Guild Wars 2

Krysard.1364:

All maps have some type of asymmetrical construction that favours some actions from one side and not from the other. Anyway, it gives the same advantage for both teams, as you will usually be on close/far equal times.

What this person said. If you take some time and think about it a bit, you should realise that on most maps the side-points, the spawn—>closest side-point paths, and the side-point—>mid paths are NOT perfect mirrors of each other. Some of the discrepancies tend to be more important than others depending on the situation.

On Kyhlo, there is an even greater discrepancy between side-points than what the OP posted and it is arguably more unbalanced towards rotational play. Even if you “will usually be on close/far equal times” does not change the fact that one point has it more easy to deal with incoming rotations as opposed to another.

I could list all of the differences, but I believe it is more important that people take the time to think about it and discover by themselves. Your positioning game and map terrain knowledge should be at a level where you can figure them out, otherwise you are playing PvP just casually.

As a side note, it is quite ironic that the most “broken” (take it as meaning: an overall flawed design) conquest maps, Spirit Watch and Skyhammer, are the closest to achieving a perfect mirror of the terrain on side-points and paths from them to the rest of the map. That is if you exclude the exploits you can do on Skyhammer.

These two effects (even the stunbreaker one) might seem minor to most people. But when you play something like warrior at high level you tend to take notice of things like this since they can be very detrimental to the nature of the class. The most important part of warrior PvP game play is positioning, more so in the post-HOT metas than before; on top of that, sustain is very limited now and relies on highly telegraphed combos (Headbutt—>Outrage—>Rousing Resilience) or long cd Stances. So you tend to rely on tactics such as: breaking the daze from a thief`s Sleight of Hand so you could Savage leap away from a Backstab followed by an autoattack flurry rather then wasting an Utility Skill, or breaking the daze from a mesmer`s Diversion or a dragonhunter`s trap to immediately go into Shield Stance or Whirlwind Attack for the incoming damage.

The traits below are all the passive procs upon incoming CC effects to your character. They all trigger on Daze, which is also part of all of their tooltip descriptions (except for Reactive lenses tooltip). Furthermore, Daze behaves exactly like all other CC in the sense that it is Non-stacking and overwrites other previous CC effects. So there is no reason for it to react differently to Stunbreakers.

1. Warrior: Last Stand;
2. Thief: Hard to Catch;
3. Ranger: Shared Anguish;
4. Engineer: Protection Injection, Auto-defence Bomb Dispenser, Reactive Lenses;
5. Guardian: Retaliatory Subconscious, Hunter`s Determination;
6. Mesmer: Mirror of Anguish;
7. Necromancer: Reaper`s Protection;
8. Elementalist: Tempest Defense, Gale Song;
9. Revenant: Eye for an Eye.

I am writing to attest that this bug exists, and I believe it should get more attention. I know at least 3 other good players that are aware of its existence. It is not new, it has been going on for quite a long while.

Stunbreakers sometimes don`t break Daze, “sometimes” being the beast word to describe the behaviour. It`s neither rare, nor prevalent; it feels almost like a 50-50 RNG.

The “stunned while walking” part, I have experienced that as well, but it has been rare and I always assumed it was related to internet lag or hardware lag. Since most dazes tend to be short duration it is a bit difficult to tell, especially with all the “visual noisy” skill spam going on these days.

Not a bug or a glitch, it seems to be working as intended. Wiki full of errors, as usual. The skill description is:

“Fire a fast, flaming shot that explodes on the first foe it hits, interrupting foes in the area.

Damage Damage: 731 (2.75)?
Burning (3s): 1179 Damage
Daze: ¼s
Number of Targets: 3
Radius: 180
Velocity Increase: 100%
Piercing Pierces
Combo Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 1,500"

What happens is that the “explosion” triggered on ONLY the first hit target has the SAME DAMAGE as the actual gunflame. The radius and 3-target limit is for that “explosion”.

Therefore, you can set up to hit gunflame for double damage by having two targets in 180 range of each other. Due to the PIERCING effect, the target that is hit after the initial one will get the piercing shot plus the “explosion”.

In regards to the WvW scenario described by the OP, probably it triggered twice off same ambient animal or npc creature. And most likely the caster wasn`t even aware of the full workings of the skill.

Personally, I don`t like this skill when I use my engi, kinda despise having to deal with it. It takes some setting up and positioning to actually encircle your target into a “caged” lock or to deny passage in a choke point. So I think the effect is fine as it is.

What isn`t fine is how it reacts to hitboxes quite commonly. I vaguely remember from back in the day, that the oldschool counter play to this skill was STANDING STILL. Don`t know if arenanet bugged it along the way or it was initially never discovered, BUT even if you slick shoes a enemy standing still, sometimes the hitbox decides to trigger a KD; sometimes it doesn`t. Even worse, if you break stun out of an initial KD, you are most likely to get KD-ed again even if standing still.

The skill should have the exact same counter play as any other “line-style” ground targeted aoe cc in the game (Line of Warding, Unsteady Ground). If it`s cast on top of you while you are standing still, you don`t take the cc. Fear Wall doesn`t work like this because the nature of its cc, to move foes away rather then prevent crossing. NOTE that all other ground targeted aoe cc-s (the encirclement area ones) behave in a different way because they are designed to be instant “cages” upon casting (e.g. Ring of Warding, Hunter`s Ward, Static Field).

The cool-down of the skill is an ample discussions strictly related to overall pvp balance between classes. Since the introduction of HOT power-creep, even now after nerfs to “bunker” amulets and specs, some 1v1-s and team match-ups, in general, tend to last a lot longer than before. So it seems that Oil slick is used more often.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

EU servers, between the 12th and the 13th of January 2016, clock in pics set to GMT+2. After two changes already implemented to the system, I guess the search range is still “expanding too much” and didn`t “become tighter”.

The amber in the last pic was a pre-HOT engie on zerker amulet and rifle that wouldn`t last more than 10 secs in a 1v1 against meta specs; running into fights upon re-spawn and getting Ferocity Buff when his team was double capped and getting wiped at their home. High mmr or not, I guess this is the deemed equivalent of a ruby player in a 5-man pre-made by an over-expanding search… yeah, more like going to terraform Jupiter.

And I guess if you are two teams matched from a mix-up of legendary and diamonds, if one team happens to get a ruby, you are at risk of 3 pips… so you better hope that ruby isn`t on bunker mesmer and that their team doesnt have 2 bunker eles on top… (500 by opposing team was achieved in approximately 9 min, not insta-win/snowballed, as can be seen in the pic. We were de-capping points and rotating but couldn`t win anything because of weaker team composition/individual specs). Also, emerald bunker mesmer and ruby DH is supposed to carry against diamond equivalents if in a pre-made, I guess… that higher mmr must mean they can carry regardless.

The posted pics are of the most radical match-ups I came across during that session (see clock in minimap). While soloq-ing, compared to before the matchmaking patch, I have gotten worse and worse teammates and opponents of the same division (diamond/ruby), where games break down to who has the most immovable bunkers; on top, if you happen to get at least one person who knows how to +1 properly, it`s gg before it started. For the first times while queuing solo in diamond, getting paired with people in the same division that can barely use their skills, let alone combo, or that fight off-point for 2 mins on a bunker spec against a rev while their team is struggling to cap something.

Since the patch, there are a number of posts in this forum that have documented the introduced discrepancies in match-making, whether they are detrimental or sudden long win streaks while soloq-ing. So, there is obviously a problem here and you can either be that legendary player that gets paired with a amber against a 5-man pre-made where ruby is its lowest division, or vice-versa and are lucky enough to have more bunkers, plus to constantly get worse opponents.