Guild Wars 2

Avelos.6798:

Sirsquishy’s information is pretty good. We’re always talking about this kind of stuff :P
I’d recommend his info too. My own, if you wanted maximum performance without breaking the bank or two you could possibly go for Intel 9 chipset and an i7 4790K which will reportedly be shipping with a 4.1 GHz base clock which is a substantial jump from the previous 3.5 GHz from the past four generations.

New Intel board and Intel CPU. Reuse all of what else you have. If you want, grab 8 GB of RAM so the operating system is not taking away from RAM that can be used with GW2.

An i5 is a much better option for “not breaking the bank”. It’s half the price of an i7 and gives the same performance in GW2: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,3268-7.html

To the OP: If you upgrade to an i5 4670k (+required motherboard + 8 gb of ram), you’ll be able to run the game on high settings with at least 30 fps. Such an upgrade will cost you about $700 based on current prices. You can overclock the 4670k quite easily to get even better performance.

AOE condi damage is the normal counter to AI builds, and it counters them pretty hard so they’re fine. AOE condi works against necro minions, mesmer phantasms and ranger spirits. The only problem with AI currently is that Engi turrets are IMMUNE to conditions and if you kill them while on point, they aoe knockback + aoe burst dps on explosion.

Giving AI condition immunity + high aoe damage on being killed + aoe knockback + high damage if not killed = awful game design. It’s one of those cases where you lose if you kill them and you lose if you don’t kill them.

Malediktus.9250:

Better to add DX11 support before Mantle. Far more people would benefit from that.

DX 11 will not reduce the current cpu bottleneck, so it will not benefit anyone. It will not run any faster than DX9.

tedfoo.8109:

This would require way too much developer effort for just a tiny boost in performance. It’s far better that the developers focus on making the game better through LS/expansion (hopefully).

Besides, the game already pulls on 8 threads very effectively – just check your core usage.

You obviously do not have an 8 core cpu and do not know anything about how Mantle works. GW2 has 3 very slow threads that bottleneck the entire cpu. After 4 cores, you don’t gain any extra performance. Even on a 2014 gaming PC with i7 4770k this game still drops to 30 fps in WvW on high settings due to the cpu bottleneck. It will run 4 cores at 100% and leave the rest at idle.

Mantle support would be a huge boost in performance and is significantly less work to add than optimizing for 8 threaded computing (something which no one has done well in a game). Either way, mantle or better multi-threading is needed for large-scale player interaction, especially now that mega servers have been added. Zones that were previously running at 60 fps now run way slower due to all the extra player interactions in each zone.

The OP has some very good points to address uneven teams/team swap abuse in hotjoin. Players who have joined a hotjoin match should not be allowed to team-swap. This completely defeats the purpose of the auto-balancing mechanism. Players who have joined a team should also not be allowed to go back to spectator mode.

Almost every time someone gets auto-balanced to the losing team, they will swap back to the winning team within a few seconds. Or, the player will go into spectator mode, causing uneven teams and autobalance to trigger again — then they will go back to the winning team when someone else gets auto-swapped to the losing team.

I played a match yesterday where this happened over 10 times in the same match. This is unbelievably broken to the point where it’s not fun to play the game. I always volunteer when auto-balance pops up (since it grants the win-bonus even if you lose), but it’s not fun when it’s 3v5 and autobalance is constantly bouncing people around.

With Hotjoin being broken, SoloQ being full of trolls and ragequitters/constant 4v5s, the only game mode that currently works is TeamQ. No one likes it when I’m trying out new builds in TeamQ.

randomly.6395:

Shemsu.8721:

randomly.6395:

Shemsu.8721:

Shockwave.1230:

Karolis.4261:

Let me explain you some basic stealth mechanics. If you do direct damage to someone while you are in stealth – you get revealed. That’s exactly what you are describing here.

I don’t know where your expectation is derived from, but mine comes from Heartseeker and Smoke fields.

IF you hit someone with heartseeker WHILE in stealth you will be revealed

If you use heartseeker while in a smoke field and hit an enemy, you will gain stealth.

If you use cluster bomb in a smoke field and hit an enemy, you will gain stealth, but immediately become revealed.

If you use heartseeker in a smokefield while ALREADY stealthed, you will be revealed

Well, duh.

The difference is that the initial Heartseeker in a smoke field can give you stealth even when doing damage. This is not so with blast finishers that deal damage.

Probably coded this way very specifically, as others have said, for other blast combos.

Heartseeker is the only exception as far as I know, where you can do damage and gain stealth at the same time (aside from cloak and dagger which does both damage + stealth). Engineer jumpshot (leap finisher) through smoke field (e.g. bomb/turret smoke field) grants stealth and instantly reveals the engineer if it hits anyone during the leap, unlike Heartseeker. Any blast finisher on any class will reveal the caster.

The reality is that healing/bunker builds are too strong without spammable poison to keep their healing down. Even with poison, regen/healing is too strong. Warriors especially can reach 900+ hps.

If we’re going to keep comparing this game to GW1, let’s keep in mind that not every class could bunker + heal to full hp in GW1. I’m currently running a cleric siphon necro with wells and it takes at least 3 people to take me down in s/tpvp. I usually go the entire match without being killed once. Every class except thief can do the same thing.

This game NEEDS spammable poison or a huge nerf to healing/regen builds. Personally, I’d prefer if all passive healing (regen boon included) were nerfed by 20% and poison was made less spammable. Spammable conditions and passive healing are two of the major things wrong with s/tPVP.

Sylanna.1947:

I like the idea of when it’s 5 vs 4, the team with 5 should always have one player stay dead and not respawn until someone else dies (and then they remain dead until someone else dies). It’s not completely fair because some classes can stay alive forever (thieves) but at least it would give the team of 4 some chance.

I’ve seen this idea posted before and I want to take a moment to explain the ramifications of this approach and how it can be improved:

The team with 5 players and 1 forced dead player will be put at a disadvantage by the system compared to the team with only 4 players. This is because:

1) If you’re forced to stay dead for an extended period of time, you lose the flow of combat/rotations since you’re stuck at spawn. This will make the team with 5 players suffer since it will create disorganization, especially in SoloQ where 4v5 is the biggest problem and there is a lack of voice communication. This is unfair punishment to the people that showed up to play. The team with 4 players will be able to rotate without losing the flow of combat and have an advantage.

2) This opens up avenues for abuse — make the worst player on your team leave for the chance of getting one of their good players to be locked out of team fights for a while (e.g. their bunker). We don’t want more people abusing the system.

3) It punishes people who showed up to play and wastes their time. Why should players that stayed in the match be penalized for someone else leaving? No one wants to spend the match locked at spawn while others get to play. This also provides quitters with the ability to troll the other team by forcing them into this chaotic rotation of random players being locked out of combat. We do not want quitters to have even more power to ruin matches than they already do.

A solution for SoloQ:
If the game is 4v5 at the start of the match:
Punish the person who did not show up, and kick one person on the opposing team (with the closest MMR to the no-show) back into queue (without penalty). Prevent the 5th person from joining the game. Give the person that was kicked back into queue priority for joining a new match (i.e., reshuffle existing teams in queue) so they don’t have to wait another 5-10 min to play. (This will require an info prompt explaining the reason they were removed from the game). This way teams stay even in average MMR and no one’s time is wasted being locked at spawn/being forced to stay dead.

If a player leaves during the match (in SoloQ only):
When a player from one team leaves for more than 1 minute total (which is enough to cost their team about 30 points in total score at high-end tpvp), prevent them from rejoining, give them a dishonor debuff. This will still allow for switching characters mid-match (which takes about 30s). For the team with 5 players, pop-up the “automatic balancing” prompt that currently exists in hotjoin and ask players to volunteer being locked at spawn for the rest of the match (no rotation possible). Award the volunteer with bonus rank points on top of their teams earned points (+100?) to compensate them for having to sit at spawn not playing the game for the 5-10 min left in the match. If no one volunteers, kick a person from the team with 5 players, and put them into priority queue. If possible, award them with rank points after the match has ended based on their contributions during the time they were in there.

The reason these should be restricted to SoloQ is because you are playing with strangers who may or may not have stable internet connections/computers and may just be trolling. In teamQ it is accepted that you play with an organized premade team that will give you hell if you leave on purpose. Teammates in a premade group are also more understanding of disconnects/crashes since they know each other. Lastly, it will prevent organized abuse of the system from people who know each other.

Everything in that screenshot aside from the spinal shivers hit looks normal. Never seen spinal shivers hit for so much — it looks like it’s over-scaling with attack power.

The main saving grace of FT are the knockback (great CC) and blind (good for stomping in PvP). The rest of the skills might as well not be there.

1 skill is very low dps, short range, and still bugged to the point that it can’t hit targets at different elevations from you. Burn is too short for a condi build, damage is too low for a power build. Either buff direct damage or make the burn last longer.

2 is great when it hits, but it often bugs out and rolls into the terrain instead of exploding and just sits there, making the skill unusable for a long period of time. Needs bugfix

3 is great when it works, has problems hitting target due to narrow cone and unadvertised minimum range. I think this one is fine since there’s a high risk that it won’t hit, but the knockback is low cooldown and aoe so the reward is also high.

4 is useful for condi builds and stacking might. Would like it if it did more damage, but not necessary. Engi has fire fields from other sources, so this is not really a useful skill.

5 is great for stomping in PvP (use right before players try to interrupt you). No change needed

That being said, since FT direct damage is so low, the 15% damage and juggernaut traits are both quite useless since even in a power build it does subpar damage (with the +damage traits) compared to other weapons/kits. Buffing these could be a way of making it a viable direct-damage or tanking kit.

Warrior melee weapons do not have a consistent attack arc. (Note: This may apply to other classes with melee weapons)

1) Melee weapons are hitting in a 180 degree arc, making it possible to hit things that are beside you.

2) The range for the attack to the side is greater than the range for the attack when facing the enemy.

3) The range on melee attacks is significantly larger than the animation for the attack.

This can be seen in the attached screenshot. Currently, it is better to NOT face enemies when attacking since there is increased range. The 180 degree arc is also problematic in PvP since it makes melee attacks nearly impossible to avoid.

If Anet would revert the changes to hammer over the past year (increase the damage back to where it was; make it so staggering blow and hammer shock root the user once again; and increase the after cast delay on all the hammer skills back to where it used to be), hammer would stop being a face-rolling CC spam weapon and go back to being a tactical skill-based weapon with high risk and high reward. Right now it’s got little/no risk and high reward.

Edit: For those who didn’t play the game before hammer was overbuffed, it used to require actual timing and anticipation to land CCs due to them rooting the user and the high after cast delay. Getting hit with hammer hurt, but it was possible to avoid the CC spam with dodges + kiting without requiring stability since the warrior had to stand still for the big attacks.

Glory rank has been a joke since Anet allowed the original Skyhammer farmers to go unpunished. If you want to protest, just swap to exclusively using the bunny finisher. See how many “Dragons” get stomped by bunnies. Maybe some of these “fake pros” will start to understand that their dragon rank is meaningless.

Sunshine.5014:

This has been said too many times already. ANet, give us the option to make the opponent displayed as a generic human. I’ll even pay real money for it. You can even make it a gem store item. Here is my money, please take it and give the players a way to normalize the opponents’ models.

This. They can look however they want on their screen, but on our screens they should be normalized to prevent abuse of the system.

Anet, you already have a system in place that swaps character models for generic standardized ones that’s used for PvE and WvW culling (i.e., if I set my options to “low detail models”). It can’t be that hard to toggle it on for sPVP as well so that we at least have the option to use it. If it’s fine in WvW, you’re obviously okay with it in a PvP setting.

Justin ODell.9517:

Solstice.1097:

yea in this scenario the only remotely fair setup would be a 2v4 >.<

Is this something the community would like to see? I could definitely do that, but I’m worried how it would be perceived to those actually playing the game. People complain about the 4v5 often, this would be doing that on purpose.

Instead, have you considered offering a handicap in terms of points per objective and player kill? Higher ranked players should be worth more points when killed. They have the skills to stay alive and to pick their fights, so taking them down should be more rewarding. Novice players on the other hand may run in to get slaughtered due to their inexperience, so they should be worth less points per time killed. This system was once used in the battlegrounds of an mmo that we all know, but shall not be named. Killing High Warlord was worth a lot more points than killing Legionnaires.

Realistically, a player in the top 100 can usually 1v2 against two players ranked below 90% and win without much difficulty. They could put up a reasonable fight even in a 1v3 situation if the opponents were below 80% rating.

Another (or additional) handicap could be to give more points per captured objective per minute held for the lower ranked team, since they will have a much harder time holding the points and decapping points vs the experienced team. This could also be used in situations where there are forced 4v5s.

Just, as a theoretical test, 4/5 players = 0.8 team efficiency. What if the team with 4 players got points at the rate of 100%/0.8 = 125% from captured objectives to compensate for being a player short? This would require the team with 4 players to hold objectives for slightly less time in order to win. It wouldn’t even things out completely, but at least it would make those close games where the score has been 380 vs 500 in a 4v5 a lot closer (380 × 1.25 = 475 vs 500 assuming it was all from objectives and not kills).

Bot reporting is very easy in sPVP. Since you can see the bot name on the scoreboard, you can just right-click and report for botting. It would get 9+ reports per round and Anet would suspend the account very quickly. That is why there’s no or very little botting in PVP.

In PVE there are teleporting bots that mine nodes, etc. With their randomized names, it’s impossible to type them out. It’s also very hard to click on them to report fast enough before they teleport away. I would love to see the PVE system have maybe a list of names of people in the zone, like the PvP scoreboard, to make bot-reporting easier. It could even use the same hotkey!

Swim.6830:

Yeah really… when another class with 2600+ armor and near 30k health comes and crits you for 7k on one move lemme know. Warriors are still way above viable at the moment.

I would love to play this mystical warrior that you’re playing against. I’d totally stop playing my necro if I could have all that.

This is one of those super old bugs that has not been fixed. It happens in hotjoin when you join a new game in progress, and can be fixed by re-equipping your sigils. The same thing used to happen with signets and guardian virtues (not sure if it still does). The match skill-reset in tPVP fixes it too (unless it was broken with the new patch).

No game can please everybody for their entire life. The devs are working hard to make the game balanced and more fun for the 99.99% of the GW2 population that has not “finished PVP.”

That being said, maybe they could introduce a new title that requires as much rank points to get as the old Rank 80 did. That’d certainly deal with all these threads since then you could proudly display your PvP grind above your name tag.

I think this thread is funny since the other top thread is asking for a nerf to hard condi-counters.

Yes, condi builds got buffed. Most of us saw this with the trait preview. Power builds are also stronger now with the new runes and double sigils.. in general, you just die a whole lot quicker in sPVP.

I’m not sure if it’s the new runes, sigils, or some bug with phantasms. Mesmer phantasms are definitely hitting harder. It almost seems like they’re either over scaling with might, or simply ignoring toughness. My 3000 armor bunker gets hit for 7k from iDuelist.

As someone who’s been PvPing since beta, I like the change. Ranks were always something that players got angry about when it’s only loosely correlated with MMR in tPVP.

If the matches are unbalanced, that’s a problem with the matchmaking system and MMR, not ranks.

bhagwad.4281:

Kharr.5746:

Getting to level 80 in PvE takes only a few days. That has not stopped people from continuing to play the game, and neither will getting to glory rank 80. It will still take as much time to get to glory rank 80 as it does to level 8 characters to level 80 in PvE (probably way longer). It’s a great move.

Ooh, bad example. PvE players have other ways of showing off time spent. Gold. Legendaries. Achievement points. Loot. Take away all that, I can assure you GW2 will be a desert. No one plays “just for fun” in an MMO.

So far ranks have been the only marker of our time spent in PvP. Taking that away is akin to confiscating everyone’s loot, legendaries and gold in PvE.

Uh, after the patch PvPers will be able to work toward legendaries, can make gold, dungeon loot from reward tracks, and various max level rewards from glory rank chests. Have you even looked at the blog posts or watched the Ready-Up episodes? GW2 youtube/twitch channel is your friend.

Getting to level 80 in PvE takes only a few days. That has not stopped people from continuing to play the game, and neither will getting to glory rank 80. It will still take as much time to get to glory rank 80 as it does to level 8 characters to level 80 in PvE (probably way longer). It’s a great move.

It’s definitely not the best color scheme since several of the colors have equal luminance but only slightly different hues. You can mouse over them to get the useful information in text format. I’m pretty sure this is a case where the design team went with aesthetics over functionality. I play every class and this is what mine looks like….

I’m pretty sure I represent the more “casual” pvpers: I’ve got about 50% of each section (e.g. Armor-Light: 130/274 pieces earned, etc)

All of the Skyhammer exploiters suddenly think they’re special and should be rewarded with prestige. Anet really should have reset all Skyhammer exploiters so we wouldn’t have threads like this.

So many of these “why does the other class have more HP than my class” threads have been posted since launch that it is getting ridiculous. This game is not about raw stats, and never will be. Every class has a different playstyle and the game is quite balanced even if you don’t think it is.

If any of you want to know why ele only has less hp than warrior, you should look up some ele videos. Before they were hit with the nerf stick for several patches in a row, they could do 1 vs 10 (not kidding — see videos on youtube) even though they had only a little bit of HP. Eles are getting some nice buffs in the coming patch which will bring them back into competitive scenarios (staff ele is already used in high-level pvp and WvW). On a similar note, until healing signet got doubled in healing power, warriors were the worst PvP class despite having more hp and armor than any other.

I could go on explaining why each class has the base stats that they do, but that’d be a waste of my time. If you think x class is better than others, play it. Every class has a different play style and not every class can be mastered by every player.

Nabbo.2845:

Someone needs to implement an instructional videos (discussing strategies and such) for noobs entering tPvP for the first time. And they should be forced to watch it.

There’s a stickied official post on these very forums that has a huge selection of guides, top PVP builds, and links to top PVP streams: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/New-to-PvP-Start-here

The problem is a lot of people don’t read the forums.

Is hambow still a thing? Almost every warrior I see in tpvp is s/s + bow condi spec even after the bugfix on swords endlessly blocking even while on cooldown.

Anyway, all those builds have pretty straight forward counters. Except Caed. No easy counter for that.

The goal of the MMR system is to figure out your skill level. It takes quite a few games to do this. Once your MMR matches your skill level, you will win 50% of the time. The same applies to your sister who’s apparently winning 90% of the time.

If you want better matchups, I recommend playing around server peak hours when more players are online. You might be getting matched with bad players simply because there’s no one else that’s online.

DS stomp isn’t very hard to do, but it requires precise timing. It is a more advanced technique that requires some practice to pull off in live combat.

Making it possible to always stomp in DS would noobify the class, and taking it away would make it impossible for necro to stomp in group fights.

It’s fine the way it is.

Remember when people thought moa destroying all necro minions, including the elite golem, was a “bug”? https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Moa-killing-all-Necro-Pets-intentional

I haven’t played MM in a while, but I’m pretty sure that “bug” is still around. I hope this change to clones stays. Being able to summon phantasms and run away while they killed the thief was/is quite broken.

The main problem was that phantasm attacks AND the phantasm summon skills recharged while the thief is in stealth. This allowed for instant burst from summoned phantasms once the thief broke stealth + 2nd round of burst from shatter + 3rd round of burst from resummoning of phantasms. This is all on top of the automatic tracking + location revealing of the thief. Any mesmer that needs this to win vs thief should consider learning to play the game instead of relying on broken mechanics.

Ever played <name of any modern FPS here> online? It’s a bunch of children yelling obscenities at each other and QQing. No thanks. If you want to play with an organized team, play in teamQ and use a service that has experience doing voice (vent/teamspeak/mumble/etc)

Team chat already gets full of garbage that ultimately results in that team losing the game when a troll starts trash talking the rest of the team and folks spend their time talking back to the troll instead of focusing on playing the game/winning.

Do what ens said. Portal has a long cooldown. Finish off the treb once portal has expired.

Until Heartseeker gets tweaked (maybe +1 initiative cost?) there will be a ton of bad thieves running around in full glass spec pressing 2222222222 thinking they are ninjas or something.

Unless it was changed back, shortbow #1 was also nerfed to no longer track targets, making it super easy to dodge simply by strafing left/right.

Make sure you’ve updated your amulet/accessories to level 80 stuff. A lot of your stats come from there.

With all of the condi spam/cleave that’s currently happening, I’m not sure how anyone would think this is a good idea. In group fights, it’s not uncommon to go down with 15-25 stacks of bleed + poison + burning on you — you’d last maybe 2-3 seconds while downed if they persisted since your hp is greatly reduced to begin with. There’d be no point in even having a downed state in that case.

I’m surprised no one in this thread has linked the official teaser video from Anet’s Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9LrN-LD-ZI

Tyria will burn.

Anet could easily fix this problem by greatly reducing condition damage on all skills which would force players to supplement condition damage with power + precision.

To make it more clear:

1)Currently, Berserker needs power + precision + crit damage % (3 different stats) on their gear to do damage.
2) This change would force condition builds to require condition damage + power + precision to do damage (3 different stats) on their gear to do damage.

This would also fix all the QQ about condition immunity skills like berserker stance, diamond skin, and automated response since these skills would not prevent the incoming damage from power/precision.

Conditions will still be useful for locking down your opponent (blind/fear/daze/weakness/chill/immob) and adding armor-piercing DPS (bleeds/burn/torment/terror/poison).

Of course, I realize that this idea will not be popular since it will force all of the people building for vit + toughness + condi damage to reconsider if they want to dps or to tank instead of having their cake and eating it too.

Edit: I wanted to clarify that condition duration isn’t really a useful dps stat unless it’s a 1v1 fight since condi-cleave maxes out duration + stacks in seconds. It’s a useful stat for skills that disable the player (immob/chill/fear etc).

Put on the sexy T3 medium human cultural armor, and start throwing my expensive axes at enemies instead of chopping their faces.

Osi.3504:

Evan Lesh.3295:

• Each stack of dishonor has it’s own duration of 72 hours.
• You can play until your account has 3 stacks of dishonor.
• You cannot play until your account has less than 3 stacks. (Think of bleed stacks)
• Dishonor stacks expire while offline.
• Being kicked by AFK detection automatically adds a dishonor stack.
• Being absent from a match will add a stack of dishonor when the match has ended.

Simple version: You can leave a maximum of 3 games every 3 day period. Those could be spread out: If you leave once a day, you effectively lock yourself out every 24 hours. They could be stacked quickly: Leaving 3 times in one day means and cannot play almost the maximum of 72 hours.

Does that mean I’m not allowed to switch to another class mid-game anymore and if I do it 3 times I’ll get a debuff and be locked out of ALL games for 3 days???

If that’s true that’s a little absurd, especially for anyone doing achievements each day for the AP’s to maintain their leaderboard rank or spvp rank. I’m pretty sure I swapped to another character at least a couple times so far mid-game… I didnt techincally leave the match and yet nearly got punished for it?

You guys should be more clear or make these things less overwhelming like 3 hours debuff, other games I’ve played did a similar thing but it wasn’t so drastic… maybe 30 min debuff that you couldn’t join again. If I was locked out from doing my APs for 3 days that would be a huge disappointment.

You are NOT supposed to be able to swap characters in the middle of tPVP matches. Skills get locked once the match starts for a reason: What you are doing is exploiting a vulnerability in the login system to circumvent the skill-locks in place during a match. This exploit (swapping characters mid-match) should automatically put on a dishonour stack to prevent people from abusing it.

Edit: Evan, I hope you’re reading. Either make the system add dishonour when people swap characters to circumvent skill-locking after the match has started, or patch the tPVP servers to prevent re-entry using a different character after the match has started.

If you are winning/losing 50/50, then you have reached your skill bracket. The only way to get out of it is to get better. But, keep in mind that everyone else is also playing and getting better too. Your “rank” is a representation of your skill relative to everyone else that’s currently actively playing sPVP.

Playing more without getting more skilled does not guarantee that you will move up in the leaderboards (unless everyone else quits sPVP, which has happened to some extent).

Staff (fire) auto attack does more damage than warrior hammer. Also, dagger (lightning) auto attack does more damage than warrior hammer.

You don’t even need to press a button! But, if you feel like it, you can toss in some lava fonts/fire grabs/dragon’s tooth/phoenix depending on your weapon of choice.

Dee Jay.2460:

Because as I pointed out before, AoE CC coupled with decent AoE damage is never going to be bad.

I know Hammer hasn’t been popular for that long but it has always been OP in my book. No class should be able to constantly put out so much AoE CC. It’s just broken, especially in a game where most players have a fairly short time to live.

People back then were just too caught up in the impressive Greatsword numbers to give Hammer much attention. Now that they’ve grasped how easy it is to pressure people with CC in this game they won’t give it up easily.

Uh, Hammer was NOT OP before. It became OP when ANET buffed hammer skills by removing aftercast so they could be chained / allowed them to be used while moving (they used to root the warrior during the animation). Prior to these changes, it was very difficult to land staggering blow / hammer shock.

You should mention that water spirit adds body blocking and another target that opponents have to cycle through. Damage blocked/delayed by the spirit adds to its “healing potential”. This alone gives it a big edge in sPVP. It also moves when traited unlike healing spring. Lastly, the large passive radius means your allies don’t need to stack on you to gain the benefit.

The passive portion on the heal is very useful for dealing with low-sources of incoming damage from stray dots/attacks that hit you while the burst portion of the heal helps deal with direct damage. What’s important here is that the passive heal is active prior to setting your burst heal on cooldown — this is superior to healing turret/healing spring which require you to blow your healing cooldown to get the passive heal (regen).

The new heals were never supposed to be “the best heal the professions have.”

Wooow. If that’s accurate, you were getting hit for 630 per torment stack. That’s not possible.

There’s a fresh crowd of new sPVP players — this is a very good thing. As they get better at understanding positioning and rotations in tPVP, they will get better. Hotjoin does not train players to tPVP. It never will. It’s a fun mode for trying out new builds or having a quick relaxing game.

In a week, the MMR system will have figured out the MMR of all these new players and matchmaking will improve. The only problem is that new players start with an MMR that’s too high for the average player.

Earthshaker gets the 50% crit bonus from UF since the stun is applied before the damage. The same applies to Merciless Hammer, which gives Earthshaker a 20% damage boost whereas other hammer skills do not get the bonus unless the target is already disabled (KD/KB is applied after the damage).

Edit: The merits of UF are as follows:
1) Shield bash + Eviscerate for guaranteed crits with Berserker amulet.
2) Skull crack + 100b for guaranteed crits on every hit (deadly).
3) Usual hammer chains
4) Shield bash + Final Thrust for similar effects to eviscerate combo.

As you can see, UF has more uses than just for hammer.