Guild Wars 2

All bombs, grenades, and mines from skills or traits count as explosions (even reserve mines, throw mine, evasive powder keg, etc.)

Additionally, bombs that “pulse” an effect like smoke bomb and glue bomb have multiple chances to proc shrapnel.

Shockwave.1230:

It’s that I can always use whatever suits my situation best at will. This means when my opponent swaps weapons, I can always swap to counter them. Someone comes up on me from Range? I can always counterplay them.

Not completely true, actually. Engineer doesn’t really have any ranged kit attacks.

(Exceptions: elixir gun 1; toolkit 5; grenade kit. Grenade kit can be used vs. WvW zergs at full range, but in small encounters in WvW and PvP it has an effective range of 600 units.)

The point is that there’s never a situation like “Oh, I’m being attacked from range. I’ll just swap to my ranged dps kit.” There is no ranged dps kit.

Cygnus.6903:

frans.8092:

Pretty much says it all, if the trait is so good that it is mandatory it is probably too good.

That is one interpretation. Another one is that without this trait, warrior is not viable.

Judging by what viable warrior builds are available in pvp/wvw, which do you think is correct?

Viable is a weird word, but the short answer is that warriors would of course be viable even after a small nerf to this trait. No one has said it should be removed, just increased to maybe seven seconds instead of five.

If you want diversity, all you have to do is nerf the things that are too good not to take.

PvP now uses the visual appearance of your regular weapons and armor, but they are all buffed to level 80 exotic level whenever you are in a PvP match.

There is also now a “PvP build” button at the top center of the screen when you are in a PvP area. Use that screen rather than your “equipment” screen to choose which combination of traits, stats, and gear you want.

Keep vigor. Make energy sigil give X seconds of vigor on swap instead of instant endurance refill.

Julie Yann.5379:

NevirSayDie.6235:

So if I double-capped home at start and got ten extra points, that would raise my MMR? Or if I survived a 1v3 on far point for 10 minutes but didn’t get any kills or caps, my MMR would go down?

That’s why I said they would have to include some way of calculating bunkers that hold points. As for the randomness, yesterday I got put on a team with 4 rangers, not saying that rangers are bad (well the 2 Bear Bows were) , but it is a disadvantage when facing a well balanced team. I got 3 4v5 matchess, and was on the losing side of Skyhammer 4 times in a row. All that time I was top 2 scorer by a a considerable margin between me and the guy below me. My MMR dropped and there was nothing I could do to stop it. 1 or 2 people cannot carry a whole team.

That’s why I say that the current system is pointless. It doesn’t mean a thing when so many factors out of your control influence the results.

I agree that skyhammer and 4v5s are both massive problems that are killing solo queue right now. They’re the reasons I usually solo join team arenas instead of solo queuing.

Skyhammer is easy, just needs to be removed from the rotation. 4v5s are tougher and will likely never be completely eliminated, but simple things like an audible ping on queue pop and a 1-minute confirmation button required to enter the map would help.

So yes, there are issues like this making the leaderboards less meaningful, but I don’t think changing the parameters would be helpful.

I have two issues with suggestions like this when they come up:

1. Graveyard is a huge point, and as a result it’s nearly impossible to de-bunker. I’m not sure we want to make more points like that. Saying a 2v1 will cap, but slower, might help. But I believe it would just make killing bunkers pointless. Why waste time killing the bunker when you can just cap under him with two more bunkers?

2. Other game modes have placed a massive emphasis on AoE, bunkers, etc. Look at the GvG annihilation fights that used to happen in WvW. It was basically a ton of hammer warriors and a couple guardians, with a couple of staff eles and maybe a necro or nade engi spamming AoE. I think 2v2 or 3v3 annihilation would be awesome, but anything above that would likely make bunkers and AoE way more important than they are now.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

say, do you have any special tips to share with us regarding tranquility?

Don’t be a baddie like me and die falling down into the cave at half health.

ow that gotta hurt. but if we drop in at full health we became half health anyway. that is intended?

I’m not sure. It has to do with moving through the platforms too quickly for the game to realize you didn’t fall the whole way down.

But I disengaged from a fight on top at half health earlier tonight and lost the other half of my health jumping down…that’s what I meant you should not do.

Julie Yann.5379:

I can see this working for Tpvp where people usually create structured teams with proper comps and such. SoloQ however is all up to chance, you basically get lucky enough to have a decent comp or not. However, if they included a variable for how many points you make in any giving match it would offset the randomness of the horrible Solo match maker. You could lose a match because of a bad team make up but still not lose any points because of what you contributed to the fight. On the flip side, you could be lucky a get a spot on the winning team but your contribution is so low that you don’t gain any points. There would have to be ways for counting bunkers who defend nodes but don’t get a lot of kills and such but that is the general idea and would be way more accurate than the current system.

Just saying that there is a better way for determining ranks on the leaderboard. Though I doubt we will ever see anything that sophisticated.

So if I double-capped home at start and got ten extra points, that would raise my MMR? Or if I survived a 1v3 on far point for 10 minutes but didn’t get any kills or caps, my MMR would go down?

Sometimes solo queue teammates feel random, but that doesn’t change the value of win/loss as a parameter for the leaderboard. Even if there were no matchmaking and every solo queue was totally random, the strongest players would win much more often than average players. Again, I’m not saying the leaderboards are great or super accurate; but on the whole, they’re probably more accurate than they would be using additional parameters like score.

Julie Yann.5379:

So they are pointless cause they aren’t a reflection of anybodies skill.

Win/loss is the best parameter for measuring skill that I can think of. Skilled players tend to help their teams win more often than not. Sure, there’s a margin of error—players who get lucky and land on great teams their first ten games tend to shoot up the leaderboard, then quickly settle back down. Some players get unlucky and land on awful teams or 4v5s multiple times in a row, and fall down lower than they rightfully should be. But over time, the extent to which you help your team win is the best tangible way to measure skill.

Edit: I don’t mean to say that the leaderboards are a perfect reflection of skill, because they’re not. Just saying that win/loss is an acceptable parameter.

“Easy” meta has arrived. Simple is the flavor of the month.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

say, do you have any special tips to share with us regarding tranquility?

Don’t be a baddie like me and die falling down into the cave at half health.

Eurantien.4632:

I strongly agree that coordinated burst is better thank bunker comps. The problem is there aren’t as many margins for error when your whole team is glass but when you run bunkers there is a lot of room to make mistakes and still succeed.

Exactly. People play bunkers because a poorly-played bunker comp beats a poorly-played dps comp. It’s unfortunate, but we’re just not very good at this game. I place myself in that category as well—I know for a fact I’m a bad right now, yet I do all right because everyone else is, too.

Also, conquest is not the reason for bunkers. TDM would place even more emphasis on them.

style.6173:

Simon.3794:

PU mesmer , PD thief, MM necro

most broken spec of all, more like cancer specs, tho not viable in tPvP.

Not sure if you play PvP or not. PU mesmer and PD thief aren’t an issue in this game mode. SD thief is a much bigger issue here.

Proof that conquest encourages real fights.

On the other hand, if you over-commit to tranquility, the other team will probably just two-cap immediately after you commune anyway. It’s a great map and mechanic, easily my favorite.

Dave.4358:

ANet has to do something about people quitting in the middle of a match. Trying to play pvp more (like the new reward system) but it’s just painful. Halfway though most games the losing team starts to shed members. So the winning team has folks pulled to the losing team, negating their earned reward.
ANet needs to impose a penalty to these folks. Gold, pvp points, something. Can’t remember the last time I finished a game with the same teams I started with. Man up people and take the loss.

If you get transferred from the winning team to the losing team, you automatically get the full reward for a win, no matter which team ends up winning. So no worries there.

I don’t like hotjoin either, entering and leaving in the middle of the match just throws off the sense of competition. I’d recommend solo or team arena. Those put two teams against each other for the entire match, no shuffling or entering mid-match, and leaving mid-match is heavily penalized (do it three times and you get locked out of arenas for a certain amount of time).

The OP has a point—fast hands is so mandatory it’s not even funny.

However, the correct response to mandatory traits is to nerf them, not make them free. I’d say change fast hands to 7 seconds. Actually, weapon swap cooldown would have been a cool warrior profession attribute rather than trait, but too late for that now.

Blasino.3128:

I think you are missing the point of my OP and are digressing. This has nothing to do with tpvp (which I play also).

1) The auto balance feature doesn’t even fix what you are stating either. How does auto balance fix the fact that one team is already up 150+ points? The game is pretty much done. This doesn’t discourage people from going in with friends on one team to play with each other. Especially since you still get the winning bonus.

2) Who stated hot joins was not designed to be with friends? If that were the case why allow us to choose a side? It should automatically force you on a team w/o a choice. And we do treat it like casual. We don’t run our tpvp builds and do not run our normal strats.

Hotjoins were absolutely designed to be able to play with friends—just not organized groups of friends who keep on crushing the other team so that they quit, as you describe. A lot of casual friends join hotjoins together and have a great time. They don’t have to worry about autobalance because they don’t usually make the other players quit.

The OP has everything to do with team arena, because that’s what you’re describing. Believe me, I’m right there with you. I don’t like hotjoins, either. I don’t like the joining/leaving, autobalance, etc. I avoid hotjoin as much as I can.

Blasino.3128:

Just curious. It seems when some friends and I get into a hot join and start winning, people from the other team immediately quit. One of us ends up being auto balanced. Not that it matters because by that point the match is pretty much gg by then.

Is there a purpose for this feature anymore?

Good news—this has already been implemented! Hotjoins weren’t really designed to handle organized groups of friends playing vs. randoms. That’s why there’s a progression cap and autobalance—to basically force the mode to stay casual.

Team Arena has neither of those things. It’s exactly what you’re looking for. Plus, it’s ten times as fun and rewards much more, with no cap.

Mrbig.8019:

Ok dudes it went a bit off lawl.

This is not a “OMAGWD OP NERF PLOX” thread.

I’ve been playing power nec as my “main” (along with thief) from beta, and it has never been viable, not a single time, and it’s not even now.

Pow nec is uber squishy, has no mobility, no reliable ranged damage and no realiable AoE damage without CDs ( wells).

It’s an over all “balanced” build relying totally to burst damage.

Point is, when that damage goes out, it’s silly and ridicolous: wells+lich shananigans is ridicolous if you stay in the circle, something like the biggest source of damage that has been coded in the game.

I just find this damage silly, and i would be really satisfied if this was “flipped” into a more reliable source of damage instead of oneshotting whole teams if they don’t stop you.

That’s it.

Right, necro needs some serious adjustment. It’s too weak to compete overall, but has that 7k proc and the ability to 1-shot multiple other builds with lich autoattack…that tells me things need to be re-adjusted.

The leaderboards use a glicko2 system based on win/loss. Basically, if you beat very high-ranked players, your rating will go up a lot.

The player who is 8/4 probably got the four losses before the leaderboard reset back in November. Those matches still display on his record, but have no effect on his Glicko2 rating.

So he’s likely won 8 matches in a row. Maybe he was just lucky, in which case his rating will quickly decay down and he’ll lose matches if he tries to play again. It’s not anything to worry about either way. Either he’s just that good and he’ll stay there as he plays more, or he got lucky and he’ll be at the top for a few days at most.

Julie Yann.5379:

I always wonder about SoloQ. What if you get a bad streak of nubs on your team yet you keep getting 150+ points in the each match, do they have any effect are your ranking?

If not then the leader boards are quite useless.

The leaderboards shouldn’t be taken too seriously because there’s just no way to know exactly how good you are. But win/loss is a perfectly acceptable parameter. Good players cause their teams—even bad teams—to win more often. The better the player, the larger the effect on the win rate.

Butter.3024:

Stop it.

Stop trying to turn sPvP into esport, it’s not gonna happen.

Instead focus on make sPvP enjoyable for players first.

Thanks

Thankfully, the devs already agree with you. In fact, to my knowledge they have not spent any significant amount of resources on “pushing” for esports. Ever.

They did give some interviews before launch (that is, 2+ years ago) in which they mentioned esports. Since launch, they’ve added spectator functions, because the playerbase was pushing heavily for that at the time even though there were probably more important features that should have been added first. They’ve also spent some modest resources encouraging tournament events, usually hosted and run by a third party with little or no prize money provided by Anet directly.

tl;dr esports have probably consumed around 0.01% of Anet’s money/time in the past two years.

This is essentially already fixed. Rosters are shuffled to distribute MMR evenly to both teams before a match starts, so there’s no way to know if you’re going to land on the same team as your friends any more. They probably wanted to solo queue together, played several games landing on different teams, and then you saw the one match where they got lucky and landed on the same team.

Direct damage on auto attack…too easy?

bhagwad.4281:

Minekit? That’s a guaranteed 27 second AoE launch.

Whew, I need to find some of the opponents you’re playing against! Most people I see have no trouble avoiding BoB…

And turrets are so good for decap builds because you’ll be using healing turret anyway. That’s another 20-second knockback to go with the multiple knockbacks from thumper turret, OC shot, and another 1-2 turrets or kits.

Juggernaut builds are not cookie cutter at all! They’re pretty rare and if you’ve gotten it working well for you that’s very cool.

It seems you maybe prefer to experiment and theorycraft rather than copy/paste builds. So for example, you might take static discharge as a starting point and then see what utilities mesh with that for you. The toolkit fits in nearly any build, very strong in tournaments. I personally love bomb/nade/elixir gun combination. You can take turrets as a starting point, and make a troll node defender that wrecks everybody that doesn’t have stability. You can even teamfight bunker using elixir gun for support, bomb kit for area denial/healing with EIB, and elixir S for downed state control. Not quite a bunker guardian, but much more fun.

XacTactX.6709:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Anet likely didn’t want to remove the armor stats entirely because…well, we’ve all seen what happens in games where there’s no disadvantage to taking your pants off.

This is going in my signature, thank you witty sir.

I’m honored.

I don’t know if GW2’s competitive population is necessarily more juvenile/offensive than other games, but it’s true that it’s a problem. Please continue to block/report true verbal abuse.

Though definitions vary, a good rule of thumb is this:
—“Go back to PvE, scrub:” offensive but just block-worthy
—“Go back to PvE, kittening scrub:” report-worthy

BrunoBRS.5178:

i was actually an advocate of solo queue and didn’t go for team queues unless i actually had someone to play with, but despite my build being, like you said, more of a duelist build, i prefer teamplay and some coordination over “outplaying” individually to win. i feel sad inside when i try to coordinate a plan with random strangers and they’re like “just kill them and don’t die”. team queues are more likely to have groups that will actually play smart over “just get good 1vX builds and win skirmishes”. also way less 4v5s and quitters.

I hear you there. Hopefully the woes of solo queue will get fixed soon, because it really does have a better matchmaking process in theory.

I believe this is because newly-created characters don’t always come with shoulders/helmet/gloves. Based on your choices at character creation, you may have one or more of those pieces of equipment but you would never have all of them. Since your armor skin is now the same in PvE and PvP, it would be unfair for a new player to do PvP since he would be missing 2-3 armor pieces.

Anet likely didn’t want to remove the armor stats entirely because…well, we’ve all seen what happens in games where there’s no disadvantage to taking your pants off.

dank.3680:

The problem is Anet with their infinite “wisdom” has punished some players by limiting track progression in hotjoin and custom arenas.

I think they wanted to make sure hotjoins remained a good place for casual players to play against each other. In other words, people who are not casual (let’s say they play for 2+ hours/day) would be less likely to play hotjoin the entire time. It’s not perfect, but I can definitely see the logic.

BrunoBRS.5178:

well, i come back from a break to be shouted at by random strangers because apparently it’s the duty of the thief to carry the team, and we lost, so it had to be my fault.

i also got to see people running teamq matches without armor.

i’m wondering if i should’ve bothered coming back.

Check my post in your other thread. There are certainly unfortunate things about the patch and the playerbase has not gotten friendlier, but with a few adjustments I think you would be fine.

BrunoBRS.5178:

1- well, 9-10pm server time seemed like a good time to play, and since the queues were popping instantly, i’d imagine it meant it was finding people on my level quite fast. which is odd because before the matches i was listed as 18%, and after the matches i “dropped” to 93%. oh well. as for solo queue, it can be worse. at least on team queues there’s a semblance of organization on top of the badmouthing and namecalling (not always in my direction)

Leaderboard decay is currently temporary only—that is, your rank was displayed as 18% because you hadn’t played for a few months, but your real MMR was probably somewhere in the 500-1000 range. That’s good, because 18% is firmly in the “inactive” region of the playerbase. No players exist at that MMR who could have been matched against you. Instant queue pops are often the result of another team having waited for a long time before you entered the queue, so they are not necessarily a better matchup.

Solo joining team queues is great, and I do it all the time. But the team queue matchmaker is not optimized to “shuffle” solo-joining players between teams, like the solo queue matchmaker does, as far as I can tell; so the chances of getting a lopsided match may be higher.

And yes, unfortunately the last patch was a significant power creep. Literally every build got buffs, at least indirectly; some got massive buffs, some got moderate buffs. Celestial amulet got buffed. It’s somewhat unfortunate, but the sigil changes needed to happen so they could be less arbitrary and confusing for new players. Giving certain runes massive buffs was not a good decision.

Be that as it may, it means you should re-evaluate your build. P/d thief is a very strong duelist, but you may need to update your trait, rune, or sigil choices, and you may need to re-think your general strategy.

You should also consider solo queue. The population has risen dramatically and the matchmaker is more effective for the type of playing it seems you’re interested in (i.e. solo queuing). It seems you’re likely in the ~90% MMR range, which means there are tons of people around your level on. Solo queues should pop quickly and give you pretty decent matches.

ellesee.8297:

Hello frands! Vee Wee here #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

I know Vee Wee, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80, is thuper cool and all but this is a thread about the celestial rifle build! Golly gee willikers let’s get back on track here my frands!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Yes! That celestial rifle build is a lot of fun!

I’ve been running it with bombs and elixir gun rather than toolkit/S. Very mobile with EG 4 and rifle 5, plus a fire field and a couple of blasts to synergize with those runes of strength.

It’s not a “cap,” it’s merely an interact. I don’t see a problem with being able to interact with the hammer while stealthed. I believe you can fire the hammer, as well as the treb on Khylo, while stealthed as well.

Personally I would have advised him to kill you instead, but whatever works for him I guess.

OP:

The system is definitely not perfect. Hotjoins are so casual and flexible that you can do anything you want. Teams vs. randoms, high ranks vs. low ranks—anything goes.

I think that’s why the cap exists. Anet wanted to keep hotjoins for casual players—specifically those who don’t play for long periods of time at once.

PS just solo join team queues. No Skyham, almost no 4v5s, and practically no full teams except for the top 100 spots or so.

Aaron.2413:

EDIT: Formulas
AF=min{100+4Ns+2Nr+Nk,150)
Ea=(1)/[1+{10^(Rb-Ra)/400}]
R^1a=Ra+K(Sa-Ea)
Rating Change = K-factor * ( Result – Expected Result )

This is the best part. It needs more brackets, though.

Conquest does have several advantages:

1. It promotes diversity in team comp—there’s no need for roamers in TDM, for example.
2. It promotes team splits, giving duelists a chance to shine.
3. It’s easy to understand (and given how much the playerbase still struggles with it, I honestly couldn’t recommend adding a more complex mode)

AoE and bunkers are even more important to TDM than to conquest, so I don’t think that’s really a solution. I do think there’s a lot of potential in 2v2/3v3 type annihilation matches in a tightly-controlled area like courtyard (or the beach of Niflhel, etc). Larger spaces would just promote disengaging at will, like roamers in WvW do.

Hotjoin has always been a huge problem. It was a cool idea/experiment, but it just doesn’t feel/work good. The chances of seeing good, satisfying fights are low, since there’s no matchmaking, and the good players will usually all join the same side, leaving the inexperienced players a man down most of the time and hopelessly outmatched.

I disagree about conquest. The forums have continually tried to tell people since launch that conquest is about bunkering down on nodes and not “real fighting,” and to this day it’s easy to see the teams/people who believe that in team/solo arena. Hint: they’re not winning. Conquest is about controlling the map by winning fights. If you’re not winning any fights, you’ll lose. If you’re winning fights but only by balling together and zerging around the map, you’ll still probably lose.

The good thing about a mode that encourages team splits is that it promotes build diversity. Mobility plays a huge role in conquest, but not in TDM. Teamfighting is also extremely important—there are constant 4v4s at mid. Small fights have their place also. You’ll see a lot of side-point 1v1s, 1v2s, and 2v2s. I understand that you just want to fight alongside your friends, so strategic team splits can seem annoying. But without them, the game would be reduced significantly, more along the lines of what you’d see in a WvW train (probably several hammer warriors, a guardian, and a necro/ele in each team, balled together constantly).

It’s cool that you need good teamfighting, mobility, spike damage, and dueling capability to succeed in GW2. You should try some arenas, I think you’d like them. You don’t need a full group of five—just queue up with a friend or two and enjoy.

Corian.4068:

Here’s the problem. Why is it flawed to say “warriors are not OP because we had three and lost anyway”, but not flawed to say “warriors are OP because some team had two and won a tournament”?

What’s the difference in the logic?

I’m not over-concerned with warriors, but there are two differences in logic. One is that in the finals of a tournament, it can be assumed that the two teams are fairly close in terms of skill, as people have stated.

The other difference is that the people who chose two warriors did so because they thought that was the best choice. They won, which validates their opinion.

Liewec.2896:

4v5 is possible, but if the enemy team has a good setup and is a guild then it probably will just save your time to let them win it fast.
losing teams get hardly any points, save 15 minutes

BUT
if you have a good setup guild group and you end up against a random pug of 5, or a badly setup guild group then go ahead, this is Buildwars you’ll probably win even with 4.

But remember that very few of us care about points. So a 10% chance of winning a glorious 4v5 victory is well worth the extra 1-2 minutes the match will take from trying vs. not trying.

Besides, trying is more fun. I’d rather play for five minutes and lose than do nothing for four minutes and lose. Did I “waste” a minute? Maybe, but at least I got to do something.

Darnis.4056:

You’re asking for ridiculous resources to be spent on solving a problem that doesn’t exist.

Collect chests, Don’t open em.. drop em in the bank while waiting on Ques.

Exactly. If reward efficiency is really important to you, just let the chests pile up in your alt’s inventory for a while, then transfer them all at once during some period of downtime such as waiting on an arena or WvW queue. I understand the loading screen thing, but you don’t have to let that decrease your farming efficiency at all. You can choose to spend 90 seconds transferring one chest or 90 seconds transferring 480 chests, up to you.

But why are we talking about farming efficiency, anyway? This game mode is about direct competition vs. other players. It was never meant to be a loot or level farm area.

Rezz.8019:

Pairing now would be: 20 8 6 3 2 vs 11 7 5 3 1?
I don’t think that’s balanced at all.
I would make it something like: 20 11 3 2 1 vs 8 7 6 5 3

It doesn’t use the first example. I can’t remember the exact formula right now, but Justin spelled it out a while back. Something like 1, 4, 5, 8, 10 vs. 2, 3, 6, 7, 9. The team with the highest-ranked player also gets the lowest.

I don’t think it would be wise to use your second example—putting positions 1, 2, and 3 on the same team would likely lead to utter domination despite their lower teammates.

This build is called a “bunker guardian.” It’s a very common build and top teams usually have one of them (but never more).

If you’re playing alone and notice a bunker guardian sitting on a point, the correct strategy is often to attack a different point. If the guardian’s sitting on a point and not fighting, you can outnumber the other team in a different location. After you kill a couple of his teammates, you can easily kill the guardian. There are plenty of builds that can kill a guardian alone, but sometimes it takes longer than it’s worth. If three people combined can’t kill a guardian, it means those three people are using soldier’s, cleric’s, or settler’s amulet and probably autoattacking a lot. No guardian can survive vs. three people playing well.

This doesn’t mean guardians are so strong it takes multiple people to kill them. It just means you should choose your fights carefully. A good rule is to never enter into a long duel on a point the enemy owns.

Eurantien.4632:

We tested this extensively when Steamhawke first began the decap engi. We found that the only way a/s lb would beat decap engi was through the block bug (which wrecked the decap engi). But since the patch to the block bug, it is quite feasible for decap engi to handle this type of warrior. Granted, you probably can’t eat every guaranteed crit eviscerates either.

Thanks, good to know. I’ve been away from the game for a bit so I’ve only dueled against an a/s lb build a few times (and never as a decap engi). I probably overestimated it considerably.

JinDaVikk.7291:

Also don’t copy the meta. Learn from it but never copy.

Good call on the counter-comp. If people could learn this simple principle, skill levels in GW2 would skyrocket.

Although I do agree that axe-sword/longbow would be a significant threat to a decap engi. The engi would have to out-play.

Scrambles.2604:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Hey, not sure if this has been said but…you don’t have to go through two loading screens to do a duel. Let’s say you’re super busy in Queensdale doing really important stuff and don’t have time to go through two loading screens? No problem! Just click the crossed swords at the top of your screen, then select the PvP server list from that menu, and double-click on an empty one.

Bam, you’re there! Your friend can right-click your name from the contact menu and choose “join friend in PvP.”

When you’re done, you will have to go through two loading screens to get back to queensdale, it’s true. But don’t let that discourage you.

I tried to introduce my friend to GW2. He has a new lvl 5 guardian and wanted to test some PvP. So we head to the mysts. Let me tell you, it is frustrating trying to explain to a brand new player that he needs to go here to get weapons, here to get runes, what runes are, what sigils are, etc.

In any other MMO I couldve just dueled his lvl 5 guardian there where he was questing, where he could use the skills he had just learned and was familiar with. This game lacks any introduction to PvP and open world duels would fill that gap.

More good news! PvP builds have been changed so that you no longer have to visit all the different vendors in the Heart of the Mists to set up your PvP build. The top of your screen now has a “PvP build” option visible when you are in a PvP map or the HotM. Just click it open and choose any gear/trait combinations you want from dropdown menus.

Even better, you will automatically be using the same weapon sets you have equipped in PvE. No more totally-foreign build to worry about once you step into the HotM—if your level 5 friend was using a hammer in PvE, he’ll be using a hammer in PvP. Better yet, his stats and traits will be boosted to level 80 so that you don’t kill him in two hits like you would if you dueled his level 5 character.

Although probably your friend would be better off to level a bit more before doing PvP. It doesn’t really matter whether he has to buy runes/sigils/etc from a vendor or not if he has no idea what any of those things are.

Hey, not sure if this has been said but…you don’t have to go through two loading screens to do a duel. Let’s say you’re super busy in Queensdale doing really important stuff and don’t have time to go through two loading screens? No problem! Just click the crossed swords at the top of your screen, then select the PvP server list from that menu, and double-click on an empty one.

Bam, you’re there! Your friend can right-click your name from the contact menu and choose “join friend in PvP.”

When you’re done, you will have to go through two loading screens to get back to queensdale, it’s true. But don’t let that discourage you.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Winning those fights becomes a lot easier when you have the ability to use AoEs that cover the whole point that basically say “either leave the point or lose it.” It’s not that hard to do and it does make certain builds much more powerful than they actually are. Earthshaker is really easy to avoid in an open area, but less so on a tiny little point. The small points are also REALLY bad from a spectators PoV as well. It means you just see a crap-ton of particle effects in one spot, in addition to tiny little rat-men that have harder to read animations.

Controlling the map is much easier when one player can delay the cap from 2 or more players for a significant amount of time. I also see no issue with rotations being more important because then it makes teamwork OP rather than “X class OP.”

ANet has made a lot of mistakes with PvP. They didn’t put much focus on it when it was the main thing in GW1 for the longest time. They tried to force Esports, which has never worked out. All you can do is make a solid game and hope people want to play competitively. No big Esports game that I can think of came to be because of the developers, the scene came from the players THEN the devs encouraged it. There’s also STILL no mention of GvG in a game who’s predecessor was pretty much built from the group up for. GW1 had Random Arenas, Team Arenas, Hall of Heroes, GvG, Alliance Battles, Jade Quarry, Fort Aspenwood…you get the idea. Sure, they didn’t all exist at launch but what was there was much more solid in design than what we currently have.

Yeah, I hear ya. GvG groups would probably not want warriors using earthshaker, really. Too easy to avoid. And AoE in general would likely be less useful.

jk, jk.

Having a ton of game modes would be cool, but I don’t think it follows to blame balance problems on conquest. Mistakes have been made, Asura are too small, etc, etc. I never mentioned any of that. I’m not even concerned about warrior balance.

I just don’t understand the whole conquest=bunker=aoe thing. I think bunkers and AoE would be even more useful in TDM, for example.

Domzz.1260:

So you would say — current state of game..
WvW / PvP: Classes who maximize conditions (E.G. engineer, necro, thief)
PvE: Classes who maximize damage output (E.G. warrior, ranger, ele)

It’s much less simple than that.

In NA PvP, a popular team composition in the recent tournament was double warrior with other tanky specs like bunker guardian, spirit ranger, or celestial ele. However, in EU specs were much more dps and mobility oriented from what I hear.

However, in solo queue PvP and regular team queues, you’ll see a ton of engineers (often condition builds or turret point-holders). In less-coordinated matches (matches where people are not using voip), “solo artists” like engineers seem to shine.

In WvW, the most popular roamer is power thief because of stealth and mobility. Condition thief is also somewhat popular. However, condition engineers perform well vs. power thieves and have also become popular. Warriors and mesmers are also somewhat popular for roaming in WvW. You will almost never see a roaming necro because they lack the ability to run away, which is so central to WvW roaming.

In large groups in WvW, you’re likely to see a lot of hammer warriors, several guardians for support and healing, several eles and necros for ranged AoE damage, and some other professions in specialized roles or just tagging along.

I don’t do much PvE but I think whatever does the most damage seems to be most wanted.

Lopez.7369:

BurrTheKing.8571:

I think many of you are looking at this from the wrong angle. It’s not the Warrior, or any one class/spec, that that is to blame. What’s wrong with PvP is that we have tiny little capture points and the fact that one tanky player can totally deny the cap of 2 or more players.

This design means that AoE and tanky builds are going to be prevalent. Hambow wouldn’t be that great if the capture point wasn’t so small. The same goes for condi necros and engis. If the points were larger the builds would still be good, but avoidable without leaving the point. I’m also not a fan of one player being able to deny the cap of 2+. It should definitely slow the progress by a large amount but it being able to stall indefinitely is not a mechanic I’m a fan of.

The playerbase seems to be pretty satisfied with where Warrior is at now. Beating on Hammer or Bow any more would just make them worthless.

That is completely inaccurate. The comp is even stronger in Legacy because it’s practically impossible to take a large point away from a full bunker team.

And considering necromancers and engineers didn’t make it to the finals, I’m not sure we should be discussing nerfing AOE or conditions right now.

Yes, larger points seem to benefit tanky comps more than anything. Even if the rules for contesting a point were changed so that one player couldn’t maintain control of a point vs. two players, that wouldn’t change. Rotation would just get even more important.

The whole “PvP is about standing in little circles” thing has been completely overblown for almost two years now. PvP is about winning fights and controlling the map. If you don’t win fights, you always lose. If you win fights by clumping together/zerging, but have no control over the map, you usually lose.