in it’s current state and that’s ok. Look at all the HoT content that was pretty un-enjoyable. Anet took some time and refined them and now they are all pretty enjoyable. I don’t see why they can’t go over it as well.

Edit LOL this thread merges completely destroy the threads. None of this makes sense anymore.

Heimlich.3065:

Teon.5168:

gennyt.3428:

Teon.5168:

gennyt.3428:

Hesacon.8735:

I’ve come to the conclusion that the majority of desert haters are a very very vocal minority of the overall population. The majority of the overall population will play whatever they’re given.

I’m going to have to call bullkitten. The DBLs were largely empty even in T1 unlike the ABL that have queues almost every night now. The “majority” of the overall population crammed themselves into EBG or quit when the DBLs were the only other option. My guild roster and friendslist reflected that too. Anet having your mentality is exactly the reason why WvWvW got to such a sorry state in the first place. Players can and will vote with their feet when they’re not having fun.

Interesting. I’m on a server paired with TC(Tier 1), and the bls rarely have queues. Maybe one of the bls has one every once in awhile, usually pretty small. EB has more queues, just like when we had dbls……but even EB doesn’t have much in the way of a queue, except for reset night.

So I am not sure where you’re getting your “the abls have queues almost every night” stuff. But, maybe you’re on EU, or BG(NA)…..I wouldn’t know what it is like there.

I have a theory on why TC isn’t showing up. The current scoreboard has to be discouraging, especially with what TC is used to in T2. Which is a shame as I do get better fights out TC than I do YB.

I don’t know. Probably plays some part in it. My server hasn’t been paired with TC for long enough to really know what does or doesn’t discourage the average TC player.

It’s hard to get excited to lose a match that was decided the instant it was created. Blobs and server-stacking uber alles.

^ this, as someone on TC it feels like a lost cause. BG always has more people coming out of the wood works at every hour of the day. It does not matter where you go from aside eb; you will alway have the outnumbered buff. The only time we aren’t back capping/outnumbered is our prime time.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

What’s next?

• We’ll poll the community to see if at least 75% of them would like to see the Desert Borderlands permanent removed. This won’t be next weeks poll, but likely the week after that.
• If players vote to remove DBL, then the results of this poll will be void (as we’ll only have one borderlands map.) Otherwise, we’ll move forwards with the results of this poll.

When you go to make this poll, please put an option for keeping the desert borderlands but with a community driven revamp where we the players can bring forward the issues we have with the map, and the vote on changes to come.

I think thematically, visually the desert borderland map is amazing. I also like the various choke points for fights. In contrast things like the layout/scale, elevation and strategical value of objectives are problematic. It’s also very slow to get around.

I would hate to see the map scrapped for good.

Well the skill floor just dropped again in wvw. Pretty soon all you’ll ever need is to have more numbers pressing 1.

Oh wait.

Sadly people cheat. I see this all the time on TC, and it isn’t always black gate that comes storming on up either. I’ve seen it also happen to other servers as well.

I wish they would put in report section for “gaming the wvw system” and that is exactly what this is. I honestly think these people won’t learn unless they are given a good timeout from wvw.

What needs to be done is if an account is found guilty; all accounts tied to offenders: IP address, MAC address and the router’s MAC address need to be locked out of wvw for x amount of time, that increases exponentially based on the number of offenses. That way the main account is punished, as well as all the other “smurf accounts” and any new accounts they attempt to make. If they did that people would either stop or remove them selves from wvw.

DeceiverX.8361:

Soldier’s gear in SA/Tr/DD (a friend of mine did this with fair success while learning thief).
S/D + Staff Brawler:

Friend here.

Build was actually this for the record.

However it was mainly an experiment to see if I could make front line thief viable while learning the class.

If your looking to run sword /x + staff, id suggest something along the lines of this

Sword in general is a very defensive weapon and it does not do much damage, its better for extended fights if you dont waste your initiative. That said dagger OH works really well atm with the amt of boons going around.

Fluffball.8307:

I think people make way too much of the projectile reflection. Just don’t shoot into it. Several pro league druids use LB. It’s very similar to saying don’t run melee weapons on any profession because DHs exist. Anyone with a brain does one of the two above.

Yup, a lot of people that I see play longbow based builds continue to fire into stuff like scrapper shield, or earth aura and melt them selves because they don’t cancel the channel or use that lovely option that allows you to switch targets mid channel.

Shadelang.3012:

Notice a pattern? In ALL THREE GAME MODES our only “viable” builds involves our roll as support. Supporting others damage because we can’t deal damage ourselves. Supporting others survival because we can’t survive ourselves. Supporting our pets and focusing on surviving because we can’t reliably build towards just killing the kitten.

Obviously this is from my own experience. And ill admit the last month has been more frustrating than many in attempting to adapt by playstyle to the metas of all 3 game modes. But I thought id put for the issues as I saw them.

I too share the exact same experience. Our offensive options are either binary or easily counter able. When we have burst, we have no sustain, or when we have tones of sustain and no burst. There is no middle ground because damage per second is laugh able in any set up.

I’ve said this before ranger deprived compared to other classes; we have many of the same tools as other classes, just weaker versions of things on shorter cooldowns. Which does not allow us to stand out anywhere and it makes the class really frustrating to play as because it does not excel at anything.

Druid just pigeon holed the whole “were a support class” mindset.

Starbreaker.6507:

Has anyone found success running something off-meta so far this season?

From time to time when I see a really tanky group on my side, I will run glass druid and +1 with it. I have had lots of success with it. However, I wouldn’t recommend it with how prevalent projectile denial currently is and how extremely unforgiving it is. If you make a mistake when running maruader/zerk I can guaranteed your re spawning in the near future.

Starbreaker.6507:

It may very well be either the build I put together or the way I was playing it.

I’m not a master in either, but I do love theory-crafting and coming up with things.

For reference, this was the initial build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQRAnf8YnEqAVsitsAOsAUtgFDBDOrGWTrMBg1VDo5dFsaBlMtzA-TpRAQB1Y/hJWGIDPAAAcCAAxBB4DHBAA

Should we continue the discussion in this thread, or should I make another?

I don’t want to feel like I’m stepping on someone’s toes and hijacking their thread

No issues, I started the thread to bring about these kinds of discussions. I’ll add your build to the list as well.

Personally, I kinda found sages to be a really nice balance between damage and survivability my self. It really does well in extended fights. However, I do agree with you though; I’ve found builds with sages to br really lacking in burst. Which is needed in so many match ups currently as the amount of sustain in the current meta is kinda unreal.

Fluffball.8307:

Generosity sigils, my favorite.

aye, added had totally forgotten about sigils.

Part 2: Rune & Sigil Options:

Here is a quick overview of runes & Sigils that provide some counterplay to condition damage:

Rune of Trooper: Clear one condition when using a shout, Vitality & toughness mix.

Rune of Leadership: Converts 2 conditions to boons on elite use, All stats & boon duration

Rune of Lyssa: Converts 5 conditions to boons on elite use. Gives protection and retaliation on heal skill use. Precision and condition duration stats.

Rune of Hoelbrak: Reduces the duration on conditions on you, might duration & power main stat.

Rune of Antitoxin: Not in pvp. See rune of the Sunless

Rune of the Sunless: Reduces the duration of conditions on you. Fear opponets on elite skill and apply poison. Condition main stat.

Rune of Melandru: Reduces the duration of conditions & stuns. Toughness, vitality mix

Basically, Leadership and Trooper are the two main contenders for runes. They provide good stats, excellent sustain and good condi clear. Hoelbrak and sunless are better for damage oriented builds. Melandru and Lyssa are your bunker down options.

Sigil of Generosity : 60% on critical to transfer conditions to your opponent.

Sigil of Purity: 60% on hit to remove a condition on hit.

Sigil of Cleansing: on weapon swap remove a condition.

Again quick thoughts here, obviously Generosity is the best sigil here. It takes the pressure off of you and applies it to them, where as the other two just remove a condition.

Part 3: Example builds

Disclaimer: I do not claim that these build are better than others, or the most viable(meta), just examples of the above knowledge. I will also add builds that others suggest here.

Power:

Condition:

Tank:

I don’t want this to be a non constructive thread about how OP condi are. Instead I’d like to post a few way’s I’ve been dealing with condi’s and the mass amount of them going around. I wanted to post this and see if there is anything missing as well as add other peoples builds and thoughts. If this goes well I hope to do this in other class sections, then eventually make what will basically be a giant guide for every class on the pvp section on how to stand up to conditions.

So what options do we have as a ranger/druid against conditions?:

Shouts, trooper runes & resounding timber:

This is a great combo. It makes all your shout skills sustain you and condi clear on top of their base function. Skills like protect me become really overloaded, being a condi clear, sunbreak, cc & regen. The issue with this it’s only one condi clear per skill and can lead you into the trap of wasting skills or getting overloaded with minor conditions and not being able to cleanse the ones you need to. This is one of the better options, because it allows you build up astral force really fast, as well as build up might, and provide a lot of support for your team.

Survival skills, wilderness knowledge, & oakheart salve:

Wilderness knowledge is one of the most effective yet selfish routes for condi clear allowing for 2 clears per cast. The set of skills also has two stunbreaks both of which are very good skills, on reasonable cooldowns. Oakheart salve is nothing huge, or a reason to pick up the wilderness survival line, but it does provide damage reduction while under regen, and it does apply regen while under the effects of many conditions making the reduction pretty much always on you.

Glyphs, druidic clarity, & verdant etching:

Drudic clarity is basically a get out of jail free card it allows you to reset your condi bar, and now being in avatar allows you to basically reset the fight. Verdant etching provides seeds of life on glyph use, allowing for high impactful low cooldown skills that can clear condi for team mates.

Unique Special Mentions:

Healing Spring: A good heal, allows for some double trap play if you can get it down ahead of time. It provides condi clear on pulse for the whole team, a total of 5 per person if you can stay on it, as well as regen for the group on top of the heal. The issue with this skill at the moment is it get’s overlapped by many large condition fields or marks.

Signet of Renewal: Condi clear per 10 second and a sacrifice pet button via giving your pet all your allies conditions. Its pretty useful, just have to be mindful of the long cool down. Also doubles as a stunbreak. Works well with tankier pets, as they can sometimes survive.

Brown Bear: Ok we all know the jokes about bear bow, but seriously, bear is a great candidate for a pet slot. It brings brings shake it off, defy pain and some regen.

Signet of the Wild: While this does not directly clear condi, it does allow for two very attractive things: 1) gives you constant regen which will build up astral force, allowing you to use druidic clarity more often.2) It does also give a nice damage boost and some stability. Just be careful using it before or during celestial avatar form as it will kick you out of it. It also has a really long cool down.

Evasive Purity: A trait that removes poison, cripple and blind on dodge.

Smoke Scale: this could be wrong, as I need to go and test it, but the skills text flavor says it makes the pet immune to conditions while in the smoke field. If this is true there is almost never a reason to not slot this pet with signet of renewal.

Here are some keystone skills that you should be looking to add to your build, as they provide condi clear and other useful functions:

*Heal Spring
*Lighting Reflexes
*Quickining Zepyher
*Glyph of Equality
*Protect Me

If there is anything I have missed or is not in the post below please post it!

Adding my own two cents… I experimented tank thief for a while, mainly as a front liner.

Thief kinda struggles with the whole tank concept because it lacks stability and even if you perma dodge, you still have windows at the start and end of dodges where you can be locked down and rendered useless. Anyone worth their salt knows what to do vs a dodge spaming dagger dagger thief. I found that staff was a much better tool for tank thief, as it allowed you to sustain via blinds and weakness, have two skills that dodge, as well as make picks with hook strike.

I ended up running this.

The whole idea of the build is to either knock them down repeatedly from stealth with hook strike and burst them with vault/weakening charge or dash in between people while putting up blinds and weakness. It was very effective but struggles in the burst department at times.

odstninja.1468:

Does condi even have any real counters? Besides druid.

Even druid doesnt really work anymore. You can only cleanse so many bursts of condi before your out of tools. Even more so now that our condi clear on seeds was halfed.

As to all the people going on " you just slot condi clear it’s not that hard" I play druid with solider runes and seeds, which is one of the class builds that people go on about being anti condi, and I constantly get overloaded with and eventually overwhelmed. I couldn’t imagine playing thief or warrior with the few tools they have to deal with condi.

The issue right now is there is just simply too much condi application all around in aoe format and in large stacks, Teams are running pure condi damage nothing else, and when your in those kinds of matchups there is nothing you can do but blow your clears, and get melted anyways.

All the classes need some access to some resistance, we need a reduction on application for aoe skills, and to be frank we need toughness and protections reductions normalized to affect conditions. Then I think conditions could be healthy.

What’s the deal with insane degen on the guild team leaderboards? 4 days ago our ranked team lobster pod(nice corpse guild) secured the number one place at the top with 1413 points.

Unfortunately, some schedules didn’t align the last few days, and when we logged in this morning we had dropped over 200 points and almost 300 rank. We totally expected to not be first, or even in the top 10… but to drop that much on the leaderboard in such a small time frame is a little nuts.

On top of that were only getting about 10 points on a win and 3 on a loss now ? wtf?

No no and maybe.

The only idea I really like is having 3 different maps on rotation for the bl’s. As for the whole lets make wvw great again by merging everything… No it will cause more problems that your solution fixes and does not eliminate any of the current problems. We don’t need pve trains for wvw or large mega servers, we have that its called EoTM and it has just as many problems if not more than core wvw.

Leaa.2943:

I really don’t care what you think you know about what i read and did not read. It is rather silly that you are trying to tell me [what I think]… I gave a very valid answer to the topic.

This should be the prefilled response to almost every one of swaggers response posts. In general he can’t accept criticism and fails to see other peoples perspective he gets caught up in how great his ideas are. Despite his short sightedness he is very good at nailing the head on whats wrong on an issue.

@Swagger I don’t mean to hate on you or start some kitten. I only posted the above paragraph solely because I see you spin your wheels against people that already have their minds made up. Just accept peoples comments and move on.

In reference of the world linking poll:

I voted yes, but there are still many problems.

To start, the population bubble is just repeating. The same server stacking is happening just on two servers instead of one. Right now there is people simply moving onto Eredon Terrace to get on to black gate. Making an already over covered server have even more population.
This only creates:
a) longer frustrating ques for the people native to both servers.
b) frustrating match ups for for the other servers.
Either the linkings need to rotate, higher populated servers be completely unlinked, or we need a forceful population rebalanced. I also think that a seasonal transfer lock to prevent stacking would be more beneficial to the community as well.

Second, a large problem of the linking is that it forced smaller roaming focused communities into blob focused servers. The two don’t really mix and basically every time this happens the roaming community quits. I think that linking up three smaller servers together would have been better in the long run for the community, as it destroyed a lot of those kinds guilds and groups.

Lastly, in regards to population, something needs to be done about omniblobing. I know you guys tried to do this with desert borderlands by making objectives far apart, and harder to take, but it didn’t work. It just made it harder for smaller groups to defend, react and scout.

Id suggest a bonus, for not having more than 20 people near you, but that would cause players to be resentful towards each other and would create a barrier for players trying to get into wvw. Maybe something along the lines of traps that do delayed damage based on the # of targets that walked over it. either way there needs to be something to give players reason to split up.

Yes and no.

As others have stated, you will use other skills for things like breakbars, or closing the gap. However, you will auto attack a lot. Bound dodge auto attack & fist flurry is the safest rotation atm. It does put out good dps.

If you want to put out higher numbers the rotation becomes a bit more complex, adding in two weakening charges into your attack rotation between dodges is an increase in damage. However, a lot of the time it’s hard to do because you also have to react to mechanics in the fight and it requires a lot of positioning knowledge to do this.

Here is an example of the advanced rotation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiw27PHvl5Y.

Well the seed changes are what ever. I guess people will have to rely on other classes to clear conditions. Were fine for our selves but that is about it.

Lunar impact is going to have some interesting implications for raids. Pvp wise I can see why it was changed.

The pet changes I ave mixed feelings for:

Smokescale changes are what ever. The pet will get used soley because of two factors: It’s the only reliable pet that can actually hit things, and its the only pet with a smoke field. So I am fine with the reductions.

The bristleback nerfs are knee jerkish. The pet took a lot of setup to get the high numbers out and it was always extremely telegraphed what was about to go down.We lost a lot with these changes: the ability to stack might fast to cap, our only reliable ranged pressure via pet, our only real burst coming from a pet source.

Druid got nerfed a lot and got nothing in return and base ranger still needs a lot of help.

We already have this discussion going on in another thread, but ok. @OP

First, I just want to say, defining your self as casual, hardcore, semi casual, etc has absolutely no bearings on skill. I know some pretty hardcore people that play many hours a day, and they absolutely suck at the game. In contrast I know quiet a few people that play casually maybe 1 or two hours a day that are on the much higher end of the spectrum.

Anyways, HoT isn’t hard. It’s built to be social and in many aspects it’s events are geared away from zerging. Take Verdant Brink for example. In order for the map to get tier 4 at night, the map has to split up into small groups and hold camps. A zerg would fail horribly at doing this. The other maps follow similar patterns. Dragon stand is an exception to this and yes in some cases like auric basin we have found ways to zerg the content because we have adapted and gotten used to it. Most of HoT problems are social problems, not communicating or being able to find people.

Third, Most of the mob encounters in HoT require a different approach. Sometimes you need cc for breakbars, sometimes you need aoes for pocket raptors, sometimes you need just cold hard single target dps, and sometimes you need to not stand on that red line. That makes them really hard for people that do not adapt. Which is why a lot of people say L2P.

Lastly, most peoples complaints about hot being too hard is that hero points aren’t soloable. Most of them are. There is a few champion mobs that aren’t, which frankly how many champions have you ever soloed in core tyria? There is more than enough hero points that are soloable (I know I’ve done one of every elite specs). My response to this complaint is go look up info and find out which ones are soloable and are not. It might take you 20 mins to do so but save you hours of frustration.

All and all HoT isn’t hard at all, and if you think it is than I hate to be that guy, but you need to learn to adapt and play the game arena net have made for you.

LetoII.3782:

LordEnki.9283:

You can thank the Anet leak of server matches for this cluster kitten. BG, used the info to get stacked for free. Now Anet has moved on and considers the issue fixed.

So did TC.

There was a lot of TC guilds that left to DB, Mainly to try and stop TC from becoming tier 1. Backwards logic. Don’t ask me to explain it. We may have gained a few groups but we lost a lot of our regular guilds to DB.

Even with what we gained, TC still lacks coverage off peak. Every day we come back to a devastated home bl, and a few towers/camps in eb. When I head off at the end night its the very opposite.

As for all the skill and blob talk in here. It’s all subjective. I’ve seen black gate going on that they are winning out manned fights when its 35 black gate group vs 15 or so TC and I’ve seen it the other way around too. So I don’t believe either side.

We are all tier one. We all blob, we all run havok, we all put up siege and hide behind it. We all have good and bad players. We all have a pile of players that act like they are twelve years old. So get over your selves.

Coverage wins WvW. Not blobs, not 4 arrow carts per person, not disruptive or skilled havok. Until they change the current setup, the server with the most consistent coverage wins the match up.

Nice video. Thought I would bump as I think I ran into you earlier today in tc bl. Was pretty bad duel on my part you kinda gave me the ole what are you doing /shrug after killing me.

Lol I saw this title and thought this was a kitten post directed at black gate(seriously all they do is run until the numbers are in their favor). Pleasantly surprised. As other have said make people work for bags. Sometimes you get out sometimes you don’t.

I have no problem with conditions dealing damage.
Warrior, revenant, thief, guard, rangerm and engie are all fine condi.

I do have an issue with the meta mesmer and that invulnerability while they pump out the conditions. Then we have perplex runes. Which need to go. Nothing says interesting game play like runes that punish you for even attempting to kill them. I don’t even bother with mesmers anymore in wvw just because 9/10 of them are running this crap.

Oh and make resistance a little more accessible.

Flumek.9043:

• 33k dps that isnt affected by alacrity to me isnt as terrible. Especially as the starting phases are easy – what matters is to quickly kill it at end when its chaotic. But same argument can be made for thief&ele and chaotic means more interrupts on gravediggers :

• A necro in “executioner mode” is dealing less dps than a thief autoatacking. Or ele 3 button overloading.
  Yes they are squishier, but our GS and dagger autos have fallen a bit behind, since Anet buffed thief to deal with brokenant.

Thoughts?
Edit: its rare for me but this a PVE post.

I think power nerco is fine pve wise, its a great solo class and its perfectly fine to bring in a raid. There is usually 1-2 slots in a raid group that are often filled by thief, rev, d/wh ele, etc for just extra dps and are not core pillars of the group. This is where power necro fits in, it’s a very competitive and low in demand spot.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

OK so far when I said un-nerf true shot dmg, the responses are “RE-roll another class” or “dh dmg is fine were it is, and it needed to be nerfed” this in light of the fact that dh is currently the least viable class to play in Spvp. So no buff necessary apparently and or go play completely different class.

GG guys GG

Going on about how you want 20% more damage on a single skill wont fix the lack of mobility guard has or any of its other problems. Even if it were to get the buff your asking for it would still be crap tier and have a very binary fight pattern. It needs work in many areas to be brought up to snuff.

A bunch of us said we’d be fine with un nerf if they did something about barriers. Most people are happy with where dragonhunter is right now solely because of how abusive and unfun it is to play against.

imho dragonhunter cannot have that damage back until they do something with barriers. Other people have articulated why pretty much every classes struggle with barriers much better than I can.

I have absolutely no problem with true shot hitting like a truck and to be frank it still does. I do have problem with the way dragons maw and hunters ward interact with skills like true shot. Until they change barriers so they don’t lock you down give you no means of counter play to do anything while the guard attacks, guardian should not be allowed to have spikes of damage period.

5 Runes of evasion and a sigil of stamina is really fun with opening strikes.

Condition Rev is some what viable for fractals, and raids. It is inferior to power revenant as power rev brings everything that condi can while being higher dps and more reliable.

What hold back condi rev the most in my honest opinion is four things:

We are plagued with bugs that hamper us. Both mace 2 and axe 5 which are bread and butter skill fizz if there is a slight variation in the ground between you and the target.

We have very few options that apply conditions. 3 sources of burning, 5 sources of torment, 1 source of confusion, 2 sources of poison. All low stacks. That includes traits.

Torment requires the target to be moving to get good damage out of it, which is rare, and when that happens we can struggle to stay on top of targets to get dps out of our mace 2.

We are required to be point blank in melee at all times which isn’t doable sometimes.

Ashantara.8731:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Where-are-the-Monks/

Please discuss there, thank you.

Get lost seriously. Your posting a thread to push a thread. That’s spam and its against the rules here.

As for the rest of the discussion here…

Many people have said this, but I will reiterate: druid does not just open up healing. Druid brought tones of things to ranger such as blinds, sustain, immobilize, interrupts/control and buffs.

We got everything but high sustained damage… boo hoo. Were one of the most well rounded and useful classes in the game. If a group does not want to bring you then you obviously don’t want to run with them as they don’t have a clue.

yea its also an issue without quickness though. Quickness just accents how problematic it is.