Guild Wars 2

dank.3680:

Whats funny is they all still run the super cheese tourney comps when they know they will be facing easy pugs.

But they just trying to pvp and have fun like everyone else right, naw they would never want to “farm” you…

Yep, 2 bunker mesmer and 2 condi revs plus a marauder scrapper.

It was painful. The other teams ran something similar, at least 2 bunkers (of which 1 almost always was mesmer) and either tempest/rev,

sickening

If you think LoL, Dota and Cs;go succeeded to the masses by sacrificing the people who likes to soloQ and duoQ (occasionally) you are already doomed to fail.

This is what I have been fighting all day; premades of pure cancer abusing the system. Earlier today it was PZ full roster vs a full pug group.

I honestly feel like farmfodder.

Anet, you really have dropped the ball this time.

Morwath.9817:

Fortus.6175:

So yeah, Sapphire here, just came out of a game with Phantaram’s (or whatever his name is) team, 5 pugs, 1 of them was ruby, rest sapphire like me, vs a 5 man premade, 1 diamond, 1 emerald and rest 2 ruby and a sapphire…..

fun times.

Tried to take a screenshot but for some reason they are not saving. Does anyone know where they go? I press PrtSc and nothing happened, I went to Documents, nothing in pictures or a file named Guild Wars 2. Dunno whats going on!

C:\Users\yourusername\Documents\Guild Wars 2\Screens

yah, nothing there, but thanks anyways!

Perhaps im taking the screenshots wrong? Do I have to press PrtSc and something else ?

edit: nvm, went to keybinds, found out I had it set to f6 for some reason..

oh well, its ok, im sure if I queue again i will get the same group so here we go!

So yeah, Sapphire here, just came out of a game with Phantaram’s (or whatever his name is) team, 5 pugs, 1 of them was ruby, rest sapphire like me, vs a 5 man premade, 1 diamond, 1 emerald and rest 2 ruby and a sapphire…..

fun times.

Tried to take a screenshot but for some reason they are not saving. Does anyone know where they go? I press PrtSc and nothing happened, I went to Documents, nothing in pictures or a file named Guild Wars 2. Dunno whats going on!

Xillllix.3485:

Jourdelune.7456:

It’s funny… people blame the bunker, but we play bunker to survive versus REVENANT OPness (or even reaper constant condi pressure, or both).

This right there, bunker build are the consequence of Anet’s terrible balance giving crazy bursts to not just Rev but Guard, Chrono and Reaper as well. It’s not what is imbalanced.

It’s like blaming eles for using Diamond Skin, while an ele without Diamond Skin has absolutely no chance to win against a reaper because it will get locked out of attunements and skills because of the constant application of chill. In the current condi-heavy meta eles have no choice but to use Diamond Skin, it’s not the cause of the problem, it’s the consequence.

As an ele main I completely agree to this.

I was daring to run marauder, but soon thereafter I realized that necros, revs and engis were eating me alive, and this is while they were substantially tanky themselves… I had no choice but to drop marauder for celestial and get into water for a chance to live.

Ross Biddle.2367:

• Balanced team tokens – Grants an assured balanced team while solo-Q

• No Revs token – Next match 100% assured no Rev’s in it

;D

Wait, can I get one where I see no bunker mesmer/engi ?!

Dustin.2793:

There is potential for this to be one of the funnest metas. Unfortunately, revenants and bunker memsers are not in a imbalanced, but broken state in my opinion. Which leave close to every team being force to convert to using these compositions. It is very boring to watch and play in. My team scrimmed the double rev, double mesmer, tempest team for hours the other night and by the end of the scrims I had such a headache and everything just blended in. If a balance patch cannot happen until the end of the season a one class limit per team should be considered. If something doesn’t change this could be a big disappointment not only for the players, but to the already hard to spectate side of things as well.

you know it is bad when even toker agrees….. smh

Jourdelune.7456:

Like 2 dd ele team was not enough for a full year and a half.

oh god the nightmare….specially since im 100% guilty of playing this too…… we need a proper balance between bunker and squishies…. i want to go back to be able to play marauder builds (that arent engis..)

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

. every time someone blocks your attack, X damage happens. Cannot crit/Ignores armor. Long channeled blocks vs quick auto attacks will be able to wear down bunkers without buffing thieves too much vs glass classes

utility that makes the enemy unable to block all incoming attacks for a few seconds[/b] making the thief and ideal +1 vs certain bunkers.

All the things you just described would affect squishies more than bunkers. bunkers can heal up that minuscule amount of damage you do to them, while that same damage to squishies is way more powerful (since health % is lower) and most squishy classes rely on those “oh sh^t” defenses in order to survive the already apex predator thieves have bene to squishies since the release of the game.

if you go back to the beginning of the game, you will see the main reason squishies were quickly drove away from the meta and into bruisers/bunkers were thieves (and mesmers to some extent)

A better suggestion is; amount of damage based on Effective health (not max hp% since toughness can be stronger in generalthen, and cleric would still be incredibly strong on bunkers)

Spartacus.3192:

Drafigo.4690:

Ebut this is the first season and hopefully it will be ironed out before a second season starts.

I wonder how many people will be around for the second season. The bad publicity GW2 is getting with this is pretty substantial.

some of my friends and a cousin asked me how GW2 was doing, whether they should come back after a year and buy HoT, it would have been very low of me to cover up and lie to them, making them spend $50 only to find out i lied, the game didnt improve and in fact only got worse, I would look bad, Anet would look worse, and nobody would win. So I did the only thing I had left as an option; I told them the truth, that the game was in a dire pvp state, not worthy to come back. Two of the watched some of the ESL matches, sent me a text message that read as follows ; “LOL that was pathetic” and the other “I kinda want to come back to play mesmer, but not the bunker crap [not the word he used but filters] you have now”

I can’t save that[“them”] which doesn’t wish to be saved…..

Spartacus.3192:

Thanks for the post Tarcis.

Its good that you posted this. I wish Anet will do something about this because frankly if they wait for 2 months, they may have lost too many players by then. There are players in this game that only PVP and 2 months is a long time to be in this situation.

namely me :<

Jourdelune.7456:

Dal

Hey Dal! Im Fortus, the ele!

Cmon man, you know our bunker builds are broken, together with the condi rev of course. Personally I dont mind to keep running this cele ele but I would much rather be able to kill (and be killed) than to have the snore fests we currently have, like the 2 games yesterday where once an enemy mesmer got to one of our points we needed 2-3 people to kill him, and then by the time we managed to kill the other one, the first one had respawned and gotten to mid again.

ReaperJr.5967:

All is well – anet

mesmer’s wells

ftfy

My guess is that Anet has a low budget for PvP and cant afford enough people to pay attention to the metrics and thus balance out the game.

It is truly sad, Im sure they are trying their best but it seems it isnt cutting it. Plenty of people have noticed the problem, and now even Apex Prime’s captain is speaking up to this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/My-Opinion-After-Today-s-Pro-League

The system plus poor balance have made this season a total bust.

Lets hope ANet learn from their mistakes, own up to them and is willing to improve upon it!! I have faith in them

ReaperJr.5967:

You know there’s an issue when multiple pro players speak out against the system. Anet, i implore you, hotfix the system before the next season.

or before people no longer care about the “next season”….

I watched most of the matches today…. it was pure aids, cancer, or whatever disease you think is worse.

Neither team getting anywhere, no one dying, the few that went down would get resurrected in seconds. Condis are really unfun to watch…they sort of just…tick away…. you see hp bars jsut slowly fading away….nothing exciting to watch since most skills that apply them are just as passive.

Honestly this is a disgrace of Anet to launch and promote a PvP season, invest so much money and put so many hopes bfore doing the bare basic; balance their game out to a bare minimun such as that there is some diversity and counterplay

If you go to normal PvP you will see 3-4 mesmers, 2-3 revs, 2-3 eles and the rest usually engis or maybe a dh here and there.

Disgusting meta, terrible balance.

Been matched agaisnt premades all day today, many of them 4 and 5 man premade, as a solo player…… this ISNT ok.

they were ALL blow outs, we barely scratched 100 on most of them, and in some cases I had to ask to please let me decap something to get some points….. Sapphire tier 4 atm, the higher I go the more premades I see.

Do you honestly think this will increase your PvP community?! What do you think brought success to LoL and cs;go and dota and all those other games? The ability to play on your own and still see yourself capable of succeeding. As it is right now, it is either premade or get farmed.

This isnt fun for me and mst of the player base who is also solo queue. Honestly, as an AAA game with plenty of resources, 3 years of metrics and plenty of constructive criticism I would’ve expected you to have gotten your sh^t together already.

/rant

Morwath.9817:

We already had it and it was bad.

No, we had a grindboard and it was bad.

A MMR leaderboard displays your actual MMR, that is, your skill level, not how many games you have had.

I know this is madness and probably has never occurred to anyone, but, imagine a leaderboard where your MMR is displayed to everyone, and based on the percentages at the end of the season, you would get a reward.

Seems pretty simple, and we already have something like that for guild leaderboard.

Am I a genius or what?!

I just want a reward track for the tickets…thats all man…. thats all…

Im currently Sapphire tier 4, it has been painful. Since this is a grind already, might as well ask to see results from it, like dungeons…repeat long enough and eventually you will get the stuff…… right now on top of the grind all you have is frustration, just plain frustration.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Manimarco Devil.1790:

Bunker mesmers are insanely hard to kill once they get off point and I would argue that they are the best bunker gw2 has seen. Even bunker guard and shoutbow were killed when outnumbered but bunker mesmer can sustain a 2v1 for a longer period than normal while still contesting the node because evade frames do not stop point capture. Everyone is complaining about DH which is easily countered at higher elos and here we have one of the most disgusting bunkers ever made. If you have two good bunker mesmers you will beat any team due to the amount of quickness, alacrity, evades, and the time it takes to kill one is enough to have your team rotate back to help.

The truly broken thing IMO about bunker mesmer is that it overcomes the mobility problem that bunkers SHOULD have. Bunkers should be susceptible to good rotations. With portal and blink, a bunker mesmer isn’t.

& ^this.

Also the fact that their periods of cant-touch-me do not impede their ability to contest the point.

This are infuriating to fight against…… and incredibly easy to use once you get the hang of it. Winning with it feels dirty, man :/

Pepsi.8907:

You lost against 3 DH?
I’m not saying there isn’t a problem, but having 3dh on a team is an impairment rather than a help truly… and if the thief isn’t in the amazing-tier of his class he’s also a liability…
Anyway, I do still feel you OP, had amazing win streak
then got paired against Abjured, Apex, and with pve players
Like that condi necro with greatsword saying he was going south.
SOUTH!
I wanted to die here and there…

Hi pepsi !

Lmao, I feel you, earlier today i had a guy who said that he was and had just bought hoT, trying out warrior, he didnt even know what “home” and “far” was….. This is me as a sapphire tier 4….. the matchmaking hates me…

it is almost as most of the population IS soloQ. Thing is, Anet sees us as kids who are blaming their kdr to SoloQ rather than skills. To back this up they stated on reddit that the mathmaking metrics indicate that the party vs pug seems correct. Same people who didnt find anything odd with the fact taht MMR was broken and you would get 10,9,8,7,6 vs 5,4,3,2,1 and yet their metrics showed nothing.

They live in a cloud, sometimes i wonder if they play, as in REALLY play their own game at times, I get the feeling they just get home, look at gw2, see it as work, tune out, go play some LoL or idk (and idc).

But lets face it, on the other hand they might be aware of these issues, but want to push the community to form groups if they want to succeed, which I imagine they have already achieved considering the amount of premades i face already in ALL of my games. All of this to push their esportz.

Shameful really to screw an entire playerbase to gain some popularity and recognition out there, when it is the community itself who is the one, if happy, that will spread the word and try to recruit new people.

I for one, would NOT recommend anyone who is serious about competition and pvp since this game offers neither with the crappy balance and skewed systems.

I have reached 4/5 pips 6 times today alone….. still t1…..

this is beyond frustrating.

I honestly dont know who in their right mind would design a system that WANTS you to be at no more than 50% win rate, and then on top of it put another system that only wants you to be on win-streak to advance, then to top it off make it so that it takes forever and god-like amount of luck that you get the right mates at their best, the right enemies at their worst and for that to happen multiple times.

0/10 would not recommend, would not repeat.

>4 man premade, recognize some of the names.

Sorry, no pity.

On a more serious note, perhaps a new patch hit and one of you guys didnt log out, happens all the time.

abc.5790:

I have mad respect for veteran pvpers that queue solo.

sadly “respect” is not being given by Anet and respect wont prevent people from tanking MMR or get us reward.

SteepledHat.1345:

Aylpse.6280:

A good question by a guldie I showed this too.
“Who designed this?”
I am also not so far behind Helsleth and I soloQ'ed my way into Emerald, feel a bit better about myself.

A good portion of the player base doesn’t understand that this is a team game. Helseth is great, but you can see what happens when you don’t have team support. That’s why he’s in Emerald still.

I think he already broke out of emerald with something like 75-12 wins or around that.

I was PvPing non-stop for the last 3 months. I have around 4k PvP games under my belt.

Guess what just happened today? I quit PvP.

Guess what my PvP premade mostly did yesterday/today? If you said quit you might be onto something.

My queue as a solo player on a 13 game win streak was already 8 min yesterday. A couple of throwers made me lose, I demoted all the way to emerald 0 (from 4 pips) and now I just cant take it.

pretty much this:

http://imgur.com/cMWalaa

That was so sad. almost an entire minute of being flabbergasted.

I think the biggest offenders are brokenants, signetper (also called frostfire reaper) and engis in general. Add to that that everyone and their mothers who arent condi are going bunkers, and what do bunkers use as damage? You guessed right; doom/geomancy, which devolves into even more people having to trait even more condi cleanse, cuz otherwise bunkers who should have no killing potential would win the attrition war if left long enough.

Seems to me that MMR wants you to be at no more than 50% winrate, aka punish win-streaks.
Pips system punishes losing, which MMR wants you to anyways. Assuming MMR works, you will be going +1|2 or -1|2 depending on win lose. Assuming MMR is doing its work, matches will be close in MMR, meaning most matches will be +1 or -1, with a 50% win rate, you will be going up/down like a tide, taking you nowhere.

How thought this was a good idea?!

It is sad that you now not only have to fight ragers/leavers that would do it for no reasons, bad players and premades, but now you have to fight the system and players who would otherwise never would’ve done anything like what they are doing.

Goes to show how much of a success this new system was.

I just hope they learn from this beta and improve upon it.

I for one gave up. Those wings are beautiful but my enjoyment in the game went down 2 fold. Not worth it. Last time I farmed agaisnt my enjoyment was to get a 1150 gold precursor and farmed dungeons for 2 months and a half non-stop; got so burned out afterward that I almsot hated my legendary…quitted for 4 months afterwards.

Only thing that brought me back was PvP 2 months before HoT. Now that pvp is out i will just have to wait for wintersday and hope for the best, that we dont get another Nightfury skin and something I want and CAN get.

smekras.8203:

Just did a quick test for this. Roughly speaking, this is my system:

CPU: Nehalem i7 920
GPU: GTX 295
RAM: 6GB
OS: Win7 Ult 64bit

In central Tyria, I’m getting 10-15 fps more on average.
In Verdant Brink …well, I’m finally able to navigate properly.

Edit: All graphics settings are on highest possible, except for LoD (lowest), number of models (lowest) and sampling (native).

If it is a laptop, the try this, it fixed my issues:

For fps drops on laptops using discrete nvidia gpus -
You need to go into Nvidai Control panel under 3d settings and add the 64 bit executable to your applications list and set it to use high power video card.
Source: Using a laptop with integrated and discrete gpus as well. 850m.

For those having issues with laptops and low FPS, please try this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3riq5s/psa_you_dont_have_to_redownload_the_entire_client/cwok091

Dojo.1867:

There is a reason for this to be ferocity. There are classes that can build around getting crits out of their traits/sigils/runes instead of the precision stat. Bad suggestion. People are already running crusader, inform yourself first.

Like necros

ReaperJr.5967:

Fortus.6175:

Iohanna.4863:

Tempest is a dream-come-true for Earth / Water / Arcana Bunker Support Celestial Staff Elementalists in sPVP. Replace Arcana with Tempest: no more wasting dodges to proc Evasive Arcana and constantly switching attunements to maximize benefit from Arcana.

With Shouts instead of Cantrips, you now remove 2 conditions (instead of 1) per utility slot. You also get Protection, burst heals, and Auras – all of which Cantrips lacked. You get an Armor of Earth 2.0 (Overload Earth) every 20 seconds, and it doesn’t even take up a slot! Vanilla Bunker Ele was always immune to crits in Earth attunement, but now your utilities give you enough healing, cleansing, and protection to pretty much never need to switch out of Earth! If you get grossly outnumbered, you still have the good old Unsteady Earth to cover your escape while you switch into Water to recover. Except now you also have Overload Earth to hasten your escape! (It is unfortunate that Lightning Flash must be sacrificed, but one cannot have everything.)

In a team fight, both Fire and Air have excellent damage options. And everything your Shouts give you can be SHARED TO 5 ALLIES! All that protection, heals, regen, vigor, condi-cleanses, etc.

And if you want swiftness, you have Earth 2 into Air 5, Air 4, and your Overloads.

Constant source of Regen, Vigor, Protection, and heals. Immune to crits. Practically immune to conditions. Respectable access to damage, swiftness, stability, and stun-break.

Field tested – pretty overpowered bunker! Just…no Lightning Flash.

You know, upon reading your post I too decided to drop arcana for earth. My biggest issue with Tempest right now was the lack of reliable stun breaker. Healing wise I was unkillable, it took 2 people to kil me and I would just heal most things up. However if any of them brought any CC they could mildly chain, I would die before the end of it all. Now I have a [near]on-command 10 secs CD stability. I must ask though, since Im at work and cant field test, does attuning to earth with the stability grant me a stun break?

From my knowledge it does. Its just one stack though. But in all honesty, being able to survive isn’t much of an issue for tempest in general. Its being able to survive and dish out pressure. Sure tempest/water/defensive traitline makes you survive. But so does earth/water/arcane. The problem? Tempest/water/defense traitline has almost no pressure at all.

You can make it sound good, say we can survive, share boons, support etc. But at the end of the day, so can other elite specs (cue Herald) and more, they can dish out damage too. But you can’t.

Dont ask me how I was able to try it at work, but I was able to test it in-game, it doesnt break stun. Deleted my post anyways since now it no longer applies to me.

I will give earth a try and post how it goes.

As far as pressure, true, we lack any burst, but I have been able to bring down several foes by attrition wars. I use cleric, not celestial, which gives me more raw damage, more healing, at the cost of passive defense. I have to be constantly on my tip toes but with a fully casted air/fire overload I can wear them down enough to make them go off point for a bit, and if they decide to stay, I can actually kill them if they dont pay attention to heir health (bad players, I know, but without ranked it is noobfest out there)

Sunshine.5014:

Glenstorm.4059:

Maybe they’re wary of instant-cast AoE CCs?

I do agree that being able to cast “Flash-Freeze!” and “Aftershock!” while Overloading (or Fire Grab, or Churning Earth, etc. etc.) would be amazing. But I can also see an argument for why counterplay is needed.

There can be delayed effect, but it doesn’t need a cast time. Make it instant cast, and freeze after 3/4s.

This.

I have found a few wild tigers, perhaps you should start around there?

Anyways, I’ve only been in the Verdant Brink, on the canopy; there is this activity where you have to pick up crates and these mean roots attack you all around, in that WP there are some stairs that lead up, take the bounching mushroom, climb the GIANT root, there were be a small patch of both electric and fire wyverns, I saw some tigers too.

The other place is somewhere in the almost very middle of Verdant Brink, forgot the location too, but basically it is on the floor, in one of the path leading to the roots, there is this very small and kind of creepy places, FULL of tigers.

Sorry it isnt very helpful, Im at work and cant do much more, and I dont really know the names of the location, but hopefully someone knows what areas Im talking about and get to it!

Do you guys think D/D ele is balanced then? Ok then……

T raw.4658:

snip

Again, stop with the passive-aggressiveness…

1- I do play ele a lot, I have no issues 1v1 a thief with D/D, if anything i like the match up since they pose no threat to my sustain.

Read all my posts before and you will see exactly what im tring to say the problem is, I wont repeat myself.

I think we all can see that if you think the old thief, with all the nerfs it has received and still is strong as heck, wasn’t strong, then you might be delusional.

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

Its been very frustrating playing a thief main in PvP after the June traits patch. Thieves used to be able to solo join ranked and stand a reasonable chance of carrying a poor team.

Playing S/D meant you could decap and contest points. The burst wasn’t all that high, nor could it bunker – but it could 1v1 most meta builds and stand a decent chance of winning. This meant you could carry a bad matchup.

Now there is absolutely no chance of carrying a bad matchup. If your team aren’t rotating well enough to create decap / +1 opportunities, having a thief will make zero difference.

It has gotten to the point where people are asking for a matchmaking mechanism to prevent 2 thieves in a team. If decap / +1 is so strong, why does 2 thieves equal an automatic loss? And once again, I would like to point out decap is basically short bow. One weaponset should not define an entire class.

Why do all X classes arguments devolve into “why isnt stacking X class meta?”? The answer is simple, thats not how balance works, except for maybe D/D ele, any other team that stacks a class tends to perform poorly, funy note; the team with 4 D/D eles had a thief in their composition!. Besides, where is it written in stone that having 2 thieves is an automatic loss? I have had plenty of games with 2 thieves or the enemy had them and still didnt feel much different from any other 2 classes stacked.

I think we can all agree that he old S/D thief was beyond OP strong, driving mesmers and eles away from the meta and pretty much erasing all non-bunky builds from conquest.

As it stands right now, thieves are not as bad in 1v1 as some people make them out to be. Are they supposed to win all 1v1s? Of course not, that wouldn’t be fair, would it; a class that can force 1v1 by threat of decapping and the ability to win all those fights is beyond the scope of reasonable.

Highlie.7641:

are you Still anti thief fortus…

Stop trying to 3 cap = thief can’t backcap and goes down in a hail of Aoe in the teamfight. It really is that simple.

Lets not devolve into personal attacks. Nobody has any hate for a class or anything, in fact I do play thief quite a bit now a days once I finally gave up on trying to fight them (if you cant beat them, join them).

Just yesterday I had 2 matches in which multiple people (1 per game) complaining about my decapping (one of them whispered me to the point I had to mute them).

I wasn’t fun for me, it wasn’t fun for them, I still won both games, one of them really close (17 points apart) from a deficit of nearly 100 points, all thanks to me keeping their engi and ranger between points in Battle of Kyhlo, where I could use Sb5 to get to the ledges and they couldn’t.

All I’m saying is that if you care more about winning rather than what is fun to deal with and to use, then you should leave things are they are, however, if you want the class to be more engaging for both the opponent and the thief himself, then some changes need to be done, specifically the fact that thieves have been reduced to decapping/+1 bots.

T raw.4658:

Fortus.6175:

Throughout all of gw2’s history, thieves have been a very integral [mandatory] element due to their mobility, however , I think it is time to address some aspects of the class, namely the way their mobility and stealth come into play in Conquest.

I keep hearing that thieves are in a bad spot (mostly by thieves players) but they dont seem to realize the strength of basically forcing a 4v5 everywhere by constant decapping threat, or their ability to get out of vitually anything and anyone if so they wish with Sb 5 and stealth.

Are we honestly ok with this? Is it ok for a class to single handily dictate the pace of a match with only 2 abilities? I honestly dont think this translate to much fun to both the opponent or the thief himself, since there is no fighting involved at all, jsut running around all the match, “chasing” after the incapturable ….

If you leave a point unguarded for a thief to decap you that’s on you.

The simple fact that a theif can’t 1v1 any other meta class in this game means all you have to do is get to the point before its decapped.

Hell even some of the worst players in the game can hold a thief off long enough until help arrives.

Complaining about thieves at this point in time is just a sign of a player who needs to improve his game.

Lets not get into “a good/bad player can do X/Y vs Z class” because we will get anywhere, cuz likewise I can say a good thief will 1v1 and win and there is no way of proving/disproving that. I could also say a sign of bad players is not recognizing the strenght of thieves, and again, that will take us nowhere.

Lets analyze this from a holistic, unbiase point of view. You made a point of saying “a thief cant uncap an unguarded point” so lets take it from there; if a poit is guarded, that means an enemy is there, so the thief will not go, that means that on other sides of the map, it is a 4v5 fight, since the person guarding the point cant leave or else the point gets uncapped.

I cant think of a class faster than thief outside combat, which means that by the time you get to the base the thief is uncapping, he will be gone, and capping time takes longer than uncapping, therefore that person either sits on point, or remains forever going back and forth, chasing a ghost.

Lets take the supposedly strongest team that won the last Pro competition; 4 D/D eles and 1 decap thief. Even there, the strength of a thief surpasses that which another D/D ele would’ve offered. If you go back to all competitions, there can be a very vaiated team, but NEVER missing a thief for the for aforementioned reasons.

if you honestly think thats ok, then perhaps your sense of what’s balanced or not needs some reviewing.

Throughout all of gw2’s history, thieves have been a very integral [mandatory] element due to their mobility, however , I think it is time to address some aspects of the class, namely the way their mobility and stealth come into play in Conquest.

I keep hearing that thieves are in a bad spot (mostly by thieves players) but they dont seem to realize the strength of basically forcing a 4v5 everywhere by constant decapping threat, or their ability to get out of vitually anything and anyone if so they wish with Sb 5 and stealth.

Are we honestly ok with this? Is it ok for a class to single handily dictate the pace of a match with only 2 abilities? I honestly dont think this translate to much fun to both the opponent or the thief himself, since there is no fighting involved at all, jsut running around all the match, “chasing” after the incapturable ….

Ok, time for feedback.

Before I begin, I want to thank the entire team for everything, you guys are working hard and we know it, enjoy your cupcakes ! (for those that have no idea what I’m talking about, go to this link https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cupcakes-for-arenanet-staff/x/12355874#/ and please donate to the cause, cupcakes for Anet, we are already at 85%)

Overall tempest feels better and snappier, however it still feels very underwhelming in some regards, namely its support role and its ability to survive long enough to do so.

This is strickly ranked PvP!!!
Build; celestial, auramancer, water/arcana/tempest. Basically trying to get as many auras as possible out. 3 shouts (except lighting one, for reasons I will later explain), Rebound and healing signet. Soldier runes. Energy/Leeching or Renewal sigils.
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Overloads;

The problem with them isn’t about numbers, although of course, numbers matter. I know it is really late to go back to the drawing board so instead lets work with what we have, the strengths and weaknesses. The risks: you have to get into near-melee range for them to have any effect, with the amount of random CC flying all over the place, even a single 1/2 daze is enough for it to lock you out for 20 seconds. This is perhaps the biggest offender. You are locked out of weapon skills and being basically sitting duck, and 1 stability stack isnt cutting it tbh.

Solutions; make the lock down increase the longer you channel. Or make the channel shorter, weaker channel but stronger after effect OR increase range.

Also, the trait Unstable Conduit needs to provide the aura at the beginning, not the end. Reward the channel with stronger after effects.

Fire damage needs to be raised a QUITE a bit, as it stands right now, locking yourself out of your main DPS attunement isn’t worth it at all, or not doing almost any DPS for 4 seconds either. Add weakness to it.

Water needs higher channel healing, less payoff heal (a bit too strong), and leave a water field instead for 3-4 seconds. Add 2 secs regen every 2 seconds for 6 secs instead of flat 8 secs. (for non auras builds).

Air seems pretty good, maybe increase it to 5 targets (?).

Earth; nerf the protection, a bit too much. Also add 2 seconds blind every 2 seconds to its effects. Could use a little more damage, in the form of bleed stacks since earth is usually condi focused.

Shouts

Skill effects are beautiful! However the effects are still very, VERY, VERY underwhelming! Outside auramancer build and or soldier runes, shouts are highly outclassed! And even as an auramancer with soldier runes, they are still very lackluster in both team support and self survival. I understand they must be weaker than cantrips, the selfish ones, but auras, outside Magnetic Aura and Shocking Aura (which do not stack in duration!) auras have little place in PvP in terms of support as compared to aegis, protection, condi removal, etc etc.

The biggest issue I found is the lack of Stunbreaker, which happens to be in the only shout that doesn’t have a corresponding thematic aura; “Eye of the Storm”.

Solutions;

“Feel the Burn”. Make it the (a?) stunbreaker. This is a must. Also, perhaps increase the base damage since fire stands for direct damage (?)

“Flash-Freeze”. Needs to be instant. In fact, all shouts should be tbh. I can’t put my finger on what makes this shout the most underwhelming. It has low CD and gives an aura so over Eye of the storm it is better, but the skill just…feels wrong. I have no way of fixing it since I dont know what makes me not like it, but neither damage nor CC is the issue, perhaps add some cool functionality (?).

“Shock and aftershock”. Again, needs to be instant. CD could use some reducing, the effects do not justify its long CD tbh. Decrease aura duration to 4 seconds since 5 might be too much, specially with lower CD. (30-35 seconds seems reasonable)

“Eye of the Storm”. The aura, cmon ! Reduce the superspeed to 3 seconds. Reduce CD to 25-30.

Rebound

We are perhaps the only class with a full line-up of underwhelming elites. On a game with Moas, Lich forms, Banners, Glints, Mass invisibility, Time Warp, etc etc, the best thing we have is a glorified warrior’s GS for running away with limited charges and that locks us out of skills.

It is ok to give us a decent elite . Right now the idea is good, but the implementation is poor. As it stands the heal is negligible, a single autoattack will down you from the hp everyone gained. It has a cast time so no clutch and cant be used while CCed.

Solution: Upon reaching 1 hp, the person becomes invulnerable for 3 seconds and gains 3-4k healing afterwards. Lasts for 7 seconds. If it fails, it gives all auras for 3-4 seconds, with a buff based on current attunement; fire 3 might, water 5 secs regen, air gives fury, earth is protection. Of course CD 180.

Traits:

Latent Stamina. Poor choice. Im sure it will be good in raids, but compared to other traits.

Gale Song; with the changes to “Eye of the Storm”, this one would be ok.

Unstable Conduit. Aura at the beginning. Buff at the end based on the attunement (refer to the reasoning for the aura before-hand at overloads section)

Speedy Conduit; superspeed isntead. Everyone is getting it, we need it more than most, specially if running staff and need to get in range for the short range overloads.

Earthe Proxy; now that it is selfish, make it so it reduces condis by 20% (?)

Harmonious Conduit: 2 stability per 2 secs.

Tempestuous Aura: Increase duration of weakness or add a blind. 20% shout CD decrease, we got none (?).

Grandmasters are ok for the most part. Maybe Lucid Singularity can stunbreak for yourself and everyone around you. (raids!)

Elemental Bastion; maybe increase the healing scaling a bit, also, base heal maybe a little bit more (33% more), BUT add a 1 secs internal CD to it since otherwise it might be too much.

Overall better the class feels in a better place, but there is still a reason why the specc isn’t very welcomed, it still feels sort of underwhelming in many regards. It loses in support to most bunkers, specially D/D ele, bunker guardian, bunker engi, cele staff ele (sad, I know). And it doesnt work for DPS since for 4 seconds you arent using any skills, and sure, you dont need to use overloads, but whats the point of it if you dont use them, the traits are still too weak to justify replacing water/arcana from most builds, leaving only 1 DPS trait left (ever since the uncalled for blinding ashes nerf, and might on cantrips, fire seems more like a poor choice really). Numbers isnt the answer, but rather some mechanics.

Lets make Tempest go from last place to first
http://strawpoll.me/5643009/r

MiniEquine.6014:

snip

Yah I know it was a joke jab, the bias part was at the toxicity. However I still wanted to make clear that reddit isnt a circlejerk for those that coudnt see his sarcasm and would legitimately believe only banned people would go there.

I vote with my wallet. I voted for both the broom and the carpet (and i didnt for the drill since it doesnt show my character).

This game is Fashion Wars 2 (for the most part). Aesthetics sell. Dont believe me? Most popular PC game out there, LoL, only sells purely aesthetics, yet it is successful.

I want mounts not to go faster, but to further aestheticize my character, like a golden horse for my human guardian, or an charrcycle for my charr engi, or a Moa for my ranger. Things that are ingame already, nothing like unicorns, no 50% movement, just character movement (25% with signet, 33% with ranger’s trait, etc, or maybe just a flat 25% so that mesmers and guardians dont feel left out, although mesmers already get theirs with HoT).

I see no harm in those, jut like I dont see anyone screaming at me when I roll around in my carpet or broom >.>

Rauderi.8706:

Mounts: Go to the other thread. It’s long, and discusses every point ever made about it.

Duels: Just about every thread on dueling gets closed, because it devolves into insults. No wonder its opponents don’t want that toxicity in game.

Reddit: It’s where jerks go to jerk when they get banned from the legit forums for being jerks. =P

Talk about bias lol.

Im in reddit yet Im not banned?

I will report anyone who start being toxic. Toxic people are toxic, regardless of what you do. They will go on ranked and AFK, they will join your AC run party and disband it, they will move the items to a place where it cant be retrieved, they will spam whispers at your until you block them. Dueling isnt inherently toxic, toxic players are. Just like guns dont kill people, people kill people.

Mounts, is another of my points, perhaps the one closest than duels, if we follow the wings/gliding timeline.

Wil leave this reddit port here, lots of insight, highly upvoted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/38uray/gw2_and_open_world_duels/

Will do! However this thread isnt abut just ueling, but rather Anet warming up the community to things some are opposed to.

Well that is one discussion that will get us nowhere, since neither has access to ways of seeing metrics. It is no secret that this game lacks some core stuff, dont try to sweet talk your way around it. Look at most big and successful MMOs with PvP and now count how many of them dont have dueling….

But that asides, lets extrapolate results. Reddit is known for having a wider, friendlier community (greatly in part with the fact that upvotes and downvotes exist, so topics rise/fall depending on popularity)

Here, one of the topics, you can see the upvotes number. (high for normal traffic, most topics dont reach above 50 points), high %, only 3 months old, before F2p announced, so less people on the forums. It is generally warmly accepted, heck, even templates, another basic feature is highly seeked there:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/38uray/gw2_and_open_world_duels/

I like reddit more since negative posts tend to be downvoted, like those hating on the wings, or those bashing gliding and forth. 120k people follow that forum, a good metric for perhaps an entire server worth of people.

edit: actually a lot more people also frequent redditm since Im not even one of thsoe 126k people following yet I constantly upvote/downvote/comment , most people I know dont follow that page either since you only follow to get news and stuff. So more than those numbers. As of now 1,6k people are currently roaming there. I think thats more than our official forums see on peek hours (?). To me those are pretty good metrics. I post on the officials cuz as the name implies, things get done here.