Guild Wars 2

Hello,

I was wondering how to set up my inventory to fit my needs. Currently I use standard 18-slot bags. And once you carry potions, multiple gear- or weapon-sets, foods, transformation tonics, etc… they tend to mix up with the loot you get while playing. To help us sort out things a little – Anet added these different types of bags. But they still dont give you a perfect solution.

Fractal Exotic Equipment Box – does this also priorize ascended gear? (Its too expensive to ‘give it a try’.)

Invisible Bag – is nice if you put it to your inventory as the last bag, because that way loot starts to fill your bags from the uppermost bag, and you stuff will stay there even if you sort your inventory. The problem here is switching gear. If you swap two 1H weapons for one 2H weapon, one will switch solts with your 2H weapon (therefore stay at the bottom of your inventory), but the other one will simply go to the first empty slot of your inventory. And if you re-equip that weapon it will again put an other weapon item outside of you invis box. You switch weapons 4-5 times and its all mixed up again. :S

Oiled Bag – is ok, but is really optional as the ‘sell junk’ button at vendors just does the job fine.

Equipment Box – is silly imho as (assuming from the tooltip) it gets filled with white/blue and green items as well.

So how is a poor GW2 player supposed to keep his/her inventory arranged?

My idea would be using an invis bag and a fractal exotic bag as the last two bags in your inventory IF(!!!) that exotic bag works with ascended gear.

I’d welcome any suggestions, ty!

Booms.2594:

I once lost a 4v5 because apparently 2 of our people were lagging really hard and lost 1v3s since i was winning 1v2s

I sense sarcasm here… Poor me, you could have singed this to me at least.

Sorel.4870:

Nimrud, I sympathise. But really, you lost a 5v4 with a turret engi on their side? It’s already difficult to loose when the other team has one turret engi out of five players. I understand you may be getting bad team mates, but at that point, you have to ask yourself if you don’t have a small part of responsibility in all this. Maybe roll a turret engi or a meditation guardian until your MMR gets better.

Its not even a skill level issue m8. Doing what they have been doing – in both cases I described – not even the abjured could have won. See? The huge difference in skill level comes only as second reason, the prime reason for the devastating losses is ignoring basic game mechanics and not even realizing it or caring about it. So its either major trolling, or ppl playing their first 10 games ever, or autism, or whatever…

I never said I play flawlessly. I never said I’m a noteworthy player. In fact I mentioned quite a few times that I’m average at best. (Btw I’d happily accept duel invitations just to know how good/bad I actually am. But this is way off topic…) Therefore if for example: an other thief jumps me and bursts me down to 10% HP, then I reset with my heal on CD and manage to kill him in 10 seconds without taking significant dmg… then, then we should not be on the same battlefield. But it works the other way around: I’m at far, decapping… Mes+thief jumps me… I’m dead in 1 second. Or I see an other thief on 10% HP and cant kill him while I start with full HP. See where I’m going with this? When I’m the underdog I make my higher ranked teammates feel the same way as those noobies made me while spending the whole match off point fighting. Even though there is a major difference: at least I listen when some1’s talking to me…

Oh and my MMR seems fine (if you can know this at all). Or at least I think so… I get good games when I see a lot of ‘legendary champions’. (Not even that ensures game quality, but at least allows for some hoping.) And in those games I can still stand my ground, at least blending in. Maybe even standing out sometimes if the map/enemy comp is in my favor. I’m not a star, but not low either. That’s why I keep saying ‘average’. (Maybe a lil’ above that. )

Talking about bad matchmaking… Just finished an other one. This time 5v5 but after the initial rush to cap points (we wiped on all 3), it was an other senseless group fight at the base walls where a guard and a warri played 4v2 and kept stomping my teamm8s… The guys didnt even try to go out at the other exit or run away or anything. Just rush in, die, rez, rinse n’ repeat for the whole game… No reaction to chat, no nothing. In the end I was called a noob for only scoring 5 points…

Actually one of these is no biggy, kitten happens as we know. But it happens just too often. Either the system is totally unable to measure skill level by any reasonable standards, or the population is so low that they literally cant assemble 2 groups of 10 somewhat equally skilled players. The balanced matches I get still have wildly different skill level players, but in a more or less equal distribution. And only if equally skilled players get to fight eachother in the key moments of the game. (For example a lordrush takes place while both teams are there with equal potential and not the ‘topdog’ member of one team and the noobie member of the other team.)

I understand that the pvp community has population problems, but come on! Cant they really find 9 other players from my totally average skill level to play a decent game with??? I just cant believe that!

…while being on the full team? When I thought matchmaking cant get any worse this happens: Enemy team had a DC after like 30sec into the game, from that point it was 4v5 until the end. They ended up beating us while scoring more than twice the amount of points.

And I know, I know… everyone is saying that they were doing their best while his/her teammates were all stupid pve scrubs, BUT sometimes this is actually the case. I had a 1v1 against their thief which I won in less than 10 sec, then he DCed. While 3 on my team could not kill the turret engie at their treb, NOR the treb itself. It took almost 6 minutes 3v1! Or they simply didnt care… All I saw was a constant group fight at their treb. Yet their treb was up for 6 long minutes. Just chip damage should have destroyed it if they had fought around it, but no… thats too rational. Anyone I ran into at capture points I killed except for one occasion. I mean Im far from being good but these guys were all fresh noobies really. I dont mean to brag, its just fact. I myself got rekt in less than 10 sec many times, so pls dont make me explain this any further.

Conclusion: prbly their turret engie at the treb and me were the ‘high’ ranked members, witnessing an absurd play of random mind activity paired with button mashing.

Which leads us to the same topic that everyone brings up here daily: matchmaking is flawed! Stop putting ppl with hugely differing skill levels into the same team/match! Its really annoying!

Keep this topic hot guys, start a new topic 5 times a day about this issue until anet has no choice but fixing it. A few more weeks and I’m gonna burn out from frustration and lack of enjoyable competitive gameplay. And many are walking in the same shoes as we can see… ( And hell… I’m not even some super-skilled guy for whom its hard to find a competent opponent. I am around average I guess, yet hardly ever see a match with guys at my level.)

This matchmaking is just so flawed for so many reasons as the others above me mention. No competitiveness (therfore no fun for even the winning team), discouraging experiences, cant plan strategies because of the wildly differing skill levels (cele ele dies to thief for example, which would never happen on the same skill level). And the list goes on…

But if we only complain about this, changes will only come slowly or not at all. I suggest we should try to recruit more peeps to play the game. That would solve the player base issue and the resource issue for more development/balance. If we want Anet to do more than it is doing now we gotta make their gemstore stacked with money. Simple as that… Ok, this should be the responsibility of their marketing team; but they are not doing a good enough job, it seems… And until they make enough money to dedicate more workforce to the pvp community all we gonna get are nice PR terms and promises. No money, no game!

And finally lets see my latest example:

I play a thief from day one. I got the same suggestions for the same question from the community back ‘in my time’. I understood it, but I was just too stubborn. Simply get emotionally ready that you will be killed a lot. (I even had to skip some skillpoints in Queensdale cuz I kept dirtnapping at ettins’ feet.) But it pays out in the end. My first two toons were thief and ele. And after a year or so I rolled a warri. It was super easy to get the basics. So you can go from both directions. Just get your tissues ready!

Hehe, two totally opposing pieces of advice. Well fight if there is a fight to be won. I just dont think there is… I’d be a little more careful when following your logic. You see power necros/rangers as well in some higher rated teams, you still would not say they are the best choice for the spot they take.

Ok, so here it goes:

Justin,

all my teammates in every game I play suck hard. Can you pls check my MMR?

Eyia Hellhide.7320:

MethaneGas.8357:

I’ve heard this opinion before but I don’t agree that a cele ele supports better than a guardian. Maybe it depends on your team compo, but a support guard should still be pretty rocking. If you feel like you’re too much bunk and not enough damage, try this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNApdWlsApVo1CxfH8DNBFBl9LS/6xOBRYCXFAA-TJxHwAILDM4EAob/BAPAAA

Slightly more squish than usual, but HUGE retal uptime for allies, nice boon duration, stability and extra condi clears. An easy 20 sec AoE retal = each enemy spell is gonna hurt em like hell. It can also 1v1 pretty well as well against certain classes like LB rangers and thieves if it ever comes down to it. Haven’t tried it in too many organized 5v5s or tourneys or anything like that, but in the many normal ranked games I played with it, it seemed to do really well

Thank you for trying to cheer me up, my fellow Guardian, but I have already tried all possible and impossible guardians builds (even celestial guardian, fml) and I know my teammates are right. Ele do gives more support plus decent damage.
(sinks into deeper depression)

Dont be so sad my fellow guildie! You should be happy now that the spell has no power on you anymore. You were just lost in the idea that you have to stick to your guard. I play 5 classes. (Which means I probably had more potential if I only played 1 or 2 classes, but hell… I like trying new things.) That way I have more space for my intentions in this game with the ever-changing balance. Unless a necro-engie-mesmer meta kicks in. (Moreover Impact is just too firmly settled in the guild for me to ever dare challange his spot with my beloved thief. I wouldnt match the required skill level anyway.)

Back on topic: being a surfer does not mean standing on the shore complaining about the way waves are coming. Pick the right board and ride whatever type of wave comes.

I think the whole matchmaking system should be removed and the only way to enter a game should be the same as for dungeons/fractals. That would eliminate absurd team comps that the random queueing gives you. Would let you check the skill level of the guy you invite to your team (at least to a certain extent).

Now almost all games are predetermined due to differing skill levels. Today I’ve won one 500-80 and lost an other one 110-500. Me AFKing or actively participating wouldnt have changed a thing in neither case. Thats what is called lack of competition. So 70% of my games I’m at the mercy of RNG gods, and maybe in the remaining 30% I can feel like acutally making a change to the course of the match.

All these problems come from conquest mode imho. There are just so many pvp modes – as other MMOs showed us in the past decade. I used to be a WoW addict so these are the first examples that come into my mind:

- capture the flag (warsong gulch)
- even conquest mode was different as you had to completely clear the node to cap it (like tranq/stillness/etc. in temple)

These would open up a whole new horizon as many other roles would be needed than just bruisers and roamers. A lot more builds would become viable. New tactics, team comps, builds, etc. It’d be so easy to spice up spvp. They could even ignore this constant balancing issue as the increased demand for alternative roles would allow a lot more creativity even with broken mechanics.

So imho, conquest is the root of all bad in this game.

where MMR range can be set up before searching. It should look something like this: You have your personal MMR and – let’s say – you decide to give a + / – 10% bracket from which you invite players to two teams. You could even determine roles. Just like PvE LFG functions. Except for the MMR stuff ofc. But pinging gear and seeing achi points helps a little, altough can be misleading sometimes. If you take a look at that you will see serious teams (well the whole PvE thing in this game is not so serious, but hell…):

-can look for specific class/role/spec

-the system displays the class composition of the incomplete team, so potential members can have a better idea if they fit in or not

-the team ‘captain’ can at least somewhat estimate the potential of a newly joining member by checking his gear and achi points

Sure this takes a lot more time. But people do it. Why? Because there is no alternative option to make a team and get into a dungeon. (Unlike in spvp…) It sucks if you are impatient. But if you dedicate the time and the effort you can have a smooth run. Just imagine when you enter a dungeon and the random matchmaking drops you 2 thieves and two mesmers. And you are… yes, a thief. That team composition wouldt make it further than the point when the second mesmer/thief joins the party. And in spvp: I just had that happening to me 20 minutes ago. And pls dont get started about elitism and the exclusion of certain classes/specs. Its already going on in PvE and nobody cries… If you think its ok the way it is, I’m inviting you the coach a team of five thieves consisting of mediocre skill level players and make them complete a lvl50 fractal run with less than 10 wipes. Then do it with an ideal setup, and tell me about the difference. The pain that you discover there is the pain that can be felt when playing on absurd team comps.

I would tolerate 20 minute waiting if it gave me balanced, exciting, competitive games against and with players from the same skill level. Stomping others or getting rekt by them is by no means fun. For me even being on the winning side is frustrating. Gives no sense of accomplishment.

/rant

(This ‘/rant’ thing may have been unnecessary, but I do know that it does not matter whether this is helpful feedback or just an angry rant. Either way it’ll be handled as an angry rant, so I gave it style… )

Ok, I have to admit 30-35% of my games are somewhat balanced.

Hello,

so I was wondering if there are any viable roles/builds for a guardian in spvp other than medi and bunker. I mostly play solo so bunker is not always reasonable. And medi is just not my cup of tea. However I’d still like to use my guardian in spvp. Question is, will I burden myself with an alternative build or are there other builds just as potent as medi and bunker?

This topic drifted away from its intended course. You guys started to widen the bracket of ‘great players’. Which isnt necessarily a problem as lower tier players should behave too. But the fish stinks from the head. So I addressed this primariliy to those who can somewhat be considered rolemodels (at least in-game). I am not naive enough to try to extend this to the whole community. Maybe even addressing the top players is naivety too. I’m just a fool of love, what do I know… lol

ronpierce.2760:

If you’re an enthusiastic noob, may I suggest playing more Turrets? It makes life easier on you, and you REALLY get to see the “pros” rage. Its a wonderful feeling.

Well I’m not totally noobishly noob, just noob. Played something like 700 matches so far. My experience cannot be called vast by any means, but I’m already beyond the moral barrier that would allow me to play turret engie. (And I main a thief from day one…)

Vence.6974:

Tsk tsk..you value yourself so little young friend….

PS- They might not be as “great” as you think…

Yep maybe they are not that great… but thats not the point here. I just meant ‘if you wanna be a champ, then behave like one’. Childish behaviour diprives them of the very thing they long for.

Hello guys,

first of all I’m no pro, I’m not even close. And I’m not here to judge any1 from a gaming point of view. Any of the competent/famous players would destroy me before I even push a button. My best rating was the 947th place on the old soloq ladder. Hope this is enough self flaming to avoid more.

So if I’m not here to comment anything from a pvp point of view then why did I come at all? Well, here’s the thing: I see most top players being motivated by competitive spirit. They want to be dominant/the best/cool/respected/feared/relied on/etc. And they may or may not have the skill to do that, but these are the things/feelings they long for. Not realizing that only – just like in any other area of life – inner qualities, proper attitude, emotional stability, humbleness and genuine good-will take you far enough to reach your goals.

So it’s really funny to me seeing skillful/top players raging, bltch-fitting, shame-gaming, quitting then returning 3 times then buying an other account, mouth-karate on forums/in-game chat etc… the list is endless. Come on guys! You wanna be on top, yet you behave like underdogs… It’s really fun and pathetic at the same time from an outsider’s point of view.

Just 2 cents from a no-skill old fart…

Not bringing the proper build for the given situation is a mistake. If you roam in WvW – as wast spaces are provided – you will most likely engage your opponent in an open area where you can see and attack eachother from distance. What counters the ranged damage you complain about? Absorbs/reflects and gap closers (and higher counterburst or CC or…). So if you dont have the proper tools for the problem, its not a flaw in game design. There are many other classes and builds that will destroy you by pewpew and kiting if you have no counterplay. So yeah, its most likely a l2p issue.

Ok, so here she goes:

Eurantien.4632:

I think 6/6/2 and 6/x/x/6/0 are pretty much viable power builds no matter what the permutation is. I think that fear wolf and drake hound (or immob spiders) pair well with power ranger. The reason I do drake hound and fear wolf is because they have an aoe F2 which is great for team fights and you can psuedo-control the kd by just knowing when they will do it (from experience) and skill cancelling with F3 and F1 to save the kd for when you need it. Moreover, you can skill cancel the F2 as well to still get the howl sound but not use the skill which can bait dodges. However, if you want to use a spider thats fine (but use an immob on f2 spider) It’s just not my preference.

That leaves you rune choice and your off set wep choice. For the runes I think there are a few options: pack, traveler, air. The reason I like pack is because it provides you with fury and near perma swiftness coming out of a winning fight (if you have 1 in skirmishing that is) which is great for mobility. However, when you die (which you will eventually) you need to get back into the fight as fast as possible which is why I like traveler (because of the speed buff, runes of speed can work as well). If you find yourself having trouble with thieves and mesmers then runes of the air can be amazing. They do like 4k damage every 20s (but they can pull you out of stealth which is why I don’t use them) which is a substantial amount of damage on a squishy class. Plus, you can also proc it after moment of clarity (if running 6/6/2) in order to get like a 7k air strike. If you die with air runes you can get back into the fight faster than pack because you can use your heal to get swiftness to get back into the fight.

As for the weapon choices.
S/x provides little counter pressure. If a power ranger swaps to sword main hand I pretty much can ignore it for that 10s if I wanted. So what does s/x give you? an evade, a reposition, and since dagger is often used another evade. Greatsword gives you a potential 3s block, a ranged cripple that does good dmg, a reposition, a burst, and the ability to skill cancel the third auto attack for double swings to get longer evade frames. When someone is in GS they are still a threat (albeit gs is a little more “yolo” when being focused by multiple targets but that’s what positioning is for). Of all the s/x options I think s/a has the most potential to be viable (since it can still provide counter pressure with path of scars) and although whirling defense can be a death sentence I also think it could be a very powerful skill when used at the right times. I don’t know anyone that has mastered axe off hand (i know I haven’t) but I think it coooould work… maybe.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Ty, I’ll be fine with this for a few months.

Eurantien.4632:

That’s uh, that’s not gonna work.

Loss of 6 in MM means you can’t hit targets from far away with lb. That means you have to be closer to the fight. That means your positioning is bad and you’re gonna die. If you’re gonna be that close to the fight just go condi. If you’re planning on 1 v 1 ing with this you will just instantly die to any +1… so you should probably just go condi.

GS is superior in fights if you use it right.

Personally, I think just using 6 in MM and having good positioning is better than 6 in skirmishing with bad positioning. If you really want condi clear I think NM is superior because it gives active condi clear over the passive condi clear on WS (I NEVER use EB anymore with SotF as an option if I want condi clear). That’s because i’d rather cleanse what needs to be cleanse right away then just pray that empathic bond is about to tic.

Power ranger worked when it countered HB wars and quickness was 100% and we could have like 10s of quickness. Power ranger worked when ravens hit for 10k off of a hilt bash. Power ranger worked when read the wind became available. Now, its become viable with a rapid fire buff. However, anything that worked before now has been nerfed, no more quickness and no more pets. That leaves the only option to be reliant on read the wind.

Ty for the helpful answer! Would you be so kind to give some feedback on my last build variant? Which is basically the same as the GS build except for one trait selection and the meele weapon set. Sigmoid.7082 found it interesting enough to try out, but his feedback never made it to the forums. And I’m really curious.

In the end I may be fine with a ‘go back to GS and l2p’.

That’s what I thought too.

I think I’ll rather post this here:

I’ve recently picked up ranger for pvp. I like the power build. But I dont seem to stand the heat well enough when focused. So I’m facing the same reason why ranger is out of the meta atm. (Some may argue about this, but lets not discuss it now…)

Point is I’d like to stick to a power build but with a little more survivability than the standard LB/GS build has. So I’ve come up with this. What do you think?

Sigmoid.7082:

Sube Dai.8496:

Sword/dagger has 3 evades making it a lot stronger on point than GS. The only thing it lacks is burst but the ‘sticking’ aspect of sword auto means you that once you start hitting an enemy with it, you keep hitting them.

That provides good pressure and often ppl can’t handle it.

S/d is much, much stronger than GS IMO.

GS if you time it well enough you can get 2s of evade from the auto attack which is pretty huge.

Also sword cant hydro-leech -> maul for around 6~10k total damage which can sometimes be very decisive.

I do realize that GS gives more burst potential. What I tried to find out was if there was a fair trade-off for some more survivability. I by no means am trying to find a higher damage weapon set instead of GS.

So all in all I’ve ‘come up’ with this build. The wilderness survival traitline looked good to me for the first sight, but I had to realize how wrong I was as Nature Magic works much better with Marksmanship. So my only question that remains is whether a more defensive weapon set would do the trick? Will the Sw/Axe secondary weapon set kitten my damage into oblivion so that I become unable to fulfill my role as a zerker? To me it does not seem that bad, but I may be wrong. And lets not forget about the surprise effect as everyone will expect me to have GS if they see my longbow…

Btw do pet abilities also proc MoC? And once its procced does it effect all hits of rapid fire or only the first one? If it procs only on the first hit, then it only works well with GS#2, doesnt it?

Aomine.5012:

Ahh, so people eventually figure it out.
This is the build used by the top guild in Legacy of Foefire, winning 55 HP Monk by a huge portion with the edition of this power ranger.

Which of the mentioned builds do you mean?

Fluffball.8307:

I’d switch the first two trait lines, so you have 6 in MM. I don’t see what you’re gaining from MoC, especially with no GS, and the MM traits are too good to pass up.

EB is a great trait, just keep a close eye on your pet, especially in team fights.

Ty for the advice. How about this one instead then?

So after a while I’ve decided to try my ranger in pvp. Both WvW and spvp. I’ve picked a power build. What I found out is that the longbow is great, but the GS needs more on-point fighting potential. (I may be noob at playing ranger, but its not my first class.) I saw some guy using 1H sword+dagger for the second weapon set. Well the 1H sword is a power based weapon also (top weapon for PvE), wouldnt that work with a power build? I saw ROM taking steps to this direction as well. Look at his new build. He uses leeching and hydromancy on GS, and also took the skirmishing traitline instead of marksmanship. Which imho allows for a more defensive playstyle while not hindering your damage so bad. So what do you think?

An other question: How about wilderness survival as your survivability traitline instead of nature magic? Survival of the fittest is nice but i find myself using 2 signets (stone & renewal and only keep lightning reflexes) many times and rampage as one instead of entangle. Which only leaves you with one survival skill to trigger that trait. So with this in mind and the changes I saw in ROM’s build I’ve come up with this. Would this work?

What I’ve found out is that its only worth to queue up for a match if you are solo, duo and maybe a trio works as well. With 4 members or a full team, you get way better players against you than your actual rating is (or is supposed to be). Problem is, the system weighs full teams too high. It is very reasonable to give some additional MMR to a full 5 member team, as being able to communicate verbally indeed gives an advantage over PUG teams. But that additional MMR seems to be too much. Some of my guildies only play with full, 5 member team. And they get crushed most of the time. Their win ratio is between 15-28% and arent even close to me on the LB however they are at least as good as me or better.

All in all: dont expect any changes soon, play with 1 or 2 guys and thats it.

EU

1. January 18., ??0:34:21 a.m. C.E.T.
2. January 10., ??0:15:15 a.m. C.E.T.
3. January 9., ??23:41:18 p.m. C.E.T.

Considering the number of replies I got in the WvW section of the forums – I think it may be a better idea to post this here:

Hello,

being almost exclusively an spvp player, I have only a few hours (10-15) of experience on my thief in WvW roaming. And I was wondering how the usual course of an encounter goes down. What I mean by that: is it more important to be able to reset as often as possible/needed, or is it more important to hit like a truck?

And why I’m asking this is because I want to pick out the proper build for myself from my two candidates. I’m a D/P fan so the options that come into my head are either 2/6/0/0/6 or 2/0/6/0/6. I refuse to not use trickery, I like it too much and I’m used to it too much. However I’d love to see some suggestions maybe that try to talk me into using 2/6/6/0/0 or 0/6/6/2/0.

Back on topic: the SA version lets you reset almost endlessly but that also means that your opponent will have time as well to heal/wait for CDs/etc. Which brings the question: will I benefit more from the reset cycles or will my opponent benefit more? (Eles spamming air autoattack to heal, blasting water fields. Warrior signet/trait regen ticking, etc.) While the Crit Strikes version allows you to land a much bigger burst and also more sustained damage, you have less options to retreat/reset if SHTF. Its a fair deal btw imho, but I’m not experienced enough in WvW combat to know which will bottleneck me less than the other.

ty

Hello,

so I was wondering how to set up my power ranger the way I like it. And the problem I ran into was the master and grandmaster traits in the marksmanship traitline. There are 3 awesome traits to pick up: VIII – Piercing Arrows, X – Eagle Eye, XIII – Read the Wind. But only 2 slots.

So what are the priorities when chosing? Landing rapid fire or point blank shot on multiple opponents sounds awesome…

…just like faster arrows and increased range. -.- What’s a man to do???

p.s.: Talking about the marksmanship traitline… What about the first trait slot? I – Steady Focus vs. IV – Signet Mastery got me wondering too. However Signet of Stone has quite a long CD even when reduced.

Hello,

being almost exclusively an spvp player, I have only a few hours (10-15) of experience on my thief in WvW roaming. And I was wondering how the usual course of an encounter goes down. What I mean by that: is it more important to be able to reset as often as possible/needed, or is it more important to hit like a truck?

And why I’m asking this is because I want to pick out the proper build for myself from my two candidates. I’m a D/P fan so the options that come into my head are either 2/6/0/0/6 or 2/0/6/0/6. I refuse to not use trickery, I like it too much and I’m used to it too much. However I’d love to see some suggestions maybe that try to talk me into using 2/6/6/0/0 or 0/6/6/2/0.

Back on topic: the SA version lets you reset almost endlessly but that also means that your opponent will have time as well to heal/wait for CDs/etc. Which brings the question: will I benefit more from the reset cycles or will my opponent benefit more? (Eles spamming air autoattack to heal, blasting water fields. Warrior signet/trait regen ticking, etc.) While the Crit Strikes version allows you to land a much bigger burst and also more sustained damage, you have less options to retreat/reset if SHTF. Its a fair deal btw imho, but I’m not experienced enough in WvW combat to know which will bottleneck me less than the other.

ty

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Nimrud.5642:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Nimrud.5642:

A lot of helpful answers, thank you!

I’m mostly interested in roaming and small scale battles, so then I think I can stick to full celestial. Am I getting it right? I may occasionally join zergs too, but thats not my kind of thing. I prefer balanced, toe to toe fights. (Thats why I started out in spvp.)

LOL’d so hard considering you play cele.

What if I play against an other cele?

I understand you are b.tthurt, but you still dont need to spread your frustration and expand it to those who play the class you hate. I main a thief FYI, play a med guard too and stuff. Do I qualify now with my non-cheese classes? (Dont even get started on ‘stealth is OP’…)

You couldn’t go more defensive than this over a fact I pointed out. I understand your frustration over community having the opinion that cele is op, but it is not a reason to call me names or state that I hate ele as a class while I mentioned “cele”, a full celestial build.

Well call this 1:1. Calling me out for playing cele and liking toe to toe combat at the same time isnt particularly kind either. Anyways, lets move on…

Having played an ele (and thief main, and warri and guard and ranger) for over a year in spvp, I never thought I’d be surprised this much about my beloved classes. Your discussion made me realize that I would not enjoy playing d/d outside of spvp. It also made me realize that even though I love staff the most, it does not fit the playstyle I’m intending to play in www (mostly solo or small scale and occasionally joining zergs for some loot). These kind of lead me to an off-topic decision: I’ll play my ranger for www.

I already roam on my thief, and I really enjoy it. Moreover I’ve never really found a proper role for my ranger in spvp to fill in. Power rangers are for soloq, tanky condi-rangers have a lot better alternatives. So maybe the time has come to pew-pew finally. (Guard and warri have range and mobility issues for www for my taste.) I’ll make a build a little tankier than your average glass cannon, lot of movement skills, CC, etc. Like a longbow thief. The thief took my heart in the beginning and no matter what other classes I’ve tried out, it still remained my most loved class.

Now you can call this ‘kind of’ drifting aways from the original topic, but well… its www. You never know whats coming your way. :P

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Nimrud.5642:

A lot of helpful answers, thank you!

I’m mostly interested in roaming and small scale battles, so then I think I can stick to full celestial. Am I getting it right? I may occasionally join zergs too, but thats not my kind of thing. I prefer balanced, toe to toe fights. (Thats why I started out in spvp.)

LOL’d so hard considering you play cele.

What if I play against an other cele?

I understand you are b.tthurt, but you still dont need to spread your frustration and expand it to those who play the class you hate. I main a thief FYI, play a med guard too and stuff. Do I qualify now with my non-cheese classes? (Dont even get started on ‘stealth is OP’…)

ResJudicator.7916:

Full celestial ele is not optimal in WvW, even in 1v1s, because of the interaction of food buffs. The reason celestial ele is so powerful in sPvP is because (1) you maintain a LOT of pressure through high burning + poison uptime that let’s you outsustain your opponent; and (2) you have less control over your stat allocation; and

In WvW, almost every non-condi class will run lemongrass poultry for -40% condi duration, which means your burning and poison won’t last as long. To the point where it’s not even worth taking sigil of doom, which means your only real damage is coming from burning. On top of that, most of the builds you’ll be running against in WvW will have more condi clear (SA thieves, PU mesmers) so burning won’t stick nearly as long as it does against the meta builds you see in sPvP.

Unlike in sPvP, you generally can’t rely on out-sustaining your opponent in WvW because there’s no incentive for your opponent to stay in a losing fight. Most people will just back off and reset, with nothing lost. Or, during your 2-3 minute long fight, your opponent’s teammates come in and force you to retreat.

Against condi builds, you definitely need a lot more power damage to quickly take them down before their condis wear you down.

With full celestial, you’re basically trading burst damage and survivability for a moderate increase to burning damage. Not worth it.

Another reason celestial is less useful in WvW is that, unlike in sPvP, you have a lot of control over how you allocate stat points in WvW. I would recommend a focus primarily on zerker/knight/soldier (adjust between tankiness<—->damage depending on how good you are at avoiding damage, what kind of builds your teammates run and how good they are at peeling for you, what kind of role you want to play for your team, etc.). Don’t get me wrong — it definitely makes sense to take a few pieces of celestial as needed to round out the stat spread you’re aiming for. But going full celestial is almost never a good idea for WvW unless you’re doing no food/oil duels in Obsidian Sanctum or something.

This information will be enough for the next 25 years thank you. My last question: What about zealot gear?

A lot of helpful answers, thank you!

I’m mostly interested in roaming and small scale battles, so then I think I can stick to full celestial. Am I getting it right? I may occasionally join zergs too, but thats not my kind of thing. I prefer balanced, toe to toe fights. (Thats why I started out in spvp.)

Hello,

I’m about to set foot in www with my ele. I played a fair amount of spvp games, so I’m not a complete noob. But my knowledge about www specifics is quite poor. So the first thing I did was checking metabattle… but the second thing was coming here and asking you guys, cause you know metabattle… good, good but not good enough every time. They suggest to toss in some soldier/knight gear too.

So would it be a mistake to go full celestial? I mean weapons, armor, accessories, etc.

I plan to run the www versions of the common spvp builds for staff and d/d. And celestial being so awesome for the ele, it feels like I’m missing out something when I dedicate gear slots to soldier/knight items. But this only may be the case because I’m a www-noob…

Help me out pls!

Hello,

correct me if I’m wrong – but I dont think there is a general answer to this question. It rather comes down to your team comp, your role in the comp, enemy team comp, map, etc.

So could you pls instruct me about the specifics? I play and like both specs but I’m having a hard time deciding which one to use in the given situation.

ty

Justin ODell.9517:

Can you give me a little more detail that that?

Let me jump on the bandwagon! So first of all I’d like to point out that also in my experience games are inbalanced. Be it a win or loss… (Today I had a game that we lost only by 90-130 points or so, but that was all I can remember.) One thing is having bad luck (before the new system I was just a few wins shy from being exactly 50%, now I’m probably sub 30%), and an other is close scores, competitive and exciting matches. So a bad win-loss ratio sucks but it can be accepted and understood IF it comes from competitive games where you felt like your contribution could make a significant change in the course of the match. So its not that bad… However when the same win-loss ratio comes from uneven, no-fun blowouts most of the time; losing a lot (being on the sucker team) adds quite a lot on top of your misery. And the game gets demotivating. I dont mind losing that much, but I do mind having hardly any competitive matches.

p.s.: The final score of the game is not always telling, because once the winning team realizes how much better they are, they tend to not focus so much on capture points. They just go out and farm kills at random places on the map.

It is just so kitten frustrating to be in a match and feeling useless. 70% of the matchups are basically predetermined by player skill. Its either 100-500 or 500-100. Sometimes a little less difference, sometimes even bigger… Point is either I’m on the winning team or on the losing team (which can easily happen with some bad luck—> I’m looking at you, my dear disastrous win percentage); my contribution hardly ever changes a kitten thing. Maybe we lose 180-500 instead of 110-500, which will take a lot longer, will involve a lot of not-fun gangbanging, outnumbered fights etc. So basically you are predestined to be a kitten victim, the only thing you can change is how hard you are trying to fight it.

A little less unpleasant but still killing the spirit of the game: being on the winning team. Sometimes I almost feel guilty for being so kitteny to push a button at all… and you still win by a huge margin. Not fun either.

Please Anet, make matchmaking better so games get competitive, exciting and one is motivated to do his/her best. Getting fed a faceroll wins in return for bitter losing streaks is not the best way to go about this thing imho…

So does the two stack when it comes to immob, cripple and chill?

Not just premades. Its generally imbalanced 90% of the time. Its either 500-50 or 50-500. No matter if winning or losing my contribution hardly ever matters. When I’m on the winner team, they could have done it with even 4v5, so me running around killing things does not change much. Maybe the match is over a little sooner, but thats all. And when losing… well then not contributing actually helps, because it allows you to get out of there sooner. Its really not fun, to run in, get ganked in less than 10 seconds, respawn, rinse and repeat…

Anet has to come up with some realistic personal MMR to compose balanced teams. And player skill level is the first priority when deciding a team’s potential. 5 skilled thieves can destroy a noobie meta setup team. But never the other way around…

So proper personal MMR first and foremost! This shltty matchmaking system is killing all the competitive feel from the game.

ArrDee.2573:

My frand Nimrud you can’t really compare the two! Medi Guardians fulfill the role that Thieves do but not as well! It’s a fragile burst build that gets melted by conditions! Meanwhile both hambow and celestial shout Warriors are extremely tanky and can contest the point, stomp downed baddies, revive teammates, and do other things that beefy builds do! If you try to do any of those things as a Meditations Guardian you will asplode! So pick a role! Do you want to be a boring beefcheeser on point, or do you want burst people down with the awesome fiery might of a Medi Guard!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Thx Vee Wee, but I suggested a more tanky build for medi guard than the usual zerker in my OP. You know… the one that does not asplode so easily. But meanwhile in my 5 month-long hesitation I’ve finally come to a conclusion: I’ll stick to ele and engie for point contesting, and to my thief for doing the dirty job. (Maybe there’ll be a time for bunker guards sometime in the future.) Warrior is just too simple for me. (I do realize that even on warrior there is a lot to learn if I want to be good, but I’d rather learned something more tricky than hambow.) And a medi guard just cant be turned into a hambow, no matter the tweaking…

So thief, ele, and engie. I think I’m settled now with these. (Mesmer maybe has a slight chance.)

ty all

Thank you all guys! You’ve helped a lot, as always. Now you only need to watch your backs, in case I show up on that kitten d/d ele. :P

GhOst.4019:

SobeSoul.6910:

full zerk staff ele with downstate traited that rekt me by surprise.[/spoiler]

There you have it. Trait for downstate and you can beat em.

Actually it just depends on what your team needs. Staff cele is full sustain where as D/D does more damage with slightly less sustain. Going head to head with equal players should just be a stalemate. So the question is, what does your team need? Does it need a D/D cele that can provide support and damage, or does it need more support and less damage.

Ok, so you mean they are equally viable? It just depends whether your team needs more support or more damage? I thought they are not so balanced and staff is only better in some specific situations.

Hello,

the thing is I do realize that d/d eles are superior in general. Many – much more knowledgeable and skilled – players share this consesus. But I still like staff ele, mostly because it has ranged attacks. When the gameplay involves a lot of running between capture points or the combat is spread out, its kind of annoying that I have to run and/or use gap closers to get to each enemy. And many other reasons… you, who also play pvp need no explanation how having ranged attacks is useful in various situations.

So with this in mind – can I use staff ele without hindering my team’s progress? One scenario that comes to my mind is Legacy of the Foefire. Huge mid capture point (staff attacks cover bigger area), and a ranged class can cover the distance between side points and mid much easier. Also the structures around the mid point allow some nice pillar hugging with a ranged class. But anyways, these are just my thoughts. I’d love to see yours.

obal.3218:

Unless your capping out on vuln reliably frailty is a good choice for 1h guardian weapons. The reason to take frailty or strength is that you will cap out with accuracy on the 1h weapons between all the buffs + right hand strength. There’s not much else to use when your capped out on crit, it’s day, and slaying sigils aren’t going to help or you need a ton of sets.

Just on the spot… ty!