Guild Wars 2

Rather than cheeseing your way through this, you could look at it as an opportunity to become a better thief.

Playing them for real makes you a much better PvPer. Looking at metabattle and actually feeling how they work are entirely different.

This is why I stopped at Ruby for now, nothing to do with any of the lose streak stuff on the forums. It’s just not fun to fight 4 necros every match. And that has nothing to even do with balance, it’s just lame.

This could use a post in the regular forums or something. I wouldn’t have noticed this if not for the “dev tracker”, and I’m sure a lot of people would like to know about it.

Why did you go for it if you didn’t want it? To make a subtle brag post?

I LOVE the system, and have had the best/closest matches against 10 equally skilled opponents I’ve ever had. However I’ve stopped playing because every day another 500 people convert to necro. I’m not playing anymore until something is done to dissuade 8 necro matches.

I imagine the balance is now handled entirely by a separate team, like the PvP team or something. Just guessing, but it seems like Karl works on all the classes to some extent.

Irenio probably making new engi and ranger elite specs.

Druid vs scrapper is a stalemate. Loooong term, the druid has more CC than scrapper has stunbreaks and other defenses, but it won’t resolve quickly.

Sorry for attempting to help you. Figure it out yourself if you’re going to insult those of us who gave you sincere replies. I reported this thread.

I’m not having much fun with anything because every match has 5 or more reapers in it. I’ve played 2 ranked games in the past 2 days and both of them had 5 or more reapers.

And this is not an MMR whine post, I have been winning and am in ruby division, but the reaper spam is making me stop playing.

Tragic Positive.9356:

However, when it comes to PvP when burst is all that matters, we do not bring enough relevant support to get into high tier PvP without burst.

I think you and I are playing a different meta. The burst meta is a myth that was created before the season, but everyone is playing sustain at the highest levels. Tempest bunker, necro, scrapper, rev, and druid. Rev and scrapper are the closest thing to burst, and that’s just because they’re so durable they can be ‘glassy’ and bunkery at the same time.

DH, DD, warrior and to some extent mesmer are pretty much never played, and those are the 4 professions with most burst and least sustain.

DH does show up all over the place in the lower divisions, but that’s such a noob spec you stop seeing them shortly after you enter emerald from what I’ve seen. Obviously they had 0 in ESL at any rate. Burn medi DHs are making a bit of a come back because traps are so lame.

There are no server-based maps anymore. Go to the map ~10 minutes before hand or look for a “taxi” in the LFG. Got to SC, join that party, then right click on the leader, join them on their map, then leave the party.

There are plenty of full maps every time he spawns.

Eurantien.4632:

Dodge the shatters!!!

To expand on this, dodge into the shatters. If you dodge away from them they may not explode until after you dodge.

Condi mesmers shatters like all the kitten time though.

I tend to gravitate towards builds like that. I run dolyak runes on my WvW engi with backpack regenerator. :-O

Since you’ve said you’re not a WvW player you may not be familiar with the regen builds that have been around since release. Ranger mitigates so much damage with weapon skills and protection that multiple sources of regen mean you don’t really have to use heal skills. I still use defender runes in WvW.

Presumably he’s doing more than having fun. I wouldn’t roam on druid if I wasn’t able to win more than I lost. If you’re going to say every other build is better than his I think you need to back that up…

I try to avoid using CA as much as possible for several reasons. 1) It’s a giant sky beacon that says “come kill the druid.” 2) I need the stun breaker and condi clear for if the other team decides to kill the druid anyway. 3) I need it for emergencies if one of my teammates get spiked or falls asleep during the 10 minute mid fight. Basically 1-3= I find it wasteful to use CA if we can get by without it.

Us disagreeing is probably two things. 1) A play style difference; if you’re using CA as much as possible then “topping people off” isn’t going to matter to you and might even be inefficient. 2) It doesn’t matter because you literally have no choice but to heal people if you’re using staff and shouts. You’re following my viewpoint even if it’s for a different goal than me.

That’s the thing about staff and shout regen though, it heals whether you want it to or not. In the build I use, quick draw means I have to keep swapping weapons to play optimally. So ya, when I need to I LB 4 to protect my ally, and then moments later I’m back on staff topping off the auotattack damage with staff healing, which helpfully also maximizes my damage.

The second part is the meta we’re currently in. Despite the amulet changes, everyone is running either sustain or flat-out bunker builds. If me and a scrapper are fighting and ele and a revenant, not only is no one going to die, I can actually outheal the damage the opponents do as long as my competent scrapper buddy walks away from precision strike and etc. Hell, just using a shout alone puts out like 300/s on the scrapper due to RR (edit for clarity, scrapper trait rapid regeneration). Astral wisp bumps it to ~700/s on the melee scrapper and staff auto takes it close to 800/s. (I’m estimating these numbers obviously but whatever). Healing turret only heals for like 4k or something, so the scrapper is actually better off doing damage and using non-healing skills while I keep him going. If something goes terribly we both heal to full via CA and blast combos and nothing dies.

Big damage classes like DH or DD just really stop making appearances after a certain point. I see 0-1 per match.

We’re talking about WvW, not PvE, there is no black and white “better”. If you want to run your mouth at least duel the guy.

I agree with you Tragic that the healing is relatively useless in a zerg because of the sheer numbers involved, but then any amount of healing is going to be relatively useless. CA is relatively useless in a zerg.

But I still disagree entirely that 500/second or so is useless in PvP. I think you’re drastically overestimating how much of the time someone is taking big damage. Most of a PvP fight is spent using utilities, using long-casting damage skills, kiting, dodging, LoSing, taking small packets of damage like autoattacks and condis, and so on. Ideally you ally dodges the big attacks, and you clean up the damage taken from the unavoidable minion herd ad autoattacks or whatever.

Let me give you a concrete example. Back before the trait changes, I ran a WvW build that used natural healing (on the ranger still at that time) SotW, and regen to stay alive. I could fight in extended, minute + long duels or versus multiple opponents without ever touching my heal skill. 0 big heals. That’s how powerful these tiny heals are. The 1.5 seconds or whatever that someone dodges you might heal them for 700 health.

This health needs to be regained sooner or later, and you can’t easily get out of combat in a PvP team fight. If someone uses their own heal to get them up to 7k health, wouldn’t it be better if they were at 10k health instead? Yes. More health is always better.

Justine.6351:

Yeah I was wondering why NS over celestial shadow when you got huge swiftness.
Another why is the sharpened edges over primal reflexes.

I just don’t often want to dodge when I can’t between the quickdraw of staff or LB 3 if things get desperate. Basically I wasn’t sure what else to take there and cover bleeds seemed like a good idea. I’m not 100% sure they’re doing anything, but what the heck.

NS just because of this garbage (edit, I also don’t want to decap my own points with CS):

I’ve been having the most balanced matches I’ve ever had by far. Hopefully all the baddies get stuck in ruby and then you get 10 players you know can carry their weight every match.

Ah that makes since. I bet you could do well with viper’s or sinister as well.

I’ve reversed my stance on GoTs. Although I still find it invaluable, I’ve replaced it with S&R because of the totally obnoxious prevalence of reapers. They make rezzing with GoT impossible because of the condi cleave, and the skill doubles as a personal condi clear if you have to 1v1 them.

This is what I’m using in Ruby.

I don’t think I’ll be changing much of anything until legend/diamond, as it seems to work fine against any level of opponent. The mobility of GS is missed, but I usually set up camp halfway between home and mid, and the range I have (plus S&R) means I can work both points even with mild mobility.

I’m not fully decided on SoR/NS vs GoE/VE, there are just so many kittening reapers out there and SoR/NS both are excellent reaper defense. I suspect once I hit diamond there will be less reapers, because it’s not that great of a class, and then I may be able to go back to GoE.

If you see a condi disappear that’s when the timer starts; you’ll have to keep rough track of it in your head.

In PvP it’s not used much anymore because some other things got buffed or added, but it’s still a solid skill to keep condis in check without you paying attention to it. The real value of the skill is that the active is a full condi cleanse on everyone around your pet, (and it’s a personal stun breaker which is always valuable.)

It doesn’t show us anything out of context. I can think of a half dozen scenarios off the top of my head where that would make perfect sense. For example the end of the game and beast is critical. Red just won a team fight at home and chased and killed the survivors to mid. Etc etc.

What are you running with staff, Justine? I tried a rabid sharpened edges + sigil of earth in PvP and the damage it did was completely unacceptable. I’m not sure how to get any more damage out of it than something like paladins. I assume you’re running celestial in WvW?

Zietlogik.6208:

you do know you can sell them right?

Nope! Ha!

I don’t know what to do with these stupid things, I’m overflowing.

runeblade.7514:

• It tracks players. You can not side step away from staff attack.
• It is instant. The moment you press the button is the moment the player gets damaged.

It is impossible to escape Staff pewpewpew. At least with longbow, I can see the arrow coming and dodge it when I see it near me. I can get out of range because Longbow doesn’t have a mobility skill.

I just saw this quoted in a later post. LB is and has been instant-hit for some years now. It’s not possible to avoid the arrows with sidesteps or movement skills, they hit the same as a rifle.

Ya I hear you. I keep switching back and forth between the two builds. LB just feels so much more toolbox-y, but then GS calls me back with the mobility.

jcbroe.4329:

I’m still skeptical of using Celestial Shadow, not because it isn’t valuable, but because at times you have to be incredibly mindful of how you use it in PvP, especially if you are skirmishing sidepoints in a close game, but still, it’s disengage/safety net is so strong, and it really helps avoid common anti-druid strategies since most organized teams or smart players know to focus you down when you go into celestial form or when you drop out of it, but celestial form allows for a quick positioning reset and target drop, which is super helpful in high pressure situations.

That’s one of the reason I prefer LB over GS. Both are great builds, but a quickdraw’d hunter’s shot goes a long way towards making people call a new target, and it doesn’t cost you the cap (kitten scrappers be careful with your stealth gyros!)

Never thought I’d be advocating LB in PvP…

Well I mean I play PvP because it’s fun not because I’m getting paid, so question answered.

I also think you’re dramatically overestimating the number of unwinnable games. At a certain skill level people understand the game well enough to see what they need to do to comeback. Whiny little kittens that just give up are weeded out and can stay in emerald, and those kinds of people will lose no matter what the rules are.

Those rare times you comeback are IMO the best possible experience you can have in GW2. I wouldn’t want to give that up. And speaking of absurd comebacks, oRNG probably wouldn’t want to give up their WTS 1st place finish.

I don’t have to convince anyone, druids heal people near them for ~300-500 health per second whether you want to or not.

On the contrary, it’s impossible for you to convince me that doesn’t have an effect. After all eating a full maul or RF only does like 5k damage. The “burst meta” is still the sustain meta. Again, points are rarely full capped, and everyone is playing ultra-sustain scrappers, revs, tempests and druids. Those 4 classes plus necro account for like… 100% of the players past sapphire. Just sustain sustain sustain, nothing ever dies.

anduriell.6280:

i’m not and i can tell you are so wrong.

If the staff healing is useless in PvP then you have to also tell me Regen is useless, Rapid Regeneration is useless, Virtue of Resolve is useless, Soothing Mist is useless, Sigil of Leeching is useless, etc. etc. For years healing signet was considered the best heal in the game and staff heals for more than HS does.

These things are all active at the same time. There is a reason even in this “burst meta” that points are often neuted for 5 or 7 minutes at a time. The other day I won a match after we lost the mid fight at start; me and a scrapper went far and held it nueted in a stressful fight that lasted until the match ended. My outgoing healing was obviously off the charts for that one.

Just because you don’t feel like regen or astral wisp are helping your team doesn’t mean you aren’t still healing them.

You do belong in HoT, you just need to step up your gameplay a bit. Figure out what is killing you, and then make sure your utility skills and weapons can deal with that.

For example you almost certainly want a stun breaker, which isn’t needed in the core game PvE. You probably want some condition removal. You may want a defensive skill like an invulnerability. You most likely want a melee and ranged option because some enemies have anti-meleee/range abilities. And so on.

Or travel with a friend, that makes everything much easier.

Always play with say and map chat turned off, instablock anyone who whispers you without responding to them.

Because they don’t do anything to them anyway.

I would never use staff in regular PvE anyway, I don’t think you can balance a PvP weapon around whether it has uses when fighting the shadow behemoth.

Anyone can simply walk to a downed player and press F to rez him.

Team fights often last more than 70 seconds. But this isn’t about that, CA is for your bursts, staff (and the shout regen) tops people off who are also mitigating their own damage and healing themselves. The healing happens while you attack, so you don’t even have a choice but to heal people. It makes a really big difference to your sustain when you’ve got a friend constantly giving you health.

Staff healing and regen that rangers are throwing out whether they want to or not heals more than having a healing signet on your entire team. It’s not about healing someone from 0-100 while a thief is ganking them.

Tragic Positive.9356:

There’s Zero value in healing from #1, #2 or #5 apart from building up Astral Bar.
None these healing values have ever helped anyone in my raid, in my PvP party, in open world or WvW survive.

Are you being sarcastic? Skill 5 is crazy powerful, especially in WvW where everyone uses projectiles in the pirate ship meta. Crazy powerful.

And 1 and 2 add up over time, it’s basically like having regen on you only it stacks with regen.

If you or your teammate are back within 2 minutes it’s irrelevant. Pretty simple.

Justine.6351:

I’m thinking to balance it better, SoS on 30sec cd and a trait that casts it whenever you take damage that you should have dodged. Yes I expect them to code it in so it blocks said dmg too !

You have clearly done a mind meld with Roy because this is spot on what Anet would do if they loved ranger like their golden children.

I love how anytime people lose the opponents are well organized teams on TS.

Justine.6351:

signets

Our signets our balanced really well and in a great place for this game, but if you were to balance them according to scrapper or revenant standards, they would be a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT better. Like let’s say 20 second CD on SoS.

You need new material. If I wanted to read this again I would go look it up.

I answered this in your other thread on the PvP forum, but for others:

You DO NOT lose a pip if a teammate not in your party DCs or rages.
You DO lose a pip if a party member DCs or rages and doesn’t make it back in 2 minutes and you lose.
You DO lose a pip if you DC and make it back after 2 minutes, but still win the match.

PvE has 25 legendaries AND legendary armor coming, and you’re complaining about having to do PvP to get the only legendary available here?

But yes, you can earn it over any length of time. The wings may get more expensive as new PvP back items are added (anet said the newest back item would always be the cheapest) but it will still be available for you.

The staff is a solid utility weapon. 3 is good for movement, but it’s also a blast finisher and heals allies. 5 is amazing in team fights, especially since it doubles as a waterfield; I gift that thing to scrappers and they all know how to use it. 2 and 4 are meh, but I try to put 2 on enemy revenants and scrappers to help their targets. 4 actually isn’t bad if you’ve already CCed someone, I often use it as my choice for quick draw. And of course you’re going to be using the autoattack most of the time, so why not heal your teammates while you’re at it with some basic movement?

Staff is a good PvP weapon.

I don’t even know what I want them to change because the things that would make us on par with revenants and scrappers are totally unreasonable, i.e., revenants and scrappers are totally unreasonable.