Guild Wars 2

Wow, it’s like I’m 7 months in the past with that clever use of “inb4 fanboys.”

Fanboys, AKA anyone who disagrees with my opinion

Play the classes and find out yourself. Don’t expect anyone to list off all the skills you should know to avoid.

Here’s a tip: If there’s a fancy animation, it’s probably bad.

Explorable modes have always been the GW2 PvE equivalent of raiding. I don’t think they’ve changed this philosophy because Fractals were released.

“Casuals” should play the appropriate content for them. You have the entire world and story modes for your “casual” content.

If facesmashing your head against a keyboard and blindly running into fights is what you consider casual content, I’m glad they’re changing it.

Badges of Battle? You mean badges of honor?

pantsforbirds.9032:

I get what you’re saying. So a roaming glassy necro could be pretty good as a counter to a bunker though? Im thinking maybe 2 bunkers and 3 roamers for the team. A bunker guardian, a bunker ele, a roaming thief, a roaming necro, and a roaming mesmer/ranger.

A condi necro can work, I won’t say they can’t, but they aren’t exactly roamers. They’re fairly bad in 1v1s and have very little mobility. They offer good support from the constant conditions and boon stripping, and have quite a bit of CC (3 second daze, 2 second knockdown, 1s instant fear).

They’re just not used very often because trap rangers do more damage, and mesmers can boon strip just as well as a necromancer. Both of them are better 1v1.

That team comp can work though, you just need to support your necromancer a lot. He’s the easiest target to focus, and maybe other than the thief the most likely target to be focused. He really should never be left alone after a group fight either.

Like say Foefire, you win the fight at graveyard, don’t send the necro to go poke at quarry alone. Send the thief/ranger/mesmer to do it, or have them accompany the necromancer if there’s someone on point.

It’s been tried. They’re not really bunkers, they’re more tanky DPS like a caltrops thief is really. If you have the choice, there’s no reason to go for a subpar build when you can bring a guardian or ele who is much better at it.

If you want, take something like a ranger and a thief to fight whoever you think will bunker. If they can’t survive something like 30-60 seconds (it really depends on how good the DPS are) then they’re either a bad player or the build is poor.

For example, a friend was adamant that he had a viable bunker warrior. I was able to solo it in under 30 seconds on a 100B warrior.

Bunker and roamers.

Get 2 or 3 of each.

Bunker: guardian, ele
Roamer: ele, thief, mesmer, ranger

I miss having a pocket healer myself, but for selfish reasons. It just doesn’t seem right to not have a healer as a warrior.

waka.9826:

funny thing is this is what they are also going to say on the third SOTG

“Don’t worry. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. We have plans for some upcoming changes, but we can’t give too much information about it.”

Reason why the SOTG isn’t worth the 40 minutes or whatever it takes to watch it. I can sum it up in 2 sentences.

East.8960:

Larynx.2453:

Custom arenas have only been top priority for the last 6 months, guys.

yea you surely know with all these competitive teams playing right? oh wait…. they are all waiting till things get fixed. gg.

-Kontrol

That reply made no sense.

Custom arenas have only been top priority for the last 6 months, guys.

These were features they told us about in the beta or before. The lack of features isn’t the problem, the pace which they implement them is. People were fine playing an incomplete, garbage PvP with no MMR at release. They’ve had to put up with it until now, and still have to put up with something almost as bad.

Darcy.2079:

The most basic of principles: for a company to succeed, it is necessary to provide what the majority of its customers want.

Ree Soesbee from ArenaNet: “The most important thing in any game should be the player. We have built a game for them.”

Apparently from their actions, ArenaNet do not see PvPers as customers nor players.

We should go to Washington and picket outside their building for equal rights.

Sanis.1096:

anet thinks RNG is good for esporst

“Apparently someone read somewhere on the internet that RNG was bad for PvP.” is what I remember the quote being.

Anyways, yeah. Engineer is fairly ridiculous. And things like chance to fear on hit or chance to proc quickness, really? I’d be ok with things like critical chance or whatever, but those are literally game changing. In fact, I remember a specific example where a warrior had already used frenzy, but quickness proced after he used bola, so I got to eat a full quickness 100b. Yay.

Just another hurdle for ArenaNet to get over…

RaynStargaze.6510:

Larynx.2453:

RaynStargaze.6510:

Sooo this is the ideal thread for entirely irrelevant balance chitchat?

I got instakilled by a thief (selfbuffed only – no massive might stacks going on) today while in stunlock 1v1 even though i have 2K toughness + protection up + 17K life

that + infinite combat reset

and you seriously put thief in tier B?
admittedly this doesnt happen often – but in the end it really shouldnt happen at all

It shouldn’t ever happen, but it’s not overpowered. Any competent player can beat a thief who relies on the opener to win a 1v1.

not if their stunbreaker is on cd they`re not – then they`re dead

The thief has to use a 45 second CD, a 40 second CD, a possible 45 second signet cooldown, and 6 initiative. I think it’s fair that for that they can do almost kill someone who’s only missing a single cooldown.

Nevermind the fact that you can easily avoid the stun in the first place, and there’s more to it than just “using their stunbreaker”. Again, a thief that relies on this to win is incredibly easy to beat, just like a warrior that relies on bulls rush landing is.

RaynStargaze.6510:

Sooo this is the ideal thread for entirely irrelevant balance chitchat?

I got instakilled by a thief (selfbuffed only – no massive might stacks going on) today while in stunlock 1v1 even though i have 2K toughness + protection up + 17K life

that + infinite combat reset

and you seriously put thief in tier B?
admittedly this doesnt happen often – but in the end it really shouldnt happen at all

It shouldn’t ever happen, but it’s not overpowered. Any competent player can beat a thief who relies on the opener to win a 1v1.

There’s a reason warriors are #8 on this list and not #2 behind thieves, or are you going to say they’re overpowered too?

peter.9024:

Hmm that got me thinking, how about this build:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.0|1.1g.h1|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.71g.1n.71g.1n.71h.1n.71h.1n.a7.1n.a7|2v.0.2v.0.3v.0.2v.0.3v.0.2v.0|k59.u3ab.0.0.k5a|3a.8|0.0.0.0.0|e

4.7k effective power and 1800 toughness. (power could be higher, but i really like my boonduration runes)

This is a PvP build. Hence the “PvP build” in the title…

Ridiculously inflated stats like that don’t exist in sPvP.

Defektive is saying that a balanced isn’t worth the weight you’re making your team carry. Either go heavy toughness, where it’s noticeable and provides something substantial, or go full roamer/glass, where the damage is substantial. At least I think.

This build is a bit more offensive than anything, but the logic is that why do something half way when you don’t have to? This warrior build will still have the same faults as the typical build. It will still be squishy, require hand holding from a team, and be terrible 1v1. The difference is that this one will do less burst.

This is in actual gameplay effects. The warrior will be tankier, but it will still have those faults and require additional help from their team regardless, which is why warriors are so weak in the first place. Thus it’s not an optimal solution.

Warrior is fairly ridiculous damage underwater. The five on harpoon does like 13k damage, and the 2 does around 4k.

Basically whenever I’m underwater on my warrior, I don’t feel helpless anymore. It’s basically a “you’re in my realm now” kind of deal.

They can implement the VGS system from Tribes.

Basically it’s a shortcut system accessed from pressing V. So pressing V, G, Y says “Yes”. (General -> Yes). VGN = No,
VGW = Woohoo!,
VAB = Attack the enemy base (Attack -> Base)
VAF = Get the enemy flag (Attack -> Flag)
VDV = Defend our vehicle (Defend -> Vehicle)

etc.

In case it’s not clear, the D in VDV means defend, and it accesses the “defend” category. The V is the vehicle category, so it accesses the vehicle category within the defend category. There’s a maximum of 4 keystrokes per message, so it can go deeper than just Defend -> Vehicle.

It works really well for Tribes. http://tribes.wikia.com/wiki/Voice_Game_System

VKDT = Defend our trebuchet (Khylo -> Defend -> Trebuchet)
VKAT = Attack the enemy trebuchet (Khylo -> Attack -> Trebuchet)
VFDL = Defend our lord (Foefire -> Defend -> Lord)
VFAL = Attack the enemy lord (Foefire -> Attack -> Lord)
VGAM = Attack the middle point (General -> Attack -> Middle)
VGTR = Thieves are OP (General -> Thieves -> Rage)

Some possibilities. It’s a fairly intuitive system if you break it down like in the parenthesis. If you know the logic, you don’t need to know that Attack the middle point is VGAM, you just need to know the keywords.

Zodian.6597:

Larynx.2453:

Zodian.6597:

It would be cool if there were mobs that spawned to help defend nodes, I noticed there were neutral mobs near the nodes on the new map, maybe this was something they were playing around with -would be interesting if they did this, nerfed bunker defense (so bunker guards can’t just sit on a node forever and not die to 1v1), and maybe balanced out burst and some of the bunker offensive options.
Holding a node would then be about actual 1v1 skill and not just build wars…

There’s a reason people moan and complain about the sharks on Capricorn, you know.

It’s already easier to hold a point then it is to take one. There’s no reason to exaggerate that even more with NPC guards. Plus people in general dislike PvE for PvP. Things like Khylo and Foefire are fine because of the implementation of them. Sharks are not fine, nor would NPC guards be.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind the sharks if they weren’t underwater. I’m just saying this would be ideal if at some point they nerf the 1 shot builds (thief backstab/engi 100 nades/ ect…), nerfed dedicated bunkers survivability by a bit (bunker ele, bunker engi, bunker guard, trap ranger) and just made every class able to 1v1 each other at equal skill levels. You may see less bunkering and more roaming, which would be more fun for everyone.

Except for engineers and necromancers.

Argis.7049:

Larynx.2453:

Rune of the Mesmer only applies to daze.

…Hence the reference to “daze” in the runes.

I’m aware of the reference to daze in the runes. It was confirmed long ago that it also applies to stuns. Have you personally checked?

During the October-Novemberish time it did not apply to stuns. I made a hammer warrior and tried.

Rune of the Mesmer only applies to daze.

…Hence the reference to “daze” in the runes.

Zodian.6597:

It would be cool if there were mobs that spawned to help defend nodes, I noticed there were neutral mobs near the nodes on the new map, maybe this was something they were playing around with -would be interesting if they did this, nerfed bunker defense (so bunker guards can’t just sit on a node forever and not die to 1v1), and maybe balanced out burst and some of the bunker offensive options.
Holding a node would then be about actual 1v1 skill and not just build wars…

There’s a reason people moan and complain about the sharks on Capricorn, you know.

It’s already easier to hold a point then it is to take one. There’s no reason to exaggerate that even more with NPC guards. Plus people in general dislike PvE for PvP. Things like Khylo and Foefire are fine because of the implementation of them. Sharks are not fine, nor would NPC guards be.

Geewoody.2017:

Larynx.2453:

Look at all this glory I can’t buy anything with!

Buy chests. Salvage gear from chests. Use materials from salvaging to make dyes. Sell those dyes for gold. Exchange that gold for gems. Use those gems to buy skins. That should keep you busy for a couple million glory.

That’s incredibly inefficient.

It’s Power/Defense, not Defense/Power.

I went ahead and did the numbers for you.

Average hit with Valkyrie build: 115.00
Average hit with Berserker build: 141.12

So a difference of roughly 22.7% damage.

Seems a bit low from what I expected to be perfectly honest. Basically, 284 healing power and 569 toughness, or 284 vitality and 23% damage. Keep in mind the healing power is negligible for warriors.

The question then is, how much is 569 toughness worth exactly? What’s the difference between 2127 armor and 2696 armor?

EDIT:

If I’m doing this right: 2127 armor = 1.034 and 2696 armor = 0.81, so the difference is about 22% damage reduction.

So:

22% damage reduction
10 more HPS w/ the healing power (absolutely irrelevant)

vs

23% damage
2690 health

I don’t think it’s worth it.

Great post. So much vital information.

Alvik.4207:

Overall I like your build. It comes about as close to being max efficiency in battling other warriors or physical dps classes without too many conditions.

But change the sigil to force. Accuracy raises your dps by 2.94%, while Force is 5% (70% more than Accuracy).

And this. 5% damage > 5% critical chance unless you have 51%> crit damage.

I would personally make a few changes, like Healing Surge over Mending and Balanced Stance over shake it off, but it’s at least a bit more promising than 90% of the other “innovative” builds.

I don’t think you’d do enough total damage to make it necessarily worth it over the typical zerker build though. Do some DPS tests with steady weapons and see the percentage difference. If you have to give up something like 30% or more damage, it’s not worth it.

Kugron.5128:

Harrier.9380:

- Unique skins

This x 1000.

Seriously wtf, the progression of rank points is a little absurd at 40-50 and it’s all just for skins from PvE that take less than a sliver of the effort to get in PvE. Getting flame legion gear in PvP requires rank 50 which takes months of nonstop grinding, meanwhile in PvE land you can get the same set in just a few days of dungeon running. Seems totally fair right?
And from the few insane souls that have pushed to 60, have discovered that at that level you get random T1 cultural. I’m sure they feel well rewarded, 6000+ games played for an armor set that takes about 10g to buy in PvE, outstanding.

10g for Tier 1? Not even. The pieces cost like 10-40 silver each. Assuming each piece is 40 silver, of which I know for a fact they’re much lower, that’s a maximum of 2.4 gold for a full set. You can get 2.4 gold in like, 30-60 minutes.

Yet it requires half a dozen thousand hours in sPvP to acquire.

ensoriki.5789:

Larynx.2453:

Infectious.4836:

Hot join.
1v1 no party join, solo only.
1v1 party join, no solo.

Problem solved (for the mean time).

Custom Servers
1v1 Unranked, invisible MMR solo/duo queue
1v1 Ranked, visible MMR 5-man queue

I fix’t PvP fer you ArenaNet.

CA is already on the way…

Did I ever say it wasn’t?

No, I didn’t. Custom servers should simply replace hotjoin completely as the browser based system. Sure, ArenaNet can have some official servers, but they said they wanted to treat sPvP like an FPS. Custom servers are integral to most PC FPS games.

Have maybe 10 official servers with the full 16 players and map rotation. Then all the other servers are player created, have custom rules, possible passwords, etc.

Sanis.1096:

reedju.5786:

Sanis.1096:

if i remember right there will be no solo que? They said something like “you are so good in solo that you will get matched vs premade”

False. They told us they currently not comfortable splitting the player base into solo and group Q. They will however be “watching” player feedback and assessing its possibility as a separate entity. In the SotG Jon Peters mentioned a trend of “organized” solo Q members forming groups to beat established teams (rare).

what about this?

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The point is to have competitive matches. If you are so good that you beat every other solo group. Then yeah you should have at least a reasonable shot at beating the lower tier premades.

Apparently ArenaNet doesn’t realize that success in solo matches is largely irrelevant when there’s 5 other unaffiliated players assisting.

Just because a person wins 5 solo matches in a row doesn’t mean he can carry the rest of his team when they suddenly fight a full premade. This logic is just dumbfounding.

Conquest is a boring game type so players do what they can to have fun.

Raptured.9307:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_Rage rage is bugged
But yeah overall build works, just don’t 1v1. Play like a bs thief with that 100b build lol
imo warrior truly shines in team spvp situations via defensive c/c builds, but that’s just me.

Just tested it, you’re correct. 6 on Rune of Rage is bugged.

This changes everything. =0

Infectious.4836:

Hot join.
1v1 no party join, solo only.
1v1 party join, no solo.

Problem solved (for the mean time).

Custom Servers
1v1 Unranked, invisible MMR solo/duo queue
1v1 Ranked, visible MMR 5-man queue

I fix’t PvP fer you ArenaNet.

That solution would be fine IMO. Something like a mesmer stacking 9 confusion on you + the phantasm criting for 5k is just ridiculous. The person is literally bleeding out on the floor dying and they can kill someone from 50% health? Makes no sense.

And then you have something like an engineer or necromancer which is basically helpless. Ridiculous imbalances.

When a keyboard turning mesmer kills me 1v1 on a warrior, or when a heartseeker spammer kills my necromancer. Oh oh, or when I down another warrior, but he downs me a few seconds later, and he wins the fight because he vengeance stomped me.

Basically ragequiting.

Also Capricorn.

They need to get over their whole hitch of trying to let the system balance itself out. It doesn’t work.

Before, we had three modes. Hotjoin, Free, and Paid. Casuals play paid, people looking for organized but still casual play or looking to improve used free, and people who did paid were the hardcores. So it just works out right? No, it doesn’t. What happens is the people in paid go pupstomp people in frees, and both go to hotjoin and think they’re gods incarnate.

So now we have this new solo queue and MMR system. If you solo queue, well your MMR is going to be low enough so you’ll be matched with bad premades or other solos. Obviously this isn’t true and doesn’t work.

I don’t understand ArenaNet. Just use the tried and true already. The sPvP community literally can not take any more of this hipster and innovative crap.

Look at all this glory I can’t buy anything with!

ensoriki.5789:

^ There is Keg brawl.
Get your Norn on.

Keg Brawl is the true endgame of Guild Wars 2.

Ithir Darkleaf.7923:

XerreX.7196:

Only a handsome of top tier PvP players remained because there is simply nothing to play for anymore.

If Elder Scrolls Online ships with a decent PvP and if it’s not subscription fee based , you will see a massive exodus from this game.

Well, you would know it wont ship with decent PvP if you’ve been following it at all. The only PvP it has is WvW, with the standard level to cap and gear out routine. It doesn’t even have any sort of small scale or battleground type format.

The game’s focus isn’t on PvP, and Elder Scrolls is an RPG series in the first place.

It makes me sad, since there’s really no MMO with actual competitive PvP that could ever be taken seriously. MMOs just retain too much of their RPG nature with all the RNG and gear progression for PvP to work. GW2 was that one light in the darkness with the whole Heart of the Mists thing, but then they suddenly just didn’t support it. GW2 could have, and would have, become an enourmous eSport success if the developers just tried. The following was already there.

The only reason I still play it is because there’s no new better thing out yet. And there probably wont be for years.

Rika.7249:

XerreX.7196:

One thing is for sure: if the month wont be a success story for the pvp part, the competitive scene will be wiped out, because 95% of the top tier PvP players will quit and probalby 50% of them wont even consider checking out any news concerning the game ever.

What makes this month more important than the previous?

It’s supposed to be the “big” PvP patch.

I think they should flat out remove downed state personally. Or at least remove all offensive downed abilities. It’s nothing but frustrating.

As for rally though, I think that it shouldn’t exist personally. It’s too much of a tide changer for such a small thing. You can have a 5v5, and 3 on each team are down. Well, because one team was maybe 1 second faster suddenly it’s now a 5v2. In other words, there would be too much disparity between even matched teams.

I think they need to do something with the reward system, because rank-based armor is not satisfactory. It’s not exactly a goal one can strive for when it takes literally months and months of hardcore grinding every day to achieve it. The game has been out for 7 months, and the highest ranking is only like 63. Well, they have only 13 ranks to go, right? Technically the first 60 ranks are half the required rank points for 80, since it’s exponential.

So, in other words, after 7 months, no one is even close to rank 80. I myself really like the Flame Legion and Twilight Arbor armors, but it’ll be months before I can get them. It’s not going to keep me playing like a week-term or month-term goal would.

I don’t think they should remove the rank grind, since that’s fairly neat. They should just not base armor rewards or any rewards besides finishers and /rank off of it.

Some ideas:

-PvE Gold
-Gems
-Progression in WvWvW (like, 100k glory cost in order to get a full level 80 exotic set you can use in WvWvW, but through Heart of the Mists and on a level 2 character)
-Unique sPvP Skins
-Much more guild influence (you get like 5 per map, oh boy)
-Legendary skins for monthly/yearly tournaments

They could also try and convert their GW1 system over as well, like you said with the chests.

Stick to making half the current weapon sets a warrior has useful before adding more.

A big problem currently is that the viable builds are also ones which are able to support themselves. That is, they don’t require another team mate in order to be effective. For these same reasons warriors and necromancers aren’t desirable, since the hold handing isn’t worth it when a perfectly fine replacement can be used.

In other words, the complexity and coordination that would be involved in a small scale team death match (ie. 2v2/3v3) wouldn’t be a very sustainable spectator sport, and would be fairly boring to play as well.

If the independence of certain professions/builds was nerfed, then we might see a bit more interesting fights. Regardless of whether or not arena is ever implemented, it’ll definitely improve conquest.

Once they implement custom matches, depending on how it is done, at the very least we’ll probably see some player hosted arenas. For the near future, that’s all anyone can really expect. ArenaNet is incredibly hesitant to add anything other than Conquest (for the wrong reasons imo).

On a related note, I’d be interesting to see the sort of meta that TDM creates. Condition Necromancers are really similar to WoW Affliction Warlocks, yet warlocks are (at least when I played) one of the most desirable casters in the game. Yet they were immobile and required constant support from the team. Just like necromancers. Maybe the fact that there’s really no solid peeling class? or maybe it’s just not worth the effort when the fight takes place over a node? Just some thoughts.

Reinhart.2703:

Larynx.2453:

Rika.7249:

milo.6942:

Reinhart.2703:

Rika.7249:

I’m all for adding arenas.
I’m totally against adding dedicated healers.

I do not think it is possible with out healers. or some sort of heal from outside otherwise it will be greatly imbalanced due to gimmicky specs

CC will become the new healers.

This.

Look at WoW’s 5v5 for reference.
No need for a healer at all. Just pick your target and kitten it.

3v3 was roughly the same too. Pick a target, kitten avoid being kitten

It could definitely work. Just not with the current bunker spec-strength.

Hardly. Unless you run a heavy burst comp like RMP 3v3 matches are going to be more so a war of a attrition than anything. Especially something like Warlock/Shaman/Priest, or really any warlock comp.

A healer in WoW can out heal 2 DPS easily if the healer is receiving no pressure, which is why a team like RMP can kill someone in the first minute. Since GW2 both lacks healers and long duration CC, it won’t work exactly like this though. I don’t think WoW is at all a good comparison for how arena would work in GW2. The combat mechanics are vastly different.

Bunkers would be a problem in GW2, since two DPS will have a fairly difficult time killing 2 bunkers though. It’s not in WoW since, well, 2 DPS can kill two healers or tanks provided they aren’t hard countered or anything. That would probably be a huge barrier for arena tbh, and GW2 can’t exactly ban certain builds since builds aren’t cookie cutter as WoW talent trees either. I also realize the only reason people would run 2 bunker in 2v2 would be to troll, but regardless it’s not fun for the other players even if it would be low MMR. Obvious solution would be to just nerf bunker strength of course, but I’m skeptical on how much ArenaNet are willing to change their conquest format.

suggestion was introduce 6k HPS to the entire arena team (no healers just passive 6000 healing a second) and then let it roll. nerf bunker specs though before that

That’s actually really kind of funny.

MMOs are inherently difficult to balance due to the amount of variables required to take into account.

Frankly, if they don’t really do anything meaningful this month, don’t hold your breath until the first expansion comes around and really stirs up the meta.

Don’t expect the game to ever be completely balanced, and don’t expect to be able to make any build you like and play it competitively. Some builds are simply better, and that’s the nature of the game.

Less choice is actually better in the case of balance.

Standardizing profession builds would go a long ways to balancing profession performance and increase the variability of team comps. I didn’t really read your entire post, but I’m assuming that’s your idea.

Lets use the example of a warrior and a thief. Comparatively, a thief is much more desirable. Thieves are more mobile, have more damage, have greater defensive capability than a warrior, and are less reliant on team support. So why would you ever bring a warrior over a thief?

That’s the current meta of 100B warriors and backstab thieves. With how the game is built currently, with the amount of options available, some builds will simply be flat out better than other builds at the same task. Bunker warrior versus bunker guardian, or direct damage ranger versus direct damage thief. There are 4 options and 2 obvious choices. The other 2 choices aren’t real choices in the first place. All the current system does is promote the false illusion of diversity and options, while at the same time creating a much larger barrier to entry for new players and simplifying the meta game. Since one build is flat out better than all others, you bring that build. Since some entire niches aren’t required, builds in that niche aren’t used. Since some professions simply do not specialize in the right niche or have an optimal build relative to others, they are simply not used either.

In other words, standardizing profession builds would increase the diversity of profession representation. This is because each profession can be solely balanced exclusively around one build, and each profession can occupy a unique niche that is neither better nor worse than others, and each niche can be equally desirable. The only variable is in how the team wants to play.

Fantastic thread.