Guild Wars 2

Lifelike.5862:

It’s kind of shocking how selfish this class is. I was expecting a dps with some kind of team utility. Barriers, walls and so on. but most of the boons or unique buffs granted here are for the Holo themselves and not their teammates.

Still looks fun to play, but I am a little worried about what their role ultimately ends up being. It’d suck if engineers end up with two elite specs that don’t have a place in endgame pve.

Basically two more years of being a side-point duelist and being in gutter groups in WvW raids.

Hard to really form an opinion without getting my hands on it. Everyone thought scrapper was going to be trash too, and it ended up being one of the most broken elite specs.

It’ll offer a playstyle different from the scrapper in PvP and WvW, and it’ll hopefully offer a more enjoyable PvE experience than the current metabuild does. I am cautiously optimistic.

Buran.3796:

Both WvW and PvP are ded parts of the game

And why do you think they’re dead?

Because they’ve barely supported them for years on end. This expansion was ArenaNet’s last chance for a lot of players, and I’m not sure what they’re offering is enough.

Abelisk.4527:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Nothing.4953:

We’re getting 9 new specializations. How is that not new content for PvP? It’ll take a long time for everyone to figure out what’s what again and enjoy new metas.

It will take a week at most to work out the broken specs. Then pvp will suck for the next 3 months until anet finally nerf those things. Then pvp will be semi-bad due to the power creep.

We still haven’t figured out all the builds we could make with the HoT elite specs.

My build literally hasn’t changed since Celestial amulet was removed from the game. Engineer has pretty much been stuck with running two gyros and the elixir gun since Heart of Thorns came out. The only utility skill that was even remotely competitive (Slick Shoes) was subsequently nerfed into the ground.

You CAN theoretically run Adaptive Armor with double elixirs over gyros, but it’s just a lesser setup.

Allarius.5670:

In a recent AMA they stated that sPvP and WvW content is released as it is available and is not held back for expansions.

I suppose that makes sense, given that the content isn’t gated behind an expansion in the first place.

I still think it’s important to keep your player base informed of what to expect, however. The WvW updates and automated tournaments were a nice fresh coat of paint on preexisting content, but it’s still the same alpine maps we’ve had since 2012, and we’re still fighting on Legacy and Forest in PvP.

I guess I just find it disappointing there’s nothing to really look forward to aside from the new elite specializations.

The lack of any mention of PvP leads me to assume we’ll be seeing another two years of Conquest-only PvP. Are new specs really all we can expect for a five-year-old game?

Nikkinella.8254:

Meanwhile in Korea BDO has the Arsha arena where you can get an instant max level character with all skills and max level gear and compete in structured pvp that’s perfectly balanced. Its only a matter of time before NA/EU get the patch for the arena as well. So, your argument is invalid.

Oh, really? I wasn’t aware such a thing existed; that’s actually very interesting. Is there a time table for when NA BDO servers will get this?

Anthony.7630:

Scrapper is fine. They are not a solo roamer instead they are enhancements hammer power dps.

And yet in PvP we’re a side-point duelist and in WvW we’re best at roaming.

Interesting.

Nikkinella.8254:

And once your gear is equal and both people are 60, its purely skill based as far as duels go.

LOL, okay. It’s “purely skill based” only after you dump hundreds of hours into the game, which for the most part involves getting trashed by top-tier players at Sausen or pirates when you accidentally stumble into their instance.

I have friends of mine from ArcheAge that have full-timed that game since it came out. They literally 1v10 people; if that’s something that interests you, so be it, but you couldn’t pick a game more far removed from the qualities that made up Guild Wars 2.

The completely horizontal PvP progression is what drove this game’s popularity, and until another game on the market offers it—and with a competent PvP team that balances their modes regularly—Guild Wars 2 will continue to have zero competition.

It’s pretty telling when PvE-oriented MMOs like FFXIV and World of Warcraft offer a closer comparison to Guild Wars 2 PvP than Black Desert does.

Azukas.1426:

No one cheated who played in the tournament. The integrity of the game was NEVER compromised. The only thing done wrong was some idiots put a price tag on an achievement title. Thats it.

Last I checked, account sharing was against the EULA.

More importantly, the players themselves received dishonor for a reason; they’ve abused the rules and aren’t supposed to be participating in any more automated tournaments than they are ranked matches. They circumvented this ban by playing on other players’ accounts. You really don’t see the significance behind that?

Nikkinella.8254:

They were able to get away with such incompetence in the past because there literally was no competition.

There still is no competition.

Black Desert Online is so far removed from the qualities that make Guild Wars 2 great, I have no idea how anyone can maintain a lasting connection with that game. I went all in on that game. I bought the $100 pack for the four-days early access, grinded to 50 in literally a day, and then realized there’s absolutely nothing to do in that game aside from just mindlessly trashing mobs in circles.

It has a shallower end-game than Guild Wars 2 had in 2012, and the fact that you have to constantly grind to stay competitive makes it literally the antithesis to Guild Wars 2. There is very little skill involved in winning fights in BDO, and when it’s impossible to setup your combos because you’re trying to grapple someone with over 100 ping, you can’t help but admit the entire combat system is all flash but no substance. More importantly, many professions have too many mobility skills, and they just run away when they start losing a fight. If I could compare it best, it’s as if everyone was a thief or gs+s/wh warrior and just resets the second a fight goes south.

I’d rather play 3 more years of ArcheAge mageball kitten than put myself through that. BDO is a terrible game on so many levels; it’s bad enough that the only time that you can actually participate in castle sieges is on Saturday nights, so you have to choose between having a social life or forgoing experiencing the bulk of that game’s endgame.

Scheraz.8132:

I remember when Ranked queues were fun and competitive, now it’s just carrying awful players and praying the enemy pugs are worse. I remember when the legend ranked sorta meant something. I remember when Match Manipulators weren’t ruining the matchmaking and making it horribly unfair for people just solo queueing. What happened to the days when the game was FUN? I don’t even know anymore.

I remember in the early seasons, when solo-queuing and maintaining a >55% win rate was incredibly difficult because you’d run into partial team queues often, if not face full team queues on a team full of solos. I also remember in the early seasons, where legendary/diamond players would intentionally queue with emerald/sapphire players to lower their team’s MMR and face lesser skilled players. I also remember in the early seasons, where players would team queue into Stronghold at 3 AM to farm pips with alt accounts simultaneously queuing. I also remember in the early seasons where every match went the full fifteen minutes because of bunker chronomancer, making pushing beyond diamond an absolute grind; most players that reached legendary that first season were forced to treat the game like a full-time job.

There never was a point in time, for me, where ranked PvP was truthfully all that fun—and players have pretty much always used and abused any mechanic possible to give themselves an edge. Remember when the “guild team” system was introduced, with rewards, and Pro League teams just filled up the leaderboard with duplicate rosters? What the Abjured is doing in 2017 isn’t really any different from what they were doing in 2014; and while Chaith and Phantaram had a lot more tact and respect for the game mode than the current Abjured roster, at times you just have to call a spade a spade.

I played a lot of season one and some of season two when it was incredibly fresh and new, but when the above tactics and strategies revealed themselves, I ended up quitting the game to prepare for ArcheAge 2.0 instead. I then went on to play BDO and WoW Legion, returning for season five … but most of these issues have only exacerbated themselves further, culminating players gaming decay rating volatility to catapult their rating far higher than others playing normally and the rampant match manipulation of buying wins and queuing on alts that continues to exist today.

It sucks, because none of these games ever compared to Guild Wars 2 when it was at its best, and I can’t help but think its best years are behind us. The entire Heart of Thorns content cycle has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster. I can’t think of anything that has gone well, or left a lasting positive impression on the game—and it’s very likely we won’t see another solid PvP-oriented MMO on-level with Guild Wars 2’s combat depth for another 5+ years.

This week’s drama surrounding EG leaders buying a monthly tournament win off the Abjured isn’t some isolated incident—it’s just the latest plot point on a trend, the icing on the proverbial kitten cake. I just can’t be bothered to care anymore, or muster the interest to even want to care about PvP in 2017. I just live in WvW these days, and log off and play something else when I get bored of it.

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

I mentioned this in the AMA, may as well repeat it here. For a multitude of reasons, balance being just one, we don’t have any plans on doing a 2v2 (or 3v3) queue.

We’ve been talking about doing special tournaments on occasion. 2v2 would be one option for a special tournament.

I genuinely don’t get this.

Conquest might be a 5v5 mode, but there’s rarely full-blown 5v5 fights. 3v3s and 2v2s occur organically all the time in Conquest, and there’s never an instance where I’m in a match and feel like how many participants were in a fight affected the potency of a certain build.

WvW offers an extremely wide spectrum of engagements, from 1v1 to 60v60. Nevertheless, the mode survives just fine. Certain builds obviously function better in 1v1s than 10v10s, but that variety in flavor is what makes the mode refreshing and needs to be replicated in some way in PvP.

If you really want people dropping money on another expansion in the next six months, we need more than just Conquest for the next two years.

Ithilwen.1529:

No, I’m complaining that the bracket is deliberately pitting the best team against the worst. This creates a near certain win for the top teams.

I doubt it’s intentional, but you realize this is how tournaments are supposed to work, right? The top seeded team plays against the lowest seeded team. You don’t have conference finalist teams facing off each other in the first round in sports.

Tournaments shouldn’t be pulling in or catering to new players; ATs are something for veterans to do, and it makes no difference to anybody if we only have 6 teams in the monthly.

Chorazin.4107:

Rezzet.3614:

scrappers now are rubbish

I dont think they are rubbish but they are limited in what they can do from a PvP perspective.

I don’t think scrapper is “rubbish” either, but after receiving two straight years of nothing but nerfs it’s hard to argue that scrapper doesn’t feel bad.

In the years following the Heart of Thorns launch, other professions have gotten stronger while we’ve gotten weaker. Scrapper is still a very effective duelist in the right hands, but in every subsequent season it just feels harder to be competitive.

It also doesn’t help that our build has literally not changed since the end of season one and the nerfing of Slick Shoes. We’re simply forced to play a worse iteration of what was played previously, which never feels particularly good either.

So, it’s feels over reals that pushes people to see scrappers as rubbish, but their issues are legitimate because Anet continues to nerf our meta spec without producing any viable alternatives.

scorekeeper.6524:

tigirius.9014:

Thats the thing about engineer for some reason the so called “balance team” still haven’t addressed the shear lack of burst damage on the engineer in PVE without having to resort to using the grenades or the flame thrower.

I argue that properly traited, our PvE burst is pretty good with rifle alone. It’s our sPvP and WvW burst that is lacking.

The crux of the matter is that the engineer as a class doesn’t lack damage in anything, burst or sustained. Running Explosives/Firearms/Tools together, whether power or condi, competes with anything for damage output.

The problem is that engineer in its current situation gives up far too much sustainability to match the damage output of other classes. Thieves have more stealth than us. Mesmers have more evades than us. And revenants have more blocks and better healing than us. Engineer in the current meta wins 1v1s not through spiking down targets quickly but merely outsustaining them through attrition with the help of a well-timed reveal, daze/stun, or unblockable damage versus these professions.

This will likely never change. Engineer has nearly always favored filling the role of a bruiser, and the few times glass cannon engineer was viable in PvP or WvW it was built on a gimmick or a poor foundation that was easily patched out of existence by the slightest nerfs.

If the Scrapper trait line between Adaptive Armor and Rapid Regeneration wasn’t strong enough to support Explosives+Tools or Firearms+Tools builds on its own, then nothing likely ever will.

Ario.8964:

Celestial was only dominant after they did the massive merge the kitten out of traits change and gave everyone might stacking for free.

Celestial was dominant long before the pre-HoT trait overhaul.

Balthazzarr.1349:

But taking shots at each other as if one caused the other to have a “bad day” just doesn’t make sense to me.. just sayin.

As stated…

> I mean no offense to either server, but their plan to cap all the host servers as full and force people to transfer to the smaller ones isn’t really working out in the lower tiers.

I have nothing against being linked with Borlis Pass, but the idea that Sea of Sorrows is left “full” because of it is pretty absurd; the combined population of Borlis Pass and Sea of Sorrows is not enough to help the server climb out of T4.

To make matters worse, there are players in my guild and friends outside of it that want to join SoS but can’t.

Naix.8156:

I also get the impression you missed out on most if not all of the pre-HoT days.

Why, because I just so happen to disagree with you?

I have a day-one account and have ~4,000 games played in Guild Wars 2 PvP—most of which were obviously before Heart of Thorns. How about you?

Naix.8156:

Not sure how cele ami being a borked stat combo both before and after HoT dropped, or the current meta in wvw in 2017 has much to do with anything but do go on…

Only so much that it pertains to your comment where you said they intended to “encourage teamwork to cover you weaknesses and limit or prevent apex builds (i.e. good at everything)” despite not really showing any evidence of it.

Guild Wars 2 pre-HoT was not populated by “teamwork” builds. Not only was pretty much every single Celestial build completely self-sufficient in team fights, but most of them were also pretty competent duelists.

Just look no further than how d/d elementalist performed compared to tempest today. Or shoutbow warrior versus berserker. Or cele necro versus marauder reaper. I’m almost more inclined to believe that it’s you that has very little pre-HoT PvP experience—or just that you’re simply remembering it incorrectly.

Naix.8156:

I don’t think that pre-HoT PvP should be put on a pedestal for other PvP games to look to, but you’ve massively understated passivity of post-HoT. Pre-HoT the dev’s had a philosophy they referred to as ‘holes in roles’ to both encourage teamwork to cover you weaknesses and limit or prevent apex builds (i.e. good at everything).

If that was their design philosophy, they very poorly executed it. Celestial amulets made builds that were literally “good at everything,” and the meta was dominated by builds running it for years until they forced its removal in 2016.

Even still in 2017, Celestial builds absolutely dominate WvW.

Chinchilla.1785:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Chinchilla.1785:

?

WvW is just massive pvp. It’s just as unwatchable as spvp is in regards to E-sports (GvG or otherwise). If not even more so due to the shear amount of spam or bland running simulator from objective to objective. Nothing in this game feels like it had an audience actually observing in mind. The combat for the player is definitely top notch at least.

Black Desert Online is just as bland with players farm mobs in circles for hours, with combat just as unintuitive and flashy. So why does it have 5,000 viewers and Guild Wars 2 has 500 on Twitch?

I don’t think it has anything to do with GW2 being a “running simulator” or having “spammy” combat; I think it’s purely due to the fact that Guild Wars 2 is five years old and has a very bad public perception following Heart of Thorns.

Booty Duty Online for a reason. ~_^ Yes, being recent (2016 official release or w.e.) does help.

Is 5000 views a lot for twitch? I am curious.

Not really, but that’s neither here nor there.

I was just more so addressing the point that there are games that are just as guilty of what you describe (in some capacity much worse) that manage to obtain larger viewership.

It’s not that GW2 is unwatchable (though I think Conquest in particular struggles to be entertaining to watch even as someone that’s played 4K+ matches of it) so much as that it’s not really a part of the conversation anymore. MMOs in general just aren’t really all that popular these days. World of Warcraft gets by just on the basis of having millions of subscribers, but after that it drops off a cliff. Final Fantasy XIV had a new expansion drop a couple weeks ago; it’s already down to under 3,000 viewers right now.

atheria.2837:

Linking has failed.

Many servers that are linked ride a wave of ‘winning’ only to fall hard once the link is changed or removed.

On top of that mess, the queues since adding “Legendary Armor” has pushed Prime Time queues to all time highs – at least since the last official tournaments.

Please, give us back our servers and watch as the populations and the queues even out and get better.

Give us our servers back – we didn’t sign up to be linked as an add on to a host server.

+1 on this.

On Sea of Sorrows, Devona’s Rest didn’t really bring much to the table. And now we’re stuck with Borlis Pass again.

I mean no offense to either server, but their plan to cap all the host servers as full and force people to transfer to the smaller ones isn’t really working out in the lower tiers.

Chinchilla.1785:

?

WvW is just massive pvp. It’s just as unwatchable as spvp is in regards to E-sports (GvG or otherwise). If not even more so due to the shear amount of spam or bland running simulator from objective to objective. Nothing in this game feels like it had an audience actually observing in mind. The combat for the player is definitely top notch at least.

Black Desert Online is just as bland with players farm mobs in circles for hours, with combat just as unintuitive and flashy. So why does it have 5,000 viewers and Guild Wars 2 has 500 on Twitch?

I don’t think it has anything to do with GW2 being a “running simulator” or having “spammy” combat; I think it’s purely due to the fact that Guild Wars 2 is five years old and has a very bad public perception following Heart of Thorns.

Dawdler.8521:

Not really sure why that is considered a problem. I run with 3 gyros most of the time and need neither the toolkit or flamethrower to deal meaningfull damage (although I do generally pack the toolkit, gotto pull those peeps off walls).

Are you talking about PvP or WvW?

In WvW marauder scrapper does far more damage than a condi scrapper does. Like it isn’t even a contest.

In PvP, I can’t genuinely believe that you’d run 3 gyros and manage to kill anyone with just pistols for damage outside of bronze/silver division.

zHasgard.9827:

Spvp needs some changes,soon no one will play spvp cuz it’s getting too STRESSFUL

I feel it’s become the opposite of stressful; there’s no reason to really get invested, which has caused my own personal play time in PvP to nose dive significantly. I haven’t played a single game this season, nor do I plan to. It’s partially the fault of ArenaNet for their lack of punishment, but it’s a truthfully dreadful playerbase that populates this game mode and the game at large.

During the early seasons, players would manipulate matches in their favor by queuing into Stronghold late at night with a full five-man team of alts and literally farm wins for their main accounts. Some got so efficient at this that they turned this into a service, and sold wins for gold. I reported people in my own guild that were doing this. What do you think happened to them?

Nothing.

Season five suffered from rampant “decay gaming,” where players would intentionally log off the game for three days to force a rating decay, which increased their match volatility and allowed them to gain 20-30 rating per win instead of the normal 5-8. Through this method certain individuals were able to hit like 2000 rating in season five while everyone else was struggling just reaching 1800 seeing single-digit rating changes per win. What do you think happened to the people that did this?

Nothing.

They did manage to fix the situation down the road, later in the season—but they absolutely refused to reset player ratings and the damage was already done. The top 250 ended up being full of mostly players that decay-gamed their accounts.

The truth of the matter is that the NA playerbase deserves nothing from ArenaNet, at least as it pertains to ranked PvP.

Whatever inch ArenaNet gives players to abuse, they take a mile. Guild teams were populated by duplicate rosters when the system first started, and certain “pro” players on the NA side of things similarly chose to fill the top 250 leaderboard in season five with over half a dozen different accounts just because they could.

Truth is, you can blame balance or ArenaNet for the status quo, and I certainly do as it pertains to their soft-touch approach to match and rating manipulators. But you can really lay the majority of the blame on the PvP player base that some how manage to shoot themselves in the foot and hedge their own momentum. The same thing is already happening with automated tournaments, where certain guild teams are lowballing their qualifying points for the monthly so they can beat up on low-seeded teams rather than just play the mode normally.

There is absolutely nothing to be stressed over, because there is absolutely no reason to feel invested. Either play it or don’t. It’s just a game, anyway.

scorekeeper.6524:

I no longer really care about PvE or sPvP anymore, I consider WvW to be my endgame ganemode, so I am more than willing to spend the gold to experiment. I already stated that I plan on making a set of trailblazers, which is not cheap. I ask the collective knowledge of fellow engineers about celestial since I’ve never made that type of set before, and heard about the nerfs to celestial, so I wondered if people were still playing that type of build.

Celestial is perfectly viable while roaming, but I find full Marauder or Wanderer/Minstrel mix to be far more effective in zergs.

scorekeeper.6524:

Elmo Benchwarmer.3025:

What makes Scrappers so scary? They bore the player and the opponent to death.

So true. I was fighting an Ele over a camp 1v1 for nearly 5 minutes. She eventually disengaged, went to /sleep then ported back.

While I like sustain builds, I really hope we get a true burst build with the next xpac.

This is why taking Blast Gyro over Bulwark isn’t really such a bad idea, especially if the other team has no dragonhunters or druids. You may not kill people, but you’ll at least decap points on them.

Dawdler.8521:

Ever occured to you then… that maybe you are simply a better player than most? Its true that the scrapper traitline does nothing for condi, but neither does anything you would replace it with.

With Tools you can run Kinetic Battery, getting two quick applications of Incendiary Ammo. It’s with this combination that most players are able to quickly load up an unreal amount of burning stacks on a necro and just Toss Elixir S away. Power Wrench also makes the Tool Kit’s Gear Shield have a 13 second cooldown, which is a massive boost in survivability.

I haven’t played a condi engi since Heart of Thorns launched, but that’s what the old build used back after the pre-HoT trait rework … and I still use Tools in WvW roaming solely for permanent swiftness.

The problem is that with condition engineer you’re left to only run one gyro at most, and that’s the Sneak Gyro. As if you’d be running Alchemy with very few elixirs on your bar, you’re just not going to make the most use of the traitline taking it when you need both flamethrower and tool kit to deal meaningful damage.

That being said, I haven’t died 1v1 to a condition engineer in nearly two years—not since Heart of Thorns launched. I genuinely think it’s a mistake to think such a build is even remotely viable beyond 1500 rating. Condition mesmer is just a far better duelist if you want to play a condi build on side points.

JTGuevara.9018:

You can thank elite specs for this. Elite specs artificially raise your skill. PvP was better before HoT. It’s not even a comparison. You didn’t have all these faceroll mechanics like you do now. Yes, it had problems but balance was better.

I’m inclined to disagree.

There have always been “face roll” builds. You used to be able to stand on points as a bunker guardian literally just empowering on cooldown, or just mashing signets on necro on cooldown to win any 1v1.

Pre-HoT Guild Wars 2 really was nothing to be proud of, and PvP wasn’t alone in this. In WvW only 4 classes were really valued (with 1-2 mesmers around just for veils), and PvE was about standing in corners using ice bows and fiery greatswords.

While I agree that Heart of Thorns introduced a lot of power creep and passivity, especially with regard to the scrapper and berserker, it’s no “easier” or “harder” to play than it ever was.

gmxde.9360:

I had more luck with a non scrapper p/p condi build so far. Would you explain why the healing and damage reduction is better than many other classes? Which skills particular? And i never cared for meta. And builds that could explain more?

Feared because when you look up pvp most classes say they can beat most classes except DH, scrapper or necro.

Your post caused me to raise my eyebrows a couple times. The first time was when you said you were having more luck as a non-scrapper. The second when you said you never “cared for the meta.”

In response to the first instance: what division/rating are you playing in? And in response to the second: what division/rating is your goal?

To answer your questions, though:

• “Would you explain why the healing and damage reduction is better than many other classes? Which skills particular?”

It’s not that the damage reduction or healing output of the engineer is necessarily better than the tempest, druid, or bunker guardian; it’s more so the fact that the scrapper dishes out a lot more damage than those builds while simultaneously having a ton of survivability, crowd control, and disengage potential to near-permanently contest points even when outnumbered.

The big reason for this is just by how Purge Gyro and the Bulwark Gyro work. Against power-oriented and condi-oriented builds, they simply negate a great deal of damage. This is somewhat self-explanatory given by how both skills work.

Their tool belt skills, too, are very useful. Rocket Charging through a poison field stacks 16 seconds of weakness on a target, which significantly reduces their power damage output, whereas Bulwark’s bubble tool belt is an obvious counter against dragonhunters and druids running longbow.

These two utilities, between both their main activations and their tool belt skills, are immensely powerful and cover a great range of utility, which is why most engineers that have found success in Jebro’s Unity tournament as well as automated tournaments run one if not both of them alongside the Elixir Gun.

Blast Gyro is also a particularly strong utility skill, giving you an unblockable knockback on a fairly low cooldown—which gives the engineer a lot of decapping potential when intelligently combined with Thunderclap, much more than tempest or bunker guardian, while retaining a lot of the same defenses. In short, a well-played scrapper mediates somewhere between the sustain of a bunker guardian and tempest while having the decapping potential of a longbow druid … with all of their upsides.

Furthermore, gyros give you stability, super speed, and (if using Sneak Gyro) stealth. Not only can a well-played scrapper essentially outsustain/outdamage most 1v1s, they have the escapes available to peel out of a bad play or an outnumbered engagement between stealth and super speed to easily reset and try again. Truth is, in its current iteration, the scrapper is a pretty formidable duelist … and there’s never really a situation where a death isn’t somehow preventable. I went several matches in a row in season five (back when I last played PvP) without dying once as a scrapper, and this was at 1750+ rating where most players are worth their salt. I understand that I’m talking about play a good eight months ago and we’ve seen some nerfs since then, but the meta is still largely the same and our build outside of sigils is exactly the same as it was in season five if not (outside of no Slick Shoes) season one—which is one of the primary reasons I don’t PvP anymore. It’s become staler than the Overwatch meta.

You also said:

• “when you look up pvp most classes say they can beat most classes except DH, scrapper or necro.”

I also disagree on this point. Up to a certain point there are rock-paper-scissors balancing between classes (e.g., boon corruption necro is supposed to completely shred a scrapper/druid/tempest 1v1), but Guild Wars 2 is not so clear cut in its class design and balance as, say, World of Warcraft is, and player skill is a much greater indication of who you will beat than what class they are playing. Despite the above example given, I have defeated plenty of necromancers 1v1 on my scrapper.

What is, for example, a necromancer going to do versus an engineer running Elixir S and Elixir X? I can invuln or stealth to avoid boon corruptions, and I can moa them the second they drop into shroud. This is only doubly-so in WvW where I run Kinetic Battery, having two moas to use against them, where it’s particularly easy to “global” them with a well-placed Thunderclap and Electro-whirl in full Marauder/Berserker for over 18K combined damage.

Conversely, I have lost to plenty of thieves and guardians on my scrapper in both PvP/WvW, classes that we’re “supposed to” counter. The truth is, Guild Wars 2 has never been a 1v1-balanced game mode, and while there are general rules of thumb to follow and an ideal order of operations regarding who you should engage, at the end of the day it’s much more muddled in higher tiers of play.

Sword being power and pistol being condition is perfectly fine. Don’t forget that Celestial is already a very strong stat allocation on the engineer in WvW, and you could easily run Carrion with Intelligence sigil in PvP.

“So feared?” I’m not so sure I follow.

Scrapper is not a PvE spec and its additions of the hammer or its gyros aren’t really very apparent or even valued there. You have to remember that PvP and WvW are played very differently from PvE. PvP has a very stringent and controlled meta, and it just so happens that the scrapper’s overwhelming condition cleanse and damage reduction makes it a very good duelist/side-point class right now, especially when gyros also provide stability, healing, and damage on top of their preordained utility.

I also find scrapper to be the tankiest build in WvW and one of the best solo roamers. I’d be happy to share my builds but it’s also important you understand a bit of the metagame (which doesn’t seem to be the case). On that subject I’d be happy to help you, though.

fashion.6712:

Been reading on Reditt the new engineer elite will be “Surveyor”. His weapon will be mace and he will get shouts. Still i am reading about the holosmith being engineer on other sites. Dunno.

Does your “surveyor” leak contain genuine concept art and was it published with other equally genuine in-game screen shots from the internal client?

People can make stuff up on Reddit, and do so all the time. They do this often to obscure facts or to just troll people, but they also often lie on Reddit to manipulate the market and drive up the price of certain consumables or crafting reagents.

The “holosmith” leak was about the most genuine-looking thing we’ve gotten so far, and included screenshots of mounts and maps alongside it. And considering I’ve already explained to you how the warrior’s elite specialization was already leaked alongside the engineer one, I’m confused you insist on disbelieving the legitimacy of it.

The only thing that’s really in dispute right now is whether the sword itself is a main-hand weapon or an off-hand weapon. The charr appears to be holding the sword with their left hand in the concept art, but it more so looks to me they’re holding with both hands. A lot of people thought this as well and assumed at first we were getting a greatsword, instead … but then the weaver (elementalist elite spec) was leaked later and contained the same sword icon.

Obviously, with all things in development, everything is subject to change. It’s very well possible the holosmith could be launched with a completely different name, concept, and weapon when all is said and done. But if the rumors are true and we’re looking at the expansion launching within the time frame of the next 6 months, I doubt ArenaNet would make such drastic changes between now and then—and this is the most genuine leak we’ve got to work with.

fashion.6712:

Err…i think you understand something wrong here people.

The Trait Wheel in the leaked picture is RED and thats the color for the Warrior. The Charr shown looks like a warrior. So Holosmith=Warrior Elite in the upcoming EXP. It was also said on the leaked post that warriors get daggers and the Charr in the pic is clearly holding a dagger.

The engineer wasnt leaked yet but there had been a post saying they get maces.

Unfortunately, it is you that is mistaken. The warrior’s new elite specialization is the spellbreaker, which you can easily find with a simple Google search.

The weapon icon associated with the specialization is also a sword, not a dagger. Look at spellbreaker and soulbeast and you’ll see what the dagger icon actually looks like. The holosmith is getting a sword, and you can also see that the weaver’s sword icon is identical.

You also have to remember that ArenaNet used the same races to reveal the Heart of Thorns specializations as what was used in the original class art work. The warrior was a norn. The berserker was a norn. The spellbreaker is also a norn.

Engineer is actually the only class represented by a charr, and it’d be kind of silly for them to make a point to change that now.

Tyaen.5148:

Switch Self Regulating Defenses for Inversion Enzyme. SRD is garbage and will kill you more often than not simply because you can’t condi clear. I also would switch Tool Kit for Elixir S. My build is basically the old HGH build with a Hammer. I also use Sneak Gyro and Elixir H (again HgH). I get why you are using Mortar Kit though. When I run into heavy ranged groups or solo Rangers I switch Elixir S to Bulwark for the reflect on the toolbelt.

Superior Rune of Leadership.

I don’t really have problems with Self-Regulating Defenses. I have also changed my build a bit: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASncoClchtbBGYB0ehlJjS8ZGvAY8Dqg4jeuz7AH-T1xHQBfTHAAeAAMUJY42fgeq/8Plf57CAQKgiUpB-w

If you don’t want to deal with Magnanimous Oil you can run Wanderer amulet and weapon instead. Helpful if you have Juggernaut to swap stats around.

Dustin.2793:

Hey if someone has proof of foul play, someone trolling or dcing on purpose I encourage them to send it in for review. I’ve recorded numerous games this season for those purposes.

That’s very nice to hear, but at this point it all feels like a lost cause, if not entirely pointless. I know you and I are on very different ends on the spectrum of player skill, at least as it pertains to PvP, so it perhaps doesn’t really matter that I say this, but I don’t see why there’s any reason for anyone to get invested in ranked PvP moving forward given the status quo, and I don’t really plan on participating in any ranked PvP seasons moving forward for that reason. So, yeah … you can report people and feel good about yourself like you’re making the world a better place, but the damage has already been done to ranked PvP—a large part of which is on the basis of your own previous actions.

At this point automated tournaments are just a much more stable and entertaining gameplay experience for both casual and hardcore players, and the drama surrounding ranked PvP matchmaking and its lack of population has become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Each season is just going to be worse than the previous one without some major revisions, and while I’m sure ArenaNet has something planned for PvP with the upcoming expansion, I doubt it has very much to do with conquest or even ranked PvP at all.

And at this point, why should they? This community has done very little to warrant any effort on ArenaNet’s part to continue supporting ranked PvP, as any changes they make only end up being a temporary fix or ruined by the antics of sweaty teenagers.

The e-sports scene is completely dead and deserves to be, and it’s probably in ArenaNet’s best interest to flesh out PvP with new rule sets and game modes and completely ignore people like yourself outside of automated tournaments for the rest of this game’s shelf life.

The only constants to this game mode from 2012 through 2017 are the severe lack of population and the literally ensconced toxicity surrounding the high-end PvP community. I can’t imagine that ArenaNet has not yet recognized the correlation between those two premises and realized it might be in their best interest to push PvP in newer directions.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Q: What can be done to remedy this epidemic of cheating?
A: Allow 5 man teams as to prevent throw matches

They have tried to make five-man queues work in ranked PvP, and every time it has failed. First solo and team queue were split, but solo eventually died out and we were all forced into a dynamic queue together. Then they had guild teams, with a guild leaderboard. Very few participated in it, and it eventually died out too.

Worse yet, your argument that 5-man teams would prevent throwing, match manipulation, or general trolling is simply false. It’s not really match manipulation per se, but when ArenaNet set up rewards for the best guild teams of the season in Heart of Thorns, most of the top-end PvPers just ended up making multiple guild teams with the same rosters, stacking the leaderboard in their favor just in the same way players stack the leaderboard with alt accounts today.

Not only that, there also was rampant match manipulation in Stronghold back when you could queue for it in ranked, where players would team up during off-hours and trade wins throwing games with alt accounts. Some people even went beyond that point and sold wins for gold. It was around this point I uninstalled the game and went over to Black Desert, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone in that.

The simple fact is that players will always attempt to manipulate matches or leaderboards in their favor regardless of what’s done, and these continual attempts over the years have eroded what little momentum the game mode ever had. Even season five was perceptively the “healthiest” PvP ever was, and it was also in the end ruined by match manipulation in the community’s highest echelons. The status quo is a direct byproduct of that furthered erosion, and while I quit BDO and came back to GW2 to participate in season five, I haven’t really seen a reason to tell my friends to come back to the game just yet, and if it wasn’t for this month’s WvW update, I’d probably be playing BDO again.

The only fix to rampant match manipulation is having a large enough sample size of players to make it harder to do. Even in games like Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds that are literally among the most played games on the PC currently, you still see match manipulation with “teamers” in solo queue, but it’s a far less egregious and significantly more rare problem because it’s just too hard to get put into the same game together even if you hit the “play” button all at the same time. This is why splitting the playerbase among more game modes is just not going to work, and it’s also why a solo/team queue system will never work either.

The game just doesn’t have a large enough population to even make a balanced dynamic queue. The only real solution to fixing ranked PvP match manipulation is an influx of players, which we all know just isn’t likely going to happen. Accept the situation for what it is, hide in 2v2 custom lobbies, or just queue into automated tournaments every eight hours. Those are really your only options moving forward without some major revisions to the game mode and its ranked system.

Dustin.2793:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Dustin.2793:

No one on top 10 in NA is throwing matches. I don’t know how people can be in such disbelief that people have a high win-rate in a dead game. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of players in MMOs are horrible at PvP. So when you combine that, with the fact that an extremely good duo will be forced into a match at 6-8 minutes, to be put with players hundreds of rating below them, is going to result in very one-sides matches. When top duos queue at the same time, it then becomes a game of who gets the vanilla staff guard, the condi thief gods, or players who are just known to guarantee you an auto-loss. So then you take turns losing 25-30 rating to only gain 6-8. That sounds fun, Woo!. I haven’t had one match this season where there were 10 good players in it.

In total I’ve had two games this season where someone deliberately threw. But in all honestly it didn’t trigger me and my duo queue partner that much because we just gain it back in 2-3 games. It’s the same thing on the EU leaderboard. They just farm noobs, what else is there to say that’s the reality.

Remember when you got removed from the season five leaderboard for match manipulation?

You still obsessed with me?

I just find it ironic someone that was removed from the leaderboards for match manipulation in a previous season doesn’t understand how other players might doubt the legitimacy of their win rating.

Dustin.2793:

No one on top 10 in NA is throwing matches. I don’t know how people can be in such disbelief that people have a high win-rate in a dead game. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of players in MMOs are horrible at PvP. So when you combine that, with the fact that an extremely good duo will be forced into a match at 6-8 minutes, to be put with players hundreds of rating below them, is going to result in very one-sides matches. When top duos queue at the same time, it then becomes a game of who gets the vanilla staff guard, the condi thief gods, or players who are just known to guarantee you an auto-loss. So then you take turns losing 25-30 rating to only gain 6-8. That sounds fun, Woo!. I haven’t had one match this season where there were 10 good players in it.

In total I’ve had two games this season where someone deliberately threw. But in all honestly it didn’t trigger me and my duo queue partner that much because we just gain it back in 2-3 games. It’s the same thing on the EU leaderboard. They just farm noobs, what else is there to say that’s the reality.

Remember when you got removed from the season five leaderboard for match manipulation?

Akeno.4962:

Core engineer lacks a power offhand so, if we stick to that rule, it will never have a power main hand. More restrictions to a class with the least possibilities in weapons and combinations between them. Wouldn’t be better if they compensated this issue with a spec with good mechanics and skills?

Never is a strong word, and there’s nothing stopping them from making the sword strong enough to where the off-hand doesn’t matter. Look at revenant, for example.

I just figured it made sense to make the sword a condi weapon in this instance just so perhaps in PvE we can finally shed our reliance on kits and run a sword/pistol setup … while still giving us a reason to run shield in PvP/WvW. It just seems logical to me.

The only real guarantee right now is that, without some kind of rework, no future elite specialization would ever have a power off-hand, as we’d be stuck running the pistol with it.

scorekeeper.6524:

Phineas, I think his point is that if these buffs/nerfs are useless, than why waste time on them at all? He’s right in pointing out that the Devs feel Warrior rifle needs a tweak, yet Engi rifle doesn’t? It’s like they are trolling us on purpose now.

I don’t think the situation is as dire for us. Warrior doesn’t even have one viable build in platinum-ranked PvP or the daily/monthly ATs.

I’ve voiced my issues regarding the scrapper’s lack of identity and the state of PvP numerously, especially given this is the seventh season and all I’ve really changed between now and season one is my amulet and one utility skill … but at the end of the day scrapper is still one of the best professions to solo queue even in platinum with and had healthy representation in Jebro’s Unity tournament in both NA and EU.

I’m honestly relieved that scrapper has been left alone, seeing that it’s received mostly nothing but nerfs since Heart of Thorns launched in the first place. I’d rather they just focus their energy on holosmith at this point and leave our rifle alone.

Odokuro.5049:

So people who aren’t running a meta build and comp, aren’t trying to win, I got it.

Plenty of teams veer heavily from the meta and find great success with it. Marvin couldn’t replace the role of an elementalist as a scrapper, but his team still finished top three in the tournament.

My point was more so that it’s pretty bad advice to tell someone to “play what they enjoy” with complete disregard of what’s actually effective. Your quote:

Odokuro.5049:

Or you could say, screw the meta, and play what you have fun doing?

Simple fact is, by saying “screw the meta,” you’re promoting ignorance with a bit of arrogance. I think it’s important to remember that PvP is a team mode and your contributions (or lack thereof) can have very severe, negative consequences that affect other players on your team and their own ranked progress.

Just be a team player and work around the weaknesses of your roster; you may not have to play precisely the same build I linked above, especially if there’s already another engineer in your team (I usually opt for Paladin or even Marauder in such instances) but you should at least put some thought into what you’re running to beyond “what’s fun” to at least lead yourself and the rest of your team toward the path of least resistance.

Either that, or you’re welcome to “have fun” spending the afternoon trying to push open a glass door by its hinges.

Spartacus.3192:

is Menders really that much better than Paladin amulet? I feel like i cant kill anything with menders

On Menders I can 1v1 pretty much everything but other engis just fine. Engis I can still kill, but it takes a while and I’d rather just get a thief or rev to +1 real quick.

Firebird Gomer.9563:

Did I ever in a Private Room, doing the PVP dailies, ever actually affect you personally? I’m talking me having done a set of PVP dailies that in someway stole your Ranked win? Stole your Achievement Points. Stole your rewards. Stole your gold. Stole your Reward Pots?

Affect me as in you directly affecting me? No, of course not.

But achievement/daily chasers on a grander scale beyond yourself have actually ruined a great number of Guild Wars 2 features, several of which I’ve already mentioned, in ways both large and small. They even had to take out the AP from the effing seasonal leaderboard titles, because God forbid we attach points to something that would actually be a reflection of real achievement.

You literally get more AP chopping down trees in Queensdale than you do winning first place in season seven; you also get more gold farming Silverwastes pressing #1 over and over on your loot stick guardian for a few hours than the effort and skill level it takes to practice in PvP well enough to earn even the reward for fourth place or better in the upcoming monthly tournament.

The simple fact is that Guild Wars 2 has always had an awful way of balancing effort vs. rewards, and a very large component of why that’s the case is because people like you exist. If people made more gold than you, had more AP than you, or had more ascended boxes than you for actually playing the game, you’d somehow find a way to argue it’s undeserved and/or unfair.

Firebird Gomer.9563:

The true fact is that now it will get worse in Ranked cause PVP’ers asked for Anet to do something about the AFK’ers that also affected quiet non invasive private rooms. Well done.

Doesn’t affect me. I don’t play ranked PvP any longer with WvW having far more interesting things to do/work toward. But even if I were still playing ranked, I’m pretty sure daily AFKers aren’t going to be in platinum-ranked games.

Firebird Gomer.9563:

Actually. I think all we non-PVP’ers should go play PVP on classes we don’t like and cant play. I think that this would be a wonderful way to give back to the PVP community.

The fact that this is your go-to response just indicates how perfect a representative you are for everything I just wrote. It’s really just kind of tragic how sour and petty you can be to where you’d rather run a stick through the mud and ruin everyone else’s experience than just consider some achievements out of your reach.

PvP dailies never should’ve attracted “non-PvPers” in the first place, and if class achievements are just going to be a form of griefing, they too should just be removed from the game.

Mistress Elemental.3750:

I cant stand the new change because I used to be able to get the dailies done with a single match in a daily room because I don’t have a huge amount of time during the week to play but I guess its too bad for me because I don’t “have skill” or “don’t like pvp” and good riddens to me and people like me.

Jesus.

Effing.

Christ.

This is Exhibit A of the absolutely reeking self-entitlement I was talking about previously. “Why isn’t ArenaNet catering to my every whim? What do you mean I have to actually play PvP to complete PvP dailies now?”

Boo-hoo, dude.

If you don’t have “a huge amount of time during the week to play,” guess what?

You miss out.

For years ArenaNet dumbed down this game and their original vision they launched with in 2012, solely to cater to achievement hunters such as yourself that feel excluded from content. It’s because of people like you that:

• WvW achievements were nerfed
• Dynamic events were completely gutted and put on timers
• PvP class achievements were made unlockable in unranked
• dungeons were nerfed and left in a state of disrepair
• Living Story season one was completely scrapped
• WvW tournaments were cancelled

Guild Wars 2 has lost so much of its original appeal and charm because people like you kittened and complained that you’d “miss out” on something; they caved to this pressure from casuals to gut/nerf so much of this game, resulting in the casual-catering kitten show that was season two with 3 hours of content every month and WvW being left in complete disrepair for nearly three full years.

Even when Heart of Thorns launched the crusades continued, crying that it took “too long” to unlock elite specializations, which they later ALSO nerfed, and complained that raids were “too hard” and encouraged “elitism” just because you were required to actually exercise some effing brain power and not press #1 to have loot rain from the sky for you.

Last week’s patch was the first time WvW got some actual good things with meaningful, long-term rewards … and up and down these forums and reddit people were crying that it’d take too long to reach the rank required for completely free ascended gear and moaned that the T4 chest piece skin looked better than legendary armor.

I mean, seriously? I have a wife and both a part-time tutoring and a full-time teaching job(s), and at 29 years old I have plenty of other societal expectations and personal responsibilities that divide my attention to the point where things like regularly attending automated tournaments are out of reach for me. I’m still very happy to see the game mode grow, and I want to see ArenaNet continue to foster the competitive aspects of this game, even if I’m gatekept from it by multiple factors.

So rather than kitten and moan on the forums, take some personal accountability and set some more realistic expectations. Or just be like every other casual kitten ruining this game and chop down some trees or look at some stupid kittening vista to complete your daily.

Mistress Elemental.3750:

I already feel excluded because there is no way for me to get any of the Mini Llamas without playing a part of the game I hate making it impossible for me to ever complete the mini collection.

God forbid PvPers have something they can claim as their own, as little as it were.

Akeno.4962:

I really hope not. Offhand pistol is already used in a top-tier condition build, with simplified versions (meaning no or less kits) of it that deal great damage. For build variety’s sake, I hope it is a support spec that enables shield at least for the utility it brings compared to no-condition-damage blowtorch.

That just speaks to the one-dimensionality of PvE being a DPS-over-everything kind of mode. The only time I remember ever really using the shield in PvE was during the Queen’s Gauntlet.

There’s no sense in Holosmith being a power-oriented specialization when there is no off-hand to accompany it.

Yakez.7561:

As the person who rotate 3 gamemodes on monthly basis.

PvP and WvW community in the nutshell:
1. Give us the rewards! Done.
2. Cleanse our elitist gamemode from PvE scrubs! Happened.
3. Ah rewards suck! Statement.
4. Our gamemode is dead, why?! Fact.
5. Then cycle repeats.

This is a hilariously bad oversimplification of the situation.

The rewards weren’t nerfed in season six to appease PvPers or keep “PvE scrubs” away. The rewards were nerfed in season six because getting a free set of ascended armor, literally worth hundreds of gold, for just queuing matches (and not even winning them) for a couple weeks was pretty detrimental to both the economy and the game mode overall. Case in point the insufferably self-entitled comments like this:

Firebird Gomer.9563:

Don’t sweat it. When PVP’ers who championed this change don’t get players to fill out teams they will only have themselves to blame for even longer wait times. And Anet don’t change things back unless it really breaks the game. Have fun “serious PVP’ers” with the choice you asked for.

Nobody wants to have these PvP daily achievement chasers on their team that have literally zero investment in the game mode beyond how much AP it adds to their account, and good riddance if this is the type of thing that gets these people finally out of PvP.

ArenaNet sensibly nerfed the rewards for season six, and the mass exodus of PvErs back to raids, fractals, or worse, just AFKing in Lake Doric for money, indicates how toxic a large percentage of the game’s community really is, and how allergic they are to playing something simply for fun. We’re talking about people doing stupid kitten like, following the WvW update, trebbing a random wall every 5 minutes in WvW to maintain participation while watching Netflix on the other screen than actually play the game mode just because it earned them the same amount of pips with substantially less effort. There are thousands of these types of people who are literally just poison to this game’s future; these are the people who show up to PvP just to get a dumb backpack.

These aren’t people that actually care about PvP or even really, my view, even care about PvE or Guild Wars 2 at large. These people aren’t even really gamers in my view; they’re just obsessors, gamblers, and addicts. The only thing keeping many of them logging in every day is the knowledge that it’d affect their AP leaderboard position if it didn’t, and without those meaningless internet points they’d probably be buying kittenty $5 games to inflate their Xbox Gamerscore. I hate to sound like a curmudgeon but a lot of these younger MMO players who need that instant gratification or constantly need a reward for everything they do are just cancerous to good game development.

ArenaNet needs to stop catering to those people and just focus on making PvP and WvW fun to play. New WvW maps/objectives (with a desert BL rework), new PvP modes, and automated tournaments are the types of things we need more of.

Most of these changes were pretty minor, and probably won’t change the meta at all in the grand scheme. Sword/torch berserker is still going to just be an unranked troll build, and bunker guardian is still too slow to replace druid, tempest, or scrapper.

Odokuro.5049:

Or you could say, screw the meta, and play what you have fun doing? A lot of people seem to think that, playing the meta equals winning. But I’ve always been under the impression that playing what you enjoy, you’re going to perform better than someone who just, knuckles under to the, “Muh Meta” mentality. As long as you are helping and not hindering the team, then go for it. Not everyone has to strive to be the next, “1%’er”.

GLHF

In an unranked environment, I think this type of attitude is perfectly fine. But in ranked play and in automated tournaments, places where people are ideally trying to win as many games as possible, I think it’s incredibly detrimental to your team to shirk the meta out of some self-aggrandizement urge.