Guild Wars 2

suffish.4150:

From a while back but I still think it was a great unranked moment- on forest my team who had a great composition actually lost against a team of 5 thieves (they were all solo queue so what are the chances of that? Lol). We did okay but people died to the thieves too much and we lost about 500-450. I found that loss particularly funny because people get angry when they have 2 thieves but clearly having 5 is not a bad idea!

Once had a match against 5 staff daredevils with me (herald), a reaper, an ele (pre nerf), and 2 DH’s.

I think I was the only one to die that entire match, I only died once, and it was because I got focused by 3 of them at mid.

We actually timed out at like 350-290. Only match I’ve ever hit time limit on.

Darknicrofia.2604:

if anything they still need more QoL changes on weapons like hammer/staff and reworks on entire useless trait lines (zeal in pvp, radiance) and the dichotomy of half the virtue traits encouraging spam activation while the other half encourages NEVER activating

a trait like zealous scepter and big game hunter existing in the same class is just hilarious.

While this may be true (I literally only play mine for pvp) there are other classes that need attention MUCH WORSE.
-rev sword 3 is literally worse than useless with the stuck bug happening 30-50% of the time on most maps and completely dangerous on Skyhammer as it will get you stuck in a wall 99% of the time
-rev hammer 2 won’t hit if there’s even the slightest bit of incline
-rev hammer 3 will cause you to fall off/through platforms in PvE (namely uncat and chaos fractals) and the glass panels on Skyhammer, usually to your death
-need to fix the “long press” triggering both/multiple facets of signets/abilities on the slightest of taps, seemingly at random

Seiroxena.6350:

I’m tired to go through the forums and see crybabies everywhere …

So let me make this clear for you :

1) The developpers are LISTENING to playerbase and are TRYING to balance classes out.
Which means that from a season to another there will always be an “OP” class out there.
Balancing a competitive PVP game requires ALOT of time, dedication and testing.

2) ANET is trying to step out from bunker / condi meta by removing the bunker abilities STEP BY STEP.

3) Don’t expect instant balance when an expansion comes out with 9 new elite specializations … It takes alot of time to make everything perfect.

4) JUST BE PATIENT AND POST [Suggestion] In your appropriate class forum .

Thanks for reading

1. They take far longer and do much poorer than every other MMO with a PvP facet of the game, MUCH LESS something like a MOBA that’s 99% PvP.
2. They may say they’re trying to get away from bunker and condi meta, but while they killed bunker ele they also killed 2 power specs in the process (power herald, staff thief), thus making condi MUCH MORE POWERFUL since now almost everyone has to run it if they wish to be competitive (standout exception is hammer scrapper) AND they got rid of the primary source of cleanses in PvP.
3. We haven’t been anywhere close to balance since HOT came out 10 months ago, and quite frankly they’ve been generally making it worse.

Went from several months of zero connection issues to, from minute 1 of the LS3 patch, to having frequent and consistent 3-second server side latency spikes.

Using several tools and the in-game tooltip on the options panel I can verify that my connection to Anet continues to hover in the 34-46ms range, but once the connection is handed off to the game server there will be a packet drop for around 3 seconds every 1 minute exactly.

This basically makes PvP, WvW, fractals (especially ones with large jumping components), and group events with a necessity for positioning or dodging basically certain death, and has gotten me kicked out of more than a few groups when I lag out and run off a ledge or end up facetanking a pack of mobs.

Aeolus.3615:

@Kageseigi.2150

Cant you just knock/pull guardian out of its traps????

For sure he will panic….

Assuming he doesn’t have stability up (I know they have very limited access to it, but they still do have access to it), yes.

Then he just drops more, because they have ridiculously short cooldowns for how powerful they are.

FunkaHolixx.2937:

haha good one koru. i dont get this snitch mentality too. think some of those guys had some hard time in school :P

So when consistently half or more of the team either DC’s before the gates even open and are gone all match every single match (on both sides), or stay in the spawn dancing and hurling insults at the map in general in /yell, we shouldn’t report them?

10 matches in a row on Capricorn I had a thief who would stand in the spawn, dancing, yelling “I’m sinking this ship lolololol!” over and over the entire match. And no ability to report what is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, griefing.

Hunter.4783:

1 day into the patch and there are already people who are qQing about dh. This time though it’s different.

Because the OP knows that if he dies to DH traps is most definitely his fault he saw says that his TEAMMATES are the ones who mess up and die.

So perhaps instead of nerfing the class because your team (and yourself ) can’t find the dodge key perhaps they need to learn proper pvp play?

So, within hours of patch multiple threads reporting that DH traps ignored block/dodge/skill-based evades/[anything not invul]. Surprise, servers go down for most of the day, come back up bug is “gone”.

DH traps were already rather deadly in team fights (where you have basically no way of dodging them, though this is true for all ground-targeted AoE), and are only 1 of 2 classes where they CANNOT BE SEEN AT ALL. It’s not like necro marks, and they’re far more damaging than druid traps. I mean, yeah, 1v1 you have about a 9000% chance that the DH is standing in the middle of his traps, but when he’s leaving them on a point and either going halfway across the map or just 20 feet away, if you have no idea they’re there you can’t dodge them. And yes, not every class has the option of basically permanent on-demand stunbreaks or condi cleanse, so they’re quite dangerous even with little or no incoming damage from the DH himself.

So when you pair the dangerous/annoying traps with a significant buff to active DPS on a DH and they went from being not viable in high-end PvP to being quite powerful.

There’s a reason why you’d go from seeing 1 every other match to most matches having at least 2 per team, something normally only witnessed with condi warrs and necros.

I’m not calling for a nerf here, but I really do think traps need a rework. The skill floor for being a competent DH is one of the lowest in the game (drop traps, stand in traps, touch no other buttons or movement keys, receive at least some free kills) solely because of how powerful their traps are.

A.
Condi Chrono, Condi Warr, Powerhammer Scrapper
B.
Condi Herald, DH, Necro, Druid, Condi Scrapper, D/P thief
C.
Staff Thief, Power Warr, all ele specs, Power Herald
Don’t even bother playing:
Centaur Herald, D/D thief

Jury’s still out on power mesmer.

Jourdelune.7456:

Sorry, we seen those counter thread too much.

All classes and builds got counter.

Scrapper melt in 1v2 if they don’t juke properly. And Juking is hard versus 2 players that know what they are doing.

Scrapper got nerf a lot since HoT, while other spec where not nerf at all.

Scrapper is tanky by nature but will never ever do the same damage than REV or Thief.

Scrapper is bruisers, while REV or Thief are roamer DPS.

I can claim that REV need some sustain shave, so they fit the role of roamer squishy DPS. I find it really hard to “escaped” a revenant mobility and their burst is higher than the sustain from bruisers spec.

But guess what… it’s probably right to have REV > bruisers (scrappers) because they are bad versus condies.

Rock, paper and scissors is fine actually. It was bad in October 2015.

I would probably want more VIABLE spec into META than nerfing META spec to have less viable build.

If they nerf something VIABLE, they should nerf them ALL. This would open up build diversity.

But nerf… usually bring a lot of turn over, where your player base start playing something else.

Anyway, my 2 cents.

Bruisers and Support are fine, what is not is the CONDI burst from mesmer, warrior and reaper… and of course, those same condi users will CRY a lot to nerf Tempest and Scrapper, the only viable AOE cleanses classes on META actually.

Everyone should melt in 1v2 assuming relatively equal skills.

Scrapper may not have DPS but they have a hellacious burst, which is literally the only thing that matters in PvP. 6k+ from missile turret (non-crit) on a warr/rev with protection? That’s half their health. If it crits it’s basically a 1-shot that can’t be blinded/reflected, only invul’d/dodged/blocked. Then you have their 2-3k leap, 3k+ hammer hits, and a few others PLUS condi (even though it’s minor in powerhammer).

Turrets have entirely too much health. When an engi turret has more hp than I do and they can have 2-3 out at once plus themselves, it’s ridiculous.

Scrapper out-DPS’s shield build Rev’s (both current metas) by a long shot. Rev’s are not roaming DPS, they’re support classes (2 of our 3 heals as shield herald are group, plus add prot, even if they’re comparatively tiny heals; tablet from centaur is very very easy to not put in the right place and has a miniscule range even with the 33% buff to it, and even with Mender’s is the weakest dedicated heal in the game). A Rev might, maybe, if he goes full glass-cannon (sword/axe/zerk amulet) do more single-target DPS but in a team fight the scrapper is going to do 3-4x as much.

Much like the complaints about macebow warr in S3, I think Scrapper’s gonna have too much sustain for the damage (particularly AoE) they can put out. I’m not calling for a nerf here, but it’s right on the line of being OP.

Zelulose.8695:

Lets be real though Rev’s have an insta gib combo that needs to be removed. I say this anticipating more sustain reduction.

And what would that be? UA, which bugs out and only hits once then sticks you in an animation you have to emote out of 50% of the time AND can be dodged AND has a very short range AND has a long cooldown AND can be invis’d out of AND really doesn’t hit that hard even if all attacks land?

Or Precision Strike, which requires absolutely perfect positioning (literally inside opponent’s character) to land even half the projectiles, can be reflected/dodged/blocked, and which they halved the damage in sPvP and lengthened the cooldown on?

Face it, they absolutely 100% killed power herald and are forcing us to use condi mallyx with half the sustain.

Zelulose.8695:

Really, I think what is hurting this game is more than just the gameplay. In tpvp, a team up on kills can still lose just by being out rotated. Dying doesn’t mean a great deal in tpvp unless you die much much more than 10 times (one death per minute) granting the enemy team a measly 50 points. Deaths should be worth 15 points to a team at least or have some consequence for this game mode to be successful especially with the sustain around.

All that’s gonna so is see the introduction of stealth ganking, as kills will become far and away the most important aspect of PvP.

I mean, why risk a team fight when you can run 5 stealthers and waylay the guys left on point (since they can’t find any of you and have nothing else to do)?

I still disagree with the assessment that Rev is #1. They are strong in 1v1, yes, but they’re definitely behind warrior and scrapper.

Khisanth.2948:

50,000 range? We need to drag a bunch of these into WvW and replace the trebs with them. Trebs only have 10,000 range …

Yeah, it’s pretty ridiculous. I’m literally getting hit from almost max draw distance and over a third of the map away.

Zelulose.8695:

Lucred.1802:

I’m curious as to which build you’re referring to that puts Rev at #1, because Power Rev got nerfed into the ground on damage and condi rev has basically no sustain compared to Power Rev.

Yes, a full-zerker PvE build with sword/axe is incredibly damaging without being nearly as squishy as a full-zerker PvE build with ele or thief (the only 2 classes to out-dps it), but they have a pretty worthless heal for pvp dueling, no ability to cleanse damaging condi (movement only), and can’t catch a druid/mesmer/thief unless the opponent seriously gets outplayed.

If you’re seeing bad warriors, that’s because they’re played extremely poorly. Current macebow condi build is VERY easy to play decently and somewhat easy to play very well, is a CC spamming machine with excellent self-heals and frequent resist/cleanse, and does decent damage. They are very definitely #1 on lethality vs. pretty much anyone else 1v1 and are probably the second easiest class to get good on. Very low skill floor, very high skill ceiling, very gentle learning curve.

Yes That is why I placed warrior in unknown as they dont have enough good players playing well enough to have an op average. But the few who are good are extremely hard to face. As for revenant, I realize that in group pvp they are weak. However, this is a 1 vs 1 post and they have plenty of defenses to last in a 1 vs 1 situation. Their damage seems nerfed because in group fights it gets spread out. However, the damage goes up when single target focusing happens. Lastly, Revenant like warrior is hard to play but again like warrior the good revenants I have seen rarely lose a 1 vs 1 and if they do they win eventually. I really put them up there because of how fast they can drop a players hp. It is incredible the burst revenants have even after the “nerf”.

Actually, Precision Strike when in PvP (or anywhere else gear is “normalized”) got a pretty hard nerf because of how they changed the mechanics to scale better with gear and how they added an extra second to the cooldown in PvP. Considering that ESPECIALLY in 1v1 that was 80% of our outgoing damage Power Herald is dead as hell. I main a Rev and Precision Strike went from 7-8k outgoing damage if all projectiles hit to 2-3k outgoing damage, over a 50% nerf ON TOP of the increased cooldown. This is going to force Revs to swap to Condi for PvP, which has less sustain and screws with the overall meta even more (leaves seriously only 1 class whose “best” spec is power—scrapper with power hammer).

Also, I see FAR FAR FAR more terrible ele’s and druids than I see warriors, though I do see a few warriors trying to use a PvE greatsword build in unranked occasionally (they’re still dangerous, they just don’t have the sustain of a pvp build).

I’m curious as to which build you’re referring to that puts Rev at #1, because Power Rev got nerfed into the ground on damage and condi rev has basically no sustain compared to Power Rev.

Yes, a full-zerker PvE build with sword/axe is incredibly damaging without being nearly as squishy as a full-zerker PvE build with ele or thief (the only 2 classes to out-dps it), but they have a pretty worthless heal for pvp dueling, no ability to cleanse damaging condi (movement only), and can’t catch a druid/mesmer/thief unless the opponent seriously gets outplayed.

If you’re seeing bad warriors, that’s because they’re played extremely poorly. Current macebow condi build is VERY easy to play decently and somewhat easy to play very well, is a CC spamming machine with excellent self-heals and frequent resist/cleanse, and does decent damage. They are very definitely #1 on lethality vs. pretty much anyone else 1v1 and are probably the second easiest class to get good on. Very low skill floor, very high skill ceiling, very gentle learning curve.

Since LS3 launch I’ve noticed that White Mantle Knights will aggro from ridiculous distances (over 1400 units, out of range of any skill on any of my characters by a good bit) and their ability “throw rock” will fly both through all walls/objects (can’t LOS it) and works for over 50,000 units (I was still getting pelted with rocks by a White Mantle Knight that was directly below the Depths of the Maw waypoint when I was at the mastery point).

This surely is a bug as it more than quadruples the aggro range and is over 100x the attack range of the next closest mob in the game.

ShadowMageAlpha.7580:

So we’re at the end of Season 3 today, and I’ve had my share of issues with this season, but I’m only one person.
I got to thinking about how everyone else fared this season, and the best way to do that is a SURVEY! WOOOOOOO!

If you did any PvP this season at all, please please please take this survey. Even if you did not have a major opinion of this season, take this survey. I want as complete a picture as possible, and that can only happen if as many people fill out this survey as possible.
If you know anyone else who PvP’s, I would appreciate you directing them to this survey too! Many thanks.

Here’s the survey . Results will probably be posted in about a week or two. Depends on how long it takes for people to stop answering.

Edit:
Survey Synopsis:
The survey asked a number of questions concerning the player’s performance in this season of PvP. These question were fact-based, although there was nothing to stop the respondent from lying. I expect that the vast majority of people would answer the questions (relatively) accurately. Such questions included:

• The version of the game (Heart of Thorns, Core Game, F2P)
• Earned division
• Tier within this division
• Legendary multiplier (if applicable)
• Win percentage
• Longest win streaks
• Longest lose streaks

The second part of the survey asked the respondents to share their opinion concerning the state of various aspects of the PvP season. The questions were multiple choice with 6 answers available (“Very Poor”, “Somewhat Poor”, “Neither Good Nor Poor”, “Somewhat Good”, “Very Good”, and “N/A”). In the graphs, these responses are ordered 1 through 5 for V. Poor to V. Good, leaving “N/A” unchanged. These questions consisted of the following:

• Match-making quality
• Class balance
• Class variety in matches
• Build variety
• PvP rewards
• Ranked Progression
• Map Mechanics

The final questions were text boxes which allowed the respondent to type out their response to the questions. These were all open-ended opinion-oriented questions. Currently I have not analyzed this data, as it’s far more complex to attempt to analyze data such as this. I will get to this eventually though…
Only three questions asked:

• Which classes were over-powered?
• Which classes were under-powered?
• What other comments do you have?

---

Data time:
Gallery of all graphs and charts

• Win Percentage (1% rounding) (2.5% roudning)
• Longest Win-Streaks
• Longest Lose-Streaks
• General Frequency Graphs Gallery (Mostly meaningless, but interesting to look at)
• Division-Sorted Frequency Graphs Gallery (Also mostly meaningless)

Note: The Frequency graphs for division-based sorting are quite misleading. You must look at the approximate percentages of each division. This is because the number of responses in each division varies quite widely.

---

Interpretations:
Note: As I get more time to review these graphs, I’ll be editing more stuff in! Be sure to check back later for more findings and conclusions]

• The win percentage graph is unusual. Given the math behind games of PvP (there must be an equal number of winners and losers for every game), one would expect a bell curve centered at 50%. However, the graph is heavily skewed above 50%. This is a good indication that my survey has a very small sample size. I expect that if/when more people fill out this survey, the graph will trend to a bell curve. For now, though, this gives a good indication of the general quality of people who took the survey and how accurate my survey is.

• The match-making graphs are a bit peculiar, but not entirely surprising. While in general, a wide margin of people believe the match-making system to be “Somewhat Poor” or “Very Poor”, when you break this down according to divisions, there is an obvious pattern.
  All the divisions but one hold to the general trend; the divisions mostly feel as though that match-making is quite poor, with a majority of respondents indicating their displeasure with match-making. But, Legend-division players are much more spread across the field. While almost no Legend players believe the match-making as “very good”, the group as whole is not nearly as displeased with the match-making. (Perhaps this is in part because they made it to legend?)

• An over-whelming number of people (nearly 70%) seemed to indicate that build variety this season was either Very Poor or Somewhat Poor. This view is held by all divisions and it seems to be an even larger issue that match-making, which is interesting, because match-making was what I seemed to see the most complaining about.

---

Conclusion:
While this (hopefully) is far from done, indications seem to point toward people not hating Season 3 as much as I might have expected. While peopled seemed to (generally) hate the match-making and lack of build variety, most other facets I surveyed were more middle-of-the road or even positive.

My sample size is still quite small in comparison to the PvP community at large (which itself surprised me as the PvP community feels small). Hopefully this post will encourage people to complete the survey themselves (hint hint) so I can continue to collect more data.

Quick References:
Survey
Full Graph Gallery

If you have any ideas on what patterns I could look for (i.e. “See how win-rate affects match-making feedback.”), feel free to let me know! You folks may think of something I do not!

Thanks again folks, and, once again, if you have not done the survey, please PLEASE PLEASE do the survey. The more responses the better!

An educated guess as to why you got a small sample size:
The vast majority of league participants are casual players in it solely for the wings. They do not research builds beyond copy/paste from metabattle, they do not visit forums, they will never see this survey.

This leaves almost exclusively “serious” PvP players watching the forums, and thus responding to your survey. This would, generally, trend towards the upper third of skill level simply by its very nature, which would also skew your w/l ratio.

wardspratlin.9107:

as far as i could tell most of my ques were 10 man votes for Capricorn yesterday in unranked so basically thats what it is…. if they were to just have a “beta map” que the ques would be very long after a few days….

of course thats not big deal anymore bc we dont have to sit in heart of the mists anymore!

I don’t really see how it matters.

9 times out of 10 the map with the fewest votes gets selected to be played. Oh, 9 of the people picked Capricorn but somebody wanted to play Kylho? KYHLO IT IS!

Jourdelune.7456:

Now with Cleric amulet, you sure bet ROCK (bunker support) is gone.

So, let’s see who is stronger, Power or Condi?

Well, they definitely killed one of the currently viable power builds (power herald) with a significant nerf (~40% damage reduction) to their main damaging ability.

On the other hand, power-shatter mesmer looks like it might (maybe) be viable again.

So…without a complete rework of the meta it’s looking like:
-(condi) Necro, macebow warr, condi mesmer, condi herald
vs
-(power) Power zerker, powerhammer scrapper, thief
and
-(bunker/support/wet noodle) meditrapper DH, bunker druid
with
-(sideline) Ele, power herald, condi scrapper

Honorable mention, potentially viable will be power mesmer as inferior but good enough.

That gives us 4:3:2 for “best” specs and 5:4:2 as viable in favor of condi.

Zelulose.8695:

I would present two types of tiers and rank the top 5.

Broken tier (Easy play obvious advantage)

God Tier (High skill cap. Even high than the general skill required to play a class decently)

The God tier have the most potential. The Broken tier are an uphill battle to face unless you outplay them but they can only go so far.

Broken Tier (Strongest 1- Weakest 5)

1) Druid
2) Condi/Chronomancer
3) Scrapper
4) Revanent
5) Thief

Ah, forgot to address your “broken” tier.

A poorly played (or improperly built) Herald is fodder. They have at least a modest skill floor but a high ceiling. Since they have both a finite resource AND cooldowns, they’re very bursty but this also means if they time something wrong they’re screwed for 30+ seconds.

I would add DH to the broken tier, especially now that they got rather significant buffs. Very little skill to play competently but a still relatively low ceiling. I’ve been dying to them fairly frequently all day instead of them being relatively easy kills for the last couple months, and I don’t think I suddenly started being horrible.

Zelulose.8695:

I would present two types of tiers and rank the top 5.

Broken tier (Easy play obvious advantage)

God Tier (High skill cap. Even high than the general skill required to play a class decently)

The God tier have the most potential. The Broken tier are an uphill battle to face unless you outplay them but they can only go so far.

Broken Tier (Strongest 1- Weakest 5)

1) Druid
2) Condi/Chronomancer
3) Scrapper
4) Revanent
5) Thief

God Tier (Strongest 1- Weakest 5)

1) Revanant
2) Thief
3) Engineer in general
4) Mesmer in general
5) Druid.

It should be noted that Classes like Guardian, Warrior, Necromancer and Elementalist are limited in their easy builds and their skill floor.

This is strictly 1 vs 1 although many of those classes are also powerful in tpvp.
This opinion comes from observing which class is most likely to win while spectating similar builds.

Honestly I’d rank it, from strongest to weakest, as
1. Condi warrior (insane CC, insane resist, good damage, great self-healing, decent mobility, decent ranged damage)
2. Signet Necro (insane CC, insane self-healing 1v1, excellent damage in both melee and ranged, hands-down the best downed abilities)
3. Scrapper (insane mitigation, great mobility, decent CC, decent damage in melee, token ranged damage)
4. Druid (very good ranged damage, insane mobility, decent self-heals, okay melee damage, annoying knockback/good CC)
5. Revenant (insane mobility, decent damage in melee, decent self-heals, decent mitigation, zero ranged damage if wanting sustain)

Any class with at least 1 stunbreak and a decent self-heal should beat a dagger thief. Anybody with decent CC should beat daredevil or d/p thief. This is because everybody has at least some active mitigation.

Mesmers are great at kiting but should lose to an equally skilled druid or necro due to being ranged users. If a Herald builds specifically for it (power herald sword/axe) they can catch and kill a mesmer, but give up basically all of their sustain to do so.

Azukas.1426:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

what about necros and revs ?

They are neither won or lost

At least Power Herald got a significant nerf in PVP specifically because they normalized (greatly reduced) the base damage on Precision Strike and added a stout weapon quality multiplier.

It’kittenting for a third of the damage it was pre-patch, and it was our primary source of damage.

Looks like yet another viable power build killed in favor of condi when everyone’s complaining about condi running rampant.

mrauls.6519:

Lucred.1802:

mrauls.6519:

AN outdid themselves with this patch. I’m glad Guardian is still balanced, but had a complete overhaul of its skills/traits. Falling in love with the profession all over again

You mean “balanced” right?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Possible-bug-DH-traps-now-unavoidable/first#post6257634

Isn’kitten bug?

And lauding a class who gains greatly from said bug (effectively exploiting game mechanics) is not a good thing.

Mr Godlike.6098:

Jourdelune.7456:

Mr Godlike.6098:

Ele pvp is dead.

Without any changes to surviablity, nerfs and removal of cleric amulet that was MUST for staying alive as pvp elementalist -> simply put class is dead.

And also NO balance changes to composite for changes.

Why we are writing here anything an try to give some balance/change ideas for devs…it’s depressing waste of time….

Don’t despair.

I got nerf on all those META for support bunker:

1- Bunker Guard
2- dd ele
3- Shoutbow warrior
4- Mesmer bunker
5- Tempest shouts ele

We will still find a viable meta build to support the team fights. But now, all build that can’t heal/cleanses themselves would be unviable.

Power Revenant / thieves would be the biggest losers in team fight (or all power dps builds) because they rely on their bunker support to keep them alive.

It become harder now. All viable support bunker amulet got DELETED.

So, time to work your own conditions builds.

It’s not despair.

When class can’t sustain on any amulet no matter if it will fight with meta/non build it’s removed from pvp. I don’t care about pseudo bunkering – i wanted working dps build and this patch has only NERFS.

You wanted to be full-bunker AND do decent or better DPS?

And that’s why ele got nerfed hard.

mrauls.6519:

AN outdid themselves with this patch. I’m glad Guardian is still balanced, but had a complete overhaul of its skills/traits. Falling in love with the profession all over again

You mean “balanced” right?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Possible-bug-DH-traps-now-unavoidable/first#post6257634

sephiroth.4217:

What a joke.

What’s the point of team builds in a team game? lets all just run kittenin condition builds now yay.

You mean exactly how it was, and ele’s were only ever used to solo-bunker a point?

mrauls.6519:

I’m confused. What is sucking you in?

Elite skill Dragon’s Maw. Which is a pull+snare+barrier trap.

Yesterday and for months previous it could be dodged/dodged out of/blocked/stunbroken/cleansed/etc. Now it seems it cannot be.

Which means every meditrapper in the game is running that (it’s optional in the S3 meta) and dropping it on top of Test of Faith. The two of them combined, since they’re no longer dodge/blockable, do approximately 20k damage over 4 seconds. Which means the only people able to survive it are those with invulns and Reaper Shroud.

Tomiyou.3790:

Ubik.8315:

Ele will do tons of damage but get deleted faster than even thieves. Not sure it’s viable yet, but we’ll see.

What makes you think they’ll do tons of damage? They haven’t done it in this meta eer and even got damage nerfs. Of course it’s not gonna be viable, otherwise it would have been viable up to this point.

Because a full-zerk ele can do 35k dps (with much of it also being aoe), but has the sustain of crepe paper in a hurricane. Whereas previously, the bunker spec did ~6k dps (low but not horribly low compared to herald/guard/druid) but had way too much sustain (unkillable unless +2’d).

Since their bunker spec is no longer valid, you’ll see them either opting for a balanced spec with too-low dps for their modest sustain (which is probably the intent) and be in the same position DH’s were for all of season 3 (melting scrubs in unranked and not viable for diamond+), or you’ll see them go full glass-cannon (which is probably what’ll actually happen) and be in the situation thieves were in season 3 (melting scrubs in unranked and having situational utility in diamond+).

Tomiyou.3790:

Was wondering when people would figure out this bug. Wasn’t sure if it actually was intended and the devs just screwed up again and “forgot” to state that in the skill description or it was a valid bug.

Would certainly explain why in the 3 matches I’ve played since the patch I saw 19 DH’s instead of the normal 0-2. They’re basically PVP gods at the moment—each trap is a guaranteed kill basically (assuming this affects more than just Revenants).

Was in the off-season sPVP just now, and literally none of my skills as a Herald were preventing me from getting hit by/sucked into DH traps.

Normal dodge roll wasn’t working—I’d go nowhere, it wouldn’t even play the animation, but would still drain my stamina gauge.

So I tried Riposting Shadows. No dice—used the energy, didn’t restore any stamina, and I wouldn’t go anywhere.

So I tried Crystal Hibernation—still sucked me in, still did damage, even when I was blocking before they dropped the trap on me.

So I tried both my stunbreaks—consuming Facet of Darkness did nothing, activating both of my legendary abilities did nothing, whereas previously this would at least break the snare effect of the trap. Further, because of how the traps work, the blind mechanic of Facet of Darkness did nothing to prevent the DH from hitting me.

I genuinely don’t know if this is a bug, or an intended change (significant buff) to DH’s.

Vagrant.7206:

Lucred.1802:

Warrior has NO condi removal in current meta.
Necro has condi transfer galore.
Tempest has (I think) pulsing condi cleanse (10 seconds, 1 condition) no on-demand cleanse.
Druid has pulsing condi cleanse (10 seconds, 1 condition) and I think they have 1 on-demand cleanse, unsure of cooldown

Thief has NO condi removal in current meta.

Scrapper has ONE cleanse (all conditions) on a 40 second cooldown.

DH has ONE cleanse (2 conditions) on a 20 second cooldown.

I have no idea what chrono has, I won’t ever play one.

So that’s 3 of 8 with NO CLEANSE AT ALL, 1 (maybe 2) with a full cleanse on a long cooldown, and 2 single-condi cleanses on mid-long cooldowns.

Corrections:

Thief: Multi condi cleanses depending on build. Shadowstep alone removes 3 — D/P thief has the least condi counter, with only shadowstep (some traits/heals can remove crippling condis). S/D can remove extras per return skill. Staff thief can remove via dodge trait. I also believe stolen ectoplasm (from mesmers) can help cleanse a condi or it provides resistance.

Warrior: Condi cleanse isn’t quite as necessary with high amounts of resistance. Theoretically you can chain resistance for approx 20 secs with a down time of another 20 secs or so. You don’t need condi cleanse if you ignore condis in the first place.

I don’t know Tempest, Mesmer, or Herald, so I can’t speak for them. That said, I have seen more than “no or few” condi cleanses — I’ve seen tempests completely remove about 5 condis with one skill, on top of overcharging water and a few other skills. Herald builds can do something similar, removing several condis at once. I also don’t know druid that well, but I have seen their celestial form remove all condis and heal to full health.

Scrapper: You forget purge gyro. 2 condi cleanses every 3 secs for 15 seconds total. On about a 25 sec cooldown. Serious condi hate. And don’t forget elixir gun 5, and any elixirs used heal 1 condition on top of that (including the auto-triggered elixirs at 75% and 25% health).

DH: The jumpy skill (forget the name, F2), removes 3 condis, smite condition removes 1, and the healing trap skill removes 1. Admittedly, they’re all on long cooldowns. But it’s more than just one condi cleanse.

Thief, Herald, and Warr have a “condi cleanse” in the respect that they can remove movement effecting conditions (immob/slow/chill with shadowstep/riposting shadows/[almost every skill] respectively). They can do nothing about damaging effects (bleed/burn/poison/confusion/etc). So while technically correct, I feel it’s irrelevant to the argument which is why I excluded them since we’re talking about damage.

Staff thief (daredevil) is not current meta, D/P thief is, and as you say they have the least (shadowstep, which only removes immob/slow).

Purge gyro is not current meta for Scrapper. and you’ll rarely if ever see it used in sPVP above Sapphire (unless they change a lot of stuff with the rebalance).

For DH, I’d missed the trait “Smiter’s Boon”, which will remove 1 condition for every healing skill used. Apologies on that. I don’t PvP much on my DH and was going off memory. If you’re seeing more than 1 condi come off at a time, they’re spamming heals while lagging.

Looks like I missed a couple traits for current meta on Auramancer (which I don’t play, I play Fresh Air, which doesn’t take some of them). They remove 1 condition when swapping auras and 1 when applying regen, and Diamond Skin means no condi will stick when above 75% health. I guess that’s technically not a cleanse but we’ll count it.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Azukas.1426:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Only three classes even have viable condi builds right now:

• Chronos
• Reapers
• Berserkers
  All three of these condi builds are hard countered by marauder/berserker specs.

No need for a weakness like condition vs. condis. Why? We already have condition clearing skills, traits, boons like resistance and skills like berserker stance.

What meta power builds are countering those?

• Condi Chrono gets chewed by any direct hits from any power build.
• Reapers or Necros in general, have always been hard countered by CC/Power builds due to few resources concerning stability and stun breakers. They are especially hard countered by Daredevils.
• Condi Berserker is hard countered by Power Berserkers and Dragonhunters.

-good luck ever hitting a well-played chrono, condi or otherwise, with a direct attack.
-Reapers or Necros in general have always been hard-countered by CC. Doesn’t matter a lick what type of damage it is. I’d posit that condi berserker is closer to a hard counter to a Reaper than power berserker, and definitely more of a hard counter than power herald (who has zero CC). Power scrapper can probably fight it to a draw.
-Condi Berserker is only hard-countered by anything that can kite, damage type is irrelevant. They get you in melee range, you’re screwed. There’s a reason it’s the #1 class/build right now. Put an ESL-tier condi zerker against an ESL-tier power zerker and condi will win 90/100 fights.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

So many false statements …

Lucred.1802:

Not to mention how many of the really nasty condi’s are ground-targeted AoE.

Necro’s marks and scepter 2, warrior lb burst skill … that’s all. Marks don’t deal that much dmg anymore after chill nerf and the firefield from warrior isn’t too hard to avoid.

Lucred.1802:

Or a full-bunker DH running through a team fight crapping traps everywhere. Or a trap ranger doing the same. Condi is both as damaging as power, and capable of 5-person aoe, and is generally able to be used from a safe(ish) distance instead of melee range.

A full bunker dh isn’t going to do any mentionable dmg at all. If dh traps hurt, it is a power dps build. Traps are not ranged/ground-targeted btw. Trap ranger is even less viable than power dh – for good reasons.

Lucred.1802:

And then when you consider how few condi cleanses there are and how many of them are on long (20sec+) cooldowns compared to blocks/reflects (since the ground targeted aoe ignores reflect and at least some of the blocks)….I hope I’m making my point.

Most classes have frequent access to condi cleanse, not only every 20 seconds. And you don’t have to cleanse all condis, nor are you supposed to be able to do so. Also ground targeted aoe is not the main source of condis.

Lucred.1802:

As an example of how powerful condi is (yes this is cherry-picking): Warrior’s bow skill Pin Down—approximately 600 direct damage (non-crit) but applies 6 stacks of bleed, which then tick (6 stacks combined) for 2k, and with the current meta build lasts for 12 seconds. 1 skill that will do approximately 1/6th-1/8th of a player’s health per second (considering most pvp builds have between 13k and 18k health) or 24k over its full duration, cannot be blocked or dodged once applied, and is on a relatively short cooldown. Guaranteed kill if not cleansed from 1 ability. Also persists through downing, so it can both down and kill in 1 application. Find me any power-based attack that doesn’t require extensive setup (thus discounting GS power warr or mesmer shatters) that’s that powerful.

6 stacks of bleeds are ticking for about 600/s, not 2k. On wanderer/krait setup the total dmg is about 12k (more with might/vuln, but definitely not 24k, less with rabid or carrion amulet or a different rune). It will take 22s to deal that much dmg from this single skill. More than enough time to heal or cleanse. It has 25s cd which is quite long compared to many other important dmg skills and it has a distinctive animation and reasonable casttime, which makes it not that hard to dodge/block/evade/reflect or blind it. And if you get hit you can still cleanse.

An afk zerk ele or thief is the only think you can kill with Pin Down alone.

I could understand complaints about Skull Grinder, but Pin Down is a pretty balanced skill and a good example of how skills should be. Powerful, but with reasonable counterplay.

Shala.8352:

The reason revenants prefer to play power rather than condi is that the condi side has less evades/stun breaks/mobility. Revenant is only class that if going for condi, has to go full melee and lose all his mobility.

Similar is actually true for other classes too, not only for rev. Condi engi loses the defensive skills from hammer, condi ranger loses mobility and/or ranged dmg, condi warrior loses mobility – just some examples.

—any extra, basically unavoidable damage is too much damage when it’s so easy to apply (such as dropping signets and scepter2 in a team fight on point, considering how large they are and how the longest cooldown is ~8 seconds with most of them 4-5 seconds).

-and the firefield from warrior isn’t hard to avoid
Unless you’re in a team fight. It’s pretty big, though admittedly not as big as a necro mark or DH trap.

-full bunker DH isn’t going to be doing noticeable damage
Bull. Just straight bull. It’s not going to be immediately lethal like a power DH, but when their traps are on low cooldowns and cover an entire point, and it takes so ridiculously long to kill a bunker (any bunker), dropping them in a team fight is all they seem to do—run around crapping traps.

Same deal with a full-trap druid. I know they’re worthless over-all but they can be a humongous pain during team fights.

-most classes have frequent access to condi cleanse
Herald has NO condi removal in current meta.

Warrior has NO condi removal in current meta.

Necro has condi transfer galore.

Tempest has (I think) pulsing condi cleanse (10 seconds, 1 condition) no on-demand cleanse.

Druid has pulsing condi cleanse (10 seconds, 1 condition) and I think they have 1 on-demand cleanse, unsure of cooldown

Thief has NO condi removal in current meta.

Scrapper has ONE cleanse (all conditions) on a 40 second cooldown.

DH has ONE cleanse (2 conditions) on a 20 second cooldown.

I have no idea what chrono has, I won’t ever play one.

So that’s 3 of 8 with NO CLEANSE AT ALL, 1 (maybe 2) with a full cleanse on a long cooldown, and 2 single-condi cleanses on mid-long cooldowns.

Sure seems like that’s really not a whole lot of cleansing considering the condi classes can apply between 2 and 6 per second.

edit
Forgot to address warrior’s Pin Down.
I play one. A lot. I routinely see Pin Down’s bleeds ticking for 1000-1200 in actual combat. If you’re seeing it do 600, you must fight a lot of people with protection on and you’re buffless.

Here’s a screenshot of me attacking the target golem with NO buffs on me and NO debuffs on it. Add might on me and vuln on the target and it’s going to go up, a LOT.

The Game Slayer.7632:

Condis need 1 stat to be powerful. Power needs 3.

You also don’t have nearly as many traits that simply proc on crit like condis do. Imagine a world where condi and power are on the same level.. You’d have things like protection, which would protect against condition damage. Toughness too.

See, the problem with condition damage is that you can do the maximum damage that condis can do and still manage to have 1/3 or 1/2 of your stats allocated to being a bunker. If you want to do the same with power, you need to go zerker. End of story. Imagine a full zerk player going up against a full ‘glass’ condi build.. (lets say that condition damage required 3 stats).. You’d be having some fair fights going on. But we don’t see that.

The reason people call other people out for being condi, and the reason why people say power takes more skill, is for the aforementioned reason. If you mess up as condi, it’s okay because you have a ridiculous amount of stats to help you out defensively. (Also did I mention that you’re still doing max damage as a condition dealer? I feel like people should know that.)

Not to mention how many of the really nasty condi’s are ground-targeted AoE.

1v1 they’re not too horribly hard to not get hit by, but when you have a signet necro dropping them in a team fight (say, opening fight at mid) you have one person doing an absolutely ridiculous amount of damage to 3-4 players from a safe(ish) distance. Or a full-bunker DH running through a team fight crapping traps everywhere. Or a trap ranger doing the same. Condi is both as damaging as power, and capable of 5-person aoe, and is generally able to be used from a safe(ish) distance instead of melee range.

And then when you consider how few condi cleanses there are and how many of them are on long (20sec+) cooldowns compared to blocks/reflects (since the ground targeted aoe ignores reflect and at least some of the blocks)….I hope I’m making my point.

As an example of how powerful condi is (yes this is cherry-picking): Warrior’s bow skill Pin Down—approximately 600 direct damage (non-crit) but applies 6 stacks of bleed, which then tick (6 stacks combined) for 2k, and with the current meta build lasts for 12 seconds. 1 skill that will do approximately 1/6th-1/8th of a player’s health per second (considering most pvp builds have between 13k and 18k health) or 24k over its full duration, cannot be blocked or dodged once applied, and is on a relatively short cooldown. Guaranteed kill if not cleansed from 1 ability. Also persists through downing, so it can both down and kill in 1 application. Find me any power-based attack that doesn’t require extensive setup (thus discounting GS power warr or mesmer shatters) that’s that powerful.

First match: 3 D/C’s before game starts, 2v5, still managed to finish 230ish to 500.

Second match: 9/10 players stood just outside Keep’s capzone on Niflel spamming “Br? Br? Alguen br?” the entire match. Won 500-0 because I 3-capped and stood there in amazement. None of them were from the same guild. I’m 100% sure I got on the lucky end of a troll team.

Third match: 5v5 revenants. Actually pretty fun fight, though I was the only run running current meta (shield herald), the others were all sword/axe assassin stance. Surprising how lethal 2 of those can be, even if they’re super squishy. Won 440-505.

Fourth match: Reaper/Reaper/Reaper/Scrapper/Scrapper vs. DH/DH/afk druid/pve chrono/me (shield herald). We got destroyed, like 90-500, and the druid wouldn’t have made much difference.

Fifth match: Premade 5-scrapper team named “GL we don’t die” vs. 4 macewarr premade and me. Turns out with enough condi scrappers do go down :P. Still lost, but due to warrs not knowing rotation.

Sixth match: Good, balanced teams on both sides, decent to good players, fair loss at 430ish to 500.

Takeaway: When you queue at 9am CST you get weird team comps. And most of them are intentional.

In response:
1. every class too tanky
Unless you’re fighting a signet necro or condi warrior (or tempest). Then even with equally skilled players unless you’re ALSO playing a signet necro or condi warrior you lose (or get bored not moving the health bar at all and leave).

While I agree that most builds need to be less tanky, condi is way out of control. They need to reign in the power creep before they take any survivability away.

2. increase build diversity
Again, while I agree this needs to be done, I don’t want “condi necro #’s 1, 2, 3, and 4” and “you can play a condi warr with a mace or you can play a condi warr with a mace, BUT HEY, rifle is now also viable for the ~2% of fights you do anything other than open with headbutt and stick your mace down their throat!” or “you can play a tanky druid with an annoying but mostly useless knockback, or you can play a tanky druid with an annoying but mostly useless trap.”

The current problem isn’t lack of damage, it’s that PVP is all about burst instead of sustained damage. A well-timed low-mid total damage burst will kill most people, whereas the best full-zerker sustained damage is easily healed through or mostly negated long enough to nuke the glass cannon. And the big problem is even the tankiest bunkers right now are capable of low-mid-damage bursts. They shouldn’t be capable of burst at all at any damage level.

3. Absolutely they need to be more exciting. The best way to achieve this is LARGER MAPS. It’s ridiculous that it takes 10-12 seconds to respawn but only 3 for pretty much any class to run back to home or 6 to run to mid. When even a lopsided 1v1 lasts 20-30 seconds, having someone back in the fight in 16-18 seconds is ridiculously too low. Dying should be more of a hindrance to the over-all team fight as your allies are out of it for long enough to actually matter.

4. Balance. Oh, the never-ending quest for balance. There’s a problem with balance though: If you balance for end-game PVP, you end up with huge discrepancies in character usefulness for end-game PVE, and even larger discrepancies in the relative power of certain classes (when compared for ease of learning curve) for middle-of-the-pack PVP and WVW. A great example of this is current DH: They absolutely destroy bad players (even when played poorly) because the strategy is “crap traps, stand on traps, traps’ll kill anything” and that’s it, but they’re very very bad as far as actual competitive play and nearly worthless in high-end fractals and most raids due to poor survivability and low DPS (and the “everything procs reflect” issue in fractals if you don’t have a mesmer to boonstrip)

runeblade.7514:

Lucred.1802:

I’d be fine with bunkers that (if played perfectly) can 1v2 indefinitely against good players or 1v3+ against bad/mediocre players.

No you wouldn’t.

Teams would go full Bunkers. It would be very very boring.

You mean basically how it is now?
-auramancer (bunker)
-scrapper (bunker)
-macebow warr (semi-bunker CC/condi god)
-reaper (condibomb/semi-bunker) or another macebow warr
-some flavor of mesmer (some variety here but the bunker-ish ones are favored) or another macebow warr
If you’re not able to bring one of those 3/4 classes you have no place in high-end competitive PVP and will struggle to make rank in low-mid PVP.

I mean honestly, 4 condi warrs and an auramancer is a valid/viable team composition. Might not get into legendary but it’s competitive. For that matter I had one battle against 5 scrappers that was tough as hell (we won, barely, but only because we outplayed them and they were a dedicated troll team).

So yeah. Bunker is in.

edit I suppose when they’ve got an auramancer with them reapers are pretty good bunkers too. And anything is a halfway passable bunker around a competent auramancer.

Saiyan.1704:

@ Journdelune

Then give us another method to survive a cc+burst attacks without instantly placing a Stun trap on the ground. You have to realize that this helps our survivability tremendously too… when a Guardian is already terrible at it. It’s not just some burst damaging utility. That may be something you see as the player but for us, we need it to be instant.

But you have as many survival abilities without traps as every other class already.

And the stun trap is one of a very short list of skills game-wide that both works offensively and defensively, and it’s on a relatively short cooldown for how powerful it is.

Aereniel.7356:

With season three drawing to a close, I’d be interested in hearing how people did and how the league system could be improved for season four. Please post your stats for the season and list a few of the key improvements that should be made.

If possible, please focus the feedback on the league system specifically. Leave stuff such as class balance to other threads.

My stats:

• Started the season in Sapphire
• Played only solo conquest
• Alternated between Druid and Scrapper (about 70/30 split)
• It took me 100 games to reach legend, won 72, lost 28
• Win percentage 72%
• Longest loss streak 3 games, longest win streak 17 games

Feedback & suggestions:

For me as a solo player, the match making did not seem substantially different from season two (whereas two was markedly different from season one). I think the biggest issue with the match maker continues to be the fact that the rating difference between players within an individual team is too high, and the match is decided by which team has the weakest player. Of course I have no actual data, but it feels as if most matches have a couple of good players, a couple of decent ones and then one or two lost souls who really should not be there and end up costing the game to their team. For season four, I would look to reduce the MMR gap in team formation, if it can be done without compromising queue times too heavily.

Another change I’d like to see for next season is to allow people to drop divisions. Keep Amber as a safety division, but after that, losing should allow people to drop down to lower divisions. This would be a small but important step towards an MMR-based ladder, as opposed to the grindable reward track we have now. I’m under no illusion that we will ever have a purely skill-based ladder, but at least we would have a bit more realistic player distribution across the divisions.

-started with a week left
-51 games played, got half way through Ruby
-44 wins, 7 losses
-longest win streak of 16, longest loss streak of 1

I’m okay with a grindable reward track. I’m not okay with it being as simple as it is (throw enough matches at it and wings in 1 season regardless how bad you are). A truly terrible player should not be able to grind to legendary, but should be able to get at least ruby. That means 2 seasons to the wings. Which would be a maximum of 20 weeks (8 week season, 4 week break in between, 8 week season), making it a long but not the longest grind.

Euthymias.7984:

JETWING.2759:

The character has 3 main potentials – Damage, Resistence and Support. This potentials could be removed of especializations and only be obtained by equips like ammulets, runes and sigils. But to be viable, DoT conditions needs be balanced.

The potentials could be divided by:
DPS:
Power (with precision and ferocity).
Condition (with precision and ferocity)..

I’d rather see Condi builds actually need to invest in Expertise for meaningful duration than Ferocity. There would just need to be a few new amulet choices with it, and a shave to base Condition duration in PvP.

When every stack of bleed is doing a thousand(+) damage a tick they’d need more than a “shave” to base condition. Especially when most abilities apply more than one stack of any given condition.

Cobrakon.3108:

Bunker needs counters. I don’t agree with getting rid of bunker all together. I just think it needs more counters I.E. Ways to melt it down in a 1v1 or smaller group. The question is why does bunker have so many get out of jail free cards?

I think we need to ask ourselves what a bunker should be. In a 1v1 A glass canon and bunker should have both a good chance to beat each-other. They have opposite strengths and weaknesses.

But if we leave it at that then the bunker would still get melted by two players. And this is the big controversy, all these sustain passives and get out of jail free one click abilities.
Because if we were just to remove all of those, then 1v2 1v3 would become less frequent and the whole Idea of holding a spot outnumbered would be marginalized or non existent.

I believe the proper nerf should be for the insane anti cc that bunkers have. How many times have you placed a trap or landed a successful blow that should proc a daze or a stun, and it does nothing because of a passive that the bunker had on or they activated a invulnerable.

I have a few suggestions

1. Make invulnerable removable. I don’t mean easily. I can think of a couple ways to do this. You could give invulnerable stacks. Lets say 2 or 3 stacks. If the invulnerable is hard cc’ed then you lose a stack. That way you either have to spec for more than one cc to help you solo bunkers, or a group has to land either 2 or 3 cc to remove it. As far as coding goes, seems like it would be easy because you could simply use the aegis boon to rework invulnerable. You keep the property of aegis being removed from one hit, give it stacks (perhaps 3 max) and instead of every hit removing invulnerable, only selected hard cc.

The other way I can see to balance bunker would be to straight nerf their sustainability in 1v1 situations and increase their bunker ability the more enemies that are around.
You might ask yourself how this would be possible, but i think it really is possible.

Yesterday I was playing around with Druid for the first time. They have an elite ability that tethers to enemies around them. So how about an ability that you have to use or procs every 30 seconds or so that builds your toughness and other defensive traits the more enemies that are around you. Anet could figure out the best timing, though it should be well under a minute otherwise you could jump in a mob of enemies then go protect another point with the buff.

This way dueling the bunker isn’t as big of grind fest and if there is more allies to help beat bunker the buff would give the bunker a better chance at surviving.

I believe these two solutions could help. Perhaps they could both be integrated. Along with these changes some tweaks to healing would be in order I’d imagine.

The whole point of this is to allow Bunkers to keep sustain but lose it if they are OUTPLAYED.

Being Outplayed is the key to everything in balance.

I’d be fine with bunkers that (if played perfectly) can 1v2 indefinitely against good players or 1v3+ against bad/mediocre players.

I’m not okay with bunkers that, with a bad/medicore player at the helm, can 1v2 indefinitely against better players (or 1v5 against equal/worse players) while also doing more than token damage.

For that matter, I’m not okay with full bunker specs doing 80% of the damage of a glass cannon. That makes the game to where everybody who’s able goes full bunker because they’re giving up very little (if any) damage for a TON of sustain, which means 90% of the players you face will also be full bunker (having a game where nobody kills anything is no fun) and the remaining 10% are playing a class with no valid bunker spec (getting killed constantly and not killing anything due to game imbalance and not player skill is no fun either).

Auramancer got close to the iron wall+wet noodle thing, a slight nerf to their healing (or stability, either would be acceptable but both would be a bit much) would put them about right. DH is a little farther off: Their traps (semi-passive damage) do too much and they have too little damage avoidance (but decent heals/cleanses). As much as I personally think it ridiculous that the tankiest class in the game wears a dress (light armor) and the squishiest wears full plate (heavy armor) it does seem to work in a game where everyone can do everything at least somewhat well.

Belial.9350:

Seriously how do you kill these things 1v1 on point?

Mace warrior, reaper, daredevil, hammer rev might have a chance, sword/shield herald can if played perfectly, chronomancer if room to move.

Any class can kill a scrapper if there’s a large enough skill gap. Reapers, daredevils, and mace warriors should be able to consistently beat scrappers that are somewhat better players. Honestly a mediocre reaper should consistently kill a good/very good scrapper. (honestly it seems a mediocre reaper can consistently kill a good/very good anything-other-than-bunker-ele, but I’m biased).

BlaqueFyre.5678:

If you play during Prime Time you will have more players and so you see a more diverse representation of player base skill.

I certainly understand that, it just seems the skill spread is very sharply and abruptly defined, looking more like a bar graph than a bell curve. Going on the substantiated assumption that prime time is 6-10pm for any given time zone and there are 5 major time zones in the Americas, and since I’m in the dead center of them being CST, I should be seeing large quantities of all skill levels from 3pm-11pm CST with a gradual taper at each end.

I’ve noticed that depending on when I play I’ll either be in with mostly competent players or almost entirely awful players, with not much of a transition.

Basically, 5-11pm CST the overwhelming majority (90%+) of players in both ranked and unranked are at least competent and over half are good. 11pm-1am less than half are competent and maybe 1 in 10 are good, and 1am-3pm seems to be dominated by keyboard turning auto attackers spamming “br? br? Alguien espanol? Br?” in team nonstop and theyre all so bad (both my teammates and my opponents) I can safely swap to a glass cannon build with basically no fear of dying, even in mid Ruby.

I mean, two nights ago around 3am CST we won a 2v5 match 502:84 because the other team was that bad. We had 2 first half d/c’s and a whole-match afk and we still won by a landslide, I had over 30 kills. And I’m really no superstar PvPer either, there’s a reason I’m still Ruby.

I’m completely okay with unbalanced teams. If you don’t want luck of the draw, bring a premade.

What I am NOT okay with is the ability to switch characters after you’re already in the map. Too many times I’ll enter a map, the enemy team will see we don’t have any condi cleanse, then they’ll ALL log onto their reapers and mace warriors. Or if we have tons of condi cleanse they’ll ALL log onto their bunker ele’s and power zerkers. This allows stat stacking against a known opponent and heavily encourages people to have at least 2 ready-to-go characters parked in the PvP lobby, which is so far beyond gaming the system I would consider it outright exploitation of game mechanics.

I will say though, most fun I’ve ever had was me (power herald) and 4 mace warr’s vs. 5 mace warr’s. Nobody could kill anybody and it was a blast. 5v5 thieves would also be entertaining (and also frustrating).

[/quote]

But you didn’t answer the second part of the question, how do you nerf DH in lower tiers and still make viable in the higher league tiers?

You’re straight up asking for a DH nerf but that’s eons away from what the class really needs.[/quote]

I don’t see how I’m asking for a straight-up nerf. Make the traps do more damage/snare for longer, but make the area they cover less and lengthen their cooldowns. It might increase how hard it is to play DH, but will also make a well-played DH more dangerous at the higher competitive levels while making a poorly-played DH less dangerous at the lower competitive levels. Because as it stands, a poorly-played DH is lethal against decently-played melee and can usually fight to a draw with decently-played ranged yet a well-played DH gets their hind end handed to them by a well-played [almost anything]. They’re currently masters of mediocrity, they’ve got a high floor and a low ceiling, unlike most other professions that have a low floor and a high ceiling.

Make the traps deadly but at least somewhat avoidable, instead of moderately dangerous but completely unavoidable (due to size and invisibility).

Ithilwen.1529:

@Vagrant

The 55 Monk says “hi.” On paper, this build is squishy in the extreme. Yet, I have tanked for minutes at a time using it. Guild Wars has a long and honorable history of tough healers.

When a healer is squishy.. ( the dead game City of Heroes comes to mind ) There’s normally also a strong protector class and we start working toward the holy trinity.

No, it is not true that healers are generally super squishy. There healing makes them tanky.

Okay, keep in mind this is from a PvE perspective, but I’ve played almost every MMO since beta EQ1 (1997ish). Every PvE healer has been squishy and did laughable damage, but left alone could keep even the squishiest of glass cannons alive through a 2v10, and every PvE tank has had modest self-heals but no significant group/AoE heals, and did between laughable and moderate damage. There were a few exceptions (WoW blood tank DK, though they had almost zero CC/anti-CC, WoW holy paladin who did everything better than everyone else in all modes of play through every expansion, EQ1 monk SoV-on) until you got into endgame raiding when only the tankiest of tanks weren’t getting 1-shot (consistently anyway, it still happened) and you needed multiple healers to keep just the tank alive.

The PvP scene has been much the same, from what little I saw (this is the first MMO I’ve gotten serious about PvP in)—the tanky heavy armor classes could stay alive in a 1v3 for 30 seconds to a minute but certainly weren’t gonna kill anyone, the healers were basically 1-shot and had to choose between laughable damage and no movement or zero damage and bad movement, PvP matches were at least 10 on 10, and the big strategy was KEEP THE ENEMY DPS OFF YOUR HEALER/KILL ENEMY HEALER, for which there was a ton of CC available.

SO
In general, yes, healers are squishy and do laughable damage. But this specific mode of play in this specific game isn’t “in general”

This game is different. Every class can tank with the right spec, half of them have between mediocre and good group heals, and all of them have at least decent self-heals. Now whether those skills get selected in the current meta (since it seems everyone but war and ele get to choose between heals and damage). And despite being out as long as it has, they haven’t figured out how to balance it yet. This is most likely due to the fact that it IS different, doesn’t follow the legacy of every game previously so they had to start from scratch.

23 pips is still in the +-15 pip range. You might not have noticed but you aren’t always the “center”.

I’ve been noticing that if I queue during off-times I’ll get a HUMONGOUS spread. Diamond in with Emerald, Ruby with Amber, me in the middle in Sapphire. +/- 60ish pips, sometimes up to 40 below me and up to 35 above me (but not at the same time). Whether this is me being “close enough” to diamond and a diamond guy drags his low buddy in in a group I dunno.

Saiyan.1704:

snaplemouton.1294:

My problem with DH:
Their traps cover the entire cap point.

You need to stay in the cap point to prevent them from decapping, but at the same time you can’t stand in it because you’ll die from traps.

A non issue in the competitive scene but OP has a point.

How do you limit the newb faceroll DH builds while also keeping or improving the DH viability in the competitive scene?

Stronger, smaller traps (that are more visible, like everyone else’s) on a longer cooldown.

DH’s can drop traps waaaaay too frequently for how powerful/large they are, but if they were small enough they didn’t cover an entire point (plus extra area) on a longer cooldown but almost-certain death if you DID trigger it it would add additional dynamic to the class beyond “sit in center of point and crap out traps as fast as you can hit the button”. Higher potential ceiling but a steeper skill curve, and maybe not as deadly against bad players in unranked (who would have at least a slight chance of not tripping all of them instantly).

And an easy counter to DH’s even in the mid-ranks of league is ranged. Their pull is on a long enough cooldown even a base Rev with a hammer can down them (provided equal skill) without getting in the traps, and they’re one of the weakest at ranged combat.

Kuya.6495:

From my experience, eles have a difficult time with condi warriors.

The condis themselves aren’t that bad, but when you’re constantly getting interrupted, it makes it hard to heal, and the next thing you know, you’re loaded with too many condis to cleanse in time before he’s through with you.

This is both from the perspective of someone who has played as a support ele and played as a condi warrior vs. support eles. In fact, i’ve having a difficult time finding out what hard counters a condi warrior.

Power herald and thief both are pretty good counters vs. condi warr.