we are currently playing a beta of what gw2 could be – just take it easy and w8. ^^
Nice post and you surely put a lot of effort into it, but in PvP, everything other than
1) Obs-Mode
2) Private Servers
3) Ladder
can wait.
I really liked some of the Ideas though, like:
- Bigger Side-Nodes (I always feel so restricted fighting on them)
- Get all the Maps into the Rota (or at least slightly changed versions of them)
- Give us a casting-bar unless you want everyone to play an asura. ^^’
- I’d also like to see a change to “Blind”, but your proposal wouldn’t change much, because there aren’t too many blinds, so almost every time, it would be 1 stack anyways. IMHO, just make it work like in GW1: 90% of all the Attacks miss when a Target is blinded, but reduce the duration of the Skills that Blind.
What is all the Fuss about Quickness? I really don’t get why ppl want it removed or changed.
The only thing that’s maybe a little bit off about Quickness is that the Ranger gets it a bit too easy.
Oh yes – and that 50% of quickness-stomps don’t hit…. -.-°
Mesmer would probably still be used, even if 1-2 other classes had sth. like a Portal, but I’m sure that we’ll see at least 1 Mesmer in almost every Team-comp, if he’s the only class that has sth. like a Portal.
I don’t like being forced to have a certain Class in a Team, because that 1 Utility-Skill is just way too good to not have in your Team.
didnt think it was possible but it’s happening: meta is getting worse due to OP low skillcap builds dominating everything else.
Dude, just go with it. ^^’
Did you ever play GW1? It was ridiculous in terms of cheesey and gimmicky builds!
There were Teams of 8 Necros, most of ‘em with the second class being sth. that can heal like Monk and they spiked a target down in the blink of an Eye and the 10 Seconds between the spikes, they were Fullhealing each other, CC’ing your Team etc. It was like playing against 5 Bunker-Ele’s, were every 10 or so seconds, someone of your Team magically died. It was also much harder to split against those Teamfight-oriented Builds, especially in Heroes Ascent and there was no downed-state either.
Then, there were other Spikes, like the Ranger-spike, insane Pressure-builds like “IWAY!” and tons of other BS.
But it was kinda fun! There was always this tension between the gimmicky players and the “good” players, who played balanced-builds. The one group was regarded low-skilled and cheesey and the other were regarded better players, but they just had to come up with sth. to deal with all those gimmicky builds and in GW1, it was much harder to prepare your team for all the possibilities of ridiculous builds out there:
1) You had “only” 8 Skills
2) Conditions, or the equivalent in GW1 to those of GW2, were split up into two “debuff-categories”, Hexes and Conditions, and most Removal-Skills only took care of one of them. So to be prepared against both heavy Condition and heavy Hex-builds, you really had to cramp in A LOT of stuff and therefore you had an overall weaker build, just to be safe against certain cheesey builds.
3) With Observer-Mode in Place, crazy builds spread very very fast, so the Players playing balanced, had to know the Meta very well, analyze the new builds that pop up and work sth. out to counter them, or to at least don’t get an auto-loss, while still being fairly safe against all the other builds.
-> Playing balanced was “Metagaming” pure; A game of calculated risks and educated guesses. While the other side of the Spectrum tried to come up with always new Combinations of Skill and Chars to surprise and dominate the other Teams.
We have that in other games as well, take Starcraft or Starcraft 2 for example:
- There are Players that try to cheese and surprise the opponent by coming up with crazy timings, rushes and so on. Often, builds like that are risky, because if they are scouted, or if the opponent isn’t cutting any corners, they can backfire. Other Players try to come up with the most stable build-orders – stuff that doesn’t loose automatically against any cheese, but has a good economy when you face an opponent that is going for the lategame.
That kind of tension makes a game interesting for Players that like to think and come up with stuff and it is fun for spectators and creates kind of a storyline: One Team is the crafty one, that comes up with new and surprising builds, will the other Team be prepared or will they fall for the cheese? Does the one Team know what the other Team was working on, have they maybe seen certain Builds of them on the Ladder/Stream etc.
Just look at it from another Perspective: Be Glad ppl come up with new stuff that seems to be unbeatable and either take the challenge, or hop on the bandwagon! Of course we can whine about balance, but sticking your heads together and coming up with counters is just much more fun!
copy link in your browser and it’ll work.
I’ve seen builds like that and they do insane DPS. I don’t know if it was exactly this build though. That being said, Grenade-Power-builds have a set of Problems they are facing:
- The engi has no real gap-closer
- You need to be in Melee-range for the burst to really work
- The build is pretty glassy besides the few defensive-CD’s and pressure-DPS (both Power or Condition) will kill it easily.
- The Engi only has an easy to dodge Immobilize to keep the opponent in place for the Spike, yet grenades can easily be kited.
It has a nice surprise-effect, but in the long run, I don’t think this build will be viable in tPvP.
Thats all sounds good in theory. Im definitelly going to give it a try.. but i still see the problem in “time”. The time you need for move from one point to another, and the time you need to kill him.
And.. how to play against it if they are heavily supported by their own dual portal mesmers?
And.. how to play against it if they are heavily supported by their own dual portal mesmers?Also treb on Khylo. I dont think they will let me shoot. At least one of them.. will go for treb and make sure you can´t use it. He will probably not kill you but still can´t shoot.
Or does ele even care about treb? good players know how to evade.. time it.And.. how to play against it if they are heavily supported by their own dual portal mesmers?Also treb on Khylo. I dont think they will let me shoot. At least one of them.. will go for treb and make sure you can´t use it. He will probably not kill you but still can´t shoot.
Or does ele even care about treb? good players know how to evade.. time it.As i said.. its all nice in theory.. but rather hard in game.And.. how to play against it if they are heavily supported by their own dual portal mesmers?Also treb on Khylo. I dont think they will let me shoot. At least one of them.. will go for treb and make sure you can´t use it. He will probably not kill you but still can´t shoot.
Or does ele even care about treb? good players know how to evade.. time it.As i said.. its all nice in theory.. but rather hard in game.Well you right at one point.. Cheap and Cheesey.. was huge part of GW1 and it will always be a hudge part of any competitive game.. so we just have to adjust.. and learn to play against it..
The problem is.. im not sure if Forsaker can play Necro anymore with this meta.. maybe you will need new class.
Pushing offensively to the opposing Point costs more time in walking to the Point, reinforcing the point with players on other Points on the Map or Players respawning, so against those builds, you’ll always have a certain “defenders advantage” if you concentrate on your homepoint and mid.
The time to kill the Ele with 2+ ppl shouldn’t be too high, I’ve even seen skilled Mesmers or Thiefs solo the Ele, so with 2+ Bursty Chars (preferably Thief, Mesmer and maybe an offensive Ele), the Bunker-Ele should only survive until his CD’s are gone and mesmer even negates two of them (Armor of Earth and the other Armor of Earth you get from the Trait).
Treb is huge against the Ele, just keep the mesmer there and Immobilize/Stun the Ele when the Treb-shot is about to hit.
2 Mesmers with Portal is another thing, maybe I’ll write sth. about how to counter Portals later, cuz there are tons of strategies and builds against it. It’s nothing like a hard-counter that makes the Portal useless, but it helps controlling it a bit.
First of all, I understand that both D/D-Ele’s with tons of Teamsupport and the S/D-Bunker are pretty annoying builds, very strong and can be hard to deal with, that being said, here are some strategies you can use against them:
How to play a Team with an S/D-Bunker
1) A lot of teams send 1-2 Chars in the direction of the S/D-Bunker at the start of the game to cripple, stun, chill and immobilize him. Most of the time, your Node-def will be able to get the Point capped before the Ele is there, or the Ele has to use up pretty much all of his CD’s.
2) Another way of approaching the scenario is by putting down a portal near your mainpoint and just keep one Char there to keep it neutral or even completely ignore it. The rest of the Team (with the Mesmer), collapses on mid. With 4-5 ppl mid, you’ll be able to get it quite fast. After you get mid, the Mesmer uses Portal and 2+ ppl go back (leave at least the Guard mid), they wipe the Bunker-Ele and now you have 2 Points against a Team with a much lower DMG-output than most Teams that don’t run 2 defensive Chars and you’ve basically won the game.
3) On Kyhlo, the Bunker Ele is really no Problem, cuz you got Treb. Yeah, he has tons of dodges and heal, but a good stun/Immobilize and a Trebshot will kill the Ele easily. They then again have a second Bunker that doesn’t deal much DMG, can’t get ppl off of points (except if he runs Tornado, which is a skill that allows the Ele to die against everything) and can’t destroy the Treb too well.
4) You can also just completely ignore your Point and go for 2+ ppl on their point and the rest mid. They now just have a crappy Bunker-Ele on one node and actually defending points as the S/D-Bunker Ele, is very very hard, because decapping points happens much faster than hindering your opponent from capping it, so just 1 Engi, Guardian, Necro etc. can push the Ele off the Point and make the point neutral.
How to play against D/D-Eles
1) The best way to mitigate huge amounts of DPS from the Eles is to used some sort of Movement-impairing skills like Cantrips, Ice-Fields, cripple and get ranged Classes to fight them. They’ll do much less DPS, but eat up a lot of DPS from your team.
2) If they run Aura-Share, they heavily invested into Teamfight-Skills, so if your Team is good enough, fight for 3 Points constantly and draw them out of Teamfights.
*Edit: Cheap, cheesey and gimmicky builds were also a HUGE part of GW1, I’d go as far as to say they were even more dangerous and required less skill, or a skill-set that is different from when you play a more balanced-build. It was up to the players that played balanced-builds to figure out how to deal with those builds, to analyze the Metagame and come up with counters etc. In return, they were regarded as better players that didn’t use gimmicky builds to win.
(edited by PowerBottom.5796)
There are a vast variety of builds that are viable in tPvP, even paids – stop whining and try something new.
Not really and it’s not whining at all. It’s pretty much the truth that there isn’t much variety of builds that can’t do well play in pvp overall. Unless you can prove it in every paid tournament you do while recording it. If you can’t do that than your statement here is pretty much useless and in everything you’re just telling us shut up.
Simply not true:
1) Chieftain Ninjas, PZ and Team Paradigm have been running 1-2 Rangers the last few days and it works just fine.
2) Team Paradigm has been running Engi instead of Thief (which is used in most lineups) forever and it seems to work.
3) A lot of Top-Tier Teams have been toying around with full glass-cannon lineups and although they’ve played it for fun, it did quite well.
4) Onibawan runs Magz as Warrior quite often and he does well.
5) Forsaker from Team Royal Legion runs a D/D Power-Necro on certain Maps and it does well.
6) Supernova Jpn (I don’t know how active they are now), used to run an offensive Greatsword-Guardian as a Roamer in 90% of the games I saw of them and Mad Fury of SpNv ran a Greatsword/Rifle-War almost every game (and they were both one of the best Teams in GW1 as well as a Team with their owns playstyle and builds).
7) Team Paradigm even ran lineups without Mesmer but with a Node-def Guardian, pretty much during the time they were most dominating and where a lot of good teams still played GW2.
8) Just a few weeks ago, Teams on the EU-Server have been starting to run an Ele as a Bunker that offensively pushes to the opponents node and keeps it neutral. Now it’s considered extremely strong and is run by like 90% of the teams on EU. I’m sure it’s strong, but it can also be countered quite hard, so we’ll probably see a metagame-shift on EU very soon, probably with some new builds we haven’t seen before.
Also, there are tons of builds for every class, that could work in tpvp, if they are in the right lineup, on the right map and played well, ppl just like to stick to what works and what they’re used to.
(edited by PowerBottom.5796)
wow, thanks for the effort, much appreciated!
As an S/D-Bunker, I fear Thiefs the most and Shatter-Mesmers the least (not that they aren’t good against my build, but I’ve trained the MU very often, so I’ve got no problem against most Shatter-Mesmers)
As an S/D-Hybrid/Roamer, I also fear Thiefs the most and again Shatter-Mesmers the least, because I know the MU well and I have lots of Burning they can’t really handle.
There are a vast variety of builds that are viable in tPvP, even paids – stop whining and try something new.
There are a lot of Threads regarding this topic already. In general, I think GW2 could eventually implement a f2p-pvp feature, but there are certain things to consider:
- If a game you have to pay for goes F2P, it’s often regarded as a failure and ppl think this is a last desperate attempt to get any players before it eventually dies. If I see a game like Warhammer: Online, SWtOR or Aion go F2P, I think to myself: “well, this game obviously sucks and has no players – why would I play it; even if it’s for free?”
- Going F2P so early after many players bought the game, could lead to the ppl that actually bought it being frustrated and they’d probably expect some sort of gift from ANet to make up for it.
- GW2 lacks a lot of very important e-Sport-Features: Even if players think: “nice, it’s F2P – let’s check it out!” They might leave soon after, because there are tons of F2P-games (especially the MOBA’s), that have the common e-Sport-Features.
- Going F2P has to be timed very well and it needs to be communicated and advertised to potential Players – there’s a lot of planning, advertising-cost etc. involved.
- ANet would also have to make sure, that they have enough incentive for Players to invest money into the game, even if they only play PvP. It also needs to be done in a certain way that doesn’t lead to Money invested>skill, because no serious PvP-player will play a game like that. Atm. I’ve heard that PvP-Players invest a much smaller amount of Money into GW2 than the PvE-Players (with that I mean buying Gems for real Cash). They need to make sure that they can make Money off of Players that got the Game for free; ANet isn’t a charity, it’s a company!
(edited by PowerBottom.5796)
You know at first a new player would think that Ele is much harder to play due to the fact that he has twice as many weapon skills as other classes and constantly has to switch attunements.
It’s sadly not the case. It takes a few hours to get used to playing Ele, and when you do, you realize it’s actually the easiest class to play, it just takes more button mashing than other classes. Especially the bunker ones. It literally does NOT matter what your opponent does, just roll through your skills in all attunemets and make sure to save a dodge for when you switch to water so you can heal up with Evasive Arcana.Yes, Ether Renewal is ONE of the reasons Ele is so strong right now, but it’s far from being the main problem.
Bingo….. rotate your skills and watch the grass grow. You do not need to react to your oponent since you outheal his dmg.
All the reaction you need is stun break.
This is sadly what Anet considers ‘skill’.
The fact is, ppl who are terrible on thief for example can do very well on elementalist. Because they do not need to play against anyone on ele, they can just rotate their skills and once they get that down it is up to their enemy to actually dodge elementalist stuff and put out enough dps to kill them.
Ele is by far the hardest class to play.
Ranger: condi remove + aoe regen + quickstomp = 3 points
Guardian: Tanky + DPS = 2 points
Thief: condi build + tanky + perma swift + mobility = 4 points
Engi: ressurect, perma swift, self condi removal = 2,5 points (only selfish condi removal)
Warrior: mobility, Elite rez, shout heals, quickstomp = 4 pointsnow standard D/D ele.
- decent DMG output
- hudge mobility
- CC
- Lots of buff (pernament furry, nice swiftness, protection, regeneration when needed)
- more ways how to healthemselfs (not only skil nr. 6)
- lot of abilities to cleans condition from themselfs and also allies
- Best downed mode in game= very easily 7 points.
Well, you just counted random things on the Ele, I can do that too on other classes:
- Ranger (Power with Longbow+Sword/Warhorn):
1) AoE Fury
2) AoE Swiftness
3) AoE Reg (almost permanent)
4) AoE-Vigor
5) Quickness-rez
6) Quickness-stomps
7) huge AoE Crowd-Control with Muddy Terrain and Longbow 5
8) Ability to recap points much easier with insane Knockback on Longbow 4 and the Fear of the Wolf+Immobilize/cripple of Muddy Terrain
9) Almost immune to conditions
Engi (standard Teldo-build)
1) Selfrez and Ally-Rez in one Skill
2) Heavy AoE
3) Perma-Swiftness
4) Perma-Vigor
5) Good CC/Knockbacks
6) One of the classes that dishes out the most diverse amount of conditions
7) Good Combofields and Combosinishers
8) Harder to kill than Ele in most MU’s (Necro being the obvious exception)
9) Protection-Injection that basically counters most spikes that rely on CC (100b-War, most Ele-builds)
see how easy it is to just count whatever you want and make a point out of it?
Ele is good, we know that, but compared to the really obvious imbalances like BS, Stealth, Blurred Frenzy, Portal etc. It’s not a big thing. Besides, as stated in a Post before, no1 really try’s to counter the D/D-Ele (and other Builds at the same time) with movement-impairing-skills. It was totally standard in GW1 to have cripple-rangers, AoE-Fields that lowered Movement, freezes etc. to take out pressure-DPS from Melee-Classes, why does nobody do that in GW2? I mean, is it that hard to put Cantrips on the Thief, which basically is enough to negate most D/D-Ele Pressure in Teamfights?
(edited by PowerBottom.5796)
one of the reason Ele is strong is that he “CAN” and offten is specced well ballanced.
There is no other class that have
- decent DMG output
- hudge mobility
- CC
- Lots of buff (pernament furry, nice swiftness, protection, regeneration when needed)
- more ways how to healthemselfs (not only skil nr. 6)
- lot of abilities to cleans condition from themselfs and also allies
- Best downed mode in gameSo technically you have all and you are decent at it or best. I dont blame eles for that. But its true that sometimes i feel pretty bad when fighting them. If the player know what to do and when to avoid burst.. then its just GG and there is not that much i can do against it.
If you count it.. there is no other class that can be specced like this in whole game. Even Guardians are not that strong as they will be missing mobility or the decent damage, or cleasnsing …
negative side of it? you light armor and going with 14k HP. Well.. thats not an issue if you know how to play it.
Yes, the Ele has an easier time to come up with balanced/sustain-builds, but it’s simply not true that other Chars can’t do that as well:
- Ranger: Has builds with extremely good Teamsupport (AoE-Reg, Condi-remove and vigor on the Healing Spring, Quickness-Rezzes and Quickness-stomps every 15 Seconds, strong DPS with Condition and Power-builds, Perma-AoE-Fury and very high mobility).
- Guardian: Yes, mobility is a Problem, but just Right-Hand-Strength alone makes it possible to run extremely tanky builds that still do enough DPS. Because if you’re not running a Char with perma-fury or a total Class-Cannon with Zerker-Amu, your Crit-Chance is by far the highest DMG-Multiplicator in the game and the Guard gets 15 basically for free. There is no build that can run so much tanky equip and traits and still get over 40% Crit-Chance very easily, even without any fury at all. You can even run the Guard with decent mobility (Retreat or Staff for Swiftness and about 2 strong Blinks; sword 2 and Judges Intervention)
- Thief: There are decen’t Condition-builds that aren’t glassy, have perma-swiftness, the usual Teleports and insane Teamfight-Potential.
- Engi: I don’t know why ppl stopped playing the Engi: He has insane Teamfight-Potential, one of the best Rezzes in the game and Perma Swiftness/Vigor and you can build him basically as tanky as you wish. It’s a bit hard to get enough Condi-Remove on him (and with enough, I mean enough to get rid of at least some Conditions), but other than that, Engis are awesome Sustain/Teamfight-Chars
- Warriors: There are tons of good tanky/sustain War Builds with good Mobility – You can go for the Elite Rez, Shouts that Heal for 1.5k, Quickness-Stomps etc.
There are tons more builds like those out there, but nobody plays these Chars and they complain about aspects of the Ele, that they shouldn’t complain about.
Its the unfortunate truth that there is a huge skillgap between paid and free and IMHO, it can only be solved by a good Ladder/Matchmaking/Ranking-System, so we’ll just have to wait for that.
Just because in the current Metagame, nobody really plays conditions anymore… There might be a Necro on many Teams, so if you play the Ele as an offensive roamer, that will often fight Necro’s, Ether Renewal is incredibly strong, because it gives you an Auto-win on most Builds.
Ppl will most likely neglect Condi-Remove even more in the near future, until others realize it and go for a lot of sustain and heavy condition-builds, totally bashing most glass-cannon builds and punish Teams for not running enough Condi-Removal.
Between cleansing fire, cleansing 2 condi’s every time we switch to water, and water5 I’ve never really noticed needing more condi removal tbh. Typically anytime there’s a large stack I need to burn off I can do it at will.
Thats true in the current Meta – u don’t really need more. But even 1 Engi alone will give you more conditions you can ever remove alone without Ether Renewal. If ppl start to play Condition-Spam Teambuilds, you’ll need a lot more as a sustain-Char that has almost no Vita und gets countered extremely hard by Poison and everything that hinders movement (as a D/D-Ele).
Really, If ppl still haven’t figured out, that the D/D-Ele is strong and used often enough to warrant certain counters being implemented in your Builds, they are simply wrong.
It’s actually quite easy to almost totally counter a D/D-Ele: Just use movement-impairing Skills and you will kill almost all his sustained DPS and even make DPS-Spikes much harder to land for the D/D, here are some good examples:
- Cantrips + Small Cantrips on Dodge on a Thief (if you run the Thief with Poison-Fields and the Trait that applies Weakness if you Poison a foe, you’ve pretty much hard-countered the Ele: Movement denied, Healing heavily impaired by Poison and -50% Endurance-reg and the Ele is gone)
- Ice-Trap and Spike Trap on the Ranger (he has Poison as well)
- Ice-Fields on Staff-Ele
- Box of Nails + another Box of Nails when you switch to the Tool Kit on a Condition-Engi (Also has enough Poison)
- Lineback-Guard with tons of Cripple, Immobilize and Stuns
- Even Necro with Chilled, Boon-removal and Poison+Weakness as well.
Yes, these are all counters that don’t work in every circumstance, but if you run a Team with enough Sustain and Teamfight-Potential, the D/D-Ele really shouldn’t be a big Problem and that’s exactly why I run a S/D-Ele. He’s not as good as D/D if ppl don’t counter the D/D-Ele, but he is much harder to counter and therefore more versatile and less gimmicky.
Wait, there’s ele’s that use ether renewal? wtf?
pffft, signet heal all the way, heal through casting imo.
Just because in the current Metagame, nobody really plays conditions anymore… There might be a Necro on many Teams, so if you play the Ele as an offensive roamer, that will often fight Necro’s, Ether Renewal is incredibly strong, because it gives you an Auto-win on most Builds.
Ppl will most likely neglect Condi-Remove even more in the near future, until others realize it and go for a lot of sustain and heavy condition-builds, totally bashing most glass-cannon builds and punish Teams for not running enough Condi-Removal.
Yes here a suggestion!
Learn to play really! A 3s channeling skill beg for interrupt, don’t blame the profession for the lack of skills of others, you’re “unkillable” because you play only zerg sPvP against r10+ opponents who spamm their auto-attack, there are dozen of skill that can be used to interrupt ER:-Push-
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Push-Daze-
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Daze-Fear-
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fear-Knockdown-
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Knockdown-Launch-
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Launch-Pull-
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pull-Stun-
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/StunHow much more help baddies need?
What a shock the community in this game, I use to play mesmer in GW1 and interrupt 3/4s casting time skills on a monk…in this game people whine that they can’t interrupt a 3s channeling skills with so many freaking short CD interrupts distributed among all professions…this is just one of the many reason why GW1 PvP > GW2 PvP
First of all, I don’t think D/D-Eles are inherently too strong – but there are a few things I don’t like about the build, at the top of that list is perma-fury and Ether Renewal.
In a D/D-build, you are able to run 3 very defensive Utilities and still do enough DMG, which allows you to use Flash, Armor of Earth and Mist Form. Together with Armor of Earth at 50% Health (from Earth’s Embrace), you get enough Situations to be able to cast Ether Renewal during big fights, without having to fear of ever being interrupted.
It all comes back to the fact that the D/D-Ele can run very defensive Equip, Traits and Utilities and still do effective DPS, because of the perma-fury though. It even goes as far as a D/D-Ele being almost a necessity in Teamfights because the Perma-Fury is granted to allies as well. There are only 2 builds I can think of with Perma- and AoE-Fury and it’s the D/D-Ele and certain Powerranger-builds with the Moa-Pet and I really think that the D/D-Ele doesn’t need it.
That being said, there are way more pressing balancing-Issues IMHO…
Dear Jonathan Sharp,
We really want to know some news from you to the near spvp future features.
We really want to stop play paid tournaments where only 100 players ( eu ) play it every evening ( thats embarassing for a new game, paid tournm should be played by thousands of thousands people ), starting a paid means 5people x 8 teams= 40 people so you can start 1 tourny or max 2 per time ( every time against same people )
We really want to play a single matchmaking game with an elorating ladder (cmon, 40 mins for a tournament is too much time )
I dont know if you’ve thought yet about it, i dont care.
Tell us why u won’t do this or yes do it! Cmon!
I really think that is exactly what they are working on right now. I think they felt that making a ladder that works well, would take a lot of time, so they tried to come up with a way of making it possible for teams to play equally skilled teams without a ladder and the current system is what they came up with.
So IMHO, it’s only a matter of time, because I think that ANet knows very well, that their current System isn’t really what the community is looking for in the long run.
I give this thread 0/10. I don’t know what the attitude is with all these EU players claming they are the “best of the best” and NA is far below them. I’ve yet to see the top EU and NA teams play each other to prove their points, and as folly said I don’t know any full teams from NA worth a kitten that actually went over to EU to compete.
And that’s exactly what kind of Hype we need and why we need Cross-Server PvP, at least in the monthly finals and stuff.
Back those words up Bihatch! ^^’
Besides, EU thinks they’re better in most games, because in most Games, it’s true. :P (CS, SC2, SC:BW), only in games no1 cares about, like Halo, US is better. xD
GW1 was actually one of the Games where US had some very strong teams, like QQ, iQ etc.
I think it was more or less just for fun IMHO.
And although I don’t agree with a lot of what’s being said or what strategies they use to approach certain situations, I don’t think I’m in a position to get upset about it, because:
- Vain and the guys of QT have more QP’s and probably more playing-experience than me (I don’t think it makes them necessarily understand the game better though ^^‘)
- This kind of thing like SotG’s is exactly what GW2 needs and it essentially a good thing. I’m not doing it, you’re not doing it, why complain about it?
IMHO, you guys from Super Squad should go on there and Discuss with them, because thats what we need! If you know it better than them (and hell yes, I believe SS would tomp the whole NA-Scene into the ground EZ! ^^) then go on the “show” and talk about it, that stuff is interesting and would create some much needed excitement in the “semi-pro-scene” GW2 has atm. ^^’
Okay, let’s make a simple comparison between some of the offensive roamers: Let’s take BS-Thief, S/D-Ele, D/D-Ele and 100b War and compare them in various aspects:
Mobility
Thief is probably on par with the Eles, there are enough spots on every Map to glitch through with the Blinks and there are good Thief-builds with perma-swiftness or perma 25% Movement-Speed. Both Ele and Thief are much better than the War.
Burst-DPS
Thief is easy first, then 100b, then the Ele’s, because most Eles will run the build with defensive Equipment and Traits, so the burst is good, but nowhere near as high as the burst of the other 2 classes.
Burst Cooldown
Thief is again easy first. I do understand that Stealing has quite a recast and is an important part of what makes the spike so good and easy to land, but you can spike quite well without it. Try landing 100b without the Knockdown of Bulls Charge and/or Frenzy – without those two Utilities, your 100b will most likely be used on downed targets or is only good with strong teamplay. The Ele also has very long recasts on the best Burst-Skills, like Flame Grab, Phoenix, the Knockdowns/Knockbacks etc.
Sustained DMG
Thief is not the best in Sustained DMG, but have you ever played an S/D-Ele? The Sustained DMG is horrible! D/D is much much better in that aspect, but because it’s all Melee-Range and a lot of it is AoE, you can negate huge parts of the DMG with good Movement, positioning and any kind of Movement-impairing skills. Those where a huge part in GW1 to reduce sustained DPS, but no1 gives a kitten about them in GW2. But just use cantrips, ice-fields, well-targeted immobilizes/crippling etc. and see how much sustain the D/D-Ele does then. The 100b War has similar Problems if he doesn’t run a Ranged-Weapon (which not many War’s do), but his Sustain is also not that bad. So how well does the Thief compared to them? Not to bad after all: The Shortbow is absolutely amazing for sustained DPS – you can easily keep poison on targets forever, spam trickshots etc. Just because the Thief can easily switch to a incredibly strong ranged-Weapon, makes his sustained DPS pretty decent.
Teamfight
Again, the Thief is very strong, especially of your team wants to engage in Teamfights and the Thief makes little changes in his build to accomodate that. Just the Cantrips and the AoE-Stealth could be considered Teamfight-winning Skills. On top of that, you have the aforementioned Shortbow Poison-fields (+Weakness if traited and it’s well worthwile to trait it IMHO), Trickshot, the clusterbomb etc.
The D/D is pretty good in Teamfights as well and well above the S/D-Ele, mostly because of the much better AoE and sutained-DPS. Both builds don’t have that good utilities for Teamfights like Cantrips and Shadow Refuge though and even though the constant buffs, slight condition-removal and Healing of the Ele’s help out, they don’t have as big of an impact as those 2 Skills.
The War is not too bad in Teamfights as well, mostly because he can control downed Players well with Quickness-Stomps and 100b.
It would put the Thief on top though anyways, especially if the Thief makes some minor adjustements to his build, if he is being played in a Team that want’s to win Teamfights.
Sustain/Survival
D/D-Ele is probably on Top, followed by S/D-Ele, then Thief, then the War. I only put the Ele’s above the Thief, because they can actually guard points, but if it’s just about simple survival, a Thief is harder to kill than most offensive Ele-builds, although most of them run much more defensive Equipment and Traits than Thiefs.
The War is actually not that hard to kill: if you play well and attack the War during Frenzy, it’s almost a guaranteed kill if he doesn’t fire off Endure Pain or the Shield-Block. He also doesn’t have Shadowsteps and is not as fast as the other two and his downed-mode is far worse than that of the Thief and the Ele, so he’s actually one of the prime-targets to be spiked during Teamfights.
The head designer obviously plays this class and is totally out of touch with reality, because I’ve never seen a class this insanely over the top in any game.
I’ve seen classes that can get away from just about anything.
I’ve seen classes run faster than anything.
I’ve seen classes 1-2 shot people.
Just never seen a class in a game that could do all of these at the same time, and a design team absolutely unwilling to address the fact that it’s this out of control. So lets all stop pretending this is a mistake or balancing issue when we all know exactly what’s going on here, blatant favoritism towards a guys preffered class.
Most players call the game Thief Wars you really gonna tank your own game pvp wise to keep your class on easy mode pvp.
100% agreed.
I’ve been saying this for weeks…
Thief is in the Top Tier of all the classes in basically every important aspect of the game:
- DPS/Burst: Easy First Place
- Movement: Easy Top-3, with Ele and Mesmer (cuz Portal rulez) on about the same level
- Survival/Sustain: Even as a glass cannon, he’s definitely wayyyy too hard to kill. Maybe not Top-3 in this Aspect, but in relation to how much DMG he does and how glassy his equip is, he’s by far the char with the best sustain to DPS-ratio.
- Teamfight: AoE-Poison-Field (+Weakness if traited and oooh boy is that an underrated trait), AoE-Stealth, Cantrips, Good AoE-DPS on Shortbow, Combo-Fields, Combo-finishers etc.
- Controlling alternative Points of interest: Can solokill Svanir/Chieftain, can kill Guild-Lord in record-time and on Kyhlo, he is basically the movement-king and by far the best roamer AND he’s easily able to snipe ppl on the Treb and kill the Treb pretty fast afterwards.
- His Combos have no downside either: Easy to land, short CD’s and no real drawback like Frenzy, being open to counterattacks etc. cuz you’ll go right back to being stealthed.
There is almost no downside to the Thief if you play him as an offensive Roamer, that doesn’t need to guard points anyways, which might be one of the only aspects of the game where current Thief-builds fall short (there are decent defensive builds though, but they are not the big Issue here).
That actually made a lot of sense and having played several fighting-games at a moderate level, I think your comparison is valid.
Onto your points:
1) I’ve been saying for quite a while, that certain Burst-Chars have it too easy to land their incerdibly strong attacks. Thief for example can get into range with stealing and can land C’n’D very easily because you can activate it before stealing. Then, with you on top of your Target, it’s pretty easy to land the Backstab. Underestimated by players is also the fact, that the follow-up pressure (Heartseeker) is a leap with quite a big range that is also very very easy to land.
I’ve toyed around with Thief-builds that are more tanky with less crit-chance (but the 100% crit in stealth), with BS being the one real damage-dealer. You can’t combo sth. down so easily, so you’ll have to land multiple BS’s over a longer fight and If you can’t combo sth. down instantly and only have stealing once per fight, it actually gets much harder to land the C’n’D+BS. It’s also easier for the opponent to outplay you with good movement, or to hinder your movement with cripple and Chilled etc. which then does reduce a lot of DPS from the Thief.
The Mesmer has it easy as well, he got a leap that also Immobilizes and you can’t even do return-DPS or CC him during a spike and of course, the leap and the insane burst, have very small CD’s.
2) I guess you’re right, but I don’t see this as a huge problem, just a minor annoyance. On the Thief it’s sth. completely different: It’s not a Problem of an Animation, but of simply being able to see him before you get instagibbed.
3) True as well. I guess in GW1, certain Spikes were okay and it enabled different builds and interesting gameplay. But in GW1, you had dedicated healers and bursting sth. down quickly actually required teamwork and it couldn’t be done by just one Glass-Cannon. I think it’s better to look at GW2 as an action-game in the aspect of burst and with all the 1v1’s and other smaller fights happening, the comparison to a fighting-game isn’t far fetched at all.
In Fighting-Games, there are certain mechanics to counter instakill-combos right at the beginning of a fight (which is basically how a Thief or Mesmer work in GW2). I think it’s fantastic that GW2 implemented Stunbreakers, but they don’t help that much, if the DMG is dished out in under a second by some Chars. In Fighting-Games, you very often also have some kind of a Burst-Meter, that has to build up, for you to use your best combo’s. I think it could be a neat Idea to be explored, to let the burstiest Chars kinda build up their DPS during a fight, somehow make Initiative and the Shatter-Skills more like the adrenalin of the Warrior. It’s kind of a stupid comparison, because unfortunately, the biggest DPS-Skills on the War don’t even require Adrenaline. ^^’
Overall, I think one solution to this Problem would be to simply increase the durability of Chars (higher vita and higher Armor), so they don’t die instantly to even the biggest combo’s. Fights would be longer, burst-chars would have to play together with other char’s to bring sth. down and it would generally increase Teamplay. Burst-Chars also wouldn’t be obsolete, because no DMG was nerfed on them directly, so they’d still put out by far the highest DPS in the shortest amount of time, it just wouldn’t suffice to bring sm1 down all by yourself.
I bought gw2 at the release and played it some time and then left if
alone for a long time. It’s good to see there is still a lot of people
playing it. My friends all played WoW but that really drove me off
again, pvp is most of the time anoying because of multiple reasons
wich do not need to be discussed at this time. I really want to get
into gw2 and I’m hoping it’s pvp will be great.After some plays of spvp I must say the bg’s are beautifull and with a
lot of dept. Diving into guildwars pvp will depend on the awnser to my
one and only question I have for ArenaNet.WILL THERE BE OTHER GAMETYPES IN PVP? Something like cap the flag,
kill the main leader, etc, etc. And if yes, WHEN?!?!You can’t just have 1 spvp type in such a big and beautifull game, it deserves more!!!
Afaik, ANet stated that they will eventually bring back something like GvG, but it’ll take them quite some time, because other things, like the e-Sport Features (Ladder, Observer-Mode, Private Servers etc.) are more important to them.
so I am writing into the forum cause there is nothing else to do…
this game needs a bigger playerbase taking part on paid tournaments
Yeah, it was kinda a bad Idea by ANet to split up the community even further with the division of free and paid tournaments.
Especially because they should’ve known that the really competetive community will start to shrink until they’ve implemented the necessary e-Sports Features.
I don’t know of any “hotfixes” to this Problem, because its kinda hard to keep the level of play in paid Tournaments high enough and still give it a bigger player-base.
Take my Team for example: We win about 90% of games in free’s, but in paids, we win under 50%. I think that this level of play, where you are too good for free’s, but paids get really frustrating, should be targeted to move them to paids somehow.
Those Teams would still put up a good fight and make interesting games for the really really good teams, it would increase the player-base of paids quite a bit and I don’t think the teams in free tournaments would mind not getting roflstomped by teams that are out of their league (but play in it nonetheless). ^^’
With our Team, the reasons why we don’t play as much paids is:
1) Teams are too good (with more players of our caliber, this problem wouldn’t exist anymore).
2) Costs are too high and even if you farm through free’s, you don’t get enough Tickets.
3) You have to w8 too long for paids and often, we kinda think to ourselves; “we would have to w8 too long anyways”, so we don’t even try.
So how do we get those Teams into paid tournaments? Though question, here are some proposed solutions:
- Give more Tickets for winning free’s – MUCH more! (this one is easy)
- IMHO an important one: Set some sort of a time-frame or “happy hour” for paid Tournaments, where you could join paids for a decreased price. This would give undecided Teams a little push, it would tell teams when it’s most likely to get games (diminishing the Problem of players thinking about if it’s even worth making a paid-team) and it would create incentive for newer Teams to try out the paids.
It would also create some sort of a “buzz”, which this game clearly needs. No1 wants to watch r40+ PlayerX’s stream when he’s playing free’s in PuG’s, but if he’s streaming “Paid T’s Happy Hour!” with decent Teams and probably shorter w8ing-periods, it would be much more interesting.
(edited by PowerBottom.5796)
I feel like the visible-to-invisible ratio is perfectly fine. The reason that stealth may seem a bit overpowered is because it’s used so often due to the fact that Thieves only have two things to rely on for self-defense: stealth and evasion.
It really doesn’t help that their only methods of healing also produce stealth…
Yepp, even much of their condition-removal is more or less directly connected with stealth (either it’s the heal itself that stealths you that has just better condi-removal, or you remove conditions while in stealth).
I’ve actually enjoyed toying around with various Thief-Builds, that use more defensive Equip and Traits and don’t rely on stealth so much and I’ve run into Problems with condition-removal, being easy to kill (even though I had valk-amu and several traits that gave me better selfheal). It’s really hard to make a decent sustain-build as a Thief if you don’t rely on Stealth or death Blossom.
But the potential for viable sustain Builds with decent DMG (a middle-ground between DPS and sustain, like it’s possible on the Ele) is definitely there:
- 100% Crit-Chance in stealth (would allow you to still have BS as a heavy Damage-Burst, even if you spec the other traits more defensive and use defensive gear with low-precision)
- Possibility of lots of dodging with nice effects.
- Several Self-Heals that aren’t used as often (Assassin’s Reward, Pain Response, Slowed Pusle) but maybe just need to be used in the right build or team-setup (or maybe a little buff)
- Decent Armor (although low health-pool, but armor is more important on sustain/balanced-builds)
- Good Movement, Teamfight-Skills etc. would mostly still be there even with less DPS-oriented Equip/Traits.
But with all the builds I’ve tried so far, I’ve always felt it would be more efficient in every way to go for the vanilla BS… Why do I need Armor when I can be stealthed, why do I need to dodge when I can be stealthed? What do I do against Condition-builds, with most Condi-removal being bound to stealth AND with my Armor not helping me against them etc….
It’s hard, but I’m having fun trying stuff out, because if it wasn’t for BS and Death-Blossom, the Thief could be a great class thats fun to play with and against and there are tons of builds out there that haven’t been explored at all, just because vanilla-thief is so strong.
(edited by PowerBottom.5796)
Yup, portal mes and bunker guard is a must. Also d/d eles are way stronger than thieves.
I hope those will get fixed. Thief shouldn’t be changed in any way.
How does a D/D-Ele come even close in DPS to a Thief?
And yes, he has decent sustain and team-support, but that stuff happens if you don’t equip and trait your char to be a pure glass-cannon. Thief has very good sustain (Stealth), Teamsupport (AoE-Stealth, Incredibly strong AoE-Poison-field, good overall ranged AoE), Movement (Shadowsteps) without having to give up ANY trait or equipment for it; they can go full glasscannon!
I have to agree though, that it’s really hard to make a decent Thief with good sustain if you want to more or less not run stealth or the Death-Blossom (don’t even get me started on that one…)
Oh look, this thread again.
You are #23894740956230456034756 post this week about Thief and its OP stealth.
And what does this tell us?
that are a lot of players who doesn’t like to l2p.
if you force a thief to go away = you won the fight
if you force a thief to go in a long stalth = you cap the pointthere are a lot of thieves who write some thread about countering the profession.
still better whine on forum about thief op. right?
i was going to post the same answer…it tells me that so many ppl are wasting so much time whining on forums instead of l2p properly…
Annd why exactly do you think you know the game and all the different MU’S and various situations inn which the Thief is very clearly OP, better than all the ppl disagreeing with your clearly biased opinion?
Just ask any decent player around, you know…those ppl doing tons of tpvp, paids, high ranked, playing more than one class at a good level, QPnts…stuff like that….you’ll get your answer…
All players that is convincing himself or others, that the Thief isn’t clearly OP, are kidding themselves.
But clearly there is no talking to you. I guess numerous Threads about Thiefs being OP, nearly every Top-Team running at least one Thief and the fact that the Thief excells almost every other class in DPS, Movement, Teamfight-potential, while also being very hard to kill (although he’s running full glass-cannon gear), isn’t enough for you.
Srsly: How many games in sPvP do you have with other classes than Thief and how many builds other than Backstab did you even play on the Thief? I’d guess that my knowledge of the different classes is far beyond yours, having at least 100 games with every class in sPvP and with Hot-joins combined, I probably have 200+ with every class. Besides that, I do a whole lot of theorycrafting and I test out tons of stuff and talk to good players about builds and 1v1 with them to test them out (yes, good as in Top-50 in QP’s).
Why always thief? Why noone complains about the warrior’s 100b or mesmer’s illusions?
Okay, perfect example, lets compare the Thief with the Warrior:
- The Thief is much faster moving around the Map, with his shadowsteps
- The Thief’s combo is much easier to hit, because he does his DMG basically on one single hit, while the Warrior does his DMG over a bigger peroid of time.
- The Warrior actually needs to use offensive Utilities to make his Combo powerful – you need a knockdown/Immobilize, most Warriors use Frenzy etc. All of them are clearly linked to the Power of his Burst and have a rather long CD.
- The Warrior has no stealth, which negates most of the DPS, has to use Utilities offensively and his combo actually has a huge drawback if he uses Frenzy, making it possible to punish the Warrior after or during his combo.
Just compare BS on the Thief with Pistol-Whip, because I actually think PW is balanced – you also need to use utilities (quickness, maybe an additional immobilize) for the combo to be effective, which have Coodlowns comparable to the ones on other Burst-Classes and it’s easier to evade the combo and to return some DMG.
And Mesmer has the same Problems as the Thief: They can stay too classy and still get enough survivability, their combo has too low of a CD and is hard to punish and on top of all the DPS, you also remove boons, get might and evade the whole time during the spike.
All other classes either have to invest heavily in Sustain (valk-amu for Ele, which reduces DPS by A LOT), have much longer CD’s on their Spikes (true for both War and Ele), or have to use up their Utilities for Skills that grant them more DPS or a better chance for the Combo to land (Ele needs Instant Arcane-Spells for decent spikes and Warrior needs Frenzy and Bulls Charge).
(edited by PowerBottom.5796)
Oh look, this thread again.
You are #23894740956230456034756 post this week about Thief and its OP stealth.
And what does this tell us?
that are a lot of players who doesn’t like to l2p.
if you force a thief to go away = you won the fight
if you force a thief to go in a long stalth = you cap the pointthere are a lot of thieves who write some thread about countering the profession.
still better whine on forum about thief op. right?
i was going to post the same answer…it tells me that so many ppl are wasting so much time whining on forums instead of l2p properly…
Annd why exactly do you think you know the game and all the different MU’S and various situations inn which the Thief is very clearly OP, better than all the ppl disagreeing with your clearly biased opinion?
PvP does need more rewards, but not necessarily Gold or PvE-Equip, but:
- A Ladder
- e-Sport features like obs-mode and private games: To get e-Sport GW2 going, which opens up a whole new level of Rewards – fame, real Money and Prizes etc.
The real competitively oriented Players won’t care that much about PvE-gear and stuff like that. I don’t think it would be a bad idea overall though to dish out a few PvE-oriented Rewards, just to make PvP more attractive to newcomers and more PvE-oriented Players.
Oh look, this thread again.
You are #23894740956230456034756 post this week about Thief and its OP stealth.
And what does this tell us?
the reason why a mesmer can point guard wiht portal is because other people can jump through it as well. Also do not nerf backstab it would completely destroy a spec like mine. 25/30/0/0/15 thieves are not that big of problem because they are super squishy, yes they almost one shot other people ( yet to have a full one shot with that build) but with a stun breaker they cannot be offencive again until shadowstep cd regens. so they have to sit back and shortbow. the reason why they cannot be offencive is because if your team is working together they will target the thief who just over extended and kill him in less than a second.
Of course Portal would still be viable, but at least you’d have some alternative. And the fact Portal is used to guard points isn’t just because you can send back multiple people, even if the Portal would only allow the Mesmer to go back, it would still be used, because a not so good Pointguard that doesn’t have to stand on the point the whole game is still better than a super-effective Pointguard, that cannot roam around most of the game.
And wouldn’t it be good if the Thief would actually be as easy to kill as his DMG-output suggests? I mean: You decide whether or not to use the Shadow Step for movement or for survival – no1 would take your shadow step away, just enhance the tactical possibilities.
And to be honest, even without a buff like that to the Movement of the Thief, we can expect a nerf to BS, so why not stear the Thief away from pure Glass-Cannon DPS into more of a Char with good Map-Presence as his strong aspect?
Besides, there are lots of good Thief-builds, that don’t rely on being a total glass-cannon.
or you could learn how to counter them.
The Problem is, that the Thief and the Mesmer require you to make much more compromises if you try to counter them with builds or with certain strategies then if you would want to counter other classes.
sorry but… shadow trap is use able now but it isn’t being used because a thief isn’t ment for bunkering a point.. and rang eof shadowstep? for 20 % bs? nty :P
The range on Shadow Trap is too short, besides that, the Mesmer isn’t really cut out to be a Pointguard either and it would be way too powerful to give sth like a Portal to a very tanky class.
And about the BS-nerf, I wouldn’t mind nerfing it by 30%, I just didn’t want to create a huge kittenstorm from Thiefs. ^^
*Edit: Also keep in mind, that if the Thief uses his Shadow Step more or less purely for movement, he’ll run around with 1 less Stunbreaker and Condition-remove during fights. Or at least it’ll force the Thief to make some sort of a decision whether to sacrifice survivability for Map-presence.
(edited by PowerBottom.5796)
Hi@all,
I think that there are some Problems with the Portal, because it’s basically a necessity for most Team-Setups. There is also a Problem with the Thief – he does way too much DMG, but if you simply nerf the DMG, he might get obsolete.
Here are my proposed Changes to fix both of those Problems:
- Nerf Backstab-DMG by 20% and get rid of the Evade on Death Blossom [w8 before whining, because the Thief will get some buffs that any competetive Thief-Player will love! I mean – I would!]
- Increase the Range and duration of Shadow Step and Shadow Trap, to be on par with the Portal.
This would significantly improve the Map-presence of the Thief, making him a viable choice for Teams, even with his reduced DPS and the much needed Death Blossom nerf (that is only not talked about as much, because BS is even more imba) AND give Teams a viable Option to not necessarily use a Portal, because you got a “small Portal” on the Thief.
IMHO, they should make reveal bound to a specific skill, but increase it to 15+ Seconds (this would only matter for C’n’D afaik, cuz all other stealth-skills have longer Cooldowns anyways).
This would make it possible to chain stealth-attacks in a fast manner, but would force the Thief to fire off his Utilities and therefore make some sort of a decision with a certain drawback, if he wants to play very aggressively.
You could chain stealth-bound-attacks faster, but you would have to use more than just C’n’D and if you were overaggressive, you would’ve used up 1-2 utilities and weren’t able to go back into stealth.
The biggest Problem is C’n’D IMHO – it’s way too easy to get into stealth with this skill and it needs a much bigger drawback, Cooldown, Initiative-cost.
If you just want to make it a global reveal, sth. between 5 and 10 seconds would probably be sufficient, but Backstab needs at least a 20% DMG-nerf anyways. ^^’
Make Portal a skill every class can use….
I also agree with power but in gw2’s case, after u explore, u just go back to whatever is most effective if u wanna win.
Sure, but I would be kinda arrogant to think that there are no valid builds out there that haven’t been played to death.
[Engi] Point Decapper/Support
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-V70;2Z-Vv0u5FQFx0;9;5T-T9;115A;10195;0S;5qNnCr7W36BK
Playstyle: On my former Team, we’ve been running this Build quite a lot and If you have good Map-Awareness, it can be very Powerful. The main goal of the Build is to roam to points that are guarded by one Pointholder and decap it and maybe stay on it, so the enemy can’t easily recap it. If you are facing only one opponent, you will get the decap within 10 seconds or so and you can guard the point for quite a while, forcing the opposing team to send sm1 back.
Unfortunately, the build doesn’t have a very good Damage-output and even though the Team-Support isn’t bad, the build really is best used decapping points in 1v1-Scenarios.
Just push the enemy off the point, Immobilize him, push him off again and stay alive for as long as possible.
Traits/Skills: I wen’t for decent Teamsupport and Condi-Removal with the Elexirs, mostly because the Build would be basically useless in Teamfights and because you often encounter Condition-Builds as Node-defenders. I also went for quite a bit of Mightstacking, so you’ll at least be able to do good sustain-DMG. A little tip for using Juggernaut: The Might-gain has an internal Cooldown of 3 Seconds, but it isn’t bound to the time you have the Flamethrower equipped – so if you switch to the Flamethrower, get the might, you can switch to another weapon and if you switch back shortly before 3 Seconds went by, you’ll instantly get the Might-stack, even though you weren’t holding the Flamethrower all the time.
Equip: I wen’t for a rather tanky setup, because the build doesn’t need to do very much DMG if you play him the right way. Also, because you have lots of Boons, especially Might, I wen’t for longer Boon-duration.
You can also use the Valk-Amu – it’s decent for the regeneration, but I went for more vita, because as stated above; you’ll encounter quite a bit of condition-builds and often, the Condi-remove from the Elexirs wasn’t quite cutting it.
(edited by PowerBottom.5796)
1. Burst from the most bursty specs or professions need to be capped at something more reasonable. Give me a number. I suggest no more than 6k damage on 2k toughness within 2 seconds. Right now we’re seeing 10k+ by a few specs. This change would allow profs to diversify into their power/crit or utility specs.
I have to agree here, in a Teamgame with no designated Healer/Protter, the burst is just ridiculous: Imagine if we had the level of competetive play we had in GW1, with timed spikes – 1 Thief or Mesmer alone can pretty much burst sth. down, if Teams start to spike well, it’s gonna be impossible to play anything else other than burst-spikes.
2. Decrease stealth uptime for thieves. They should not be near-perma stealthed and they should always be fighting a timer before they have to disengage. Cd’s should not reset so quickly and the thief needs to be punished for failing to burst someone down.
Yes. glassy Thiefs (and glassy Mesmers with Blurred Frenzy and Invis) get a totally wrong impression of how easy it is to be killed in this game, If you don’t heavily invest in sustain. Being invisible basically everytime you’re not 1-hitting an opponent and complaining about bursty classes WITH sustain, like the Ele (that only seems too bursty if you run a total classcannon, because most Eles need to heavily invest in sustain), paints a totally wrong picture. Because besides Bursty Classes, there is nothing that can touch a Thief or Mesmer: How am I to get bleeding stacks onto the Thief or damage him as a sustain S/D-Ele, when my channeled and targeted spells all don’t work and I can only damage him during the few seconds, where I am forced to dodge or fire off my defensive CD’s, effectively hindering me from doing any DPS.
3. Mesmers are awesome and shatter needs to be nerfed until other builds are just as appealing. This recent blunder is a great opportunity to make shatter less of a necessity.
Just like the Thief, it’s more or less stupid to play a Mesmer that is not a glass-Cannon, because he has tons of ways to negate DMG (Staff 2, Decoy, Blink, Blurred Frenzy), but you need to burst the other classes down, before they can DMG you too hard if you play glassy and in many MU’s, this playstyle is better: For example against Thiefs – it doesn’t help you to have like 500 toughness more; the Thief will burst you down in under a second anyways, so it’s better to somehow evade the attack and quickly retaliate with a burst of your own, which will kill him, because he’s so glassy as well and with Blurred Frenzy, you can actually Damage the Thief while he’s damaging you. I don’t think nerfing Shatter is the way to go though, but nerfing Blurred Frenzy to not fully negate DMG and CC would force Mesmers to play more tanky and therefore reduce their ridiculous Burst as well.
4. D/d ele needs to be less good so we see staff and s/d again. Reduce tank by reducing boon (and stability) uptime.
D/D Eles only seem better than S/D, because it’s a good counter to the most imbalanced builds (Backstab and Shatter). D/D can actually Damage them while they are in stealth, has Shock Aura to make their burst-spikes harder to land and gives the Ele a good opening to do return-DMG. PPl think that the build does too much Damage and has too much sustain, because they play against this Build with extremely glassy builds that are more or less countered by the D/D-build. Actually, D/D’s and Ele’s in general invest a lot in their sustain and the DPS is nothing compared to that of a glas-Cannon, if you don’t play extremely glassy yourself.
I completely agree with you PowerBottom. But I guess it depends on what kind of person you are … I am of the curious kind, that can never be satisfied with only winning but can’t help exploring as well. Some people are not like that … they just want to win even if it would imply something I would call boring and dull.
For me it adds depth and understanding; to theorycraft and try things out is the way I understand things better. Frankly it is more important to me than winning, but of course my priority changes when I am playing on a team.
Well, for me it is about winning, but winning in the long run. So improving and figuring out the game is more important to me than winning right now.
I think it will benefit players greatly in the long run, if they try new stuff, play new builds etc.
sure. But if there isn’t a NEED to run anything else, people won’t.
Some people might – I did…
Honstely, I agree with you though – for most Players your statement is true. But thats why I made this Thread; to encourage them to try other stuff out because I had much fun doing it myself.
IMHO, people are focusing too much on winning now anyways, when they could work towards exploring the game and getting a better knowledge of it.
Teams and players that run the same builds over and over again will sooner or later run into Problems, when they realize that they can’t play anything else and they don’t have a clue what other possibilities and playstyles are out there.
I appreciate you trying to diversify the meta, but creating builds simply for the sake of diversity doesnt seem to be the best way to go about this. I’m going to be honest, that I dont see any of these working well in paids aside from your condition thief.
I’d love to be proven wrong, but frankly there are reasons some of these builds have lost their viabilty and arn’t effective against the current “meta” builds.
I didn’t make these builds simply to do sth else, but because I love theorycrafting and testing out new stuff.
And depending on how your Team-Setup is and how you want to play, some of the builds are very much viable. If your Team goes for a teamfight-oriented playstyle and can utilize the combofields well, the Ranger-build does wonders as a semi-DD/Supporter – the AoE, combofields and the Quickness-Rezz can often decide a Teamfight.
The current Meta builds don’t represent the pinaccle of effective Builds; they are good and well tested, but because of streams and because they work well, nothing new has to be produced and no1 experiments with other things that could be viable.
And yes: If the current fotm-builds get nerfed, these builds will probably get even more effective, because I don’t really see anything important in those builds getting nerfed.
Another thing that makes these builds attractive is the fact, that IMHO, it’s actually important to try out new stuff and builds and play other classes, because thats how you get a deeper knowledge of the game and the different Matchups.
PowerBottom lulz about ranger dude
I don’t get it……
I’m a mesmer who’s always looking out for new builds, so I thought I might give some of my opinions on this one.
The first build looks promising, I haven’t seen how celestial + divinity works since I have only worked with divinity runes only, but seems rather gimped by the very wide spread of stats and extremely strange weapon choices.
With that setup, you’re going into battle knowingly that you will be inferior to traditional 2handed mesmers with greatsword and staff. Why would I choose this build over a traditional mesmer build? Swapping decoy for blink isn’t really that special, focus is inferior to greatsword as a hard knockdown, and your spikes are weakened by slow clone generation. How do you handle this kind of situation?
What do you exactly consider a traditional Mesmer-build? Because in terms of traits, it’s pretty much a vanilla-shatter Mesmer. The difference between this build and normal shatter-builds is, that you get confusion and somecondition-dmg and trade it for weaker shatter-spikes. So this is just a variation of a Shatter-build that has certain advantages, but also disadvantages of course. The Clone-Generation is pretty standard for a shatter-mesmer: you get 1 from Focus or Pistol 4, 1 from dodging and 1 from Sword 3 → spike! ^^
The second build I have tried a variation of briefly before I saw you post on the forums, but it still seems strange to me. Why use Sigil of Fire? With 30% critchance, you barely have 9% to crit, so you would have to go through three cycles of your sword on average before it connects. Would it be better if it was swapped for something else? Also, if you are going for sustain, why not Runes of Lyssa if you’re going for Mass Invisibility as your ultimate? As the ulti with the shortest cooldown, you can gain more precision and reset your health/conditions when you go mass invis, giving you more survivability.
I like the idea of constant chaos armor/protection, but this build lacks the condition damage to give it strength. Also, illusionary membrane only gives protection on a 15 second cooldown now, so it has been severely weakened.
The Elite was a mistake – I’m running the Time-Warp of course. ^^
in terms of the Sigil of Fire, it triggers basically every spike thanks to blurred frenzy and it’s just a small boost to the spike-DPS. But you can surely try out different Sigils and see what works best for you.
I’ve tried using runes of Lyssa and Mass Invis, but I don’t really like it, because I’ve made this build have much more sustain than other Mesmers and trade in DPS, but then I pop Mass Invis and they can decap my point anyways → Sad Panda….
For the Chaos Armor – I use it because of the Buffs I get, the Conditions on the opponent are just a small Bonus. Also, I don’t use Illusionary Membrane.
[Ele] Zerker Staff (Shoutout to Hyxorcristen for giving me the Idea!)
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-kZ;3BJ-V0y47NkY0;9;4T;0JJ56A;428-46-U;5sV2DsV2D5gR
Playstyle: Just to be clear; this isn’t a build that win any straight-up 1v1’s and if you get into the midst of fights and get targeted and you have no cantrip rdy – you’re gonna die!
It’s an absolutely insane build to pressure small points with a group of at least 2 players (1 rather tanky and on the Point) and the Ele will just stand in the background, constantly spamming the Fire 2 and the other Fire-Skills – dealing ridiculous AoE-Dmg.
It’s also a good build to kill off doors and the treb, but on the third Map, if you run him mainly as a treb-destroyer, it’s probably better to go for Valk or even Soldier-runes, cuz trebs don’t care about crits. ^^
The build does well alone to pressure Points guarded by a (Condition-based) Holder, but don’t fight him head on: Stay out of sight and pop in just to put down a field or sth: The DMG should be enough to either force the Char off the Point (at which point you blink in and force him to stay off the point with knockbacks, Immobilize and Static Field) to get a quick decap and/or force sm1 to return to the Engi. It’s also very hard to catch the Ele if you don’t burst him down, so it’s possible you will just be able to retreat safely.
Equipment: Almost everything just to maximize DMG, but with the Soldier’s Jewel to get at least a bit of Health/toughness and Runes of Divinity, to get a bit of other stats and good Crit-DMG and the Energy-Sigil, to be able to dodge a bit more often – cuz hell; you WILL need to dodge with this build! ^^.
Traits: Pretty much max Fire-AoE as well. I went for the 2 buffs for the cantrips, to at least have sth to get out of Bursts, so I’m not just a freekill. I also went for Elemental Attunement, although you’ll mostly be staying in Fire, but it’s just too good to switch to Earth and get Prot if you’re getting spiked, to Water to heal up a bit or to Air if you have to run around.
Skills: Again, the cantrips are there to not be a freekill and as far as the Elite goes: I really like the Fire-Sword on this build, because it’s just incredibly strong and it gives this build a decent way of also dealing good single-target-DPS and not only AOE, thus making it more versatile.
[Warrior] Condition-Warrior
I’ve been playing this build for fun quite a bit, but I haven’t been able to properly play it in sPvP. The Amount of Bleeding I get onto a Target with Sword F1 is pretty insane though and the build is kinda tanky as well. Anyways, here’s the build:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-sFwo;1VKFM0e4oL-60;9;5TT-9;124B48A;15;0KJF4;2KJG4KJG42ZC
Equipment: I guess the most obvious thing is the Longbow. I actually think that it’s almost a „must-have“ for Condition-Warriors, because the F1-Skill is very good on smaller Points and the Burning it provides is one of the only ways a Warrior can dish out other Conditions than Bleeding. It also gives you a good Combo-field, so you get a Fire Shield with one of your many Leap-Finishers, which is decent as well.
I went for lots of precision, because I want the extra Bleeding-Stacks of the Earth-rune when I spike with my F1-Skill, so that there are lots of stacks within seconds.
Again I went for the Lyssa-Runes, because my Elite has a short Cooldown and I can use the Precision as well.
Traits: Deep Cuts is obviously a „must-have“ and is just insanely good and makes up for the fact, that Bleeding is one of the few damaging Conditions you’ll be able to put out. Rending Strikes is more or less only there, that I get a bit more other Conditions on the Target, so it gets harder for them to remove my Bleeding. Blademaster is probably better though, so if you run with Chars that put out some Conditions other than Bleeding, definitely go for that one. Even Opportunist is a neat Idea, cuz it gives you Fury with every F1 of the Sword. The Quickness from the last trait is very good for stomping and Quickness-Stomping is one reason why Warriors are even used in sPvP.
Missile Deflection is mostly thought of as a counter to engis and Condition-Rangers, because you don’t have that much Condition-Removal.
In the Discipline Trait-Line, I went for a shorter duration on my Elite, to get more Fury (and therefore have more Bleeding-stacks up in a short Spike with my F1) and to be able to roam better with Swiftness.
Playstyle: the build is decent at roaming and very good against Bunkers on smaller Points and has decent sustain as well, so it’s a pretty good all-rounder and it’s probably more important to pick out good MU’s for the build (sth. That doesn’t deal much Condition-DMG and/or doesn’t have good Condi-removal), than to simply try and put him onto a certain Position.
I’ve had decent success against Bursty Char’s with this build, like Mesmers, Thiefs, 100 blades-Wars and glassy Ele-builds, because your defense is pretty good and with your Sword F1, Bulls-Charge/Shield bash and Frenzy, you only need a small Opening to do pretty insane Bleeding-DMG. The AoE-Fire also works well against Mesmers and Thiefs, to kill off Illusions or to damage him while he’s in stealth.
(edited by PowerBottom.5796)