Guild Wars 2

“Leaving all the loyal players in the dust.”
actually in 2 days time even the Dust will be deleted :P

you’re supposed to look through the heap of minions, clones, pets and players and see what the tiny asura is about to hit you with, obviously!
L2XrayVision!

with Anet being so hush hush about the changes i’m wondering if i should save my laurels,
i was about to spend them all on dyes but if suddenly they become an integral part of pvp then i’ll need to save them!

edit: i was supposed to tick this as a Q/A and hopefully get a dev response but i forgot to tick it!

they’ve said they’ll be making spinal shards useful on the march 18th patch,
so don’t delete those!

but bloodstone dust they really need to add some sort of use for (for those of us who aren’t interested in the time/gold investment of ascended gear)
i mostly pvp and already have 3 stacks of this stuff!

solo Q is dead (difference in rewards to thank for that),
everyone just joins team Q solo now,
and when your rank rises you keep getting premades.
it kills your soul to repeatedly play against teams of clones with the exact same build and team composition as the last shameful idiots you played against.
1 decap engi cone,
2 hambow clones,
1 PW spamming clone,
and one extra of any of the above.
seriously, anyone who plays this is skill-less, shameful and straight up ruins the game.
it is also shameful for Anet, who have left these builds like this for longer than i can remember, at this point it feels like this vile filth meta has always been here…

OK anet we get your lovely little teases about some magical feature build in the distant future, but COME ON.
don’t make us wait until then, you’re losing players by the day due to this insanity.

if you have Titianic in your movie collection skip to the bit where everyone is diving overboard as the ship starts to really sink.

as a pvper i have to scream MORE!

a couple of balance changes and thats all we get for half a year?
the meta is horrible, we need a change, we need regular changes.

any info on what we can expect on march 18th?,
also any idea about when the “feature build” will arrive?
we’re a little bit in the dark,
your comments in this post are great and all,
but we’ve not really had any balance changes or pvp content in months,
throw us a bone!

they need to seriously reduce hammer damage,
its a CC weapon, its cc shouldn’t be nerfed.
but the fact that you can deal the damage of a glass cannon using this CC weapon is just WRONG

hammer wars are the scum of the earth right now, they ruin the fun of whatever match they join.
they’re a disgrace.

mtpelion.4562:

Black Lion Keys are 125 gems, or $1.56.

If you can farm 3 keys in an hour, that means you are paying yourself $4.68 per hour. Had you instead worked an hour of overtime at a minimum wage job you would have earned $10.88 for your hour and could have purchased those 3 keys with the same amount of time spent (1 hour) and had $6.20 left over to do anything you wanted with.

If people want to farm the keys, it’s really their loss.

thats a dangerous slippery slope you’re standing on.
“why play it when i could just buy everything with real money”

for example want Bifrost? but it’ll take you months upon months to get it!
well not if you let your credit card get it for you, it can be yours within a week or two!

£85 = 8000 gems
8000 gems converts to 496g
Bifrost currently costs 1900g
thats 4 lots for a total of £340
minimum wage is £6.31

so for the meagre price of 53 hours Bifrost could be yours!

while alot of us can afford to splash out on everything we could ever want using real money we prefer to be the ones playing the game, not our credit cards.

plus i’ve had fun making an awesome looking, awesomely powerful keyrunning set for my alts, you get some odd looks running around the tutorial zone wearing lv 80 exotics XD
and you get to see if you can break your records,
plus there is a chance for alot of gold if you get lucky

signed, signed, a thousand times signed!
i’m through with tournaments until this 2xhambow, 1xdecap engi meta filth is gone.

(in the far distant future judging by anets past attempt at an actual nerf,
reducing damage by unnoticeable amounts once every quarter of a year…)

fishball.7204:

3 hours later would be NA prime time. It’s always somebody’s prime time somewhere.

but they have EU and NA servers, why not patch the eu servers in afew hours while the EU is sleeping and patch the NA servers afew hours after that when america is sleeping?
too much logic for anet? XD

Malediktus.9250:

I think the patch times are just perfect.

you’re still awake, and now you can’t pvp because there are literally no players
they could have patched at 3am UTC which would have been early morning for the whole of europe.

but instead they patch now when the servers were still pretty active, now they’re dead.

there are no hotjoin servers and only 2 people in desolation mists (a pretty active server) you won’t get a tournament game now for the rest of the night.
game over, all because Anet can’t patch at decent times.

honestly, why can’t you push a patch through at 4am-7am when nobody is online?
its 11:50 now, the servers are still pretty active.
but this will mean the end of pvp for the night, there will be too few players now.

last week a patch was pushed through right in the middle of primetime (i’m not sure what exact time, but i think it was around 8pm) and it really made the servers empty for nearly the whole night.

is it really so hard to patch EU servers in the morning?!

Ugruk.4069:

LeL, “but, but… I play one and feel like a god it’s not the class, I AM a pvp god, it’s not OP at all!!! Right guys?…. Guys?”

same! i’ll be playing my hammer war again tonight,
i figure what better way to campaign for a nerf than to become walking advertisement?
so for anyone getting critted for a quarter of your health by a hammer war tonight, sorry.

Sunshine.5014:

TL;DR: The customizable zone is too large. Other games allow only 10-15% difference between builds, while GW2 allows a big range between bunker and zerker builds; that makes balancing very hard.

GW1 allowed you to choose 2 classes, put your attribute points anywhere you liked and then allowed you to pick 8 of any of the skills that those 2 classes have…

and that game was fairly balanced, probably the most balanced pvp i’ve played.
(and i’ve played pretty much every MMO released in the past 10 years)
if there was a build you considered OP then you could make a build that counters it.
everything had a counter.

its such a huge contrast in balance between GW1 and 2’s balance,
obviously the brains behind the GW1 balance must have moved to other projects.
because the current balance guys obviously don’t have a clue what they’re doing.

Sunt.6835:

How do you guys lose to hammer warrior ?

i mean srly stuns are annoying but i have no idea why u would lose in this heavy condi meta.

conditions? on a hammer war? yay.
hammer wars get a condi-clear every 7 seconds, which comes with a nice AoE stun and it also deals 4k damage.
after that the passive 545 healing every single second (thats 32,700 healing every minute without even doing anything) will top off whatever damage you managed to tickle away.

meanwhile they’re critting you with the damage of a glass cannon,
and if you’re lucky you’ll have stability, otherwise you’ll be stunlocked too.

balanced.

UnrequitedHope.6172:

Hambow already received a nerfbat and people still QQ’ing.

i played hammer last night to advertise the issue (and actively tell people to talk out on the forum) and i was consistently critting for 4-5k, glass cannons were dying in several hits.

and this is from a build that offers ridiculously high healing (passively, without the need for any buttons or cooldowns), a full condi-clear every 7 seconds, a stun, a knockback, a knockdown and an immobilize/cripple (traited).

imho if the tankiness and CC are to stay (which they should because its in the defence tree and its a CC weapon.) then the damage will need to atleast be halved.

hammer should be about control and interruption during team fights.
currently it does that but also out performs greatsword in terms of damage…

2 questions.

1. have you tried using only team chat in a match?
2. are you playing a hammer warrior?

Hidden.3975:

L2Dodge.

OH! dodging!
thank you master yoda!
thats suddenly made hammer wars perfectly balanced!
damage of a glass cannon, tons of spam CC, constant condi-clenase and large passive healing,
but we can dodge roll twice, so suddenly hammer warriors and eles are equals!

Phaeton.9582:

People are dumb and ignore OP builds/play styles until they are ‘accepted’ by the meta however. The funny thing is I made a post about stun lock warriors in the summer (as the first person to run it viably on NA) only to be shouted down by players like defective about the viability of hammer.

9 months and several nerfs later we’re getting threads like this

i also played hammer back in the day, but since then power creep has caused it to become alot more powerful.

April 30th
Added Dogged March
Quick Bursts and Adrenal Combined into Burst Mastery
Added Destruction of the Empowered

June 25th
Endure Pain: Reduced the recharge from 90 seconds to 60 seconds
Berserker’s Stance: now reduces incoming condition duration by 100%
Hammer Shock: Reduced the aftercast.
Staggering Blow: Reduced the aftercast.
Backbreaker: Reduced the aftercast.

July 9th
Berserker Stance: duration has been increased from 4 to 8 seconds.

July 23rd
Healing Signet (Passive): Reworked the formula that this passive heal uses.

October 15th
Staggering Blow: This skill can now be used while moving. Reduced the cast time.

currently using a hammer makes you a semi-bunker who hits like a glass cannon and has tons of CC.

style.6173:

You can’t say that warriors are over powered. It is just certain specs.

agreed, some specs are balanced, but the moment you put 20 points in the defence tree and grab a hammer and healing signet you’re a demi-god.

its ridiculous, i specced zerker hammer yesterday just to advertise the issue and i was walking around stunning and critting people for 4-5k while healing for huge amounts of damage over time.
no effort atall,

meanwhile my ele would die in 2 hits if i was attempting to put out such damage numbers.

hammer is just far too strong, the damage needs nerfing by atleast 50%.
it should be a CC weapon for a defensive build, not a wrecking ball for a god build.

how long has it been now?
how many months have we put up with this?
where are you Anet?!

we’ve had months of warriors rolling their faces across the keyboard,

it must be getting close to half a year now, honestly its disgraceful,
both to the players who roll such cheap builds,
and to the devs for letting it go on this long.

there is no excuse for months of this ridiculously OP BS.

you guys know this thread is 10 months old right? XD

tons of damage seems to be the only counter,
also stability is obviously a must-have.

i met a rank 70 skyhammer farmer in hotjoins once,
and they actually bragged about their rank

try using hammer and playing with the altruistic healing trait combined with healing/large/longer symbols traits, its pretty cool

GW2 “structured” pvp in a nut shell..
each meta has been worse and worse.
hotjoin right now is an oozing cesspool of filthy builds.

i hope Anet are enjoying their eternal vacation.

that’d be pretty good to have in hotjoin (yes it would pretty much remove trollhammer),

but in tournaments it could get abused with a full team of decap engis selecting trollhammer.
even if the whole other team selects a different map you’d end up with a 50/50 chance of trollhammer.

revert the ele nerfs
/thread.

if you set up a build specifically for fighting PW spammers then it doesn’t really prove a point if you win.

a bunker build with loads of retaliation for example could be catered purely to fighting PW thieves.

Phantom Master.9582:

Elementalist is practically the only class left who still requires a huge amount of skill to be effective,

there is your answer, as an ele you need to put in a huge amount of effort to occasionally do a job as good as a warrior who is simply rolling his face across the keyboard.

the only way to achieve balance (and note that i don’t expect Anet to do either)
is either reduce the effectiveness of every other class so that they are on the same level as ele (which would obviously be a huge amount of work),
or simply give ele more sustain and less burst, making them just like the other faceroll classes.
(which is what people seem to be asking for)

DeceiverX.8361:

I’d prefer them underwhelming, honestly, especially when it comes to WvW.

I’d much rather see my viability not be shot based upon which race I play combined with what class I choose.

are you kidding?
asura currently has a huge advantage in pvp/wvw due to their animations being impossible to read, and being able to hide behind/inside a wall of NPCs.
one of my characters is a norn, and whenever i play them in a pvp environment i just feel like i’ve screwed myself over by not playing asura, no matter how much i can’t stand the race.

maybe if racial skills were decent then people might have a reason not to play the annoying midgets!

i made a post like this last week and they took it down.
they removed racial abilities from pvp because they didn’t want race to be a factor.

so how the hell does that work when one of the races is a midget with impossible to predict animation.
plus the fact that there is no way in hell you’re spotting that midget behind the wall of NPCs in pvp.

decap engis can.
they stand on point and roll their face across the keyboard,
they do very little damage but can hold a point against 2 people.
or even 3 if they’re really bad and don’t have any stability.

everything about the upcoming changes shafts long term pvpers:

1. moving over to the gold/karma/whatever system will mean that PVEers will have a huge advantage since they have earned alot more gold/karma/whatever than pvpers.
what should they have done?
kept glory, it was fine, just change the way we unlock skins, change it to something like a glory shop where we can purchase all armour/weapon skins (with increasing prices for better skins)

2. as you said, increasing rank points now is a slap in the face to everyone whos taken years to reach high ranks, which the new players will be able to reach in a much shorter time.
what should they have done?
reduce the points per rank for the higher ranks, that way the high ranks won’t be getting cheated by new players reaching their rank in shorter amount of time, but reaching 80 won’t seem so impossible.

3. pvp/pve skins transferable, again PVEers are getting rewarded, since they have so many more skins, and easier access to them, not to mention legendaries.
what should they have done?
added all skins to pvp, and also added the glory shop i mentioned in 1.

i guess we can wait to see, but i can’t really see a plus side to any of the coming changes.

in that case i’d keep banning 3 of the 5 point traits lol,
so people can only use 2 trait trees.

in seriousness though, i think a ban system is a bad idea for gw2.
its better to balance the OP things than to remove them completely.

Flissy.4093:

Care to show us proof of your awesome wombo-combo in action then, rather than a .gif against a target dummy?

i’ve never frapsed a match yet, but i can tell you that yesterday night i won 7 tournament matches in a row as axezerker
believe it or not, thats up to you.

with the right spec whirling axe is like a blender!

Flissy.4093:

That’s it, waste your dodges to deal a little more damage.

vs bunkers you don’t need to dodge, plus when you can melt your enemy in seconds you don’t need your dodges
they’re just extra attacks which you can stack up.

plus is it really wasting your dodges if you’re using them to safely get off 18k aoe damage? (usually downing every enemy on a point)

“this video is not available in your country.” gg.

you can dodge roll while using whirling axe which makes it incredible,
a typical whirling axe deals around 10k damage and dodge rolls around 3-4k.
18k damage in 4 seconds without any cooldowns is AMAZING, and we can do it every 16 seconds!

i enjoy being one of the few players in pvp who fully realize the power of axe/axe :-3
its been my build for months and utterly melts bunkers.
last night i won ever tournament i entered (7 in a row)

so when i see people calling offhand axe “unviable” i laugh my butt off!

i think it’d take more than chill to make condi ele viable XD
(note: i’m not saying it is impossible, it is just currently alot worse than direct burst damage)

not to mention all of the “cloak and dagger” BS that the devs are doing doesn’t help.

ANET, open your eyes.
your community is leaving, enough of the vague hints and teases,
its not causing anticipation, its causing frustration and a dying community.
the time for transparency is now, tell us what we have coming,
give us some hope, some reason to stick around,
a reason not to move to more committed MMOs.

GW1’s pvp was still great 6 years after release,
what the hell happened to you Anet?

gonna +1 this before the devs kill it.

if they do make luck useful in pvp it will be another thing that rewards PVEers more than PVPers.
since we’re moving over to the gold system PVEers already have a huge advantage, imagine what will happen if they get rewarded based on their magic find too? (which will be double the magic find of us PVP peasants…)

imho personal score is actually a negative thing.
it shows you who has simply been zerging for the entire game, people who spend all of their time capping/defending points will be right down the bottom of the scoreboard but ironically will be the ones who carry the zerging morons.

thats in hotjoins anyway, in tournaments the scores should be less spaced out since more people should be focusing on objectives than mindlessly zerging.

it depends how the rank points look come march 18th,
if custom arenas give considerably less rank points than hotjoins/tournaments then i’ll be fine with people mindlessly farming for days.

customs should give half the rank points of hotjoins and hotjoins should give half the rank points of tournaments, both tournaments should offer the same rewards.
same with gold and any other rewards, they should get increasingly better with customs granting very little.

Magnus Heartseeker.7958:

I feel it does too much damage for the amount of utility it grants the thief. Spam 3, evade, and daze your opponent while doing good damage. It just seems like it does too much.

^this!

Do you main Thief?
nope, but i play as and against alot of thieves.

When do you feel that Pistol Whip is unbalanced? (scenarios would be great)
it is’nt really a scenario, its overall,
it is one skill that you can simply spam in any situation.
enemies about to down your ally? pistol whip stun to stop them!
downed guardian about to knock you back? pistol whip to evade the knock!
taking too much damage? Pistol whip!
need to deal alot of damage? Pistol whip!

How does it feel unbalanced compared to other class mechanics?
pretty unbalanced, thief is generally a high risk/high reward class that requires more skill than other classes, but spamming pistol whip shatters this theme, it is low risk, high reward and requires no skill atall.

What would you do to change Pistol Whip to better fit the class/game?
i have several different ideas:
1. change the stun to a daze and remove the evade, this means it must be combined with other skills to get the damage off (just like warrior 100b), it also removes the cheese of a high damage skill that makes you immune to damage.
or
2.make the first hit apply vulnerability/confusion, remove the evade from the second part and allow it to be used on the move.
or
simply lower the damage or increase the cost

note: attack skills should never make the attacker immune to damage, a player should be deciding to either attack or play defensive, skills that deal damage while blocking are extremely cheesy and ofcourse they will be spammed.

Guts.4967:

Ther other guy is also playing PW.

Community is so funny. I remember at release everybody was crying because of the powerful damage of PW, it got nerfed something like 20%.

Then community was crying because of haste. Haste got nerfed. After that, PW was underestimate because it was hard to land a proper stun with full damage without haste, like all other weapons set, it got advantage and deficit. Now, just because some top tier thief are playing it, people are crying.

As far as i remember, it was exactly the same thing with hambow warrior, the first few month/week, only a couple of people were playing the hambow spec in a “competitive way”. Only when it was mainstream, people where starting to starting to complain about it.

My question is : should it really be nerfed or it’s just because it’s kinda mainstream now to play PW that people think it should be nerfed ?

doesn’t that make sense?
ofcourse there won’t be nerf threads when something is’nt well known,
because very few people encounter it!
but when something like hambow and PW builds are all over the place you can’t help but notice them.
hotjoin right now is a steaming, disgraceful pile of meta.
a glorious display of low skill, high reward builds.