Guild Wars 2

Ele does have too much healing ability provided by the combination of 30 Water and 30 Arcana traits.

This can be balanced without affecting the weapon set viabilities and the different builds Ele can play as.

More options are clearly required as most competitive Ele builds right now whether DD, SD or Staff using a variety of different Amulets are all using 30 Water, 30 Arcana.

The NPCs probably use artificial stats not proper gear.

The Guardian represents a completely unattainable build that mixes max Guardian DPS with max Toughness and Vitality.

NPCs can dodge roll when immobilised and they block instead of evade.

How and why would a forum moderator confirm or deny the contents of a patch.

aaron.7850:

Sorry but that thing that spawns in my place when I join hotm is NOT my character.

It’s your characters spirit in an ethereal plane.

Making PvE gear a display option in the mists or mists gear an option in the PvE world would make no sense.

Change the healing allies component into a Water field that gives Regen to all allies inside, 5 seconds.

So it becomes a Water Field with an initial Heal for the Guardian and then area regen / water field for allies.

Adds to Guardian combo possibilities. (Which are currently very limited).

Talking of bugs then.

Thieves shooting at a single person on a point with Trick Shot will often see the arrow bounce off an invisible place on the point and hit the target again.

Making each Trick Shot hit twice.

As in double damage.

As in massively broken.

All the top Ele’s in D/D or S/D specs right now are using Signet Heal for the sustainability it offers…

hharry.1967:

Watter attunement (2k heal), scepter 3 (2k healing, cast time, ground targetted means its a bit harder to pull off), cleansing wave 2k, dodge cleansing wave 2k. Thats 8k every 40 seconds or 6k every 20 seconds (cd of scepter #3) or 4k every 10 seconds (only water attunement and dodge).

4k Healing every 10s without casting Water Trident or Cleansing Wave then.

+ 1-2k in each Attunement from just casting normal attacks (you know, like fighting) with the Signet Heal.

So around 10k healing every 10s just from fighting and rotating through each attunement when using the Signet Heal…

+ that extra 2k every 20s / 4k every 40s from Water Trident / Cleansing Wave.

No one else has this kind of healing, and don’t bring your HP into it, you have access to long durations of Protection and so much Vigor you can dodge roll constantly with a Scepter and nearly all the time with D/D too.
+ Dipping into Water every 10s will wipe off all the conditions on you.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

They QQ because ele they can’t catch an ele who ran away.. Ran away from the fight.. Ran away.. Wait, what??

It’s a team game.

The Ele being able to dive into a fight, unload all his cooldowns doing massive AoE damage, providing huge group support and AoE healing then flying straight out with RtL before he can be pinned down like any other Profession would for over-extending so much is not very well balanced.

He’s then off to the next team fight across the other side of the map faster than anyone else can get there to do it again.

Ele’s have too much of a free pass to get out of over-extending, the other professions are punished more for diving into the middle of things as a glass cannon, or getting caught out in a 1v3.

You’re being over-protective of your Ele’s because you like the unique power of playing a DPS spec with more sustainability than any other profession’s DPS build, more mobility and several ways to escape from unfavourable situations or when you get caught out.

Teams are running 3 Ele’s right now to dominate fights.
You’re seriously saying they are balanced?

Using it alone in the Mists vs an enemy that will cast at least 2 conditions on you, like the Ranger.

It doesn’t convert a condition as only one condition is removed when using it with the Soldier Runes.

If it did convert a condition it should remove 2 conditions with the Runes and you would expect to see one of the boons last for an extended amount of time (from the conversion) as all the rest are just 5 seconds.

Hold the Line has a 50% conversion rate.

Save Yourselves never converts.

DXIEdge.2789:

Allow me to explain

However when we’re fighting together giving AoE might, we’re also stacking might. So when without the Sigil we would have like a total of say 16-18,

This, is clearly the issue. Ele stacks too much AoE might by himself, which only gets worse when you bring two to a fight.

The Sigil of Battle is fine, it’s the same access to Might for everyone.

The real issue is how powerful the traits make Water Form.

By traiting 30 into Water and Arcana, just popping into Water and dodging heals the Ele up far too much and cleanses all the conditions on him. Every 10 seconds…

Seriously, how is a full Cleansing Wave every 10s on a dodge roll trait balanced when the actual skill has a 40s cool down.
Cleansing Water trait becomes too powerful in a team fight vs conditions on the Ele.

+ Ride the Lightning needs it’s cool down increased to around 20s, and it should be affected by Crippled and Chilled. It’s a Get Out of Jail Free card right now.

15s is too short as it means the Ele can RtL in, do his standard rotation through all 4 attunements, go back to Air after cleansing and healing in Water and RtL is ready for him to run away.

This was covered long before the game was out.

Other games have long CC and then reduce CC or have CC immunity in them because their Holy Trinity mechanic requires long CC, mainly for the PvE content.
They then need to balance this for PvP.

In GW2 the CC is never long enough to justify some reduced CC mechanic.

The devs said that creating an immunity mechanic for CC meant that that CC design was a failure. Good CC is balanced and needs no extra mechanic in place like an immunity.

GW2 has good CC mechanics through condition removal, stun breaking skills, Stability boon, Invulnerability and dodge rolling to avoid attacks.
With CC that isn’t on very long durations.

We don’t need a CC immunity mechanic and we never will.

My biggest problem is how bland we play.

We have several builds, but just one effective playstyle.

99% of the Guardians in tournaments are bunkers. And any team asking for a Guardian wants a bunker.

I’ve built for more damage before but it can be so easily countered, it was fun to play as a Guardian doing damage (and that’s the playstyle I want), but it required support from my team, specifically a Necro in Plague form spamming chain AoE blind so I could get my melee damage off without dropping instantly while Whirling round.

I want to be able to create different effective builds for another playstyle rather than a healing support tank.

As I said I’ve made DPS, but if you’re playing that role for a team you are so much better off building for that role on any other profession.

I’d like to see a condition damage spec work for Guardian for a start though with just burning it seems difficult, perhaps a trait that let our burning stack would allow us to use just burning as an effective damage source.

The issue really for Guardians is application of damage, it’s mostly melee range, which as I said before means you will take a lot of damage getting to your target, take all the AoE flying around and you need to work to stick on your target with poor tools to do so, when the other professions have so many ways to maintain kiting distance.

The issue I see with Guardian is that our damage style doesn’t match the way we are built.

There is little synergy.

Guardians are built around consistent damage, most of it coming from auto attack.
Our weapon skills tend to be built around utility more than damage. (No high damage longer cooldown skills).

Even Zealot’s Defense and Whirling Wrath aren’t that much better than auto attack on a single target + Zealot’s roots you in place and has trouble hitting anything that’s not moving, it doesn’t do enough damage to justify an immobilise combo.

Whirling Wrath needs to hit multiple targets to become really worthwhile, and as a Guardian in pvp, if you have enough targets around you to do good Whirling Wrath damage it also means there’s loads of AoE hanging around that you yourself are gonna eat.

We have teleports and immobilise, these synergise better with a high damage long cooldown attack though. Immobilising a target to autoattack isn’t something any other Profession needs to do.

Teleports again, take you right to a target but then if you can’t follow it up with burst they just move out of range again, due to other Professions having much more passive / active mobility with evasive skills and Swiftness. + Crippling / Chilling us in return to kite away.

Our consistent damage from autoattack synergises better with access to cripple and swiftness, rather than immobilise and teleport.

Guardian is too pigeonholed into similar specs right now, the playstyle is very bland compared to the rest. Due to our playstyle being based on melee range more than anyone else we also need to consider a lot more survivability when building either a damage spec or tanky spec.
+ Things like the Guardian heal skills having much higher cooldowns, 30s, 40s, 40s. It’s a lot easier to judge when to burst a Guardian down and you have a much bigger window of opportunity.
Our consistent damage with a lack of ability to stay on target consistently gets easily countered by their shorter cooldown heals.

P.S. Virtue of Resolve and 2127 base Armour does not make up for how much damage we have to take just getting to our targets and trying to stay on them.
Being in the middle of every fight and eating every single AoE skill around.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The thing that isn’t fun, is when the orb carrier is rarely in any real danger of being caught or stopped. When the other team doesn’t even bother trying to chase, because they know there is no chance to catch the carrier.

Like an Elementalist with Ride the Lightning, crazy condition cleanse / healing sustain and high up time on Regen, Protection and Stability + Mist Form.

People are talking about free tournaments rather than hot join.

No one cares about people leaving in hot join, it’s just hot join. Nothing serious.

Ranger traps going on cooldown as soon as they are thrown is too strong as it allows the point holding ranger to set all their traps and then throw them all down again when the engagement actually starts. Too many advantages.

The traps should start their cooldown when they are triggered.

Confirmed that Hold the Line is still bugged, sometimes removes a condition, sometimes doesn’t and never converts a condition to a boon with Pure of Voice.

Save Yourselves seems to still be bugged too. Never removes a condition and never converts to a boon. Very disappointing.

We got Battle Presence finally fixed last patch, would be nice to get this fixed too as it’s been broken forever and been in the bugs list for ages.

1 ticket to enter 1 team v 1 team, with the same rewards as now and a random map from the choice of Temple, Forest, Foefire and Kyhlo would be awesome.
+ Matchmaking for the teams entering as a 1v1.

Call it Quick Paid.

Interesting post, but there are a couple of omissions and a problem.

I don’t see how we have two weapon pulls.

Greatsword has a 2 stage (as in delayed) Pull with Binding Blade, what else?

You should add a Leap for Greatsword Leap of Faith and 2 Teleports for Sword’s Flashing Blade and Judge’s Intervention to Guardian.
Mini leap (300) for Hammer – Mighty Blow

(Also Pull is very different to Leap and Teleport).

Warrior needs a Leap for Savage Leap on Sword, a Charge (1200) for Greatsword’s Rush and something for Whirlwind Attack (as it moves you over an area quicker than you can run for 450 distance).
Leap (600) for Earthshaker and Mini leap (300) for Eviscerate and Shield Bash.

Also, you mention this is without traits, but is it also without Utilities?

Guardian has another Immobilise from Signet, and two more knockdowns from Signet and Spirit Hammer.

‘Most every’ has to be one of the most annoying Americanisms in English.

Such a lazy language across the pond.

Conquest promotes cautious, defensive play in order to win.

This promotes the bunker build as the most effective use of a single player when your aim is to simply hold 2/3 capture points for as long as possible.

Bunker builds are boring to play as, and boring to play against.
But they are everywhere, and they cause a disproportionate shift in players when they can hold a 1v1 eternally and force a 2v1 or more to effectively get them off a capture point in a reasonable amount of time.

Me: Guardian
Feared: Mesmers
Least: Thieves

Lol Guanglai Kangyi the PvE hero.

Guardian Scepter is NOT the best ranged weapon in the game, not by far.

It’s situational at best and only does good damage against a target that stands still and does nothing, like a wooden box.

EU meta has Teefs, NA has Thiefs.

I don’t want to see any snooker or pool minigames in GW2.

Fantastic idea.

One of the biggest problems right now would be that you queue for over and hr, play for 10 mins, get knocked out and go back to the queue for over an hour…

That happens to 4/8 teams, 50% of the people trying to play.

Why? It’s an unnecessary punishment for half the playerbase.

Those 5 tickets you spent 4 hours grinding for are wasted in 10 minutes!

This idea would be really help to encourage more people into Paid Tournaments, and it should be a system that is exclusive to Paid Tournaments due to the ticketing system.

Loads of people are rerolling these days to become Asura instead for the pvp advantages.

Hman, Gods Sacred, Holly to name a few off the top of my head.

What 1v2? I see you start with a Whirling Wrath for all of 6k damage, and then the fight is a 2v2. You have 14k HP and less escape abilities/general mobility than any other Profession.

Awesome button mashing, I think I heard you make 50 key presses in order to initiate 4 skills……. Binding Blade, Symbol, Bind Recall and Whirling Wrath.

You’re playing 8v8, your build will be obliterated in organised team play because you offer a much worse alternative to Thief/Warrior/Mesmer/Elementalist burst.

Plus we all know you play for around 10-12 hours a day, and 2 minutes of footage to back up your ‘glasscannon Thief/Warrior perspective argument’ is all you could scrounge up?

If anyone wants to feel better about themselves and their skill level, you should check out this guys backpeddaling, button mashing TwitchTV stream.

Mufa.1326:

Second, and more importantly:
With GS and sword/x guardian has gap closer every 6 seconds on average (sword has teleport on 10s cd, and GS has it on 15s cd).
Add to that utility which teleports him to enemy (with 1200 range no less + significant dmg to enemy + instant / (on 45s cd 36s if traited) ).

Weapon swap timer is 10s, you can’t teleport every 6s by continually swapping between Sword and GS.
GS also bugs like crazy and will often leap you in the opposite direction to your target.

Judges Intervention does significant damage… does it? 266 damage and a 3s burn, err yeh seriously significant…

Well I’ve also played a Guardian since the first beta weekend and this happens to me wait what???

Yeh, back on topic… This happens to me all the time, especially in PvP about 25% of the time, sometimes worse.

Happening mostly with close range usage.

It takes so long to channel though, you do much more dps with auto attack and it has a lot of trouble with missing and moving while attacking.

Cleansing Flame is a PvE skill.

Aegis will never last long, even if you sat out of range of everything and just spammed the Scepter, there is so much Retaliation around that you would get hit by some almost instantly and lose the buff.

Unscathed Contender is a joke, like a lot of our traits.

Guardian is a mobility joke.

So you build defensively and hold a point, engaging anyone that comes close.

But why would they come close when….
They can just destroy you at range instead, and don’t think you can avoid that damage with line of sight, or refection skills, the best of it is pure AoE the size of the point you want to ‘defend’.

I wasn’t being serious with the analogy
Football and video games are two entirely different things and they simply can’t be compared.

All I’m aiming for is to say that GW2’s tournament gameplay just needs a more exciting format or change that causes the gameplay to escalate to a big finish and with a chance for the other team to mount a real comeback.

Right now it’s slow paced, safe and not exciting to watch.

You can’t compare it to football.

I thought about this when writing the post and how football often can be a very slow paced and safe gametype. Those matches are often boring to watch and not exciting though.

But people still watch them, and care about them? Yes they do, but football is a real sport and it is like a way of life for many supporters. Football is the biggest sport around the world and you can’t compare video games to football.

Although we know real people are playing, we don’t really care. We know it’s only pixels and that when they win all that happens is that some pixels change.

Sport is real in every way that an e-sport isn’t.

E-sport is interesting when people are playing for real money yes and it can be exciting to watch big tournaments.

But you will never have the same comprehensive following and care for it as people will have for real sports because all aspects of real sports are real. On the pitch and off the pitch.

Video game tournaments need to be faster paced, exciting and end in climaxes or people won’t watch them.
They need to be explosive action movies, not steady documentaries.

Imagine a game of football with 3 goals, each team has a goalkeeper in 1 goal and the other goal is left free. The teams now play 4v4 around the 3rd goal.
Wait dammit no, football is always just more interesting.

I think the thing that makes LoL popular to watch is that every match is a build up in terms of power and escalation of the map all heading for the finish.

It’s like a story where a character starts weak, trains to gain more power and is finally able to overcome his enemy at the end.

When you watch LoL you are watching for small good plays at first and to see who might get an advantage or take a lead.

You’re waiting for the big plays at the end and it’s all building up to the final rush to destroy the base.

It starts slow and it builds up and up in power and speed, an escalating story that finishes very quickly.

But, with a chance for the enemy team to turn it around near the end, it doesn’t happen too often but there is always a chance.

The take and hold of 3 bases doesn’t have any kind of momentum like this.

Essentially you both hold your home point and fight over a mid point, the one that holds the mid point the longest wins.
This is generally achieved with about 2 big fights at mid, the winner normally of 2 big fights normally having enough of an advantage to then just bunker down and hold on to the end.

GW2 doesn’t speed up and escalate all the way to the end for a fantastic finish, infact at the end it feels like it slows down, becomes cautious and safe. Like the slow steady Turtle racing the Rabbit.

The most popular CS map was the de_ (defuse maps) this also works in the same principle as the escalating story.

You start off with how people deploy and tactics, people take a few shots at each other and try to gain an early advantage. At some point the Terrorists rush to get the bomb down (full escalation of the story) and then it’s up to the CTs to finish them and defuse it in time. There are chances for last stands, turn arounds or all out destruction.

Now of course an FPS plays a little differently with the way one can kill 5 much easier, and no respawns.
But, the way the maps escalate and build up to an intense finish is what makes it fun to watch.

While GW2 remains in a state of bunkers to hold points safely and a game type of both hold 1 point, fight over the middle it will always be too cautious, this gametype promotes a cautious approach.

You watch people in sPvP try to take 3 points and leave the others wide open, it’s more active and exciting to play and watch but it’s a bad strategy because you get backcapped.

The way to win 3 point take and hold is to take 2 points and sit on them for as long as possible, playing defensively. (Boring to watch). An anti-climax.

If anything, Temple could be the most fun map to watch as the steady nature of 3 point take and hold, the current meta and the way the scores generally go up equally with a slowly increasing advantage held by the team that wins the few group fights can all be turned on it’s head by the buff that spawns to allow one team to claim all 3 points.
However, the problem is that if the enemy team is just safely bunkering those points like the gametype dictates that they should to win they will just neutralise them about 4 seconds later because they are already standing on them.

Take and hold 3 points will probably never end up as an exciting thing to watch because there’s no build up, no sprint to the finish.

Lack of diversity in our PvP builds. Lack of trait diversity and synergy.
Too much revolves around gaining Retaliation or applying steady melee damage. (With few ways to keep targets in melee range).

Teams just want you as a bunker Guardian, it’s the only role they want a Guardian to perform. They want you to just be able to take damage and stall / distract the team until they come in and kill everything.

It’s a very boring role to play.

By the nature of Guardian damage being mostly melee based in his attacks and our ranged weapons only operating effectively at <600 range we also have to stand in and be hit by all the horrific AoE damage being thrown around PvP by Necros, Mesmers, Rangers, Engineers, Elementalists and Thieves.

With all of that comes a horrific amount of conditions too.

Talking conditions, our access to them is poor, burning isn’t a viable condition build due to the lack of a stacking nature. Aiming for condition damage and 100% burn uptime sacrifices so much and doesn’t result in viable damage.

Bleeds being able to stack up to 25 make them so much more viable even before condition damage is added.

Guardian feels like a boring sack of bricks to play in PvP, every map you do the same thing, stand alone on point call for help, burn cooldowns to survive and wait for your team to come and kill everything.

A lot of Guardian staleness comes from traits too I think, they tend to be very generic and one-dimensional.

We have several traits that grant small amounts of Retaliation when something happens.

We have several +5% weapon damage traits. The Greatsword Grandmaster trait is an insult.

We have nothing to enhance our ability to be more maneuverable or to fight better at range, I appreciate that the Guardian is supposed to Guard things but in a game as diverse as GW2 where all profession should be able to do everything it is not healthy to pigeonhole the Guardian into what is effectively a melee only role.

There’s too much Retaliation in our traits, not enough special and unikittenfects or synergy. Condition builds are also very poor for us compared to several other classes that can build very effective conditon specs in terms of damage, control and variety of conditions and control inflicted. + Survivability. (See Necro, Engineer, Ele, Thief, Ranger).

When it comes to real player vs player combat the Guardian is only really effective at melee range or near mid range.

The Staff goes out to mid range but it is a very low damage and underlines the Guardian steady damage style.

The Scepter lacks speed and accuracy to hit a real target over 600, realistically it has issues at all ranges, even around 300 vs a smart opponent and will only hit someone that’s not moving or immobilised. (Immobilise is already very/too powerful and pursuing that as the way for all our melee damage to land isn’t healthy either).

So we have a class that lacks ranged options and works effectively in melee. Well, being in melee means several things, but one very important thing.

If there is damage flying around you can guarantee it will hit you.

Guardians get hit by a lot of damage, trying to use most of our weapons effectively means you will eat most of the damage flying around, a lot of it not even aimed at you when it comes in the form of AoE Wells, Traps, Caltrops, Element Fields, Meteors etc

It also means you are subject to the AoE component of many weapons attacks or autoattack.

This means that most Guardian builds need to be built defensively by nature, you need to be able to survive a beating just to be able to fight, nevermind even making a bunker build yet.

Our highest damage comes from the Greatsword, trying to use this effectively means you are going to be taking a lot of damage.

+ The way the meta has evolved the only thing a team has wanted a Guardian to do since beta is to be a tank, to be defensive, take damage, distract people and give your team boons while they run around killing everything. (Having much more fun).

The Guardian also can’t take advantage of vertical space very well, the only thing working in that is the Scepter which we already know has trouble hitting anything moving. Staff won’t hit up or down. Binding Blades have a lot of obstructed issues.

Temple is a great map, but all the other professions can take so many more advantages of the vertical nature of the map compared to a Guardian.

I think the Guardian could really do with a helping hand in basic melee combat, a trait for increase base speed when weilding melee weapons like the warrior would help.

We have access to teleports and immobilises but when we are built as a Profession to not be bursty and to be more sustained damage these abilities don’t work as well as they should.

Base melee speed would help the sustained melee damage style by stopping us from being kited and controlled easily by many Professions and builds.

garethh.3518:

I’m not saying the combat is bad, it just lacks that draw every other PvP game I’ve played so far had – Rift

Exactly what was attractive about Rift pvp?

The massive gear grind in order to be competitive…

People with insane gear smashing brand new lvl 50’s and thinking they were good at pvp?…

The whack-a-mole style balancing with utterly OP FOTM appearing every patch and dominating till the next 1.×...

No thanks.

GW2 PvP mechanics are much better than any other MMO around. There are things to fix and add, things that are in the works.
It’s not possible to release a game absolutely complete, there will always be extra things people ask for or that another game develops that you want to copy after release. The expectation generation needs to get a clue and some patience.

Some of the rezz signets are good, some of them are pretty poor though.

Ele has a very nice versatile one with different options for each attunment.
-The invulnerability on the Ele when using it somehow and the invulnerability on the targets rezzed after is weird though, if it’s not a bug or exploit then it’s a serious oversight. Ele signets seem to cast quicker than the tooltip too.

Engineer’s can be great as it will rezz before a stomp and can be used to self rezz, but suffers against AoE dmg on the target.

Guardian signet has a long cast time, the longest recast at 240seconds! and a terrible Passive (Healing Power). (1 ally)

Necro is pretty standard, but almost twice as fast to cast as a Guardian and recharges a minute quicker. (3 allies)

Rangers and Warriors are tied to Elite skills, both can be used very effectively.

Mesmers Illusion of life is very powerful as it gives everyone 15s to burn everything and try to kill someone, if they do they rally, if they don’t they just go downed again.

Thief of course has no instant revive but can place down Shadow Refuge to allow the whole team to safely rezz someone, or stomp an enemy etc.

Perhaps the rezz mechanics would be better placed on Elite skills for those with things like Signets (Guardian, Necro, Mesmer).
Elementalist would be fine without the invulerability associated for them and their allies during the whole debacle.

Engineer is a special mechanic that works well already.
Thief has an alternate mechanic with pros and cons.

The problem is that Mesmers have all of GWs combat mechanic advantages in one package.

Teleports, Stealth and mass Clones.
Clones that can intercept damage, confuse the enemy over who the real Mesmer is or be set to detonate simultaneously for spike damage.

Easy to re-summon and build up a pack again.

Finding the original Mesmer and marking them isn’t enough as they have several ways to go into stealth and cause you to lose your marked target.
This is a bad mechanic really as it’s already enough to try and find the Mesmer against one that’s well prepared, the fact they not only get to reset the fight with stealth to their advantage with positioning and cooldowns but also get to remove the target above their head makes it even easier when 1v1.

Mesmers have spike, great damage avoidance with Distortion, (access to this is far too common with Blurred Frenzy). Stealth, Teleports.

Great access to inflicting conditions, easy access to boons, and teleports to disengage easy (as if fighting as one wasn’t easy enough already).

They can set people up to spike with immobilise, Mind Wrack bomb and Blurred Frenzy far too often (and of course during this they are immune to damage).

GW2 Professions each get a slice of cake while the Mesmer gets a whole cake to themselves.

Love the combat system, though I do feel a little pigeon holed as a Guardian into playing a defensive build or nothing. There are a few changes I can make, but basically the only thing seen as effective or wanted by a team is a defensive build that just sits on a point and calls for help.
+ The Guardian has to go in close to land damage, Scepter misses anything moving.

There’s a lot of potential and I would like to see all Professions become more effective with different builds, too much of a meta for a bunker right now.

OneManArmy.5617:

Also keep in mind scepter’s attack rate is 1/4, which means it will apply more and more burning procs(Virtue of Justice) than any other weapon, as the time goes on .

The attack rate isn’t 1/4 of a second that’s the casting time for the attack.

The Scepter attacks once a second.

We don’t necessarily need points for everything, different useful aspects could be encouraged with more ingame messages.

I enjoyed when Rift added messages to PvP like when it was broadcast that someone saved someone else, finally healer’s getting some recognition in a game.

We could have that appear when someone revives someone that was about to get stomped, or just on revives in general.
+ Extra stuff, revive someone together Tag team revival.
Stomp together? Buddy stomp?

There are loads of messages we could think of to apply to different events.

Perfect kills, denied stomps, last second revives, interrupt stomp & rezz combo.
Bunkers that survive against 3+ people for a while could get an Optimus Prime inspired message… XXX will take you all on!

I don’t know how much of this is possible for the engine to calculate based on who is interacting with what. But it would be nice to see some more flavour throughout the game beyond capture point messages and rampage (5 kills).

Zsymon.8457:

Considering only two people work on balancing/designing/repairing skills, probably something like a few hours a week, I don’t expect much anymore in that regard.

This is the most ridiculous and uninformed post ever. What you’ve said is a complete lie.

On topic: Signet of Mercy is basically useless. Hopefully one day it will be improved to a different type of signet with different bonuses and function. I don’t think a revive signet is necessary when everyone has the ability to interact and revive. (+ The signet takes almost 4s to channel).

What if Retaliation was severly restricted within skills and traits and became a 1-2s REFLECTION of damage. Can’t stack or chain it, give Retaliation an internal cooldown, kinda like Stealth’s Detected debuff.

Small blue bubble around the caster when activated. (Like the old animation for Shelter).

This would be great.

I’m in a team that fits into this perfectly.

We have a bunch of players that like to do tourneys (8) and a regular team of 5.
We find Free’s easy and usually walk them, but we want to get better.

Jump into Paid at the cost of 5 tickets (ouch). Lost the first round one day, but learned from it.

Today we got to round 2 and lost to Crossfire on Foefire (hence seeing this post) we played a mirror spec’d group and were really impressed, we know what we need to work on to get better but we don’t really have a way to do this as Free tourneys tend to be against a ragtag group with little to no tactics (this is fine when everyone is a ragtag group).

Trying to get experience just with Paid tourneys will blow all our tickets in about 2 days when we are more likely to lose in Round 1 or 2 and get no tickets for getting that far.

Then we have to grind 5 Free Tourneys! (no challenge and unfair to all the pugs) to get back tickets to have one shot at another Paid.

The system doesn’t support itself very well.

It punishes people for trying to get better by playing against much better teams than themselves with the high ticket cost, then it punishes pugs when the aspiring teams go back to grind tickets for 5 hours.

A middle ground is absolutely what we need.
Free – Ragtag pugs / small group + pug looking to play with tactics beyond 5v5 sPvP.
Advanced – Groups looking to work on tactics vs other groups, adapting to counters, full teamwork, comms and generally advancing themselves.
Paid – Top teams looking to prove themselves against the other top groups, or aspiring groups looking for more of a challenge.

Advanced Tournaments please.

This thread is hilarious.

So to stop a Thiefs multitude of mob stealing abilities we just need to lay down either a Guardian bubble or some Necro wells.

Let’s look at that shall we?

By Guardian bubble you clearly mean Sanctuary, the small dome that’s smaller than a regular capture point that lasts 6s on a 120s cooldown and can be traited to last a whopping 9s. Though, even if it lasted for 3 hours it still wouldn’t stop the Thief walking straight around it as it’s impossible to cover the front of Svanir’s cave and even if you could do that, Svanir deals so much damage you’d commit suicide by being in such a small place against him. (Lol @ the guy who said if you see a Thief just stop damage and wait for his stealth to drop, protip Svanir would rip you apart before the stealth ran out) He deals between 3 and 5k dps.

Necro Marks, and other AoEs, these will apparantly according to JSharp (game designer) bring a Thief out of stealth.

Do they?

No.

Only the Thief attacking will bring him out of stealth, so that doesn’t work either.

The Thief has access to 12s of stealth from refuge or 3s from blinding powder if we are ignoring CnD for now, and that’s untraited.

Even if AoEs did bring him out of stealth he has the Shortbow to jump right over them, or Shadowstep to jump right over them.

Or he could just use Steal to bypass it all and port right onto the mob, this can be traited to 1200 range and to stealth you again for 2s.

Or he could just wait and pull Svanir to himself from 1200 range, ripping him away from all your damage and defenses to secure the last hit.

There are no effective mechanics to stop a Thief stealing the NPC. A single Thief could bypass a whole team if he put his mind to it. There’s far too much room available to maneuver and the abilities listed by a game designer do NOT bring a Thief out of stealth.