Guild Wars 2

Justine.6351:

If I am fighting for a non-claimed node 1v1 and it’s a stalemate should I leave it and join team to try and roll a fight or do I stay and keep it contested hoping my team can win an even fight?

Just depends on whether you think you can win it. It’s ok to step off the node if there’s a bunch of dangerous AoE on it or you’re fighting a warrior who’s going to CC you repeatedly. You get 5 points for killing them, so if you win then claim the node then that’s great! Keep in mind that if you’re at far, whenever the enemy respawns they’ll probably come to reinforce the person you’re fighting.

What are your goals in the game? Kind of a general question, but are you primarily playing PvE? Do you want to do raids? Important stuff to know. Revenant is a bit less useful in raids than ele, but I prefer Revenant for general PvE play.

Morphic.7045:

draxynnic.3719:

At the risk of making Ghotistyx duck again, in the cases of Jalis and Ventari, you’re essentially channeling what they represent rather than the characters themselves.

When you channel Jalis, you’re not channeling a dwarf warrior with a hammer. You’re channeling the Rite of the Great Dwarf or even the Great Dwarf itself.

When you’re channeling Ventari, you’re not channeling Ventari in life, but the philosophy he laid down. It’s not a coincidence that all the Ventari skills revolve around the tablet.

Now, the charr have undergone a sufficient cultural shift that it would be entirely reasonable to have a legend that represents that shift… but I don’t think it would be appropriate for such a legend to just have a set of skills that could just as easily have fit in the ranger (or warrior, or engineer) skill lineup. Instead, I’d expect a set of skills themed around leading a revolution against an army of fire elementalists, or around the charr industrial revolution that followed.

You make a very good point you really do but if and I say IF they added pyre as a legend what other skills could he honestly have but things Rangers already have in one form or another?

I need to point attention to the that dragon hunter thread on the ranger forums where some guy is saying that DH should’ve been the ranger elite spec. Rangers already have traps and longbow, warriors already have most of pyres actual default skills. The only stuff left is just other ranger skills from gw1 with new functionality.

That being said Anet have shown that they’re not above using skills from X class on Y. Such as above with warrior longbow skills and reapers having one or two assassin skills.

I’m not saying that everyone is wrong and pyre should be added for my sake alone but he and maybe a few others are the only “legends” that may be worth it due to them having what revenant is missing.

Hmmm Urgoz, whose profession was Ranger, has already been discussed before in this thread. He’s similar to Mallyx (who wasn’t part of the main questline in Nightfall) in that he was the boss at the end of an elite area, Urgoz’s Warren. Whether you find him to be legendary or not is subjective, and his significance is very different from Pyre’s. But I think he’s a viable choice, it appears that all of the creatures in the Echovald Forest being hostile and such is the result of Urgoz’s rage at how the forest was affected by the Jade Wind. Seems pretty kitten to me.

Iain Ross.6903:

The first paragraph made no sense, I say rev is still good because it is, and I went here coz I knew the general stupidity would QQ about it anyways. I told him who I am because we’re acquintances/friends.

I never tried to imply it myself but I am top tier. And you “being in the same mmr” is a hilarious statement, since the system is broken, especially in off-season now, I get in matches with ppl who play full signet thieves and keyboard turn and afk on point, so gratz if you’re proud to be in those matches LUL.

It’s a fact that rev is still good and meta

Amber logic

Yeah lol it’s still meta because the meta hasn’t changed yet, idk what’s your point in saying that. I was in a match yesterday with Phantaram yesterday and he was testing condi rev, which he hasn’t played (on his stream) in over a year. I asked him after the match how it went and he said “yeah it still sucks.” I wonder why he’d be testing it when he plays power rev? The stunbreak on Mallyx hasn’t been added yet so he wasn’t testing out the changes, I think he was evaluating whether he’d want to play it in the next season. Not that he plays rev much anymore. Power rev is still good, but now it’s missing its burst from staff 5, and sword 2.

Lack of burst is also largely the issue with condi rev, which has high amounts of torment at low energy cost, but few cover condis to protect the “burst.” And ofc anybody can just stand still and smack the condi rev in the face to cut the torment damage in half. Rev probably has some big changes ahead but it’s unrealistic to act like power rev will be meta after Tuesday, as its biggest bursts have been toned down significantly. Boonbotting is now the only thing that makes rev a better choice than multiple other power builds that have high single-target damage, with the changes DH is a superior choice due to its better defensive utilities, AoE denial/damage, and control. Even without Piercing Light, Meditrapper still has 3 separate CCs with F1, shield 5 and LB 3.

As to your point about “insane” mobility, Phase Traversal is insanely good at chasing targets. It’s terrible for general mobility since it can only move towards an enemy. Because it’s the only high-mobility skill Rev has, it’s inferior to a Thief’s ability to decap. Rev ties thief for roaming between 2 owned points, but is no more useful for decapping than mesmer or even lightning flash ele. Not really what I’d call insane but you can go crazy about it if you want. Rev’s mobility does not offer it a special role on the battlefield, so I’m not feeling the insanity.

Iain Ross.6903:

Rev wins equal skill. Warr has an insanely high skill cap. Post patch it won’t be favoured, can still win ofc. Quickness does not increase skullgrinder cast time

Source? Quickness affects skills and actions, so Skull Grinder’s cast would be reduced to 1/3s casting time. Not saying I’d use quickness for that but that’s how it works.

ProDecius.2609:

thijsken.5031:

So my biggest concern with nerfing rev is the following:

So first of all let’s be honest ele is pretty dam strong atm, not taking an ele in your team is basically not even considered. An ele had to choose between different traits according to matchups making it weak against some things and strong against other things. But if you nerf rev thus letting ele just take diamond skin, what will kill ele?

• thief? It’s not even sure if thief will be meta but if it is, a thief can’t stick to an ele as a rev and simply can’t afford it as they die to aoe cleave.

• guard? With the amount of projectile hate from the ele itself and other classes ( scrapper), it’s quite hard for the guard to kill the ele or other targets in teamfights.

I think this will result in ele being over the top and simply not dying in teamfights as they can just fully spec against condi builds thus making the teamfights last much longer as the ele heals not only himself but obviously heals his allies by a large amount.

This is extreme and alarming misinformation, why do people on this forum pretend, that what is actually by far the most broken things in the game (condi mesmer and thief) are weak, I’m really sick of it. Thief has tactical supremacy vs ele, tbh that match up specifically is the greatest disparity I have ever seen in any competitive video game since there is absolutely nothing an ele playing can do vs thief. Ele cannot close the distance to get a kill, cannot channel skills due to pistol 4 spam, and cannot even land an attack to begin with because of evade spam. Your only chance to land a killing blow on a thief is to go full glass with FA which also increases your chances of being killed instantly by a proper steal backstab.

If you’re playing a bunkery support ele then yeah, no chance. But that’s not the point of that build, you’re support/bunker. It would be OP if you were able to 1v1 people. Your response to thief is: anything in earth attunement, including blinds, invuln, and magnetic aura, the latter of which is far more powerful vs thieves than you realize. If you’re in NA then I’d be happy to practice with you.

Emdrix.6124:

Exciton.8942:

Emdrix.6124:

Exciton.8942:

Emdrix.6124:

I would have a kitten aswell because 3 thieves= loss 99% off the time.

That is the mindset where problems come from.

You can quit as you like in a casual environment.

But when we talk about competitive PvP, players should always try their best even if odds work against them. That is the basic morality of competition. In sports, a lot of games have a clear weaker side but is it fine for them to just give up? No it isn’t.

Why would anyone play at a disadvantage. Its like saying try your best in a 4v5 its pointless. Nobody should be forced to play with 3 thieves. Id pick 3 Dhs on my team anyday though

Because it is competition. The moment you enter the competition, you should try your best. This is not only respecting your teammates but also respecting yourself as a player who tries to compete.

You can do whatever you like in non-competitive environment.

The thieves didint respect me when they refuse to swap why would I try hard for them.

You don’t. You try hard for your own sake. You’re already in the match, might as well play. You can’t control your team’s comp except for your (possibly nonexistent) duo partner, so you’re gonna end up in matches where you feel like you have a comp disadvantage. It only costs you a few minutes more if you try to win, and hey, you might. If the enemy team doesn’t rotate well then multiple thieves can easily prey on them when they’re isolated, it’s not a guaranteed loss at all.

CptCuddles.8912:

Huskyboy.1053:

Did you mean raise the skill floor? Or are you trying to make the game easier by making many skills usable less frequently?

No I meant it the way it reads. By raising cooldowns you incentivize people to think about the skills they are using and actually manage their cooldowns. It also increases the significance when players mitigate the damage from those skills because they won’t be available for a longer period. This is not the case today where you almost always have a high impact skill available since nearly all of the skills and utilities have much shorter cooldowns then the pre-HoT era. Consequently, it’s much easier for a mediocre player to compete with an experienced player.

An added bonus is that with less skills flying around there would be less effects spam and the game would actually be cleaner for players and spectators to get a barring on what’s going on.

As an aside, I have personally stopped playing gw for this and other balance reasons because I have seen what the balance philosophy is and it has moved further and further away from promoting skillful play with every patch. I hope it changes in the future but even if the devs recognize the problems it’s going to take them years to fix the problem at the pace they’re going. And that’s a very sincere estimate.

Ok lol this is just a semantics thing, higher floor = higher level of skill necessary to clear that floor. What “clearing the floor” means is subjective, but I guess clearing the skill floor would mean not being permadead (such as many new thieves, who have not cleared the skill floor). Alternatively you could say that higher CDs raise the skill ceiling, meaning that increasing CDs would require a higher level of skill to reach the maximum skill level possible (i.e. the ceiling).

Lexander.4579:

Huskyboy.1053:

Lexander.4579:

no more surge of mists instakills for you boo hoo

Um what class are you referring to that’s getting 1-shotted by SotM? Because the only class in your signature is thief, and if you’re getting 1-shotted by SotM on thief then you should be ashamed. Hotkey Shadowstep if you haven’t already. It still can’t 1-shot you anyways.

thanks for the advice, gonna be useful at my legend rank

Yw, good luck in Season 5. Lots of new things to learn!

You should make a haiku about this. Here’s mine:

1v1 is good
I think 5v5 is bad
Gimme dem duelz boi

Did you mean raise the skill floor? Or are you trying to make the game easier by making many skills usable less frequently?

BlackBeard.2873:

sophiewhite.3149:

yes rev needed nerfing. what i have a problem with is the 50% part. thats a ridiculously high number. its how you turn classes into being useless. you do small changes but lots of them and see how they do . its called tweaking. this is bulldozing. rip staff on rev. thats the only use it had. if they want condi to be viable they should buff condi. nerfing power doesnt make condi viable.

No skill SHOULD be doing everything. When timed right, surge of the mists would take like 75% of a squishy’s health, while evading and cc-ing, meaning no counterplay either. It doesn’t even need to be a damaging skill to be good. Taken objectively, its still an amazing skill if it did 0 damage, and most people would be happy to have it on their skill bar.

If rev’s need more damage, it should be in other places. They aren’t squishy like other burst classes are (they are much more tanky), and with more hard mitigation than most (evades, invulns, blocks). Thus, they SHOULD do less burst. However, to still have a place, they should probably have higher sustained damage. I think they still do compared to other in that role, but if they don’t, then there should be buffs to the other skills, not the “do everything” skill.

It’s only “amazing” as a way to avoid damage in an outnumbered situation. In a 1v1 situation, CCing my enemy while evading is nonsensical, I’d rather them blow a CD or two and miss me than be CCed, both at the same time defeats the purpose of evades and CCs. Not that it’s bad but it’s not a great skill for 1v1s now that it has meh damage. And with meh damage it’s just ok, a good defensive skill but not amazing. It’s very difficult to line up multiple CCs with this skill (unlike facet of chaos), impossible against even 1 smart player.

Lexander.4579:

no more surge of mists instakills for you boo hoo

Um what class are you referring to that’s getting 1-shotted by SotM? Because the only class in your signature is thief, and if you’re getting 1-shotted by SotM on thief then you should be ashamed. Hotkey Shadowstep if you haven’t already. It still can’t 1-shot you anyways.

Lol post his char’s name so I can prepare for when I’m teamed with im.

Good idea. Tbh I find it annoying when I go into a hotjoin to practice a conquest build and get beaten by somebody’s “dueling” build, but I also recognize that it’s essentially just a similar game mode with a different mindset. I think GW2 could benefit from trying this out, 1v1 is much more viable in GW2 than in GW1, but possibly the studio’s history is holding them back from making it happen.

Cal Cohen.3527:

Lots of great feedback in this thread! I see a lot of concern about the nerfs to revenant so I would like to discuss those a bit more.

Surge of the Mists is a skill that does everything. It evades attacks, is a massive cc, and does a huge amount of damage. The defensive capability and cc fit well with the rest of the staff set, so we felt the damage was the best spot to bring the skill down a bit. 50% is certainly a big reduction, but consider just how much damage this skill does right now. Even after the nerf it will still take a chunk out of a squishy’s health bar, in addition to providing cc setup for another skill (and teammates).

Precision Strike is another skill that we felt did too much damage on its own, particularly when all 3 projectiles hit one player. This is another case of a big reduction on a skill that does a ton of damage, resulting in a skill that still does a reasonable amount of damage.

In general, revenant isn’t lacking in sources of damage. Unrelenting Assault, Facets of Strength, Elements, and Chaos, Equilibrium, and sword autoattack are all strong damage skills as well. Precision Strike and Surge of the Mists will continue to bring relevant damage to the table, so rev should still have plenty of damage to go around.

With that said, we will definitely be keeping a close eye on things going into the season.

I’d say you should’ve removed the evade, or shortened it to 1/2s. This is a case of the nerf bat hitting the wrong thing; damage was high yeah but it wasn’t “insane,” rev could get more damage off of sword AA in the same timeframe (when you factor in Devastation traits and vulnerability). However, the evade was and is silly, they already have a block on 3 and a (difficult to land) CC on 2. SotM was a nice damage and CC, and now it’s just a watered-down version of its former self. Rather than making it a lame skill as it now is, why not instead remove or tone down the evade to give it some counterplay? People who complained about the skill beforehand had a combination of need-to-git-guditis and a genuine lack of ability to counteract the skill. The same issue continues to be just as true, but now the skill itself is just meh. Staff was already the weaker set for damage compared to sword, now it’s legitimately a bad choice overall with the nerf to Warding Mists.

1. No.
2. I’ve read the interview and watched Evan’s video, there doesn’t seem to be specific info about the placement matches other than that they will happen.

Spartacus.3192:

Hirasaki.6208:

Meta DH’s aren’t going to post PVP pwnage vids on youtube. Why? because they don’t want the nerf. That’s why they keep saying its “balanced” so they can get a free pass for another season.

OMG a huge internet wide conspiracy of DH players who decide together not to post videos on YouTube so that the class doesn’t get nerfed. LOL do you even listen to yourself?

Lol I mean his last sentence is true but it’s true of most monoclassers.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Sins.4782:

I tried to queue up for a ranked match on NA last night and had to leave it after sitting for over 30 minutes in queue. If you’re getting better times, please, by all means, share them with me. Also, balance in this game is still leagues from anything I would consider ‘healthy’. Elite specs are all still considerable upgrades from core, and real build diversity is still nonexistent.

You do realize it’s still the off-season, right?

Actually right now it’s Coliseum season.

Thief: you’re trying too hard here. Making Thief bad at its only good role is nonsensical.

Warrior: This isn’t really a nerf. “Oh no he activated berserker stance AND endure pain!!!” 4 seconds later endure pain is over, 9 seconds later berserker is over (and you can corrupt the resistance anyways. This is certainly not what makes warriors OP, if they even are. All I want is for Skull Grinder to both not be a blast finisher (why is it one in the first place?) and to remove the blind and cripple. Daze is fine, bleed and confusion are fine. But blind and cripple are just cover condis that warrior shouldn’t have bundled into one skill. If they want to cover that crazy condi damage then they can do it with another skill, that’s more skillful.

Mesmer: Shatters have a .25s ICD already, that’s been the case since January 2013. Might want to study up on other professions before making a thread like this. I would nerf Chronophantasma instead, shatters aren’t what makes condi mes overpowered, it’s the fact that their illusion gen is essentially doubled with one trait.

Engineer: That tiny cooldown on kits won’t make a significant difference for engis outside of not being able to use Elixir kit 4 to escape immediately. Really kit swap should have a 3s or so cooldown, not as long as regular weapon swap to compensate for the lost utility slot, but some cooldown would be reasonable. Right now I can and do swap all the time when I play scrapper, don’t have to think twice about it. Even more abusive when they have 2 kits like on flamethrower/tool kit condi engi. Ridiculous that with one utility skill they can access 5 more weapon skills and have no cooldown on swap. In fact on second thought maybe it should be 5 or 6s.

Necro: needs buffs or something. Shroud isn’t a big deal and currently compensates for necro’s lack of active defenses. You can kite away from reaper shroud if it’s a problem for you.

Guardian: not a terrible idea, although I’ve been saying for a while that LB skills are the problem, not traps. 2/3 of Meditrapper’s main CCs (Deflecting Shot and Spear of Justice) are unblockable, which seems a bit excessive.

Ranger: could probably use even more of a CD increase on CA. I know a lot of rangers might hate me for saying that, but look: Steal for thief is 20s when traited, 30s when not. DH’s defensive virtues have a much longer recharge. And CA gives you a massive survivability increase with lots of healing, multiple blinds, a large area CC, and ofc area damage and condi with CA 5. Maybe the increase could be compensated by a trait that reduces it back down to 15s, but which of course must be chosen over another desirable trait. That doesn’t mean that Ranger couldn’t be compensated in other ways, I think that staff AA should have more healing to improve Druid’s usefulness in node fights. And staff 2 is a bit underpowered both in its radius for heals as well as damage. I think the LB’s range requirement for max damage on its AA should be removed, unlike the similar mesmer GS you don’t get 3 pulses and it’s a projectile, so overall it’s inferior. Because of that it should be buffed or the nature of the attack be changed such that it’s more damaging or applies a condi.

Ele: don’t have much to say other than that offensive builds for ele are generally underpowered. Probably because too much damage buffing would result in ele just pooping out ridic aoe damage on points, but still. It would be nice to get beyond ele being either pure support or the squishiest of squishy DPS roles.

Rev: Needs a massive rework, not nerfs. Should be a stunbreak on every legend, period. Revs don’t have the same flexibility in their utilities so either you should be able to bring in utilities from other legends (making legend swap kind of meaningless) or make each legend have some obvious basics like stunbreaks and/or condi clear. As of right now Revs require a constant babysitter, which is super lame in the current solo/duo queue, and goes against Anet’s previous proclamations that there wouldn’t be the trinity of roles on teams. Nerfs to Rev sword and Shiro skills have been incoming ever since Rev came out, and the most recent Shiro heal nerf just made it even worse.

TwistedSister.8190:

Thanks Huskyboy.1053 and Midontto.5847!

TBH – I’m probably only going to be an average or below average player on Thief, I just don’t have the time to be a master (I’m a casual). Also, I don’t really know enemy animations – would D/P be the speck for us crappy players to still put up a good fight? Swap should be shortbow?

Tbh thief is not the class for you if you’re not going to put in the time to learn how to read enemies. With all the particle effects in GW2, it’s hard to see your enemy’s animations outside of highly telegraphed attacks like Vault on Thief’s Staff or True Shot from DH’s Longbow. What’s most important is knowing ALL of your enemy’s skills in a 1v1 situation, and predicting what will happen next. That will help you greatly with interrupting via Steal or Head Shot. But if you can’t/won’t put in the time to learn the meta builds for each class, it will be nearly impossible for you to beat them outside of lucky interrupts and enemies who don’t understand that they can just not auto attack while the Thief they’re fighing spams headshot.

I mean ya just named 3 builds of varying viability, that’s more than some professions have. Not saying we couldn’t have even more but thief really does have more variety than ele or necro.

TwistedSister.8190:

I’m a new player (just started leveling), I really like dual daggers… just kinda cool. However, this thread doesn’t even mention it – is it completely useless in sPVP and WvW (roaming/ambushing in WvW stragglers)? I want to level with the spec that I’ll play in PVP at 80.

Separate stupid question, having a dual dagger – does that increase the auto attack of the main hand dagger? I’m guessing not.

I’ll try and answer this comprehensively: doing well in sPvP is about making the best decisions and having the most optimized build. That’s partly because you want to win (right?) but also because there’s 4 other people who need you to play well and play intelligently. D/D is an ok condi build, it can build up insanely high stacks of bleed at melee range. However, because a condi clear gets rid of all stacks of a condition, if you only stack bleed on me and I remove 1 condition, then I’ll remove all the stacks of bleed. And even if you put cripple on me via dagger 4, most condi clears remove 2-3 conditions. So basically D/D condi is easily countered by any condi clear.

D/D power is pretty bad compared to D/P for a power set, because pistol 5 + dagger 2 gives you stealth (therefore access to Backstab), and Pistol 4 (assuming you get an interrupt) gives you a ton of damage if you take the Pulmonary Impact trait. By comparison, with Cloak and Dagger (dagger 5) you have to hit your target to get stealth, which means I both need to be in melee range and my attack needs to not be evaded/blocked. No such restriction on pistol 5 + dagger 2 because it’s using a combo field. And no, the offhand dagger does not affect autoattack.

So it’s not that D/D is a terrible choice, it’s just not optimized for sPvP against halfway decent players. Whether you’re ok with that or not is your decision, but I guarantee your pugs will hate on you hard if you don’t play effectively. And by pugs I mean pick-up groups, if you have actual pugs they probably won’t care what your weaponset is.

Lonami.2987:

Morphic.7045:

He was the first sucessful attempt at charr revolution that IS what he’s special for.

What’s special about half of our legends? As I said previously at least three of them done nothing even close to what pyre did.

What did Jalis do? The turning to stone thing was a people based thing not something he done specifically, and Mallyx? A random Demon in a content area based in gw1, by that logic any boss can be a legend.

Ventari? He found a seed. He done nothing else noteworthy other than creating the sylvari ten commandments which anyone could’ve done.

Actions shouldn’t qualify you for a legendary stance, but power and uniqueness.

Jalis was a dwarven king, and had unique dwarven magic. Mallyx was the leader of Abaddon’s forces, and had unique demonic magic. Shiro screwed an entire continent and was one of Abaddon’s generals. Glint was a dragon, and a prophet. Ventari is the only one who wasn’t powerful, but still has some unique centaur and tablet magic.

Pyre was a normal charr, with no superpowes whatsoever. He is not even a magic user. What skills would you give him? Traps? You’re channeling a legend to set up non-magic traps? Or maybe you want to make them magic, and pretty much ruin his character and his crusade against charr magic users.

I’m sorry, but “leading a revolution” doesn’t translate into new cool mechanics and aesthetics in any way. Anything cool you could make around his figure could be applied to the ranger instead, through a “liberator/magehunter” elite specialization or something like that. Not the revenant.

I think we’re focusing a bit too hard on Pyre and lore here, he’s just one Ranger. There could be some other noteworthy ranger that could fill the role, doesn’t have to be him.

If you insist on solo queuing with necro then go power. Condi necro doesn’t apply as much direct pressure as quickly as power necro does, and can’t take as much of a beating (unless you’re running Rabid Amulet). Boon corruption is mostly useful in an organized team. If you’re duoing with a ele/engi babysitter then condi is a better bet since it’s more offensively versatile. Also when playing power, strongly consider Foot in the Grave, the extra stunbreak/stability is your best friend.

SuB.6845:

Do you really think they should nerf during active season? This would lead to a lot of angry players. The best I can think of is: one big patch right after season, and one close to the start of the next season, but only some number tweaking.
I feel like the game is quite balanced at this moment, with a lot of viewable builds. I could only think of these changes:
- Slightly fairer tradeoff between offense/defense on guardian
- Engineer has a bit too high sustain (while having moderate damage with some peaks)
- Somehow make the warrior just a bit more mobile

I do. People are being too conservative about balance patches; if they did them more frequently (including during the season, maybe 2 during each off-season) then we’d have balance faster. Ideally. I do share a lot of people’s distrust of the devs but I think overall they do more good than harm, they could benefit from appointing a few community members who are actually good at game/build analysis and consulting them about balance changes.

Part of being a good player in GW2, as opposed to more simple games, is thinking intelligently about builds and adapting to new situations. The build notes are public so we’re all able to look at them, evaluate how they impact the builds we’re currently using, and adjust. Maybe it’s because I was really into GW1, a game with a more complicated and customizable build system, but I don’t really have a lot of pity for people getting upset that their current build is no longer as viable. I understand the feeling, but you have every ability to adjust. If you are only able to play what Metabattle says then you’re not cut out for what makes this game great.

Pyriall.1683:

Xillllix.3485:

This change was implemented only to sell more gems to the mass of casual players crafting the new pvp stuff.

Everyone is pvp legends material now, just gotta farm. No more good teams to fight on the way up, they all left the game anyway since they can’t play together anymore.

Completely lame, but it’s what the mass of casual players wanted apparently.

Esport! lol

The “mass” of casuals? There’s like literally a few hundred people who play this game.

Only a few hundred that play sPvP, yeah. A while ago somebody did a detailed analysis of what they believe the current player population to be. There are about 2 million accounts total, though of course many if not most are inactive. Still, 1% of 2 million is 20k. So I’m sure that when PvE is included there’s far more than a few hundred.

Lobstertail I have a conspiracy theory: they didn’t make a separate team queue because they think that without it, wannabe 5-mans will still enter the solo/duo queue as individuals or duos. That will increase the number of total players in the solo/duo queue and overall reduce the queue time, making solo/duo supporters happy. Also thanks for this thread, shoutout to Supreme and Emdrix (and Spartacus) for the quality entertainment.

I’m a noob at Ele, but I’ve used warhorn before successfully in node fights. You have a hard CC on water (weird) and on air, and a soft CC on Earth (melee-range blinds). And of course the on-demand magnetic aura is good, and coupled with the boon extension is amazing. The boon spam is real. And ofc you can blast water 5 with dagger water 3 for some extra area healing, never say no to a water field.

Malediktus.3740:

No matter how often you improve rewards and rework matchmaking and seasons, PvP will never be good in this game unless you completly rework the class balance of the game.
There is too much of everything: Physical burst damage, condi damage, crowd control, AOEs, traps, too short cooldowns, some classes have way too much mobility etc. Not to mention moa polymorph. It is simply terrible.

You named almost every combat component aside from healing. You basically think that there’s too much GW2 in GW2. If that’s the case then spend less time playing it, problem solved.

Crinn.7864:

Huskyboy.1053:

DH enjoys high performance against a number of professions but condi necro is their weakness. CPC is best used when they’re on LB since it destroys projectiles.

While CPC and WoC are definitely punishing to camping DH. I wouldn’t call necros a weakness. Necros are simply too vulnerable to DH F1 pulling us into oblivion.

Also as you get into higher tiers the DH stop camping and start getting aggressive.

Fully agree with all of that. I’d suggest using Foot in the Grave if you see a DH on the other team and are planning to 1v1 or 2v2 them (probably should plan for that, not a lot of situations where Death Perception will be terribly useful versus a trapper DH). Shroud activation is instantaneous, so with FitG you can save it until you’re pulled and activate it just as the pull begins. Condi necro is one of the few builds where you can afford to stay at 1200 range, as versus the DH you actually can out-damage them from that range. Many builds require closing in to match their damage potential, like Thief, condi mes, rev, etc. but condi necro does fine from range. That range gives you time to activate shroud before you hit Test of Faith.

However when facing 2 or 3 DH it’s a 90% chance that either all of them or all but one are trash. In such a case I hedge my bets and pick a build that punishes them most.

Svarty.8019:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Crise.9401:

Evan Lesh.3295:

New about season 5 is coming very Soon™!

Here I am trying to decide whether you forgot an entire word or just a letter, but waiting for both news and new info all the same :P.

One letter -_-

You know those bugs you don’t make…

One letter.

Grats, this is easily the most obscure reference I’ve seen in months.

Warcry.1596:

Every time I see 50/50 matchmaking pop up in discussion I always wonder why people hate it. When you get placed in the match you and the 9 others are sorted based on which combination gives both teams as close to a 50% chance to win.
Why would it sort you on a team that has an 80% chance to win if there is a more balanced solution? Sounds like this is what people want.

That’s how I have understood it to mean, if I am incorrect in my assessment please correct me.

No, what people mean by 50/50 matchmaking is that they believe that 50% of the time they’re being placed on teams that are predisposed to win, and 50% of the time they’re being placed on teams that are predisposed to lose. So they don’t believe that they have anywhere near a 50% chance to win/lose each match, they believe that pretty much every match they play is unfairly imbalanced in terms of each team’s skill level. Unfortunately 50/50 matchmaking also sounds like your interpretation, we need 2 different terms to differentiate them. Evan says that a system that intentionally creates grossly imbalanced matches does not exist.

Partly just adding more dummies would be an improvement. HotM either needs more dummies or more instances, sometimes literally all NPCs are being attacked by another player at once. And eliminating the Thief and Warrior NPCs has compounded the problem.

I, for one, welcome our new Byzantium overlords.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I don’t mean to pick on you specifically as the “dreaded 50% matchmaking” conspiracy has a lot of the community in its grips. Ratings obviously can’t be known unless matches are played to generate data. Do you want to play random matches and have a chaotic experience with an inaccurate rating? Or have balanced, competitive matches with an accurate rating?

Sure, we could have zero matchmaking, but two things will happen: First, your teammates will have random ratings and your opponents will have random ratings. Did you lose because you are less skilled than your opponents, or because your teammates are less skilled than your opponents? There is no easy way to tell without a lot of complicated math. “Make a system to figure it out, then!” you say. Well, Glicko does this for us already. Matchmaking assumes its data is correct by pairing opponents that appear to be evenly matched, then Glicko does its job to adjust ratings in case the outcome wasn’t what was expected. Second, random matches make your rating update verrry slowly. Every match won against a much less skilled opponent won’t make you go up because of course you were suppose to beat them, your rating must already be accurate. Every match lost against much higher rated opponents won’t make you go down because of course you were suppose to lose, your rating must already be accurate.

I honestly do not know why people think 50/50 matchmaking is a bad thing. My best guess is that people just want want something to blame when they lose.

Also wanted to say thanks to Evan and the rest of the PvP dev team. These changes are amending many long-standing issues. Looking forward to a more positive experience in S5, S4 was depressing for me.

Hesacon.8735:

My experience last season was about a 50/50 win/loss rate. What made me stop playing last season was:

• I could not progress unless I grinded and got lucky with win streaks. This is being addressed.
• Almost every game ended as a blow out with one team winning by 200-300 points. This happened regardless of whether or not I was on the winning or losing side.

So how is this blow out mechanic being addressed? It sucks the fun out of the game entirely. They’re totally not balanced or competitive,and it’s my experience that nearly every match is this way. We’re not talking the occasional blowout that will happen, it felt like it was designed to be that way.

It’s being addressed by expanding the pool of people with whom you can be matched. Previously the pool was restricted by your current pip tier (within your current division) and expanded from there. Now your tier isn’t being taken into consideration, thus you’re more likely to matched with and against people with comparable MMR even though they’re in a distant tier. Doesn’t make it perfect, but simply by pulling from a larger pool of people and prioritizing skill level over tier, you should be getting more even matches. The code hasn’t been released (to my knowledge) so none of us know the exact metrics that they’re using to determine skill level.

NNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-

Hirasaki.6208:

in before more revenant nerfs.

Oh wait lol sorry

Emdrix.6124:

had 4 games today with 3 Dhs on the opposite team and 2 on mine. This is not funny anymore

Mr Godlike.6098:

Anything being done about people broken inability to learn something about DH?

^^^ this guy is on to something. @Emdrix have you ever tried playing corruptionmancer against DH? Especially with corrosive poison cloud or well of corruption it’s very effective, either they have to sit on top of it (and their traps) or dodge out, many inexperienced DH will just allow you to condi them to death. DH enjoys high performance against a number of professions but condi necro is their weakness. CPC is best used when they’re on LB since it destroys projectiles.

sexuallegend.2153:

Xillllix.3485:

I rely on premades to progress

Look, there was a poll and the community voted. Maybe you and your friends you q with should’ve made your opinions valid when it counted; literally counted. I’m happy premades won’t be a thing anymore. A very significant portion of those in diamond and legendary were carried there by pre-mades. If they are truely skilled, this q restriction changes nothing for them. I find that most players complaining about not being about to q with teams completely rely on premades to even be relevant in pvp. Sad, but comical.

I have to agree with pretty much everything in this thread, there should be a place for full teams to compete. But in lieu of that it’s preferable to have solo/duo queue. I know one particular Legendary thief who tried to solo me on my condi warr… in full view. He didn’t even attack me from stealth to start. And yeah I won the 1v1 on point, surprise surprise. Quite a few legends got carried hard.

Honest John.4673:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Wolfric.9380:

2.) With even matches progress moves to grinding. That 50:50 rate won´t please people playing for a rank.

2) This is why rewards and skill rating are split. Your skill rating will only go up if you actually improve your gameplay.

Exactly, Evan. This is what people don’t seem to understand. Wouldn’t you want a match where it’s as even as possible, meaning that either side has the same shot at winning? Wouldn’t it logically follow that for every win there must also be a loss? Wouldn’t that mean that the majority of players have close to a 50% winning percentage? And sure, there are outliers on the bell curve, do you want to be one, do you have what it takes?

Yes, we get it, you like to throw the word “grind” around with it’s negative connotation but don’t leave it at that. It goes deeper. If you actually want to progress in your gameplay, skill rating, what ever, guess what you’re gonna have to do. Play. Play matches, play lots of matches and play some more. If I played chess for 4 years actively trying to get better, then I’m probably a better chess player 4 years in than I was when I first started. Call it “grind” call it what you will but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

And guess what, if you can consistently improve your gameplay, that leads to consistently winning more than you lose and your rating goes up, that’s the entire point of a competitive game.

Or do you just want to go “le grind! xDDD” and think nothing more of it?

Too honest, John.

Malediktus.3740:

Shadowstep.6049:

“Dear Anet, please delete thieves” – Malediktus 2016

Dude, you realize mes and thieves are designed around this very mobility you complain about? The whole reason why Anet butchered thief on first place is because they can lol +1 and decap. What do you think Anet would do to thieves if your suggestions would be implemented lol? We would have wars with stealth xD

Thief would still be viable with less mobility, it has insane single target damage. And a skill which makes people skip downed state and also ignores map mechanics like the guaranteed rezz on the coliseum map.
Same with mesmer, insane burst damage potential or tanky with condi spec.

You just really need to play those two professions for a couple thousand hours to understand what’s wrong with how you’re thinking. Thief is only effective when really glassy, so can only survive teamfights by bursting then escaping (using Shadowstep). With lower mobility, Thief wouldn’t be very useful for decapping and so would have to participate in node fights more often, which is Thief’s weakest role. Power mes is even glassier than Thief due to lower armor rating, and very much needs Blink to stay alive. Not really much more to say about that, the build is pretty transparent and easy to beat so long as you’re not an engi or ele. As to whether condi mes really needs Blink, I won’t offer my opinion since I don’t have much experience playing it. Probably doesn’t absolutely need it but it’s not “tanky” like you say, Carrion Amulet gives no toughness and mes is in the lower armor class. I’ts tanky versus condi builds to some degree, but falls easily to power thief, power warrior, power most anything that has ok condi clear.

I understand it can be frustrating to fight against people that can run away instantly, but ask yourself this: in a game where you most efficiently generate points by holding capture areas, if you can force your enemy to run away while you sit on an area and maintain control of it, do you not clearly have the advantage?

This is a DH (said himself that he has 10k+ hours on Guard) complaining about other classes having something his doesn’t: high mobility. Guess what, that’s called balance, DH has significant compensations for that in the form of multiple aegis and F3, CCs on traps, 8k healing skill and extra heal skill (F2), built-in CC on F1, blah blah you know DH’s advantages. And with longbow you have 1200 range, using it you can chase thieves/mesmers when combining it with Judge’s Intervention or Sword 2, the latter assuming that you’re on sword and weapon swap is ready.

Those are your class’s solutions to low mobility: 2 targeted teleports and a 1200 range weapon with 2 CCs. If you’re not taking advantage of those solutions then it’s not an issue of game design, it’s an issue of your skill. If your enemy is running then that usually means they’re low health, just use true shot or poke them with longbow AA.

Yeah Paladin is more selfish obviously but gives you much more sustain against power builds. If you’re playing with tankier meh-mobility teammates like DH, ele or Necro then I’d go Mender’s. But since it’s hard to heal thieves, mesmers, and revenants with healing turret and its toolbelt skill, if they’re on your team then you might as well go Paladin and settle for condi removal on elixir gun, which is easier to land. Scrapper engi is good partly because it heals/cleanses the team but can also absorb lots of damage itself. Basically you do better at direct support with Mender’s but like you said, can’t take focus all that well as a result. I prefer Paladin since I play a bit more selfishly (outside of Fumigating my team ofc).

Since we’re guessing… I’d say that OP feels he outperformed most everyone, including his teammates. The individual scores include times where one person damaged an enemy <15s before they died, so it’s possible that OP did most of the heavy lifting in fights and the teammates’ scores benefited simply from being in the right place at the right time. Either way, the fact that OP had 26 kills shows yet again how unbalanced matchmaking is. In a balanced match there wouldn’t be time for all those kills since decent enemies wouldn’t be dying in 5 seconds. The damage is high but I’ve done higher on power rev, meta scrapper, and Meditrapper. This doesn’t mean necro damage is too high, it just means OP cleaved a lot.

Lucentfir.7430:

Huskyboy.1053:

Lucentfir.7430:

Mind you baseline Deflecting Shot doesn’t knockback you need to slot Heavy Light, which is a DH GM slot for longbow users, it competes with Condi removal on block and Damage mod with vuln stacking against speared target. The previous version of Heavy light was low skill passive seeing that it only proc’d against close range opponents using any attack on the longbow. Changed to what it is now. ‘Deflecting Shot itself is much more skill based then most of the skills I’ve seen now a days, reason being that first off it’s a legitimate skillshot and not a tab targeted skill like Mirror Blade, trying to hit a moving target takes some thought and prediction of where your target is moving.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again, Deflecting Shot is a Skillshot, if traited it deserves to be a great CC, especially if a Grandmaster slot is taken. Also your bit about CCing someone through blocks with weapon skills? Traited Necro staff has unblockable fear, chills and just mark spam and even ’Nothing Can Save you" if you want even more unblockable for other skills.

This is a good response, thanks. Reaper’s mark is really the closest thing to Deflecting Shot. AoE, ground targeted, damaging, CC. With trait it’s unblockable. However I’d take DS over the mark any day because of the 32s CD on the mark. Not very impressive tbh. Staff is the best weapon that condi necros have for node fights but its condi damage and overall utility don’t match up against power DH’s longbow.

Why does it matter that you’d pick DS over Reaper’s Mark? This is like me saying I’d take Mesmer’s Tides of Time over Shield Bash/Shield Throw, because Shield Bash/Shield Throw is not impressive. You asked what other weapon Skill is like DS and there is, Reapear’s Mark when traited, and in order to have a knockback on DS, it needs the GM slot, while Necro Staff Marks traited makes all marks unblockable. Reaper’s Mark is 32 second CD, and it can linger until triggered. This comparison is also between a E-spec Weapon and a Base Class weapon from different classes with different roles and concepts?

Puncture Shot hits for what it does because by default since using the DH traitline, there’s a minor GM Pure of Sight that increases Damage the farther away you are 13% over 600 units, 7% under 600, added with any other damage mods he might hold. Hitting 1.8k on thieves isn’t DH Range exclusive, I’ve seen Hammers Revs hit for around the same as well as LB rangers(higher even).

Are we arguing? I think we’re in agreement here that they share significant similarities. I said thanks because you made a good point, I wasn’t contrasting them to antagonize you. When I said that I’d “take it any day” I wasn’t being literal, was just expressing that I think it’s much better. I said that because DS recharges slightly more than 3x faster than Reaper’s Mark, it’s superior. The Mark also has triple the cast time of DS. Additionally DS has baseline blind, projectile destruction, and much higher damage.

I did notice that minor GM trait today, that helped explain the damage. Still, my issue isn’t that I don’t get why it’kittenting for so much damage, it’s that it’kittenting for so much damage. Whether or not you view that as problematic is subjective, but would make a significant difference in DH LB damage output if the AA damage was nerfed.

Also, while I have no doubt that hammer revs get similar damage on AA, their AA is slower (1s casting time vs 3/4s casting time). So that’s going to result in about 2 or 3 extra hits for the DH in a skirmish, or a difference of around 5k damage. Hammer AA has baseline pierce though so that’s pretty nice in node fights.

Still looking for some clarification on this

This is not a bug and it’s not useless. This is the forum for bugs, not complaints.

And back to Puncture Shot, I was hitting 1.8k crits on a thief (probably running Marauder’s Ammy) in the match I just played. I was running Marauder’s and Traveler’s rune. That’s just too much damage for an AA, especially considering Thief has medium armor.

Alright here’s my QQ thread of the month. These traits need to go, or at least be Smiter’s Booned such that they’re not viable in pvp anymore. On engi, in a 1v2 situation, I got hit by first the revenant’s Eye for an Eye (45s CD) and then the Mesmer’s Mirror of Anguish (does anybody use this anymore). I really hate Eye for an Eye since it’s offensive and defensive; defensive stunbreak, offensive interrupt, both rolled into a single passive trait. Revs kinda need stunbreaks, but they don’t need it in the form of passive traits. Just put a stunbreak on each legend and good Revs will be fine. Passive stunbreaks/CCs are literally mindless, just take the trait before the match and you don’t even have to think to use it. At the very least the CD should be 120s, this should not be usable in every node fight, and anything below 60s CD is.

Lucentfir.7430:

Huskyboy.1053:

Kuya.6495:

How does an unblockable skill like deflecting shot promote low skill play when i can time it with mesmer shield block, rev hibernation or warrior shield 5 to counter their blocking? That’s the opposite of low skill. That’s reactive, not passive play. Furthermore, using deflecting shot to combo it along f1 to bounce a target on test of faith has nothing to do with low skill play.

Has the definition of low skill play changed in the last second or something?

Also, why would you even bring up DD? That’s another class accused of being cancer. Hey, you know what’s low skill play?

Dodge dodge dodge dodge dodge dodge dodge dodge etc

Did I say it requires low skill play? No. Did I say there are no skillful ways to use Deflecting Shot? No. I’ve been on the receiving end of that exact use vs. mesmers, I agree that in that particular use case it’s skillful when intentionally saved for that exact purpose.

I don’t agree that using an unblockable to break blocks is generally skillful, and the fact that DS can hit multiple targets via a radius + pierce means that it could easily unintentionally break a random person’s block and CC them in a node fight, which is just dumb. It could also be changed to remove piercing, that would also be reasonable. But like I said, it has far too much packed into one skill, in fact it has 4 non-damage components along with potential double damage (5 if you count the AoE as a component). Seriously Kuya, find me another weapon skill like that. There are very few unblockable CCs in this game and DH has an AoE unblockable CC on a 10s recharge. This is the definition of powercreep and it’s wrapped up into a regular weapon skill instead of a high-CD utility.

As to your comments about dodge spam, I agree it’s low skill. The issue is that it can’t be fixed without simultaneously overhauling thief utilities and traits to allow them defense, especially against condis. Thieves need the dodges to stay alive. Doesn’t mean the dodge spam is good design, but simply getting rid of it would make the class even more unviable than it is.

Mind you baseline Deflecting Shot doesn’t knockback you need to slot Heavy Light, which is a DH GM slot for longbow users, it competes with Condi removal on block and Damage mod with vuln stacking against speared target. The previous version of Heavy light was low skill passive seeing that it only proc’d against close range opponents using any attack on the longbow. Changed to what it is now. ‘Deflecting Shot itself is much more skill based then most of the skills I’ve seen now a days, reason being that first off it’s a legitimate skillshot and not a tab targeted skill like Mirror Blade, trying to hit a moving target takes some thought and prediction of where your target is moving.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again, Deflecting Shot is a Skillshot, if traited it deserves to be a great CC, especially if a Grandmaster slot is taken. Also your bit about CCing someone through blocks with weapon skills? Traited Necro staff has unblockable fear, chills and just mark spam and even ’Nothing Can Save you" if you want even more unblockable for other skills.

This is a good response, thanks. Reaper’s mark is really the closest thing to Deflecting Shot. AoE, ground targeted, damaging, CC. With trait it’s unblockable. However I’d take DS over the mark any day because of the 32s CD on the mark. Not very impressive tbh. Staff is the best weapon that condi necros have for node fights but its condi damage and overall utility don’t match up against power DH’s longbow.