Guild Wars 2

Celestial is the way to go.

On the same skill level there’s no class that loses in a fair 1on1 against a thief. Important though, you might not win it, because the thief gets away with stealth. The Thief is not OP, he is just annoying.

There are barely any good thieves in WvW. Most of them use Heartseeker as movement skill, never hit their backstab and think that shadow refuge equals invulnerability. They’re lucky though that the WvW Player is just looking to join the next zerg and plays that way.

I’m more interested in watching than participating, at least for now.

What time is that for EU? Correct me, if I am wrong: 8pm for central europe?

Don’t forget to fix the “jumping part” at the beginning of the dredge fractal. Just make players fall through the final ledge and die.

The dredge fractal always feels like genocide: so many trash mobs. Every time I hear “The signal … please…” during the loading screen my first thought is “No No No!”.

People just kick me, when they see my class after the accepting the group request. That said, I’ve never been kicked during the run in all those fractals.

AR isn’t the problem, lack of experience is.

You can avoid every bit of agony damage except for Jade Maw by dodging, interrupting and reflect skills. There’s nothing wrong with joining high level groups despite having low AR. If you do well, nobody will notice if you have 40AR or 0.

It’s the least creative and most boring boss encounter in the game. One problem on high level fractals is that even the normal dredge deal high damage while being quite tanky with their numerous buffs. That wouldn’t be so dramatic, because it’s supposed to be difficult, but their sheer numbers let you die out of pure boredom.

Players are too stuck with their CoF farming mindset that distinguishes between useful classes such as warriors, guardians and mesmers and useless such as the rest. In PvE players always go for the most obvious: big numbers from hundred blades and haste from timewarp. Tactics aren’t favored, because they’re the best, but because they’re “visually” the most obvious.
Just have a look on lfg.com for fractals. There are three criteria: Are you a Guardian? Do you wear heavy armor? What’s your AR? The same type of people that wants their group to have “min 35AR for lvl 32 daily” also insists on having at least two Guardians in their team. This behavior is not due to a high level of understanding for the game mechanics, it’s due to a lack of it.

GuildWars Nostalgia:

Your game lacks depth of strategy. You talked about team composition, no talk of build types like VIMWAY, Blood Spike, Ele Spike, NS, Bonds, Healing Ball, Ranger Spike, Ranger Interupt, I’d even take IWAY.

3…2…1…SPIKE!

Is that the depth and strategy you are talking about? Most of your listed builds had been based on pressing one button at the right time. GuildWars2 has it flaws, but CQ requires more teamplay and has a stronger focus on individual skill than Hero’s Ascent ever had.

TheGuy.3568:

You tell me how moving rtl’s cooldown to 40 seconds makes sense. Tell me what justifies that since you say there are other elements at play here. Really if you want to discuss than discuss. You have number maths builds core mechanics. What justifies it?

The D/D elementalist excels in all aspects of pvp: great sustain in close combat, boon support for his team, strong utility such as knockdowns and great mobility with RTL. Currently, this build has no weakness. Thieves can’t stay in close combat for long, warriors can’t do anything at all against competent players, but elementalist can do everything. Now it’s time to tone down the d/d elementalist and bring him back to a normal level.

The nerf only applies to the non-target use of RTL, in other words: running away. Despite the 40s CD on RTL you still have two very useful auras, when it comes to escaping, permanent swiftness, vigor for well timed dodges and the benefits such as stability/invulnerability/blink from cantrips.

The times of jumping in a fight without further thought, rolling over the keyboard, RTL’ing out and healing up are over.

You cannot compare mobility in isolation of all other mechanics in the game. In contrast to other classes an elementalist that leaves the fight with RTL can quickly recover, because of his strong healing ability and low cooldowns. The mobility itsself isn’t a problem, but its combination with the core mechanics of the ele is. In WvW it’s almost impossible to die with my d/d elementalist despite wearing berseker gear. Unless you go full rambo, the three stunbreaks and RTL save your life in every situation.

It makes no sense to compare these numbers, because you ignore all other skills and abilities. It’s a narrow and wrong view of game balance.

Nihevil.8024:

The only reason the gem prices are this high is because of the new Sab items and the Molten Alliance Pick, give it like two weeks they will be back to normal. In the meantime stop complaining. Thanks.

There’s no “normal”. The exchange ratio is mainly defined by the relationship between the goods that can be bought by gold on the trading post to those bought by gems in the shop. Every new product added to the cash shop makes it more attractive (relatively to the trading post). Thus after the initial spike the exchange ratio will decline a bit, but never return to its old level. To backup this argument: just take a loot at the graph at gw2spidy.
ANet will keep introducing new items to its store with every patch, so better get used to a high exchange ratio.

LordByron.8369:

That is why you see only guard and war parties not at cof but at fotm 40+.

I’ve always found high level FOTM groups to be less restrictive as long as you have enough guards. In contrast it’s always funny to see “no thief/necro/ranger” for low level fractals on gw2lfg. It’s the same story with AR: “At least 20 AR for level 18!”.

The less competent groups seem to be more restrictive on group setup and gear. It’s a warning signal to stay away from these guys.

Rising Dusk.2408:

FirstBlood.7359:

Thieves with Signet of the Shadow, for the movement speed, are more annoying in instances. That’s what I call terrible.

You might be amazed how much dps I mitigate by moving 25% faster in combat on my Necromancer.

Movementspeed is useless in instances, because all encouters can be mastered by smart positioning and well-timed dodges. Let’s assume the thief is hitting Subject Alpha in melee. Why would he need additional movement speed? Subject Alpha doesn’t kite players. Let’s assume the thief is fighting Giganticus Lupicus from range. Why would he need additional movement speed? Every dodge or shortbow 3 brings you in safety.

There’s no great idea behind Signet of Shadows/Signet of Air. Most players use these skills out of laziness. To me, it’s a dead slot that could be used to help you and your group.

garethh.3518:

FirstBlood.7359:

In League of Legends new players started at 1200 rating in the first two seasons

They have a dozen ‘test’ games it runs you threw with other new to 30 players to get a rough take on your ELO. That along with the required 30 levels before ELO even kicks in tends to create pretty good matchmaking.
I mean, short of smurfs, but that’s only a notable problem for FTP games.

Test games isnt’t the right word, placement matches is. Just because your ELO isn’t displayed until the 10th match doesn’t mean it hasn’t been there the entire time. Your rating is just hidden for the first matches, because it jumps alot and has no validity.
There’s no specific pool with new players to ranked. What conclusion could a system draw from matching two teams of unknown newcomers? None.
You’re matched with and against players that are stuck around 1200 rating with thousand of matches played. After beating those guys, the matchmaking knows that you’re better or worse than the average. These average guys are the first test in the system and thus have to live with the worst matchmaking.

Does the hate for zerker gear ever stop?!

Thieves with Signet of the Shadow, for the movement speed, are more annoying in instances. That’s what I call terrible.

garethh.3518:

FirstBlood.7359:

New players start around the mean of the matchmaking rating. So, if you’re an average player, you will often encouter players that are new to system and their performance isn’t well evaluated. Just look at the second screenshot in this thread! That’s why ELO works well at both ends of skill, but fails in between.

Bad ELO does that.
No developer in their right mind would wiki “ELO equation” then just throw it and its formula exactly in their game.

LoL found a pretty good way to enact it.

Before your first match the system doesn’t know, how good you are as a player. The only solution to this is, mathematically speaking, to use the expected value of your skill. That’s why new players always start around the mean value.
In League of Legends new players started at 1200 rating in the first two seasons (I haven’t played in s3). Between 1100 – 1300 the matchmaking was very inaccurate, because for the reasons mentioned above there was so much uncertainty about the player’s real skill in this rating range. The consequence: uneven matches and a massive cryout on the forums. I’m still sorry for everyone that had to play in those ratings.

New players start around the mean of the matchmaking rating. So, if you’re an average player, you will often encouter players that are new to system and their performance isn’t well evaluated. Just look at the second screenshot in this thread! That’s why ELO works well at both ends of skill, but fails in between.

Another flaw of the elo system is very apparent in GuildWars2, because the game lacks players at certain times. The pool of PvP’ers is too small, so sometimes a team mixed of high and low-skilled players is matched against a team with 5 average players. Their teamratings might be close, but the performance might vary. In LoL two good players can easily carry a match, while in GW2 the team with the 5 average players will probably win.

At certain points I have my doubts about the level of sophistication for the matchmaking in GuildWars2. It puts you in a group of five first, then searches for another 5 equally skilled players. Pooling 10 players first and then distributing them to two equally strong teams is the superior way of doing it. Some features of the matchmaking are still stuck in the old design of 8 team tournaments.

The nickname of GW1 among PvP’ers was “build wars”. Not the playerskill, but the team composition was the deciding variable in top matches. There had been only few viable builds for every class and a small number of team setups had been dominating all others. It’s also important to mention that the team compositions have been prone to strong extremes such as teams full of necros, rits or paragons. At times the balancing got completely out of control, because the skillsystem provided too much freedom.

Gw1 gave you the “illusion of choice” than real choice. Most skill/class combinations had been so useless that there had been no point of even trying them out.

Rezzing your group because three players got killed while trying to help a downed teammate in phase 2.

The hope for Anet fixing certain mechanics in high level fractals is as low as the numbers of players that actually do this content. Don’t get me wrong, your post is well written, but many of these problems are the problems of a very small minority. That’s why I don’t expect changes to fractals any time soon.

To me the most annoying thing about fractals is that the reward level is tied to your character. It’s not fun to have to start again, just because you need variety from playing a different class. Make it accountbound!

The fractal weapons always need transmutation stones from the gem store. Maybe ANet hopes for easy cash from players after receiving a precious skin, but it’s contradicting the game’s promises about the ingame shop. Paying real cash for “unlocking” rewards that you received from endgame dungeons is a terrible concept. Anet can do better as it showed with the super skins.

I’m actually one of those that enjoys doing dungeons with Pugs instead of having a static group that has the dungeon on farmstatus and does it as daily routine. The four players are the random variable that makes the run exciting or in rare cases frustrating.

CoE is my favourite dungeon in the game. I’ve done it for the full set and seen groups walking through the dungeon or wiping at alpha over and over. Alpha, especially in path 2, provides a good challenge, because it forces players to pay attention. Bad timing on the dodge results in downed state. Downed players need to be rezzed quickly, otherwise Alpha will finish them off. That’s why CoE demands more teamplay and individual “skill” than most other dungeons. It’s unforgiving for lazy players.
CoE is even better than Arah. It’s short, but demanding. In contrast to Lupicus, Alpha doesn’t have such a large health pool and provides a constant threat to all players without a boring phase 1 and 3.
To answer your question: CoE is short, if you’re experienced and skilled, but tedious with inexperienced PUGs. Most people don’t bother due to the lazy alternative of running CoF 30 times a day.

The anonymous trading post across all servers always has a very positive effect. It prevents collusion or a small minority from controlling certain segments of the market. Without names it’s difficult to make “agreements” and you never know which idiot undercuts you.
One of the few ways to achieve price collusion is by building a reputation and rewarding/punishing your competitors [reference: any basic lecture on Industrial Econ will do it].The lack of names on the TP succesfully prevents this.

This thread must have been sent through time, because complaining about downed state reminds me of the first beta weekends. After so many months in the game I thought everyone finally knew how to handle that new mechanic.

titaniumm.2983:

we don’t want ONLY deathmatch, we demand ALSO deathmatch arena..

(and in my opinion, 2 vs 2 it’s not brainless at all)

Another gamemode without extra balancing is just wasted effort.

People that demand brainless deathmatch arenas have never experienced any good PvP. A game needs more objectives than just mindlessly smashing heads. May it be League of Legends or Counterstrike, all successful games offer much more secondary mechanics.

To be frank, back in GuildWars 1, the arenas had been the worst part of the game. Absolutely boring. Conquest is quite similar to GvG, bunker builds, some splitting up to achieve different goals and more movement than fighting.

I prefere the new CQ maps such as temple to mindless deathmatch any day.

There are many other ways to control inflation. It’s just a cheap and lazy way to do it via the trading post tax. The purpose of a market is the efficient allocation of goods and the GW2 trading post fails at it, because the tax prevents market clearing.

John Smith.4610:

If you study economics you should have no trouble sitting down and thinking about the problem and coming up with an answer.

Just because the economy is virtual, doesn’t mean it isn’t subject to market failures or other economic constraints. In the case of the answer to this question, virtual economies are much MORE subject to this pressure than regular economies.

I strongly disagree. In the real economy taxes are needed, in a virtual they are not. Taxation exists mainly for two reasons: First, to finance public goods such as the basic education system that cannot provided by the market. Second, to internalize externalities such as in the case of tax on fuel to reduce its consumption. None of these market failures are existent in the GuildWars2 economy.
The selling tax is terrible, because coupled with uncertainty it makes market clearance very difficult. Just look at all those items that are listed, but will never get sold. One might even say that inefficiency is a goal or at least a wanted side effect of the selling tax. Lowering the player’s progress to achieve his goals by intentionally preventing market clearance.
Market failures of virtual economies aren’t the best justifications for the tax. In reality efficiency is of great importance, in GuildWars2 ANet wants us to keep playing by artificially limiting efficiency of markets.

The rich, the poor and speculation by evil capitalists. GuildWars2 has it all. The entire debate about legendaries is somewhat funny, because it illustrates how narrow-minded most people are. First of all, legendary weapons are the prime example for Conspicuous Consumption (insert wikipedia link here!). Now we come to the funny part: everyone that demands to make legendaries easier to obtain forgets, why these items are so precious and valuable to players in the first place. Removing the difficulty removes the legendary status. In the end most complaints boil down to envy “others have it, but I don’t!”.

Speculation doesn’t increase prices, especially in such market as the BLTC with its thousands of players. Speculation is even good, because it helps the market the move to the equilibrium. Further “playing the market” is costly as well: time and knowledge to gather information and to execute all the transactions. Not to mention the risks involved with any speculation and the high transaction fee on top of it.

It’s one of these funny threads that reveals the very small number of PvE players that actually understand the meaning of dodge, stunbreak and stability. I’ve done some AC runs since the remake, all with pugs, and I saw most people die at the spider due to their own incompetence. My favorite one is, when players desperate trying to rezz teammates in the poisonfields.
No, AC is not too difficult. Except for the final boss of path 2 it’s a rather boring and very easy dungeon. With an average group it’s possible to beat every boss in the dungeon. No further coordination needed.
In comparison with other games dungeons are on general too easy. To provide a reasonable challenge ANet should increase the difficulty. The Alpha encouter from Path 2 CoE is an example, how this can be achieved. You need a well timed dodge to survive. In downed state there’s only a window of few seconds to rezz up, otherwise the player is permanently dead for the rest of the bossfight. At least this encounter demands a bit of team coordination.

OP: You stopped having fun for the wrong reasons. GuildWars2’s sPvP has many flaws, but the lack of deathmatch arenas and “kitten damage leaderboards” are clearly none of these.

Rotations? Really?!

I find the question somewhat funny, because there’s no decision to make. It’s not like the sPvP itsself gets any better or worse after the SOTG.
In games with a subscription fee it makes sense to care about future development, because you have to pay up front for at least a month. In GuildWars2 you can log in, whenever you feel like. So what’s the point of planning ahead?!

The invisible hand. That’s how markets work.

P * Y = M * V

That’s all you need to know.