Guild Wars 2

zerker staff ele, soooo much AoE
melts AI in a flash but you’re very squishy to other players :P

Olba.5376:

Warriors are all about lower stack counts

Flurry = 12 stacks of bleed, one of the highest stacks from a single skill in the game. (only outdone by thief caltrops and ranger entangle.)
Pin Down is another 6 stacks of bleed, one of the higher end bleed stacking skills.

these are 2 of the highest stacks of bleeds from single skills in the game, to say warriors are all about low stacks is crazy.

yes the rangers and mesmers dominate the poor warriors.
wait, i think i’m in the wrong universe…

agreeing with everyone else on this, S/D thief is fairly insignificant next to some of the bigger fish.
Hambow is still ridiculously strong after 8 months, AI builds are still running rampant,
cancerous condi builds are still spamming condis all over the place.
S/D is still fairly low on my loathing list!

it takes a special kind of stubbornness to ignore the majority of the playerbase like Anet are doing on the Skyhammer subject.

what do they hope to gain by leaving in a map that most of us despise?
at this point they can’t hide under the excuse that its only a vocal minority that hate this map, it is evident every time the map rotation gets to skyhammer in hotjoin and almost everybody leaves.

Balsa.3951:

ur melee dps is higher then a warrior

sure…

rangers used to have their own thing until their pets were nerfed to hell,
funny how the only class tied to having an AI companion playing a large role in the players effectiveness had that companion nerfed right down while at this very moment there will be MM necros and turret engis running rampant.

ranger should be first up,
too many mandatory traits that need merging together, (eagle eye, read the wind)
too many traits that should just be passives without the need for traiting, (30% pet speed) (arrows pierce) etc.
pets need to scale with gear or they should revert the damage nerf from back-in-the-day.

the problem is that warrior is the noob class,
it is ridiculously easy to pick up and own faces without the need of any knowledge.

they have no fancy mechanics to learn.
this means that they have the lowest skill requirement but also the lowest skill cap,

in a 1v1:
a bad warrior will most likely beat a fairly good [other class],
a master warrior will most likely lose to a master [other class].

in high end tournaments warriors are still taken because they are very effective at team fights, between the heavy sustained aoe damage and the constantly chained AoE CCs (throw in the damage/condi immunitys, a condi clear every 7 seconds and the large passive regen) warriors are a nightmare in team fights.

Deified.7520:

Nothing specific, you can be as general as you’d like. However just to show people that yes, you are working on projects.

the problem there is we end up with the baseless banter that we once had before they decided to stop communicating all together.

we need specifics. no more of this…
“We’re working on a solution Not ready to talk about the details yet”
(taken from a dev post 4 months ago on the subject for 4v5s which are still happening)

“we don’t have any plans to remove skyhammer from solo arena right now, doesn’t mean we aren’t kicking around ideas.”
(5 months ago, no change)

without specifics we will just get these vague “oh yeah we’re trying some stuff” cop-out responses with no action ever taken.

“I Will Avenge You!”
Gain Might, Fury and Quickness for a short time, duration increased for each nearby defeated ally.
Shout
Radius: 900
Duration: 5 seconds, + 3 seconds for each dead ally
Might Stacks: 6
Cooldown: 60 Seconds
Max Targets: 5

its a classic for anyone who played the original GW, this version is more zerker and less defensive, Might fury and quickness are a lethal combo, hence the short duration :-3

Sarrs.4831:

Liewec.2896:

tl;dr
on the surface wars seem OP because any idiot can play one and do well,
but they also have a lower skill ceiling than any other class,
so at expert levels they are the worst profession.

are they though

i’m not really following all the mlg leet esports stuff but if your theory is true then very few or none of the teams at the high end level of play will run a warrior
to be the worst, then logically, they must have the lowest representation in high end play

well i was really talking about sticking 2 classes in a pit to fight :P
an expert warrior vs an expert ele would likely favour the ele.

in pvp though warriors are in almost every group due to the ridiculous amount of aoe damage they can put down with fire fields, arcing arrow and the regular aoe CC chains from hammer.
they excel at team fights.

Ario.8964:

Liewec, that was a very good point and I actually really loved that input. The reason I said warrior though is because of the build variety in that class, there are really no “required traits” that you need to be effective.

ah yep i totally agree there, we should be able to play interesting specs without being held down by mandatory traits (looking at you longbow ranger!)
however many people could argue that cleansing ire+adrenal health are mandatory traits, and anyone going that far into the defense tree might aswell throw the remaining points in to get 50% uptime retaliation from Spiked Armor

i’d disagree, i’d say ele is what all classes should be like.
a bad ele will get destroyed, a good ele will do well, an expert master ele will be godly.
there are no carry builds with passives or AI crutches.

warrior has such a low skill requirement but also a very low skill ceiling,
there are no complex mechanics to master so there is only so much you can do with it.
it is the most basic class.
a bad warrior will do pretty good, a good warrior will do great, an expert warrior will do a little better than great.

tl;dr
on the surface wars seem OP because any idiot can play one and do well,
but they also have a lower skill ceiling than any other class,
so at expert levels they are the worst profession.

if you’re tired of having to wait out this cr…map then just do what i do and boycott tournaments completely.
i’m sick of gambling a 1 in 6 chance of afking for 15 minutes.

what is wrong with you anet, your community is fairly unanimous in our loathing for this map, why can’t you take 5 minutes to remove it from queues and rotations?
i don’t think you’re that stupid, so is it just sheer stubbornness?

style.6173:

In fairness though, I do think there is only one dev for PvP and he seems to mostly be involved with fixing issues or quality of life type changes.

but why? this isn’t some low budget random F2P, this is Guildwars 2!
a game under the wing of NCsoft, who could be seen as MMO gods.
up there with the likes of Blizzard and old SoE back in the Everquest days.

this game sold over a million copies before it was even released,
how on earth do we end up with only 1-2 devs less than 2 years after release?…

i’m amazed there are still people that don’t AFK this cr…map.
its one of the main reasons i rarely play rated matches, i have very few nights a week were i can have a good fun gaming night,
i don’t want to risk having 10 minutes of AFK staring at the screen waiting for the garbage to end, it really puts a dint in a good gaming night.
atleast when this cr…MAP! pops up in hotjoin we can all switch server to escape it,
in rated you’re stuck to wait it out.

i can’t figure out why Anet so stubbornly ignore the community.
we hate the map anet, you know we hate it, why is it still in the rotations?
let the very few people who enjoy the map play it in custom arenas,
just like courtyard.

general pvp:
more reward tracks, I.e Living world reward track, levelling (tomes and scrolls) track, Black Lion track, Dye track, unique pvp reward track, ascended armour track.

Racial skills usable in pvp (experimental atleast), time for the people who play the hugely choreographed norn to get some bear rush revenge on those asuran midgets!

hotjoin:
8v8 given back to us.
spectator and team select removed.
region reward track caps removed, there is no excuse for region reward track caps!
skyhammer removed from rotation.(give it a totally separate queue or keep it to custom arenas like Courtyard, or even switch courtyard in when skyhammer is take out)

none pvp specific:
healing reduction removed from poison, given to a new less spammed condition (like Deep Wound from GW1).
condition caps removed, but conditions effected by mitigation.

more balance shaving patches, if shaving is the method anet wish to use then we shouldn’t wait half a year for each minuscule adjustment.

Aza.2105:

• Everyone is new to the server, match starts and its 5v5

the only problem with what you wrote XD
the games usually start 2v3 or 3v3 if you’re lucky with one team getting 4v3 when the next person joins, it usually takes afew minutes before the server fills, in which time the team with the most players is already winning and the spectator lameness starts

also Anet, will this “600 seconds between posts” nonsense ever end?
its been a week now…

imho ele is one of the better examples of balance,
bad ones will be destroyed, good ones will do well, incredible ones will be godly.
this used to be the same for engi and thief, but power crawl has given those 2 classes noob-friendly specs.

Pimsley.3681:

But you main an engie (or was it thief) so I understand your resentment towards the counter class.

my necro is my first 80 and i’d consider them my main, though i usually play every class when i log on for pvp.

if you have a decent amount of crit percentage then you should have no problem gaining and maintaining life force, the “lifeforce from crit” trait helps immensely, also i run with 2 wells and traited warhorn so i can keep locust swarm up for most of the fight which procs crits and even more life force.

i came up with what i think was a nice elite in another thread.

an elite which for a very short times grants you the bonuses of every attunement-specific trait you’ve specced in to regardless of the attunement you’re in.
so say you’d specced for stone-heart, you’d be crit immune in water attunement while the elite is active.

Glyph of Elemental Attunement:
Glyph: Grants you the effects of all attunement-specific traits you have, regardless of current attunement.
Cast time: Instant
Duration: 10 seconds
Recharge: 60 seconds

i have a sort of lore build based around guardikittening Glacial heart, ice/chilling sigils and runes of svanir, specced heavily for symbols, using zerker amulet, it deals a decent amount of damage and procs quite alot of chills, also turning into a block of ice at low hp is pretty cool XD

but i agree the cooldown is so wrong, 4s chill on a 30 second cooldown.
an ele with Glyph of Elemental Power can apply 2 seconds of chill every 5 seconds.
a necro with Plague Form and Chilling Darkness can perma AoE chill, blind and poison for 20 seconds.

people have forgotten how powerful the AI lameness of MM can be in 1v1 situations.

and also power necro is one of my favourite specs right now, popping deathshroud and lasting through tons of damage while spamming out 4-5k “guaranteed-crit” lifeblasts is amazing!

this sucks tbh!
if i go to pve i can kill champion mobs all day long and get loot, so why cant we progress the pve tracks in hotjoin pvp?

to prevent botting?
yet right now i could log on my MM/ranger and afk camp in pve with no cap and gain rewards faster than the pvp reward tracks… (note: i’m not going to)
the “botting” thing is a bad excuse.

an “ascended” reward track is one of the many reward tracks that they need to make,
they could make it alot longer than the standard reward tracks, but it should definitely happen!
i got an ascended ring during the first week of the reward tracks, nothing since!

they need to dedicate a patch to piling out a butt load of new reward tracks like ascended, living world, levelling (tomes of knowledge and scrolls), maybe a blacklion reward track with random BL loot each step and a key at the end.

they also need to get rid of the reward caps, if someone can keep earning rewards in casual pve or casual wvw then we should be able to do the same for casual pvp (hotjoin), they can keep the caps on the dungeon tracks if they want, but not the pve tracks.

LIES! “Healing Mist: Reduced the number of targets from 6 to 5.”
the game is now balanced!
rejoice peasants! or thoust will find thine self infacted upon!

Razor.6392:

I don’t play warrior (never have),
Arcing slice (greatsword):
very powerful abilities

/thread.

runeblade.7514:

The problem with that is that it will encourage meta builds in Hotjoin.
The only way to win is to use a meta build.

not really, i never play meta builds but can still win when there are some (not all) meta builds, i dont see how better balanced teams will change that!

bethekey.8314:

Hotjoins should be fluid, allowing players to come and go as they please. Maybe someone just destroyed you and you want to see their build/playstyle to learn, then hop back into the game to try out your new strategy. Maybe I just got stuck in the map and need to reset my position in a very fun game.

when was the last time you got stuck in the map and had to leave?!
and if people are so desperate to view someones build then they can, but they’ll have to join another server after that,
or we could even let them rejoin, but only on the team they were previously on,
maybe give them a 20 second window before bringing in a replacement player.

there are plenty of ways we could better balance it, the big question is why is such an abusable system still in the game? and why has nothing been done to better balance the matches?
they were far more balanced before team select and spectator.

how it should be:
game starts, players get put on (mostly)random teams,
perhaps it could use ranks and try to balance them as best it can.

if a player joins while teams are even and score are the same, player gets put on random team.
if a player joins while teams are uneven, player gets put on less populated team.
if a player joins while teams are even but scores aren’t, player gets put on losing team.

players can still choose to change to a spectator, but doing so will make it so you cannot join the same game until it ends, even if you leave and rejoin.

the current problem is the one outlined by the OP, whan a team starts winning people will wait in spectator mode to join the winning team, and while this is happening people are leaving the losing team, in severe cases you can have the match ending in a 1v5 because noone else is joining the losing team.

also to the people saying “just do tournaments!” you need to understand, many of us can’t stand meta, imho thats the main function of hotjoin, its the mode where you can get away from most of the meta clones and play with none meta builds yourself, would you really want to play tournaments as a p/p thief? or a greatsword glasszerker warrior? you’d get cursed by your team and facerolled by the meta clones of the other team, sure we still have some meta clones in hotjoin, but there are alot less of them so you get to play the more enjoyable builds and face different ones!

xbutcherx.3861:

WHAT I don’t understand is why is has to be better than the warrior skill?

it really isn’t, you can dodge while using the warrior skill, you can’t while using the thief version, also as the warrior dodges twice he’ll be avoiding all damage while dealing 6k+ damage with the Reckless Dodge trait.

also (atleast with my axezerker spec) the warrior version deals a butt load more damage, always over 10k with my spec, sometimes up to 12k.

its one of my favourite skills for blending people who are unaware/ignorant of its power!

more damage than firegrab? is your character naked?
the bird hits for 1-2k.
if you’re using firegrab and hitting for 1-2k you’re doing something wrong.

turrets are a pain in the butt,

it takes a class with ranged aoe to deal with them,
although even then, the rocket and rifle turrets (and the engis autos) will still be dealing quite alot of damage.

also minion masters seem to do well against turrets, funny watching AI killing AI in “pvp” while the actual players spam auto attacks…

separate rules for skyhammer,
over the past year we’ve asked Anet to remove it from the queues, they removed it from team queue which made some of us think that they were listening, but its still in soloq and hotjoin.

in hotjoin we can simply switch servers, its annoying and interrupts our gaming night, but we can do it, so thats not too serious, it just means that the trolls don’t have anyone to spam knockbacks on, only eachother.

but in soloq though there is no leaving, so we encourage everyone to AFK.
or even better, come to the forum and make another post about skyhammer so the mods can ignore it and bin it with the other 812 skyhammer posts.

on my thief i still prefer S/P, i abuse the crap out of blackpowder XD
if a warrior lands a hit, i’ve done it wrong!

do you understand how ridiculously OP that would make minion masters?
imho the aoe limit needs removing, if 20 people stand in a meteorshower and decide to stay there and /dance then 20 people should die for their silliness!

why is it ok that one person acting like a fool would have died,
but 20 fools are allowed get away with it!
“safety in numbers” should not apply to stupidity!

now imagine “1 target cap” aoe with a minion master and his 7 minions, each time you try to attack him you have an 87.5% chance of one of his minions soaking up the hit instead.

cleave skills already have this problem. for example a warrior using hundred blades can only hit 3 targets, that means each attack has a 62.5% chance of missing the necro and hitting his meatwall instead.

Mijo.3274:

But there are 2 things that bother me most than anything about GW2:
1) The game mechanics are so good that every other pvp game look boring and stupid compared to gw2, the pvp in this game is so fluid and awesome that it keeps playing thousand of players even if ANet don’t really care about them.

this is the big thing for me too, you come in, get addicted to the amazing game mechanics, but then when you inevitably get bored and you go to try other MMOs, you just can’t play them because they feel so archaic and last-gen, no matter how dedicated their devs are, or how much effort they put in to their pvp.

thats why it feels like a tomb, the game mechanics of GW2 have made all other MMOs feel obsolete, but the seriously lacking content, balance and dev support makes GW2 unbearable aswell.
#ItsATrap!

Eiland.1405:

If think this skill is very unbalanced as a stolen skill (compared to other stolen skills) as it last too tong/ does too much damage/ have almost no counters for the short CD it can be obtained (20sec traited).

ironically i find one of the best counters is warrior Whirling Axe.
(atleast in pvp where it deals more damage)
super secret, you can dodge while channelling the warrior version, with Reckless Dodge you can seriously stack up the damage while also dodging all of theirs.

on my axezerker i have over 80% crit chance,
the whirl will hit for over 10k.
the 2 dodge rolls will deal over 3k each.
if they’re still alive when you stop blending throw a 9-11k eviscerate in there for good measure

warriorjrd.8695:

what the hell is your healing power on that shout warrior to get 9k heals from three shouts?

i count “shrug it off!” in there too, because you will never be in combat and not have conditions constantly applied, (the shake it off that it triggers is affected by Vigorous shouts and lung capacity so it will heal every 20 seconds and remove 2 conditions if you have soldier runes)
each shout does around 2,3k healing, 2,3k x 4 = 9,2k :-3

it also makes you an amazing bunker considering you have adrenal health and healing signet both ticking for huge amounts and you have plenty of condition removal :-3

yolo swaggins.2570:

I want to say mantra mesmers because their traited mantras can heal almost as much as a guard’s meditation. The best part is that they have a mantra that recharges in two seconds I believe so they can keep heals up as much if not better than a guard. They can also provide AoE regen via illusions by traiting for it.

i actually play a mantra healer in zergs :-3
with mantra of recovery and mantra of pain you can constantly spam them meaning you’re healing all allies around you for 2,5k every 3 secs, you can also grab dwayna runes for 50% uptime regen! :-3

i also love playing shout warrior though, 4 AoE condi removals and over 9k AoE healing every 20 seconds :-3

for zergs i’d imagine regen banner warrior is pretty effective since the area is so huge and you’d be apply constant regen to so many people

we used to be able to make loads of money by crafting dyes,
but alas, that was removed when the unrewarding “reward tracks” replaced our actual rewards XD

also as i keep saying you’d have far better balanced games back when it was 8v8,
yes some people zerged middle, but generally each team had enough players focusing on objectives that most games ended somewhat close (350-500).
5v5 simply does not work with hotjoin since the burden is far greater on each player and the game never starts with even numbers, its always an inevitable steamroll.
give us back our 8v8!

a more detailed look at what happens in every hotjoin 5v5:
game starts, 2v1/2v3.
the side with more players cap more points and takes the lead.
(usually now someone from the outnumbered team quits)
someone joins the game and either sits and waits to be able to join the winning team or evens the numbers, if he evens the numbers then the next person to join will select the winning team and uneven them again, either way the winning team will also have more players for the majority of the game and the losing team will likely have multiple quitters and joiners.

giving us back 8v8 or removing team select and spectator are the only solutions.

Wall of Reflection
thats a third of the lich duration handled already, who knows them might kill themselves too! also use dodges, blocks, sanctuary, shield of absorption etc as a guardian you have plenty of ways to stop projectiles,

also deathly claws moves EXTREMELY slow, with even a short amount of distance you can simply run sideways to avoid the damage completely.

we definately do need more elites, for example, look at warrior and engi,
all engis use supply kit, all warriors use signet (or banner for tournaments/wvw)

maybe they could alter existing elites before adding new ones, make elites like engi mortar and war rampage useful!

though it’d be fun if they made an elite for each classes unique thing,
like an elite virtue for guards,
elite phantasm for mesmer,
elite kit for engi,
ranger could have an elite that temporarily lets them use both pets,
ele could have an elite that grants you the effects of all attunements for a short while, so say you have Piercing Shards, you would get the 20% extra damage while in any attunement.
warrior could have a “zerker” style elite that reduces all weapon+burst cooldowns and lets you use adrenaline skills without spending adrenaline. maybe 10 second duration.
thief could get an “ultimate escape” elite on a moderately short CD (60-90 secs) which grants stealth, invulnerability and increased movement speed but they cant attack.
necro could get a new Well of some sort, maybe one that counts all damage made by enemies within and then unleashes a burst for a percentage of the damage when it ends, sort of like delayed Retaliation

even worse, the leaderboards are so bugged, they’re hardly something to go by to judge skill, there are people with less than 40 games and a shabby win rate on the leaderboards.
25th – 19 wins 21 losses
26th – 14 wins 10 losses
72th – 10 wins 8 losses
thats just a quick glance at the first 2 pages.

i’d be with the AFKer if i did arena, and if skyhammer popped up,
like the majority of players i will never play that map ever again.

imho it should stay as it is, but not be a trait, just the default speed on all pets.
ranger is one of the classes that has too many “you NEED this” traits that making your pet walk quicker just isn’t worth the points.

due to all of the bird QQ i’ve decided tonight i shall play a super special pirate build.
a warrior build including:
Phalanx Strength + Forceful Greatsword + Sigil of Strength, with constant 70% crit chance (able to keep up 20 stacks of might on surrounding allies.)
Empower Allies (150 power to nearby allies)
For Great Justice! (fury and might to nearby allies)
and On my Mark (10% more damage to target)

let the tears flow! XD

personally i prefer signet, i always spec for faster recharge so the recharge is similar to shelter (2 seconds longer), it has a pretty nice passive, shelter has no passive, it has a faster cast time than shelter and heals almost twice as much.
plus guardians are the masters of block skills, pop aegis if you think someone is going to interrupt it.

i’m not a fan of the “play like me or you’re playing wrong!” post btw.

i play it quite a bit in pvp, its fun, its easy and it hits pretty dam hard!
but you lose a lot of utility so its not really for serious tpvp, great for hotjoin though
ricochet, unload + signet of malice = beautiful green numbers!

warrior and thief:
fist weapons! warrior will be all HULK! thief will be lightning fast like bruce lee

mesmer and necro:
scythe! slow PBAoE cleave type skills
(those 2 need some cleave love for PvE zergs)

engi:
make mortar an elite kit and rework it to be better!

ranger:
staff! more focus on control and support like viny roots and shielding walls.

i’m all out of ideas for ele though XD

disagree with loads of those:
chilling darkness? use it with plague for for perma aoe chill, you’ll ruin the day of everyone on a point.

deathnova, vampiric mastery, and minion mastery are all cornerstones of MM builds!
vampiric mastery is the best trait ever for MMs!