Guild Wars 2

Johje Holan.4607:

I watched just a few of the match videos but all the one’s I watched were blow out scores. I presume it was a blowout in favor of the side who killed the lord but couldn’t really tell. I’m not even sure how you score points actually.

The match is won when a team reaches 500 points or whoever has the most points after 15 minutes. Killing the lord awards 500 points, so it’s an instant win.

Points are awarded for other activities related to NPCs and for killing enemy players.

zinkz.7045:

That is simply not true, for example I used to play certain engy builds that were lets say a bit ‘borderline’, simply because I enjoyed them, however in their efforts to nerf condi engy they did things like move incendiary powder to master, which weakened my ‘borderline’ build to the point it was no longer even ‘borderline’.

Incendiary Powder is ridiculously overpowered. It’s way too good at any trait level. If your build wasn’t good without it, you should probably refine your build more.

With the brain-dead NPC AI from the demo videos last week, it shouldn’t be hard to just focus down the lord.

Zelulose.8695:

A power creep leads to a more detailed game with more stats more skills and more flashy combat. Anet should be buffing more than they are nerfing.

No. Power creep leads to shallow games which get to a point where everyone can do everything and people die in seconds.

I don’t have much experience with matchmaking in the middle of MMR. It might not be so bad, since average queue time is about 2 minutes. Near the top end of ratings, it gets pretty bad. Getting a match in under 7 minutes is abnormal. When we do get a match, it’s a blowout half the time or only a challenge because of an awful teammate. Quite a few times, I’ve waited 7 minutes to get the same matchup.

I wouldn’t mind waiting to get a good match. But waiting to get not so good matches is frustrating.

CMF.5461:

This is seen and utilized in WvW but never utilized in sPVP.

Cause it sucks…..Why does it suck?

Staff doesn’t suck. It’s actually pretty good.

The problem is that support guardian builds just don’t work in sPvP right now.

Are you accounting for the fact that you can have Symbol of Wrath and Binding Blades (don’t use the pull) ticking at the same time as GS#2 and GS#1? I’m pretty sure those go into the PvE DPS rotation.

Saiyan.1704:

To reiterate what Tao is saying, certain aspects of the game may seem “op” or “inbalanced” for a reason. It’s part of the game’s PvP design. See this video.
http://qqmore.net/video-guide-why-is-guild-wars-2-unbalanced/

Here’s a better version, though not GW2 specific: Extra Credits: Perfect Imbalance

The QQmore.net video does a poor job of applying what Extra Credits taught. Namely, if one build or strategy is the best in all situations, and it’s still the best after players are given time to look for alternatives, then it’s probably overpowered and needs toned down. That’s what we’re seeing with cele d/d ele and cele rfile engi.

If we had a “perfect imbalance” situation, then you would see a variety of different builds and team compositions at the highest levels of play. You wouldn’t see one set of builds in practically every team.

Won’t happen. Weapon Swap key is used to drop bundles (e.g. Fiery Greatsword) and Revenants will most likely be able to swap legends while holding a bundle.

Chaith.8256:

Burning Speed evade frames and Frozen Burst blast didn’t affect much..

The introduction of Celestial Stats, and the nerf revert to Cleansing Water, that pretty much launched Ele from garbo tier to SS Tier. It had sweet little to do with Burning Speed or Frozen Burst changes.

Don’t forget the roll back on the 50% nerf to Signet of Restoration.

Supreme.3164:

Those same traits received no buff whatsoever with the patch. Now they’re suddenly considered OP? HOW?

When the whole package isn’t strong, aspects of it which may be too strong are overlooked.

I would agree 100% with you, if teams would stack zerker/soldier/valk/cleric D/D with the same trait set up and would obtain the same results in every single instance …

See my post about the amulet system problem. Celestial is the closest to a proper stat balance for a hybrid. If there was something else which had a proper stat balance (e.g. not 900 toughness and no vitality), you’d see it too. But there isn’t.

Solo queue was just luck of the draw on which team go fewer clueless teammates. I don’t see how that was any better than the current system.

Supreme.3164:

Nerf what exactly? A staff celestial uses exactly the same trait set up of a D/D, still nobody complaints about it, why?

Not exactly. They use the same or similar point allocation, but their trait selections are different in a couple key areas:

• The 2 in earth are used for Earth’s Embrace compared with Elemental Shielding. So less protection up-time. Sometimes these two points are in Air instead.
• Blasting Staff is used in place of Renewing Stamina. That forces Sigil of Energy in place of Sigil of Battle or Doom. Sigil of Energy gives roughly the same number of dodges that Renewing Stamina would provide (Vigor is an extra 5% endurance per second and you need 50% for one dodge). But as a result, staff has less damage or anti-sustain in a fight.

Some other comparisons:

• Both have an evade: Burning Speed (0.75sec duration on 15sec CD) and Burning Retreat (1sec duration on 20sec CD)
• Staff has a 6sec CD blast finisher on earth, though it doesn’t do the finisher immediately so it has to be timed well. D/D has a 15sec CD blast finisher in water and a 45sec blast finisher on earth and another on a 30sec CD with a long cast time. Both have a blast finisher from Evasive Arcana in earth. So staff will probably have a bit less might through the course of a fight.
• Staff has more healing on water attunement skills, but it requires staying in the area to get the full benefit.
• D/D has more chill
• D/D has arguably more Burning application.
• D/D has a cripple in earth and its immobilize is much better than staff’s.
• Staff doesn’t have a very good #1 for single-target damage in any attunment. Lightning Whip has decent damage output.
• CC looks roughly the same when you look at all the abilities. Shocking Aura, Updraft, Earthquake for D/D and Gust, Static Field, and Unsteady Ground for Staff.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Show me one top ele that spams Armor of Earth and Shocking Aura off cooldown.

So you’re not going to use it at some point during a fight that lasts at least a minute? The assumption was that all these abilities are off cooldown at the start. So that means you only have to wait through one cooldown cycle of Shocking Aura (25 seconds) . That’s perfectly reasonable.

Chaith.8256:

You’d have a more accurate picture if you didn’t count Elemental Shielding as five seconds base when it’s three seconds

Fixed in original.

Swim.6830:

I keep seeing the same kitten quoted by people “5 seconds of Aoe protection in 10 seconds cooldown” and similar. Uh NO it is NOT. No one attunes just for the boon and then attunes back right away (that’s the only case where it would be remotely close to 10s). Attunements are not kits and are a class profession. It’s like me complaining about ranger pets being too stonkk kitten kitten.

This does bring up a good point: What is a d/d ele’s protection up-time?

First, What’s a reasonable time between Earth attunement swaps? I think 15sec – 20sec is a good estimate.

If we look at at 60 second window (hopefully a battle will be decided by then), we have the following sources for self-protection:

• 6 sec from Armor of Earth
• 6 sec from Shocking Aura x2
• 3 sec from Frost Aura
• 15 sec from Elemental Attunement (Earth) x3
• +30% boon duration from 6 points in Arcane

Add it up and the d/d ele gets 39 seconds of Protection on himself in that 60 second window – 65% uptime. Group is only affected by Elemental Attunement, so that’s 19.5 seconds – 32.5% uptime.

Edit: Fixed duration on Elemental Shield to 3sec.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

The discussion seems to be hitting on a big point here:

Bunkers are not used much anymore.

I fear if I answered your questions directly, the big picture would be clouded. Instead, I’ll address the overall point.

What happened to old-school bunkers?
In a nutshell, players got better. Dedicating a person to each of two points is simple, but not optimal. If you pay attention to where your enemies are, you can leave a point undefended and assist your team. If your team sits a player on an uncontested node, but your opponents don’t, they have an extra person in the team fight and will likely win. And without the threat of a decap, a team can freely do this. Backpack’s Rotations Video explains this in more detail.

So why not just move the bunkers around the map?
The old bunker specs are ineffective offensively. They can’t kill anything or de-cap anything in a 1v1, so the opponent will still get points from a node being assaulted by a bunker by just sitting a player on the point with the bunker. In a 2v2 between bunker+DPS and DPS+(DPS or “bruiser”), the DPS with the bunker will be rendered ineffective. At best, the match-up stalemates.

Why did cele builds replace bunkers?
Like the traditional bunkers, cele d/d ele and cele warrior can sustain for a long time in a 1v1. They also have group support for team fights. The key difference is that these cele builds can put out decent damage. It’s enough to force opponents off nodes in a 1v1, especially against a DPS, and in a 2v2 fight, they can assist a full DPS and make the match-up pretty even.

It’s important to note that the full bunkers were already in decline when cele d/d rose to dominance; the rise of cele d/d ele just accelerated their demise.

Can we overhaul the old bunkers?
If the main problem was being too tanky, can’t the old bunkers just drop some defense and pick up offense? Especially guardian with it’s powerful group utility? Why don’t they just slap on celestial amulet and go?

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Guardians with celestial amulets don’t hit hard enough. The same is true for other bunker builds. I personally blame the amulet system.

The amulet problem
Currently, with the exception of celestial, the amulet system only allows extreme damage, or incredibly tanky with a poor stat allocation and too little damage. Further, professions have different base HP values, and the low HP professions (elementalist, guardian, thief) need vitality to be somewhat tanky, which eliminates most of the amulet choices.

So it’s no surprise that celestial amulet is popular for d/d ele, cele rifle engi, and shoutbow warrior. Celestial provides a good amount of defense spread among the three defensive stats, but not too much in each or total. The offense is weak because the power value is low. But if you can supplement with power from a trait line (engineer) or might (d/d ele and warrior), it’s not that weak anymore.

If you can’t supplement the low power or take good advantage of at least 6 or the 7 stats on celestial, it doesn’t work. Guardian can’t stack might reliably and its power trait line is awful for PvP. Additionally it’s benefit from healing power is crippled in PvP due to the 50% penalty on Selfless Daring (heal on dodge). Non-shout warrior builds just don’t get enough benefit from healing power, so their sustain suffers, and they already have high HP.

Fix the PvP stat system
The amulet system is smothering builds and professions. Low base HP professions suffer without additional vitality. Low armor professions are “exploded” without a little extra toughness. But no one needs 900 toughness or vitality. Even 600 is a bit much. But they need some of each. Similarly, power damage without precision and ferocity is crippled. But without defenses, you’re too easy to kill.

Split the amulet stats into multiple items. I suggest a 50/25/25% split (amulet and two rings). This allows DPS builds to pick up some toughness while still having vitality, precision, and ferocity. It allows for builds which can’t use full celestial for a semi-bunker to mix and match to get something more effective.

Initially, I think a LIFO system for condition removal and boon removal would be nice.

Though if there was some documentation on the priority of each skill, it would at least eliminate confusion.

Multiple suggestions have been made such as grouping by armor class (scholar, adventurer, soldier) instead of individual professions.

Very predictable “big ticket” items should be avoided. If it’s a guaranteed reward and not a complete waste of time, you can guarantee that players will zealously farm it until the market is saturated.

Gabriell.4856:

Slick Shoes isn’t OP because of the multiple CC, it is OP because of multiple CC plus a short CD stun breaker.

I can see it being both. Engineer is generally weak against CC, so a low cooldown stun break is powerful. And it can be combined with overcharged shot to lessen the negative impact of the skill.

Simon.3794:

and about Overcharge shot, no, it will never be predictable, it has no cast time, it will always be pure RNG, you think it’s predictable, only because the engis you’ve meet use it at the same situation every time or they are simply bad and try to use it the moment you get close.

I’ve avoided it against good engineers too.

Overcharged shot is only 400 range. Engineer is pretty bad at sustained melee, so if the engineer starts to move close to you, especially with rifle out, they’re mostly likely going for Overcharged Shot or Blunderbuss. Maybe Pry Bar or Slick Shoes. You want to avoid any of those skills.

Further, if they sit in their self-CC, you’re not that bad off. If they break the self-CC, they likely don’t have any other stun breakers, so you can CC them back once you recover. And if they use their stun break, it’s a good idea to also use yours.

Edit: I’d like to add that Ranger’s Point Blank Shot is a 0.5 second cast time and is still hard to avoid. At 900(1200) range. So that kinda shoots down the wind-up idea for Overcharged Shot unless you want to completely re-work the skill.

Mrbig.8019:

Basically EVERY SINGLE ELE ASPECT IS OP.

Okay, so which ones should be toned down and which should be left alone? That’s the predicament. We have a pretty good idea where d/d ele is at – but not where it belongs in terms of strengths and weaknesses.

Once you figure out where d/d cele ele should fit, you can better identify which skills need tweaked.

How will stability on transformations, such as Lich, Plague, and Tornado work? Do they just get an absurd amount of stacks?

The Gates Assassin.9827:

When it comes to agreement, engineer has a few skills that everyone pretty much unanimously thinks is OP (Overcharged Shot, Slick Shoes, Gear Block). Even warrior, players can mostly agree that war banner is a very strong skill.

Be careful with the forums. People will say something is OP because it’s the most noticeable ability when they died; not because it’s how they died or what’s too strong.

• Incendiary Powder is too strong because you can’t avoid being hit by it and because it’s difficult to remove with lots of cover conditions. The trait should be completely reworked, but for now, a duration reduction would help a lot
• Slick Shoes is too strong and frustrates players because it’s too easy to knock them down multiple times. However, I would argue that Slick Shoes should retain the ability to knock down twice, but only with good planning.
• Overcharged Shot should be left alone for now. It has no tell for its use, but you can reasonably predict it and it self-CC’s. Unless the engineer uses a stun break, of which they have few, they aren’t going to be able to unleash a ton of damage onto you. You have to anticipate it coming and use blocks, blinds, stability, stun breaks, etc appropriately. It’s not like the old Pin Down (warrior longbow #5) with a 0.25sec cast time and 3sec immob. Fix the first two things before you change this. Overcharged shot doubles as an interrupt and defense against glass cannon melee and adding a cast time breaks that.

1. What skills can both sides of this argument agree on are too strong and COULD be shaved for elementalist? I highly doubt a massive nerf to celestial elementalists is going to happen, so what can we agree is OP or lacks counterplay for elementalist?

There’s no consensus because there’s no agreement about what d/d ele’s strenths and weaknesses should be. Is its sustain too strong and damage okay? Or is the damage too strong, but sustain good? Is the group utility right or is it too much? Should it be weaker in 1v1, team fights, or both? All of the above? I haven’t seen a consistent answer about where d/d celestial ele should fit.

BlackBeard.2873:

So…if we took Doom away (or weakened it), who really gets affected?

Only considering the meta and top builds, in 1v1, cele d/d ele and shoutbow warriors (or similar) are hurt most. This is a good thing.

However, when you consider team fights, things get convoluted. For example, let’s take a 2v2 fight with each side having a cele d/d ele and a DPS which was originally a 1v1 between the eles for a short time. What happens if the d/d eles aren’t poisoning each other beforehand or during the fight? Does it make each more powerful since they have higher sustain and used less cooldowns before it turned into a 2v2 fight? Does it make them weaker because now they’re doing less damage if they chose to focus the opposing DPS? And at the same time, the allied d/d ele may be giving more healing output to his or her DPS.

I think I’d go with the d/d ele being weaker and the DPS being more important – especially with what utilities they bring. If one DPS brings poison and the other doesn’t, the side which has poison will have an advantage in a drawn-out fight. It makes choices of who goes where more important. And I think the trade-off of the d/d ele picking up a bit more sustain in a mirror match at the cost of some damage and offensive utility is good.

Saiyan.1704:

Are we blowing Doom’s power a little out of proportion here? What makes Doom an “enormously powerful condition”?

-33% healing effectiveness. The damage is a bonus. It’s also somtimes a cover condition for burning (cleanse order isn’t consistent between abilities).

Note
The Abjured: Both Ele’s(Doom), Necro(2xEnergy), Engi(Doom).
Only 1 Doom equipped for each class. That’s approximately 6s of poison every 20s.
Air/fire would do almost twice the amount of damage than doom, assuming doom doesn’t get cleansed. They’re obviously using it to offset healing with the -33% debuff.
If there’s any type of nerf talk about doom, it’s about the healing debuff.

Try that again. Elementalists and Engineers proc sigils on attunement swap and kit swap, respectively, so they can activate Sigil of Doom every 9 seconds (though in reality it’s probably a little higher since you’re not swapping on CD every time).

Lopez.7369:

Sigil of Doom would be viable no matter the meta. It’s just an absurd sigil. It gives various classes an enormously powerful condition that they’re not supposed to have in the first place. It’s no surprise that throws off balance.

Completely agree. However, it’s stuck in a giant web of balance and it’s hard to pull it out without doing a major overhaul of everything.

Honestly, damage from conditions needs re-evaluated in general:

• Is it a primary damage source and stat like power? If so, the types of conditions, especially ones with secondary effects, and their durations need to be tightly controlled within professions and builds. Putting them on sigils and runes in anything more than small amounts should be taboo.
• Or is it a supplement to power damage like precision and ferocity? In this case, condition damage needs reigned in significantly and scaling of skills re-evaluated. However, adding more powerful conditions as rune and sigil effects doesn’t have as big of an impact.

RTL+Updraft is fine as-is. Unless the elementalist +1’s the fight, you can easily see it coming and side-step, dodge, or stability for it. Updraft also self-CC’s for the 1 second evade, so it’s not like the elementalist gets to beat on you for the full duration of Updraft’s launch.

Saiyan.1704:

This game isn’t Esports because the PvP system is a simple byproduct of their beautiful PvE world.

I wouldn’t say it’s a byproduct. They were both originally intended to be important. WvW as well. PvP needs less attention than PvE, but it still didn’t get enough.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. For Ele, What specific skills do you feel are OP?
2. For Engineer, What specific skills do you feel are OP?

Elementalist
I don’t play elementalist much, so I can only list things which seem too strong at a glance. But since the last balance patch with the nerfs to might, they don’t seem overly strong. I would only expect some small tweaks.

• Renewing Stamina: This trait gives 5sec of Vigor on a 5sec ICD. Most other professions’ vigor on crit trait was increased to a 10sec ICD.
• Blast Finishers: These give elementalists a lot of might and d/d has access to a lot of them. Maybe cut one out or tweak cooldowns?
• Signet of Restoration: Passive healing is hard to counter. A tiny shave of the healing per cast amount could add up over time.

Engineer
One big change would really bring engineer in-line.

• Incendiary Powder x100: This is the most frustrating skill to go up against. The effect application has zero counter-play (cooldown isn’t wasted if you whiff the attack) and with the large variety of conditions a condi or cele rifle engineer puts out, it’s very hard to remove. Any build 30 into explosives ups the duration to 5 seconds, which is over 2000 damage on a cele build. At the very least reduce it to 3 seconds (from 4) so that the trait line won’t add an extra second without investment in condition duration runes/sigils. 1200 damage every ~10 seconds is a lot more reasonable for something with little counter-play. Also suggest limiting the proc to rifle and pistol critical hits so that it’s harder to bury in a pile of conditions from grenades.
• Slick Shoes: I would cut the skill duration to 2 seconds (from 3) and leave the oil slick duration alone. It’s hard to tell by testing in-game, but it seems that you can’t be knocked down from the same oil slick multiple times; you’re knocked down my the successive oil slicks which engis circle strafe around you. Limiting how many slicks they put down would emphasize skillful use while still preserving the utility’s function as a make-shift line of warding.
• Transmute: Just extremely frustrating when a key blind, fear, or immobilize is converted. Suggest limiting it to only damaging conditions.
• Gear Shield: Main issue is the Power Wrench trait reducing the cooldown to 16 seconds. Could probably live with 25 seconds base (from 20) though.
• Overcharged Shot: I wouldn’t change this ability just yet. Yes, it’s hard to avoid, but it’s kept in check by the self-CC. It’s rather unique in that regard. Engineers tend to have limited stun breaks and stability, so poor use of Overcharged Shot punishes the engineer.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

From reading this thread, I’m getting that:

1. Doom is in a fair place. It’s the meta that makes it strong.
2. Fire and Air are too strong, but some think that some builds need it to stay viable (S/D Thief)
   1. Is this really true? It’s easy to test this. Someone who plays S/D thief, try running with some other sigil besides fire/air or air/blood.
3. Energy is in a decent place when on classes that need it, but a bit much on builds that take it for crazy amounts of defense.

Any disagreement here?

1. Don’t Agree. What I see is that Sigil of Doom is one of the stronger sigils, but there’s concern that reducing its power it may make the current meta worse. I think it warrants more investigation and play-testing. Its presence is part of a bigger problem with the condition system – adding more condition types greatly magnifies the power of builds which utilize conditions for damage, including celestial builds.
2. Air + Fire needs to go. If it makes some builds uncompetitive, then fix those builds in a better way. Strong procs with no counter-play are not fun. I would try to change Sigil of Fire to a different effect which emphasizes its area damage aspect and then tone down Air’s damage a little. Maybe reduce Air’s damage more and add a vulnerability stack or two.
3. Partially disagree on Sigil of Energy. You have to look at on-dodge effects from professions as well as well as Vigor up-time. Elementalist doesn’t use Energy because it already has high vigor up-time. Mesmer takes Energy for survival and because it gives them access to another clone. Bunker guardian used two because of the heal on dodge. IMO, the biggest problem with Energy is that you can dodge instantly after the weapon swap, which gives longer windows where you avoid a lot of damage.

Chaith.8256:

Doom is most effective against Eles/Wars/Engineers who have stacked multiple sources of sustain (traits, regen, highly effective healing abilities).

Shaving Doom […] would probably only solidify the status quo more.

But the most prominent users of Sigil of Doom are those same high sustain builds; not the alternate builds, most of which are DPS builds, or other sustain builds outside the meta.

If Sigil of Doom was so crucial to keeping celestial builds in check, wouldn’t we see it being used more by lots of players?

The Gates Assassin.9827:

1. Do you guys prefer this meta to past metas?

Yes and no.

The bunker-heavy meta wasn’t fun at all. But it was mostly because people were still learning how to play. Right before the patch with the addition of Dhuumfire and the PAX tournament, a few teams were figuring out that 4 DPS with good rotations and scouting could beat the mid-bunker+side-bunker meta of the time. But then we entered the dark ages of PvP and it took another year for players to move back to that strategy.

When all three points are always in play, it creates a lot of excitement and adds a new level of strategy. Spectators can follow the flow the game at the map level and aren’t thoroughly confused when the only thing to watch is particle effects.

What I don’t like about the current celestial bruiser meta is that it’s two pillars – cele d/d ele and cele rifle engi – are still a little too strong. They have direct damage pressure, condi pressure, sustain, decent mobility, and CC, allowing them to excel at 1v1 and be extremely useful in group fights. It makes builds which excel at in one scenario or aspect but not optimal in another obsolete.

TLDR: Current conquest playstyle is good, but needs more variety and trade-off between build choices.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

I’m watching this thread to give feedback to the development team. What exactly about it do you think is OP? What don’t you like about it?

The things which frustrate me most are:

1. Abilities with little to no counter-play: Incendiary Powder, Air and Fire sigil, Nightmare Rune fear, etc. If the effect of each wasn’t so strong, the inability to prevent it wouldn’t be so bad.
2. Master-of-all-Trades Builds: Builds which can do everything the best or well enough that the optimal choice, which has weaknesses, isn’t far enough ahead to justify the weaknesses. Consider map mobility, sustain, burst, attrition, CC, point presence, etc.
3. Strong, Low-Skill builds: These are a problem for entry and mid-level play. Things like turret engi and medi guard where anyone can easily beat players at that skill level with little knowledge of the build mechanics. When new players get crapped on by these builds, they get frustrated and it’s hard to grow PvP.

Medi guard is used competitively, but it’s usefulness is debatable.

Medi guard does very well against other DPS builds and is arguably best at 1v1 against DPS builds. And it counters thief. Depending on the variant, medi guard can also bring decent group utility. But in larger group fights, medi can be focused down easily, and it lacks the map mobility of a thief.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

If it were to be removed or even reduced in effectiveness then those builds would suffer quite badly.

This gets into a fundamental question: Should sigils and runes have that big of an effect on a build?

I would argue “no” – traits and utilities should.

What I find most problematic about Sigil of Energy is that you get the energy for a dodge immediately. If instead, it granted vigor or a similar over-time effect, it wouldn’t be as powerful.

Bunker guardian isn’t “garbage” but at high levels of play, it’s just not that useful.

Because bunker guardian damage is so low, they need to be with a full DPS in a team fight. Keeping that combination going while rotating around the map is incredibly complicated. If the DPS gets pressured, the bunker guardian can’t do much. Plus, opponents can just avoid the bunker guardian and go for other nodes.

The rise of “bruiser” builds, which can deal decent damage but also hold points in a 1v1 or a 1v2 for short time, made any full bunker build obsolete. Unfortunately, guardian doesn’t have a good bruiser build, due to bad or crippled traits and lack of stat customization in PvP. If it was possible to make one, it could be beneficial with team stability, protection, and healing.

I’ve run into Hugh at least three days this week in unranked. Last night Grouch was with him for a bit.

Nova Stiker.8396:

You’re right, except one problem, it’s a HEALING skill. Meaning the counterplay is very easy to punish. Being CC’d, blocked or blinded can completely ruin the healing capabilities.

Working as designed. If I see a guardian use Litany of Wrath, I do everything to prevent them from landing attacks. Just like when I see a warrior use Defiant Stance, I stop attacking him.

Comparing it to Shelter, which is significantly more reliable and has little counter play. Sure it’s weaker but you’ll see every guardian with it. It’s more reliable.

But it still has an element of skillful play. If you don’t use it to stop a large attack, then Shelter’s return is relatively low.

Litany of Wrath sucks because its numbers are awful; they were balanced for PvE against a group of brain-dead NPCs. In order for Litany of Wrath to have comparable healing per second to Signet of Resolve, you would need to deal around 17,000 damage in 6 seconds. Even if a single opponent stood there and did nothing, that’s hard to achieve.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Now look at Litany of Wrath, well that engineer put up that Gear Shield and you lose so much healing, …

That’s exactly how Litany of Wrath should work!

It’s a risk/reward skill. If you use it well, you can heal a lot. If you use it poorly – like against an engi who has gear shield off cooldown – it sucks. You can argue the numbers need tweaked, but the design is solid.

Sigil of Doom does need toned down or changed/removed. But this is a problem with condition sigils/runes in general. Perplexity is the biggest offender, but thankfully that’s not in PvP. Krait rune is kinda stupid with condi rangers. Similarly, Incendiary Powder is a big part of why cele rifle engi is so strong.

Celestial Amulet is fine. The might change did affect them. The point wasn’t to nerf the celestial amulet builds into oblivion; it was to make it so they can’t quickly overwhelm opponents by face smashing their keyboard.

The reason celestial tends to dominate is because you can’t get anything else between glass cannon and too tanky to kill anything. I sound like a broken record, but the amulet system needs changed.

Abazigal.3679:

I still personnaly fail to understand how the current leaderboard is working. I would like to be explained why :
- i am, quite often, teamed with and against people from 1st leaderboard page, although i’m only #650
- people on 1st page get +3 loses, but no negative rating point..

If i’m having the same MMR than front page players, then this means basically anyone can be teamed with anyone. This would explain why i’m getting +1 point for my wins, but still…
In my opinion people should be teamed with people having a similar leaderboard rating.

You’re matched with players of similar rating. That rating value is determined by a Glicko2 algorithm and hidden to you. The rating goes up or down based on your rating relative to your opponents’ ratings and the match result. Beating higher rated players makes your rating increase more and losing to lower rated players makes it decrease more.

Leaderboard rank has no correlation whatsoever to rating; it’s just an ordering of players by leaderboard points. Leaderboard points are awarded or deducted based on the outcome of each game compared to its predicted outcome. More Info.

The problem with leaderboard points is that they don’t reflect your rating at all. Winning an even match involving all low rated players has the same award as winning a match involving all high rated players. So leaderboard points end up being based purely on time with an advantage given to players and teams who farm in off-hours when they’re likely to be matched against much lesser skilled players.

Aomine.5012:

Sure if it’s just dueling than this skill is no big deal due to how telegraphic it is.
I’m talking about WvW situation, which there’ll be 20+ consecutive hammers falling from your head CC you to death.

Guess I shouldn’t post here because you guys are all assuming it’s a PVP situation.

So keep moving? The area of effect is the same as a necro well. If you can get out of a necro well within 1 sec, you can avoid Drop The Hammer.

Aomine.5012:

Drop the hammer: 2 sec kd /1200 range/ 5 target/ radius 240 / CD 15
Plus the stability nerf, I can already see a train of Revenant killing everyone in WvW with Greathammer. (20+ longest range AOE kd ftw)

Cast time: 1.75 seconds.

What a lot of people are missing about revenant hammer is that the attacks have long cast times (auto-attack is 1 second cast time) and are highly telegraphed. It’s like watching a slow-motion hammer guardian.

Win Ratio != Skill

It can’t be emphasized enough.

In a system where players are matched with and against other players of roughly equal skill, win ratio should be close to 50%. If a player has a win ratio significantly higher than 50%, then that player is constantly fighting much lesser skilled players and is probably below his or her proper rating. The exception to this is the very top of the rating distribution. Those players have few opponents of equal or higher skill and they end up fighting weaker opponents more often.

Basing a system on win ratio further assumes that across all games played by a given player, the average outcome or value of a game was 50% of the possible points (winning every time). However, if a players has more matches which he or she is expected to lose than matches which he or she is expected to win, the expected win ratio is below 50%. It doesn’t mean that player is worse than what their rating says.

It’s as simple as this: Player A is pretty bad, but he plays against other pretty players and wins 50% of the time. Player B is above average and plays against other above average players and wins 50% of time. They have the same win ratio, so based on your logic, they must be equally skilled. That’s the same flaw in the current leaderboard.

So your argument is extremely confusing because you’re mis-using the term “rating” or “match-making rating”. Rating is a value for each player that reflects their skill level. It adjusts up or down as a function of the player’s rating in comparison to their opponents’ rating, with “upsets” yielding a larger rating adjustment (Glicko2 is more sophisticated, but has the same basic idea).

What you maybe want is a system that adjusts the current leaderboard point matrix with the rating of the players; games between higher rated players award more points for a win and deduct less points for a loss. In theory, this allows both time and skill to be valuable.

In practice, it really depends on how correct ratings are and how good match prediction is. You need to balance the top players who play less frequently with above average players who form a team and farm in off-peak hours. I can tell you now that both of those have issues: rating fluctuates too much for unknown players (RD’s initial value is probably too high); the prediction outcome uses average team rating when in reality a significantly worse player has a much larger negative influence on victory compared to his decrease of the average team rating.

There’s a trait to make spirit weapon attacks apply 1s of burning.

It seems like a cheese build and you fell for it. The spirit sword dies pretty fast. The hammer has a decent amount of HP to stay up for a while. It’s best to kill the sword quickly since it has the most physical damage and then just to kite the hammer around while focusing the guardian down.

Going to somewhat disagree with #1. Big plays create excitement, but they don’t always have to happen. Watching a match between closely skilled teams is pretty exciting. A lot of the big swings in momentum are at the map level and reflect whether key fights were won or lost – not necessarily how. If Temple of the Silent Storm was used more often (apparently there’s a bug), it would have a bit more excitement since the buffs break up plays.

On #2, it would be better for players, but has no effect on viewers. When you watch a GW2 PvP match, it’s hard to tell when a player used a single big skill let alone set up a powerful chain of skills.

The biggest detractor for competitive GW2 PvP is lack of a large player base. That has a myriad of reasons, such as:

• Lack of infrastructure (working leaderboard, limited spectator mode)
• PvP didn’t feel rewarding initially
• Slow to balance, especially for a new game where balance issues abound.
• New players easily frustrated when overwhelmed.

Other games get far more viewers simply because there’s a larger player base.

Novuake.2691:

This. Any decent player WILL clear burning if he can, if not, he knows he has a problem. So duration matters little, a 20secs CD or even 25 makes sense.

You have 4-5 conditions on you. What ability can cleanse at least 4 so you’re sure to get burning off and has a cooldown of 10 seconds?

+1 to OP. I’ve been suggesting this for a while. I would also limit IP to rifle and pistol crits to cut down on the cover conditions.

Accelerant-Packed Turrets could have its damage buffed slightly if it was moved to master. The reason for the move is so that turret engis can’t get the knockback and damage on turret death AND boons from turrets AND turret damage+range or bubbles. One of those would have to be left out of a turret engi build, making it far more manageable for average players to combat.

Incendiary Powder at 4 seconds actually becomes 5 seconds in standard engineer builds because they have at least +30% condition duration from traits or runes. For something that is completely unavoidable and difficult to remove because of cover conditions, 5 seconds (2500-3000 damage) is entirely too much. If you ever look at a death log against an engineer, the number one source of damage by far is burning. And cele rifle engineers only get burning from IP. This strength of this trait needs reduced significantly. If it hurts too much, then buff other aspects of engineer which have counter-play.

Grump.7069:

An MMR leaderboard wouldn’t be the best idea, it could cause the same hostility ranks did in the beginning.

How? Ranks are purely time-based, like the current leaderboard. MMR is rating based on how you match up against other rated players. MMR actually does reflect skill, not time.

Line of Sight works too.

1. Implement build templates
2. Hide enemy team professions until match starts
3. Reduce pre-match time
4. Increase time to accept queue by 10-20 seconds.

Saiyan.1704:

On that note, more people probably rather play Courtyard than Skyhammer, but I’m no Dev, I don’t have the vote numbers.

For me, whenever the choice of Skyhammer, Courtyard, or Spirit Watch comes up, Courtyard is usually less popular than Skyhammer.

Courtyard in queue doesn’t work because 5v5 Deathmatch doesn’t work well – it turns into CC chain with unavoidable burst or just AoE spam. A smaller format would reduce that, but without piles of restrictions, it will be ruled by team comps that can last forever and stalemate.