Guild Wars 2

Hm.

We’ve ran warrior the past few days and we’ve beaten literally every single top team in EU atm, with dominant scores vs everyone but cn (2-1), it’s very strong when used correctly. A buff could easily push warrior over the top

There are actually strong teams that are not using mesmer in their current setups right now, both the team Onibawan and Origin Online in EU dropped it.

I do feel like dropping mesmer is foolish but hey, at least it’s being done.

Did I?

It did have far, far more viewers than gw2. I remember hotshotgg streaming with thousands of viewers a few months after release.

It also did not have the millions of sales gw2 had and the insane amount of viewers gw2 had at the start, search for ‘’guild wars 2 pvp’’ for when the game was in its early stage (~60k views) and now videos release on youtube get 2000

League of legends had a massive amount of views before spectator mode, what are you guys on about?

hackks.3687:

Oni.5429:

I must be doing something terribly wrong in my gameplay.

Apparently, there is a way to avoid trebuche shots, thief clusters, mesmer shatters while also being able to dodge/block wells on clocktower.

I have absolutely no clue how I’ve been winning games vs all the top teams when I can’t do this, could anyone make a video showing how?

I must also be playing a completely different game than you guys because from what I can tell 9/10 teams run a necromancer despite them apparently being in a terrible spot.

I wasn’t aware necros had wells that summon shortbow thieves, shatter mesmers, and seige weapons… clearly necros need a nerf

I’m describing the average scenario on Kyhlo. Your response of ‘’just dodge it’’ is extremely unrealistic since chances are that in a game with good players you can’t always ‘’just dodge it’’

I must be doing something terribly wrong in my gameplay.

Apparently, there is a way to avoid trebuche shots, thief clusters, mesmer shatters while also being able to dodge/block wells on clocktower.

I have absolutely no clue how I’ve been winning games vs all the top teams when I can’t do this, could anyone make a video showing how?

I must also be playing a completely different game than you guys because from what I can tell 9/10 teams run a necromancer despite them apparently being in a terrible spot.

It really is not that difficult.

25 vunerability+dd nuke=ele oneshot from 100% even if he reacts like a superrobot and mists the sec the thief appears.
d/p can’t do that.
We run a strat in crs where the thief needs to oneshot ele so we can rush mid, and dd works better for that.

Could Jonathan explain why they buffed the Mesmer trait ‘’Shattered strength’’ when it obviously pushed one of the strongest builds in the game to an even more broken level?

The reason why I ask this is because the PVP community worries about you guys not putting any priority at all on them, shattered strength is clearly weak in PVE while it’s part of the ONLY mesmer build in pvp. Did you really consider PVP at all when changing this?

Something that would explain why you’d make this buff in any other form than ‘’we have no clue about shatter mesmers existing in pvp, which they have since release and are still a must have for every team’’ would really ease some of mine and many other players concern.

2. Do you guys still have plans to make Guild Wars 2 an esport? Many players, myself included, have sacraficed a lot because of your promises to make this game an esport. Needless to say, we’ve been treated AWFULLY, and the sate of pvp as it is at the moment is quite disgusting, considering the amount of serious teams there were out there at the start of this game (now there is literally ONE team my team can compete with).

3. Did you guys watch the latest state of the game podcast? Will Jonathan participate in future ones?

4. Did you guys plan for pvp to be as it is at the moment? As in, are you still ‘’testing around’’ pvp and waiting for truly pushing it out there or are you satisfied with the pace/state as it is? For example, the most popular pvp streams for gw2 are 50 viewers, you can only play paid tournaments after 19:30, etc.

I’m sorry if my post seems to have a really negative tone, I just feel like I should desperately try to get some answers about the future in the game I’ve dedicated an insane amount of hours in for one reason and one reason only: the esport promise, which you guys mentioned in just about every single interview about pvp/the game in general before the game was released but I havent heard of at all since the pvp blog post several months ago. I’m worried.

yawn.7819:

Oni.5429:

Right, with the sticky this caught my interest.

I’m not streaming right now but I will start streaming when my partnership with own3d gets through, which wont be long.
http://www.own3d.tv/Crs-Helseth

Please let me know what class you play and I will add you to the list. Also NA or EU?

It’s in the sig c;
Ah well, Mesmer, EU.

Right, with the sticky this caught my interest.

I’m not streaming right now but I will start streaming when my partnership with own3d gets through, which wont be long.
http://www.own3d.tv/Crs-Helseth

My thought is that I’d reroll to elementalist if this change ever went through c:

Thief has shadow trap which can teleport you at 10k range, same as portal.

A combination of rtl+blink is just about as far as portal

The mechanic of defending a close point with high mobility is something available for everyone, mesmer just has the best one.

Removing/sharing key features of one class is not balance.

Before we want to axe stuff that works how about we buff the useless traits+utilities that exist, you know, 95% of the other skills?

What’s with this logic of ‘’this is something everyone uses, we should axe it’’

‘’Guardian bunker too much of a must, nerf them’’
‘’Necro rez sig too strong, makes everyone take it, nerf it’’
‘’Mesmer time warp and portal too strong, nerf them’’
‘’Thief burst too strong, nerf it’’
‘’Ele 2gud, nerf them’’

Every single balance thread is focused on silly stuff like this when there are traits like ‘’damage foe when you interrupt them’’, with the damage being a whooping 300 dmg at lvl 80 regardless of your weapon.

Top players don’t really play hot join, where the ‘’8vs8 stealth wars’’ go on. They play 5vs5 tournament format where you’re only likely to find one thief on the enemy team.

I suggest you take a look at some of the ’’pros’’ streams to take a look at how the game really plays.

Well, I say ’’real’’ game, but considering that only 1% of the population in the game can actually play paid tournaments that might be the wrong way of putting it.
The ‘’real potential of the game’’, then.

Your post said absolutely nothing, Jonathan. This is almost identical to the blog post, a huge wall of nothing but a ’’soon’’

The only bunker that makes ppl go thief atm is the s/d bunker ele. If it is nerfed(which it likely will be) thief will be optional

^very cool video

Portaling back and doing blurred frenzy at the same thing, having made the ranger/necro waste all their wells/marks/traps.

So…

Nobody has anything to say about what I actually discussed on the podcast? :cc

It’s pretty terrible when someone that has my girly hair has to say this but:

All of you little girlscouts need to stfu with this ekittening and play moar gw2.

You’d be shocked if you knew how many players would return to pvp if it had a proper matchmaking system. Obviously we’ll keep hoping.

Answer: you shouldnt, it’s rubbish.

Unfortunately this game has a ton of trait/traitlines that completely pale in front of others.

In the comment section?

My hair.

ilJumperMT.4871:

Jumper.9482:

possante.8310:

for me 0,25s is fine. dont see why people are complain a lot about it

Because .25s is enough time to be reacted to. Puts it on par with Thief/Warrior.

Lets add .25s between all thief skills shall we?

Mr Glasscannon useless thief with Balisik Venom whining about mesmers, when thieves counter mesmer easy.

Wanna go ahead and try to 1v1 me with your thief?

JonPeters.5630:

OneManArmy.5617:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Jumper is pro, you can’t argue with him. l2keybind.

On topic, kitten – won’t be able to forcebug the 14k mind wracks and blame the game while people scream for exploit. 1/4 of a second is really nothing, minor change that will affect only the bug.

Funny thing, Anet didn’t fix the bug, they just made it impossible to execute. Always better to add something new instead of fixing the old kitten.

I think it’s a temporary bandaid until they can actually figure out what the problem is.
It seems they can’t identify what is causing it,so they added a preventing measure.
Better than doing nothing imo.

We have a winner! This was an especially bad problem so we did what we had to do given the resources we had to solve this while the studio was closed for the new year/holidays.

Jon

Cool

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Spvp-destiny-A-message-for-Jonathan-Sharp/first#post1142753

Would you please enlighten the community on what your stance is on this thread? Please, an acknowledgement from arenanet on this post will be a huge thing for the community.

The team with the highest player score will win in that scenario, so it’s not like the result is debatable!

Jumper, you’re being silly ^^’

The change was to stop an exploit which made the shatter do more or less double damage, which it did

as for genuine mesmers, we are fine, this change doesnt nerf anything, don’t be silly c:

DevilsGlare.7658:

EU guys, I propose this….
3 matches in your region, 3 matches in ours.
Whatever team holds the highest point difference in a match (500-100 lol) at the end of the 6 games chooses where they want the final match to go down at. (Assuming both teams won 3)
It’ll be done in frees running sync que so we can get past the timezone issue and we will do it on a weekend.

You got called out EU.
What is going to be the next excuse?

I’m completely up for this, though a better way of setting it up would be joining a hotjoin game with 10 slots together and playing for however long you guys want to.

Send me a message if you wanna go into details. I’ve been trying to get an USA team to practice with for a while (I actually think I contacted you about this but not sure if it lead anywhere)

’’standard’’ composition in EU is:

Ele
Mesmer
Guardian
Thief
Necromancer

Bumping this thread – it needs to get the attention of the devs.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Oni.5429:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Klinch.2964:

Sprawl, many threads created lately have already been talked about many other times. It sucks that when ANET don’t reply to these repeated threads, everyone complains that ANET doesn’t communicate with the community.

This may be true. I only have enough time to stay attached to one forum, so this is the obvious choice since I’m on the sPvP team. This means two things: First, I see the repeat threads and don’t have time to post in them; hoping that the community will reference the older posts. Second, I will jump on opportunities to spread my knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to otherwise, like in this thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Spvp-destiny-A-message-for-Jonathan-Sharp/first#post1132982

This is no repeat thread, and it’s an important thread and point. If you could make some time to read (and more or less aknowledge) the concerns you’ll do something huge for the PVP community.

Things of this magnitude (touches many many design points of sPvP) are not something I like to answer as a programmer. I wouldn’t do the thread justice as I haven’t spent nearly as much time thinking about those issues as the designers. This thread is brand new, so please give time for people to come back from break who can answer it better than me.

Okay, understood! Thanks a lot for responding.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Klinch.2964:

Sprawl, many threads created lately have already been talked about many other times. It sucks that when ANET don’t reply to these repeated threads, everyone complains that ANET doesn’t communicate with the community.

This may be true. I only have enough time to stay attached to one forum, so this is the obvious choice since I’m on the sPvP team. This means two things: First, I see the repeat threads and don’t have time to post in them; hoping that the community will reference the older posts. Second, I will jump on opportunities to spread my knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to otherwise, like in this thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Spvp-destiny-A-message-for-Jonathan-Sharp/first#post1132982

This is no repeat thread, and it’s an important thread and point. If you could make some time to read (and more or less aknowledge) the concerns you’ll do something huge for the PVP community.

Valkyrie is an excellent amulet for Eles and they’ve been the standard for a long time.

First of all, eles have plenty of fury, giving them 20% critchance. This means you’ll get full use of the extra crit damage from valk, giving you more damage on valk than you get on soldier.

Second, elementalists arent easy to kill just because they got low hp pools. Mist+channel heal and you’re back on full hp, combined with the near constant protection, vigor and heals from water and you’ll see that ele is one of the harder targets.

They’re variations of the standard traitline, yes. But so what? On a decent level of play mesmers have one shatter spec with more or less one variation. Warriors have just one traitline and spec, necromancers have two different ways they can spec with little to no variations in them, thiefs have two specs and extremely minor variation

In terms of versitility eles are still on the top.

As for royal legion and their Berseker staff ele: I’m not sure if they actually did stop it. They’ve been inactive during the holidays. Last time we met them he was still running staff but it didnt feel like he put down the same pressure, felt like he had switched to valk. not sure though.

I sure can! Here are a number of completely viable builds, obviously not all of them will make it at the top level of paids but you seem more concerned about hot join where all of these will do quite well.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJAoYhMmObyxygjDAkHm8SJjCdUeMDO2A;ToAA0CnoQygkAJLSOkkINgY+B
^
Dagger dagger spec which has good burst. While it’s burst is not thief level it makes up for it with good survivability and excellent roaming capablities. One of the best skirmishers for sure. EU don’t really use these eles in paids but alot of american players do. It also provides good support for your teams with the aura share.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJAoYhMmObyxygjDAkHm8SJjCdUeMDO2A;ToAA0CnoQygkAJLSOkkINgY+B
^Tankier version of the spec above

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJAoYhMmKbyRygjDAkHm8SJiCPUeMDO2A;ToAA0CnoQygkAJLSOkkINgY+B
^more dps heavy version

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJArYhMmObyx5gjDAEFmgiQhFOUeMDO2A;ToAA0CnoQygkAJLSOkkINgY+B

Scepter dagger valk spec, decent damage and burst

There are also some more cheesy(but potentially very dangerous builds) such as berseker staff ele which Royal legion in EU used to run quite alot, in terms of dps that build does far more than a thief ever could.

Ele used to be a common pick for high level play back in the days when they didnt even have mist form to escape stomps and they’ve continued to be a core pick in setups, it’s power spiked even higher when their dueling capacity got buffed due to the channeling heal buff and after that(also before that) many had already voiced concerns that elementalists were possibly too strong (when played correctly, which honestly isnt as hard as many try to make it out to be.). This was all BEFORE we found the immortal scepter dagger heal allies from 20% to 80% spec.

edit; thanks to zoose for having his builds openly available c:

Tank ele is pretty silly atm.

You know something is wrong when you press B before the start of a match, see that the enemy team does not have a thief and say ‘’Okay guys GG we’ve won, our ele will be able to go far without ever dying’’

You may doubt me on that but trust me, unless the enemy thief has double mesmer on point or mesmer+thief that ele is going to tank the 2v1 EASILY long enough for our team to win mid. Furthermore, anything but the mesmerthief are very unlikely to even get a kill on the ele, so there isnt even a punishment for the decap+attention you’ve wasted 2v1 on close.

This is by no means uncounterable since like I previously mentioned mesmer thief counters it pretty well but it’s still over the top, incredibly powerful in teamfights with uberheals, best roaming spec for sure and can also infinately tank a ton of different 2v1s

Lowell isnt a BS thief, nor is he a weak one.

Why do we have to create a rift between eachother like this? Why are both sides so insecure about their own abilities that they feel the need to trakittenalk the other side?

Metor was a necromancer.

Seragi.5910:

Ultima.8673:

Seragi.5910:

thief just arent viable for paids, sorry… paids is all about team fights and winning. yeah the burst is nice but there useless for everything else. they cant stomp for kitten and they die in 2 shots flat. its a waste of a slot when another class has same amount of burst but much more functionality.

I’m not trolling, I main thief and I love it. but seriously thieves are useless in paids

lol eu top Teams all run 1 thief in their group
right atm thief is the carry and fastest roamer with highest burst….

actually thats wrong, they use the thief to sight the field… top roamer is mes and mes burst puts thief into the ground considering mes is aoe and thief is single target. and the only reason they run thief is because 9/10 there facing newb teams in first 2 matchs where there other 4 players wreck the team so thief can back cap.

when the 2 good teams finally meet in last round they usually do the least amount of pts because they cant back cap, its harder to snipe because kjylo is a thiefs nightmare… every fight is literally starting uphill.

good teams wont just sit by and let a thief shadow refuge and res… its like a big red target screaming dps here and get 2 free kills.

sadly overall thief is not that viable in paids.

ive faced and played with PZ the leading NA guild and most matchs i didnt die to thief once, I always died to the mes

Thief treb yo.

Seragi.5910:

thief just arent viable for paids, sorry… paids is all about team fights and winning. yeah the burst is nice but there useless for everything else. they cant stomp for kitten and they die in 2 shots flat. its a waste of a slot when another class has same amount of burst but much more functionality.

I’m not trolling, I main thief and I love it. but seriously thieves are useless in paids

This is completely incorrect, literally every single top team uses a thief!

I completely agree with the main point of this thread – that point being that if a player wants to be competitive at all in this game he is FORCED to find a team of 4 other players to play with. Not only that, but he’ll have to practice a ton to even stand a chance versus the top teams that he is stuck being pooled up against. It really sucks that I’ve seen plenty of teams just give up because at BEST they get to kyhlo in the paid tournament only to face lets say our team or another strong team like CN. Good players in a pug, no matter how strong they are have little to no chance versus a strong team.

I do however disagree with the ’’fix’’ you have in mind here, the 3v3/1v1 ques wouldnt really amount to anything, competitive people would treat it the exact same way they treat free tournament and hotjoin, they’d say ‘’Who cares? That’s not the serious mode in the game, go 5v5s if you wanna be skilled’’ and the problem persists, because the game is not and will never be balanced around those modes.

However, a very simple fix would be something I’m really wishing that arenanet will add, soloq with rating. Similiar to how free tournaments now work, you que up and match up with four players based on your rating and meet five enemies based on your rating. Winner gets rating, loser loses some.

Just like the soloq in league. The soloq in league is a SUPERB gateway to being competitive in it. I was the kind of player you describe yourself to be (a little bit more time to spare but still), and I had a complete blast getting to 1800 rating in the soloq system there. Furthermore, the ability to duoq enhanced the experience IMMENSLY.

That’s all we need right now. A soloque matchmaking where you do NOT match up with a full team and where winning/losing affects your rating. There will be bullkitten matches where an ally sucks, one dcs or whatever but it’ll keep people playing and let people be serious without having to spend every single evening with a team only to match up with teams that have been playing in those conditions for months.

There is also the problem of there being absolutely no effective way to practice/tryhard when my team isnt on. The only way for me to practice in this game are either paids or duels atm. And paids only proc from 19 and tend to end 2.

In the previous state of the game interview jonathan said that he intended to mix soloq pool and premade pool in the same rating, this is one of the silliest ideas I’ve ever heard of. A collection of 5 great players have absolutely no chance vs 5 great players that play every day with eachother from 19-02.

You’re really underestimating the hybrid well necro build in terms of burst. Granted, it dies easily but in the competitive format of the game (5vs5) allies will protect you and peel thieves from you, giving you a very powerful pick in terms of aoe burst.

The spec should also do very well in 8vs8 and such as long as you’re careful. Granted, you may die every now and then to a thief or something like that but you’re most likely gonna put down some insane damage before you go down.

FuVirus.6398:

Oni.5429:

Top 23 world?

By EUs standard you’re not even top 50.

What is it with EU standards lol you realize we have less teams on here? We dont get as many paids. NA standards you dont get to farm noob teams all day long.

I didn’t mean this to offend or to say that EU > NA, sorry if you took it this way. I just thought it was curious that just because you’re on 23th spot on NAs inactive ladder you go around calling yourself top ~25 on the planet.

I’m not trying to make it seem like what you’ve accomplished isnt worth anything but you literally are by brushing aside everyone on EUs accomplishment in the way that you are.

And you most certainly don’t get to farm noob teams all day long in eu ^^’.

Top 23 world?

By EUs standard you’re not even top 50.

Making my warlocks attack homing would be pretty op c:

I’ve played that confusion spec in serious tpvp(helseth here)

It’s decent in certain composition, add a necro with epidemic and a rather tanky composition, possibly with one burster and you have a completely viable playstyle.

example:
nec – condi
mesmer – conf shatter
guard – bunker/support
ele support
thief – backstab/caltrops if you wanna be cheesy, of course, in that case you could run engi or another nec aswell.

Lev: the only mesmer build this buffed in serious pvp was the shatter mesmer build, which literally every single team had one mesmer running.

Every single player who tries to defend this buff is either a weak shatter mesmer(the only mesmer build tha tmatters in tpvp) or dishonest.

very cool idea, gl in your games

Not even close, cogbyrn.

The only change is that we don’t do utility swap situaitonal moves and that we sit on our core weapons all game without ever doing any swap tricks (be it swiftness or for some cc or whatever)

Just like I said before, the only real change I did is that I now sit on focus instead of pistol. Our necro/guard has no swiftness at all and we cant stack swiftness outside of combat.

Not as many interesting options, NOTHING else, that’s all.

Havent had a single loss either in paids since the change, so I suppose the idea that all the top players that just ‘’cheated by countering the enemy team’’(wat) was wrong aswell, just like we said.

So in the end we are left off with the game having less versitility/options and that’s all.

Here are a list of things that our team sometimes did as interesting trick plays which will never happen again unless arenanet unlocks utility/weapon sets:

1. We know where the enemy is coming, thief swaps to shadow refuge, refuge+mightstack up and intercept them
2. We lost mid on legacy, the enemy has 2 point. One of our plays was that we put smokebomb, stacked 15s invis in base and put portal on enemy close, we then attacked mid and when they got to mid we portaled to their close. Is this uncounterable? No, their mesmer portals their close and then port back the allies and it’s a standard teamfight – this is just a tactic to have a comeback chance on a map where it’s nigh impossible to do so.

Here is a scenario which happened shortly before the change:
3. Our ele is dying on the treb, I’m on close. I portal close and rush to him, swapping mirror images to blink and nullfield to illusion of life. I manage to get to him and do the illusion of life JUST before he gets stomped and then I open my portal, the ele enters the portal in the illusion of life and died on close where I could easily rez him.

You guys keep saying ‘’all you do is swiftness and now you have to make balanced builds’’ and ‘’now you cant instantly counter enemy team by outbuilding them in the middle of the game’’

Neither of these were ever the case, ever. It’s a misinformed opinion (which is reasonable to have without experience) that people voiced and harassed arenanet about which lead to this change which surely is NOT good for the highest of competitive play.

Regardless, this is the change we are stuck with now. I find it unfortunate, many top players do. Not because we’ll stop winning but because there were so many trick plays, tactics and cool ideas you could do with these.