Guild Wars 2

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Arganthium.5638:

It’s bad enough I’m addressing somebody who keeps referring to his level of play experience as “casual”, but some of your ideas here are quite simply ridiculous…

hey, i really am a casual player!

1. Unlike Black Powder’s tiny radius (the skill which, btw, warrs always seem to stand in and later complain allows thief to perma blind), Combustion shot easily covers an entire point (or a lot of a point, if we’re talking about the graveyard on LotF). As a result, the debate becomes one of surviving versus holding a point.

yes, the combustion shot works very nicely at that. i like the large radius. it is working nicely as intended.

2. The skill “Pin Down” already applies two condis, Combustive Shot applies a third on a short CD. Furthermore, not every class or build has the level of condi removal/dampening that warrs can get…

yup! it is a powerful skill! so it has a recharge timer of 25 or 20 seconds!

yes, not every professions have lots of conditions removals. rocks, scissors, paper etc.
mesmers have illusions, necromancers have death shroud, thieves have stealth, etc.

maybe the 0.25 seconds activation time is … too powerful. impossibru to dodge unless the victim got off lucky with a dodge.
consider 0.50 to 1 seconds maybe? and a very big obvious aiming animation. consider flashing effects also? to make it obvious. people have been asking for this.

3. Spamming dodge has become increasingly more difficult in recent months, and even when doing so, there’s no reason you won’t get hit by the pulse on Combustive Shot. There’s also the issue of being able to be hit when your dodge cast ends, whereas you have to keep dodging in order to survive and thus can’t stand in place. Furthermore, that burns your dodges, which then can’t be used for the “loleazy” dodges on skills like Eviscerate, Earthshaker, and so forth.

hmmm perhaps consider increasing the activation time of 0.25 seconds? make it 0.50 seconds – 1.00 seconds?

4. You’re extremely wrong as far as what the main source of damage from CS is- you seem to claim it’s the physical damage. That damage was never that high anyways- the real killer is the burning, which, outside of fear (when traited w/ damage), is the most damaging condition in the game, and once you have burn, you certainly can’t “spam dodge” to get it off.

ehehehh i did not claim that. i just said the overall physical damage is reduced by 15%

the burning is meant to be powerful. if professions do not equip enough condition removals, then they are supposed to die by conditions.

by the way, how does the burning from combustion shot works? does it applies burning every second during the 9 seconds (level 3) or once on impact and every 3 seconds?

it pulses once on impact, and another pulse every 3 seconds right?
total 4 pulse on level 3, 9 seconds duration.

roamzero.9486:

Pin down needs a telegraph and a unique animation.

i can accept that. but the activation time is 0.25 seconds so i dun think adding telegraph or unique animation matters since the only time pin down misses is when the target has a lucky dodge roll.

No skill should ever be like combustive shot radius is.

On zerker gear, 3rd level combustive shot deals about 1 k damage per tick ( crit) on top of 4 k of burning. That’s 8k damage YOU CAN’T DODGE in any way. By simply pressing a button you get a free 8 k damage on the whole point ( even bigger), unless you spam dodge like a mad SIMPLY TO AVOID THIS SKILL PASSIVE EFFECT, whilst not caring about the war unleashing hell on you meanwhile.

Pin down needs a longer and more obvious animation.

Arcing arrow is the perfect example of a balanced skill: slow, obvious, high hitting.

Arcing arrow could have even be able to deal 20k damage, it woud have been balanced.

Combustive shot and pin down are not.

Isn’t this number 1 reason ( along with Healing signet) why war is OP ?

Just putting it out there.

Especially Combustive shot ( totally passive no brain ridicolous damage) and pin down ( top animation).

Discuss.

i think the time has come for the meme.

#allisvain

what are you saying ?!?!?!? i’ve met some incredible eles on my queues, they do incredibly well, dish out ridicolous damage, both sustained and burst, and they can seriously turn the tide of a battle.

This is a l2p issue, you should met REALLY skilled eles.
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No, joking, they suck balls.

ahuba.6430:

this thread is now about the 30/30/30/30/30 mesmer build

Even a 30/30/30/30/30 mesmer build would never be as OP as any warrior build.

Serious.

Romek.4201:

atm i play mesmer too and its anoying to face a warrior or necro on a node cause you can paly perfect and unload everything on him and hp goes only to 80% or something and he just smash face on board and done

I usually win against most necros and wars, what is getting annoying is the presence of bunker engies-wars-condi wars and the almighty spirit ranger.

As a mesmer you’re forced out of the point in order to do damage and it really takes TOO MUCH TIME to bring them down.

Unlike guards, which survivability is tied to boons easily stripped with a simple shatter, these proffs survivability/counterpressure is too high when faced 1vs1 ( by any proff, not only mesmer) and untied to anything aside passive healing and blocks ( traited toolkit gives you 3secs of blocks every 15 secs) and it just takes too much time to kill them by yourself ( if you can even do it) while the points slowly tick in their favor.

Bunker wars is unfun in any shape or form.

Romek.4201:

dont have any AFKers or 4v5 at start and i palyed a lot

whats the point in writing all this nonsens here? you guys think arenanet dont have the numbers to see themself how many 4v5 started? dont you guyz think they see that you lie?

useless thread

In my case, i don’t complain regarding 4vs5 ( it very rarely happens to me). I complain about overall class balance, cost vs rewards ratio and skill spamming.

The most succesful builds are the most braindead, even in team q. Playing as a mesmer ( since thief is dead after this patch and almost unplayable, especially on solo q) i really suffer against professions that require a lot less effort than the one i put into the fight to give me hard times, and this is frustrating.

As a mesmer ( who can’t hold the point, altough winning the fight) your impact on the match, if your team is not playing properly and the opposite is full of semi-bunker proffs, is not that big and in solo q you would be better off with another profession in order to carry your teammates.

Mesmer is the clear example of a high risk/high reward case where the reward is not that high due to current balance.

In team q you can at least make them work, in solo q it’s just frustrating. And in team q such builds and comps are present in high end rating ( just take a look at what top teams are running).

The point is that the game is getting unfun.

Reikou.7068:

Travlane.5948:

Arganthium.5638:

Actually, if you look at his games, many of his opponents seem to have that “flight” idea programmed into their minds mixed with a half-hearted attempt to fight back. Many of them also seem to ignore targeting him completely, and their combat skills are relatively lackluster. Furthermore, his build seems extremely suspect, which, presumably, means that he’s even luckier with his opponents than was implied before.

i hate to be the one to say “bad opponents” on a video as it makes me feel like a hater…. but he is right here. seen some of his live play…i keep saying WTF is that other thief/player doing. really? why did he do that…wow. but thats me. idk.

Perhaps so. I’ve never really watched him play, so I can’t comment too much on that. Perhaps its true, perhaps its not.

I’m simply saying that if Sizer is able to pull it off, other thieves should be able to do so as well. and even if Sizer is “an outlier in the statistic,” it doesn’t mean that the build is bad. It just means that everyone else needs to L2P.

If the day comes that S/D Evasion can really no longer be played at top level, then I will rephrase my statement.

FeelsAlright.5860:

Except NO other class is balanced in that way. It’s all balanced by the general population. Why should thief be any different?

No other class is balanced this way has more to do with the fact that anet’s balance team is incredibly incompetent and doesn’t know how they want to balance the game, than it being a good game-balance philosophy.

Sizer is nothing special.

He used to get crushed by good players BEFORE and still will be right now ( surely not because he’s a bad player, but because the thief profession, and in particular S/D, was nothing special from the beginning).

for a reference

Cheese mode is simply sticking to their old comp because they don’t want to adapt again, and because, right now, there’s no competition even in EU ( and i dunno if it’s ever going to be again).

Thief sucks balls right now, worst prof right after ele.

Even burst S/P is better than S/D now, D/P too, and they both sucks.

months after, this map is still here.

Thanks devs, indeed you care.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Mrbig.8019:

I see bunker/bunkerish prof everywhere, TTK is slow and th game is dominated by wars/guards/engies/necros, with the last one rising even more now that godmode soldier hambows and thieves have been nerfed.

There are a lot more necros and engies as of late. I thought it was just me.

And yeah, as for the fun part, it’s slowly going away. At this point, I really don’t know anything that can save the game. Increasing population size by attracting PVE farmers is good. But the quality of matches has gone from bad to terribad. It’s just sad.

match quality is just a side thing, the point is that balance is not BETTER after this patch, it just pushed people more into bunker crap meta.

At least i’m rediscovering the beauty of an S/P thief, but the game is simply not fun anymore.

other than this, the game is losing its enjoyability.

I see bunker/bunkerish prof everywhere, TTK is slow and th game is dominated by wars/guards/engies/necros, with the last one rising even more now that godmode soldier hambows and thieves have been nerfed.

This is not only an issue in solo q, team q is horrible and there’s no way to overcome this issue.

As i said tons of times, rewards are not enough if the game is not enjoyable: and it is not anymore.

Django.5923:

I know what you want to say. Thief has a build problem. But Thief will be a MUST HAVE and stay in high tier pvp because of his mobility.

As said. Reduce RTL to 15 seconds or 20 would also be ok again and ele could actually be viable.

Tbh i don’t think thieves will stay top tier for long ( it’s not that i see thieves so many thieves in EU, ya know): meta is shifting to “bunker yo easy mode” where the best target to focus are necros ( !! ) , spirit rangers, ( !!!!) and engies ( !!!!!!!), with maybe wars (!?!?!?!?) following, as long they don’t build with endure pain.

There’s no real target to focus anymore, the squishiest is necro ( which is not squishy at all) and we’re starting to play bunker game ( or decap game).

Thieves are starting to have no real impact on a fight and there’s very little you can do with your mobility if you’re no longer able to win the 1vs1 against 80% of the professions you’re going to face at side point ( which is very rarely left uncovered).

Thief is mobile and has team stealth, but aside that, you would be better bringing another engi-necro-war-ranger.

And in that situation, you may have an S/F ele in your team without it being a complete hinderance.

I’m not saying ele is not the worst of all, in fact it is, but it’s not that behind other “low tier” classes currently: mesmer is the only one which can REALLY be useful.

Relentless.7023:

Arganthium.5638:

Relentless.7023:

Why do the worst thieves end up being the ones puking bullcrap about the state of their class on the forums?

I guess they need to be carried by Sword 2 to get carried by their teammates. Pathetic

It’s funny that people like you say this, because there have been many “top” thieves- such as Jumper and Caed- that have complained about the balance of the thief or the balance of the game in general.

It’s also amusing because your stereotype means that thieves should never, ever be buffed, i.e. the ones asking for buffs are just “bad thieves” and should be ignored.

I just ran D/P Trickery tonight and the initiative gain is pretty dope. Your “claim to fame” is a S/D build which tells me exactly what your sig says “retired.” Baddie is baddie.

D/P trickery is a useless build in current meta, good only in team queue where, in any case, there’re better choices.

The fact it’s our strongest build ( and, tbh, was already on par after Flanking strike was nerfed to 1 boon stealing) says it wide about thief viability.

You can trash talk as much as you want, right now thief is useless: i would pick up a mesmer everyday.

Django.5923:

I’m not a top 100 thief. I’m not even a thief. And i wont waste my time proving you that ele is not viable. Karsaib, Sickness, Apollo and Sunshine know whats going on. And I know them ingame as good ele players.

You can’t just bring your pve staff build stay max range and expect not to get focussed. Viability is not about the possibility to play the class. You can, just that each role there is another class can do better and that’s why ele is not viable.

If you want to prove to me or others that ele is viable, you have to show which role your build will fill in and point out why it is better then other builds in the same role.

But honestly, it’s like sensotix says “listen to the wrong players”.

tbh, since thief is not really that viable anymore, you could easily try playing ele, which is far stronger against current bullkitten meta builds, at least the S/F variant.

The real issue i see with eles is mobility but aside that, it’s not really THAT bad.

Currently even thieves and mesmers are not THAT bad, with mesmers being slightly better than all of them.

Ele is just behind them, but not that far, and has its strenghts.

Shiver.5903:

Paragon.5479:

thiefs are to strong after a patch to strong,evade evade evade stealth then port then evade then port,whole faking day blinking,now we will be nailed by thiefs for 2 months,i am really kitten ed off

mighty meak.6387:

i heal and i heal and i heal moar
but w t f
i am alone
no one helps no loves
sword#2
i die no win
nailed by thief
all is vain

All is vain.

ALL IS VAIN

the game is sligthly less worse than before after patch, but bunkers are still everywhere.

we need to go back to power meta, that’s the only thing that will save this game: we can talk about all this stuff as much as we want but we just need to go back in time, no escape.

There’s no way to make this game better without nerfing HARD bunkers and conditions ( which favour attrition so BUNKERS even more).

Condi wars are the worst of this world, bunker engies follow, even without stability.

no sane guy plays thief anymore and threads like this pop up, LOLWUT.

agree. /15golds

Lordrosicky.5813:

Romek.4201:

this guy^^

we still have a condi meta – arenanet have the numbers how many necros are played in soloQ they dont need another lordrosicky tread for this

warrior counters necro and can be played by a monkey – thats only reason why in teamQ people dont wanna use necro (would be 4v5)

but when warrior is nerfed we still have necro left and NOTHING changed on necro since the necropatch which destroyed this game for everyone but the necros

thx for your time

Warrior doesnt counter necro as much as people who dont play the game (and only post their “insight” on the forums) like to say. I can kill any warrior in the game and any warrior in the game can kill me. But if I play good I can kill them. Which is fine. They have an advantage but it isnt as large as you think. Necro not being played is because it is slow and doesnt survive well in 1v2 so you can get more bunker there. Also it is at a disadvantage vs warrior and thief in 1 on1 if thief is able to use his sword 2 out of line of sight. So necro is fine but with more and more immunities it will just become bad. Zerker stance I dont mind – at least it has a cooldown after used. AR I dont mind – I can sometimes burst engi down if I play right. Diamond skin on the other hand is a blanket hard counter with zero counter play.

omg wut are you sayin this doesn’t even make sense.

it seems you don’t even know why necro gets hard countered by war, no worry I’ll give you a shot.

First of all, this game is not only about 1vs1 so nobody cares about 1vs1ing a necro (since necro is by far the best 1vs1 prof but whatever).

secondly, necro has no real “out of jail” card unless he runs with wurm, and no real immunity, neither stability.

so if a war jumps on him stunning multiple times without the chance to peel on him, the necro is stunned and gets THE WHOLE OPPOSITE TEAM focusing him.

so in a team fight, if there’s a war, the opposite necro is dead as soon as guardian SYG expires, reason why necro is not abused like in the past.

and even more, stop saying bullkitten about necros losing to thieves since necros eat thieges alive as long as they knoe what they’re doing.

Saying " if the thief knows how to LoS with sword" as an excuse is ridicolous, because without LoS abuse the thief has 0 chance, and with LoS abuse the match up is still in necro’s favour.

let’s talk again when necro’s auto attack chain won’t eat half health bar of 50% of professions in this game and when we don’t make whole game power creeping simply due to necros existing

10th december balance changes won’t be enough.

It’s a step in the right direction for the most part ( aside diamond skin) but it won’t really change anything.

If anything, it will push bunker meta all the way, since they’re basically nerfing all viable sources of damage without addressing bunker capabilities.

Bsgapollo.5364:

Do you play any other class than necro lordy? Like have you ever played an ele, mesmer or even a thief perhaps? Cause I feel like always the people complaining about how weak condi’s are have no idea in reality how easy it is to play those compared to other classes and how rewarding as well at the same time.

Hey, you just need to be out of LoS with your thief in order to beat the necro, don’t ya know ?

Because in a normal fight, without LoS tricks, the necro won’t win 100% of engagments, no sarcasm, really.

Don’t you see the abundance of thieves, eles and mesmers in PvP ?

Lordrosicky.5813:

Anet – here is the secret:

There is no condition meta anymore gasp . In fact that hasnt been one for a while either in team q or solo q.

I think your balance changes with nerfs to necro condis, and incendary ammo/sun spirit are about 3 months out of date anet.

P.S. Diamond skin is going to be the most broken trait ever made. A lot of people I respect in game agree with me on this. You might as well remove necros and engis from the game

Plz tell me how condi proffs are not strong.

When i was still playing, engies were everywhere, spirit rangers everywhere.

The only class which was not “abused” was necro, because its direct counter ( war) is OP as kitten and abused to a ridicolous degree.

Other professions are barely viable ( mesmer, ele) and build diversity is at its lowest EXACTLY due to condi builds being so strong against basically anything aside warriors ( which is, and we all know it, OP as kitten).

As soon as Hambow gets nerfed, necro will get back and wreck anything again aside Diamond Skin Eles ( which is terribly bad as a balance decision anyway, but that’s another story).

The game is going AGAIN into power creep and believing that condis are not OP and don’t need to be nerf hammered EVEN IF we don’t have a pure condi meta anymore is silly and ridicolous.

If anything, they should nerf EVERYTHING along with condies.

lol first game after patch for me.

Me, with a rank 10 max team.

Elo hell, here i come.

am i the only one who thinks there’s a problem if people have no idea how to play this game ?

Doesn’t this show there’s a problem due to the game not teaching players how it should be played ?

Josh Davis.6015:

Justin has been looking into ways to make rosters more balanced. He’s mentioned placing users with dishonored together in queue (what a terrible place to be!), spreading professions more evenly, and a few other things.

In theory, the idea sounds awesome! I’ve personally been on quite a few solo queue rosters of myself + 4 of the same profession – and it’s definitely not fun. The obvious downside here is that every filter he creates is going to extend queue times that much more.

Justin created a thread on this topic already and has asked what you guys feel would be an acceptable queue time, assuming the matches were more healthy and balanced based on these filters. You can check the thread out here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Poll-Would-you-wait-for-a-better-match/first

-Josh

the problem i see is that there’s no real way to tell what kind of profession a player will bring into the match.

For example:

If i queue as a mesmer, the system will count me as a mesmer, but as soon as the match starts, i just switch to war and i just cheated on the system.

The only reasonable way to fix this would be to make a second shuffling among teams as soon as the wait time ends, in order to balance professions.

But in this case, players choice pre-match ( maybe in an attempt to counter-comp the opposing team) is just being nullified, taking away any possible player choice.

Basically, it would just become a RNG match, and i’m not sure everyone would agree with this system.

NevirSayDie.6235:

We’ve always known the team queue population was small. The fact that Anet is actively improving PvP regardless says a lot about their commitment to the game.

We can point fingers wherever we want, but I’m not sure what the purpose of that would be. If the game is fun, play it. If not, play something else and ghost the forums to berate the devs, I guess.

Expectations.

Some people really spent tons of time for this game, with the hope of it being the “next e-sport” ( we all know this game has the best combat mechanic ever created) and for the chance of being a “pro”, having fans and playing a competitive game.

The game has progressively been dumbed down, people had ( and still have, but it seems it will change in the near future) no reason whatsoever to play PvP aside “fun” ( something you get tired of quickly, reason why hotjoin is full of players and tPvP is a ghost town); couple these 2 things and you know why in NA nobody plays and why here in EU it’s really not that better.

I wanted this game to succeed, but by seeing current numbers, i think it’s really too late right now.

I’ll still play it because i find it “fun”, but it’s really sad that Gw2 has lost the chance to become the greatest ever, because it had ( at the beginning, before devs started dumbing down the game to spam and no skill) everything it needed to succeed.

train lost, it seems.

I really hope the rewards rehaul will be able to do something , but at this point, i think it’s really too late.

Sad ( on a side note, it’s not any better in EU, having barely 800 people trying PvP in game which sold more than 4 millions copy IT’S NOT FINE AT ALL).

Kaon.7192:

Caffynated.5713:

I haven’t talked with one competent ele who thinks this trait is anything but broken.

The sad thing is, the devs seem to love it and bad players even think 90% is weak or even worthless.

Please rethink this trait.

I hope nobody takes offense to this, but statistically speaking, it is likely that most devs are, in fact, bad players. And this can be reflected in many of the previous balance changes they’ve implemented and their general inability to predict the effects of their changes on the high level competitive meta, as well as their tendency to favor passive, easy to play builds over those with a high skill ceiling.

Its about time they swallowed their pride and started getting input from high level competitive teams on balance changes by letting them test them out in preview servers before releasing them into the wild.

Before this game strays too far from what a competitive game should play like.

From one of my previous posts:

Kaon.7192:

I really don’t think ANet’s internal testers can play at the same level as top-tier competitive teams do in the external meta.

Traditionally, testers are hired based on their professional skills in terms of testing experience, efficiency, and attention to detail, and not solely on their GW2 gameplay ability. Statistically speaking, the number of people who possess both the necessary professional skills as well as the ability to play GW2 at a high level will be relatively few. And to be honest it’s not reasonable to replace testers simply because they’re not top tier players when they can perform their real work flawlessly.

This gap in skill and experience level between internal and external teams can be evident from the last few patches where several changes have had detrimental effects to the competitive meta that ANet was not able to foresee. The fact that passive builds like Healing Signet Warrior, Spirit Ranger, etc have been favored in balance changes over builds with a high skill ceiling is likely also a direct effect of this gap. This gap will only widen, and its effect amplified, as time goes on, because the large majority of competitve players have much more time to play and master the game than internal testers do.

Bottom line is: ANet needs to start consulting top competitive teams and players when making balance changes, and give them access to playable preview builds to get their feedback before release. This is standard practice in game development for ESport worthy games, and it’s about time ANet started as well.

Powerr and Grouch are indeed good players.

Dunno about other devs.

Fact is this trait sucks balls and should be never implemented.

They should remove AR too.

They’re buffing bunkers to a ridicolous degree, nerfing damage increasing defenses, this game has become so slow and boring, based on condi-spam and bunkering.

as things stand now, 10th december patch will do nothing if not aggravating our balance issues.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Mrbig.8019:

But you have your heals.

Healing turret with blast finishing is one of the best HPS in game ( the best if we do not account 3 clones on Ether Feast or 5+ condies with Consume Conditions).

Healing Turret toolbelt skill grants regen ( every 20secs) and is a water field which can be blast ( and you have 1 always available with shield 4).

Add this to a 3 secs block every 16 secs, shield 5 blocking, flamethrower CCs, shield CCs and magnet pull and you have a beast decapper which won’t be killed 1vs1 by anything.

If there’re 2 power builds they’ll just scratch him. You need a necro+thief in order to proficiently kill him, and NOT in a reasonable amount of time, especially if they run with melandru runes.

Basically i told you my whole build, try it with energy sigils and feel the brokeness.

I think I’ll stick to my builds, but if it works for you, that’s great! I’ve never seen anyone run a flamethrower/toolkit settler’s decapper. Actually have you tried it with soldier’s and rifle? Rifle is much better at decapping, I honestly don’t think you’d notice the lower healing power affecting only your HT/regen, your leap finisher will heal you on a lower cooldown than magnetic inversion, and you’d put out a ton more damage (your burns tick for ~350 instead of ~500 and of course your direct damage will skyrocket). Plus your 25% health threshold would be higher.

That’s the great thing about engineers, there’s so much possibility for theorycrafting and build variety. Yes, energy sigils + perma vigor is ridiculous, so it’s a good thing that’s already getting nerfed on the 10th.

But i do not want more damage, my build is solely focused on CCing out of the point and surviving ( something hardly achievable without tool kit and tool kit trait).

Shield gives you plenty of defensive options you would lose with rifle, plus you would lose pistol blinds.

Damage is decent already, plus it’s condi damage. CCs are all AoE ( forcing even 2-3 people out of the point if you time them well) and healing is decent thanks to points spent in inventions.

That’s basically an all-in-one build focused on bunkering: it’s basically like an off-point guardian with more survivability, CCs, mobility and damage, but less group support.

Natural role → decapper.

Builds such this create huge imbalances, if you do not bring multiple source of damage ( DD and condi) this build won’t go down even when focused by 2 players.

Altough this is sintomatic of the fact that there’s no more enough damage in the game ( aside condies, countered by AR alone).

Devs should think about the reason why such builds are now viable: in the past running such kind of engies would have been crazy.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Mrbig.8019:

A settler’s engi is a bunker engi. If you run with toolkit-flamthrower-elixir C you’re a beast which can’t be nuked in any way, especially since you take so little damage when CCed ( that is the perfect time to spike) that you can’t really be brought down. Once you get low, you only take damage via power ( which can be easily blocked-dodged) and are up again to heal and facetank.

Bunker engi is really strong, really really strong as a side point assaulter.

Actually even better than the already semi-OP bomb engi.

Maybe. I’d find it odd to take settler’s without any skills that heal, but to each his own.

I was just trying to say that the entire thread is really focused on AR—no one has a problem with toolkit block or flamethrower. And as I said, I’m fine with nerfing AR on point assault builds or any other kind of build. It’s just not what I thought the thread was about.

But you have your heals.

Healing turret with blast finishing is one of the best HPS in game ( the best if we do not account 3 clones on Ether Feast or 5+ condies with Consume Conditions).

Healing Turret toolbelt skill grants regen ( every 20secs) and is a water field which can be blast ( and you have 1 always available with shield 4).

Add this to a 3 secs block every 16 secs, shield 5 blocking, flamethrower CCs, shield CCs and magnet pull and you have a beast decapper which won’t be killed 1vs1 by anything.

If there’re 2 power builds they’ll just scratch him. You need a necro+thief in order to proficiently kill him, and NOT in a reasonable amount of time, especially if they run with melandru runes.

Basically i told you my whole build, try it with energy sigils and feel the brokeness.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Well, at first I thought this was a thread about actual full-bunker engineers, which confused me since no one really runs them. But I think it’s really just about AR, so that’s no problem, we can nerf that definitely without harming fun, creative engineer builds.

I’d also recommend toning down some necro condi flips or consume conditions, since apart from AR condi necro hardcounters condi engineer. Since we are talking about reducing hardcounters in general, which I am all for, it would only make sense.

A settler’s engi is a bunker engi. If you run with toolkit-flamthrower-elixir C you’re a beast which can’t be nuked in any way, especially since you take so little damage when CCed ( that is the perfect time to spike) that you can’t really be brought down. Once you get low, you only take damage via power ( which can be easily blocked-dodged) and are up again to heal and facetank.

Bunker engi is really strong, really really strong as a side point assaulter.

Actually even better than the already semi-OP bomb engi.

Yes.

End of the story.

Alissah.9281:

kirito.4138:

1 thief is good because they have high mobility and can decap points fast. Having any more would be a negative to the team.

Were talking about the average solo Q person, of average skill/kmowledge etc.

Most thieves I see just roll around and die randomly kill people in mid or close fights.

Maybe Im just unlucky and meet the wron people :P

Btw, you cant make professions negative points, because t makes the math weird :P
By the OP’s numbers, a single ranger can win vs 5 thieves

We put negative numbers in order to show they’re a hindarance.

An ele in this meta is just giving points to the other team for stomping, no matter how skilled he is.

At least thieves and mesmers can be useful to a certain degree.

Simplicity.7208:

…of a Solo Queue match.

• Guardians = +5
• Rangers = +3
• Necromancer = +3
• Warriors = +2
• Engineers = +2
• Mesmer = -1
• Elementalist = -2
• Thief = -4
• AFK Person = -5

The team with the highest # wins. It’s not 100%, but it’s pretty accurate, and if there’s a large disparity between the teams’ #s it will not even be close. Not even by a little bit.

Try it out. Tell me if I can tweak some numbers. This is what I’ve been doing before matches, and usually I’m right. It only goes wrong when you have a really terrible guardian/warrior/necro/engie or a really good thief/mes/ele…but since skill is rare it usually holds up.

nah, it’s more

War + 4
Guard +4
Spirit rangers +4
Engi +3
Necro +3

Mesmer + 0
Thief + 0
Afk guy -4
Ele -5

Narcarsis.5739:

Mrbig.8019:

Yeha, so strong that you’ll have basically no chance to win a 1vs1 against any meta class and will need to run away as soon as you meet one.

SUPASTRONK.

Mesmer is already better. After 10th december it will be obviously better.

If you can’t win 1v1s then that’s a player skill issue. The class has to tools to win a 1v1 if you outplay the other person. Yea, not exactly the best counter argument I know: Oh just outplay them. However, you have the ability to win just about every 1v1 IF you don’t mess up. Not easy to do, but possible. Saying the class sucks because you can’t win a 1v1 is pure ignorance, and even if that was the case there are several classes (such as necro) who build for team fights (losing several 1v1s) and are still more than viable.

sigh i don’t want to start arguments with you again.

Outplaying is not a good argument, you said it.

If you need to OUTPLAY it means your prof is not on par. Moreover, there’re classes you simply can’t beat.

A team must think about all these stuff. A necro ( built for teamfight) is strong 1vs1 against most classes with few counters and can handle multiple players for quite some time with plague form and blind spam.

A thief, even an acro one, won’t be able to do such thing without losing the point.

Currently thieves are not in a good place because team, in EU, start stacking bunkerish builds you can’t bring down.

In top EU solo queue all you see is wars-engies-spirit rangers-necros with some random off guard.

Against such comps thieves are borderline useless and if meta shifts towards this way, we’ll been outclassed in any possible way.

This is just a fact, i even dunno why we’re arguing: ini regen buff won’t help burst thief sustain against condi spam, so we’re left with 2 subpar option instead of only D/P trickery being subpar.

I want to believe i’ll be viable, i know i won’t.

Even if i can outplay my opponents, my contribution will be very minimal when compared to other classes.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Mrbig.8019:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Excalibur.9748:

I forsee bunker meta (which is really no change). Warrior will still be heavily used.

Thief will be dead, the role can be filled by a warrior.

Thief will always be viable. It just has stuff other classes dont have. So will always be decent and playable.

Running a thief simply for shadow refuge, after 10th december balance patch, would be plainly idiotic and absurd, since the thief won’t be effective anymore.

Not just for that. it will still be decent. Really. Just the mobility helps alot. Good damage. Stealth. Its a strong class inherently.

Yeha, so strong that you’ll have basically no chance to win a 1vs1 against any meta class and will need to run away as soon as you meet one.

SUPASTRONK.

Mesmer is already better. After 10th december it will be obviously better.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Excalibur.9748:

I forsee bunker meta (which is really no change). Warrior will still be heavily used.

Thief will be dead, the role can be filled by a warrior.

Thief will always be viable. It just has stuff other classes dont have. So will always be decent and playable.

Running a thief simply for shadow refuge, after 10th december balance patch, would be plainly idiotic and absurd, since the thief won’t be effective anymore.

Darnis.4056:

Stop crying guys, we’re giving you free legendaries, Pvp Rewards Fixed
~John Peters.(Not Really)

Next meta I predict we’re going to see a strong showing of Mesmer/ApexSinceReleaseStillGettingBuffedGuard/Necro/Engi/0skillBM Ranger type groups.

Meta Warrior will rotate to M/S GS build probably…
Just joking about mesmers though; probably still gonna be a warrior in that slot.
Unless they rotate to Condi instead of M/s Gs and then what’s the point of bringing em?

They don’t freaking die.

That’s the reason.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Ezrael.6859:

Oh god the Looking ahead GW2 in 2013 post is so depressing to read again now.

The addition of new skills and traits on a regular basis will of course mean expanded variety of abilities, builds, and tactics in PvP as well.

This just never happened. An entire year, and nothing.

2013 – The stale condition meta with a smattering of Warriors.

Are you talking about tpvp? Because there is no way you can call this a condition meta unless you are way out of touch. It is the warrior meta. Having 2-3 warriors makes the game easy mode. Imagine you are playing with classes such as warrior, thief and spirit ranger. ALL are VERY HARD to kill. And yet all put out insane damage/cc/buffs.

When you run a comp with these classes it really is easy mode vs anyone who doesnt run a comp like this. You can play to win 500-0 and you will win 500-0 alot with these classes.

Because rotations become easy. You can snowball onto far point and make them fight there. If they push another point you have a warrior/ranger there. Who win 1v1 alot and yet can survive for some time vs 2 people too. Then you can rotate your guardian back and have a team fight on that point. The warrior/ranger have everything. And thief will always be strong, whatever build is used. Because it is mobile and have stealth/evasion.

So imagine you have a warrior/ranger/thief team. You can press all 3 points every single game. And it is really hard to counter. In fact the only counter is to press 3 points yourself. But then the game becomes spread out. And then you are fighting 1 on 1 vs a warrior. Which nobody can win. Or 2 on 2 vs a warrior and spirit ranger. All whilst they can easily support the fight with a 3rd person if necessary.

So the meta is a “god mode” meta. Spirit rangers and warriors are god mode. And easy to play. If you run a necro it is easy to kill because it is slow and no evasion. So when you push far to snowball a game it is a big risk because the necro can easily die and leave you in big trouble. Same with other classes like ele and mesmer without portal or mass invis.

These classes, espicially warrior, do everything. Best in 1v2. Best in team fights. Best 1 on 1. Very fast. So currently in tourny queue there is alot of not close games between teams with similar skilled players purely due to composition.

Please tell me who runs a thief aside Cheese mode here in EU.

They already said they’ll drop thief as soon as 10th december balance patch hits.

It’s really silly for you, as a necro, to complain about this situation.

condi bunkers meta, obviously

Pretty much at random times.

Pingtest shows my ping is 15m/s, so it’s not a ping problem.

Sad part i made my team lose twice because of me Q_Q

Justin ODell.9517:

Mrbig.8019:

snip

We do the range filtering already, but we could turn off, or slow down, the growth of ratings deviation over time. That’s a very plausible solution, but like you said it could mean some players would never get a match because there simply aren’t enough players online in their range.

In my experience range filtering barely works.

I ( as a top 200 ) have been put with people HIGLY BELOW my “possible” range, sometimes with a full team with no no one in the ladder against full teams of top 100.

In other cases it was completely the opposite.

With the new matchmaking it has been slightly better, but still i get people A LOT lower than my rating.

Again, this is a population issue above all, there’s very little you can fix, aside people desire to play.

So i’m sure the best bet is to rehaul the reward sistem asap.

that’s not always true.

I was in a match with Xerrex and since all the classes i’ve been used to have become cheesy and unskillful ( i’m only left with my thief right now) i’m now trying to learn mesmer ( that i obviously don’t play at max, and not on par with my ladder rank).

He gave me advices without being rude and he carried me all the match.

Top players should be also top guys, otherwise they can kitten themselves.

When i’m on my thief and i got bad teammates i always try to carry them without saying a word.

Justin ODell.9517:

This is a very complex subject. Please feel free to share your ideas on how to improve things.

Elo range is the only possible thing.

basically matchmaking should never put teams aside their elo range.

For example:

matchamking should alway pick up from a pool a players ranged 0-200, then 200-400-than 400-600 and so on.

Of course this is just a numerical number, elo would be something like 1300-1450 then 1450-1600 and so on.

The issue gets complicated due to poor population: in a perfect world with tons of players, current system would be fine.

Point is that elo range is also possible only with high population.

Dunno how to solve, sincerely.

If you put elo range now, queues for top 200 players would basically never start if not at prime time.

Forsaker.9213:

i feel like its better but still….

for example got Ultima Deus guys on my team last 5 games and he was afk in every game :P

I lol’d ( i was in some of these games too)

Grouch, threads like this really show there’s a huge lack of PvP “intro” for Gw2.

People enter and have no idea what to do, how the game works, how they can become better, if they’re doing things right or wrong and all the following.

Please consider giving new players a good way to learn how to PvP, because it causes massive frustration for both good PvPer when they meet total newbies in solo queue ( the first thing they see, ABOVE ALL) and for new players, due to being ganked by good players without even knowing what happened.

Really, consider this.

shimmerless.4560:

Thief isn’t badly designed at all. If anything Thief is one of the classes that closest matches the original design philosophy of anticipating and reacting to incoming attacks instead of simply playing a numbers game.

There are also Thief specs that can take a phenomenal amount of punishment (Dagger, not Sword) but unfortunately they’ll be gutted come December.

“respecting desing phylosophy” doesn’t mean it’s well designed.

Engi is well designed.
Guard is well designed.
Mesmer is well designed ( but could be improved).
Necro is well designed ( but could be improved)
Ele is well designed ( but has been gutted too much by nerfs and other classes power creeping).

Ranger is horribly designed.

Thief is horribly designed.

In thief case, it’s because we lack tools, we’ve been playing with the same build-utilities from headstart, the rest is trash ( traps, tricks and pre-buff signets).

We have no defensive tools, we have to stack full damage in order to be decent damage dealers, our condi builds are a joke, venom share is patethic and gimmicky ( especially now with immo stacking).

How can you say we’re well designed is beyond me.

muscarine.5136:

Mrbig.8019:

muscarine.5136:

EverythingEnds.4261:

I actually saw yesterday some kind of Bunker/condi/aoe/ thief in solo queue ^^
He was using caltrops, daggerstorm, smokescreen and Leaping Death Blossom.
Dide quite well.
Of course he had not that much sustain like a “real” bunker, but still.

But to be honest, when I was fighting him, my thoughts were “So, has PvP rly become so low, that even thiefes are now playing aoe condi spam?”

Yea, that would be me.

I only lack on demand stability and i can join the cheesy wagon.

I’m Vanh, you played against me somedays ago ( the match was on spirit watch). I play S/D thief and we had 2 1vs1 where i killed you in less than 20 secs.

That build is ineffective, i appreciate the effort but bunker thief is not viable ( not the way you play it, at least).

Simple kiting and your main way to heal ( Caltrops) is totally negated.

I would say that thief is barely viable in current meta ( even cheese S/D thief) and we seriously have a problem with current meta builds overall.

Tanky builds deal too much dps, that’s the problem.

Untanky builds have to totally outplay their opponents in order to win ( and the only untanky builds being decent are GS-Staff mesmer and S/D thief).

Current state of game is based on slow TTK and neuts due to too high sustained damage.

Thanks god i’ve very little time to play due to IRL issues, at least i’m not raging.

I appreciate your input, but next time let’s have a fight where i’m not actually busy reading flamers on my chat.

No offense but if you did pay attention i was on autorun most of the fight.

On the other hand i wasn’t saying it’s like the ultimate build or anything, i’m just trying out something else than S/D after months of rolling it, and this particular build may actually benefit from the so called “ini buff”.

We had a very clear 1vs1 fight at raven.

It took me 20 secs or slightly more to bring you down.

If you want to try a bunker, you should try S/P cleric, at least you’ll have pistol whip for evading ranged damage.

You’ll still lack condi cleanse, thief is overall not made for bunker builds due to how ridicolously BAD this class had been designed.

I don’t want to sound rude, but just leave thief, we’re not on par in current meta unless you play uber good ( in that case you’ll just be “slightly subpar” ).

BakiSaN.9281:

Mrbig.8019:

muscarine.5136:

EverythingEnds.4261:

I actually saw yesterday some kind of Bunker/condi/aoe/ thief in solo queue ^^
He was using caltrops, daggerstorm, smokescreen and Leaping Death Blossom.
Dide quite well.
Of course he had not that much sustain like a “real” bunker, but still.

But to be honest, when I was fighting him, my thoughts were “So, has PvP rly become so low, that even thiefes are now playing aoe condi spam?”

Yea, that would be me.

I only lack on demand stability and i can join the cheesy wagon.

I’m Vanh, you played against me somedays ago ( the match was on spirit watch). I play S/D thief and we had 2 1vs1 where i killed you in less than 20 secs.

That build is ineffective, i appreciate the effort but bunker thief is not viable ( not the way you play it, at least).

Simple kiting and your main way to heal ( Caltrops) is totally negated.

I would say that thief is barely viable in current meta ( even cheese S/D thief) and we seriously have a problem with current meta builds overall.

Tanky builds deal too much dps, that’s the problem.

Untanky builds have to totally outplay their opponents in order to win ( and the only untanky builds being decent are GS-Staff mesmer and S/D thief).

Current state of game is based on slow TTK and neuts due to too high sustained damage.

Thanks god i’ve very little time to play due to IRL issues, at least i’m not raging.

Untanky build that qualifies in your argument is also a glass fresh-air ele. Higher skillfloor than both you mentioned.

When did eles become viable ?

They said S/D thieves were keeping eles out from the meta, now that nobody plays thief anymore, it’s WARRIORS AND NECROS who are keeping eles out from the meta.

Why don’t we start taking a look at eles ( since they was nerfed so hard it’s not even funny) instead of complaining about thieves ?

S/D thief has an high skill cap altough low skill floor. All current meta builds aside engies ( rangers-necros-wars) can be used even by a dumb monkey.

Still it’s thieves which will be nerfed HARDER than them.

The already “weak” thieves.

Nice balance here, gimme some more.

muscarine.5136:

EverythingEnds.4261:

I actually saw yesterday some kind of Bunker/condi/aoe/ thief in solo queue ^^
He was using caltrops, daggerstorm, smokescreen and Leaping Death Blossom.
Dide quite well.
Of course he had not that much sustain like a “real” bunker, but still.

But to be honest, when I was fighting him, my thoughts were “So, has PvP rly become so low, that even thiefes are now playing aoe condi spam?”

Yea, that would be me.

I only lack on demand stability and i can join the cheesy wagon.

I’m Vanh, you played against me somedays ago ( the match was on spirit watch). I play S/D thief and we had 2 1vs1 where i killed you in less than 20 secs.

That build is ineffective, i appreciate the effort but bunker thief is not viable ( not the way you play it, at least).

Simple kiting and your main way to heal ( Caltrops) is totally negated.

I would say that thief is barely viable in current meta ( even cheese S/D thief) and we seriously have a problem with current meta builds overall.

Tanky builds deal too much dps, that’s the problem.

Untanky builds have to totally outplay their opponents in order to win ( and the only untanky builds being decent are GS-Staff mesmer and S/D thief).

Current state of game is based on slow TTK and neuts due to too high sustained damage.

Thanks god i’ve very little time to play due to IRL issues, at least i’m not raging.