Guild Wars 2

The queue times can be really long, I strong support the OP. letting us join hotjoins will permit us to join/warm up in hot joins/king of the hills and actually play the game instead of waiting.

Hello, I have one complaint about EU Academy gaming. How come it doesn’t have Free agents in it? I find it difficult to participate in EU Academy Gaming because I have no team in EU.

on another note, Nerfing turrets will greatly nerf Supply crate…I don’t believe an elite which is on a 180 second cool-down would be that good if the main source of supply crate (burn and immob) will be cleared out in matter of seconds… Perhaps buff the supply crate as the turrets are equipped with the reflect bubble to ensure that the turrets stay alive longer than 5 seconds? (or else you are killing all of Engineer’s elites as mortar and Elixir X tornado are completley useless.. )

Can you also give us a balance updates on upcoming patches please? So the community can help out with the balance by giving suggestions or reasons where the balance can be further improved (it’s only fair after ignoring us for 6 other months). Would really appreciate it.

10/10. As much as I love the game, and I owe it to the developers that made it…They failed to update it properly. The basics of marketing success is to make your clients happy and listen to what they are complaining/asking for, they failed to do both and are constantly ignoring us.

My advice to you, Anet, is to look at other company’s success’ and see why they succeeded (look at the league of legends staff for example and how they quickly react to any exploits or imbalances in their game.)

Stronghold is cool and all, but it doesn’t have the factor that would “shut us up.” The game is still heavily unbalanced, the lower-tier pvpers and solo qers are being driven away from PvP due to the constant exploits of turret engineers/power necros/mindless gameplay, the leaderboards are broken, match making is terrible, the community is rather quickly dying off, and the list goes on.

I really see no reason to buy HoT as I’ve seen no initiative to buy this game as you are introducing even more specialization and complication to the balance of the game yet no reply to the current unbalances. This will only make it harder for you…and judging by the experience I had with you, Anet, you will continue ignoring the balances and perhaps add little shaves for us to be quiet until the next 6 months to go (which is clearly not working as intended, eh?).

The clock is ticking Anet, expansion is really your last chance to get more players hooked to this game.. and ignoring us will not work anymore.

I can already think of a lot of ways you can exploit stronghold point system in order to just win by points. I’d suggest actually making the game mode about killing the lord as the end of the game. No time limit but game ends on lord kill.

2 Thumper turrets + Shadow arts/acro thief on supplies spamming headshots , rest zerg one gate. GG.

Assuming no nerfs were applied to the meta, then engineer 100 nades

Alright so..

I was trying to think of making a fun Mortar build and perhaps make it viable (yea right lols) .. and it hit me… Why don’t we make turrets like mortars? I mean… Rocket turret can become a rocket launcher…stationary slow…requires the player to actually use the rocket..same applies for every other turret.. Rifle being bullets .. flame being a flamethrower kind..etc.

That will make turret engi think about their positioning, multi task between switching kits, using the turret, and keeping the point capped. I can see a lot of possibilities in such mechanic and would be REALLY fun to play if designed properly. I really honestly believe instead of removing a certain aspect of the game (which honestly 99% of PvPers would love to have) into turning it into something positive to the game. After all, this game lacks diversity in builds in which the “meta” builds just dominate the other ones …

Just a food for thought

I completely agree with the OP, as seen in the last WTS how a well coordinated stealth play between 2 berserker amulet players (in that case d/p thief and hammer meditation guardian) can instantly kitten out a target from stealth with little counter play —- which is really just awareness and random dodges lel (and recently rune of vampirism but do you really call this a counter?).

That being said, nerfing smoke fields would really hurt d/p thiefs so I would either suggest a “compensation” for thiefs for losing a stealth on demand or just changing blast on smoke field to something less impactful (I honestly have no idea what..)

Mmmmmmm, too much words

Whether or not you’ve encountered or heard someone calling you “bad” or “not that great” don’t take it personally. Consider it a challenge. Seriously, if you want to be competitive then expect such comments. They are not toxicity but are a must-have in every competitive scene. They spice things up.

However, if you take it negatively and start flaming/harassing whoever actually said that then the competitiveness turns to toxicity.

My point is, you’re all bad :P

Weez.6315:

offensive passives like IP and Chill of death are both bad for pvp in gw2.
If there had to be passives in the game they shouldnt be that decisive in the way u play or how the fight ends.

defensive passives are the same problem for me. A passive stunbreak punishes the opponent who tried to interrupt a keyskill. At least make those visible for gods sake.

AI builds should never be more effective than any non AI build. If we wanted to play against npcs we would play pve.

One of the main dmgsources of powernecros is sadly spamming ds 1. Id like to see some changes in ds and also weapons skills for power necros that they dont just have to spam the 1.

Power Lb Ranger. The Problem with ranged dmg is, you dont have to set up your burst. You can just press the buttons and do a lot of dmg. You simply can´t dodge as much as there are arrows flying in your direction. At least tone down the range id say..

I take that back, not everyone in the community is stupid. Thank you sir.

adozu.6398:

simple != mindless

also having 1million skills spread over 4 weapon setups with no cooldown doesn’t equal skill in my book, it just means you’re better at pressing lots of buttons?

if anything, a power necro has to manage 2 resources = life force and death shroud cooldown, engi doesn’t really need anything of that except for keeping in mind the cooldown of your kit skills.

such skill.

Yes, you are perfectly right. lol’d.

Yes turn this post into power necro vs cele engi, coz thats exactly what this post is about. Lmao later buds.

You know what? you are right.
Anet is not wrong at all, it needs to make these builds for you guys since you guys are really stupid and can only play such classes. Enjoy your broken game.

I apologies anet, your interest was indeed for the player base, I guess.
I can’t believe people are defending power necros…sigh.

Then you should just imagine if anet actually makes the class skill-based.. you’d probably do better.

Again, have you read my post? This is not about Competitive play whatsoever, however it indirectly effects it, and here’s why:

Getting into competitive play actually requires the person to be motivated and interested in improving as a player first, then improving as a team. That being said, rotations, communication, mechanics, and positioning etc.. come into play. However, how do you expect people to enjoy this game knowing that they got “outplayed” by someone who just summons turrets and runs around, spams 1 and waits for procs, etc etc…

That being said, you cannot compare IP with spinal shivers. IP does not result in a 1 shot 1 kill. You just can’t compare the two passives. There is a lot of way you can deal with burns, engi is a problem but not that big of a problem AT THE MOMENT.

Stop focusing on complaining about every single aspect in this game, it won’t lead to nowhere… haven’t you learned that anet can’t multitask?

Like i said in my post, celestial engi/ele/warrior are by far not balanced. However, this is irrelevant to this post. This post is about MINDLESS gameplay. Positioning, rotations, communication and all those cool stuff come with ANY CLASS YOU PLAY. However, when you play a class that requires 0 brain skills, and 0 inteligence aside from what I mentioned above that makes you a “better” player…. then those classes do not reward SKILL what so ever.

Skill in my opinion (this is where i am subjective) is how you OUTPLAY your opponents. How do necros outplay? they don’t…their passives do. How do turrets engis outplay? they don’t…their turrets do. How do rangers outplay? they don’t they are in a very bad position at the moment and require a rework.

Now dear sir, to summarise this post for you one last time and I hope I don’t have to repeat myself….

The classes I mentioned are brainless, I am NOT saying that the cele builds are not broken. What I am saying…in order for this game to have more teams…more players..better leaderboards..and generally a better and more competitve community… it all is on ANETS hand to reward skilled gameplay and punish brainless ones. Promote and encourage players to play classes and builds that actually requires your brain to function rather than just kiting around or spamming 1. Please tell me more about how you can be a better power necro by positioning… I don’t wanna repeat myself anymore..whenever you are writing the next post re-read what I said i’m pretty sure the answer is there.

No. I wreck power necros all the time, I have 0 issues with rangers/necros/turret engis. In fact, I have no problem facing any class as a cele engi except possibly condi rangers. However, don’t overthink this too much. I’ll do some baby step explanation for you sir.

Necro takes no skill. Rangers take no skill. Turret engis take no skill. Yet they are all effective in solo q/team q because again…they take no skill but have very high reward. It is ANNOYING to deal with, Extremley over used by the player base, and extrmley frustrating for anyone who wants to be part of the PvP scene.

Take a minute and think about it. The reason we don’t have a proper leaderboard system isn’t because it is hard to make one but it is because there is a small player base in the PvP community. You can’t blame Anet for tryin to make a leaderboard but you can blame them for giving bad players really easy classes to play and have a very high reward and are extrmley annoying to fight and hence make the community extrmley toxic..as I am right now. I used to play gw2 on a daily basis at least 2-3 hours a day..Now I haven’t even bothered to log on for a good 4 days simply because it is a pain to Solo q, a pain to team q, and even more of a pain to wait in heart of the mists for 8 minutes just to match up against 2 turret engis , 1 power necro, 1 power ranger, and a shout warrior over and over again only to die to random procs or players who are absoultley doin nothin but summoning turrets.

tl;dr: If you are tryin to tell me to learn to play then please don’t coz i already did and I pretty much know how to deal with each of the classes I mentioned. IP is an issue, but it has a counter. Spinal shivers, power ranger + air and fire, turret engi in general…there are counters as well…however…the skill required to play these classes… close to 0.

Anet needs to reward SKILLED gameplay, or this is NOT esports, but a complete and an utterly sad joke.

I am not complaining about the class being overpowered whatsoever, I am complaining at the effort required to do such burst. Simply the idea of Necros having a 70% increased damage in downstate + having procs is just insanely stupid. What do power necros really do aside from focusin on positioning themself and wait for their passives to proc? BE REAL PEOPLE. Same applies for ranger and turrets and any class that has AI. Classes with AI should be punished for being AI. Look at minion mancer or spirit guardian, there is a reason they are not viable and they should stay that way. AI should not be a viable build but associating some AI into your build should be fine (healing turret/rocket turret/thumper turret for decap/golem for necros etc..)

Putting everything aside, what frustrates me more is the fact how inconsiderate anet can be.. can we at least get a headsup that these issues are being looked at? sigh

Aeroxe.8140:

Patchi.9061:

fueled by salt, rage, anger .. you name it.

I had a team it disbanded so I started solo qing again.

I think we know where this channeled salt is coming from now haha :P

Haha well I am a little dissapointed that all hard work and we didn’t get to prove ourself :/ Regardless, not being on a team = not playin with permades…it really showed me the terror of solo q x: Most of my ex-team-mates stopped enjoyin the queues because of all those AIs… most of the salt is coming from the fact they did stop playing :/

Sometimes I wonder if Anet even plays their game…..seriously go ahead and solo q into an engi/necro/ranger daily.. Good luck and try your best to have fun…because whoever made turret engis probably thought skyhammer is esports.

Alright,

I’m skipping the introduction as I am fueled by salt, rage, anger .. you name it.

Some of you guys me know me in game as Paw Paw. Not much into there I am a hardcore PvPer… I had a team it disbanded so I started solo qing again. That being said, I know the game inside out, I’ve done tournaments .. I’ve played with great players and I know what I am talking about right now.

When I started PvPing, people complained about the bunker meta.. how warriors and spirit rangers were strong. They were right to complain..the regen on those classes were absured. I’m not really here to talk about any of that…but I just wanna compare what people are complaining about back then and what people are complaining about right NOW.

People are complaining about AI. Artificial Intelligence… Something that has NOTHING to do with player skill…except actually placing that AI/Summoning. If you don’t know what I’m talking about..have you heard the term AIDS? It stands for AI Doing stuff…..and I’ve been saying that a lot lately.

Let’s take that one step backwards. We are all PvPers. What are PvPers in Guild wars 2? People who queue in a strategic 5v5 game to compete in a conquest map and test their skill against each other.

That’s right…test their SKILL. Furthermore, in order to do so… the PvP developers need to balance the game to make sure the game is competitive and fun.

Now let’s go back to what I said point by point:

“Test their skill”… Now don’t get me wrong… I am not gonna complain about how turret engi takes no skill and it is one of the major reasons the PvP community is toxic to every freakin turret engi in this game and Honestly hope they all lose every game they queue in as turret engis coz they do not deserve that win what so ever since they did NOTHING but run around summon turrets and randomly dodge. —- Putting that aside… Guild wars 2 has been trending to more mindless game play and the balance updates have shown nothing but to promotes those brainless game plays.

First — you add the new traits and buff turret engis
Second — you buff power ranger with the read the wind trade and allowing air and fire procs
Third — you buff downstate necro and reward the 1 spam gameplay.
Fourth — you are constantly buffing condi mesmers and condi rangers hoping they come back to the meta.

Do not get me wrong. Celestial meta is not balanced by far. No class should be able to be a bruiser and still deal tons of damage…. However, you can differentiate between a good cele engi and a bad one.. a good cele ele and a great one…etc etc. Turret engi? power necro? power ranger? aside from the general knowledge of how to dodge and position yourself (which is a factor on anything you play) There is NO difference.

The other point was… “To make this game competitive and fun.”
What part of puttin turrets mid air and just being there as a nuisance is fun to fight? or even fun to play? what fun do you get from being spammed by a ranger 1500 range away when you are solo qing? what part of killing a power necro only to die to him in a downstate seconds after because spinal shivers and air and fire proc’d on you?

Anet…. expansion is coming…this is your real last chance to prove to everyone to coming back to this game that there is esports….The first thing the old players are gonna do is solo q or even team q….your game is flooded with turrets, liches, and mindless gameplay. What do you think their first reaction will be? Do you honestly wanna pursue esports or are you just a making a terrible saddistic joke out of us and slowley killing your game?

Your move anet.

TL;DR: Stop the brainless gameplay and start rewarding skilled play. Competitve or not it is not a good idea to have any sort of brainless builds that has such high reward in solo qs. Wether they are effective in tournaments or not is irrelevant since only a select few participate in the tournaments and people usually would try solo/team qs before even thinkin of forming a team/participating in a tournament … and with all these brain-dead classes/builds in solo q it is not a fun experience and any sane person would quit this game.

P.S: Sorry for the rage… However you guys really pushed us to the edge….There has been no initiative or any sort of movement to reward skilled gameplay..

P.S.S: No offence to the good power rangers/necros but your class brain-dead even if you are so good at positioning/dodging.

There is counter to all of them. Please stop complaining about it, it’s a learn to play issue

That aside I think their cool down is pretty low for what they offer , so what is “overpowered” is the fact they have really short cool down.

Turrets don’t know you back if they explode. It is an engineer trait that makes it so. Turrets are AIDS (AI Doing stuff). less brainless please.

Lux.7169:

Also, people should go back and look at the team comps on the stream, three teams were running the EXACT same comps and builds, skill for skill, trait for trait except when Anya changed to the smoke blast thing and then one team ended up switching a d/d ele to cele rifle.

Seriously though, is that what we want to promote in pvp? Here’s a list of 5 builds, we’ll ban the non-meta build only one team cares to try.

I come here on neutral ground , and I have to say that you have my respect for being innovative in this community trying to figure out how to counter cele comps and what not. However, I can see why there is a restriction to turret engis.
I see academy gaming as a first step for low-mid tier players to experience tournaments and compete to see where they stand in the game and pretty much let everyone who watches stream watch the matches and enjoy them as well – all in all a promotion for tournaments and a fun experience overall.

That being said, is it really a fun experience when you have 2+ turret engi on a team? it’s not. Nor is it good for the community as we are trying to promote skill over AI. I don’t know why anet made such a comp around turrets but I believe it is for the people who do not want to try hard and just want to have fun and play a simple low floor skill cap class. That being said, I believe academy gaming is a place to compete and to test your skills against low-mid tier players… what skill are u talking about when you’re playing turrets? Celestial might be strong, but it actually requires you to cast spells in order to succeed on it.. there is a difference between a good d/d ele and a great as there is to every class in this game. However, a turret engi is a turret engi no matter how good/bad you are. You are not doing anything. You are running around and placing turrets. That’s it. Nothing. If you want decaps then go back to decap engi. or necro, or simply play somethin such as staff ele. There are a lot of options where you can have a class that can “decap”. Instead of limiting yourself by playin turret engi and have no hope against mid-high tier teams, learn a decap class that actually has a higher skill ceiling and more potential overall. (that’s my 2cents take it or leave it)

TL;DR: turret engi has a very low skill ceiling and won’t work againt mid-high tier teams. However, it is also not fun to participate in a tournament when everyone is runnin turret engi nor is it helpful for the community since mid-high tier realize that turret engi is useless and hence the low-mid tier teams won’t have any good practice to prepare them for the mid-high tier teams.

Exedore.6320:

Patchi.9061:

IP isn’t the reason engi’s are OP

If you think this, you should stop proposing balance changes.

Incendiary Powder is incredibly broken and should have been nerfed a year ago. With 6 points in Explosives, it’s a baseline 5 second burn which cannot be avoided and with all the cover conditions that engineers have, it’s near impossible to remove. With sigil of Intelligence and grenades, it’s reliably applied close to the internal cooldown. You end up eating the full duration, which even on a celestial engi after the nerfs is still ticking for almost 500 damage/second. That’s 2500 unavoidable damage for no effort on the part of the engineer. Every ~10 seconds.

You say Air and Fire are too good, yet totally ignore IP as being a problem. Don’t even say it’s the fault of runes because it’s too powerful on celestial rifle engi and they don’t use + condi duration runes.

IP is one of the base reasons Engis are viable at the moment. Remove IP and what is left for engis to deal damage? You make it sound that you will eat 2500 damage over 10 seconds neglecting all sources of regen, condi clear, and whatnot.
Let’s take this to another level, let’s look at each spec;

Starting with Condi Engi. THE source of damage of condi engis are poison from sigil of doom ( requested nerf) sharpnel grenade (already gettin a nerf) and if traited 15% to have a bleed on each grenade toss (trading turret knockback) , then there is IP. Last but not least Confusion from pistol and prybar and toolkit 2. — Summarising it , 3 sources of Poison, 2 sources of burn (if p/s, 3 if p/p), 4-5 sources of bleeds. So there is no major “Spike” damage that engis have unless they manage to outperform the enemy by covering up the bleeds and burns — managing that is quite challenging as ur constantly applying bleeds(pistol autos) which will be condi cleared.

Celestial rifle: Most cele engis trait for turret knockback, so their only sources of condi damage are IP, Sharpnel nades, box of nails, poison grenades, prybar, blunderbuss and the rest are pretty much cover up condis and power damage. With the nerf of Battle sigils the power/condi of celestial has been tuned down, so in order for an engi to optimally do damage it would need to properly land CC which is not quite hard (suggested balance on Rifle KB, and remove pull from stealth) – Then all what is left are counterable CC and not many stacks of bleeds, one source of poison(2 with throw wrench), nor any source of burn other than IP. Engi is ment to be a hybrid class, zerker engi is not viable because other classes can do that and manage to survive better. If you nerf IP, there is little to no reason for players to play Engi over Condi necro or even condi rangers as there isn’t a proper source of burn it can provide.

~TL;DR: Engis main source of damage comes from the burns, rather than nerfing IP it is what makes IP more powerful which are Sigil of battle (nerfed), sigil of intel (suggested nerf), balthazar rune (suggested nerf), and Doom sigil (suggested nerf).

Exedore.6320:

Patchi.9061:

Hence adding voice comms in game would fix the issue~

Counter argument: Blizzard added voice comm to WoW. It delayed content by months. No one used it. I think they eventually removed it. I don’t think ANet has time to waste on an in-game voice comm feature.
Correct me if i’m wrong, but I don’t remember WoW going E-Sports either.

Communication isn’t the issue so much as players being able to learn roles and smart strategies from gameplay. All too often you get the guy who goes far node at the start, can’t get there before it caps, and has no sustain or decap ability. He ends up dying in an easy +1 and causes the match to snowball for several minutes. But instead of realizing what they did is dumb, they blame the rest of the team.

Communication Helps. There is no denying it. Not gonna go full details on that. However, the average PvPer does NOT keep an eye on the map and match numbers and what not. With communication you can call for help, you can call for numbers, you can call out your CC and the list goes on.. WoW is not as action-based as GW2, and i’m quite sure most of WoW teams use voice comms.

Rym.1469:

Patchi.9061:

Shadelang.3012:

Patchi speaking as a necro I kinda cant help but laugh at what you said about greater marks. I cant think of a single build that takes this trait ever since the original marks got buffed in size to what was at the time the greater marks effect.

The only place I believe it was taken before that buff was for WvW and in certain early attempts at a heavy staff build for pvp. I havent seen anyone run that build in an extremely long time though.

I…honestly doubt your running into necros traited with greater marks as often as your claiming to.

Dude, you must be from EU or out of the NA scene for a while. EVERY good necro in this game uses Greater marks, and it counter the kitten out of engineers. If you look up to necros, you should look up to the best of them – Noscoc. He uses Greater marks, and he laughs at every engineer for playing that class against him. General counter to staff marks was to block and walk through them, now you can’t. Jokes on us. Reaper’s Protection is so easy to counter with little patience, while greater marks — well it’s obvious.. you’re screwed. If you’re not using greater marks as a condi necro against engineers, then i would suggest you reconsider that.

I will surely get Greater Marks over Reaper’s Protection because I like 1v1ing Blocking Engineers.

Not like I can’t Dark Path them instead during that block and fear right after.

Greater Marks was mandatory pick as Adept in 2012.

Let me get this straight…You are willing to get a 2second fear on a 60 second cooldown over a trait that will make ur marks unblockable and greater radius? – that can interrupt engi blocks, DESTROYS guardian shelter, will cover up most of Shadow refuge radius, cover up the whole point in a team fight, will go over LoS spots in certain points of the game like Mine in Forest..and the list goes on. I don’t even know what we’re debating anymore..this is a clear favorite unless you wanna give engis a chance to beat you 1vs1.

Arachnid.4062:

Laraley.7695:

Arachnid.4062:

Chaith.8256:

Simonoly.4352:

“Dev note: This penalty felt unnecessary and it wasn’t fun”

This was quite important for me to see. There are quite a few skills in the game that just aren’t particularly fun due to various penalties and lack of rewards for landing as a part of a combo. So I’m glad to see some concerns over this from the balance team.

In particular, I really would love for the Mesmer scepter auto-attack to be revised. It is so painfully slow that even with the new torment it’s still not fun to use. The after-cast from Ether Clone is really quite crippling for chaining attacks. It kind of feels wrong that Mesmer, a class that thematically exudes such finesse, has such a clunky auto-attack chain.

I would prefer people to not spam torment with finesse, thanks.

I dunno, I think condi mesmer is a fair bit more balanced than Engineers currently, and spams less condis too. At least it has a role as “duelist” instead of the Cele Rifle role of “Duelist, Team Fighter, Support, Bunker, Home Node Defender”

Lol wat. A fair bit more balanced than Engineers? You mean dodge three times to get clones up and then camp in stealth and wait for them to apply condis? How can you even say torment on AA and balanced in the same sentence. It’s crap, that’s why no one uses it. But that build is far far far from being balanced.

Let me know when you see a Condi mesmer used in 5v5 conquest pvp in a high level tournament, thanks.

Also let me know the next time you see a time run double Cele Engineer.

It’s a conquest game, you need to cap points/keep them decapped. Mesmers fail at both. Condi mesmers are sustained fighters, unless you’re willing to fight for 30s-1minute against a person on a point that’s not urs, be my guest and good luck not getting +1d.

Jekkt.6045:

as engi you have access to a lot of heal on demand with one of the best heal skills in the game. you can chain your blasts/leaps which aren’t even on a long cooldown. the kiting potential of a celestial rifle engi is beyond the one of an ele and your chances in a 1v1 are just as good.

you have a way larger health pool than ele has and as nice as protection is, d/d is close combat. how do you imagine a light armor class fighting in close combat without something like that?

if you want to nerf engi then nerf the passive traits like incendiary powder. as suggested many times this trait needs an icon that indicates that it is up and that you can actually dodge it. the same for transmute, rather than just converting a condition it should make the engi do something, switch to a kit or whatever is useful.

IP has a 10 second cooldown on crit — I think thats fairly balanced as celestial has 25% crit chance, and if they use intel sigils then that is the issue and that is the tell you need, other than that 25% crit chance isnt that big of a deal.

Jekkt.6045:

did you even read my post about the loss of power compared from ele/war to engi?
engi is as tanky as ele and has even more direct damage and condi pressure.

How are they more “tanky?”. Eles have perma vigor, 50% protection upkeep. We don’t have protection, we have only one stunbreak and another one at 25% health. We have barely any condi clear and we are hard countered by Condi classes — while eles can 1v1 pretty much anything – except possibly power necros. Our block is OP, our rifle knockback is op, but that’s why i suggested a nerf on one of them, as it will effect the other. If we nerf the knockback our CC will be a lot weaker since it is the only CC that is hard to dodge, while the rest have easy tells (aside from stealth pulls). With the nerf on rifle KB cooldowns it will force us to either trait it to reduce its cooldowns, which will nerf our block — or we will remain weaker in terms of CC and maintain our block — overall a shave and more counter play. A class shouldn’t be dominant over all classes, but rather have equal chances against most of them. We already have that.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Patchi.9061:

Very Good Post +1’d.

@Deimos Tel Arin – Go play another game or something or stop posting biased stuff in forums, you are not credible at all. I’ve been reading post and you’ve been defending warrior over and over again. I faced you in ranked arenas and your at most an Average. I’m not trying to pick beef here but stop posting senseless arguements. The post touched on almost every issue Perfectly. I would like to add to that is to make other build options viable by making other skills more relevant to the game rather than having 1-2 viable builds per class..but that’s another day.

of course i am average.

the fact is, if warrior in the hands of an average player is not godlike, then warrior is balanced.

the people asking for nerfs are simply outplayed by better warriors.

deal with it.

Sorry I didn’t mean to offend you, I was taken away by frustrations of the past – and how teams can get away with running full cele comps and winning games just by bunkering out points. It is boring to spectate, easy to play, high rewards. We’re just back to the Warrior soldier meta, except more cheesy. Look at the past ESl’s and what the teams are running. Mercy/shout warriors – D/D eles – Or anything that can res/sustain for a very long time. Not fun to play with or against, but it is common knowledge to play those specs and cheese it out to win these games.

Good warriors Los their banners, and with proper communication will get it done. There is a lot of counter play to warrior banner as well as there are a lot of ways to counter counter that. The fact remains, the numbers on that banner res are too high. The cooldown is great – but the synergy should be punished somehow. Mercy runes are very cheesy and full celestial comps abuse that. (It’s not only warrior but also staff eles can run that). It is a mistake that I put it under that category, it is a general change. I’ve run across teams that ran 2 mercy warriors, a staff ele, and 2 d/d eles…and they took 2nd to only abjured. Why are we rewarding low skill play?

Jekkt.6045:

Patchi.9061:

Celestial engineer has weaknesses. Good ones know how to tackle them, but they still exists. Mesmers are one. Necros is a big one. Condi classes in general are REALLY strong against them. Shout warriors, condi rangers, and even good condi engis can beat celestial engis. They are not invincible, they are just a hard match-up that requires lots of practice against. But once you get how to beat them, it would be rather easy. Learn to dodge please.

After all, engineers can’t stack might, the only source of might – sigil of battle – have been nerfed. Unless you want engineers out of the meta, this is a sufficient nerf. Even tho i still believe sigil of doom/intel and Rifle knockback requires a nerf for it to be completley balanced. (Read my forum post for full details)

so have eles. necro and mesmer and even thief to some extent. whats your point?

My point is, Engineers are not as much of a threat as most people think they are to be. Eles and Necros right now win almost all match ups against the “meta” classes, while engineer struggles with a lot of meta match ups. The nerf on sigil of battle is a good shave to engineers, and it would hurt them more than Eles as they have no other way of stacking might. Necromancers are untouched, and Eles still have their perma vigor and high protection uptime. A lot of people want engineer out of the meta, however, aside from the Rifle knockback suggested nerf I don’t believe there should be a lot more nerfs as a lot of classes would replace it by then.

imaclown.1628:

Burning already has high base damage nerfing might isn’t going to do kitten to IP. But I didn’t mean to target engineers with my comment simply saying if we ate going to nerf necromancers passives because they don’t have counters then there are a lot of other broken skills that you neglected to mention.

Just because we have many issues in the game doesn’t deny the fact that the issues I addressed are issues as well. One step at a time on the right path will fix this game.

Aside from that I 100% agree with this post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Things-that-should-be-in-the-balance-patch/first#post4704520

I think it addressed the issues better than I did, definitely worth checking out.

Very Good Post +1’d.

@Deimos Tel Arin – Go play another game or something or stop posting biased stuff in forums, you are not credible at all. I’ve been reading post and you’ve been defending warrior over and over again. I faced you in ranked arenas and your at most an Average. I’m not trying to pick beef here but stop posting senseless arguements. The post touched on almost every issue Perfectly. I would like to add to that is to make other build options viable by making other skills more relevant to the game rather than having 1-2 viable builds per class..but that’s another day.

- Aside from that, you haven’t Touched on Necromancer.
I wrote a post about how Necromancer in general does not have enough Tells in its significant skills, such as dark path looking exactly as staff auto attacks. Staff mark 4 and 5 cannot be differenciated from the other minor marks, and how unblockable marks can be an issue to a lot of classes — corrupt boon as well. Suggested changes: The same animation “style” as signet of spite to corrupt boon, reduce the radius of greater marks, add tells to staff marks 4 and 5, and add a tell to dark path. Similar punishing skills on other professions have a tell such as warrior pin-down or engineer magnet. (The same idea with adding a cast time for rifle knockback on engineers).

Hence adding voice comms in game would fix the issue~ Just like Dota 2. Communication is key to winning a lot of games , adding that would significantly improve the performance of solo qers and would help teach new players how experienced players interact and think helping the community overall ~ There can be side effects to toxicity , but that’s why you can /report or /mute people.

@Rym.1469
1. I am aware of that. However, this doesn’t change the fact that it is a very hard tell in a 2v2+ scenario. A change in animation would not hurt necromancers at all as good necros would still be able to land the skill. However, it would help other players to be able to counter it as it is a very significant skill to dodge — and it is very hard to do that because of the animation and the instant cast deathshroud fear. (good necros are patient with their deathshroud.) — Other minor skills have more tell than that such as Warrior pindown, mesmer shatters, engineer pulls and what not.
2. Like i said above, i’m not requesting a change in cast time – if you’re good with timing your skills and combos- then you should be awarded by landing them. However, there is almost no tell to corrupt boon. Some classes have a constant boon upkeep, All i request is an animation similar to signets in necros where it will pop above the necro’s head. Corrupt boon is arguably more powerful than signet of spite, yet spite has a tell but corrupt boon doesn’t.
3. As for spinal shivers — for thiefs, mesmers, eles — if you’re at 50% health, it doesnt matter what you get hit by it can be an instant deathshroud fear and it will proc. Like i said many classes in this game have a constant 3+ boons in them — in fact, the only class that doesn’t have that is necro. I personally don’t have trouble with power necro — but i find it absurd how a low skill spec can 1 shot a high skill spec such as theif/mesmer with ease. Almost laughable.

Xillllix.3485:

The Engis aren’t OP because of the Sigil of Battle, their damage is fine. They are OP because of the constant knockdowns, immob, daze and the fact that they can be immune to immob on top of it.

Engi’s being immune to immob is just a misplay by ur part. Transmute is on a 15 second cooldown and it would trigger by any condi u apply to it every 15 seconds. You should apply any other condi to engi before immobing it, and that’s an easy task.

My bad, I should have added an explanation to why I would nerf Longbow and combustive shot. Three words: Celestial Shout Warriors.

It is obvious that d/d is getting the balance it needs. A lot of people are worried that shout warriors would be replacing D/d ele in the meta. Why wouldn’kitten It survives pretty well, has good mobility, can might stack effeciently, has a res banner, clears condis, offers good cc and a good mix in power/condi damage. It’s perfect!

The minor nerf in combustive shot would reduce the amount of condi clear it already has — Provides some sort of weakness to shout warriors. Poison is supposed to counter warriors as intended. However, with the current amount of condi clear it has with shouts and soldier runes, longbow combustive shot, it is a menace in 1vs1. I--I’m sure you already know that.
Please don’t be biased to your class, as I am an engineer and I am also requesting more nerfs on my own class. For a better and fairer game.

As for mercy runes — not that big of a deal to be honest. The problem is it synergises too well with the Res Banner and Warrior traits — making it more powerful than a lot of res utilities in every other class. (look at necro/ele/mesmer/engi res capabilities). Perhaps not reducing the res speed but reducing the health gained when the ally is res’d.

This might be suggested before, I’m not sure — but here it is:

There is a lot of issues that come up with the current match making (solo q vs premade) One suggestion is to add a voice command system in which the users can talk in game to others — just like Dota 2.
This way it wouldn’t matter if you’re in a premade or in a solo queue, it is rather easy for players to communicate in game, reducing the disadvantage of premade vs solo q issue. As all good PvPers know, communication is the key to winning a lot of games (excluding high tier games where everything matters.)

imaclown.1628:

If that’s the case there are a LOT of other skills spread around the classes that need fixing, steal, ip etc.

IP isn’t the reason engi’s are OP, the reason was sigil of battle – which will be nerfed. Now IP ticks will be much lower for celestial engineer that I am already considering replacing it. Engineers have no way to stack might. Their issue is crowd control which has counter play. (other than Rifle KB which has a very hard tell — which is why i think it should be nerfed). As for steal, really? you think thiefs are not in a good spot right now? I don’t know man. That’s a different topic.

Celestial engineer has weaknesses. Good ones know how to tackle them, but they still exists. Mesmers are one. Necros is a big one. Condi classes in general are REALLY strong against them. Shout warriors, condi rangers, and even good condi engis can beat celestial engis. They are not invincible, they are just a hard match-up that requires lots of practice against. But once you get how to beat them, it would be rather easy. Learn to dodge please.

After all, engineers can’t stack might, the only source of might – sigil of battle – have been nerfed. Unless you want engineers out of the meta, this is a sufficient nerf. Even tho i still believe sigil of doom/intel and Rifle knockback requires a nerf for it to be completley balanced. (Read my forum post for full details)

SoulSin.5682:

Patchi.9061:

- Sigil of Air and Fire combined is too powerful.

I fess up I’ve being abused this a lot.

No surprises if it get nerfed, It’s simply too good.

Then again, with the torment sigil some new builds are going to open nicely.

Torment isn’t bothering me. They added torment to mesmers, yet they are still unviable — people thought it would be strong , not really. I can see them being strong with condi Engineers or Rabid condi necros — but those already have a very strong offence, and a very weak defence since they lack stunbreak. A lot of people switched to celestial rifle because of how absurd it is with the CC and survivability, something that a condi engineer lacks — which is a weak point to all condi engis is that they are very weak to heavy bursts and even the 16 second block and 25 second stunbreak won’t save u that long with a well coordinated burst. As for rabid necros — there’s a reason why top necros use carion, i’ll let you figure that out by urself.

imaclown.1628:

I agree let’s make corrupt boon harder to land we can’t have precious hard to come by buffs like boons converted, I mean it’s not like you can just spam boons. Same with spinal shivers, we should just remove all boon hate traits and skills. Same with dark path.

Change the animations for marks all you want, I’d actually like it if I could fake cast a reapers mark and force you to burn a dodge.

This game needs more boon hate, not less.

Don’t get me wrong. Necromancer is supposed to be a strong Boon ripper. I’m not suggesting a change to the cast time. All i’m suggesting is an indication that the skill is gonna be cast. (Kinda like Ranger longbow knockback — very hard to dodge, yet you know its coming ). The only thing saving you from that is a very good reflex and awareness/prediction of what the necromancer would do next (if u have boons to be corrupted for example). To be honest, corrupt boon is not the major issue, but rather the Dark path and the staff marks. Fake cast them all you want, all i need is a tell so i know what im dodging. The game has a lot of mind-games but if you’re completely blind on what is being thrown at you, you’re like a punching bag to the necromancer — good ones at least.

Shadelang.3012:

Patchi speaking as a necro I kinda cant help but laugh at what you said about greater marks. I cant think of a single build that takes this trait ever since the original marks got buffed in size to what was at the time the greater marks effect.

The only place I believe it was taken before that buff was for WvW and in certain early attempts at a heavy staff build for pvp. I havent seen anyone run that build in an extremely long time though.

I…honestly doubt your running into necros traited with greater marks as often as your claiming to.

Dude, you must be from EU or out of the NA scene for a while. EVERY good necro in this game uses Greater marks, and it counter the kitten out of engineers. If you look up to necros, you should look up to the best of them – Noscoc. He uses Greater marks, and he laughs at every engineer for playing that class against him. General counter to staff marks was to block and walk through them, now you can’t. Jokes on us. Reaper’s Protection is so easy to counter with little patience, while greater marks — well it’s obvious.. you’re screwed. If you’re not using greater marks as a condi necro against engineers, then i would suggest you reconsider that.

General changes:
- Sigil of Air and Fire combined is too powerful.
- Sigil of Doom is too powerful.
- Sigil of Intellegince should be changed to 2, not 3.
- Turret Engineer should be Reworked — low skill floor and ceiling, annoying to deal with — hurts the community by making it less skillful and more toxic.
- Necromancer Healthbar and Deathshroud Bar should be differenciated in the UI as you can’t tell if your ally necro is low, or his deathshroud is low.

Thank you for reading this, I would really love to read your opinion on this, I haven’t given much thought on the Balances of Ranger, nor am i Experienced enough to talk about Thiefs, mesmers, or Guardian. However, I Strongly believe that Necromancer requires more animations to their skills — As an engineer myself it is very frustrating to fight them, and in my opinion necromancer counter engineer harder than a thief counters a mesmer. That should not be a thing. Adding animations would certainly reward skilled players.

TL:DR; Some suggested balance changes to engineer, necromancer, warrior, and ranger. Furthermore, some minor suggested nerfs such as doom/air and fire/intelligence sigils.

I am aware that the current future patch notes are incomplete and there are still more changes coming in the next Patch (hopefully).

This is what I believe would further improve the balance of the game;

Engineer:
- Increase cooldown of rifle knockback by the 3 seconds.

• Reasoning behind it:
  Increasing the cooldown will make the rifle knockback more punishing and less spammable. This will either force engineers to be more passive (by counting dodges as all people should be doing) or will force them to take 2 traits in firearms if they want the same Crowd Control power. Taking 2 traits in firearms will reduce their survivability because they will have to remove 2 trait lines from toolkit trait line which is usually reduce the cooldown on toolkit skills — which fixes the other issue of Engineer the short cooldown on block.

- Make Elixir C more viable by adding a stunbreak factor.

• Reasoning behind it:
  As it is obvious to all people who play engineers, they lack condi clear. In order to fix that they have to rely on Line of sight, dodging the right skills, and optimally using their healing turret. However, classes like Necromancer and Condi Rangers will be a real threat in the next Patch – Fixing Elixir C making it a stunbreak will make it a viable option as there is little counter play against necros that know what they are doing. It will also leave engineers in a spot to decide to replace Slickshoes with Elixir C — Further reducing its Crowd Control.

- Nerfing Balthazar Runes.

• Reasoning:
  This is self explanatory. There is incinerday powder(idk how to spell it lol), there is doom sigil, then there is Balthazar runes. With upcoming nerfs to Celestial rifle there is no doubt that some people will be running back to Condi Engis, and the issue of Balthazar rune will become more and more clear — the burn duration and burn on heal is just absurd combined with the IP and doom/geomancy Sigils.

Necromancer;

- Change the animaton of Dark Path making it different from the animation of staff auto attacks.

• Reasoning:
  Dark path , when traited, is already a really powerful boon converting to condition gap closer with 1200 range that is very hard to Line of sight due to the nature of the skill. Dodging that skill is essential for a lot of classes that have a lot of boons and low condi clear (mesmer, thief, engineer) and unfortunatley it is a very hard tell in a 2v2+ team fight because it looks exactly the same as staff auto attacks. Combined with the passive and active fears the necro has it is extremley hard to dodge, adding an extra animation to the skill would make counter play possible to classes such as thief, elementalists, and Engineers.

- Add more animation to Staff mark 4 and 5, and Corrupt boon.

Necromancer is a balanced class. However, the class has almost no tells and it is very hard to dodge the right skills due to the lack of animations (EVERYTHING IS BLACK AND THE ONLY THING THAT IS DIFFERENT IS THE SMALL HAND ANIMATIONS.) I suggest adding more animation to the essential skills such as the ones listed above. (I mean they already have VERY low cast time.)

- Spinal Shivers passive Proc at 50% health trait — too powerful against light armor classes — possibly make it a grandmaster trait instead.
--——————————
Elementalist:

I don’t think there should be any more nerfs to ele as we don’t want to remove it from meta.

Warrior:

- Mercy runes and warrior combined provide very strong res capabilities, requires a little shave (Change from 20% to 15%).
- Minor nerfs to Longbow and Combustive shot clearing condis even tho it doesn’t hit any target. (It already has a large radius, this is a very minor shave).

Ranger:

- Let’s not forget entangle. The cooldown is too short, and the immobilize is too long. (Either increase the cooldown, or reduce the duration of immob)

- Increase the Survivability of power ranger while decreasing their Rapid fire damage. I believe ranger is too glassy to be viable, and too annoying in solo qs. If there was a way to make it more viable, it is by making it more survivable and reduce the damage of Rapid fire so it doesn’t get out of hand.

Above lies on the priority of high tier PvP gameplay that I believe should be touched on and i would appreciate a feed back on them.
What i’m about to include down below are just Annoying aspects of PvP that simply don’t work in high level play.

Turret engineers — self explanatory.. summoning turrets and kiting around should not be that rewarding, there is literally no skill involved in playing that — unfortunately people tend to believe it works because they win against solo qers — but in all honesty the community will never improve if such an option is available — the skill floor/ceiling of this build is non existent.

Power rangers – Click 2 to win. I agree that there is a good skill cap to this spec, but the skill floor to this class is just absurd…someone Rapid firing away 1500 range away with absolutely no effort involved is just annoying to deal with in solo q, I’d suggest a rework to make Rangers in general more viable and less annoying to play with/against.

Sorry for the long post — To many of us the next PvP patch may make or break the game~ Esports is starting NOW, good steps need to be done NOW. An incomplete balance patch may effect a lot of good PvPers that are hanging by a thin rope on this game. It is simply not an option! Good luck anet and if you need any help/opinion im sure a lot of PvP fanatics are willing to help ! including myself of course!