Guild Wars 2

Condition damage thing caused my group to wipe numerous times last night. Please fix this soon.

It’d be REALLY nice if it was a simpler system where you simply purchased the gear you wanted with glory. It’s fine to have RNG boxes for winning tournaments and ranking up but when I want a couple pieces of gear to finish out my look I don’t want to have to dig through a wiki (To try to craft it at the Mystic Forge) or buy a bunch of RNG boxes in hopes of getting those pieces.

I don’t know why Anet insists on overcomplicating systems that should be really easy to use.

Don’t forget all those changes to the obviously bug riddled “matchmaking” system.

…. oh wait.

YEAH! Another month of failing to fix ANY of the actually problems with the class.

They said that this was a “Bug fix” patch but I assumed that meant they’d fix stuff like the kitten poor staff auto attack or the complete failure that is minion AI. THOSE are bugs that are worth fixing. I don’t care if there are some errors in my tooltips…

Not to mention they didn’t do any changes to matchmaking… There are certainly some bugs to be fixed there. What is the PVP team actually doing?

I’ve often wondered this shortly after I’ve been immobilized, thought i was stunned, hit my stun break and nothing happened.

In my opinion immobilize is far more powerful than any stun in this game simply for the fact that you cannot break it without cleanses (Which can be unreliable if you can’t do a full wipe of them). Stuns tend to not last very long in general but immobilizes can last for upwards of 4 seconds (Which more than enough time to go from full to dead).

Zenith.7301:

…

Sigh… You aren’t taking this very objectively.

I’m not comparing Necros and guardians. I’m saying that as far as diversity goes we have it pretty good, but mostly because we have no build that is really good. In the “meta” world guardians don’t really use Hammers or Greatswords, I’ve seen a few using sword/shield but it’s somewhat rare. Their builds are almost always 0/0/10/30/30 or slight variations of that (with only about 10 points shifting around).

Are they stronger than Necros? Hell ya. But are they more varied? Not really.

I’m not trying to argue that Necro is in any way compare able to other professions just that DIVERSITY is not our issue. Our issue is lack of anything to offer that another profession cannot do beter.

Zenith.7301:

Pandabro.8743:

Actually I feel like necros have quite a diverse amount of builds.

The problem is that none of them offer anything that is comparable to what other professions can bring.

How many of these “diverse” builds don’t use the staff or consume conditions as a heal?

I won’t argue that those aren’t very strong (particularly consume conditions, which is arguable the best single button heal in the game). Mesmers almost exclusively use Swd/Focus + Staff (Occasionally with a greatsword but it’s the exception). Guardians almost always have Staff + Scepter/focus. Lots of classes get pigeon holed into roles because of the “meta” but because necro isn’t very strong in any way there is very little meta for them so their builds are quite diverse.

Power builds use Dagger + axe and whatever offhands they favor. MM uses Axe and sometimes staff or dagger. If you are playing heavy condi or terror there isn’t really a way to get away from using staff though.

All I’m saying is I don’t think “diversity” is a problem for necros, it’s just that most options for the necro are not nearly as good as other classes options for those things.

Actually I feel like necros have quite a diverse amount of builds.

The problem is that none of them offer anything that is comparable to what other professions can bring.

That’s just bad design, but thanks for letting me know about it before I bought any ascended gear! It’ll save me the headache!

Tried this build a bit last night. It’s fun to say the least. I felt very effective in 1v1 situations but tended to go splat in anything else. Seems like it may be an good close point holder/roamer.

Only thing I really had trouble with was rangers who would dance in and out of my wells/range and have their pet eat me up. I just couldn’t keep them tied down long enough to do any substantial damage to them.

Arenas and Raids, especially 10 man raids.

I really miss being able to get 1-2 people together and do something competitive in PVP.

Ant.3415:

Let’s have other objective type pvp maps, but getting rid of the holy trinity is one of the best features GW2 offers, and it ruins PVP in games that have it IMO. Ever play a healer in PVP? It’s horrible being marked and targeted 1st constantly.

How is it horrible? I loved being able to heal through insurmountable damage while my teammates tore appart those who were trying to kill me.

The only thing I didn’t like about being a healer was 1v1’s where I didn’t really have the ability to actually kill anything…

I do see distinct roles evolving in high level play though. There are clearly “tanks” who sit on the point and those who try to control the point from the outside (Generally referred to as a roamer). For the most part certain professions are locked into a certain role (Guardian = Mid point bunker, Mesmer=Close point defender, Thief=Roamer) but they aren’t all just DPS.

There is a lack of a dedicated healer though. Guardians probably come the closest but it’d be nice to see some builds that focused on offering a lot of team heals outside of Guardians.

MaXi.3642:

i think they said it will be only bug fixes and story… but we can still hope for few more changes

Hopefully these bug fixes are in the right place that it’ll make a substantial impact on balance as well (In a good way). I know there are plenty of professions that have huge bugs in their auto attacks (Necro staff among others), as well as other ability breaking bugs.

Okay well If you want to improve it you need to pick a focus. Splitting between power and condition damage will leave you being mediocre at just about everything and having no real purpose on your team.

You also need to think about how Necros are extremely easily bursted down if they are caught in the wrong position. How are you going to combat this issue? Currently you have 25% move speed, which isn’t really going to save you, Thieves can easily stick on you with a 25% move buff. Plus you are using daggers so it’s much harder to position yourself.

Also you go up 20 in Soul Reaping but you chose to take Soul Marks (3% lf) over 50% more fear but you picked up terror. Wouldn’t it be best to take both Terror and 50% more fear? That way you have a high damage and long CC at your disposal?

There are a lot of things to think about here, it’s not really about the skills or traits it’s more about the approach and knowing what you will have to deal with in games. The times you get “top player” (Which is meaningless without context, tPVP? hotjoin?) matter very little compared to the times you get smashed into the ground. Those are the times you have to consider how you can tweak things to adapt.

XGhoul.7426:

Fixing class trait lines => Build diversity, not new amulets

Only partially true. While fixing trait lines will help a lot to encourage varierty, new amulets could spark some new builds be viable because that’s where the majority of our stats come from.

For example: If there was a version of Knights amulet (Pwr, Tough, Vital) for conditions (Condi, Tough, Vital) it would make tanky backloaded pressure builds more viable. Right now you have to choose between Toughness or Vitality if you want to go for condition damage.

Clearly you aren’t really looking for feedback, just affirmation that your build is as good as you think it is.

Seems a little… all over the place…

You have no stun break, and a bezerker trinket… Your using daggers which means you’ll be in the middle of a fight (With a Bezerker trinket and offensive runes). You are using a Dagger offhand which means you really only have one way to lock down someone so you can actually damage them (Where as both Warhorn and Focus give you an additional way to stay on your target).

Plus you don’t have ground targeted well so you’ll have to be on top of anyone for those to work, but you still don’t have many ways to do that.

Sorry but there seems to be no synergy here and no way to address the necro’s natural weaknesses. If I was playing a against a necro like this they’d probably be a free kill. I can’t say for sure because I haven’t played it but I don’t see this working if your opponents are slightly competent.

I’d really like to see something that protects from condition removal.

Not something that necessarily removes the ability to remove conditions (That trivializes the matter) but forces the player to make a choice to cleanse or not.

For exampe: A condition that if it or other conditions on the target are cleansed then it “Explodes” dealing half the damage the conditions would have dealt over the full duration instantly.

Say a Ele has 12k worth of conditions on him, he can make a choice to keep those conditions on him and take the full duration or take 6k damage instantly and be very vulnerable to be finished off from quick burst. This would force players to think twice about cleanses instead of mindlessly spamming as much removal as possible. Still could be very beneficial to cleanse but it also could end up killing you.

Being able to flip boons on a whim gives you such a huge advantage as opposed to taking one random boon a second. Why?

1. Stability, a lot of necros rely on fear to keep themselves alive. Lets say a warrior has 6 boons up and one of them is stability, you need to get him off you NOW. What would you rather have? A well that takes one random boon off or a full strip off of every boon so you can turn around and fear them?

2. Guardians and Elementalists, these two are in almost every single match and they produce tons of boons. Being able to strip everything off a guardian right after he uses his utilities to try to combat the incoming pressure is a huge swing in momentum. Calling for burst at that moment will almost always ensure a downed profession. Where as a 6 second strip the guardian/elemental can probably reapply all the boons you stripped and more in that time.

3. It’s unblockable, I’m not exactly sure how wells work with blocks but I find Corrupt Boon to be one of our most reliable abilities in the game.

We don’t need more burst in this game. If anything we need to slow it down a bit and give thieves more team utility apart from jumping in and finishing a player off here and there.

That’s funny… most of the hotjoins I pop into are like 50% thief. There almost always be 3 on the other team and 2 on my team.

Not really complaining as I find thieves to be pretty poor at actually winning games, but it’s really annoying when you are 1v1 and winning and suddenly you die because a thief decided to pop in.

Yeah it basically does damage to you if you fail to kill someone within the time you have while rezed. Elemenalist’s #2 does the same thing.

This is only a problem at low levels of play. It confused me a lot at first (Even as I was playing a mesmer) but now it’s basically a non-issue as I can generally spot the real mesmer very quickly.

GankSinatra.2653:

Dont most people have 2 hands? 1 for keyboard and 1 for mouse, with fingers that can move independently and simultaneously?

Unless you click your abilities :P.

A lot of people simply don’t want to rebind their skills to something they can actually reach on the keyboard.

I started a necro to try them out and see why they were so bad and absolutely fell in love.

Yes they are sub par to most other classes but I enjoy playing with a handicap and I have a feeling they are going to get some huge buffs soon enough.

I tried a bunch of builds when I first started out and finally landed on this:

http://tinyurl.com/cuc89cc

A hybrid Condi/Bunker build designed around the fact that you will probably be focused by thieves and other melee a LOT. Has a lot of control and condition damage to apply steady backloaded pressure. Both weapons are ranged for optimal positioning (Dagger main hand is very attractive until you realize you have to be in melee range where all the AOE is happening) you want to get as much pressure out there before you get swapped to.

I’ve found this build to be extremely effective at combatting the innate weakness of the necro while not simply being a punching bag.

Zombify does a great overview of this spec here: http://youtu.be/NWhTyimBbTQ

Parisalchuk.9230:

Oh boy 30 glory points you miss out on if you lose! Really the rewards are far to inconsequential in a hotjoin setup.

Yeah I think that’s fine though. Games should be more about intrinsic motivations. That way winning still feels good but losing doesn’t feel nearly as devastating.

They are responding, there is a dev tracker on these forums for a reason.

Plus do you really think they could get any of it done if they were reading these forums all day long?

There IS potential, but the rewards are pretty small for someone doing this outside of tournaments (Which will probably have a delay set up on the actual stream and on a password protected server).

So I doubt many will go through the trouble because the returns are so small and it requires a lot of coordination still.

This is ridiculous. Being able to see other players builds encourages experimentation and innovation.

Much like how open source software encourages experimentation and innovation being able to copy other’s builds does the same.

While you may see a lot of the same builds pop up in the mid skill levels the higher skill levels will be forced to tweak and modify their builds to adapt to the cookie cutter builds. Top players don’t just sit around saying “Aww this cookie cutter build is too good, my cookie cutter build can’t compete” they find ways to modify their builds to combat what they know they will be facing.

Those builds then trickle down to the more casual players through spectator mode and the builds and meta shift causing the top to try and adapt once again.

This shifting is amplified by balanced changes.

Will we see cookie cutter builds? Yes of course, players will always seek the path of least resistance to optimize their enjoyment and success in the game but being able to see builds won’t inhibit creativity from the top level it will only enhance it because more players can reach that point faster.

If the game we were playing was Starcraft you’d be saying we shouldn’t be able to watch replays because then every game would be players racing to do the exact same thing. Which is obviously not true, it’s a varied and ever changing game.

I figured out the issue. There was another option checked like 2 below it (I can’t remember what it was exactly) that allowed the free camera option to work once I had turned it off.

hharry.1967:

You have clearly not played the 2v2 rooms.

I can almost say fights were BALANCED (YES!), we had a winner stays / loser leaves setup and there was never a dominant team, they could win 2 or 3 fights but there was always another team that ended up stomping them.

This game 2v2s are way more entertaining than wow, since theres still team coordination but it isnt all about getting cced 24/7 while ur other guy dies, or dealing with endless pillar huging + kiting fights.

I think 3v3 would get a little bit messy, havent tried it yet, how about someone make a 3v3 room as well?

Sounds like a lot of fun! I’m going to have to hop in and spectate a few of these.

I do think pillars or LOS would be necessary for official maps simply because range is already very dominate and without some way to LOS range you’d probably never see any melee builds surface. That’s just a theory though, without actually seeing any of these fights it’s really hard to tell.

I see other players using “free cam” (Using left click to move camera while your character keeps moving in the same direction he/she was going) on streams but I have no difference when ever this option is checked/unchecked. My character always automatically aligns itself with the camera direction.

Is this the right option or is it just broken on Mac?

JUN YANG.4328:

run the dungeon for what? fun?

That’s kind of the point. The game doesn’t really lock you into doing dungeons(To unlock content) so running it for fun it certainly the most favorable option.

I think they cost something like 200 gems (From their leaked screenshot)? Which is like 6g… If you can’t spend the time to get 6g it’s really not Anet’s fault. Myself, I’ll gladly pay Anet for the privilege to make a custom arena.

Mesmer shatter builds generally use Bezerk/Bezerk for amulet/jewel.

I don’t think Phantasm mesmers are that popular in PVP. Most Mesmers tend to run a variation of the shattercat build:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-WvWvW-Pve-Shatter-Cat-Updated-24-4/first

haha, this guy is funny. Clearly this game isn’t for the OP and at this point he’s simply trolling everyone who’s responding to him.

I like how people seem to have so much insight into how long these things take them to develop…

Honestly I don’t mind the temporary features. It gives the world a dynamic feeling and a sense of urgency to try the new content. There never seems to be a time where there’s not something new in the world to try, where as other MMO’s there can be months in between content and I’ll be sitting around twiddling my thumbs because I’ve accessed everything I possibly can.

You guys are kind of missing the fact that the only constant in all your games is you. So if you are losing tons of rating it’s probably because you aren’t at your skill bracket.

That being said premades are a thing and they do kind of take a kitten on everyone’s day because the algorithm for matching them is too lose.

Laxuar.3504:

At the moment some mesmer are using 3 shatter in the same combo in this way:

• Create a 2 clone with staff
• Change in sword and cast Illusionary Leap (Skill 3) and recast with swap (again skill 3)
• Than they are in melee and use Blurred Frenzy (Skill 2) and shatter with Diversion (F3) in this way you are dazed for about 2 seconds gaining 10 stacks of vulnerability.
• Than they use two utilities: Mirror Images and Decoy.
• They shatter again with Mind Wrack (F1).
• They shatter with (F2) just to add more damage.

And they do all of this during blurred frenzy. Anyway with this combo they use 2 breackstuns.

This.

It’s possible to “1 Shot” glass cannons like that. Though it does depend on the opponent not reacting at all (Stability before the first shatter and just running around really screws this up). If you can manage to avoid having all of the shatters hit you at once you have a good chance of surviving long enough to turn it around on the Mesmer. Or if you can avoid the initial sword swap illusion they won’t be able to swap to you and root you.

Just some options. It’s easier said than done but they are there.

Apolo.5942:

You cant have death match with out Healer Classes, Kiting and Ranged classes would overshadow Melee classes even more than they do now (If that is even possible).

Why do people keep saying this crap?

Deathmatch is where people are supposed to die, not be healed for 30 minutes while playing a war of attrition. If anything not having healers is an advantage (Not that long matches wouldn’t happen, I’m sure they would occasionally if you get two teams who are very good at playing defensively).

The other issue (Melee/Ranged) is simply a balance issue, has nothing to do with the type of mode.

Cool video but I think 8v8 is too many players. Like others I’d like to see 3v3 or 5v5. That way the focus is more on individuals contributions and not just how many aoes can be spammed in the right area.

I laughed.

Listing three things that could change tomorrow and using the word “Never”.

Hmm… if this were true would we have bunker builds?

I don’t feel like I’m ever not rewarded for playing defensively on a node. If I can keep 2 players occupied trying to take my node there’s no doubt the other nodes are going to be capped by my team.

They don’t need to split queues, in my opinion, just have a better algorithm for matching solo players up with other solo players and groups up with other groups. Heros of Newerth does this quite well, it took a while to get to the point they are today but I NEVER get match up against a full premade as a solo queuer despite it all being in one matchmaking system.

Master Charles.7093:

1 or 2 viable builds per class = cheese vs futility

The leaderboard is mainly a list of elitists who consistently run cheese builds with 4 others in voip. The amount of people who play like this is a very small fraction of the entire player base (most of whom chose to quit rather than feed this moloch)

You’ve pretty much described every single team multiplayer game ever made.

BlackhawkSOM.6401:

Ya I was thinking about that which is why I suggested they give points to bunkers who defend nodes and things like that. They can make it work..anything is better then this. Your telling me I can be the worst spvp player in the world and be ranked #1 if I am on one of the best pvp teams? That doesn’t make sense.

That scenario is hypothetical at best. Simply because the 4 other players who are carrying that one player will always be higher ranked than that one player. You can only carry someone so far.

W/L rating is in many MOBA matchmaking systems and they work quite well for predicting skill despite being a team game. The reason is that after a certain number of games everything evens out and the only variable left is you. If you improve you will win more, if you don’t you won’t. Sure you will have a few unfortunate games here and there but for the most part those will be the exception not the rule and the statistics will inevitably reveal your true skill.

Is it a perfect system? No, but it’s much simpler and easy for users to understand compared to what your suggestions and there’s no guarantee that that system would be any better than the current one for revealing true skill.

To get a system, as you’ve proposed, to work right you’d need such tight tuning on the numbers. Which would take a huge amount of data mining and months, if not years of tweaking.

How do you gauge skill besides those who win the most and those who don’t? It’s pretty much impossible as there are so many nuances and variables.

Did you cap the most points? Okay but what about the person who roamed around points and assisted to down players but never actually capped anything?

Did you get the most kills? Okay but what about those who are focused on the actual objective of controlling points?

There’s no way to really gauge skill outside of “Do they win?”.

Kultas Sunstrider.9218:

yes but devs could have added a “show all” option as a temporary way to let people search.

True. They did miss the boat on not including a option to easily search.

Kultas Sunstrider.9218:

developers should be ashamed
just kidding, they don’t give a kitten.

He’s just pulling numbers over. Which is great, but he didn’t develop any algorithms or API. It’s not like he built a ranking system from scratch.