I personally think as a trap ranger with undead runes and a rabid amulet, empathic bond will help more than barkskin. You stack toughness and have a low health pool, ripe for death by condition.
If you were going for point defense, I would go with sword or axe with torch off-hand as your second set.
What kind of pet are you using? Immobilize is your friend so spiders and krytan dog may be good choices.
Before a fight starts, set up your traps in some logical order. Flame trap and spike trap on top of each other for instance. Don’t set up traps on the point if you’re doing point defense, it has to be towards where the enemy will likely come (or alternatively, hide in some LOS position so that the enemy has to run by your traps. This allows you to hit the guy with 5-6 traps just as the fight starts. I don’t specifically try to flank most opponents 1v1. I try to los them so they have to chase me and get hit by more traps.
I’ve had a lot of fun using the treb in khylo. Trap up the choke point. You can see them coming from far away, so abandon the treb when they pass the arch, greet them with some arrows, watch them walk into 6 traps, then finish them off.
Recent changes have hurt PvP more than it has helped. I’m going to avoid balance here because that is not my main issue with PvP. The “tip of the iceberg” post was made months ago; yes there have been changes, but they have not been for the better.
Tournaments: the only tournaments that anyone plays anymore are the 1 round tournaments. This CANNOT be how tournaments were envisioned. It’s not nearly as interesting as 8-team tournaments. There were many issues with 8-team. Why was the map rotation for rounds the same? Que times may have been longer. Moving to 1 round tournaments is not the way to go. It’s not really a tournament, more of a match or skrim.
Maps: the new maps are interesting, but why are they all point holding? Unique mechanics exist in every map, but EVERY map is point capture and hold. There are so many other ways an MMO can have a competitive meta. It’s also painfully repetitive for casual players.
Why are there no deathmatch maps? 2v2v2 maps? There were 2 or 3 pvp events in the mad king patch. Even if these modes were hotjoin only, there’s no reason why more game modes don’t exist right now.
Hotjoin: The intention seemed to involve making GW2 a pick-up and play game like an FPS, RTS, or DOTA. The basic conditions for this are missing. The servers have the same map rotations; there needs to be variety, and this should exist outside of custom arenas.
Social: SPv kitten till missing the social element. No separate SPvP guild. Leaderboards are a step in the right direction but not enough.
I do not have pure of voice, yet hold the line, and only hold the line, has been converting conditions to boons as if I had pure of voice. I do have soldier’s runes. It has been removing 2 condi’s and giving me a boon other than regen and prot. No other shouts do this.
I have not tried this without soldier’s runes.
SPvP is the least popular and least expansive aspect of guild wars 2. It seems like the design philosophy was that all aspects of guild wars 2, exploration, dungeons, wvwvw and spvp would stand on equal footing and players can play the game the way they want and get an equally good experience. I see this in the recent change, allowing you to get laurels with the pvp daily.
That vision is very far from realized as SPvP is by far the least compelling mode in this game. I think the game balance is excellent relative to other MMO’s, but that is not enough.
Gem Store: There needs to be PvP oriented items in the gem store. ANET should be able to make money off of SPvP players, and SPvP players should be able to purchase modifications. Armors, unique glory boosters (kill streak, etc).
Server variety: There are over 100 servers, there needs to be more variety in the server types. Do what FPS games tend to do: map rotation servers, 24/7 map servers. I liked the addition of 10 player max servers. Several reasons: load times are annoying, and some people just want to play 1 map for hot join.
Hot join is boring: The same map and gameplay that makes tournaments exciting does not always apply to hot join. Point capture is not what we want to do when we play hot join! There should be arena modes, hunt modes, destroy base modes. Many of this has been implemented in the mad king event. So far everything is point occupation with opportunities for bonuses, and that’s just not as fun sometimes as hunting and killing.
Not every map needs the utmost care put into it. Plenty of ridiculous custom maps are popular in FPS’s for example. It’s just hot join, it’s supposed to be less competitive, more relaxed.
Make hotjoin flashier. You already have vocalizations for certain maps. Add comical or cool audio for all of the kill-streaks.
It’s not very social: There should be an LFG tool for tournaments, maybe even a separate, guild-like thing for SPvP teams. SPvP team wins equate to team points, that are influence like. This team should be capped at a lower number, 15 maybe?
Here are just some suggestions. SPvP is probably the least realized piece of guild wars at this time. Small changes could make a world of difference. There is definitely an opportunity here for ANET making SPvP better and including more PvP specific things in the gem store.
Bunkers are now passively buffed, of course.
Mesmer berserker builds never relied on quickness for comparable quick kill ability. Even though timewarp has been hit hard, it may actually be a big passive buff for mesmers as their greatest weakness was other berserkers, and their own ability to deal fast damage was unscathed.
Elementalists: Already the best skirmishers. This just makes them better.
It doesn’t look like we will be getting a buff on spirits or utilities in the next patch. They talked about it in much less specific terms than the GS. I think we’ll get the GS this patch. I don’t think they will change the LB specifically, and we might get some improvements to defensive utilities.
Scepter is a decent enough ranged weapon. You CAN hit targets on walls, even behind walls. I think guardians have one of the fastest recharging targetted aoe skills which is smite on the scepter. I don’t think there’s a deficiency there.
Damage wise, guardians aren’t great at range, but are durable and very useful at range nonetheless. We have the gap closing judges meditation that teleports a whopping 1200m, where sword or greatsword can add another 600. With scepter, and a signet based build…with the KD signet and the immobilize one, that’s 2 immobilizes and 1 stun, totally awesome for landing a kill.
It’s interesting. I’ve never used a focus offhand for a shatter build. I also never got into staff for a burst damage build because GS auto-attack does SO much damage with a glass cannon build. I also think melee illusions are much better for shatter.
After watching your video, I think this build is better for raw damage, but you would sacrifice chaos storm and phantasmal armor, amazing skills, for it. If you get to trying something like this out, I’d love to know what you thought of it.
I generally win 1v1’s, but not if I get jump mauled by a thief. No condi-removal but I try not to get involved in prolonged fights. I get out at the first sign of trouble with decoy and blink.
Not sure about the pistol offhand, which I’m thinking could be sword instead. Lose the easy to use interrupt, but a melee phantasm is more convenient for mindwrack. Also don’t know about the elite.
Anyone know the specifics of how it works? I’ve read that it applies to DE’s and dungeons as well as farming mobs.
From the patch note, it sounds like dungeon rewards have just been capped, have they actually been reduced?
Does it not apply to people running 1 dungeon then the next?
The currently LFG tool in the game is, as far as I can tell, useless. It only applies to friends, so unless you have a facebook sized list of friends, you could easily just msg them individually. Or maybe no one is even using it, because it’s always empty when I try to search for anything.
I think the LFG tool is especially necessary in this game for 2 reasons: dungeons often outlevel the area they are in. It’s not particularly rewarding trouncing around a level 16 area when you are 50 while waiting for an area lfg call to net something. Also, story modes exist, are required, and yet aren’t terribly rewarding to repeat for the most part (the exception may be farming caudecus manor for xp when you are just around 40). It was easy as all heck finding story modes the first few weeks, but it’s getting tougher.
All I did was sPvP on beta weekends, and it was great fun. I spent a lot of time imagining what it would be like to play with a premade against another premade, but as it stands, it’s way too strict. There are no premades for random joins, can’t join as a group. Tournaments require 5 people exactly.
There needs to be something for the casual pvp’er that wants to play with friends. Arena pvp has been mentioned before, and I think something along those lines would do the trick. Quick 2v2/3v3’s/4v4’s, allow premades in 8v8’s somehow (perhaps by matching them with another 8man team with some people entering as premades).
I know warriors and guardians are both great support and damage, depending on how you spec. I haven’t gotten a warrior terribly high level but I honestly think if you want to play every phase of the game, spvp, wvw and pve with dungeons or without, you can’t do much better than guardian.
Guardian has pretty good damage, but the kicker in pvp, particularly wvw is that it has a ton of control and gap closers. If you spec for it, you can stun immobilize lock a lot of guys and kill them before they can fully control themselves without a stunbreak.
Guardian also has quite a bit of support built into many of its skills which will trigger regardless of your spec. For PVE, you’ve got a ton of blinds, which makes killing mobs easy. Against many bosses, even if you’re not specced for it, your wall will often be invaluable.