Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the detailed response!

@Jonwar

Does a hammer/bow build use a similar trait set up as I have down for the mace+shield/greatsword build? How about amulet? Also, if you have the chance could you compare the build with the m+s/gs build in terms of the matchups – any where hammer/bow is superior or is is just for teamfight utility?

@Burr

Thanks for posting that build! I think the essential features of the new meta warrior are berserker’s stance, healing signet, cleansing ire, and unsuspecting foe. There are probably many permutations with the backbone of 0/10/20/0/20 + 20 points. It is hard to pick one as the “meta build” but I imagine all stack up similarly in terms of the matchups.

I would love to hear your comments on how weaponset, amulet, or the allocation of those extra 20 points affect individual matchups. I.e. if taking hammer improves your ability to fight spirit rangers but weakens your ability to fight thieves; that is the stuff I want to know and put in the chart!

OK so thinking about D/P thief – probably 10/30/0/0/30 with dagger+pistol / shortbow, berserker’s amulet

Condi necro – advantage thief
Shatter Mesmer – even match
Bunker Guard – stalemate (maybe advantage thief? not sure if thief can kill fast enuf)
Spirit Ranger – even match
Stance Warrior – even match
Burst Ele – advantage thief
Kit Engi – advantage engi
Evade Thief – even match

This is just me brainstorming a first draft. Anybody have thoughts?

Chipster.6713:

Kavia.8249:

Ryan.9387:

Rangers should not lose to stance Warriors. The spirit actives play a key role in that match up but if you are aiming high level then Rangers should win.

Do you think the warrior could stalemate it 60+ seconds? My impression is that spirit rangers kill slowly, especially against a warrior with good cleanses (cleansing ire).

Stance warriors have no cleanses..

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Ire
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Lyssa

I don’t like OP’s idea for Dhumfire. That is how Incindiary Powder used to be but it was lame b/c you could never cleanse the burning. It has no counter at that point. The biggest complaint about both these traits (And presumably Burning Precision if condition elementalists ever become a thing) is that there is just nothing you can do to avoid the damage. You dodge an attack, the ICD doesn’t fire, and you will eat it on the next attack.

I propose picking one these options:
-tie the proc to a specific attack with its own cooldown – maybe something like the 3rd weapon skill on one handed weapons,
-when you remove a boon you apply burning (for necro). Maybe for engineer it could be “apply burning when you knockback/stun/knockdown a foe.”
-creating an icon (and ideally an animation – maybe the character’s hands light on fire) that signifies the next attack inflicts burning. If the attack is blocked/blinded/evaded/obstructed whatever, the proc is consumed.

Arganthium.5638:

Couldn’t burst ele and D/D ele both fall under the same category? I dunno, just “D/D Ele” seems a bit vague to me.

While you can play S/D and D/D both as a burst spec with things like bolt to the heart and vital striking, I would argue the advantages of scepter mainhand for that purpose are considerable due to the much better air damage skills (instant cast). Especially since the buff to pheonix’s speed, you are seeing less and less damage oriented D/D eles.

D/D’s advantages rely on shocking aura, better mobility with burning speed and/or windborn dagger, etc. I think in the current meta if you’re going to play a D/D ele you’re probably doing it as a roaming support bunker with 3 cantrips, Powerful Aura, and clerics amulet. Some D/D diehards out there feel free to correct me!

Laxuar.3504:

…evry time you change a skill the traited version is still like the old one. For exemple with necromancer staff the skill Reaper’s Mark with both staff traits still have the old animation.

QFE

This has been going on with a lot of mesmer manipulation skills. For a while after the increased cast time on Illusion of Life, traiting for Far Reaching Manipulations gave you the old cast time. I think this was also related to the shortened cast time of Sanctuary when traiting for consecrations have ground targeting.

All in all, there are numerous instances of this and if I worked for Anet I would be quite embarrassed that it KEEPS happening. There should be a QA process that examines every skill touched by a patch and all traits associated with that skill.

Arcane Thievery for example, also still has inconsistent behavior between various traited versions (normal cooldown 45 sec, trait with Far Reaching Manipulations it has 40 seconds, trait with Master of Manipulation is has 36 sec cooldown, trait with both Far Reaching and Master of Manip and you get 32 sec cooldown).

Malpractice.7850:

Would love to see this expanded to having more specs. Like bunker ranger!

Me too! If people want to propose a new meta build that has reasonable representation in competitive play that is totally cool. It would help a lot of you included weapons/traits/amulet and the proposed matchup results for the existing meta builds.

Some “not-quite-meta” builds I have been contemplating adding to the table
D/P Thief
BM Ranger
Symbol/meditation Guard
HGH Engi
Condi Warrior
Cantrip D/D Ele

Shranks.3260:

Engi shouldn’t win against the condi necro
Engi vs shatter mesmer is equal I’d say. For sure if one shatter gets through the engi has problems, but played well and with use of terrain you should get to a 50% ratio against a shatter mesmer

Thanks for the feedback, Traq!

I think I agree – if the engi can manage to avoid a round of shatters, their condies should whittle down the mesmer given their lack of removal. I originally gave this to mesmer considering the typical kit engi’s lack of ways to avoid the shatter combo, but I guess they can use either rocket boots or elixir R to avoid the burst/reset the fight. On the other hand if the mesmer whittles down with greatsword from range and dodges poison volley, they should be able to force some cooldowns in order to get the mind wrack off. But like you say the engi should use terrain to their advantage in this scenario. It comes down to timing and reading your opponent making this an even match.

I have updated the chart with this and the other changes suggested. Current as of 8/12/13!

Great discussion so far guys. OK these are the matchups I am currently thinking of changing. I will probably update the chart tomorrow AM after a bit more discussion. As long as the discussion keeps flowing I will keep updating. I can expand the chart with more matchups, too! If someone wants to come up with the matchups for say, a D/P thief, that would be sweet.

kit engi v. condi necro – change from even match to advantage necro
spirit rang vs stance war – change from advantage warrior to even match
spirit rang vs burst ele – change from stalemate to advantage ranger
burst ele vs evade thief – change from advantage thief to even match
spirit rang vs. condi necro – change from advantage necro to even match

Seems like I had a lot of incorrect matchups for the spirit ranger! Figures since I have never played one and they are a more recent addition to the meta. I would love to hear from some more expert rangers on these matchups and others!

Ashanor.5319:

Also, you are wrong. A lot of times they are not drawn from the same pool. The matchmaker seems to throw a team of near the same MMR together, then throws another team together. If there aren’t a ton of people playing, that second team ends up being a much lower MMR team generally. What it needs to do is grab 10 players of similar MMR then distribute them out amongst the teams.

I wish someone would take some time and test this popular assumption. As I posted in another thread:

“In the name of science someone should record the results of some matches based on screenshots of the leaderboards and screenshots of the players in their matches. You should be able to determine the rank of each person in the match.

Imagine a scenario where 10 people queue with leaderboard ranks ranging from #1 to #100, one person every 10 ranks. Would the match look like this:

#1, #10, #20, #30, #40, #50 vs. #60, #70, #80, #90, #100
OR
#1, #20, #40, #80, #100 vs. #10, #30, #50, #70, #90

Obviously the second scenario should end up in a closer match. I would be surprised if Anet designed their system to intentionally make it so “winners win” by keeping them with other winners.

Either way, someone should be able to figure this out with some time and a lot of hourly screenshots of leaderboards and scoreboards from each game."

Fun threads like this deserve more attention than the endless QQ threads! moar!

Mammoth.1975:

Kavia.8249:

Mammoth.1975:

It’s only anecdotal, but I agree with the chart almost 100%. Some of the ‘even’ matchups might slightly favour one or the other, but not enough to call it a real advantage. I think spirit ranger vs necro slightly favours the necro but is pretty even, otherwise I agree with it as it stands.

That said, I haven’t seen (or played) a few of the matchups there in the last month or so, like ele vs mesmer for example.

So do you think spirit ranger v necro should be stalemate (currently advantage necro)? I certainly do not think the necro is in danger of losing outright to the spirit ranger given the necro’s propper condi management, at least not in under 60 seconds. If the fight goes the necro’s way it will be over quick, if it goes the ranger’s way it will probably drag on for a long time.

No, I think it is possible for spirit rangers to kill necros in <60s, especially if the fighting has to be done on and around a point. I think the necro has an advantage, just not a huge one. It could be that I’m overestimating myself/underestimating my opponents and am just being outplayed by the spirit rangers I face though

Thanks for the feedback – Edge agrees with you as well so I may end up changing the ranger v necro to a two headed arrow. From the discussion it seems it depends on the rangers skill at evading the right stuff from the necro, which would put it in the even match category.

Communicating in solo queue is not sufficient to carry. You also have to make calls that are actually GOOD calls.

Good players in solo queue will know what calls to make, and also which ones to ignore.

Once I had a guy tell me in a match “Mansion lost – don’t go there” when our guard was 1v2 on the point after this guy had got stomped. Well I knew that was a bad call seeing as mansion was our close and we had possession of it, so I went there anyway and won the 2v2 with the guards help. Later in the match he was like “lol don’t listen to me” and I said “I know.”

Batmang.5421:

Great post. I would make a few changes though.

-spirit rangers over ele
-condi necro over evade thief
-burst ele even with evade thief
-shatter mesmer even with evade thief
-evade thief over bunker guard
-engi over bunker guard

Thanks for the feedback, Blinx! It is great to hear from players at your level in this thread.

-spirit rangers over ele
→ I will probably change this

-condi necro over evade thief
→ some are arguing for opposite result. I think it probably depends on if the thief is able to evade the proper things, so I’m inclined to keep it as a fairly close match

-burst ele even with evade thief
→ I will probably change this

-shatter mesmer even with evade thief
→ I’ve never been able to beat a good one! Also most footage I’ve seen also argues for advantage thief (there is a good jumper v xeph series on jumper’s channel http://www.twitch.tv/loljumper/c/2259958 a bit dated now but I don’t think higher initiative on larcenous changes this matchup much. Shatter mes is surprisingly reliant on their boons i.e. vigor, might).

-evade thief over bunker guard
-engi over bunker guard
→ see my thoughts on both these matchups above in my response to Reikou

Mammoth.1975:

It’s only anecdotal, but I agree with the chart almost 100%. Some of the ‘even’ matchups might slightly favour one or the other, but not enough to call it a real advantage. I think spirit ranger vs necro slightly favours the necro but is pretty even, otherwise I agree with it as it stands.

That said, I haven’t seen (or played) a few of the matchups there in the last month or so, like ele vs mesmer for example.

So do you think spirit ranger v necro should be stalemate (currently advantage necro)? I certainly do not think the necro is in danger of losing outright to the spirit ranger given the necro’s propper condi management, at least not in under 60 seconds. If the fight goes the necro’s way it will be over quick, if it goes the ranger’s way it will probably drag on for a long time.

Reikou.7068:

Hey Kavia, great post. About time we had a decent matchup thread to see where classes actually stand tier-wise.

I would just like to ask though, what sort of situation are we looking at? In an open field/free to kite or run around wherever and discussing just combat? Or attempting to capture a node, and where node capture means advantage?

If it is not free roaming/combat-focused tier list, but instead a hold-a-node style tier-list, I personally think that the Bunker Guardian holds a disadvantage vs Evade Thief, Spirit Ranger, and Kit Engineer.

In my hypothetical scenario, you would have two players fighting over a point and trying to take it either though forcing the opponent off of the point or killing them. Simply holding a neut but not being able to kill or take the node in <60 seconds is still stalemate. If the player could walk up on a node capped for the opponent, knock them off and keep them off enough to cap it in <60 seconds, that would probably be advantage to the assaulting profession. I believe that scenario is extremely rare at the moment. Most of the debunkering scenarios of a bomb/flamethrower engi best suited for that task are stalemate because while he may get a neut, he’s probalby not gunna cap the node or kill the opposing bunker in <60 seconds.

Bunker guard is extremely durable in a 1v1 scenario when they have their cooldowns available, so all their matchups end up stalemate except for classes with extremely high damage pressure and boon removal.

Evade thief’s pressure is probably not sufficient to efficiently debunk a guard. I’ve watched some duels from Jumper v Acandis even when Larcenous Strike was more powerful – it still took Jumper quite a long time to kill him, probably >60 seconds.

Similar scenario for guard v engi and guard v spirit ranger.

Engi may be able to force a neut on the guard but is not going to kill him in <60 seconds unless the guard screws up. Maybe in a different meta where the engi is HgH he would be able to kill the guard, but if the guard brings sanctuary, wall of reflection, OR shield of the avenger as he might if HgH was popular, the fight is stalemate again.

Guard vs ranger I don’t believe the ranger has enough diversity of condi to prevent easy cleanses from the guard, and has no means of boon removal. I don’t think you can call that match anything but a stalemate (gunna be a long fight!).

Defektive.7283:

Standard GS Mace Shield is 0/10/30/0/30 or 0/20/20/0/30

I also don’t agree with a number of the matchups for Warriors.

Warriors were definitely the most difficult to call correctly because there just aren’t enough of them in high level games to make accurate calls on. Most of my assumptions about warrior come from watching Helseth’s stream where he takes Furious in order to maximize the number of opportunities he has for a skull crack-hundred blades combo. By the time the cooldown is done he almost always has enough adrenaline for another full one..

I would welcome more footage of high ranked warriors playing – including yourself, Defektive, in order to better call the matchups. Feel free to tell me where I have it wrong. Spirit ranger vs warrior is getting a lot of debate at the moment!

Does building 0/20/20/0/30 change some of the matchups? I would love your input.

Ryan.9387:

Rangers should not lose to stance Warriors. The spirit actives play a key role in that match up but if you are aiming high level then Rangers should win.

Do you think the warrior could stalemate it 60+ seconds? My impression is that spirit rangers kill slowly, especially against a warrior with good cleanses (cleansing ire).

BurrTheKing.8571:

I’d say that Stance warrior is weaker than Zerker Stance, Sig of Stamina, and Dolyak Sig. I say this because Endure Pain is largely useless in such a Condi-Heavy Meta. Signet of Stamina makes the warrior even stronger vs Necros and Engis.

The version I saw used Berserker’s, Balanced, and Frenzy. You’re probably right that balanced and dolyak could be interchanged, and then you just have to choose between frenzy or sig of stamina – I doubt the choice significantly affects the matchups. Frenzy probably helps the warrior vs other glass cannons to burst them down faster during the stun, but sig of stam helps vs. condi. I think berskerker’s + cleansing ire + lyssa runes already do a fine job vs condi for most cases.

Israel.7056:

All they really need to do to make the matchmaking fair is remove the elo rating from solo queue and the leaderboards and just make matches truly random. That way anyone could get matched with anyone. Right now what we have is like a team arena lite version.

That would be great as an unrated queue – if only we had the population to support that many different queues.

Silentshoes.1805:

Kavia,

Uberkingkong has already posted a number of screenshots with top 20 people all on one team, and significantly lower MMR people on the opposing team. They were what got me thinking about what could explain it.

I have seen those screenshots, but many were from day 1 of solo queue which is likely a flawed sample. People’s ranks were fluctuating a lot that day and there was a small number of players. Also, none of those screenshots have corresponding leaderboard pics to confirm where the players were on the leaderboards at the time the match was played.

Someone needs to like, take a leaderboard screenshot, play one match, record results, wait for leaderboard update, take another leadboard screenshot, play one match, record results etc. It would be time consuming or I would be volunteering. If a lot of people were to collaborate on it it wouldn’t be too bad though.

Quite entertaining! Fun editing

Thanks for the feedback! In a few days with more responses I can make an updated chart that may change the results for necro v engineer. Anybody else have thoughts on this matchup?

I don’t understand why we need two threads on this issue. Should be merged:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/events/Update-on-EU-PAX-Qualifier-Tournament

In the name of science someone should record the results of some matches based on screenshots of the leaderboards and screenshots of the players in their matches. You should be able to determine the rank of each person in the match, and then see if the queue system is doing something like Silentshoes is saying.

Imagine a scenario where 10 people queue with leaderboard ranks ranging from #1 to #100, one person every 10 ranks. Would the match look like this:

#1, #10, #20, #30, #40, #50 vs. #60, #70, #80, #90, #100

OR

#1, #20, #40, #80, #100 vs. #10, #30, #50, #70, #90

Obviously the second scenario should end up in a closer match. I would be surprised if Anet designed their system to intentionally make it so “winners win” by keeping them with other winners.

Either way, someone should be able to figure this out with some time and a lot of hourly screenshots of leaderboards and scoreboards from each game.

Change log 8/12/13:

kit engi vs. condi necro – even match -> advantage necro
kit engi vs. shatter mesmer – advantage mesmer -> even match
burst ele vs. evade thief – advantage thief -> even match
spirit rang vs. condi necro – advantage necro -> even match
spirit rang vs. stance war – advantage warrior -> even match
spirit rang vs. burst ele – stalemate -> advantage ranger

Why: to increase knowledge of the community about the capability of meta builds and facilitate team creation, strategic decision making, and a healthy competitive environment. 1v1 capability matters significantly despite this being a team game. In conquest you have 3 capture points and only 5 players. While good teams will maximize number advantages and create mismatches, 1v1 scenarios are nonetheless quite common and a strong determining factor in team composition. In game tactics can also be improved by good knowledge of the matchups i.e. “a spirit ranger is capping our close node, who should we send to deal with them?” When creating a meta composition, you need to consider the ability of any given class to hold their own in a 1v1 against the other popular builds.

What: a table that lists all the possible profession matchups and the expected result for the most popular meta builds. Over time, the table could be expanded to include multiple builds for some professions. The table contains the expected result of the matchup using symbols:

Up arrow – advantage to the class in the corresponding column
Left arrow – advantage to the class in the corresponding row
Two headed arrow – even match. Either class has a reasonable chance of winning this fight depending on things such as timing of long-cooldown abilities, use of evades, positioning, etc.
Infinity – stalemate. This fight is expected to last for a period of at least 60 seconds, after which time a 1v1 is likely to be disrupted by help from teammates.

A noted caveat of these results is that I expect the fight to happen on or around a node. If one class only survives by repeatedly disengaging and cannot force a neutralization, I consider that a loss. If they can force the enemy off the point and keep it neutral for at least 60 seconds even if it requires disengage/stealth I would consider that a stalemate.

Also, in these hypothetical matchups we must assume both players have a high and equal skill level.

Lastly the meta builds I have included in the chart stem from observations in casted tournament play and teams playing at the ~top 200 leaderboard level. Many of them I pulled from http://mistpedia.net/index.php/All_Builds

Who: I will try to keep this matchup list up to date with changes in the meta and community feedback. I need your help! I encourage people to post in this thread their thoughts on particular matchups. I do not play every class and probably am wrong about some of the matchups (and perhaps some of the builds!). I would very much appreciate your expertise via discussion in this thread.

How: Please state in your post clearly which matchup you are discussing and what the expected outcome is (i.e. “Ele v Mesmer is advantage Ele because…” or “Ranger v Guard is even match not stalemate because…). Also if you think a build I have not included is the new meta build, please explain/link the build and the results of the matchups with the other builds in the chart (including the old meta build for that profession). This thread should NOT be the place to discuss balance, or how x profession is too strong in 1v1. If you have ideas for how traits/skills/utilities should be patched in order to change the outcome of a matchup, please make a separate thread. I think we can have some great discussions here and I will use the collected feedback on individual matchups to update the chart accordingly.

The chart and builds are current below as of 8/12/13

Nice work

Xaqq.7562:

underkingkong, I don’t want to troll you or something, but comparing basilic venom with guard / engee bumps and necro fear.. lol

I think uber was referring to using basi venom into the stolen necro fear which is even better than any that a necro has. How about scorpion wire onto the glass? How about using shadow return to port back up after getting knocked off? Thief can be great on this map.

Like has been said above. ALL professions have a way to be effective on this map. You have 1.5 min to switch characters or your utilities or whatever when you see it is skyhammer. If you refuse to adapt you have nobody to blame but yourself.

This map is FUN and the expanded map rotation in solo queue is great for keeping matches interesting. I hope they keep it and the map doesn’t become a casualty of QQ again.

Some other focus tricks

-Cast warden, cast curtain on top of warden, enemy runs away, you activate pull, pulling him into warden, then illusionary leap→swap to immob him (usually have time for this given short knockdown on the pull) and blurred frenzy → mind wrack

-When getting trained by a foe, cast curtain, run through it, wait for enemy to pursue you through curtain, then pull them backward (works quite well at choke points).

-cast curtain on top of enemy, wait for him to dodge which they generally do, freaked out they are about to get pulled. Start warden cast and activate pull in middle of warden cast – enemy will end up knocked down with a warden on top of them. Can chain this into leap→swap →blurred frenzy→mind wrack

-focus pull is really handy on Skyhammer, Temple, Khylo, Spirit Watch due to ability to pull enemies off catwalks / into holes, etc.

The key to using it post-nerf is to mind game your opponent into blowing dodges by casting it very close to them. Before you could use it more like a gap closer to pull in fleeing enemies but it is more difficult to do that now. If you want to use it on someone running away, cast it in front of them so they get crippled, and you can try pulling them after you see them dodge.

I have some thoughts for scepter. Been using it a lot lately in tPvP and wish it was just tweaked a bit to make it more fluid and fun to use.

a) Reduce cast time of Ether Clone to 1/2 second so auto attack chain feels fluid. That 1 second cast time is just soooo long and clunky.

b) Improve speed of Counter Spell (and Counter Blade for that matter) to equal the speed of the scepter auto attacks – currently that thing misses like every time since its in a straight line and nothing stands still in PvP.

c) During the animation of Illusionary Counter (and Illusionary Riposte) the block should continue or a short evade should be added. It is super frustrating to use these abilities while under fire because you block one attack then have to remain vulnerable while the animation finishes in order to get the damage and clone. It is heartbreaking that you can successfully block the attack but then if you dodge soon after you interrupt the actual spell. I mean, Blurred Frenzy gets 2 1/2 sec evade, I’m sure you can add like a 1/4 sec evade to these spells without breaking balance.

d) Confusing Images windup is way too long, and the spell cancels if people run behind you. A couple options for this spell
-Reduce windup from 1 second to 1/2 second
-Make it non-directional so it continues the channel if your target runs behind you, or if you want to run away from target. (maybe hold scepter straight up like Mirror animation?)
-Another idea that would be cool is if this spell worked more like Tainted Shackles (1/4 second cast, creates beam of confusion between you and enemy, ticks every 1/2 second x5, if enemy runs out of range it ends. Could also make it so it just does damage every 1/2 second, applies 5 confusion stacks if enemy still in range at end like the immobilize on Tainted Shackles)

I like how this weapon is hybrid power and condi. It fits in with either spec. I think the damage numbers on these abilities are fine, they just need usability tweaks because the weapon feels very clunky to use. I think you make it more user friendly you will see a lot more people choosing this.

Oh, and another idea for a stealth reveal mechanic would be to make light fields reveal opponents. Has counterplay because enemy could always run around the field, but if you had good game sense and placed the light field effectively you could reveal whole teams. Light fields are available to a good spread of classes, about half of them, and the guardian has plentiful light fields which addresses the guardian stealth gank in particular.

Could also make it so it doesn’t reveal opponents completely but maybe just they become visible while in the light field (returning to stealth when they leave it).

Teldo.1473:

I agree with Xeph’s post. The tournament gameplay has downgraded to something that is near hotjoin / soloqueue level.

In regards of stealth counterplay the best thing I could come up with would be allowing people to reveal enemies by just hitting them while they are in stealth, but this only works if someone is stealthed for longer than 3 seconds.

This would allow people who rely on stealths to get away still to use it as an escape.
At the same time this would make a counterplay possible to whole teams stealthing trying to instagib someone. With a change like that people would still be able to use stealth to surprise their enemy, but it will require some thought process behind it and people won’t be able to just mindlessly run around in stealth with 4 people oneshotting guardians anymore.

I think this or something like it is a great idea. If a team knows a stealth play is coming through good scouting or game sense, they can actually do something about it.

Another alternative, similar to this is not having the stealth break but just show damage floaters so that if you are attacking the air and hit something you can get an idea of the enemy position. You could also do some cool shimmery translucent effect for like 1/4 second if you hit someone in stealth where you see them temporarily. This would help to prevent breaking the utility of things like shadow refuge and mass invis when used for an individual utility or escape, but also give teams the option of countering team stealth plays. I think this is a good idea because it increases skill cap, because it would require manual aiming of some skills. The other great thing about these ideas is it would not affect PvE at all because NPCs don’t shoot the air and watch for damage floaters.

Thought I’d post this here because this thread is great and constructive, and likely to get the attention of devs, and the other thread on this totally devolved.

For necro dhuumfire, and many other traits that give some powerful condition on some short invisible internal cooldown, please change the rules for the proccing of the burning to something VISIBLE and AVOIDABLE to promote counterplay. I find it supremely stupid that once dhuumfire is off cooldown it doesn’t matter how you dodge or play against the necro… the next crit is going to own you. Some ideas:

a) Apply burning when you chill a foe. Burning duration is half the chill duration.
-at least you can dodge the necro attacks that chill, would also be a neat buff to spinal shivers that works with the rest of the spite tree. Duration scaling would help prevent Sigil of Ice from being OP.

b) Apply 4 seconds of burning to nearby foes when leaving deathshroud
-people would be running from you while in deathshroud literally “fearing” the burn. You can counterplay using the claw gap closer or immobilize to ensure the burning lands. Encourages builds that spend more in Soul Reaping diversifying the builds a bit

c) Apply 6 seconds of burning to nearby foes (or maybe 8 seconds to single target?) when activating a signet
-creates new multi-signet builds that force hard choices over utilities. Most signets have cast time so would be dodgable (aside form plague signet). Plague signet becomes quite nice, but still balanced b/c of long cooldown

You could use these ideas to give a similar treatment to other similar traits that give some powerful proc on an attack that is currently unavoidable (i.e. incendiary powder- maybe it would apply burning when you use a control effect on an opponent pull, knockback, stun, etc, or maybe it does it to your opponent when they block a bomb or grenade!)

Got owned by this tele churning earth burst combo courtesy of my friend Demise. I got a kick out of it! Thought it made an amusing highlight

http://www.twitch.tv/kaviakael/c/2586813

p.s. – this post is not calling for any nerfs or buffs to anybody – just for fun!

Shananigans.8412:

Can’t say this news isn’t really disappointing! Maybe next time

Do you even age, brah?

google.3709:

DeathMatch simply wouldn’t work on GW2 thanks to class balance

Currently Mesmer is the only class with reliable Ress, strong burst, boon hate, insane amounts of invulnerability and are 1 of the 2 classes that it’s impossible to stomp on the first try.

Death matches would be based around 1 guard and 4 Mesmer and maybe theif, unless Anet finds a way to give other classes without invils/stealth a way to defend against focus fire and complete boom clear. And also a reliable ress

Just wanted to pop in and point out that mesmers can stealth-stomped on first try if there are no targets for their downstate 2 around (cannot use the ability without a target). Stutter-stomp with or without blink is also effective.

Overall, though, mesmer downstate is quite similar to thief and both are typically berserker amulet builds that you can just cleave down. Every downstate has weaknesses.

I think this map is great, and promotes creative gameplay and the use of some lesser used utilities and traits.

I have a couple of changes that would make the map even more awesome than it already is:

1) allow casting of abilities while in the air. Right now jumping on a jump pad is almost like CCing yourself. Also if you run onto a jump pad while using an ability it interrupts it. At least allow abilities to finish if you hit a jump pad, that would make it consistent with jumping off ledges and such.

2) improve layout of the cannon room to reduce camera occlusion. It can get really annoying to try to position yourself to avoid knockbacks while also being able to see anything because of how the terrain up there re-positions your camera! One suggestion is to make the portal in a flat portal laying on the ground (like mesmer portal) and put a small fence behind it (like at khylo side nodes) that you could stand against.

Otherwise be sure to fix the bugs: there should be no immune/stealth channeling of the cannon, no being immune to CC on the cannon etc.

Winds.3087:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Temporal Curtain will not apply its swiftness if you already have swiftness on you

Wouldn’t call it a bug, curtain was nerfed long ago because apparently mesmers abused it by running in and out for permanent swiftness.

Well it would preferably stack with other sources of swiftness and just keep track of who has ran through it, limiting the application to one per character per curtain

Arcane thievery has multiple bugs

-cast time of 1/2 second underwater
-Far-Reaching Manipulations also changes the base cooldown to 40 seconds
-can be blocked despite unblockable skill fact
-misses if blinded instead of transferring blind
-tooltip should be updated to reflect number of boons/condis transferred (three)

There are plenty of effective 1v1 builds out there – just take a look at the results from trooper’s 1v1 tourney on the EU servers or the NMCC last week. Phantasm mesmers are by no means unbeatable 1v1 – these tournaments proved this.

Also a lot of this thread is talking about some fantasy build that has all the possible traits (“30/30/30/30/30”?). The traits buffing phantasms are spread through all 5 trait lines and there are a number of different builds being referred to generically as “phantasm” but each of these different builds has different weaknesses whether its burst damage or condi damage or aoe damage or whatever.

Acandis.3250:

Batmang.5421:

3. Stop reviewing builds pre match. IMO reviewing player builds comprises competitive value for the players and it takes too much time. That’s what guides and tutorials are for. It could also open up an opportunity for post game analysis. You don’t see casters requesting starcraft players to give their build orders pre game for a reason. If nothing else, they should have a 3rd person that isn’t casting review the builds and give a general summary to the casters so they can comment in game.

Please.

As a viewer seeing the builds used in tournament games is one of the most interesting parts of the game. I believe that due to caster inexperience often the review of the builds does take a long time. With experience, builds could be reviewed very quickly i.e. ~15 seconds per player or a total of ~3min. If casters weren’t having to do all sorts of admin for these tournies it would also be quicker.

The biggest thing missing from guides/tutorials etc. is how different builds fit into the team as a whole. Seeing 5 builds together as a team is much different than seeing a build in isolation, and I think build review during tournies accomplishes something that no guide can.

I love going back and watching VODs of previously casted games to review the builds and then watch their impact on the game. In this scenario if the caster does nothing but open each build, scroll over runes, weapons and amulet then quickly flash the trait tab it would still be useful in a VOD scenario b/c you can pause and study it if you want. It could be accomplished in <5 seconds per player and if casters simply want to say what they think the general role of the player is on the team they’ll be able to say that without explaining every detail. “This is a high physical damage roamer” “this is a condition teamfight build” “this is a backpoint defense build” etc.

I just really hope that builds don’t get totally cut from tournament casting because that is a huge part of the strategy for the game and super interesting for many viewers

I agree with OP this is extremely annoying and a fix similar to team colors where the user could normalize other player’s race is a great option.

The sword 2 ability is close to balanced, but quite annoying when used in an abusive fashion with terrain/LOS to duck in and out of a fight (i.e. from bottom of clocktower, from bottom of keep, etc). Normally this skill has a nice counter which is drawing the fight toward the white circle that is visible on the ground as the shadow return spot. The use of this ability to go through walls/terrain removes this counter.

One fix you could do to maintain the function of the ability is to increase the initiative cost if the skill does not land on a target (i.e. the Ride The Lightening treatment). Alternatively, you could increase the initiative cost when used on a target that is not in LOS. These would be small changes that would help to bring the skill in line with other weapon skill gap closers that have cooldowns and/or require LOS.

Most of the downed interrupt skill have an cast time and animation. By learning these you can time your stability/invuln/blind etc to avoid the interrupt. If nothing else, dodging these then stomping again is usually faster than eating the interrupt.

After participating in and watching a few tournies this week it is abundantly clear that custom arenas NEED a forced reset of the match. Nobody watching wants to wait around for the current match to finish or for randoms to clear out of the arena in order to change settings. Give the custom admins the ability to boot all players or reset the match PLEASE!!!!

Another useful feature would be a “pause” feature for competitive matches where there is technical issues (i.e. player d/c’s, admin can pause match until player re-establishes connection).

Thanks!

I actually won’t be able to make it tomorrow as I found out today I have to work. Go go team mesmer! Hope ya’ll have fun

I think any build that takes the mantra heal but doesn’t use a rune set with an on-heal effect is missing its full potential. Lyssa would be pretty good, but so would Dwayna, Flock, Grenth, etc.

I think portal would be better than decoy – more team utility and can provide the same purpose as Decoy (port out, charge mantras, port back) just with longer cooldown (but used smartly can virtually guarantee survival).

Question that comes to my mind with this build is what role is it supposed to play?

Bunker? Not sure it would hold out long in 2v1 scenario enough to justify bringing over a BM ranger, guardian, or engy.

DPS roamer? Would not be very moble, doesn’t do enough damage to efficiently finish fights.

Backpoint defender? Its based around being at range and has too much stealth such that you’d have hard time keeping a point from getting neutral.

I am interested in participating!

IGN: Kavia Kael
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