Guild Wars 2

The new matchmaking is working and is a significant upgrade from the last system, but people’s MMRs are inaccurate due to the previous issues. Also, there aren’t many people queueing solo right now, because the new matchmaker is harder on people at the top than the old one. So good players are just waiting it out rather than let their MMR fall to a more accurate level.

Amstel Steel.2058:

It can scale to a little over 5 seconds on the training npcs in spvp but in matches it does a little over 3 seconds.

There’s a bug that makes the heart of the mists act as a PvE zone. Basically, you can use +40% duration food and dhuumfire is a base 3 seconds there. In PvP, it is mathematically impossible to get dhuumfire over 3 seconds, and just getting it up to 3 seconds takes quite a bit of gear.

Ezrael.6859:

From ONE Scepter auto-attack chain- 4 stacks of Bleeding for 8 seconds. 6 seconds of Burning and 5 seconds of Poison. That’s 1992 + 2556 + 615.

Actually, scepter 1 applies a single 4-second bleed. Dhuumfire is a 2-second burn. I understand your frustration, but please try to research a bit before calling for nerfs.

Yeah, better streamlining for new players is a topic that’s being discussed a lot right now.

“Hotjoins” are both custom arenas and regular quick-join matches. They are the third tab in the PvP window, and are accessed by clicking “Play now.” You will have a chance to spectate before being thrown into a fight. You can also scroll through a list of rooms and manually select one if you want, but clicking “play now” will make the game attempt to place you with other new players. (Experienced players can still manually join the room you’re in, so it doesn’t always work).

Solo and team arenas are the second tab on the PvP window. Yes, you should feel comfortable with the maps and some other basics before trying these.

Mapchat is tough on some servers because PvP is cross-server, and not every server has a very active PvP population. Even if there are a lot of PvPers on your server, it’s likely they don’t go to the heart of the mists very often, since you can join a PvP match from anywhere in the game. So a lot of people only go to the HotM when they want to try a new build. And of course, even those that do go to the HotM will only be there in between matches, so it may appear empty.

pedrst.3127:

Reduce the base damage of condition… make condition “crit” similar to direct hits. If you want to deal good condition damage you’ve to invest in condition damage, precision & crit damage, else if you go for the regular “lol i only need to invest in condition dmg for deeps, rest i spend in tanky stats” you shouldn’t deal to much damage. Something like that. Also make weakness impact on the condition damage as well. After those changes which are only fair, then it’ll be fine.

I see this suggestion a lot and the issue I have with it is that currently, the most popular condition builds use rabid amulet (condition damage, precision, toughness). So making conditions able to “crit” wouldn’t change the popular builds at all, but would absolutely demolish every niche build that uses settler’s or carrion.

Nova Stiker.8396:

The point is:

• No matter how the enemy responds, evades, blocks or go invisible. You are doing damage that pure based builds would miss. If you don’t miss, you simply do more damage.

I want to address this because it’s a common misconception on the forums. Condition skills must land to do damage, just like power skills. Evades, blocks, and stealths function exactly the same in mitigating both types of damage.

i.e. if you block eviscerate, it does no damage. If you block shrapnel grenade, it does no damage. The only reason it looks like condition skills are different is that you take the damage after the skill lands, so it feels like you can’t dodge the damage.

tl;dr you can dodge conditions, just not after they hit you, which is the same as power attacks.

JinDaVikk.7291:

2:the bunker engi… ISN’T viable. Sorry nevir. (btw if you want to talk to one find Anabolly)

The decap from engis come from running rifle. ANY engi can use that. No reason to be a bunker 2. (which btw isnt a bunker just tanky. They die 1v2 very quickly)

Heheh I know, but I keep trying to make it work because it’s a very fun, actively defensive playstyle. Someday I’ll convince a team to let me try it out in a teamqueue, but it hasn’t happened yet, so I just do bombs/nades there.

And apparently at least one person thinks its OP! Which is surprising since top players like yourself agree bunker engi isn’t viable.

Nanashi.5704:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Thieves in downed state are elusive,

No they’re not. The only time they’re “elusive” is when they get killed by a non channeled ranged attack the delivers the killing blow right after they go into stealth giving them time to use their teleport and stack the stealth. If you’re getting tricked by a visible thief in the down state you’re doing something wrong.

Right, I was actually attempting to state that the thief downed state was not too strong/frustrating, and that it fit with their playstyle.

Rarnark.5623:

I made it to rank 14 on the solo ladder, then i got four 4v5’s in a row vs players off the LB’s. Now I’m out of the top 100.

Done with solo until the game works.

Wow, what time were you queuing? I’ve never heard of anything that bad happening at the top of the leaderboard.

I agree that things are rough atm. Matchmaking is much better but a lot of people aren’t playing to keep their ratings high from the old system, and in off-hours the matchmaker has to cast a really wide net, which is never a good thing. If these matches happened in prime time, my guess would be two accounts with a deliberate sync/afk.

K U T M.4539:

Illusions.3108:

I do well with Mesmer in sPVP, but engineer i cannot figure out how to do it?? Any tips?? I like condition builds but i know sPVP doesnt really offer that.

1/10

got the one because the op didnt give it away

Except it was an honest question from a new player…

To the OP: yes, engineers take quite a bit of practice before they start feeling powerful. Hit me up in game if you want to see how a few different builds work and how to start to get a feel for them.

Condition builds are probably our best in PvP right now, usually with bombs, grenades, or both. We do very well with rabid amulet because of all of our conditions (condition damage), the Incendiary powder trait in the explosives line (precision procs that) and because we have good healing (toughness compliments healing well).

A good build to learn on is HGH grenades: it’s 30/0/0/30/10. Take incendiary powder, enhance performance, and grenadier in explosives, all the elixir traits in alchemy, and speedy kits in tools. Use elixir H, B, and S, as well as grenades and two pistols. It’s probably not the absolute strongest build we have, but it’s effective, plus it’s a good way to get comfortable with grenades, kit swapping, etc.

I know a lot about engineer bunkers, so I can tell you how to beat them if you want. But I’m guessing that’s not what this thread is looking for.

I have no issue with nerfing automated response, since apparently people think it’s good. Healing turret is also a good heal skill, maybe about as strong as healing spring in terms of overall usefulness (lower CD/higher hps, shorter water field/fewer conditions removed).

Honestly though, threads like this need to stop. When we exaggerate things (“X takes no skill/horribly OP/needs massive nerfs”) one of two things happens:

1. Anet ignores the feedback because it’s obviously not constructive
2. Worse, Anet takes some of the suggestions and we get stuff like the dhuumfire patch or the current state of warriors

Also, I must remind the OP that the meta will get shaken to the core on Dec. 10th, so calling for nerfs before we even get a chance to see what meta emerges is an overall bad idea.

Lastly, can you please give me the name of one of these bunker engineers? I’ve always wanted to meet another one.

cymerdown.4103:

Valentin.2073:

guardians and spirit rangers are pretty much the same, IMO.

That is now quoted for all eternity, no backsies.

Quoted for use of the word “backsies.” Nice.

Just trying to clear something up—I believe when people talk about balancing “for PvP,” they usually mean as opposed to WvW, not PvE. For example, hammer warriors were already pretty good in zergs at the beginning of 2013, but warriors still got buffs over the year because they used to be so weak in tournaments. Some of the buffs were too much/unnecessary, but the point is they were receiving buffs specifically because of the tournament game mode, as they were pretty much fine everywhere else (except for maybe solo/small group roaming in WvW).

Edit: I just mean that it’s not true that professions are balanced for PvE, and I don’t think anyone in the thread was saying they should be.

a t s e.9614:

Downed state is just useless in my opinion , shouldn’t even exist in PvP . It’s a complete joke , why you have to be half dead to start using the most annoying skills ever made ? Good luck on stomping rangers,thieves,engis . I wouldnt even call it a downed state , it’s a troll state.

Thieves in downed state are elusive, just like when they’re up. Rangers have a strong downed state but nothing that blind/stability/invulnerability won’t fix. Engineers have two cc skills, but the timers are the same as every other profession’s downed skills, i.e. if you let the engineer get to his knockback, it’s the same amount of time as letting a warrior get to his vengeance.

Qaelyn.7612:

As a relatively new player (1 month) and very new PvPer (a few days) I will tell you that I do NOT think this is the real issue.

In PvP the other players are the content. That’s the point. It’s supposed to be something that doesn’t get stale because every player is different.

From my personal experience the issues are:

1. Class balance issues and abusive builds that don’t get fixed fast enough. I know there’s a patch coming up but it seems to be making very minor changes.

2. The entire PvP system is incredibly daunting and intimidating to a newbie. You get dumped in with little fanfare, and it’s very hard to get to a point where you aren’t getting your butt handed to you constantly. I’d imagine many people just find it too difficult and confusing and go back to PvE.

ETA: The only reason I am even giving PvP a chance is because of the even playing field. In fact, I’ve gamed for years and GW2 is the only place I’ve been willing to give PvP a chance, for that reason, and because most of the players seem nice (so I’m less likely to get abused.)

Tiered equipment is just even more of a barrier to entry, and would do the opposite of growing PvP.

Cool, very nice to hear a newer PvPer’s perspective on this! I agree that in general, PvP should be more about refining than pumping out new content like PvE is.

We’re seeing some major balance changes coming in early December, so hopefully a lot of the cheese will get toned down. It’s likely that it will take a bit for the dust to settle after such a big patch, but I think it’s going to be a good step in the right direction.

A lot of players and devs have also been talking about better tutorials/training areas. I’d be curious (and I bet some devs would as well) to hear what things would have made trying PvP a little more streamlined for you.

I don’t disagree; however, keep in mind that engineers are already in the mid- to top-tier of balance for PvP.

In other words, a very large buff like giving engineers a kit as a weapon swap in addition to our normal utility slots and toolbelt skills would require a very large nerf in return. I also can’t really agree that our weapons are so much worse than other professions—I would expect that a lot of professions would take our rifle in a heartbeat, and condi specs would love to have our p/p on swap. I agree that they’re not great as stand-alone skillsets, but they’re very good as part of any larger set of skills.

The hobo sacks I can agree with. It’s really a non-issue to me since I don’t RP or really even look at my character in combat, but I know that for some people, watching their character fight is a big deal.

silvermember.8941:

Since that rewards are currently being redone and soon to be unveiled, they could instead focus on making the elementalist a lot better than a free kill.

Whew that conversation just took a u-turn…

I agree, it’s not really that important to discuss rewards since there’s already stuff about to be unveiled. I just thought it was a cool idea and posted because I felt like posting.

We could say the same for balance: the next patch is certainly going to shake the meta considerably, so we shouldn’t really be lobbying for large buffs/nerfs until we see what happens.

Jumper.9482:

A really fun way to do it would be to give a gold reward based on your placement on the ladder.
eg. Split 1-100,101-500,501-1000,1001+ into seperate ‘divisions’. Higher divisions like 1-100 would earn 1G per win, 1001+ would win 10S.

That would actually be really fun, kind of a way of re-creating the excitement of gems for paid tournaments except without the reasons it didn’t work too well back at launch. A win from a high position on the leaderboard would simply be worth more than a win from a lower position.

Condi engineer vs. condi necro is a very tough fight.

Try comboing stealth (smoke bomb + magnetic inversion + acid leap) to get close to the necro for your opening. Necros are good at full range, engineers need melee to mid-range to be effective. I’d get right on top of him, then dump freeze nades on him so you’ll be able to stay in your range throughout the fight, instead of his. Alternatively, you could open with supply crate—1v1s vs. necros warrant using your elite skill every time.

A good fight is something like stealth, freeze nades, poison nades, supply crate, shrapnel nades, BoB, glue bomb, fire bomb, static shield stun+daze or just throw it if he’s trying to heal, static shot, poison dart volley. Basically, stay in control the entire time.

In between, you’ll need to stunbreak doom, dodge as many marks as you can (you don’t want to get hit by any of them), and use super elixir/healing turret.

Ryan.9387:

So ranger warrior engie necro and guardian all get buffs?

Hold on now, ranger’s downed state is at least in the top four. That ranged aoe interrupt, F2, possibility to see a second pet skill, not to mention that downed 3. The list is pretty much like this:

1. Ele
2. Mesmer
3. Thief
4. Ranger
5. Guardian
6. Warrior
7. Engineer
8. Necro

ronpierce.2760:

Just wanted to say, Necro has the worst. It’s effected by all of the above AND our 3 is a friggen poison. Woo. >_>

I agree with that. I’d put engineer and necro at 7 and 8 in terms of downed state effectiveness, but again, it’s not a huge deal and I don’t think either should be changed, especially since necro and engineer are already in a good place even with weak downed states.

juginst.5018:

I haven’t been to PvP for 3 days and have lost 3%… Is it works as it was intended? So, this decay implies that I loose my PvP skill so fast or developers just wanted us to play PvP everyday? I don’t think that forcing a player to play is a good idea, because that is where the fun ends. Let people do their own things, take rest and than they will happily return to GW2. I have nothing against decay but delay after which it turns on should be really longer then 2 hours or just decay shoul be slower (you can make it gradually speeding up after some periods).
I thought the leaderboard is supposed to show the relative level of the player’s skill, not the playing frequency.

Right now, the decay is temporary. In other words, the next match you play will restore the 3% you lost plus raising your MMR even more if you win.

Decay is important because it’s never good when playing hurts your rating. Over the last few months, issues with matchmaking have led to a lot of players achieving a much higher win % than should be possible. Now that the issues are fixed, those players are more likely to move down than up if they play, which is one of the main reasons a lot of the top players simply aren’t queuing right now. That in turn hurts matchmaking, because the number of people queuing isn’t always large enough to guarantee a close, exciting match.

I’d also like to see something that would keep the numbers even in hotjoin, I think it would go a long way toward making those matches meaningful. The bottom line is, people zerg around in hotjoin because winning/losing just doesn’t seem very meaningful there. I think it could definitely work to have a gating system to where people would only be allowed to join the match in pairs, keeping the teams even all the time (unless one person leaves, in which case the next person to die on the winning team would have to wait to respawn).

Engineer has one of the weakest downstates, even with the two cc abilities. However, I don’t think it needs to be changed. Remember what happened last year when eles got their downed state 2 and 3 reversed right when people figured out how good eles were?

OP: engineers are a pretty strong profession in tournaments atm. We may not be as mandatory as a guardian or as easymode as a hambow warrior, but people fear us, for good reason. The engineer subforum is filled with people who sincerely believe that engineers are very weak, but the same is true of all 7 other profession subforums.

In other words, people in the forums are absolutely, dead wrong much of the time. That includes this PvP forum as well

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

NevirSayDie,
well, i’m sure they (anet PvP team) have the actual figures.

i will do more quick actual surveys (i.e. add up the numbers from screen shots) from different time and many days and post up my results.

so far, the “play now” is still bugged to favor shoving players into 8 vs 8 servers until further notice.

and yes, i can only count hotjoin since there is no public way to count arena matches.
however, i heard that the queue times for solo / team arena games are horribly long. please correct me if i am wrong.

Apologies, I didn’t communicate very well. I meant that if hotjoin were made better, the total number of players would be much higher (and so the current percentage would lose significance).

Solo/team queues are actually pretty fast. I don’t usually play in the morning/afternoon, but in evenings I’d say depending on your matchmaking level, you could expect a 1-5 minute wait for solo queue. Team queues are actually sometimes instant.

If I were you, I’d go one of two routes: either focus on decapping the point and surviving 1v1/1v2 indefinitely (and then escaping), or focus on forcing the opponent off the point due to overwhelming area damage. I’ve played both styles, and they can both work in solo queue.

If you want to force your opponent off, you’ll really need that bomb/nade combo. I prefer elixir gun as my third utility when I take that route, but you could potentially make several other options work.

If you want to knock your opponent silly and then refuse to die, I recommend rifle/bomb/elixir gun. Your third can be flamethrower if you really want to be sure you get the decap very easily, or it can be toolkit, elixir C, or Elixir S if you feel you can get the decap just with bombs/rifle and you just want more survivability.

I love seeing eles on my team, because people usually don’t take an ele into solo queue unless they’re good.

kaikalii.4198:

So, I had never played LoL before, but a friend of mine wanted me to to try it and play with him. After playing a few games, I realized…it doesn’t hold a candle to GW2 PvP. Given, I was only high level enough to fight bots, but I cannot imagine it being much better against real people. The combat is incredibly clunky compared to GW2. You can’t even use a skill until you’ve stopped moving. With the minions everywhere, I felt like I was fighting 2 or 3 MMs the entire time. Also, 6 skills, most of which have very long cooldowns, does not make for very interesting gameplay.

Now, if this were just some game, I would understand, but as I understand it, LoL is one of the most if not the most popular esports games, yet I can’t imagine playing it while GW2 exists. GW is so much more dynamic and interesting, mainly due to the necessity of mobility, skill choice, and timing in battle.

I haven’t really played any games competitively other than GW2, so I’m probably extremely biased, but is this really the best the rest of PvP gaming has to offer? If LoL gets several times more fun against actual people, then I guess I should just try it more, but if not, then I don’t really understand why people complain so much about GW. Sure, it has it problems, a lot of which seem to be ignored by the devs or take a very long time to fix, but would you really rather play a different game with far more tiresome, clunky combat?

Just a note: please don’t put me down for inexperienced with other games and still judging them. I know that LoL is not a representative of every other game. If my conclusions seem misguided, please let me know your opinion.

I agree with you. GW2 pvp has a ton of really exciting, well-designed stuff. I haven’t played LoL, but I know I wouldn’t enjoy it as much as GW2 because of all the stuff you said. It’s a great game in its own way, but personally, I know it’s not for me.

Keep in mind that people also spend millions of hours playing farmville and CoD, so I think it has more to do with people than the games themselves.

You could say the same about LoL: sure, they’ve done some great things with the moba genre and it’s a well-polished game. But at the end of the day, they have those numbers because they figured out how to tap into a massive number of people who enjoy that type of game, not because the game itself is inherently that amazing.

There are way more people who enjoy a game like CoD or LoL than that enjoy a game like GW2, so direct comparisons will never be fair. As an extreme example, it would be like comparing a single McDonald’s store to a deep-dish Chicago pizza place. I mean, sure, the Micky D’s has more customers, but…you get the idea.

Remember that the leaderboards aren’t based on a strict win/loss ratio, nor do you gain a set amount of rank per win. The reason there can be people higher than you with a worse w/l is that they had to play vs. higher-ranked opponents, especially before the patch when the higher ranks were often on the same team. For example, playing matches vs. stacked teams and winning 50% of them got a lot of people pretty high on the leaderboards.

Since the matchmaker has received a huge upgrade, the leaderboards will be reset at the end of November. If you start off with a win % similar to what you have now, you’ll find yourself very high on the new leaderboards.

Also, keep in mind that the OP’s quick survey only counted those currently in hotjoin.

It’s very likely that the total numbers would be far higher if 5v5 hotjoins were more prominent and the system were tweaked a bit to try to keep numbers even.

Any balance of stats will work for leveling; power is fastest, in general. Bomb kit is probably the highest damage kit at early levels.

The best thing you can do is just try stuff. It’s not hard to see what the med kit does, just use a skill point on it and find out! Spoiler: sorry, it’s impossible to be a dedicated healer by throwing medkit bandages.

ronpierce.2760:

Yes, the numbers would have to be looked at, the 30% was a rough estimate, not something to take to the bank. but essentially settlers would work more like Soldiers or clerics, not an amulet to do it all in one (tank, heal and dps).

which settler’s builds do you feel are OP?

This would be a very large change, and very large changes usually cause very large imbalance until the numbers get tweaked to be exactly right. 30% + 25% + x% (from resistance) is a lot of reduction.

Additionally, carrion and settler’s amulets would be nerfed much harder than rabid. Both of those are already much less popular than rabid.

This would also be a massive buff to toughness, which would remain just as effective as before but would also give 50% of its points to vitality.

google.3709:

Wintel.4873:

Too hard to predict the meta with all the incoming changes. I was going to say bomb engineers might start getting really annoying but their survivability is getting a slight nerf and their big condi trait is also getting moved deeper into bomb tree.

you mean bomb engi with healing trait ? nah :p on clerics amulets bombs will heal for 240, with 50% that’s only 360 heal on a maxed out healing build, engineer bunkers, ain’t nobody got time for that

Actually it’s only the scaling that’s getting increased by 50%, not the base healing—and the scaling was previously (I believe) the lowest in the game, coming in at 0.1. The new scaling should be 0.15.

So after the patch, with 1000 healing power, each bomb will heal for 50 additional hitpoints.

Darnis.4056:

The problem with condition builds is that they are apex builds right now, and they should never be.

1v1 masters, Team Fight Best friends, Expert Point assaulter and great Point bunker ALL at the same time..

This is why Engi/Warrior/Ranger are so overpowered atm and imho Anet needs a bigger bat.

Respectfully, that’s not really the definition of an “apex.” Apex means the top of the food chain, nothing able to compete with it. You’ve described all-purpose or jack-of-all-trades builds, but not Apex builds. Midpoint bunker guardian is an apex build—nothing can do its job as well as it can. Other apex or near-apex builds would be hambow warrior, s/d thief, and spirit ranger.

Relentless.7023:

Condis are never going away guys. Even if the good players come back, do you really think they’re gonna pass up getting 3k armor, protection through Forge Runes, and getting 1k condi damage?

Settler’s Undead runes or Settler’s Forge runes are really strong for home node and 1v1s on a variety of classes.

I’m not saying condition builds would go completely away. I’d expect to see comps like 1 teamfight bunker, 1 tanky dps home to mid player, 3 heavy damage builds (probably mesmer/thief/war/necro/ele burst builds).

Mister Fluffkin.7358:

I dont wanna start a qoute aria, but most of the complainings in here are pretty weird:
Some are complaining that they dont have enough condiremove, even with 3 or 4 of them. Of course you havent! There should never ever be anything that completly counters a source of damage. Its like yelling for more heal to outheal every burst.

Others compare condition specs to glass cannons. Compare them to a power build(i.e. soldiers amulett). Glass cannons are supposed to kill fast or die hard, thats what glass cannon stands for. And its a good thing they can be easily get countered by good players(commonly by dodging the stun). Seriously, how sad would a meta with glass cannons be? Its building/negating pressure that makes a fight a good one, stun and kill isnt very exciting in my point of view, nevertheless requiring any sort of “huge skill”.

Just tone done the necros sligthly and remove the only really op trait engies have, “automated response”. Because it exactly does what should never be: Countering a complete source of damage, making him unkillale to certain specs. Then im perfectly fine with the balance between condi and power.

Thanks, that’s essentially what I’ve been trying to say. A guardian should die eventually to heavy sustained damage. An attrition spec should kill a glass cannon if the glass cannon can’t finish off the attrition spec quickly.

An attrition spec should lose to a glass cannon if he can’t survive more than a few seconds. Anyone should die if they eat multiple large damage cooldowns in a row, whether they are power or condition damage.

Yes, there are a few specific skills that are out of whack, such as HS+CI on warrior making s/s longbow too difficult to bring down, or signet of spite on necro. But we should be lobbying for changes to those skills/traits.

Ezrael.6859:

Rarnark.5623:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I could be wrong, but I’d expect a move to heavy burst.

What makes you think that?

He’s a condition meta apologist that tries to deflect attention away from how easy yet overpowered condition application (spam) has become in this game.

Hmm, well that was a bit angry-sounding. I’ve tried to make it clear that I don’t defend any particular builds, especially cheese builds.

I expect a move to burst if good teams start playing or if good players start solo queuing. If that doesn’t happen, yes, it’s possible we’ll see a ton of s/s longbow. I expect that because really good players don’t just roll something because it’s forgiving.

coglin.1867:

NevirSayDie.6235:

The reason a decent condi necro beats a decent condi engineer is the condition flips and consume conditions. A power engi is an even matchup, but for engineers that put out a lot of conditions, necro has the upper hand.

My experience says that just about everything you said here is inaccurate. Calling elixir C a mulligan, lol. It is a condition removal, every class has them. Ours just happens to buff us as well. Calling an above average condition removal, which would be in just about every professions build in WvW, a “mulligan” doesn’t make any sense.

Hmm, well that’s a pretty strong reaction. Yes, it’s a strong condition removal skill. My point was that condi removal is not a condi engineer’s weakness when fighting a condi necro, it’s the flips and difficulty getting meaningful damage to stick to the necro.

I also don’t have trouble vs. necros in WvW, but that’s not the point. The point is that with roughly equal skill level between opponents, such as in an evironment with matchmaking, condi necro does have an advantage vs. condi engi. Again, as I said, power engineers don’t face the same difficulties and fare pretty evenly vs. condi necros.

I could be wrong, but I’d expect a move to heavy burst.

Alissah.9281:

The thing with condition buikds is that thy only need a single wtat (condition damage) to do nearly 100% damage, the rest can go to survivability.

That’s why I asked for settler’s amulet builds, since it’s the only amulet with two defensive stats + condition damage.

I understand the point about rabid, since there’s no direct damage amulet that’s similar (except maybe valkyrie, and that’s only useful to a couple of professions). I wonder if adding a power/prec/toughness amulet would be a big deal? Alternately we could remove toughness on any amulet that’s two other stats were offensive (valks and rabid) so that it became impossible to build a “bruiser” that had decent damage and decent survivability at the same time.

TheGuy.3568:

You can achieve strong DPS in a condi spec even without heavy investment into condition duration due the constant application. Base times are long enough to apply pressure and condis are very cheap to apply.

I could run HGH engineer and just use the base investment in explosives and do some damage. However, if I go 3 kit then application constant and varied I do not need to invest heavily in condi duration. That being said you invest in it and yes your DPS will go up the problem is it is high to start with even without it.

Additionally due to the randomness of application (lots of on crit proc etc) it is very hard nigh impossible to dodge a spike. I still think condi should always have place but much like the idea of not tossing in too much CC with DPS many condi builds are getting the best of both worlds too cheaply.

I meant that very few working condi builds exist without 30% duration. Theoretically you could make a 3-kit condi engi without 30 in explosives, but in reality a build like that doesn’t exist, at least not in any tournament team. There are condi necros without dhuumfire, but most have at least +fear duration an 30 in spite. I simply meant that what you were asking for—that the most effective condition specs would need a lot of +duration—was already true.

Random conditions from procs could theoretically be a problem. However, there are only four that are commonly used: IP, dhuumfire, and the necro 5-point trait, and a chance to proc fear on being hit (can’t remember the rune name atm). Dhuumfire is something like 100 extra damage per second over time, if always landed on a player character (which is actually very hard to do); IP is 200 with the same problem. Both traits are in the neighborhood of sigil of fire in terms of free damage.

Silentshoes.1805:

People vying for rank 1 will only play ever 3-5 days to erase their decay and jump up in ranks.

Lux,

Well, does decay just all go away if you just play again, and lose? Or Do you have to replace the MMR by winning?

It currently goes completely away. The devs have confirmed that to be changing in some form, although they haven’t been allowed to release any details.

I agree with Lux that the potential for the top ranks to only play a game every X days will still exist. However, the difference is that no one will have an inflated win percentage (from syncs, bad MM) that they’re protecting by not playing. Also, theoretically no one will skyrocket to the top of the leaderboard with unmatchable MMRs, because no one will get 11 lucky wins vs. people with perfect records, as happened at the opening of solo leaderboards in august. Someone might go 11-0, but it won’t be vs. other people with inflated MMRs. Meaning that anyone who gets to the top of the leaderboard naturally and wins some matches vs. high-MMR players should pass them even while they remain at 11-0.

tl;dr in August, some people went 11-0 vs. opponents who were also undefeated going into the match. That type of situation should be impossible to repeat.

I think the suggestion is just fine, but honestly I don’t think it would change anything or open up build diversity. Thieves will very rarely get a point neutralized/capped from under them due to stealth, it’s usually due to stepping off point to apply ranged pressure while taking less damage.

As for build diversity, unfortunately that’s very difficult for thieves since any given ability can technically be used any number of times in a row. That’s why every thief has shortbow (blast finishers, mobility, etc).

As unpopular as it would be, unfortunately the best way to give thieves more build diversity would be nerfing shortbow utility and adding buffs to other places.

Apollothirteen.7201:

Necros are hard for engies? You must be kidding me. We have elixir c for condi necros. For fear necros we have toss elixir b and with 30% boon duration (which is in almost every build) we have it for over 5 secs. For power necros we don’t need anything special because they are easy. And don’t get me started on thieves. I kill most of them 1vs1 with my berserker sd build unless i don’t see them coming.

People that say engies suck are noobs that need easy panic buttons (warriors) or don’t know how to spec an engie to be effective.

Elixir C is basically one mulligan, allowing you to mess up vs. a necro and still clean all the conditions off yourself.

The reason a decent condi necro beats a decent condi engineer is the condition flips and consume conditions. A power engi is an even matchup, but for engineers that put out a lot of conditions, necro has the upper hand.

Some good discussion, thanks for keeping it civil and reasonable everyone.

TheGuy.3568:

I think Dec 10th’s balance changes might help but overall condis probably need to be reworked require both condition duration and condi damage for any sort of strong DPS.

Almost all of them already do require both of those.

Yup. A lot of the problems we’re seeing now are residual effects of things that have already been fixed. So after the reset, those things will be gone.

Cynz.9437:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Sword/greatsword warrior is about as fast over distances as thief, but yes, teleports with the orb would be horrible. Infiltrator’s arrow—shadowstep—infiltrator’s arrow—steal and you’re there!

but war does the same thing basically tho

let’s put the fact aside that they are tanky and take no dmg for given period of time

my point was, i agree that if you carry orb you shouldn’t be able to teleport around with it, i just don’t understand why wars allowed to do it or maybe it is just a bug

Think of it this way: even if a warrior uses endure pain, zerker stance, and balanced stance all at the same time, he could theoretically still get stability stripped and stunned/knocked back. There is no way to keep a thief from using shadowstep or steal. Invulnerabilities like mist form or elixir S also drop the orb. In other words, it’s never absolutely impossible to do anything to the orb carrier.

Mobility gaps are an issue though, and when spirit watch first came out, rtl was considered OP on spirit watch.

Avigrus.2871:

Also realise, not every Necro is a condition Necro – i play a power Necro and Doom remains one of my only defensive mechanics besides going into DS and trying to facetank the DPS.

Apologies, I made it sound like signet of spite/doom had seen large buffs. It wasn’t just dhuumfire, it was torment, fixed spectral armor, and dhuumfire at the same time.

But again, the point of the thread isn’t that there are some builds/skill combinations that aren’t exactly awesome gameplay. There are a few ultra-cheesy power and condition builds atm, and several of them are getting adjusted heavily on Dec. 10th. That’s not really the main point of the thread, though.

Sword/greatsword warrior is about as fast over distances as thief, but yes, teleports with the orb would be horrible. Infiltrator’s arrow—shadowstep—infiltrator’s arrow—steal and you’re there!

Ezrael.6859:

That’s just from a standard 2v2 fight in normal solo queue game, but the same can be found in team queue and even 5v5 hotjoin.

Go and spectate any fight involving either an Engineer, Necro, Spirit Ranger, condi Warrior or Mesmer and you can quickly take a screenshot of a condition stack like that.

I don’t think I’ve seen 23 stacks on someone for a very long time. It reminds me of caltrop thieves last year actually. I mean theoretically a couple necros could pump out 23 stacks of bleed to someone very quickly. But that’s purely theoretical, only if no bleed stacks are avoided or cleansed.

brannigan.9810:

Nevir is almost like a paid plant for A-net. You want to talk about negative posts being annoying well these are just as bad in the opposite direction.

You can easily find me talking about things I don’t like as well, such as skyhammer in solo queue, 8v8 hotjoin, signet of spite, cleansing ire, and healing signet. I’m sorry for being too positive. In the future, I’ll try to be much more pessimistic!