Guild Wars 2

I knew the nerf would be good, and that it has been needed for so long, but I’d honestly forgotten how enjoyable PvP was without turret engineers - be they on my team or the opposing team.

Great job! I just wish it didn’t take so long to make these kind of changes in response to player feedback!

Auto balance has never been implemented in solo queue, team queue, unranked, or ranked arena matches.

Hot join is the practice arena, and has been described as such by ANet; yet many players still only play hot join, getting worse matches - matches of the auto balance more than actual PvP - instead of progressing onto unranked and then ranked, where you can have matches without the auto balance abusers, and queue with friends in a party to get onto the same team for the full duration of that match. If more hot-joiners did unranked/ranked queues, queue times would also be shorter.

LOL. Those people don’t pursue targets off point for the kill for +5 points, they do it for the kill only. They don’t think about the score. Most of them either assume another ally stayed behind the capture the point, that it’s their job to chase down runners, or just don’t think at all, without having awareness of their immediate surroundings or giving thought to their team’s composition and how that might affect the role they should fulfill. Just like some players sit on a single point for the entire match thinking that is all there is to it. Just like some players fight to the death or wait to respond to what the other team does instead of predicting and rotating. It has nothing to do with points awarded, it’s difference in player skill, knowledge and experience.

To summarize: tweaking the points awarded will change nothing at that level.

Evan Lesh.3295:

It would help if we can figure out what is in common between everyone since no machines in-house reproduce this issue.
What arena are you playing in?
What map is it on?
What state is the game in? (Warmup, playing, postgame)

Custom and ranked. Don’t know about unranked; I rarely go there.
All maps.
Warmup, post-match, during match, and when the scores pop up automatically.

There’s at least one thread in the bug forum, but it doesn’t seem to have been heard: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Freeze-after-I-open-Score-Board-PvP/first#post4987780

Healing turret:
- 2.6k activation
- 2.6k overcharge
- 1.5k blast from detonate
- 1.5k blast from a skill
- Some regeneration
- Total of 8.2k + ticking regeneration, all AoE

Elementalist:
- 1.7k water attunement
- 2k dodge in water attunement
- 2k cleansing water
- 600-800 Signet of restoration
- Some regeneration
- Soothing mist
- Total 5.7k + ticking regeneration and soothing mist, all AoE (excluded restoration signet).

Ele and engi together easily do 13.9k+ AoE healing. If they are with another player who is low, take that 13.9k and add that player’s own healing skill which would be another 4-6k.

Meditation guardian:
- 2k meditation 1
- 2k meditation 2
- 2k meditation 3
- 1.8k virtue of resolve
- 2k meditation 4 (elite)
- 1.8k virtue of resolve
- 4.8k Shelter
- Total 16.4k to self; greater than his health pool.

1. Bunker/Support D/D or Staff ele; no more celestial
2. Revenant will be the new bruiser
3. Warrior may finally take its place as a viable bruiser instead of being supporty as it is now, and its spot will likely be securred over a second revenant or possibly an engi by its battle standard.
4. S/D or D/P thief going into CS for more damage or SA for OP res support - may depend largely on the enemy shadowstep of revenants which may make res/stomp very difficult - or S/T shatter mesmer.
5. Medi guard, S/T shatter mesmer, or tempest ele (anticipating a viable burst roaming build perhaps 0/6/0/0/6/6[tempest]).

Edit: Oh wait, if you mean before specializations/HoT, then remove tempest ele and replace revenant as a bruiser with a new guardian or engineer build.

Power of innertia would be useless with the change to feline grace. Power of innertia promotes dodging for might, and new feline grace is only vigor and endless stamina is far less endurance return than the current feline grace.

Acro will only be fun for swindler’s equilibrium, which is a nice trait but alone not worth investing into acro for. SA or CS will be the way to go, SA offering some team support on revives and longer stealth, and CS offering more damage, albeit less than we currently get from it because the straight up damage modifiers become critical damage modifiers and may not be tweaked to keep them the same effectiveness in terms of DPS increase.

It pains me to know I’ll be forced on to the panic strike wagon with S/D. I hate such traits, and would see them deleted from the game.

It literally just happened to me again, a whole bunch of times in a single match. When it happens thief vs. thief it’s basically an instant lose. I’m going to have to try and remember to aim it so it lands a bit away from myself so I have time to detonate it without it "spawning under the ground." I’ve not encountered this so much before because I don’t do it as much on S/D, but am brushing up on D/P in light of the upcoming changes. Surely if it’s on the ground at that point though, it should just deal large explosion damage.

Edit: Or it could be that my S/D thief is human, and my D/P thief is asura (closer to the ground).

I’m 99% sure it’s not due to lag, having seen it numerous times now.

Shockwave.1230:

There’s a bug where if you detonate a cluster bomb too close to it impacting the ground nothing happens.

I’m not sure why, but I’d guess is because the 3 cluster bombs spawn below the collision layer of the terrain

This would explain it. This bug and no valid path to target is making thief quite irritating at times. Earlier today I lost a 1v1 with so many escape options and cool downs, just because my attempt to port up to someone gave me “no valid path to target,” and an instant later my target ported down to me just fine.

Make it the minor. Swap it with the 3rd minor that reduces damage while in stealth by 50%.

nightblood.7910:

Impact.2780 I dont see where the Dont Stop trait affects that math, but only in that of dodging.

With S/D you have evades, with Dont Stop you have evades with swiftness.

You have swiftness on dodge and if you have some other source of swiftness IE Pack Runes if they will still be relatively the same, you have more evades plus vigor if the evade works.

SO worst case scenario is that you have at least another evade in there that is not a dodge.

I can barely interpret what you’re trying to say. You’re questioning where don’t stop comes into play? That the maths omits this trait? Well of course it does, it’s for manual dodges only. We have no idea how effective don’t stop will be, and thus no way of factoring it in or knowing if it’ll even be worth taking. Personally, I don’t like reliance on RNG.

Has anyone experienced what appears to either be a bug or the result of the target lagging (which I thought before it started happening quite often), where using cluster bomb right on top of a target, who does not dodge, block, or go invulnerable in any way, does not do anything? I mean nothing, no floating numbers, no damage, doesn’t put you in combat. Nothing. If you use auto attack or swap weapons and attack, hits are registered and damage is applied just fine.

I’ve said that the changes to acro are good in that they punish mindless dodging, but they are far from OP. I’ll quote a post from the thief forum where someone did the very simple maths that shows just how little an extra 20% effectiveness to vigor is.

Maugetarr.6823:

Endless stamina is too weak to make up for the fact that FG doesn’t stack with vigor anymore or the loss of fluid strikes. It would need to be 50% before it’s going to make an impact on actual combat (which would be 1 more dodge every 20 seconds). I’m more or less happy about everything else though.

Math for FG and the change:

Baseline Endurance: 50(endurance)/5(endurance per second)=10 seconds per dodge

Baseline FG Endurance: 35(endurance)/(5 endurance per second)=7 seconds per dodge

Vigor Endurance: 50 (endurance)/ (5*2)(endurance per second)=5 seconds per dodge

New trait: 50 (endurance)/ (5*2.2) (endurance per second)=4.5454 seconds per dodge

Suggested trait (50% increase): 50 (endurance)/(5*2.5)(endurance per second)=4 seconds per dodge.

Current Vigor+FG: 35(endurance)/(5*2)(endurance per second=3.5 seconds per dodge

Shadow arts will make D/P overpowered. Acro won’t. The nerf is in anticipation of the fact that vigor will be near enough permanent when evades are used properly, and swindler’s equilibrium which D/P won’t be able to utilize. I don’t know how hard this will hit S/D, or how great the gap will be in effectiveness between S/D and D/P after this. I do think that the endless stamina trait does need to be a bit stronger though. Making 5 seconds down to 4.5 seconds isn’t much for a build that relies so heavily on endurance.

Well.. Yes. These changes will enable full specialization of 3 trait lines. That means essentially 6/6/6 builds. 3 grandmaster traits.

Ohoni.6057:

The fewer dodges is ok because:
a) mindless dodge spammers will be punished
b) they are trying to ensure it will be balanced with swindler’s equilibrium

Swindler’s Equilibrium only applies to swords though, it’s no value to any other weapon so you can’t consider it for overall balance.

I can when I’m comparing two builds that will result from these changes, and of course the fact is they have to balance possible pairings of traits, regardless of whether some builds won’t be able to utilize them as a pair.

The fewer dodges is ok because:
a) mindless dodge spammers will be punished
b) they are trying to ensure it will be balanced with swindler’s equilibrium

I’m afraid for S/D though. I haven’t run 2/0/0/6/6 for months, since my team needed more damage support from me, so I’m 2/6/0/0/6 with S/D. I can play D/P, and it was my first weapon set on thief, but it is boring to me; S/D is my play style. You need agility signet to be viable without the acro line. Now sure, acro has got some nice changes and would be a fun 3rd trait line, but shadow arts as we saw it is now very strong for survivability and on revival support. That’s right - thieves now have a support option that can be taken as an addition, not as a trade off. This means D/P can not only have the same build, but improvisation is significantly buffed, they’ll be able to pop steal or blinding powder for 50% reduced incoming damage, it will also stealth allies preventing stomps and reducing incoming damage for them, allowing them to be fully revived. The 50% reduced incoming damage will stack with elementalist’s geomancer’s defence and protection, making downed eles essentially immortal while you res them. D/P so often hides in stealth for the opportune moment - now they’ll essentially have a passive healing signet while they do so. To even try to be this useful to my team, I’d have to take shadow arts which is less effective unless you’re D/P, and able to not need agility signet outside of acrobatics in order to take blinding powder, and free to stack stealth out of combat.

I’m hoping the revenant’s enemy shadow stepping skill - which I was initially gobsmacked by, thinking it’d be absurdly overpowered in preventing stomps and resses - will be that strong so as to counter this new ninja-nurse aspect of D/P thieves, and keep S/D in the running with what it can offer by going into acrobatics. I know they will both excel at different things - that is the point behind specializing in a trait line, of course - but right now I’m worried what D/P will be able to offer will just be too much more advantageous against what S/D will be able to. Time will tell though; being a consistent damaging presence in a fight beats hiding in stealth waiting, more boon removal is always good, with acro an S/D thief can keep a point neutral or even capped for a little while. Shadow arts will allow D/P to try to get that in-fight presence but they’ll need to instantly stealth to avoid death when focused, and won’t be able to fight on a point lending capture contribution as much, but they’ll be insane revivers. The meta shift and the composition will of course be a factor in which type of thief is preferred.

50% reduced in coming damage while in stealth should be a grandmaster trait; it’s a team support skill, and its strong both your you and when with allies. There’s no way it can be a minor. Last refuge should be an adept trait making it optional to take, and concealed defeat should be the minor.

"On a successful evade." Dodging and evasive skills grant evade frames, and successfully evade if an attack would have otherwise hit you.

The feline grace replacement is actually the new minor, Endless Stamina. Feline Grace is now an extra source of vigor so we don’t completely fall apart when we miss steal.

Laraley.7695:

You probably don’t realize how much fresh air ele loses by not going arcana at all and taking suboptimal traits in fire.

1. Condi cleanse on 10 second cooldown in water, exchanged for 40 second cooldown passive cleanse that might as well remove conditions you don’t need to be removed, promoting passive play.
2. Vigor.
3. Protection, regeneration, swiftness on attunement swap. Protection is crucial for such a squishy build. (EC is bad because you have to get hit, same as they told memsers ’’we don’t want you to get hit to have boons procs.)’’
4. Fury > loss in dps
5. Weakness in air, which is again crucial to such a squishy build.
6. One access to blind.
7. Bolt to the heart.
8. Damage loss due to nerf to Air Training.

You gain.

1. Flame barrier (lol), Sunspot, Burning rage > no crazy buffs there
2. Burning on crit (1 sec on 2 sec cooldown)
3. Three condi cleanse on 40 sec cd.
4. Blinding ashes maybe? Not such a good trait compared to loss of everything in Arcana.
5. Superspeed (3 sec on air), which is okay but doesn’t help with sustained dps.
6. Damage loss from major traits in Air.
7. Toughness in earth, 20% dmg reduction in 600 range, which mesmers and rangers will completely ignore.
8. Armour of earth (meh), earth skills cd reduced, soft cc duration reduced.
9. I don’t know about GM traits in earth. They’re not kinda appealing, I’m not saying they’re all bad but they promote passive play again.

These things are important to fresh air, which won’t be able to compete with the new buffed versions of mesmer and thief. The DPS loss is significant and some buffs in survability won’t change that. Where is your major power creep? Oh yeah, wrong class. Scepter is a bad weapon and needed rework since day one, but they just don’t bother with ele anymore.

Fresh air atm is 0/6/0/4/4, they don’t even take evasive arcana. You completely ignored the part where I said "and utilities" for condi cleanse. You will have more power now, from the base increase and gear stats increase. You can afford to drop something cheesy like an insta-cast always-crit arcane blast, for a condi cleanse. You can even take cantrips for the might stacks from burning fire instead of ignoring that factor and calling it purely a passive trait. You also can’t have it both ways; you can’t complain that burning fire is passive and therefore bad to use, yet complain about having to get up to 600 range closer to a mesmer for geomancer’s defence to kick in. If geomancer’s defence had no range factor, it’d be purely passive and overpowered. You also ignored the point about it stacking with protection from external sources, and the fact that this is a team game after all. Listing one access to a blind as a loss, but "maybe?" next to a trait that allows you to blind every 3 seconds regardless of attunement? You do realise blind causes a miss, and a miss is essentially 100% damage mitiagation, right? Furthermore, blinding ashes won’t require you to burn a dodge to cause the blind; they will just get blinded more often, saving you dodges, which means more survival resources.

Are you serious? With taking 20% less damage from foes within 600 range as a minor trait in earth, you’re complaining that you can’t get elemental attunement with evasive arcana anymore? 0/0/6/6/6 would be the new D/D, and if anything it’ll be tankier than it was with elemental attunement, with a safe stomp on earth attunement, and entering earth will give you immunity to critical hits and therefore immunity to fire/air sigil procs, instead of 6s protection.

6/6/6/0/0 Will be the new fresh air, and it will be viable. You’ll have a safe stomp, condi cleanses from passive trait in fire and utilities, 20% damage reduction from foes within 600 range, which stacks with protection from external sources. Tanky like a medi guard.

And of course, let’s not forget the balance changes are in the wake of elite specializations that we have not yet seen.

Edit: Oh yeah, and because you can take elemental contingency as a master trait now, you’ll still be able to swap to earth to get protection for incoming burst. It’ll just be applied on the first hit instead of on attunement. It’ll also be able to stack with the 20% from geomancer’s defence for a total of 59.6% reduced incoming damage. Nerf and power creep indeed? Pfft!

nightblood.7910:

Well I have no idea on panic strike as I havent tried it yet, but executioner on DP, well Cele eles have become a far less problem than they ever were on S/D for me. S/D just couldnt produce the damage needed.

Im fairly new and likely have a low MMR and might need to adjust soon, but as of right now, Im very happy with critical strikes D/P with Pack runes as it stands now. I guess because I have no reference of what the damage used to be, it seems pretty high damage to me very quick.

Remember you’re not just getting executioner though. You’re getting 300 precision and 300 ferocity with it, which also makes your sigil procs more reliable. More crits, higher crits, more sigil procs, and executioner. These changes will see the stats you would get from trait lines added in part to your base stats and in part to the gear you equip, meaning you would not be getting 300 precision and 300 ferocity - you’d already have that elsewhere - you’d only be picking up executioner.

MarkPhilips.5169:

PS They buffed vigor? I see 120% end regen now instead of old 100%

Don’t overlook the minor traits!

No one will take executioner now though. Improvisation is in the same line and tier, and has become better, with a permanent 10% boost, allowing stolen skills to be used twice, and being able to recharge any skill the thief has, including withdraw and hide in shadows. The critical strikes line as we saw it has actually been nerfed by all the previous damage modifiers becoming critical damage modifiers, yet with the numbers remaining the same; this may change though as they repetitively said they are working on the functionality and haven’t done their pass over the new traits to balance numbers yet.

Acrobatics endurance has been overall reduced, but most importantly thieves that just spam dodged won’t be rewarded as much anymore; baiting dodges will actually work vs them because their endurance return will require a successful evade. Fluid strikes is gone, that’s 10% damage lost. Hard to catch finally got the change it’s needed for so long, but likely won’t get used much because Swindler’s Equilibrium is much better for S/*. Don’t stop is an interesting but dangerous trait. Too low and it’s too unreliable and won’t be used, but too high and it’ll be too much of a counter to builds with reliance on projectiles such as ranger and warrior. We need more information on it.

Shadow arts is actually quite interesting now, since it isn’t going to cost offensive stats to go in to. We might actually see what was once a joke - the "ninja nurse" - becoming a thing. Shadow step to and stealth your downed ally and res them while you both take 50% reduced incoming damage. It’s stronger than protective reviver, except you lose capture contribution. Blinding powder on steal is also an interesting idea.

My thief needs dual swords. I don’t care for rifle.

Oh I forgot something I meant to include in my earlier post regarding opportunist and infusion of shadow’s dissapearance. It was briefly mentioned on the stream that the removal of those traits meant they could tweak the baseline initiative regeneration slightly. Whether they will or not, and if so by how much remains to be seen, but they have at least entertained the possibility of compensation for their removal, which is huge for thief. The devs merely considering compensation for this class is practically a buff in itself.

Odyssey.2613:

Impact.2780:

Swindler’s Equilibrium looks amazing. It could let D/P thieves utilize bountiful theft more often so they can steal more boons, and allow S/D thieves to utilize sleight of hand more so they can interrupt more often (specifically mentioning S/D because they don’t have headshot).

Reread Swindler’s again.

Oh yeah, S/* only =P. I prefer S/D anyway so my brain remembered it for its positives not the negative.

Critical strikes was too powerful, they said. They wanted to balance the other lines, they said. So they moved executioner to deadly arts, and moved panic strike down to master so you could pick up both in one line. Because that didn’t just make deadly arts more powerful... LOL. Although, executioner may become obsolete, with improvisation giving the 10% buff constantly, allowing us to use stolen skills twice, and recharging all of one category of skill with all skills being assigned a category. So I guess moving executioner was actually a damage nerf in anticipation of 6/6/x/x/x(/x).

Damage was also nerfed in acrobatics by the removal of fluid strikes. It’s nice to see the other changes to acrobatics though. While the removal of feline grace might technically be a nerf in terms of overall endurance regeneration, it punishes unintelligent dodging/dodge spammers, and promotes and rewards skillful play which is always a good thing. Swindler’s Equilibrium looks amazing. It could let D/P thieves utilize bountiful theft more often so they can steal more boons, and allow S/D thieves to utilize sleight of hand more so they can interrupt more often (specifically mentioning S/D because they don’t have headshot). I noticed the new stability on attacking from stealth trait got completely removed lol.

Basically our buff is Swindler’s Equilibrium and being able to take acrobatics and trickery both with deadly arts. No major trait/class specific buffs. At least there were minimal nerfs.

Starting or finishing a combo finisher inside a combo field will create the combo effect when the skill with the combo finisher ends. Anything done inbetween will not cancel the combo. Using steal before the combo finishes means mug landing before the combo effect - stealth - is applied, meaning it will not cause reveal.

Zzz. Why not test it yourself? It’s not difficult. In fact, it was more trouble and took longer for me to compose and respond with evidence than it did to check it for my own curiosity having read this post.

http://postimg.org/image/f18dlz0c1/

Seems about right to me.

Edit: And here’s one for Stomp: http://postimg.org/image/6r1rtkidz/

Amulets are fine. What the game needs is more counter play and skill rewards. That means the removal of builds that completely counter other builds by design without requiring any skill, such as shoutbow, builds which dominate in their MMR bracket through the use of AI such as turret engineer, less instant-cast skills that deal significant damage (or the damage of such skills toned down significantly) such as overcharged shot, elementalist lightning strike on attunement swap, smite condition etc. the removal of traits that deal a strong effect on-hit meaning "cannot be dodged" such as chill of death and panic strike, and finally the removal of or significantly rebalance of fire and air sigils.

I’ve died so many times because I’ve had an escape planned that didn’t work when it should have, be it Infiltrator’s Arrow, Infiltrator’s Return, or Shadow Return. There are spots that you know work, but can’t depend on because if you are so much as half a step to the left or right, it can go from working perfectly to telling you no valid path to target for no apparent reason. It makes you look like an idiot, running into a wall tanking auto attacks or burst when you’re meant to be running from your port location. It completely screws up your flow. It removes forward thinking potential and skillful maneuvers, and it’s beyond annoying to get into a situation you should have easily avoided.

Started for me yesterday to. Very annoying. Fine when it closes, but opening either from end of match or my pressing ’B’ gives me 1-2 seconds freeze.

Shylock.4653:

Sadly I have to say this sounds more like an PvE speedrun competition than like actual PvP. :-(

This. It’s nice for a change, and some people may even prefer it to conquest, but it should definitely not be put with conquest maps.

The worst is probably the ice shard. It can be used effectively but usually it’ll get cleansed by or for the target, making it the stolen skill least likely to be effective.

Healing Seed sees the least use, but it is great when healing and condi cleanse is needed.

Skull Fear is excellent on Khylo mid for getting decaps, and whenever someone goes down to get a head start on a res or stomp. It’s also useful for kiting and getting some free hits in. It’s probably the best one if you judge it as "in an unknown situation, which would you choose to have?".

Consume Plasma is nice, although not as good as it was prior to the change to stability.

Throw Gunk is amazing. It’s strong on downed for extra damage, especially if you’re unable to get close. It’s some nice burst when combined with immobilise on mesmers, thieves, engineers - any class that has difficulty vs. conditions.

Whirling Axes is great for the reflection, but generally it makes you vulnerable. It’s best used on the warrior it was stolen from shortly thereafter, unless there are rangers around and you plan to face one next.

Blinding Tuft gives stealth so is of course awesome. Best utilised vs. the thief it was stolen from, vs. another squishy, or to disengage or sneak a decap.

Mace Skull Crack works brilliantly vs. meditation guardians, other thieves, mesmers, power rangers, necros - basically anything that can be significantly hurt in those 4 seconds; at the very least they’ll blow all their endurance or a stun breaker. It can also be used as an interrupt for res and stomp attempts.

Sigils:
- Sigil of Energy: Gain vigor for 10 seconds. Prevents stacking with vigor, reducing the "acrobaticness" of some classes that shouldn’t operate that way.
- Sigil of Intelligence: Each charge adds 20-30% critical chance to your existing critical chance for that hit. (Alternative: see Celestial Amulet)

Amulets:
- Celestial Amulet: Reduce ferocity. (Alternative: see Sigil of Intelligence)

Other:
- Condition removal: Last on first off is dumb. It should be intelligent, and cleanse whatever is dealing the most damage to you first.

Guardian:
- Add a cast time to smite condition.
- Despite being the class intended to be the best at team support, it has been overlooked in that there is no mid-way build. It’s either damage, or support. It’s extremely restrictive of players who main or would like to again main guardian. Ideas to address this? The Communal Defenses, Shattered Aegis and Pure of Heart traits look like they could be something. Shattered Aegis would need a significant damage buff though, and the Aegis from Communal Defenses would need a longer duration and or a side-effect if it is not removed, like gaining retaliation.

Elementalist:
- Make Ride the Lightning get a 50% cool down reduction when it is blocked or misses, as originally stated before it was changed.

Warrior:
- Rush should have the same treatment as Ride the Lightning.
- Berserker stance is not only protection against damaging conditions, but it is immunity to cc effects achieved through conditions (movement impairment), blind, and vulnerability which is direct-damage related. It should have charges like the new stability mechanic. It should have counter play for builds that rely heavily on survival through conditions or entirely on conditions for dealing damage, not counting "just wait it out."

Enginner:
- The turret build shouldn’t exist. Make the utility turrets much easier to kill. It doesn’t matter whether some players find it easy to deal with, the fact remains it is reward without risk, promotes passive unskillful play, and foremost, the community hates it.
- Overcharged shot should have a cast time or longer cool down. It cleanses immobilise, deals good damage, knocks back both upright and downed players and is on a low cool down. It should not be instant cast with a short cool down; so add a cast time or increase the cool down. It also sometimes hits the wrong target, even when you seem to be positioned correctly in front of you who want to hit.

Necromancer:
- Fix the absurdly overpowered downed state.
- Increase the cast time of downed #2 skill, or make it AoE.
- Increase the duration of the spectral effect of Spectral Walk.
- Reduce the cast time on Summon Flesh Wurm.

Ranger:
- Cannot swap pets while downed. Would it be fair for a necro to enter deathshroud while downed and get back up until it runs out? Or a fresh air ele to swap to air and burst you while you stomp? Or an engineer allowed to use his toolbelt skills while downed?
- Reduce the damage reduction of bark skin.

I’d rather see a decap engi than a turret engi. At least they had a role in competitive PvP, could rotate (albeit practically limited), didn’t rely on AI, and couldn’t almost kill players while being on the other side of the map, afk, or doing figure eights on the point with 0 awareness. Turret engi hurts the community. Decap engi was a part of the meta, and thus contributed to its evolution. I’m not saying I would want a decap engi on my team - they have drawbacks too. I’m saying I can appreciate the creation and use of the build, while turret engineer just shouldn’t exist. It’s nothing against engis either; I feel the same way about all AI builds, including spirit weapon guardian and minion master necro. I don’t count spirit ranger as an AI build since the NPCs just follow him around providing passives and have some activatable skills - basically signets with physical form and can therefore be killed, and the strength of those passives as the balance to that fact.

Please indeed. As the name suggests... Player vs. Player. Not Player vs. AI, or Player vs. NPC, or - what it increasingly becoming the case - Player vs. Turret.

The only AI PvP should have are those from elite skills, mesmer’s clones and phantasms, and ranger’s pets.

Do you mean for dueling as in actual dueling? As in you want to try to kill those 2 players, and they want to kill you? Or do you mean in terms of 1vX situations in a PvP match?

If it’s the former, then not really. Assuming it’s an actual duel, all players are running dueling builds designed to excel at 1v1, and you’re alone vs 2 of them. Assuming no huge difference in skill level, you’re toast.

If it’s the latter, then yeah, some can. Bunkers are designed to hold off more than 1 player; guardian and warrior can spec to be capable of this, but they shouldn’t get a kill. Celestial elementalist and engineer possibly could both bunker and get a kill, but they’d have to out play, use the terrain, get some lucky shots in or be a lot more skilled, and this assumes that the opposing player close to dying doesn’t pull off or go quite defensive. Meditation guardian can, but not for long, and if the opposing 2 players are smart, they’ll rotate themselves so neither of them dies - as in one applies pressure away from the other while that other recovers a bit. Power necro could if the 2 opposing players are squishy and he gets one to half health to trigger spinal shivers, downing them, and then once it goes down gets another proc off on the remaining opponent with the downed state buff; again though, if they are squishy the necro should melt before he can do anything, being squishy himself, so it would need a significant skill gap. The absolute best option for 1v2 in PvP would have to be S/D thief running 2/0/0/6/6, because of its high number of evades, and S/D thief can utilise the terrain like no other, and on top of that, escape if it needs to; except rarely would an S/D thief want to engage a 1v2 that it thinks it can win... Because again it means the opposing players must be squishy - or one very squishy and very bad - which also means they can burst him down quickly, which, vs equally skilled players, is the more likely scenario.

Apparently it’s not just turrets!

While I was mid air, having just jumped from the top of some steps, skipping the steps to the bottom, a mesmer cast a phantasmal berserker on me (I dodged, idk if that had any influence). I didn’t see it appear and try to hit me. I looked behind myself and saw it had spawned in mid air above the steps, unable to move or do anything. I would have taken the time to go back and take a screenshot but I needed to rush to a point =P.

Macros? No.
Custom key binds? Yes.

Don’t do it for us, do it for the community. Give them something real to cry about.

1) The tooltip says "Shadow step to your target and steal from them," indicating that the shadow step comes first.
2)The buffs coming after the shadow step is also indicated when attempting to steal from a target out of range - the shadow step fails and no bonuses are given.
3) Bountiful theft shares boons it steals, which it steals by hitting the target, thus it must first shadow step to the target before it can share them.

Logically, the boons are shared around the location you finish at.

Edit: Found someone to test it on. Boons from bountiful theft are shared in an area around where you finish. Boons from thrill of the crime are shared in an area around where you start.

Easy and annoying are two completely different things. It’s possible for something to be both.

It is appalling! I’d like to see it nerfed just so it isn’t used by 50% of solo queuers.

It is demotivating to see all the time.
It is boring to fight.
It is annoying to have on your team.
It encourages passive play.
It rewards passive play over skillful play.
It indirectly encourages players to hurt their team’s ability to rotate.
It is Player Vs. Turret.

The other day, to "that’s a problem with turret engi: you can’t rotate," a turret engi replied "you don’t need to rotate if you are good." That is what this spec does to players. It makes them think they are good, and that there is nothing more to learn.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=gw2+unranked+separate+rating&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=CNccVfP_JILjatG7goAG
To
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Ranked-vs-Unranked/first
To
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Does-my-Ranked-MMR-determine-my-Unranked/first

Google is your friend!

I believe there is a separate rating system for unranked. I think it was Justin that said so in a post on these forums somewhere.

You do occasionally get people that whisper after a game to complement how well you played if they think you were really good, and sometimes even a party invite. It’s not all bad. Unfortunately the bad is just more potent. What annoys me most about it is these hateful whisperers seem to lack the ability to reason - as you said, what does it make them if they lost to someone so bad? What does it make them if they lose to someone who does "nothing but" evade, kite, engage from stealth, heal or whatever it is that particular person was doing? Sometimes you’ll run into a particularly nasty piece of work who deduces, from you killing them, that they don’t know how to play the game mode and only focus on kills, having just expressed how you ’re too bad to get kills. Sometimes it’s amusing, sometimes it’s just a nuisance. If you don’t think you can (or want to) talk sense into them, just say "k," or "whatever," or "you’re entitled to your opinion," and block them. There’s nothing much else you can do, and even if you do get a point across, that was only one bad egg in a very large box.

Nope. Unless you’re going with pistol mainhand, your options are acrobatics+trickery, executioner build, panic strike build, or some weird variation that lacks damage because the damage modifier traits are 5 and 6 points deep, and lacks a defining trait and is consequentially unable to do anything as well as anything else. Even the "fun" high burst D/D builds you sometimes see use panic strike because it’s the best option for deadly arts grandmaster.

Evan Lesh.3295:

The button could be more flashy I suppose. I generally only open it when I get destroyed on glassy builds to see what to avoid next time.

Personally I think that UI needs an overhaul and the damage history doesn’t seem to accumulate everything correctly. (may need to extend record length)

Or let us set up 2 combat tabs – one for outgoing and one for incoming. Then, collectively, there would be more history in the buffer. Every time I create a second combat tab, it gets deleted when I relog.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl0Mp7pVOxwJ8PNBNBt9w7QE8OMfpMaFAA-TZBFwACOFA12fYxRAoaZAAPAAA
Is what I use.