So it’s not a well-kept secret that necros get kittened frequently furing matches. Looking at plaguelands, it actually seems like a great way to ward off melee attackers (or at least take them down with you). Thieves, revs, and warriors really can’t afford to cleave inside it, especially if you’re a power necro. That’s the upside I’m seeing here.
again the problem is PI spamm…..
put cd to it 5 sec and solve any problemPI only procs if you get interrupted, something that in 90% of all cases is completely avoidable….
This is a thoughtless response, and there’s no way you can prove it. Headshot with PI counters a few builds outright; necros and revs get destroyed by it due to long casting times on skills, and in rev’s case the inability to respond at range. Meditrapper is somewhat countered by it once cooldowns are exhausted, but that’s more just its lack of sustain. Very easy to interrupt F2.
PI needs a short ICD, like 3 seconds. Getting multiple stacks of it because you mashed a button is low-skill, idk why you’d defend that.
Make Shield Master reflection only affect shield’s block and turn Defy Pain into a 3 sec block.
That would be a massive buff to Defy Pain. Defy Pain only stops damage and not effects (like CC) but blocks stop both damage and effects.
But a nerf to mace’s block, to make warriors don’t laugh at DH and Rangers.
W: I pop my Endure Pain!
DH: Nice try, W. I active Deflecting Shot!Deflecting shot still knocks back warriors with Endure Pain or mace #2 up on the live servers.
Well it depends on if this is a channeled block like Shelter or a passive one like Aegis. If it’s channeled then it’s a nerf for sure.
Idk what you mean by “Unblockable skills NEEDS to be toned down.” Yeah sometimes when I get ganked on necro I think that necro needs defensive buffs. Then I take a deep breath and realize that the class is in a good place right now.
Except necro isn’t in a good place. Just look at videos of Nos playing compared to videos of other ESL players. Nos on his main struggles way harder than what his peers on other classes do.
If it wasn’t for corrupts necro would have no value at all.
Depends on how you define struggle. Objectively he did well this season overall. If you think “can’t win 1v1s easily” means struggling then yeah you’re right… but is that necro’s role? Also he duoed with Naru a lot, a non-support; necro + support is a very strong duo at all levels of play. I would enjoy being more independent on necro, but necro’s damage is quite high when you take into consideration its ability to counter all types of defense aside from invuns (has unblockable shout, can strip protection and resistance, can trasfer condis). It’s just a different playstyle, if you judge its ability to 1v1 like a warrior you’re gonna think it’s really bad.
Think about it this way: if we went back to team queue, would necro be “struggling” as hard?
Idk what you mean by “Unblockable skills NEEDS to be toned down.” Yeah sometimes when I get ganked on necro I think that necro needs defensive buffs. Then I take a deep breath and realize that the class is in a good place right now.
Thermite got in the top 10 this season playing DH. I believe Saiyan was around top 50, he was definitely inside top 30 during the season. The only “unblockable skill” that should be giving you any trouble is signet of might warrior. Just F2 away, kite, and once it’s over you can face the warrior. Learn to play the game instead of whining about how there are some counters to your class.
This is a sPvP thread
Alright so I’ve been playing dagger main hand for the last two weeks with marauder amulet. I’m really torn on it; on the one hand, its boon corruption, healing, and LF generation are great! On the other hand, its range sucks hard, and there’s a reason it’s not meta. The LF generation from the autoattack is great… except for the fact that necro can’t just blindly autoattack. I only get to use it on downed bodies. So here’s some suggestions for dagger buffs, not all of them should be implemented together:
- Change dagger autoattack to 300 range. This alone would make it a much more competitive option
- Add lifesteal to autoattack and dagger 2. This seems like a no-brainer considering it fits with the overall “necrotic” theme of the dagger itself. Dagger 2’s damage should be lifesteal instead.
- Add either chill or some high amount of vulnerability to Dagger 3, like 8 stacks for 10 seconds.
That’s it! Dagger’s autoattack needs to be revisited most, it’s almost unusable in sPvP and its melee range doesn’t even make sense with dagger 2 and 3 being 600 range.
Yeah I proposed a simple solution a while ago: give static amount of points for wins/losses, rather than dynamic amounts based on opponents’ relative skill level. Here’s the Full comment
You’re wrong. Shatterstone is fine. 2.2k is a lot of damage and it can’t get reflected like water auto, it applies vuln unlike water auto, and it’s a good aoe unlike water auto.
I’m not wrong, it’s an opinion. I’d love to see you hit something other than a downed body with Shatterstone, it’s slow and small. People often joke and complain about this skill because it’s weak and doesn’t fit into a FA ele build very well. Phantaram described using Shatterstone as “Sometimes it’s the difference between doing nothing and pressing a button instead.?” It’s really UP and I fail to see what you gain by pretending it’s perfectly fine.
Arcane Fury: Traits that proc on swapping to the attunement of the spec they’re in is amplified. Healing Ripple: Healing is changed from 1302 to 2100, radius is increased to 360. Electric Discharge: Damage increased from 249 (without power) to 426. Sunspot: Damage increased from 178 to 426, applies 1 burn for 2 seconds (without expertise), and radius is increased to 360. Earthern Blast: Damage increased from 80 to 426, cripple increased to 5 seconds, applies 2 bleed for 5 seconds.
Arcane Precision: change the burn from 1 to 2 seconds, and make the chance on critical hit 50%
Elemental Contengency: Increase the retaliation to 5 seconds, increase the vigor to 5 seconds, increase the protection to 4 seconds, reduce the cooldown to 7 seconds.
Elemental Enchantment: Increase the duration added to boons to 20%.
Final Shielding: Arcane Shield’s cooldown decreased to 60, to match the utility skill.
Evasive arcana: Flame Burst’s damage is increased from 27 to 210. Cleansing Wave’s condition cleanse is increased to 2 to match the skill in dagger offhand. Shock wave’s damage is increased to 256, the cripple is increased to 5 seconds. The radius of all of these is increased to 360.
Elemental surge: Whole under the effects of Arcane Lightning, you ignore weakness.
Also, making FA viable is mostly dependent on just improving damage values on weapon skills. Air is great, earth is bad, fire is great except you can barely land any hits, water is mediocre (but if Shatterstone were more useful maybe that would be different).
False. All of what you just said was false. Fresh air’s burst is completely fine, the problem is the DPS. That’s what these buffs are for. Also, Air is great, Earth is #1, Water is amazing and earth is fine. (Earth = invuln, 3 condi cleanse/cripple/blast finisher/high damage hit. Water = Cleanse/regen/chill/daze. Fire = Condi cleanse/burst/burn/might, Air= High damage, blind, good dps, projectile block, unblockable knockdown)
I didn’t mean the non-Air elements were bad in general, but bad from a DPS standpoint. They are great from a utility standpoint. Though the need to use lightning flash in order to land a phoenix burst kind of makes lightning strike both mandatory and useless as a utility, since ultimately it’s used for damage, not utility.
Arcane Fury: Traits that proc on swapping to the attunement of the spec they’re in is amplified. Healing Ripple: Healing is changed from 1302 to 2100, radius is increased to 360. Electric Discharge: Damage increased from 249 (without power) to 426. Sunspot: Damage increased from 178 to 426, applies 1 burn for 2 seconds (without expertise), and radius is increased to 360. Earthern Blast: Damage increased from 80 to 426, cripple increased to 5 seconds, applies 2 bleed for 5 seconds.
Arcane Precision: change the burn from 1 to 2 seconds, and make the chance on critical hit 50%
Elemental Contengency: Increase the retaliation to 5 seconds, increase the vigor to 5 seconds, increase the protection to 4 seconds, reduce the cooldown to 7 seconds.
Elemental Enchantment: Increase the duration added to boons to 20%.
Final Shielding: Arcane Shield’s cooldown decreased to 60, to match the utility skill.
Evasive arcana: Flame Burst’s damage is increased from 27 to 210. Cleansing Wave’s condition cleanse is increased to 2 to match the skill in dagger offhand. Shock wave’s damage is increased to 256, the cripple is increased to 5 seconds. The radius of all of these is increased to 360.
Elemental surge: Whole under the effects of Arcane Lightning, you ignore weakness.
Also, making FA viable is mostly dependent on just improving damage values on weapon skills. Air is great, earth is bad, fire is great except you can barely land any hits, water is mediocre (but if Shatterstone were more useful maybe that would be different).
Anet can we buff/change this? It’s almost impossible to land and I get like 2.2k hits with it. If you don’t want it to be a DPS skill then give it some support. Just a bad damage skill is pointless and it’s better to use the autoattack, which is sad.
Arcane Fury: Traits that proc on swapping to the attunement of the spec they’re in is amplified. Healing Ripple: Healing is changed from 1302 to 2100, radius is increased to 360. Electric Discharge: Damage increased from 249 (without power) to 426. Sunspot: Damage increased from 178 to 426, applies 1 burn for 2 seconds (without expertise), and radius is increased to 360. Earthern Blast: Damage increased from 80 to 426, cripple increased to 5 seconds, applies 2 bleed for 5 seconds.
Arcane Precision: change the burn from 1 to 2 seconds, and make the chance on critical hit 50%
Elemental Contengency: Increase the retaliation to 5 seconds, increase the vigor to 5 seconds, increase the protection to 4 seconds, reduce the cooldown to 7 seconds.
Elemental Enchantment: Increase the duration added to boons to 20%.
Final Shielding: Arcane Shield’s cooldown decreased to 60, to match the utility skill.
Evasive arcana: Flame Burst’s damage is increased from 27 to 210. Cleansing Wave’s condition cleanse is increased to 2 to match the skill in dagger offhand. Shock wave’s damage is increased to 256, the cripple is increased to 5 seconds. The radius of all of these is increased to 360.
Elemental surge: Whole under the effects of Arcane Lightning, you ignore weakness.
Are you proposing all of these? Might be a bit excessive, including Electric Discharge buff.
That totally reminds me of how PvP used to be before HoT got introduced. The toxicity right now compared to back then, has had a huuuuge increase. By the simple reason no one wants to play together with them.
Which made a way better and healthy PvP environment. The current system encouraged “me, me, me” and “I, I, I” way too much. And no matter being toxic, friendly, winning or losing, you’ll get the rewards anyhow, at the end of the day.
I repeat myself, as I have done many times before.. Why.. the hell.. would you make a team oriented game mode solo/duoqueue? It ruined the mentality and the whole PvP scene. And don’t tell me something like “uh, because there was no competition back then”, because, really, is there now?
You couldnt be more wrong.
It has nothing to do with solo and duo queue.
It has everything to do with lacking popularity of pvp in and GW2 as a whole. This results in poor matchmaking and conflicts of interests. People who grind for achs, do dailies, are there for the first time and people who try to be competetive are all in the same games.
THIS creates tension.
This is one of those usual “no it HAS to be only one reason” kinds of arguments. Yeah it does have to do with solo/duo, which punishes people that actually have social skills and are team-oriented, and it also has to do with low population. I’d prefer toxic people with no social skills to leave and have a smaller population of people who want to play on teams and improve.
I don’t care about ESL honestly. If people don’t want to play ESL then why care if a game has it or not? Prestige? Because the game is considered “balanced?” Because the game has talented players to compete against?
Balance will never be perfect or easy to achieve. I can play chess if I want perfect balance after all. Talented players might be a draw but I wouldn’t want to play against people who spend all their waking hours on it. People who care about ESL and don’t play ESL are like disappointed sports fans who like watching more than they like playing the game.
It would be nice to spectate ongoing ranked games. Idk how much effort that would require from developers though.
My character is a Thief and every time I go up against a Warrior, or Guardian they feel like a raid boss.
Guardian- Non stop blocking, heals, and if I try to escape they just teleport to me and kill me.
Warrior- Non stop healing, invulnerability, and kills me in 2 seconds.
Should I just avoid these two classes?
Thief isn’t a 1v1 profession so yeah you shouldn’t be trying to do that, especially against those. In reality if you want to learn how to beat a particular build then you have to play that build.
Whats wrong with The Schoolmasters?
It will never be as good as Dancing With Your Dad
Alright what’s up with needing 3 people from a guild team in order to show the team name in matches? Solo/Duo has killed this! I didn’t make Dennis and the Rodmans for nothing: we are important and the world needs to see it.
Funny thing is the fanboys of the solo que system are content to go down with the ship with this new system… I agree without team content the game is in serious trouble
Except team queue messed hard with matchmaking. It kinda seems like Automated Tournaments are the only way to fix stuff.
+1, absolutely correct. Right now there’s no way to objectively prove that you’re the best or near it, RNG is too big a factor in solo/duo queue.
@Huskyboy.1053
Many thanks! I’d write something reflective, but I think I’ll get more out of your tips by doing more queues and watching what’s happening as I fight these builds.
Best of luck. You’ll learn more about how to beat these specific builds by playing as them rather than against them. Watching streamers (Sindrener for thief, maybe Drazeh’s past broadcasts for warrior) will help you tremendously. Nos streams power necro so watching him will be very helpful to you. Obindo and some others stream warrior but I’m not up to date. For DH there aren’t many high-profile streamers, but Meditrapper is easy to understand and counter. Symbolic is a bit trickier. Feel free to send me a letter in-game and I can help you practice.
Funny thing is the fanboys of the solo que system are content to go down with the ship with this new system… I agree without team content the game is in serious trouble
The game or PvP mode? Because was just playing GW2 earlier today. The only complaints I was getting was from PvP players in HotM. My PvE guilds that refuse to kick me claims that the game is great.
And since this “IS” a PvE MMO. I don’t get how the game is going to be in serious trouble. Just because a side attraction to the game, that is not supported much is having issues. For every PvPer having bad times with GW2. Their are at least 10 PvEers laughing it up and screaming to ANet to just shut up and take their money.
I even dare to say that even if all of the dedicated WvWers and PvPers all left the game. ANet and GW2 more then likely not even notice much. At worst case, ANet may lose 3% to 5% of the total GW2 population across the whole game. I don’t know about you. But that doesn’t sound like it’ll put GW2 into trouble. Now if was found broken and messing with the PvE side of the game Anet is forced to scrabble to fix that stuff right away. Or risk losing a big portion of the game. Where if the same item was broken in WvW or PvP modes, ANet can just push it to the back burner till they feel like getting around to it on their spare dev time. Just saying.
True, but PvP players of any sort are more valuable players than PvE players. Story content gets exhausted, the desire to compete does not (unless the game does not reward ambitious players). Losing people that log in every day for a year or so like myself, people who will buy things from the gem store to show off (or extra character slots to be more competitive) are better than casual PvErs from a revenue standpoint. You might be right that the PvP population is low enough that it wouldn’t hurt their bottom line too much, but MMO devs are smart to pay more attention to the competitive crowd if they have an in-game store like GW2 does.
Yeah the fact that we’re lacking team pvp is killing this game since it’s a team game mode.
Hello, thanks Dustin for writing this up – currently studying the Necromancer in Season 6 and it’s a lot different from the bunker builds and classes I’m used to run. In all honesty, I’m pretty much used to bum-rushing and fighting on-point (War, Engi, Guard, Ele), so what I’m used to is absolutely counter-intuitive to my Necro’s well being (read: just another scrub).
Granted there are some impressive moments when – anyone/monkey can do this honestly – you find the moment to dive into a team-fight, target someone for boon-stripping and wipe everything inside of ten seconds (like you said, killing some guy, killing his rezzer, killing whoever is unfortunate enough to be caught in the spins and AoE)…
I’m just struggling to kite and run from half the team trying to gank me when they see me a mile away. I have to work on my non-existent kiting skills.
This guide is giving me a lot of helpful tips.
P.S. If anyone from the Necromancer community can chime in regarding matchups like Dragonhunters, D/P Thieves and Power/Condi Warriors, that would be awesome.
I can give advice about power boonstrip. Against DH, trigger their passive trait with either warhorn 4 or staff 5, make sure to step on the trap to trigger it. I usually use staff 5 for that. That will give them stability, corrupt that and it turns into fear. Switch to axe/warhorn and hit them with axe 2 while they’re feared. From there you should expect longbow 2 or 3 if they haven’t used it yet, be prepared to dodge True Shot and look for the animation. If you feel like you have enough LF then you can go into shroud at this point, if not then depending on your positioning you can try to hit them with axe 3. Remember that they get protection when Test of Faith is triggered, so don’t burn your high-damage skills on them without first corrupting it. This is a winning matchup if you walk into it with around 5k LF or so. If you’re empty when you start then you have to play carefully. Make sure you know the animations for True Shot and Spear of Justice so you can dodge them.
Against thief, you usually lose. To win you need a good bit of LF to start. Things you need to do to win, not necessarily in this order:
- Corrupt their Fury into blind
- Land Axe 2
- Dodge Steal
- Land Staff 5 and Warhorn 4. Remember that Warhorn 4 is 600 range, you can land that when it would seem the thief is out of range.
- Land most of your shroud skills
- Don’t get interrupted a lot
There’s no point in me giving you a rundown of the fight like I did against DH, the thief mostly controls this matchup. If you can’t anticipate when they’re going to use certain skills then you will always lose against thief. Remember that if they haven’t used Steal yet then LOSing them isn’t safe. Letting them steal your stability is ok if you’re going to corrupt it right away, if not then it’s a bad move.
Against warrior, it’s pretty easy. Stay at range, kite a lot, corrupt their stability (they get it in Berserk mode), and don’t waste high-damage skills when one of their Endure Pains is up. Really it’s just about proper kiting, timing your corruptions well, and landing your CCs. Pro-tip: your CCs are unblockable so use them when the warrior is using shield 5. Also it’s ok to use axe 2 if you need LF but the warrior is damage-immune. Axe 2 has a low-CD so it’s spammable.
You mean in the pond between the two spawn points? I have no idea but it’s probably not new.
A small tip when fighting people using that shield. Dont get inside someones hitbox or let them in your hitbox because it messes with the shield and pretty much allows someone to hit you from any angle. Probably has something to do with how the server sees player positions.
This is an important tip. When I’m playing symbolic versus another DH, if they’re standing on top of a symbol but have SoC up and are facing me, my symbol doesn’t do any damage. If they are facing away from me and on the symbol, it damages them. Tbh I think that SoC shouldn’t block AoE but that’s just me.
I’d like to see the percent of team screenshot and not just the one where you got top stats.
Yeah that’s pretty important. I like looking at the stats when i get top damage; when I’m playing DPS and 2-3 other people on my team are also playing DPS, and I get 26% of team damage, that’s fine. When I get 35%, I’m carrying.
There’s only so much that match making algorithms can do, but it’s follies are further excaberated by low population. You need better players, but not all of them read internet forums or are motivated to improve themselves so I think the correct direction would be to create annoyingly visible alerts on screen that tell people what they’re doing wrong (or deceptively helpful tips so you’re not demoralizing) without interfering with their visibility on the fights.
This is a good idea. General info like “you haven’t gotten top offense in the last 8 games. Are you fighting off-point frequently or standing on-point instead of rotating to help your teammates?” could be helpful. It would have to be class-specific though since there’s different playstyles depending on your build.
Yeah if you exclusively get top in 2 categories or more, that generally means you outcontributed your teammates. Only one, like top damage, just means you played your role correctly. I also think stats like rezzes should count for more since that’s tough to pull off and a team play, whereas top damage is pretty negligible.
I’m a returnee to pvp.
I don’t want to have to test this out, I should be able to find this information somewhere right??I was chastised for using ranged from inside the capture point to cleave a downed player. My teammate indicated you get 1 point for cleave, 5 for a stomp.
Is this true and is there some place I can read about specifics like this?I really appreciate your help and hope to see you on the field.
Your teammate is quite uninformed. I don’t usually say that but it’s provably false that you get more/less points if you cleave or stomp, they’re spreading false information for no good reason. It’s the same amount of points for all kills, 5.
Sometimes stomping is better than cleaving and vice versa. Power revs, power GS warrior, and symbolic guards are better for cleaving, most anyone else should stomp if they have the chance. That being said, if you’re stomping thief or mesmer then you’re doing it wrong, thief will teleport out of range, mesmer will negate the stomp. So it’s very situational.
I use: “If we start to lose mid, go play side nodes” and it turns out to be quite efficient. Rotation is cruicial if the enemy team’s combat capabilities are greater.
Winner winner chicken dinner. I’ll be using this.
If you ever watched Helseths streams, especially the 1v1s he used as practise or time filling while waiting to queue pop you’d see a slightly disturbing realisation. To get a kill he pretty much had to do an excellent continuum split moa burst, usually using portal to allow him to get back to where he ended the split to keep the pressure up. If it failed, which wasn’t uncommon then he pretty much couldn’t do too much until he had continuum split again.
Put simply mesmer atm is carried by moa, if elites weren’t reset by CS you’d see the power of mesmer drop very significantly. As much as I love the uniqueness of moa and how funny it can be across the game (srsly moa the wargs in the raid wing 3 escort, it’s hilarious) part of me thinks the game and class would be better off without the skill.
It props up the profession with portal to such an extreme that the only way a mesmer would not be viable with them is if there was an apex predator that would literally jump and kill them before they even got to a node. That isn’t a good balance state at all.
Practically every class/build is “propped up” by 1-2 key skills, Rev being the exception because it’s not being propped up, it already fell down. Where would thief be without Basi, the unblockable shareable CC on a low CD? Constantly running away from every fight. Where would DH be without ToF and a reset on its virtues? Dead in less than 30 seconds. I’m not saying your argument is illegitimate, it’s just applicable to almost every meta build. Some skills, especially elites, contribute more to the success of the build that others. That’s not unique to mesmer, only a few builds can have the elite changed out and still be fine (Engi’s sneak gyro being an example). And yeah Continuum Split is OP as has been pointed out many times before, that’s the real power creep here, not moa or portal. Honestly CS “props up” Chronomancer more than anything else.
I’ve never been able to climb on Mesmer. Why is that?
It’s because Mesmer lacks the tools to carry high level games.
Compared to an ideally played Necro, a Mesmer offers very little other than 1v1 potential and moa, and mesmer still struggles to 1v1 dh and engi, and stalemates ele and ranger most of the time. Mesmer is essentially just a continuum split moa bot and a portal placer.
We need to return to the good old 2014 shatter meta where mesmer actually did damage and could carry games in the way that a thief could, rather than push far, leave portal, run mid, moa, go far, only to have your team wipe.
You already named the tools that allow Mesmer to carry high-level games: top-notch 1v1 potential via F5 and moa. That is mesmer’s niche. On top of that there is portal, which allows team plays in a way that rev/thief’s mobility does not. Those are the reasons to take mesmer, they are compelling reasons. I don’t disagree that power mes could use a slight buff but condi mesmer is fine. Helseth was one of the top players in S5 so clearly your inability to climb is due to your lack of skill at Mesmer. Watch more Helseth, find a good duo, duel more, and you will climb.
Ohhhhhk these responses have gotten really off-topic, if you want to debate the popular “thief goes close at start” strategy then start your own thread. If anybody has anything to contribute to the copypasta then please do so.
The Anet team added Stronghold to ranked, but took it out prior to S5 because it was easily farmed by premades. That was also true of Conquest and Anet made the solo/duo queue to compensate, but inexplicably didn’t add Stronghold back in.
I mentioned that to make the point that Anet had an interest in diversifying sPvP more, but seems to have forgotten about that. The small sPvP team has many things to focus on, like improving matchmaking, changing the league system, and class balancing, and as a result new game modes seem to have fallen by the wayside. There are far more “ugh i hate DH/Warrior REEEEE” threads than threads asking for new game modes, so that’s where they focus their limited resources. If you’re looking for a response from the dev team then just sit tight, they don’t directly communicate very often.
Oh I think majority of people already have some of those ready. For example: “Thief close.” is pretty common one.
I’m and idealist so sometimes I type: “Pls don’t wipe mid at start.”
Sometimes they listen.In all seriousness, I don’t think writing a tip at the start of match will help that much. If you get team that needs to be told that it’s better to leave point than die on it, then you’ve already lost the game.
Yeah my point was to come up with a copypasta, i.e. something that various people can just copy/paste. It would standardize this advice rather than having people try and come up with a good one individually.
Everyone already knows to target necros, but you call the target that messed up. Called targets all over the place means no one pays attention to them.
Very true. Occasionally I remember to say something like “attack the target that’s called, don’t retarget randomly,” but I think that goes over people’s heads. I don’t often find that this is an issue though, usually the problem is that I’m the only person who calls and follows targets. As to the “everyone knows to target necros” yeah they do, but if the necro is off-point and a guard is on-point then oftentimes people will just attack the guard because they’re nearer. Again, just because people “know” something doesn’t mean that they’ll remember that piece of information or act on it when they need to.
Well that’s what I mean, just because you generally “know” something doesn’t mean you’re going to remember it when you need to. Source
If you say it at the beginning of the match then it will be top-of-mind for everyone on your team (that reads chat). Like I said it won’t solve all bad behaviors, but it will be a small improvement. Covering the basics increases the chances that your teammates will make basic smart decisions.
I don’t know but I’ve had the same problem. And the client will crash on reload multiple times. Usually if I disconnect my ethernet cord then reconnect, the client doesn’t crash again. And I don’t have time to send the bug report usually since I’m starting a match :/
Usually when I load into a match, I’ll say something to the effect of “focus target, focus necro” etc. General advice that you’d think most people know, but many don’t remember. Since Anet won’t give us a sPvP tutorial, and people often don’t remember things even if they “already know” it, can we brainstorm an all-purpose, 2-sentence copypasta to use before matches? It’s not relevant in high-plat, but judging from all the posts from good players on this forum, basic conquest advice is needed from bronze to mid-plat.
I’d start with “Focus the target always, 2-cap not 3-cap, defend points after capture (don’t leave it open), kite off-point if you would die on-point.”
It won’t solve all bad behaviors, but if the same good advice were passed around constantly then at least 5% of people I see regularly would improve a bit. People can improve their dueling skills in hotjoin by asking “what did I do wrong” and having a single, knowledgeable person say exactly what. With conquest it’s a lot harder to figure out what your mistakes were over a 12-minute match, and teammates tend to blame each other.
I thought quickness could be nice since a staff-user themself probably wouldn’t benefit that much from quickness and thus it would be primarily supportive, although resistance is probably the best boon alongside quickness as well (in fact Resistance is arguably stronger). Resistance fits the defensive support theme of the staff, but it may be a bit too strong for a weapon skill. I still think like 2 seconds of superspeed would be perfect in this case since it fits the stationary symbol more than a buff that stacks.
Vigor is already applied by the longbow’s symbol.Honestly I think the staff’s auto-should just be completely replaced. If it gets healing, it’d probably be a really low amount because its area of effect is so huge. I’d kill to have something like Water Blast or Light of Judgment replace Wave of Farming.
I like the wave though I’m biased because I want to use this in a symbolic build, but it’s currently not really competitive. If its goal is to heal allies then it should stay a skill that doesn’t lock onto enemies though, so projectiles are kinda meh.
The boon duration increase is not reflected in either weapon skill or utility skill tooltips.
I think they should go a lot further on the staff changes. Literally the only reason some people like the auto-attack is because they use it to farm, which is honestly quite sad. I don’t think speeding up the attack would change that much, and I don’t think it makes it more of a support weapon like it’s supposed to be either.
The whole point of the staff is to support, so increasing the damage on its symbol seems like a meh buff when they could simply just make it grant a better boon (like short durations of quickness or superspeed).
I agree on the mace but I’m not sure if the scepter justifiably deserves any buffs.
As for the hammer, I find that symbol on auto-attack to be quite interesting personally. Without it the auto-attack would be extremely bland. The weapon itself is quite interesting, it just might need some buffs.
I think quickness would be a bit overpowered :o but it does need to be a boon, since otherwise the Honorable Staff trait would be useless. Either Vigor or Resistance are the only remaining unique options, I’d support Resistance since it’s such a limited application, but Vigor would be more in-keeping with the Honor line. If it were Resistance then it would allow bunker guards to spec out of Valor for once, which would be nice.
I mentioned a buff to the staff AA simply because it’s an inferior version of the scepter AA. Slower, shorter range, slightly less damage. The only thing it has going for it is that it’s not vulnerable to projectile hate, that’s it. At the very least it should do higher damage or have similar cast time since it’s limited to 600 range, though it could heal instead for like 200 baseline with a 1.0 heal coefficient. But healing would only be viable if it keeps the 1s casting time.
I’ve been playing symbolic lately and noticed that a few main-hand weapons are pretty subpar compared to sword and longbow. Here’s what I’d propose to bring them in line:
Staff
- Change autoattack to have same speed as scepter. Currently it occurs much less frequently despite having the same casting time.
- Reduce Symbol of Swiftness CD to 10s. Right now it’s no better than Symbol of Punishment yet has a much longer CD. Its boon is crappy enough (why do I need swiftness while standing still?) so at least let me take advantage of the damage. I wouldn’t be opposed to increasing the damage by around 15%, no more than that.
Scepter
- Reduce Chains of Light CD to 15s. Currently it’s a skill that only immobilizes and nothing else yet has an incredibly long CD. Either that or make it unblockable, though I prefer the former. I guess the immob could be increased to 3s instead but I think a CD reduction is the best option.
Mace
- Reduce cast time on Symbol of Faith. It’s wayyyy out of line with other symbol-producing skills. I think 3/4s cast time with very little aftercast would be fine.
Hammer
- The weapon is basically unusable without Judge’s Intervention -> Ring of Warding, which itself has a long CD. At the moment, why would I play hammer in order to use that combo for +1s when I could just play thief?
- The AA’s symbol should be switched to Hammer 2, which should have its CD increased to around 8s, and the blast finisher from 2 should be added to the end of the Hammer AA chain. It’s too much work to only get that symbol at the end of the AA chain, realistically your target has to be perma-stunlocked or immobed in order to pull off even a single chain. This is Guardian, not Warrior.
I know you can potentially get precursors if you put 4 exotic weapons in the mystic forge, what should I do with exotic armor?
I am NA, otherwise I would. However if we’re limiting it to fighting on a capture point, where you’re actively trying to cap, then I have the advantage in the fight. Good luck sitting on point with your melee-range attacks while I hit you from 900. Range and the ability to keep range is what makes S/F a decent matchup against warrior, you can kite endlessly with LF and superspeed from air attunement.
Ok, lets do like this…. If we are dueling we are mostly on a side node so:
1 lot of side point have something for hide behinde making obstrutced most of Ele skills, so I can Easy decap/cap ignoring the Ele. So a point for Warrior.
2 if the point is already mine I can just hide behinde something waiting for you to come in the node.
If with Ele you come in the node for win it in melee range vs a Warrior you have already Lost. Another point for Warrior.
3 I would never stand on the point and take damage, I can just decap and then fight the Ele. Another point for the Warrior.
4 At 900 range I will never get hit from Phoenix, nor dragon thoot, so if i have a longbow I can just proc adrenal healt and stand on the point, blocking evading and recovery most of damage ele Can do, and cap it.
Another point for warrior.
5 Ele hard counter Warrior only in open field, and that means the Warrior should Chase you out of nowhere (wondering why someone should do it) Maybe in wvw you are right.
6 superspeed alone is not enough to kite a GS Warrior, so if you have lighing flash in CD Warrior can close gap easy
7 if we are talking about a duel in a 1v1 server then I stop to talk hereSo don’t come here to tell me SF counter Warrior please
I’m not going to respond to each individual point, I’ll pick a few:
1. The warrior can’t hide behind an obstruction and cap at the same time. Saving your unobstructable attack (Comet) for when your enemy is trying to kite and heal is part of being a skilled player.
2. While what you say is true, why as a S/F ele would you go attack a point where a warrior is bunkering? Even if you win it will take a long time, no matter what you’re playing it takes a long time to 1v1 a warrior. This is a mistake.
3. If warrior decaps then leaves the point, that’s not a win. Warrior’s rotation speed is slow, their role is not decapping. And if the warrior decaps then goes and fights the ele, they aren’t doing much to help their team. If in this instance the warrior won, they’d have to go back and cap the point, then slowly make their way to the next node. Even if the warrior did exactly what you say they would, this would only be a slight gain for the other team. And the warrior still eats a bunch of damage during the ~6s you spend decapping. Maintaining damage via air auto is how you keep them from regenerating health after you burst.
4. So now we’re discussing Macebow, which is great but not meta. To be fair I did not clarify, I meant that S/F ele can beat GS power warr.
7. I am purely discussing Conquest, capping a point is irrelevant in a 1v1.
This whole post is incredibly wrong. “Every meta build in the game that does any kind of damage can beat it” That’s a load of bull, either you don’t know how to kite or you’re not utilizing the full potential of the build. S/F Eles HARD counters warriors, revs, and possibly engineers. The only thing that hard counters you is thief(due to stealth, evades and gap closures) which is why you’re trying to make it sound op. Even then thieves has to be careful due to how much INSTANT bursts and defense eles has (acrane shield x2, shocking aura, invulnerability, mistform, reflects, projectile block). Every class has a counter and this post is purely trying to get rid of every counter s/f eles has with these absurd buffs.
Now you can argue “oh but thieves has no cooldowns, unlimited evades, can perma stealth” Well you can shut up and sit down because eles has tons of defenses(as listed above), 20 abilities with lots of AoE from their weapons with tons of great traits to help either burst down someone or survive.
SF hard counter Warrior or engie was right maybe before
Before hot… Now a Warrior eat us for breackfast.
For win vs a Warrior you need to kite a lot, making him decap/cap, and It will take forever. If you try to kill a Warrior in a reasonable time you Will be Dead. So if you face a Warrior is just better run away and go to +1 somewhere instead fight.For scrappers, even if our burst come out perfect, we still doesn’t have enought pressure to win, since a scrapper Will always recover between a burts and another.
So it will outsustain US.We dont hard counter rev is just a 50% matchup.
Thief doenst HARD counter ele SF, to be honest I would always prefere to 1v1 a thief than a warrior, a scrapper or a druid.
PS: SF Ele doesn’t have shocking aura, usually no one run mistform and arcane shield is not that good vs thieves since unblocable blind+veryfast autoattack Can Just make it explode without taking damage. As always it has been, best defense vs thieves is to outburst them
I agree with everything lucardio said. I’m a geat s/f ele, I know how to kite and land bursts and the whole works. If you think that s/f ele with its ATTRITION hard counters warrior’s unkitable gs, 10 seconds of invuln (10 seconds of last stand, 10 seconds of endure pain, 11.25 seconds of resistance from zerk stance), you are the one who knows nothing about s/f. Warrior dominates us to. death. He can literally afk and heal more than we do on our auto attacks. We have to play perfectly to kill him. We. Stand. No. Chance. Rev’s a decent matchup because rev’s in the kittenter right now. Ask anyone in legendary, rev’s an easy 1v1. I also have no idea where you got that scrapper idea from. We cannot even come close to pretending doing enough damage to kill them.
Idk how great you are if warriors are giving you trouble. You don’t have to play absolutely perfect to beat a warrior, you have arcane shield as a stunbreak if you mess up. They are the most telegraphed class in the game and you have every ability to kite them out. I can’t remember the last time I lost a 1v1 to a warrior while playing S/F. If you need more dodges then play a Water Cantrip build instead of Earth. Your superspeed will allow you to kite the majority of their attacks alone.
As for your points about traited stances, why even bother bringing this up? It triggers me to see people make bad arguments as an excuse for their losses. I use Last Stand on my joke hammer build, but it’s not a competitive trait for a reason: you need the condi clear and adrenaline generation from Cleansing Ire. There’s a clear choice there and pretty much nobody chooses Last Stand. If a warrior chooses that, then yeah, they have an advantage over you. But they’re gonna fail hard against condi necro or mesmer, and won’t contribute as much in teamfights due to the lack of adrenaline. There’s a big cost to choosing that trait, and that’s why nobody does. Also, warrior is the best all-around 1v1 profession, that’s how it’s designed. Idk why you’re complaining about that, ele has team support options even with S/F that warriors don’t. Every profession has its strengths.
If you are in EU just pm your name ingame and come to to duel my Warrior with your fresh air ele on a capture point please
I am NA, otherwise I would. However if we’re limiting it to fighting on a capture point, where you’re actively trying to cap, then I have the advantage in the fight. Good luck sitting on point with your melee-range attacks while I hit you from 900. Range and the ability to keep range is what makes S/F a decent matchup against warrior, you can kite endlessly with LF and superspeed from air attunement.
This whole post is incredibly wrong. “Every meta build in the game that does any kind of damage can beat it” That’s a load of bull, either you don’t know how to kite or you’re not utilizing the full potential of the build. S/F Eles HARD counters warriors, revs, and possibly engineers. The only thing that hard counters you is thief(due to stealth, evades and gap closures) which is why you’re trying to make it sound op. Even then thieves has to be careful due to how much INSTANT bursts and defense eles has (acrane shield x2, shocking aura, invulnerability, mistform, reflects, projectile block). Every class has a counter and this post is purely trying to get rid of every counter s/f eles has with these absurd buffs.
Now you can argue “oh but thieves has no cooldowns, unlimited evades, can perma stealth” Well you can shut up and sit down because eles has tons of defenses(as listed above), 20 abilities with lots of AoE from their weapons with tons of great traits to help either burst down someone or survive.
SF hard counter Warrior or engie was right maybe before
Before hot… Now a Warrior eat us for breackfast.
For win vs a Warrior you need to kite a lot, making him decap/cap, and It will take forever. If you try to kill a Warrior in a reasonable time you Will be Dead. So if you face a Warrior is just better run away and go to +1 somewhere instead fight.For scrappers, even if our burst come out perfect, we still doesn’t have enought pressure to win, since a scrapper Will always recover between a burts and another.
So it will outsustain US.We dont hard counter rev is just a 50% matchup.
Thief doenst HARD counter ele SF, to be honest I would always prefere to 1v1 a thief than a warrior, a scrapper or a druid.
PS: SF Ele doesn’t have shocking aura, usually no one run mistform and arcane shield is not that good vs thieves since unblocable blind+veryfast autoattack Can Just make it explode without taking damage. As always it has been, best defense vs thieves is to outburst them
I agree with everything lucardio said. I’m a geat s/f ele, I know how to kite and land bursts and the whole works. If you think that s/f ele with its ATTRITION hard counters warrior’s unkitable gs, 10 seconds of invuln (10 seconds of last stand, 10 seconds of endure pain, 11.25 seconds of resistance from zerk stance), you are the one who knows nothing about s/f. Warrior dominates us to. death. He can literally afk and heal more than we do on our auto attacks. We have to play perfectly to kill him. We. Stand. No. Chance. Rev’s a decent matchup because rev’s in the kittenter right now. Ask anyone in legendary, rev’s an easy 1v1. I also have no idea where you got that scrapper idea from. We cannot even come close to pretending doing enough damage to kill them.
Idk how great you are if warriors are giving you trouble. You don’t have to play absolutely perfect to beat a warrior, you have arcane shield as a stunbreak if you mess up. They are the most telegraphed class in the game and you have every ability to kite them out. I can’t remember the last time I lost a 1v1 to a warrior while playing S/F. If you need more dodges then play a Water Cantrip build instead of Earth. Your superspeed will allow you to kite the majority of their attacks alone.
As for your points about traited stances, why even bother bringing this up? It triggers me to see people make bad arguments as an excuse for their losses. I use Last Stand on my joke hammer build, but it’s not a competitive trait for a reason: you need the condi clear and adrenaline generation from Cleansing Ire. There’s a clear choice there and pretty much nobody chooses Last Stand. If a warrior chooses that, then yeah, they have an advantage over you. But they’re gonna fail hard against condi necro or mesmer, and won’t contribute as much in teamfights due to the lack of adrenaline. There’s a big cost to choosing that trait, and that’s why nobody does. Also, warrior is the best all-around 1v1 profession, that’s how it’s designed. Idk why you’re complaining about that, ele has team support options even with S/F that warriors don’t. Every profession has its strengths.
Example: If, while playing Dragonhunter, I use Ring of Warding followed by Banish:“https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Banish”, they won’t be launched outside the ring, because it’s a Launch. However, if for example I switch to Longbow and use a traited Deflecting Shot, it will knock the person through the ring. Same for barriers created by Hunter’s Ward.
But here, sorry
veteran100-0 newbie <—- THIS IS THE PROBLEM! If a game 100-0 that mean no/less new player will join and stay.
This is not a problem. This type of logic is what leads to passive traits that reward people for taking a hit, rather than avoiding it like a skilled player. A veteran playing a high DPS build such as D/P thief or FA ele should be able to 100-0 somebody in around 6s if they don’t move or react in any way. If they do move/react, it’s no longer a 100-0 situation. That simple. If you don’t want to face the unpredictability and difficulty of playing versus other players, may I kindly introduce you to PvE?
The real issue in your overgeneralized example is that if a highly skilled veteran is facing a “newbie,” that isn’t an issue of class balancing or game design. It’s a failure of matchmaking and Anet’s pretending that their formula is infallible. That veteran shouldn’t have been in a match with new players in the first place.
If there’s only one warrior on the other team then you’ll just have to put up with the fact that that they soft-counter your condi mes. If there’s more than one, switch Illusions for Domination, take the boonstripping trait, and switch sword for scepter. You can outkite a warrior without sword, and the scepter makes up for the loss in condi damage. It will serve you well against both warriors and guardians, though the meta condi build has more general applications. Warrior’s resistance really shouldn’t be giving you that much trouble on meta condi mes though, it takes time but they should be a guaranteed kill. Full melee is a bad matchup versus mes unless you have a thief’s mobility.
I don’t play a Mesmer, and I’m aware that out kiting warriors during the resistance window is a thing.
I was just irked by the other poster’s suggestion that relevant amounts of boon rip are available to non-necro.
Basic issue is that stance resistance is pulsing, and no class beyond necro can rip fast enough to handle pulsing boons. That said I don’t have a issue with warrior, I just enjoy poking holes in people’s arguments.
Yeah Berserker Stance should only give 9s of Resistance imo, not 12s. If they want more then they should have to use Healing Signet.