Guild Wars 2

I’m actually finding off hours (12am pst and later) to be much more enjoyable when it comes to soloq. Hardly run into premades and the teams are relevantly balanced, compared to primetime, which is just a terrible experience for me. Only downside is the que times tend to be a bit longer.

Justin ODell.9517:

Solstice.1097:

WE WANT MOAR DATA! even just a raw data API the community would do wonders with it.

It’s definitely on the list, but we’ve got a few things at a higher priority right now. I don’t mean to tease (or do I?), but I think people will be very happy with what we’re going to do.

During the off season there really is no point, besides the map pool. The only reason I’ve been playing ranked is so I don’t have to deal with Skyhammer or Spirit Watch.

Justin ODell.9517:

Harbinger.8637:

I know what desertions are, but what exactly are buys and forfeits? I’m guessing that has to do with 4v5 or something of the sort.

A buy means the other team lost but had deserters.
A forfeit means your team lost and had deserters.

Thanks for clearing that up.

I know what desertions are, but what exactly are buys and forfeits? I’m guessing that has to do with 4v5 or something of the sort.

It still works fine, however it’s not really optimal depending on the situation. Conditions aren’t that much of a problem in larger organized fights. Melandru and Hoelbrak with lemongrass poultry soup is generally more than enough to deal with them.

It still works fine in pug zergs and also in smaller groups, however in larger organized groups it’s not really needed.

For example, I still use it when I do small group comp because conditions are still a viable threat there, Melandru and Hoelbrak are very selfish runes that would not help the comp out at all.

5v5 heavily relies on the right comp, you can’t use the same conquest comps and expect to win. I don’t have a problem with it because all I do in WvW is small group roaming with 5 people and also 5v5 scrims, so I know what works and what doesn’t.

That being said it probably should have it’s own playlist, since a majority of players are built for conquest. Also not having build templates is troublesome too.

Tonight was quite odd, went 10-1 or something like that, lost track of it. I just find it peculiar every other day I struggled to go 50% when I soloq, yet tonight I hardly lost anything. Maybe nobody is playing idk.

Those roaming builds are for WvW, they also work better in WvW due to the ability to customize your stats. The hybrid doesn’t work as well in WvW, since conditions are somewhat useless in larger fights and also due to consumables such as lemongrass poultry soup.

For me it has become somewhat more than a game. Little about me, 26 years old, was in the Air Force for six years, now I’m a full time student, so I have a lot of time on my hands. I have dedicated a lot of time into this game (+5k hours) and countless hours on the forums with advice and other things. Some people think it’s a waste of time and my talents would be better elsewhere. However, I enjoy this game and the community. As long as I still have a passion for this game and the many friends I’ve met through it, I’ll continue to play.

In my view, I see it either being 8v8 or 10v10. I don’t see 5v5 working well in this type of game mode (if its what I think it is).

Xaylin.1860:

Even with that premise Radiant Retaliation doesn’t offer enough for its investment.

A significantly high uptime of Retaliation already requires certain traits and utilities which generally limits the appeal of Radiant Retaliation for most trait combinations. Even worse, why would you pick Radiant Retaliation if you could pull of the same Retaliation damage in a power build?

Even if you went for it, you won’t have enough points/utility slots left to ensure your survivability which is crucial to actually utilizing Retaliation as a major damage source to begin with.

• Radiant Retaliation should be way more efficient than power based Retaliation
• Radiant Retaliation should offer an additional functionality (e.g. proc Retaliation when being hit like Spiked Armor or proccing pbae Burning when Retaliation expires). Otherwise it would just not pay off even when the efficiency was increased.

I agree with this.

Even if it did work properly, coming up with a viable build isn’t, due to the trait lines. It requires you to dump six into Radiance. After that you need at least three into Virtues for Virtue of Retribution. You would also be forced to take shouts like SYG and SYS. So the only build that could be somewhat viable would be 0/6/0/4/4 or 0/6/0/2/6. However due to the limited amounts of amulets in pvp, nothing would really work, maybe Settlers. Of course in WvW it would fair better since you can customize your stats.

PoV has priority over Soldier (Trooper) runes. So PoV will convert a condition into a boon, then the rune will remove a condition.

Black Box.9312:

Arken.3725:

Agreed, even with the (small) change to Litany, no one will touch it with a 10 ft. pole. It would be nice if we could discuss directly with the devs on why these changes are being implemented.

Their justification for Litany not being instant cast makes me laugh. They want healing skills to be interruptible to provide “counterplay”, and yet we have Withdraw on thief, which is not only instant cast, but has an evade built into it. Anyone know how to interrupt that?

The part that doesn’t make any sense at all, is LoW has the most counterplay out of any healing skill. You just have to simply avoid the Guard, which isn’t very difficult to do since Guards lack soft CCs. For example, if you’re fighting an Engi, all he has to do is use Gear Shield and your heal is worthless or a Warrior using Endure Pain.

LoW is a high risk reward type of skill, which I like, however the risk far outweighs the reward. When it comes to healing skills, you want a guaranteed heal, which is why Shelter is generally the most used healing skill. You are guaranteed a solid heal, while mitigating damage.

I really like the concept behind LoW, but it’s still lacking.

0/0/2/6/6 high healing works exceptionally well in small groups and havoc. However, I do agree, it’s not really needed in larger fights, due to the amounts of fields. As for the build; Mercy isn’t worth using, and Consecration are a bit iffy due to the mobile nature of WvW.

Personally I use this: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWlsApWotCxfH8DNRCRldR8fBI2fwJkCXFAA-TFyDAB9q+zVK/GUJ4u6CA4IAU8DAQp9Hg4SAEAABwRP6RP6RPaH9mH9mH9olCwrlRA-w

Also a video if anyone is interested:

XacTactX.6709:

Harbinger.8637:

That’s what unranked is for, you can’t fault them.

No I believe that’s what hotjoin is for, there is no excuse for doing exactly what I advise them not to do because they’re clueless. I played 1500 hotjoin games before going to solo/team queue, someone should play at least 100 hotjoin matches before playing legit PvP.

Hotjoin is essentially the same thing as unranked. The only difference in being spectate and join in progress. Furthermore hotjoin teaches a lot of bad habits. I can understand players’ frustration when this happens in ranked, however it’s unranked.

It’s great that you played 1.5k hotjoin games before going into que, however times change. That’s when people only had the option of hotjoin and teamq, later soloq and customs. So telling players to start off in hotjoin was reasonable.

I’d much rather have new players go into unranked, where they can actually get some decent advice and play the game how it’s supposed to be played. Rather then them going into a hotjoin were people just abuse the spectator mode for an easy win.

That video doesn’t demonstrate the build well. Killing uplevels and players that don’t fight back isn’t something to brag about. You even had a 2v1 clip in there, which doesn’t show anything. Against any competent player this build doesn’t work well.

That’s what unranked is for, you can’t fault them.

Personally when I do open world content, I want to maximize AoE as much as possible, so I can get more tags. So staff is generally a must with either gs or hammer. 3/3/0/4/4. Using both Writ of Exaltation and Persistence, for as much AoE as possible. I usually use retreat for more mobility, PF for clears and fire fields, and Bane just for more power.

All they had to do was add the veto and ready system and soloq would have been fine. By my reasoning, they didn’t want to split the already small pvp community, so they just threw us all into one playlist. In theory this would work, however it didn’t.

Very rarely will Anet revert a decision, even if it wasn’t the best idea. They are too prideful.

Bumping to share my experience!

It took me 80 games to finally break a 50% w/l, this was all soloq. It seems like it has been getting better, however there are still blowout games. 4v5 aren’t really prevalent anymore, which is a good thing. Also I tend to play the same players over and over again, kind of annoying, however this is just due to the small pop size. Class stacking is still an issue, a lot of duo and tri classes on the same team.

I’m assuming he met to use AH, regardless, the build is lacking clears. All you have is PF and the passive on the signet, which really isn’t going to help that much. Also Battle Presences really isn’t worth using in PvP, unless you go Cleric and Absolute Resolution.

Zerker AH builds work fine for soloq. Generally though you need to go three shouts with PoV and solider runes.

Engels.8537:

As far as I know, the Ultimate Dominator title requires 50,000 kills not 250,000
wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Title -> Ultimate Dominator -> Get 50000 total kills in WvW.
And I’m around 15k kills atm, so I consider it reasonable.

And btw, sPvP titles are not handed out like candy. Sure Gladiator/Champion Slayer are like “Welcome to sPvP/tPvP, take this title”, but +Ransaker takes some serious time. And that’s fine with me.

Some intermediate titles for the Ultimate Dominator, and all the other WvW titles would be really nice tho.

PvP titles take considerable less time to get than WvW titles. One could argue before the April 2014 patch, it took longer, however you can reach r80 in a few months now with casual play.

WvW titles definitely need to be looked at. The only one that is somewhat achievable is Ultimate Dominator.

Lazeris.1725:

Thanks for all the builds I was just looking over your guide post.

How do you (or others) feel about Valkyrie gear to keep critical damage around 215-220%?

I’ve been fooling around with the stat allocations on the gear but I’m not super sure about how valuable Toughness/Armor really is in the long run or if I’m better off just going for the additional Vitality/Critical damage on valk gear.

Toughness definitely makes a difference, generally between 2.6k and 2.9k is fine for a medi build, since you won’t be in the larger fights.

When it comes to solo roaming and small group, there are a couple variants of builds:

x/6/6/x/x- Highest damage possible.
2/5/6/x/x- Again high damage, and doesn’t rely on one handed weapons as much.
6/x/6/x/x- Hybrid ( direct damage/condi)
2/1/6/1/4- Balanced
x/x/6/6/x- Most sustain
x/x/6/x/6- Most utility

For gear, zerker and solider is fine. Pure zerker is also fine, since there are Guard stacks and Force of Will.

Sigils: Fire, Air, Energy, and Bloodlust.

Runes can vary, however Pack gives you the best bang for your buck.

Warrior is obviously going to be Commando!

Extremely pleased so far. Can’t wait for more information!

Lich Form is just good, it hits like a truck (it was stronger before lol). If a Necro goes into Lich, they should always be the first target, if the whole team focuses on them it’s not really a big deal.

If it’s a 1v1 or 2v2 it’s a bit more of a problem. It’s best to have some type of block and invulnerability ready (Shelter and Renewed Focus), also having protection up helps a lot. If someone can strip the Lich’s stab, that’s also a great help.

That’s because it was thrown together at the last second. It wasn’t even in the game prior to the April 2014 patch because they knew nobody was going to reach 80 anytime soon. That’s why it looks so different compared to the other finishers, plus all the good finishers are in the gem store, but I digress, I’d love for them to revamp the dragon, however I don’t see it happening, pvp has much more pressing issues.

x/x/6/6/x is a pretty common build, however there are a lot of questionable decisions with this variant. If you have 50% CC there is no reason to take Intelligence sigil. Also that high of CC is somewhat pointless with this build, due to the low power and ferocity. Generally if you go 6 into Valor you take AH, same applies to Honor with Pure of Voice and Battle Presences.

The consumables and runes are fine. There is nothing wrong with Knight, however it would be to your advantage if you mix it. Mixing Valkyrie with Knight is generally a safe bet, same goes for Solider.

So I played quite a few games tonight, my experience was still fairly bad. I didn’t really run into many full premades, I believe, duo and tri was the most I saw. However, players’ skill levels were all over the place. Also there was a lot of class stacking still (dual thieves, mesmers, and rangers). However, I guess most of this can be blamed for the time period. I played from 1 am to 6 am pst, so the already small pvp population was even smaller.

It really depends on the team comp. For example, it worked well for Tage because both Helseth and Sizer (Mesmer and Thief) lack stab and clears. It’s a very solid build but I don’t believe it’s necessary for every comp.

Also Hammer and Scepter are strong atm. With all these cele builds running around. There is a lack of stab, since you don’t have bunker guards any more with AoE stab. So you can take advantage of all the CC they bring.

Conqueror doesn’t even have a title, you just get ap. Champion Brawler is the one with the title.

That being said, I don’t see why it shouldn’t have a title.

For me soloq is beyond frustrating now. I use to love soloq, I had over 1.5k games on the old lb while still maintaining a 65% w/l. Now almost every game I want to pull my hair out. 5-10 since they reset them. If I’m not going up against premades, then I get completely clueless players.

I don’t even want to soloq under this new system anymore, my experience has been terrible.

It depends on the situation, in larger coordinated groups you really don’t need it as much. Since a lot of your healing comes from blasting water fields and AH doesn’t really scale well with it. However, in smaller groups it’s much more beneficial. When it comes to gear, Cleric is generally your best bet with it. However, it helps if you mix it with other sets like cele or solider, so your vit isn’t so low. Runes, you can use standard things like; Trooper, Hoelbrak , and Melandru.

I personally use nomad weapons and armor with cleric trinkets. However, my situation is a bit different. My group is usually taking on much larger groups, so it helps to have that extra vit and toughness.

Healing power doesn’t have diminishing returns so you can technically never have too much. However, a good spot would be around ~870, this is when your Selfless Daring will heal for 1000. The higher your healing power goes, the more you have to sacrifice other stats.

Reduce CD on the shield skills was nice, but it was not needed. There are more appropriate ways to fix it. Same goes for torch.

Then there’s Litany of Wrath, nobody is still going to use it, I could go on a long rant about this, but I’ll save it for another day.

Helm looks great, only one I’ll probably get.

Booms.2594:

Darnis.4056:

Based Devs.
Good Changes Overall.
Reduced TTK for Glass by nerfing Might.
Some passive play nerfed(Battle,Nightmare),
Some underpowered weaponsets buffed..
This meta is probably over..

But Some changes make me shake my head..
Add More passive play with new Sigil of Fire™, now available for condition classes.
Buff Duel build ranger to also be effective in team fights.
Buff Medi guard which is a mostly a faceroll class which hard counters Zerkers.

We did not get buffed.

He’s probably talking about Litany of Wrath buff, that nobody is going to use still.

Overall decent changes, we’ll see how it plays out.

Chaith.8256:

Harbinger.8637:

Searing Flames is underwhelming, hardly any Guard will take it over something like Blind Exposure. Might is applied so fast in this meta, that stripping it every ten seconds isn’t going to do much.

If it actually strips might 100% reliably, it’s not underwhelming when you consider how much god mode you’re denying when stripping an Ele or War’s might every 10s so they can never go past 3-6!

This is all in theory based on Eura claiming it prioritizes might.

It does prioritizes might and that’s where part of the problem lies. For example, lets say you’re fighting a Guard. That Guard probably has protection or stab, those are boons you want to remove. However, you can’t because chances are that Guard has at least one stack of might, and that’ll get removed instead.

The only way this trait is somewhat decent is if you pair it with nullification. It’s not a good trait and it needs to be redesigned. There’s a reason a majority of the players don’t use it.

Searing Flames is underwhelming, hardly any Guard will take it over something like Blind Exposure. Might is applied so fast in this meta, that stripping it every ten seconds isn’t going to do much.

He has a point, besides the reward tracks, there’s really nothing. Ranked and unranked are pretty much the same thing atm. I know play for fun, but after +7k games of conquest, it’s not as fun as it use to be.

More people might be interested in pvp, if we haven’t been playing only conquest for over two years.

Yes, more exclusive pvp rewards (titles, finishers, weapons, and armor). Just no more llamas…

Still the best gif ever!

Hattoni.8597:

Most often I’m in a team with condi/terrormancer (I think it’s standart 06404 with perlex runes, but I’m not 100% sure now), sometimes sb/d+p thief joins us (I’m really sorry, but I don’t know what traits he uses now, I’ll ask him tomorrow). I know it’s not very good comp, but we’re doing it just for fun, nothing really serious. But it’s something on which we spend much time now, so after few hours of roaming we decided to be a team, not just 3 guys standing next to each other. Also, they might change their build of course, but I’m the first who need change. Our main problem was that we were 3 guys fighting for ourselves only, now we are trying to think and play as a team.

Also, I can play any of guardian builds, I don’t care if it’s medi or ah or whatever, I like playing guardian with any build. I can use any gear, runes and sigils so full zerker isn’t a must-have for me.

Sorry for responding late. However, you got solid advice, from all the other posts. All those builds are viable and would work well. I’ll just throw in one more, this is mainly a support build. The main focus of this build is by providing support through; heals, cleanses, boons, CCs, and peeling for teammates. Damage isn’t the main focus, yet more damage is always helpful.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWlsApWotCxfH8DNRCRldR8fBI2fwJkCXFAA-TVyDABXp8bQlgZqWBAHBA80FU8DAQp9HqUVFIuEAkCwrlRA-w

I asked this before, it’s not coming back.

RIP Capricorn

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Question-to-devs-about-map-voting/first#post4585020

Farzo.8410:

Didn’t Tome of Courage have stability in early stages of the game?

Yes, they removed it and replaced it with retaliation on Wrath and protection on Courage. Still never understood why they made this change, it wasn’t overperforming. Now you have to take a trait just to make tomes viable.

It’s been tried on AH and Virtues bunker and it generally doesn’t work. The only thing that you gain that is noticeable is vit and crit chance. The crit chance can be useful for Vigorous Precision, however this only procs every ten seconds, so just running intelligence is more than enough. Guards also can’t really stack might like ele and engi can, so you’re damage is still going to be consistently low.

The hit to healing power is actually a big deal, it might not seem like much, but you have to remember Selfless Daring only has a .5 coefficient pvp compared to the 1.0 in wvw/pve. Plus things like regen and Empower also greatly benefit from higher healing power.

When it comes to AH bunker you want either Cleric or Solider. The cele build you posted will work. However, by my reasoning, it’s not really optimal, especially in the current meta.

You have a couple of different options. If you want to run medi, then 0/1/6/1/6 is a solid choice for small group comp. It’s a medi build that also brings a lot of utility. When it comes to AH, 0/1/6/6/1 is always a safe bet. You can still run zerker in it, so your damage will still be decent, yet it still brings support and sustain.

However, if I read your post right, your teammates are a necro and thief. Necro needs a lot of babysitting to be effective. They’ll generally be the first one focused. They need a lot of peels and support, so going a 0/0/2/6/6 might be a better choice.

It really comes down to your team composition, if you have more information about that, I can give you advice.