Guild Wars 2

Ayestes.1273:

It’s much more complex then either learn to play or learn to analyze. I don’t think the right answer is learn to play, because we have tons of issues that need to addressed certainly. It’s not learn to analyze though either, because every other class has a bunch of their own issues and each of those classes would also tell you they are the most unpolished. Not to mention, with a select few builds and a lot more micromanagement then other classes we can be right up there with the best in terms of competitiveness situationally.

Basically, you are all arguing extremes. We are not fine by any means, but we aren’t broken either. Now I’m not a dev for GW2 or anything, but when I see exaggeration it makes the discussion much less credible in my eyes. Discussing what we can do with what we have though, that is valuable stuff and it’s disappointing any discussion on what we can do ends up turning into a bunch of exaggerated despair.

Take your reasonable, measured posts and GTFO!! The sky is falling kitten !!

Played this some more last night and starting the get the hang of it – it’s pretty fun. I noticed sometimes kits are not switching when I press the hot key … haven’t figured out why yet. Also, is it just me or is getting the magnet skill to land very difficult? It misses or otherwise doesn’t work (haven’t figured out why yet – obviously sometimes it gets evanded) yet. Lastly, you really need to be right on top of the guy for the kit refinement barrage to do any damage huh?

Also, found a pretty cool video of a guy running this build in wvw:

GS Whirling Attack and Rush (after detargeting) are pretty great for mobility. Also sword #2 (also after dropping target). I like hte idea of the longbow and maybe because you’d be at range more often it woudln’t be such an issue but the loss of shield #5 and shield #2 must make it pretty tough to stay alive!

Defektive.7283:

As the maker of the thread, I weeded out those whose opinions seemed bias in their reason.

No offense, but this is kind of ironic. You clearly main a warrior and are very vocal about the problems you see with the profession. The little “sad face” category sort of makes me feel like you yourself have a bit of a bias.

Calae.1738:

Leadfoot.9071:

Calae.1738:

Mice.8921:

The primary error is your assumption that they’re concerned about you backstabbing repeatedly, whilst that would be a problem, I believe you’ll find the stealth has a “cd” not because they’re concerned about the damage, but they don’t want you to be able to instantly escape into stealth… Since as a thief we already enjoy massive mobility, exiting stealth with a hit (in other words, fighting) has to come at some cost of commitment to the fight… If thieves didn’t have to commit at all, they would be nigh impossible to kill

I don’t think so. Hit and run is part of the Thief design philosophy. Engage, disengage, rinse, repeat. I’m almost positive they’re trying to stick with the idea of Thieves not having cooldowns on weapon skill. Unfortunatley due to this, reveal is used to dampen burst damage. The same effect could have been achieved with cooldowns. That’s the whole purpose of cooldowns, so that you can’t spam X, Y or Z.

You want to bet how many times Thief ability damage is going to be adjusted because of this? How many patches adjusted Thief ability damage so far? There will be more.

I feel like that is just a small part of the larger design philosophy which is that thieves use initiative and therefore do not have cooldowns on their weapons abilities. Some of these abilities (e.g. CnD) grant stealth and being in stealth permanently is overpowered. Therefore, introduce “revealed” buff as a way to keep the initiative system while still introducing a sort of cooldown measure to prevent “exploitation” of stealth, which can be powerful for many reasons including but not limited to backstab burst. My 2cents

Yes, initiative is the culprit.

I don’t understand why; as a designer, you would want players to spam ability X, Y, Z. There’s no skillful play here. It’s obvious that the skills which provide most use and utitlity will be overused and the less efficient ones will be underused or even ignored. Even in WoW the Rogue had cooldowns precisely for this reason.

Why on earth is spamming X, Y, Z considered fun, interesting or even skillful in any way?

I personally like the initiative system – it’s different. It doesn’t inherently mean you need to spam abilities – I feel like there are very few times where you want to do that (aside from auto-attack).

Interesting, but I bet it would be even more interesting to see that data weighted against the time the players spend in the 3 major areas of the game: pvp, wvw, and pve. While the professions may appear to be balanced in general, you might find that they are not so balanced in specific areas of the game.

I’m not complaining about balance issues really – my opinion is that there are some minor balance issues (I pvp mostly) but not nearly as bad as the forums would have you believe.

Calae.1738:

Mice.8921:

The primary error is your assumption that they’re concerned about you backstabbing repeatedly, whilst that would be a problem, I believe you’ll find the stealth has a “cd” not because they’re concerned about the damage, but they don’t want you to be able to instantly escape into stealth… Since as a thief we already enjoy massive mobility, exiting stealth with a hit (in other words, fighting) has to come at some cost of commitment to the fight… If thieves didn’t have to commit at all, they would be nigh impossible to kill

I don’t think so. Hit and run is part of the Thief design philosophy. Engage, disengage, rinse, repeat. I’m almost positive they’re trying to stick with the idea of Thieves not having cooldowns on weapon skill. Unfortunatley due to this, reveal is used to dampen burst damage. The same effect could have been achieved with cooldowns. That’s the whole purpose of cooldowns, so that you can’t spam X, Y or Z.

You want to bet how many times Thief ability damage is going to be adjusted because of this? How many patches adjusted Thief ability damage so far? There will be more.

I feel like that is just a small part of the larger design philosophy which is that thieves use initiative and therefore do not have cooldowns on their weapons abilities. Some of these abilities (e.g. CnD) grant stealth and being in stealth permanently is overpowered. Therefore, introduce “revealed” buff as a way to keep the initiative system while still introducing a sort of cooldown measure to prevent “exploitation” of stealth, which can be powerful for many reasons including but not limited to backstab burst. My 2cents

I was having a tough time with s/d in spvp last night – I may have been underutilizing Inf strike and also running into a lot of 3+ person zergs and getting nuked. Maybe an l2p issue for me but it seems that the thief squishiness doesn’t synergize that well with toe-to-toe sustained damage and the typical backstab/pistol whip burst builds are better because of the get in and out aspect. Of course, completely different playstyles and I’m used to the latter so it could be jsut a matter of learning the playstyle a bit more.

I’m surprised s/d works in spvp with the nerf to the tactical strike daze… i’ve been running d/d backstab primarily but recently switched to s/p but i can see that it will most likely suffer from the same limitation as 100b warrior (rooted burst that is probably pretty easy to evade). already tried condition builds and would rather play conditions on my necro so i’m thinking about giving s/d another shot (tried it a really long time ago but didn’t give it much of a chance)

Pretty similar to Golradaer’s spartan build:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/66134-golradaers-warrior-guide-for-pvp/

4 sounds good but 5 seems a bit weak to me… I think instead it should be:

5. Kill all enemies instantly on the map and win 1000 internetz

Hanzo and lettucmode – thx for your posts, very helpful!

whew… just started messing around with this build in hot join. I feel like it’s a challenge to get used to – I’m coming from playing primarily necro (both condi and power), thief (mostly backstab but also various condi builds), and a bit of warrior. The kit mechanic is a bit tricky to get the hang of at first – I find I have to waste a few too many cycles to get my brain to figure out how to get back to rifle lol.

Just a matter of needing more practice really but I find that trying to learn a build in hot join can be really frustrating since you often run into zergs and get bursted down before you can remember where your defensive oh kitten get away abilities are.

Anyways, lot a good tips in this thread so bump of appreciation for the OP and the other contributors

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Shroudstomping doesn’t work in sPvP. Haven’t bothered trying it in WvW or tPvP.

It certainly used to – I haven’t tried in a while but I know I was able to do it before – it was tricky to get the timing right though.

From the levelling I have done on my necro I agree 100%. I ran dagger/warhorn and scepter/dagger (always using staff as 2nd weapon) and found it to be way easier to use scepter/dagger conditions. This is due to the AOE as mentioned but also due to the fact that you can easily/quickly stack a bunch of bleeds and just easily stay out of melee range for the shrot amount of time it takes for the bleeds to take the mob down. Therefore, there is much less downtime between fights due to low health.

but you can sell them once you identify them?

Bhawb.7408:

Easiest leveling build is using increased mark size with staff, plus ranged wells. At low levels use minions to face tank creatures up until you can get wells to siphon health. After that, drop minions and use wells + siphoning, eventually getting ranged wells (so you aren’t in as much danger right away and can let other poor noobs tank for you).

Other than that, do personal story like you do already, and also be sure to craft if you can, its decent experience and can easily bridge the level gap to the next story quest (and also if you are gathering resources as you wander, it will be pretty close to free).

Regarding the crafting – just gathering along with questing has not been nearly enough in my experience.. there is always some ingredient in the middle not easy to come by (i think cherries for cooking?) or another resource that is difficult to farm and expensive to buy off the TP (e.g. jute scraps). It definitely does give good xp though – just seems that in my experience I Run into a wall where I am out of a key ingredient and haven’t made enough gold to be able to just buy it off the TP.

Faeyd.5094:

It’s hard in PvP – not so rare in WvW.

25 stacks of bloodlust and having might stacked too helps a lot.

I have pulled off >11k backstabs on GCs in spvp – especially other thiefs

25/30/0/0/15 and I think I’m using Ogre runes air/bloodlust sigils and of course zerker amulet/gem.

Also there was recently a post by a GC mesmer in the pvp forum who got hit with a 14k backstab O.o

wookie.8934:

What I find truly hilarious is that the fear induced by Skull Fear is longer than any single fear that a necromancer can induce. GO FIGURE.

It’s like when someone steals your kittenty car and puts 22" blingalicious rims on it!!

Ugh… I find questing to be extremely boring – my necro is 23 (last 3 levels gained in wvw) and my highest level character is a level 50 thief. I play the game mostly for PVP but would like to get max level so I can be viable in wvw and see if that gets more interesting (can be pretty boring unless you are part of a group). I actually kind of enjoy my necro more than my thief most of the time. I do questing for like a half hour, get sick of it and switch over to the mists for a couple weeks before going back lol…

Schwahrheit.4203:

^
Braxx mad. He can’t prove his worth in PvP cause Thieves are too “OP” for him. That’s why he wants PvP to be separate from easy mode, aka WvW and PvE.

lol… I don’t agree with Braxx opinion – but this kind of statement you just made is exactly what he’s talking about with regards to “pvp elitists”. Two ends of the extreme here haha.

I didnt’ know you could craft unidentified dyes either O.o

Mrbig.8019:

Lol, still arguing against the OP ?

Altough his arguments fell short, the thing Asura have advantage in PvP is obvious.

Their animations are tougher to notice, especially in teamfights.

THIS IS A HUGE ADVANTAGE.

A player can bypass it and deal with it, still it is an unfair advantage in a PvP environment without casting bars ( that’s why gnomes were not broken in WoW, stop using this example ), where according to your animations you can spot if the mesmer is summoning the iZerker or using his heal.

Positioning and the lack of visual impact for asuras weapons are all secondary issues, but animations recognition is indeed a huge problem when we go down to asuras.

IT’S OBVIOUS , stop this senseless discussion, lol.

They are also harder to click – afaik you must click on a guy in order to call target on them? Tab-targetting is also not that great in this game so sometimes you have to manually click someone to target them. Asura have an advantage (small maybe) of being harder to click as well.

I don’t think this is a really big issue in the grand scheme of things but the OP does have a valid point. Those trying to turn this into an OP thief kittenfest are just ridiculous – has nothing to do with thieves other than the fact taht landing a backstab is another of several areas where an asura has a slight advantage.

jportell.2197:

Mufa.1326:

I do not know again how this bad of a design could find its way into the game.

I know that for some people it is a non-issue since they do their dmg in aoe manner or generally do not care if they are hitting from the back, front or side.

However, if you have to consistently land backstabs on something that looks like a little speck and is moving and you have no idea which way it is facing and you cannot even see when it is dodge rolling…..it really makes it much much much harder than playing against other models.

Players should not be getting huge advantage relative to others just due to the model choice.

So your backstab lands for 3.5k instead of 7k? Poor you. Sorry that’s just a ridiculous thing to ask for. And there are several asura thieves running around for just that reason. :P

I find it pretty pathetic that someone could turn this thread into a QQ about thieves – OP raises a valid point – asura models are advantageous in pvp – has nothing to do with thieves he just used that as an example. Another perfectly valid example is trying to call target on an asura mesmer — more difficult than for a charr mesmer.

Sprawl.3891:

For all the suckiness of WoW at least they had 3v3 and 2v2 that only required you to play 10 games a week minimum to stay relevant.

This is not exactly true, people who grinded out higher rating via arenas had access to superior gear. I guess it depends on what you mean by “relevant”…

urinfamousr.7631:

Sky.9347:

hharry.1967:

Theres no gear grind at all unless you want to look cool.

When talking about PvE (and by extension, WvW) you are wrong sir.

For the OP: I think you made some good points. I don’t think hotjoin should go away, but they do need to do something to create a transition from solo player to tournament team.

there is no gear grind in gw2 i got all my exotic gear from gold/karma which i already had long before i hit 80. by the time i hit 80 i already had my gear i had done maybe 2 dungeons 2-3x and wasnt about to repeat that process just for skins…

Having to accumulate currency to buy gear in order to get the best stats is by definition gear grinding – whether you found it to be “grindy feeling” or not is purely subjective and is besides the point. As the game progresses, more levels will be introduced, newer gear with better stats will be introduced, and players, in order to be at the highlest levels of competition will have to “grind” to get the best gear.

My point is that you don’t have to do any kind of questing or dungeon running or anything like that in order to get the same stats as everyone else in spvp – which is exactly what attracted me to this game because, coming from wow, I am sick of questing and grinding for gear… it has no appeal to me.

Vex.7486:

Leadfoot.9071:

How about powermancer with 30 in spite and then 20 in curses for fury on DS and targettable wells? Drop marks and wells on a zerg from a distance and then switch to dagger/x to pick off stragglers?

Don’t bother investing in Curses, the precision is nice but that condition damage is useless. You get more out of the Blood magic & Soul reaping tree’s (lower cd on wells, free spectral armor, stronger DS etc) and you’ll be harder to kill while still doing crazy direct damage.

Really? But targetable wells and Fury in DS is the primary reason to go there and I feel like targetable wells could be huge in zergs?

I think the damage contribution explanation probably makes the most sense – i was running with a group of around 20 players most of which were 80s so the amount of damage I was doing was probably negligible compared to everybody else. I was just dropping marks and occassionally running into the fray to drop wells and pop life transfer but there were very very few drops of bags (it’s possible I missed a bunch too from dying and having to rez at a distant wp)

Also the group I was in was using combo fields to stack 25x might so most of the time I did have that buff – we were mostly on the offensive so there wasn’t much of a siege weapon opportunity.

Thanks for the responses – makes sense.

I was playing in wvw with my guild on a level 20 necromancer just dropping aoes on the big groups of enemies – was in a good 8 or so fights with ltos and lots of enemies and we were wiping them but i could not find any bag drops at all – what is up with that?? I got ONE badge out of the whole thing.

EDIT: I actually meant to post this in the player helping players forum – woops! If anybody can help me out i’d appreciate it.

How about powermancer with 30 in spite and then 20 in curses for fury on DS and targettable wells? Drop marks and wells on a zerg from a distance and then switch to dagger/x to pick off stragglers?

I’m talking about for wvw/pve there is a gear grind which is what turns me off to it and why I prefer spvp. So the problems mentioned in OP are of concern to me as well and I hope they do something to improve it soon.

Agree with many of the OPs points – switching to PvE/WvW is not really a good suggestion because, for me, I like spvp because it doesn’t have the endless gear grind that most mmo’s have – I joined this game because you can jump right into pvp and be on a level playing field (gear/stats wise) with everybody else. I’m starting to try out wvw more and have found that it’s a lot more fun in a group even though i’m severely gimped at level 50ish… i know as soon as I get to 80 I"m going to want to gear grind to be viable in wvw and am not too keen on that idea…

People run lots of builds that don’t specialize in 1v1 as it’s primarily a team oriented game. I can see that a lot of these people do not want to be harrassed with duel requests. That being said, I don’t see any reason not to add dueling – maybe in certain areas only, maybe with a per-player option to turn off the ability for other players to attempt to duel you. It’s annoying when you actually want to join a server and play conquest only to find the server being taken up by people dueling…. I’m sure it’s annoying on the other end too.

I’ve been saying this to myself quite a bit to day – ridiculous. I have been playing backstab on my thief and been amazed at the fact that I can take down squishy players from 100% to zero if I manage to catch them by surprise. I know from playing against thieves on my other toons that it is possible to counter it – but it’s really tough. It happens so fast that I feel you have to be preemptive about it – I see a lot of people saying they can react between the cnd and the backstab even if they didn’t know the thief was coming but I just find that hard to believe.

Definitely a hot join/free tournament issue – organized teams can handle these guys but if you are pugging then they are pretty efffective. my 2 cents…

Attila.6348:

Daecollo.9578:

Attila.6348:

Daecollo.9578:

Attila.6348:

As a necro with 22k hp, I was hit for 20k damage, by a thief, in matter of 2 seconds. I was left with 2k health, confused as to what just happened, he stealthed and finished me off. Yes, there is something wrong with this. I don’t care how glass cannony you are, if there is no counter to this, it should be nerfed. Or, if nerfs aren’t planned, give my necro an irremovable debuff/condition that does 1k damage per second every time you move until you have stopped and not moved for 3 seconds. That sounds like a perfect thief counter to me.

My necromancer has no problem killing thieves, how much toughness does your necromancer have?

In fact, I don’t think its possible for my necromancer to die to a thief as long as i’m paying attention.

I forgot to mention that I didn’t even see the thief. This wasn’t a duel. This was me running towards an herb I wanted to pick, thief pops out of stealth, pulls Steal, Backstab, and Cloak and Dagger, and by the time my heal skill hits 100%, I’m dead.

Can I see a list of your traits please?
I would also like to know how much toughness you have.

I mean, it seems like you weren’t paying attention either, which isn’t the thieves fault.

Considering I’m a condition/power Necro, my toughness is at 1041. And I always pay attention in WvW, but I was jumped. As in, I didn’t see him in front of me or on the side.

I play a necro as well and think that out of all the classes the necro is really good for countering the thief backstab burst – but you do have to be quick. If you don’t see him coming at all you are at a severe disadvantage – but it’s going to be rare that you are full HP and his combo completely kills you. Ways to counter thief on necro:

1) Dodge – requires you seeing them coming
2) Well of Darkness – requires you seeing them coming
3) Spectral stun break
4) Death shroud – requires you to have LF
5) Some good traits for this too like the one that fears when you are disabled and spectral armor at 50% health

All that said, you still have to be on top of things to survive the thief burst – but each class has their strengths and weaknesses and I think the thief burst is not really so far out of balance in the grand scheme of things.. just my opinion though – I know plenty disagreee.

frans.8092:

Auesis.7301:

As said before, human reaction time is 0.15-0.30s on average.

That is for ‘twitch’ reaction, when you know something is coming and all you have to do is react in a predefined way to any trigger. If you have to evaluate the trigger and the proper reaction it takes much, much longer.

This – and also if your reaction is something like shadowstep where you have to click, target, click then you’re going to have a much more difficult time.

EasymodeX.4062:

In the CnD combo you have to consider also CnD which has 0.5s cast time.
So basically it is CnD (0.5) + Steal + Backstab (0.25) = 0.75s and requires correct timing of 3 skills and has 900 range

1. The damage is at the end of the CND, and I said “on reaction”.

2. Complaining about “correct timing” is irrelevant. It takes about 5 seconds of practice to be able to do the combo reliably. Ham-fisted neanderthals can even macro it if they really want to.

Kill shot is 1.75s doesn’t require coordination (1 key) and has 1500 range

Kill Shot requires a resource buildup (e.g. they can’t use it at the start of a fight), and has a very clear and blatant animation. It also does less damage.

Hundred blades is 3.5s but it’s aoe, channeling 9attacks and deals more damage

This must be a joke.

Pro and cons… hard to say this is OP that isn’t.

I didn’t say it was OP. I just said it was much faster than other kill combos for no apparent reason, with less telegraph as a random and unnecessary bonus.

This also works only if you don’t see thief coming, if u can see him going your direction, it’s just L2P problem of how to dodge.

How do you dodge something that has nearly zero telegraph? Do you randomly waste your endurance on any target within 1200 regardless of what they’re doing?

If you see the thief coming it’s entirely possible to avoid the burst but it’s not easy depending on your class and the utilities you have available to you. If you DON’T see the thief coming, I think your basically dead – at least I am because by the time I realize what’s happening it’s too late to use a stun breaker or some other ability to save myself (depending on my HP of course). I’m sure plenty of people will say I suck and that they never die to a thief ever ever ever… but I think on average the thief burst is super powerful (due to the speed at which it occurs as well) unless you are completely aware of them coming and focusing on them solely.

MaXi.3642:

many people here dont even know what is the purpose of hotjoins and try to make it a serious mode with matchmaking… its a bit funny

A large contingent of pvpers are casual players that don’t have time to establish set teams to play in frees/paids and prefer to hop on and jump into hot join. Maybe I’m misinterpreting but your post sounds elitist and dismissive of these types of players which everyone knows are important for the health and popularity of the game – especially if they want it to become an esport. To say that hot join is not worth improving is really narrow minded in my opinion.

I’m actually coming around to the other side of the penalty discussion – I can see how there may be better alternatives such as a simple balancing approaches where the system prioritizes keeping games balanced – so if someone leaves it can quickly pull someone from the queue (assuming there is a queue) or put the next person that queues up into the now unbalanced game. However, it would still be nice to discourage people from leaving – but this system alone may actually result in that because the teams may end up unbalanced for less time. I don’t know – I hope they do something soon.

Hi, for a backstab build, wondering what experienced thieves think about Deadly Arts and how far they go into it. Going all the way to 25 seems like a reasonable strategy as exposed weakness seems to synergize well with serpents touch during the steal combo. Also, mug is a no brainer, but waht about the second slot:

Dagger Training?
Venemous Strength? Basilisk venom as part of the combo would then add a couple stack of might?
Back Fighting? This seems cool but I’m not sure it’s worth it over the other ones that buff the combo that is centric to the build.

hooma.9642:

Aurum.8793:

hooma.9642:

also nr2. its stupid.. there will always be a server where the rooster is not full. so u want that they dont can play?

Have… Have you played WoW before? The system works. In fact, it works very well. There are never any unfilled rosters (I sincerely hope you meant roster anyway, filling roosters would be unpleasent). This is because the match isn’t formed until the roster is FULL. Once the roster is full, your queue pops and you get to join. Short wait, full games, life is good. If you wait until the roster is full, then the roster will always be full.

so u will always has ppl waiting… nope bad decision! just put the ppl in the next server with place.. so nobody will wait!

I don’t think I explained it clearly in my first post – my idea was that when a person queues for hot join the system will look for a server with a free spot and uneven teams and put the player there, otherwise, wait for an even number of waiting people and put them into a server with a free spots such that the teams will not go uneven, otherwise, wait for a full 5v5 or 8v8 (depending on what player chose) and then start a new game.

Chances are the players waiting will end up getting moved to a game that has a free spot(s) instead of waiting for enough people to start a whole new game… basically – how wow does it in BGs – prioritized balanced teams over everything.

I think with this system there is definitely less of a need for penalizing players who leave. However, even in wow, when players leave when they’re getting their kitten beat, a poor sap in the queue gets stuck on taht team – I don’t think there is any perfect solution really but what’s going on in gw2 is clearly crap.

I got hit with an 8.5K backstab in spvp hotjoin the other day… I play a backstab thief occasionally but never seen backstabs that high – they are usually around 5k or so. Pretty standard build taking the full 30 in crit strikes. I think I use air and bloodlust on my daggers and divinity runes – perhaps I would reach backstabs that high with ogre runes or something?

Shanos.2459:

Leadfoot.9071:

3) Penalize players who quit matches early

This is just a bad idea. In GW1 I played Alot of Random Areana.
Some days I spent more time not playing due to deserter penalty, cause every matchup we didnt have a monk and the oposing team did. and in that game having the monk was a free win.
So after awile of being denied the ability to play I lost interest and only played when I had absolutly nothing better to do.

dont punish players like there children standing in the corner for 15 min cause they were bad. If the player wants to leave let them, someone else might join to take there place or auto balance.

but team swaping to imba the teams thats the real problem.

Other ideas then? Because I feel that something needs to be done as players quitting games is a big problem. Perhaps the auto player placement idea will mitigate this somewhat by prioritizing matches that have an uneven number of players so the spot gets filled quickly. I feel like any kind of incentive to stay, like a “short team buff” or something will somehow be abused…

reedju.5786:

What you are describing would literally kill hotjoin. It is already sad enough how few servers are running compared to launch. Right now the only redeemable part is the fact that if you are playing with friends you CAN switch to their team. Lets be honest no one is interested in trying to get premades for hotjoin. And implementing penalties for leaving would be awful. Too few people play already and if there was even a 10 min cd after leaving prematurely no one would play. A lot of times you get sent to a low population server anyway and if a few more players left you would either be stuck in there alone or be forced to take a penalty yourself. As for map morale? Who cares! Winning gives you a measly few points. I actually find I am far more likely to get more points on the losing team via back capping and smart skirmishing it is very easy to avoid most mobs. As for skill, I rarely see players over rank 20 in hotjoin leaving usually maybe 1/5 of the team at 30+. Unless more players join sPvP (unlikely seeing as the game additions announced will have little/no draw for casual players to start playing, just a little better environment for those here now) there will always be higher rank/skilled players with newbs.

Well, friends should definitely be able to join and play together I’ll give you that. I respectfully disagree with pretty much everything else though. I’m not sure if the server browser is server specific or what but I always see plenty of games going and having the system place players to promote even teams will make it a LOT less frustrating for new players. Right now, the majority of games I join (even when I’m specifically joining games that have an odd number of players) are always uneven which gives the team with more players a huge advantage making it not fun at all for players on the other team – which then leads them to quit.

I would think it would not be too difficult to implement a penalty system that had some basic logic to it that would not penalize players who leave because they are on a team of 2 against a team of 5 or in the first or last few seconds of a match or something along those lines… I’m sure there are a simple set of rules that can be put in place to increase the effectiveness of the penalties so that people don’t just leave as soon as the going gets rough.

I don’t know what’s so hard about implementing the hot join system similar to the wow battleground system:

1) Don’t allow players to choose a server
2) Wait until there is a full roster of players and then start the game
3) Penalize players who quit matches early
4) Implement some sort of team balancing (by rank and by profession so that experience and profession is equally distributed across the teams)

The only issue is that rank applies to account instead of player – so a high rank player might start experimenting with a new profession and end up at a disadvantage because the system assumes experience.

Feel like we are beating a dead horse here… oh well.

Hi, the focus of this question is PVP which is pretty much all I do in this game…

I’m wondering how people manage to keep track of their mouse cursor in the event that you need to click target someone or target a ground-targeting spell.

I use RMB to move my character a LOT and in doing so I’m swinging my mouse around the table. So when I need to locate my cursor and click somewhere on the screen I am often delayed because I cannot find the cursor easily.

Does anyone have any tips for improving in this way? One thought I had was to greatly increase the mouse sensitivity so I don’t have to move it so far while moving around – however, this will take some serious time to get used to and will probably cost me a lot in terms of getting my butt kicked in pvp.

Any help is greatly appreciated!!!

jportell.2197:

Leadfoot.9071:

daydream.2938:

Warriors are limited, no doubt about it.
BUT warriors in 100 b spec DO have great burst and are viable. But perhaps not in the way that people want warriors to be viable.
Additionally, this is the only viable way to play a warrior that i have seen.
I think some other specs are semi-viable like hammer control.

What about the “spartan” build… axe/mace sword/shield with lyssa runes and shouts – (I think the lyssa runes remove conditions on shouts). Is that one not viable? (I’m seriously asking because I don’t know and am curious)

Soldiers runes remove conditions with shouts.

Ahh you are correct sir… but the spartan build I referred to uses Lyssa runes which has “Lose all conditions and gain all buffs for 5 seconds when you use your elite”. And actually the spartan build has no shouts at all lol… so I was all confused. Spartan build obviously takes signet of rage elite.

hooma.9642:

Leadfoot.9071:

Ayestes.1273:

Royce.6835:

Well, essentially, they should be deleted from the game.

If you are going to start a post with this it’s unlikely you are going to get anything you intended once people are laughing and no longer taking your post seriously. I understand your frustration and the like, but to even consider deleting a profession or mechanic from the game as a valid response is just silly.

MatyrGustav.6210:

any Suggestions?

The Mesmer in this case is a Shatter Memser, not really a melee mesmer. It’s unlikely they will stay in melee the entire time. The reason being, they are incredibly squishy when they aren’t pulling off their burst and when they are in their Sword set. This changes a bit when they are with the Staff, but in general there are fantastic set of tips when dealing with them. Keep in mind though that if you are pure melee then the odds aren’t in your favor, but that doesn’t mean you auto-lose.

• Dodge roll into the clones when they shatter. This triggers their explosions. A Shatter mesmer’s damage is mostly in these shatters. Mitigate them and you mitigate the vast majority of what they can do.

• Move away from the Mesmer if possible. Mesmers need you to be close to deal their real damage. Unless they have a Greatsword they have no real way to deal damage in this long range case, and without the Staff they are incredibly weak defensively beyond the trickery. AoE slows in particular can make it very easy to pick off Mesmer stuff.

• Move all the bloody time and learn to recognize the leaping clone. This leaping clone is the very beginning of the burst combo that you are going to be hit with. If you can keep away from it and/or dodge the follow-up then you have fully mitigated the combo. The other way to start the combo is with the Magic Bullet stun, so dodge roll that projectile if possible as well and stun break it if you get caught while having that cooldown up.

• AoE is pretty key in dealing with clones in general. This won’t stop the primary combo of clones if you get caught in the burst cycle, but beyond a Mirror Images burst while you are Immobilized it’s completely feasible to cleave them down. If you do get immobilized, make sure you use whatever invuln options you may or may not have.

• Recognize Distortion. They are invulnerable during Blurred Frenzy and their Distortion Shatter. Don’t waste valuable cooldowns during this period. I’ve seen far too many people try to burst a Mesmer I have targeted with Quickness for example. They are literally invulnerable during their burst combo, keep that in mind.

Best advice in general though, is to go play one. Start with a Phantasm build for a few hours to ease into the profession and then pickup the premier Shatter build once you have adjusted to the profession. Easiest way to learn how to beat something is to play it, and in GW2 it is incredibly easy to do that. If you are too stubborn to learn how to do that, then just watch Mesmer some streams on twitch.tv. Experience and knowledge of what a profession can do and usually does is the vast majority of skill in any MMO. Targeting nightmare is accurate though, they can be pretty frustrating without tons and tons of practice.

A lot of people seemed to just glaze over this post which is the most useful and productive post in the whole thread. So yeah, I’m going to go ahead and quote it and says thanks for the constructive feedback amid the qq fest.

I agree that good mesmers can be really tough to beat… but I think its’ a really cool idea for a class and would never want to see it deleted.

u realize that dodgine into the clones is the only way to avoid that combo with dodging? so u think to be forced to dodge in a specific direction is a good balanced solution?

as example if i bullscharge u it doesnt matter what direction u dodge i dont hit u…

I didn’t say anything at all about balance – I just commended this guy for making a constructive post with an attempt to give some tips on how to play against a mesmer instead of the qq’ing. I’m not a pro and get frustrated with mesmers kicking my kitten regularly but I don’t see any benefit to crying about it – instead learn as much as you can about them and their strengths and accept what you cannot change. The game is still fairly new and balancing for pvp in these types of games is undoubtedly a big challenge – I think it’s best to remain optimistic that anet will be making changes to balance things as they see fit.

Ayestes.1273:

Royce.6835:

Well, essentially, they should be deleted from the game.

If you are going to start a post with this it’s unlikely you are going to get anything you intended once people are laughing and no longer taking your post seriously. I understand your frustration and the like, but to even consider deleting a profession or mechanic from the game as a valid response is just silly.

MatyrGustav.6210:

any Suggestions?

The Mesmer in this case is a Shatter Memser, not really a melee mesmer. It’s unlikely they will stay in melee the entire time. The reason being, they are incredibly squishy when they aren’t pulling off their burst and when they are in their Sword set. This changes a bit when they are with the Staff, but in general there are fantastic set of tips when dealing with them. Keep in mind though that if you are pure melee then the odds aren’t in your favor, but that doesn’t mean you auto-lose.

• Dodge roll into the clones when they shatter. This triggers their explosions. A Shatter mesmer’s damage is mostly in these shatters. Mitigate them and you mitigate the vast majority of what they can do.

• Move away from the Mesmer if possible. Mesmers need you to be close to deal their real damage. Unless they have a Greatsword they have no real way to deal damage in this long range case, and without the Staff they are incredibly weak defensively beyond the trickery. AoE slows in particular can make it very easy to pick off Mesmer stuff.

• Move all the bloody time and learn to recognize the leaping clone. This leaping clone is the very beginning of the burst combo that you are going to be hit with. If you can keep away from it and/or dodge the follow-up then you have fully mitigated the combo. The other way to start the combo is with the Magic Bullet stun, so dodge roll that projectile if possible as well and stun break it if you get caught while having that cooldown up.

• AoE is pretty key in dealing with clones in general. This won’t stop the primary combo of clones if you get caught in the burst cycle, but beyond a Mirror Images burst while you are Immobilized it’s completely feasible to cleave them down. If you do get immobilized, make sure you use whatever invuln options you may or may not have.

• Recognize Distortion. They are invulnerable during Blurred Frenzy and their Distortion Shatter. Don’t waste valuable cooldowns during this period. I’ve seen far too many people try to burst a Mesmer I have targeted with Quickness for example. They are literally invulnerable during their burst combo, keep that in mind.

Best advice in general though, is to go play one. Start with a Phantasm build for a few hours to ease into the profession and then pickup the premier Shatter build once you have adjusted to the profession. Easiest way to learn how to beat something is to play it, and in GW2 it is incredibly easy to do that. If you are too stubborn to learn how to do that, then just watch Mesmer some streams on twitch.tv. Experience and knowledge of what a profession can do and usually does is the vast majority of skill in any MMO. Targeting nightmare is accurate though, they can be pretty frustrating without tons and tons of practice.

A lot of people seemed to just glaze over this post which is the most useful and productive post in the whole thread. So yeah, I’m going to go ahead and quote it and says thanks for the constructive feedback amid the qq fest.

I agree that good mesmers can be really tough to beat… but I think its’ a really cool idea for a class and would never want to see it deleted.

daydream.2938:

Warriors are limited, no doubt about it.
BUT warriors in 100 b spec DO have great burst and are viable. But perhaps not in the way that people want warriors to be viable.
Additionally, this is the only viable way to play a warrior that i have seen.
I think some other specs are semi-viable like hammer control.

What about the “spartan” build… axe/mace sword/shield with lyssa runes and shouts – (I think the lyssa runes remove conditions on shouts). Is that one not viable? (I’m seriously asking because I don’t know and am curious)

I agree it is one of the more annoying “bugs” in the game and hope it’s easy to fix and will be fixed soon. That being said, if it is easy to fix, it’s troubling to me that an engineering team would release their software with something as obvious as this broken.

Might be better to post this in the bugs forum?