Guild Wars 2

I like this one:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjMat7xbSb8bKApCPPV47oHEbcyUKKndA-TsAgyCpIaS1krJTTymsNNqY5xcBA

you have to copy/paste the link probably…

One thing I’m not sure of – if you get a kill with that build while you have staff equipped, do you not get a corruption charge from the sigil on the other weapon set? I would imagine so but I’m not sure…

For just questing/levelling I feel like scepter/dagger and staff are ideal weapons because you can kite mobs pretty easily while melting them with conditions. Staff #3, Staff #5, Scepter #2, DS #2, DS #3 are all great for kiting and keeping them off of you.

Errant Venture.9371:

permanently maintain 20 stacks of might

Hyperbole at its finest.

hackks.3687:

So I’m curious. This HGH-condi build has only been popular for a month or so and only after a number of Engi buids were annihilated by the Kit Refinement over-nerf (and make no mistake it was an over-nerf), even though the build option has been available for months. Obviously, the last patch took a lot of builds off the table (something that stands as ‘at odds’ with previous ANet statements of wanting to create more build variety) across a handful of classes.

Something that hasn’t changed though is the prevalence of Bunker Guards, D/D Ele’s, Shatter Mesmers, as well as the return of one-shot Thieves (granted they don’t really have a choice if they want to bring anything tangible to a group). These builds have been around and at the forefront of the meta for months(!!!) now. Yet, anytime we have one build that comes along and gives them a run for their money, making them actually think about what they’re doing rather than just letting muscle memory carry them from target to target, match to match, and the first thought from the community is…. ‘nerf it’?

So what I’m curious about is this: Are we so complacent and settled on dealing with what we largely consider to be the staples of PvP viability (i.e. the aforementioned builds/classes) that whenever something infringes or impinges on their viability or success rate we have to call for it to be nerfed?

And if it is nerfed after only a single month of being popular from players griping on the forums without understanding it, and while also in the grip of a sizable meta shift, isn’t that a very distinct statement from ANet as to what classes/builds they would prefer everyone play competitively? – edit: and to take it one step further, wouldn’t that also be entirely at odds with their statements towards build variety and viability?

awesome post.

The lack of build diversity of many classes and complete uselessness of some classes cough warrior cough seems to be a bigger problem – HGH is just mixing up the meta by countering bunkers and making things shift and be more interesting. Somebody smarter than me will come up with the next fotm soooner or later

Because people leave matches early, there isn’t really a good solution – either the people who got ditched are kittened, or, if the system is prioritizing evening out odd matches, you get kittened when you get thrown into a rout. I think punishing those who leave early in some way is one reasonable way to “help” the situation but there really is no perfect solution to this problem imo… mostly a hotjoin problem because ppl leave so frequently but it happens in tpvp solo join as well and they do not fill hte mising spot afaik..

Destiny.6738:

Raptured.9307:

Ah if you are talking about his wvw video that is pretty much the build I run for spvp. It is even more effective for spvp (I runs similar one). Does crazy damage and is highly survivable. I’m surprised it isn’t nerfed, as it is the terror of hot joins.

NICE one! Have fun in sPvP anyway, but you are just badly informed about thieves. There is only one viable build in sPvP for thieves (classic BS). You won’t see other builds on a competitive level.

I’m truly curious why p/d perma-stealth thieves are not viable in tpvp? In a team fight they won’t have much trouble getting their CnD/sneak attacks off and putting out decent condition damager – same question for the deathblossom unicorn build I guess. Is it just that there are other classes that fill that role more efficiently or that they are easy to counter (not for me!)

Lordrosicky.5813:

NevirSayDie.6235:

1v1:
—cc, kiting, and necros are pretty much hard counters to HGH nade engies. Boon stripping also works but it’s not really necessary.

Teamfights:
—focus the engi down. It’s a pure sustained dps build so if you’re not focusing the engi, joke’s on you.

In general:
—stop bringing four bunkers to every match.

By the way, thank you so much for starting this thread.

Necro a hard counter to HGH build? It is a fairly even fight I would say. Besides it is rarely if ever going to be 1 v 1. If necro had something like elixr s then it would be more fair in a team fight scenario.

Well a conditionmancer has several abilities to punish HGH engineers by flipping boons and transferring their conditions. I would maybe argue (i’m no expert) that necro DS can be compared to elixir S for survivability purposes – it’s on a 10s cooldown so assumign the necro is built for some reasonable LF generation they can absorb a lot of damage with DS while engineer only has that one short invuln on a much longer cooldown. Basically… what Chaith said :P

Asomal.6453:

Leadfoot.9071:

Shananigans.8412:

50% chance ele kills the hgh engi…. trust me on this one

What about retaliation? I don’t really know but aren’t there some guardian builds that can get a lot of uptime on retaliation which seems to me would be a pretty decent counter to HGH engis?

What about Superior Sigil of Nullification? I haven’t tested it, but I assume it would work.

On a 10s cooldown you have the possibility of stripping might off the engineer – seems hard to rely on. I’m not sure how the boon stripping works but the engineer often has other buffs up as well that might get stripped instead of the might stacks – also would it strip all X number of stacks? I’d imagine so but not sure…

Shananigans.8412:

50% chance ele kills the hgh engi…. trust me on this one

What about retaliation? I don’t really know but aren’t there some guardian builds that can get a lot of uptime on retaliation which seems to me would be a pretty decent counter to HGH engis?

Raptured.9307:

It’s the overlapping stacks of aoe from the turrets of a single engineer at the same time that hurt and build up because the turrets last quite a long time (you can’t just wait them out given the time constraint of tpvps) and stay compared to those of other classes, not just aoes themselves

Aoes serve an important function in wvw and especially pve right now and it would make things worse if they were affected in those aspects of the game.

Dude seriously, stop posting in these threads when you have no idea what you’re talking about. The only turrets you see on an HGH engineer is the supply crate elite which is 1) on 3 minute cooldown and 2) is not a significant source of damage for an HGH engineer – AT ALL. HGH engi is not GC I agree, but they are far from the survivability of a bunker!

Honestly I think you are conflating turret bunker engineers and HGH engineers in your head.

This is the variation of Ostrich’s backpack generator build that I have played with lately:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqel0picX3ShF17IxIFdW0hUgfDL6h+tsjB;ToAgzCmouxcj4G7Nubk3MaY+B

It’s super tanky but puts out very little pressure.

I have definitely run power builds with 30 in SR and do like the LF regen – but it’s almost overkill – especially if you bring the LF signet, which I agree with Khalifa is pretty f’n awesome.

I have also tried running 20 in SR and 20 in Blood magic for life stealing along with vampirism runes – pretty tanky!

I feel like this is one of the pros for necros is that there is some much potential build diversity as opposed to other classes (engi/ele/thief/warrior) that have very few viable build options.

So much hyperbole… must hide under desk to avoid falling sky!!

Ferum Flamebender.5910:

Aaaand again! Does an unexperienced community yell and shout about something they don’t know a thing.
There has been a thread in the engineer forum about the weakspots of th HGH build, and guess what? There are plenty things we engis don’t have when rolling an HgH build (auch as zero stability options. ZERO.). but because no one plays our class you don’t know what we do or how to get us,-> go to the engineers forum and ask!
Plus have you ever seen #1 pistol damage? Even with 25 might it crits for 500 MAX.

You come at me with some real arguments, and some real engineer knowledge before you start complaining.

Throw Elixir S = stability 50% of the time
Nobody uses Pistol #1 in an HGH build you swap to pistols to unload poison dart, flamethrower, static shot and maybe the glue thing then right back to nades.

notanewmethod.8267:

Clearly I’m a bad engineer, because I average 12 stacks of might with spikes to 16 stacks and sometimes 20 if auto-elixir b procs at the right time during a fight.

I run the standard hgh grenades build, sigil of battle, boon duration/might duration runes, I swap weapons in combat blah blah…

I guess only “OP” players can manage 25 stacks for 40 seconds as I see purported all over the forums.

Same here, I occassionally see 20ish stacks but more often, during a fight, I see mid to late teens. However, I imagine that maybe I could be abusing the weapon swap sigil a bit more – I admit I am certainly not nearly the same level players as some of these other guys like ostrich and chaith.

But still… furious demise = 5 seconds of Fury. If I go into DS it seems like a waste to not DS#1 at least once for the might from Reaper’s Might and vulnerability from Unyielding Blast and also to use DS#2 to gap close and get a chill on the target to set up the dagger spam and then of course possibly fear to make dark pact land – after this the 5 seconds of fury is down to like what? 1 or 2 seconds? I could very well be missing something here which I why I’m bringing it up. This is all in addition to the fact that DS is one of our most valuable defensive options and therefore there is a cost to using it offensively. Just curious about the rationale behind the DS use in this build.

Couple questions 1) Would you consider dagger OH to be a preference? It seems to me this build would work just as well with focus 2) I’m skeptical about Fury on DS as a means to increase dagger burst because it forces you to put DS on cooldown when it is often very needed later as one of our survivability options… thoughts?

Appreciate you taking the time to put together this guide!

Raptured.9307:

Turrents is your only viable elite… and it is the actual part of this build that melts other bunkers down because of the condition spam. They are anything but bad and every competent engineer uses this to protect bases or capture bases. The conditions that come out of them hurt people more than you realize – not in direct damage but it actually lets you hit them and they can’t recover from it.

lol… not sure if srs?

Correct me if I’m wrong but:

jportell.2197

HGH build is getting 20+ stacks full time

is an exaggeration. It’s certainly possible to get those kinds of stacks but I wouldn’t call it easy – you start with just like 7 or so and then gradually build them up as the fight goes on – once the fight is over they start dropping off and you need to stack them up again. Far from 20+ stacks full time. Not arguing that the build is not very powerful and could maybe use a looking at but had to point this out – I could be wrong but sounds like BS.

It’s entirely possible my brain is not functioning properly yet but it seems to me that maybe the FAQ for leaderboard should be:

Q: How do I get to the leaderboard?
A: <<< insert URL here >>>>

??? Maybe it’s very incredibly obvious and I’m not just seeing it?

Hey what do you guys think of this build for bunkering? I love kit playstyle so I wanted one that involved backpack regenerator but no KR:

• Copy and paste **
  http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqel0pSYX3SyF17IxIFdW0hUgfDL6h+tsjB;ToAgzCmouxcj4G7Nubk3MaY+B

I have only played a few games with it so far so I have a lot to learn but it seems decent.

Considering upgrading my aging 560ti with a new GPU and considering giving AMD a try this time due to their lower prices. I am looking at a 7950 to stay around the $300 mark – don’t really want to spend $400 on a 7970. Question is, how big of an upgrade is this? Is it worth it? How much better is the 7970 than the 7950?

Raevyn.2167:

Leadfoot – You start off by saying you don’t think my solution is feasible…then you go on to suggest EXACTLY what I already suggested….getting a small amount of points for standing on a node or around a node that you own….

I said fighting on a node – i.e. actively defending it.

I’m more of a hot join player than anything so I’ll speak from that level of play – I’ve played various thief, necro, and warrior builds in addition to engineer. Of all those builds I find that the hgh engineer is currently the easiest to play to high levels of success. I can totally see it being a lot more challenging to play at higher levels as landing grenades as you said can be very difficult and I have to assume that I could be using my elixirs much more efficiently. But you gotta consider lower level play too because that’s new players first impression and I’d say this game could use some more pvpers ;P

Hi, there is clearly something going on with the game at the moment – a lot of people on various servers are complaining about lag issues. I experience it myself last night playing spvp – it was nearly unplayable at times. Hopefully, ANet is looking into it – although they have not made any comments in the various threads in the tech support forums.

EDIT: I should mention that I have never had any problem with lag prior to about a week ago – this appears to be something newly introduced (perhaps the culling fix? Though I would think the pvp servers and wvw servers are separate…)

DesaanUK.3742:

It’s borderline ridiculous in it’s current situation. My only guess is that the servers are performing some kind of capacity throttling. Every day it’s the same 7pm GMT- 11pm GMT = unplayable.

Who knows, maybe the removal of culling is causing the servers to bog down… could be anything. There were times where things like this happened in WoW (I know I know people hate the comparison but too bad) and it ended up having to do with the network trunk hosted by AT&T and had nothing to do with Blizzard – theres really no telling what is going on but it sure would be nice if ANet would at least give us some kind of indication that they are aware of our complaints and looking into it.

I ran into this for the first time last night while playing spvp – never experienced this in this game before but basically exactly as you all describe. Previous to that, I was starting to have an issue with severe drops of FPS while in situations with a lot of area effects going on (again in spvp in fights or while getting pegged by the trebuchet in khylo). Not sure if the two are related – seem different but clearly some problems have been introduced with recent releases of the software.

Yeah true.. I’m not sure I can tell the difference so much… a lot of the lag I was experiencing last night – which was definitely server lag becuase my skills would go off a good second or two after I pressed the key (horrible for pvp as an engineer throwing grenades around lol) – was accompanied by the video lag/stutter I described in this thread – so I was thinking maybe they were related but I’m not sure.

I did turn on a bunch of OSD/overlay last night and while in the mists I would go stand on this fire emmitting smoke and would see my FPS drop from 60 (limited vsync) to 40ish. I also zoomed in and walked aroudn throwing grenades and especially near other players would notice a bit of that video stutter and see my GPU jump to 100% momentarily.

Note that the effect, the video stutter, is pretty much identical to the type of experience I would get on my old rig in wvwvw when encountering a massive zerg. I upgraded my computer since then and tried it out in wvwvw to see the difference and while I would still get a small quick video stutter in those situations it smoothed out quickly and ended up at a reasonable FPS (lower than usual but understandable considering all that is going on). In those situations, I’m pretty sure, iirc, that my GPU usage would not spike but my CPU would. I find it interesting that in this scenario it appears to be my GPU spiking.

Could this be related to the other “network lag” thread? I played a bunch of spvp tonight and it was nearly unplayable – this time it wasn’t just spikes of “lag” around explosions/etc. but also really bad lag just casting skills.

All I do is spvp first off….

Over the last week I was getting bad spikes of “video lag” whenever a lot of area effects were going on around me.

Today I was playing and was experiencing really bad “skill lag” – i.e. i would fire off a skill and not see it connect a second or two later. It was nearly unplayable. This happened consistently all night.

I had this problem on my last computer and discovered that it was a bad stick of RAM. This is actually very easy to check – download a program called memtest and run it overnight and see if it is still running and reporting no errors in the morning. If it does error and you have more than one stick, repeat the test with each stick to identify which one it is and replace it.

Of course, a computer can crash like that for a lot of reasons hardware related – I mention this one because it’s an easy test to at least eliminate your memory as the culprit.

I have only played thief, warrior, necro, a tiny bit of guardian, and engineer and engineer is quickly emerging as my favorite class… for spvp, which is pretty much all I do, it does lack in build diversity currently – but the mechanics like kit swapping are really fun. I feel like with some smart changes it could become very well rounded with a lot of fun options (hoping for viable multi-kit builds in the future).

I’m with you – kits are a lot of fun. The nerf related to kits has to do with the change to the Kit Refinement trait – the effects on kit swap got changed drastically (the previously OP effect on the grenade kit – grenade barrage – was removed completely killing the 100nades build) but more importantly the effects are now on a 20 second internal cooldown so it’s very difficult/ not feasible to rely on them in a meaningful way (unless you have one kit I guess) so nobody is using the trait anymore. I think for levelling and dungeons it doesn’t matter quite as muhc though.

Raevyn.2167:

It can be balanced very easily really. It is going to be worthwhile to you to do a mix of things. Lets look at the numbers:

You get 5 points for a kill.
You get 10 points for a Skirmisher, Defender, or Assaulter kill.
You get 10 points for Neutralizing (which takes about 5 seconds)
You get 10 points for Capturing (which takes about 8 seconds)

If you balanced it so that you got 10 points for staying in a node of your color for every 1 minute you stayed there, at most you could rack up about 80- 100 points in a game.

In most games I play, I’ll usually have a score from 80 (very low) -335 (being very high). A player who chose to just stand on a node would be getting on the low end of total glory you can receive.

If we wanted we could lower it even more so that players could get at most 60 points per game, but this seems very reasonable.

If you’re worried about AFK people – that’s a whole different animal…we definitely need a reporting tool (but I would start another thread for that because that is a very detailed design mechanic).

I don’t think this is a feasible solution as it is likely to be exploited and not necessary accomplish the end goal of encouraging teamwork. I think, as someone else previously mentioned, that the point system should give more points for winning a match and have less emphasis on solo achievements such as kills/captures. That being said, I think it might make sense to grant some small amount of points for fighting on or around a node, regardless of whether you actually get kills. I’m not sure though, it’s not an easy problem to solve in a way that achieves the end goal of rewarding teamwork but at the same time not opening up a way for people to exploit the system and farm glory without doing anything (like bots – although I’m not sure why anyone would put in the time to make a bot that farms glory ;P)

Kardiamond.6952:

Then you don’t answer, no need to be harsh with the little guy.

Don’t let him discover how grumpy our communty is! It’s too soon!

He is gonna side with those kitten necromancer now! As he just posted there and got friendly replies!

Kudos to you for being a nice guy – though I have to disagree with him that the search feature is useless… true it sucks if you are looking for something off the first few pages but htat is obviously not the case for HGH related topics…

anyways, in the spirit of your kindheartedness I’ve decided to link the HGH build out of the goodness of my heart – however, I’m too lazy to make one of those tinyURLs so you have to copy and paste this link:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqalIqKenty5F17IxoCfG0j9637K6xjp8kB

Some specific examples:
1) Raid on Capricorn near the beach point big fight including a lot of area effects —> serious lag dipping my FPS to probably below 20 while within the effects – I can’t say for certain whether there was actually smoke effect in there
2) Also RotC fighting on dock point – pretty much same scenario as #1
3) Center of Khylo with friendly treb shots landing near by – major drop in fps for a brief second when the treb shot hits

All of this is very new – my computer was handling this stuff perfectly just a week ago… I’m not sure I understand what you mean by:

That may explain why you haven’t noticed it since recently.

What may explain that specifically??

I have been primarily playing an engi but my own grenade effects when i throw them separately by myself do not cause the problem.

My settings are all at the max level and I have not changed them. The only time I ever got any kind of performance issues on this set up were encountering huge zergs in wvw (not something I play often) and then it would be a very quick dip in performance but then quickly stabilized back up to acceptable levels.

I should also mention that I loaded up Borderlands2 and tried to get myself into some situations with a lot of stuff going on including grenade effects, etc… and it ran perfectly. However, comparing BL2 to GW2 is really apples to oranges and probably not a good comparison at all. I’m thinking I may run some benchmark GPU tests later tonight and see how my GPU fairs – perhaps I have pushed the 560ti too hard with the slight OC and it is failing?

I should also open up the case and clean out any dust build up although I feel like I did that only a few months ago. Worth a shot!

It’s so hard to tell if its due to a change to the game or a hardware related issue.

NevirSayDie.6235:

mursie.3681:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Raptured.9307:

It is pretty clear this is getting nerfed. Engineers right now make the best point defenders/ point oriented support right now with ridiculous dmg/control/ good survivability. With the ridiculous amount of buffs last patch, They are bound to be toned down- the question being, by how much?

Just putting out another reminder for those who haven’t actually played the spec—HGH condi engies have zero interrupts (outside an elite skill) and very little support. They do have a huge amount of sustained damage, as well as plenty of single condition removals and a three second invuln, so they aren’t completely glassy.

The buffs of the last patch were almost all to turrets, which are still virtually unused in tournaments. The HGH condi build received zero changes.

Lastly, I would like to remind people that the HGH build is a hard counter to pure bunker team compositions. Removing a counter is a dangerous decision. I thought a few weeks ago we wanted a profession that could reliably kill a bunker after a reasonable amount of time? If teams literally stop taking eles and guards because HGH engies counter them too hard, then we know it’s time to nerf.

aren’t completely glassy? lol. You have around 1700 toughness and 18.5K hp with rabid amulet. plus the boons from elixir H…plus the condi removal from elixir drinks…plus elixir S and thrown elixir S… plus your elite.

you are, no where even close to near, the definition of glassy.

1485 toughness (916+569) with base toughness, rabid amulet and carrion jewel, actually, but I agree, not glassy. The point is that whenever people encounter a powerful spec they feel it can do everything and has no downsides. That’s not true. HGH nades engineers are good because they have great sustained damage, period.

Not only the toughness but the shorter cooldowns on elixirs for more frequent heals as well as the frequent condi removal is what makes this build not glassy at all. I’m certainly not a pro player but I have had ridiculously good success with this build and hardly ever die!

I agree that it doesn’t really seem like a very engineer build – alchemy for an engineer? just seems a bit strange. I’d rather be playing a kit build honestly.

Lediath.7593:

Thanks for all the updates guys. Hopefully they add some kind of slider for this…

I really don’t care too much about the actual smoke visual effect, I just want to have consistent frame rate when I’m playing the game.

IMO, just let me get rid of all the smoke in the game and I’ll be happy haha

@Zao: great explaination, thanks for that!

I guess I have a different perspective since it seems to me that this problem was recently introduced and therefore they should be able to identify what particular change caused it and then correct it properly!! I had no problems with smoke before – the game ran perfectly smoothly – so what got broken? PLEASE FIX!!!

I am still uncertain as to whether you guys feel that this is a recently introduced issue like I do – I mean I play a good 3-4 days a week for at least a couple hours per day and have really only noticed this just over the past week or so! It has me concerned that it could be a problem on my end although this thread does seem to fit the symptoms I am seeing.

Megido.9456:

Well the real problem is that there were no such problems few patches ago (at least for me ). I run and 4.1 i7-3770, ssd ocz agility 3,16 gb ram and 7850 oced to 1050, 1350 from sapphire. My card gets pretty hot (but i have 1 bad fan and the card is being raplaced in 2-3 weeks at most) and goes over to 73-74 in normal play and when there is heavy load like smoke for quite a bit of time it can jump to 77-78 (note that i have no problems with it like crashes etc anymore). Camp fire test dont cut my fps by a high margin ( about 10 fps while i use the same settings as were post). Fire ele cuts me from around 60 fps to 35-25 so its a massive one… same goes when a treb hits me i can get a drop of 15-20 fps for a second there. They messed something up as my friends from the guild the the same behavior on dozen of diffrent cpus.

Thanks for that info – so it sounds like a problem recently introduced into the game?

I was just about ready to spend some of my tax return on a graphics card update!! kitten I think I might just do that anyways

So, this JUST started happening to me… 3570k with a 560ti and 8GB ram…

I pretty much only spvp and the game has been running perfectly smoothly up until about a week ago. Now I get bad video lag/fps drops whenever there explosions or smoke.

This JUST started happening… I was on the 314.07 driver when it started happening and upgraded to the 314.22 driver today but its still happening.

Is this a problem with the game or my computer? Why would performance degrade suddenly? I do have my video card overclocked slightly but I stress tested it quite a bit and was stable and also I have had it OC’d for a very long time with no problems until just now.

Thanks for any advice.

Ostrich I know you don’t typically bunker but the bunker build you listed here has KR in it which I imagine is not worth it anymore… have you thought about changing it to something else?

Eldan.8627:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Eldan.8627:

Why does this have to wait until the end of the month?

I understand that not everything can be fixed quickly, but since you already have a fix what’s the hold up? This kind of imbalance is very annoying, especially for more casual players without teams, and having to wait two weeks for a simple fix like this is disheartening.

Whenever we put out a new patch to the live game, it’s a big process that most of the staff is affected by. So an issue generally has to be really critical for us to justify putting out a hot fix outside of our normal build schedule.

I figured that would be the case. The problem with that is that you lose the ability to iterate.

As players we have to wait for a balance change that we hope is the right one. If it’s not we have to wait a long time for a subsequent change. This is especially important in SPvP where these balance changes directly affect the essence of the game. I’m sure you iterate and test them in house, but having the players involved can give more reliable results (if used correctly) and absolutely raises the moral of players because we are able to see direct progress being made. It means players don’t have to suffer through the poorly balanced, but not broken, aspects of the game for an entire month.

I was working on a list of suggestions for GW2, and though I’m not sure I’ll ever finish it (polish wise, not because there are too many things) incorporating a faster update cycle is the number one thing on it for that reason.

haha!!! I would imagine it’s a resource issue – maybe you should buy some more copies of the game so they can hire more pvp guys??

Probably a noobish stupid question but do you need to be on the same server as your guild? It seems a lot of the posts above don’t specify what server the guild is on which leads me to believe that you don’t have to be on the same server so I’m wondering how specifically that works??

bhagwad.4281:

Leadfoot.9071:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Hammerwarriors or mesmers without portal are in the category of r10+ players. They don’t know yet the full potential of their class when it comes to pvp.
For e.g. when I see a signet-warrior, I promise it’s a beginner, who has no understanding what to do on the map.
A good player runs viable builds, what you listed above are not viable builds (guardian excluded).

I’m probably misunderstanding, but are you saying all warriors should be taking shouts/banners over signets for tournaments?

On the original topic, I find that solo join tpvp is basically exactly the same as hot join with people running around disorganized trying to kill stuff without focusing on the map objectives. Even if you form a random group and then queue, if you don’t have voice comms, it is very hard to be effective because typing during the match is just not feasible.

I’ve often found that a quick rundown of the strategy before the match starts helps immeasurably throughout the game. So many times I’ve told an ele or a guardian “stay at this point and bunker” and they reply with “I’m GC”. So I choose someone else, they say “ok” and actually do their job throughout the entire match leading to victory and a sweet little match win box

True, talking during a fight is infeasible for the most part. But before and while on a point? It’s easy with no downsides!

I agree, but my point is that that is no different than hot join – you could do that there as well and probably get similar results. I guess people who play tournaments are a bit more goal-oriented and are less likely to quit mid game and maybe a bit more likely to listen to strategy… but from my experience, solo queueing is not that much different than hot join unfortunately.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Hammerwarriors or mesmers without portal are in the category of r10+ players. They don’t know yet the full potential of their class when it comes to pvp.
For e.g. when I see a signet-warrior, I promise it’s a beginner, who has no understanding what to do on the map.
A good player runs viable builds, what you listed above are not viable builds (guardian excluded).

I’m probably misunderstanding, but are you saying all warriors should be taking shouts/banners over signets for tournaments?

On the original topic, I find that solo join tpvp is basically exactly the same as hot join with people running around disorganized trying to kill stuff without focusing on the map objectives. Even if you form a random group and then queue, if you don’t have voice comms, it is very hard to be effective because typing during the match is just not feasible.

I wonder if the pvp team all patted each other on the back after the 26th patch and said OK good job, lets head to Aruba for a couple months!

I agree with the people who say that necromancer is rather difficult to play successfully and therefore maybe considered weak – in the right hands they are a menace.

I have encountered a problem many times over the past week – very similar to a thread posted in the engineer forums “pvp bug”. You use grenade kit skills but they do not show explosion graphics on the ground or do any damage to the enemy. There are no “missed” or “invulnerable” type of messages or anything. The grenades just… disappear!! Yet the skills go on cooldown.

The thread in the engineer forum states that it is only against elementalists but I swear this happened to me against a mesmer tonight – I don’t think there was an elementalist around. This is a pretty terrible bug for engineers playing pvp!

Ok I’ve seen something similar a bunch of times over the past few days including just now – but it’s not just against elementalists. I just had it happen against a mesmer – I threw a bunch of grenades and they didn’t explode on the ground, no damage, no “invlun”, “miss” or anything and they go on cooldown.

Adaneshade.2409:

It’s what you get with increase to population, you get increase to the tools in that population as well.
The crowd who are there just for their daily, don’t stick it out if they aren’t winning, they tend to bail to “greener patures”…while this is ok in hotjoins, it really screws with tournaments. I think if the ability to complete the dailies was removed from tournaments and made hotjoin exclusive, much of that would disappear.

The problem is that there is already a shortage of tournament players which is probably a big motivation for introducing it in the first place – to attract more players. So removing the dailies from tourneys would have a negative impact on the number of people playing them.

Zodian.6597:

Warrior

• Pros: You’ll feel like an underdog.
• Cons: gl finding viable pvp build post-quickness nerf. (someone probably will)

I have had some good success with Defektive’s hammer build – basically pick a target, lock him down with hammer while your friends nuke him. I used to use Frenzy for a bit of extra damage but was using the might/fury shout last night to buff up the nearby bursters. I’m not playing at high levels but it was very effective.