The problem with quickness is that it has the potential to turn otherwise balanced abilities, such as pistol whip, into gimics. Currently though, the skills it interacts with to create issues is fairly short, and the draw backs of using any quickness skill turn it into “use this skill, skilled players now pop burst”.
On a side note, you don’t need frenzy to land 100 blades, hell you don’t even need 100 blades to kill people on great-sword warrior.
It is fine and makes fights a lot more intense and dynamic than they would be without it.
Considering how hard hip shot hits for, engineer does just fine at max range. The weapon is one for control, and as such, does its job quite well.
I find it odd people rather warp the profession to their taste, rather than simply change professions to something that suits you more. The engineer fits a pretty unique niche with the rifle that no other profession really offers, and that’s how it supposed to be, a play-style of its own that sets the profession apart from others.
And then the other team caps the point, mission accomplished. Time warp wins team fights when used properly, that’s why it has such a long cool down.
They need to make enemy time warps and feed backs more different from friendly ones though. That way people know what they can stand in when you have those bizarre moments with double warps down.
I think the skills you get in moa form should actually be combat viable, as so people can keep fighting (sometimes you can’t really bail) when moa’ed.
But seriously, if anything about moa needs a change, it needs to let you jump. Getting caught on fences because you can’t leap over them is quite saddening.
Since I think the merge ate my earlier post:
I’m pretty convinced this has something to deal with the in game sounds getting confuzled somehow. I generally experince the loading screen of doom when ALOT of effects go off around the time of my death, meaning it happens more frequently in a team fight, or when zerged, then alone (still happens them sometimes too). Also people effected by this don’t actually re-spawn, their corpse remains right on the ground were they fell. They just get the loading screen and can hear everything going on around them.
Seems to trigger when a lot of sounds are played at the time of death. This bug isn’t new, it’s been around since release, just finally now seems to be getting some attention, lol.
Engineers are so talented they can hip-shot someone right in the eyes from 1200 if they want. If that’s not impressive and awesome enough for you, I don’t know what to say.
Since some people don’t understand some changes:
Chaos storm synergies with phase retreat for chaos armor, which you then can sit in the storm and gain a mess of boons regardless if the opponent chooses to attack you or not.
Chaos storm was far too strong in area control. The conditions it puts out in a short period of time, combined with low recast made trying to hold the smaller points against a mesmer, or forcing them off the point was very difficult. Your best option was to get off the point, every time it was dropped, in small points.
Phantasms in general: Phantasms were too fire-and-forget. No thought was involved in using them, just hit them off cool down for massive damage that was difficult for players to get rid of. No real punishment for killing phantasms, as you could easily make a new one right after one went down. (Note on warden, that was bug fix)
To players in general, I don’t think that phantasms were ever meant to be something you try to keep on the field for long periods of time as you can’t heal and can make a new one. Stop clinging to them as pets, realize that these are damage abilities that get the added bonus of racking up more free damage as time passes. Yes traits exist to help phantasms and you can build fully around them, but understand that’s the risk you take by going all into phantasms for your damage and not say, shatters or damage that comes directly from you. Just cause you can take all phantasm traits, doesn’t mean you should. To those who complain about things blowing up your phantasms before they do damage, do the same thing all other professions have to do: time abilities for effectiveness. There is a right time to drop one, and a wrong one.
Overall, staff, phantasms brought in line. You still have all your other weapons and plethora of builds you can make. Try experimenting and innovating a little before screaming your profession is dead. Mesmer is still quite viable.
Blunderbuss: The hit-box for this ability has little z-axis, meaning you frequently get “miss!” when shooting at someone at a lower/higher elevation (like from the ledge at keep onto the point).
Toss elixir C: Functions as following: Gives a random boon, removes one condition. Different from the tool tip description of converting one condition to a random boon as you can use it with no conditions and receive a boon. This however means it still functions with cleaning formula 409 to remove two conditions.
Toss elixir B/ toss elixir H: Tool tips need to be updated to state you receive 2 of the listed boons at random. As a side note, boons received aren’t exclusive, you can get the same boon twice.
@Rukh, Cleaning formula 409 removes one condition per elixir. It currently functions properly from my testing. Are you perhaps receiving conditions at the same time as the removal occurs?
As a side note. Cleaning formula 409 needs a tool-tip update to state it cause elixirs to remove one condition on use.
Its a control weapon and does what it is supposed to do pretty well. Torpedo hits pretty hard to make up for it’s slowness, and up close the mine spread is pretty powerful as well. I like to use the grapple to yank people off the point and into a net.
It is out shined by how crazy the grenade kit is underwater, though at least for fighting in a set area.
I love the engineer rifle, so much power and control. If someone is at a distance I can just shoot them to death with hip-shot and up-close I just knock them around and net them constantly. It’s good for both kiting and getting up in someone’s face.
I main a warrior mostly, and one thing I would like to point out is that as a warrior you bridge to each volley, as that’s most of the damage. Play style wise the warrior longbow is closer to the engineer rifle, as they are both pressure weapons that work on just constantly hitting hard rather than suddenly spiking up damage.
Its the quickness boon. I’ve never had this happen while playing my engineer.
I feel that “Defiant” needs to be replaced with the enemies gaining the old un-removable version of stability for a period of time if they get controlled too much.
I also wish that encounters were kinda like facing off against an opposing 3-5 person team and less ‘pound on this 1 guy for 3+ min’. The encounters need to be dynamic and engaging, not mind-numbingly tedious and frustrating. Even smooth runs leave me somewhat disappointed with just how repetitive they can be.
I feel that because warrior is so well balanced and brings nothing blatantly strong to the table people think they are a weak profession. People also have some bizarre hang ups on building them (and even how they are supposed to function in comparison to other professions), and are working with artificial constraints. The curse of anything competitive seems to be a focus on copy-cat builds versus innovation, I suppose. Really they shine depending on the player ability more so than the others due to having no gimmicks or tricks to hide behind in higher level play.
Mesmer is strong in tourny due to their top notch shutdown abilities and damage avoidance. The ability to generate field clutter constantly (and to not have to manage it, due to clone/phantasm spawn rules) makes them very strong.
The really funny thing about signets is you can still run defensive stats and enjoy the bonus critical rate. That and signet of fury and signet of stamina are amazing. Apparently people forget that you can balance stats.
I love warrior, and like the fact that they are a simple, straightforward profession with a lot of interesting options for builds. Others may have flare and flashy attacks, but a warrior needs no such trickery.
The heal you want to take is dependent on your build, more so than raw numbers. In general you want a bigger heal the more hp you have so you can effectively maintain your hp in a fight, while a build with less hp will want to heal as often as possible to offset damage taken. Though your durability factors into this as well (fragile builds need to heal often, sturdier build won’t need to).
Don’t forget you can trait for condition removal on heal (restoration strength; removes cripple, chill, immobilize, and weakness), and for passive regeneration based on adrenaline level (360 hp every 3s at full adrenaline).
Also do you plan on using your burst skill often? That may impact your choice.
No I’m saying they would be the best choice for it, and are very strong in team. Don’t put words in my mouth (so to speak).
This doesn’t change the fact that bunker guardian is so strong in tournament that you’re kittening yourself by not taking one on your team (or taking bunker mesmer in it’s place). That’s a problem because nothing should feel required to win.
The real issue here is guardians can do something that Anet stated they didn’t want, which was for a single player to just tank damage from multiple players for extended amounts of time without dieing. In beta necro could do this pretty easily, and that’s a big reason why deathshroud is the way it is now in terms of damage absorption.
No one has a problem with a guardian holding off several players for a short while to buy time. People do have an issue with the fact you can sometimes have 3 people pounding on one and it takes a rather long time to down them. Personally, I think that the fact you can’t interrupt shelter is such a big issue as it’s a free heal that just absorbs incoming damage. Sure signet of resolve heals for more, but that can at least be offset by just continuing to damage a guardian during the heal to offset it.
(edited by Numot.3965)
I laughed so hard at this thread. Stability ensures death against 5 of 8 professions making things largely equal across the board. Hammer knockdown also means you must be double stomped or risk vengeance.
Vengeance is good depending on your build, if you can bang out a lot of damage in the brief period it is up, you can easily kill 1 or more people in pvp with it. And if you traited vengeance and can kill people fast, well then, more power to you. Often you were gonna die anyway, so you might as well make people burn cool downs.
This is really an issue with rangers lacking condition removal that is effective and efficient, given how often you can become layered with conditions.
From a design standpoint rangers look like they are supposed to just power through conditions and endure them, with powerful heals or other forms of mitigation, this wasn’t that hard to accomplish back in early beta because runes of melandru were amazing, and evasive purity not only took a condition off you every dodge, but your teammates.
Really I don’t mind the ranger having to tough it out, but bring back “melandru’s resistance” in some form to compensate, if empathic bond was something like “conditions last 50% less on you and your pet” or even 25% (cause melandru runes would bump you up to 50%) it would be a lot more desirable. Right now empathic bond is terrible, same with signet of renewal since transferring conditions on to what is essentially your damage is generally a poor move. As a tier 3 ability it should be more like “your pet cures you of 2 conditions every 5 seconds” or something better than its current form which triggers instantly on the first condition applied (often a single bleed stack) then goes on cool down. In turn it doesn’t serve it’s purpose as a cleanse simply because its never up for what you really need to get rid of (like immobilize or a poison).
I understand that passive removal wasn’t to the devs liking, as passive condition removal was toned down for every profession that had it (stop drop and roll is now also useless), but considering that most of the ranger’s condition removal is passive it needs to be improved in some form. Either with increased effectiveness and up-time, since you have no control over it, or improved utilities and traits that give rangers some viable active removal so conditions don’t wreck them nearly as hard as they do.
The hero panel doesn’t show it, but I’m almost positive it actually works, I guess I’ll test it later tonight.
I love the warhorn and I’ve never even used it traited, it’s just that good. Might have to give it a try now though.
The main advantage of the axe is the pressure it provides and the ability to take an offhand of choice with it. Plus, eviscerate just ends lives if used properly. The great sword is a good toolbox weapon. You have a solid auto attack for pressure, you have a gap closer, a snare, something to move you through a crowd, and a way to punish stationary targets.
I’m curious as to what you players do that gives you so much trouble against thieves. Generally speaking as long as you’re alert and dodge the burst you can take them down no problem. That goes for glass cannon builds in general. If you’re fighting someone else and a thief kills you, then that’s a 2v1, so you probably would have died anyway. In a 1v1 you should have a even match or even a clear advantage/disadvantage, depending on your build if you know their coming and recognize their abilities.
If you’re expecting to simply be able to soak damage, no, game doesn’t work that way. Avoid damage when possible and bury your foe in an hp deficit.
If you’re having trouble recognizing abilities or even having a hard time dealing with a profession, just go make a character of that profession, work out a solid build, then play it a bunch. You’ll learn that profession’s ins and outs, what skills look like, what they can and cannot do, and what they have trouble doing.
Most of the common thief builds and counters:
Venom sharing: make sure you have condition removal, or something to bunker down with to avoid getting smacked around during the immobilize.
Bleed build: Generally involves leaping death blossom spam and caltrops. You can dodge leaping death blossom, simply don’t stand in the caltrops. Removal to purge bleed stacks.
Pistolwhip: hasted pistol whips are hard to deal with, but still possible to avoid. Bring a stun breaker and/or stability, mash dodge if you get stunned and can’t break out. This is really a build that should only give you trouble if you had no idea the thief was there. Pistol whip can be walked out of without haste, its very obvious animation makes it easy to spot. Most sword thieves go right for the pistol whip, some however may make use of the infiltrators strike/ return to harass.
Heartseeker: distinctive animation and sound makes this ability easy to spot, and thus, avoid.
Steal: a lot of thieves will open with this. Steal against warriors grants whirling axe, evading melee strikes but not reflecting projectiles. Just run away from this so they whiff whirling axe. Ranged snares or attacks can be used against them just fine however.
Clusterbomb: slow when used from a distance. The only time a shortbow thief will want to be in your face will be to shotgun you with this. Dodge/block if they suddenly decide to warp in with infiltrator’s arrow.
Stealth/backstabs: A thief is invisible, not invulnerable, swing auto attacks while turning sharply behind yourself and to the sides to find the thief and return damage. Dodging randomly, or using aoe also can be effective. You’ll be surprised how many people you can catch just by turning, often making a sharp 180 for the obvious backstab means you eat it to the face, and take only a fraction the damage you would have otherwise.
Log in server imploded i think, I was pvping and right after the match ended got booted.
I would change nothing, they are fine were they are. All they need are bug fixes.
If anything, banners still need a little work, but everything else is viable and effective.
No penalty, besides it really hurts when you actually need to leave for something, or get dc’ed.
After some more testing, the bug is the following:
When moving from pve to Heart of the Mist, any major traits shared between the modes are reset to blank slots once you get to the Heart of the Mist. That means a player with a similar (or the same in the worst case) build in both modes will have to re-select their major traits once they reach the Heart of the Mist.
I kinda have to second this. I rather see more interesting encounters with diverse opponents with lower hp, than having the current ones were you chip away at a glacier for awhile.
Are there ANY other viable tpvp warrior specs besides dull HB gimmick
in Warrior
Posted by: Numot.3965
Just about anything is solid if you know how to play it, and what it’s good for. The warrior’s niche is in being an amazing source of pressure and burst damage, which makes HB builds really silly because they don’t capitalize on the strengths of the profession.
People could start making arcing slice builds for the greatsword and rock the fact you can have near permanent fury in combat with solid durability, but that would mean actually putting effort into your game play and not hitting the same button sequence every min to score a kill.
Sword main hand+ axe offhand is a solid balance between damage, mobility and pressure.
Longbow double shot is gold for combo fields, building adrenaline, and general pressure damage, as it hits very hard as it is.
This really is an apples and oranges comparison. There is no competition as they have different roles in combat. One is a slow pressure weapon with an emphasis on AoE damage, the other is a bursty weapon for dealing with single targets.
Mesmers offer the highest amount of control with their damage. They deal more pressure than burst, and steadily, masterfully trump their foes. I never feel like their damage is lacking, it just isn’t explosive.
Warden is a defensive phantasm, it’s more like a piece of cover you can spawn on top of someone to block shots than a source of damage. The fact it does damage if someone is stuck or foolish enough to stand in the entire animation is bonus.
Moa tends to be a “win more” skill. It either seals your fate cause it was well timed or just stalls out. Chances are if you died under moa morph you would have died under any number of things at the time.
One thing I think should be changed is the fact that you can’t jump while a moa, and that sometimes leads to getting stuck on small terrain. Other than that it’s fine.
The fact of the matter is: it lead to some combo field abuse.
Also, engineer is still plenty playable and quite a few things were improved since beta, stop acting like this is the end of world.
Grenade kit skills sometimes don’t properly activate or go on cool down when used underwater. Throw flash grenade seems to be the worst offender for me, either having no cool down and not activating, or activating and not having a cool down. This may be from later skill activations cutting off prior ones, as not hitting the abilities on the kit as fast seems to cut down on incidences. Such as throw poison grenade> throw grenade, and having throw grenade over-ride poison grenades activation.
Grenade kit attack speed is too high in the water, as mashing skill one as fast as possible lets you overwhelm just about anyone or anything with grenades in record time. Probably due to not having ground target constantly.
To elaborate on poison dart volley: Currently uses a conical spread, changed from its original non-spread version in BWE1.
[Mesmer Bug] Ether Clone (Skill 1 for Scepter) overidding third Phantasmal Duelist
in Mesmer
Posted by: Numot.3965
Thinking you need to use staff when phantasms are up is inflexible. I use scepter for block and confusion. Should I not auto attack during this time?
Uh, considering you CAN’T auto attack while using your confusion and block, I would say that no, you should not auto attack during that time.
Having a second weapon set is not being inflexible. I just mentioned the staff because it’s very common and excellent. You also have the option of the sword, and GS. People are picking the weapon with the least synergy for their build and wondering why the auto attack isn’t that great.
So I’m just suppose to sit there after blocking and casting confusion until I can switch back to staff. Got it.
Scepter/Pistol and Staff is the most synergy for my build… being a condition build. I also happen to use phantasms to combo field confusion.
It sounds like whatever build you are using that this is detrimental to is the inflexible one.
The scepter offers 2 things for condition builds: confusing images, and clones to fuel shatters, if you’re traited into having all shatters inflict confusion. That’s it, everything else is power based.
Shrug I actually run a power build with Scepter + pistol/ great sword and it works just fine. The Scepter honestly works with both power and condition builds. In a power build confusing images does fair damage, has ample opportunity to score critical hits and trigger sigils. Five stacks of confusion still hurts with no investment, and illusionary counter hits for 3k consistently, while the skill chain on one sets up shatters rather nicely.
Dodge, blind, stability, distortion, stealth, aegis, all of these help secure stomps.
Downed state adds quite a bit of depth to group engagements.
The 10 (and possibly 20/30) point traits you select become empty trait slots when going from the pve environment to the Heart of the Mist. This only happens if you have trait in a shared line between modes; such as having 10 points in Arms in pve, and 30 points in Arms in pvp, results in an empty 10 point trait slot in the pvp hero panel when you go from pve to pvp.
I didn’t have this issue until I spent trait points in pve and unlocked my first 10 point trait.
-Control points, are the game. Capturing and defending them will net the team far more points towards victory over time than kills. It can often be better to capture an uncontested point, or simply defend a point, than to roam looking for kills.
-Some points offer large strategic value: ruins in Raid on the Capricorn allows a large amount of map control (thus letting your team move more freely) and controlling this point often wins this map.
-Points don’t cap faster with more people on them. The only time to multicap is when you’re expecting a clash with the opposing team over control of the point.
-Don’t get kill hungry, especially if defending a point. Players often give chances to lose points by mobbing people who strayed by. Don’t get caught up in battles that you don’t have to fight, especially if they are prolonged and far from the points, you’re liable to lose points while your team struggles to down players.
-Assist the defense of points your team has captured, use the map (M) to look at where your teammates are and where they are fighting.
-Its not over till its over, don’t assume your lead now is still going to be a lead in the next few minutes.
-Its important to know the strengths and weaknesses of your build and play with and around them for maximum effectiveness.
-Know what you bring to a team. If you defend points or fight better in team battles, then defend points and follow a teammate or two around, rather than roaming. If you’re a really good treb user, use the treb and defend it, ect.