Guild Wars 2

evilapprentice.6379:

This isn’t meant to sound rude, but on paper, that thief build looks unplayable. Perhaps I’m wrong (and I will be testing it out tonight to see), but it seems there’s just an overall lack of damage, and many wasted talent points. I’ve run almost 0 power P/D builds before (specifically with a Sham Ammy too), and nearly every point in Crit strikes is wasted – you’ll be hitting non-glass cannons for 100-150 (iirc), so your crits will be adding 70-100 damage, and your crit% isn’t great to begin with. Low base condition damage + base length bleeds (you’re 5% short of an extra bleed tick per pistol shot) is just more and more time for you to slip up and get pasted by a glass cannon, or for help from the opposing team to arrive.

The condition removal is also a bit lacking – in any other build, it would be fine, but this is an attrition build (and a slow one at that), any class that relies on condition damage is going to eventually overwhelm you once you’ve popped BV and shadow return.

Lyssa’s rune seems nice, but the on heal effect can range from nearly useless (might, fury), to situationaly useful (swiftness, regen), to amazing (protection, stability), and therefore can’t be relied on in a fight. Although the spec doesn’t rely on stealth, you can still get forced off the point by enemy AoE, and not using stealth at every opportunity for Sneak Attack seems like it’s going to slow down this already low damage spec even further. Shbow is going to be an initiative hog, since the autoattack will hit like a feather.

Don’t get me wrong, I do hope my take is off – I’d love to run something new and effective.

I’ve playtested the build in 1v1’s extensively yesterday and I’ve run into the Problems you’ve described. It’s the build and class I’ve least experience with, but I liked the build so much, I’ve wanted to post it anyways.
I have already tried going for no crit-chance; it’s not worth it for the few bleeding-stacks you get and it worked much better. I’ll also try some specs with Celestial Amu and a few other traits. Unfortunately, there aren’t many viable Options to remove conditions if you don’t wanna go stealth, which I choose not to with this build and I do still think the build has lots of potential, but I guess I’ll just try and playtest it a little bit more.
Of course I’m grateful for every input I get to make the builds better, so if you come up with sth. that worked well, don’t hesitate to tell me! ^^’

@ Nerva: Holy moly, I haven’t actually tested vigorous renewal with Healing Spring, but it gives you vigor every tick, so it’s indeed a very good choice, you can easily swap it in this build without making any big other changes. And yeah, I don’t get that much use out of the condition-dmg from Wilderness survival and yes, it’s a good option to go for other weapon-sets as well, but I went for the max amount of knockbacks on this one – it’s a personal preference and has both advantages and disadvantages over other weapon-sets: Use the one that works best for you, it’s really as simple as that. ^^

Poxxia.1547:

I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but I can’t help it, so here goes:
If you compare gw1-mesmers and gw2-mesmers, mesmers often had a drawback in their skills … not so much, that they didn’t give you an advantage, but enough to make you think twice. Something like that could be nice when it came to portals … it could be, that the portals were free to use by anyone. It is just a thought, nothing more.

Yepp, I thought about that as well. As for now, there is too little players can do to counter portals, some strategies are for example:

1) Pushing to their Point at the start of the game and therefore forcing the Mesmer to stay on the point to deff – if he’s constantly on the Point, he won’t be able to use his Portal as effectively.
2) Use builds to punish stuff coming out of a Portal, like a Ranger/Thief-Trapper or a Necro using Marks, so stuff that comes out of the Portal will take lots of DMG before the real fight even started.
3) Apply pressure to the point being guarded by a Portal with 1 roamer to force a Portal-Exit, try to win the 1v1 or retreat and collapse on the Point with 2+ Players after like 30 seconds again, where he won’t have a Portal ready.
4) If the Portal runs out unused, the time passed (while only the Entry, but not the exit was used) actually counts towards the Cooldown. Most intelligent Mesmers that went to another Point and weren’t forced to use their Portal, will retreat by foot when the Entry is starting to run out, so they can put up another Portal again in faster intervals. You can abuse this fact by pushing to the Point at maybe 50 Seconds after the Entry has been put down to force the Mesmer to use the Portal and to give him the maximal amount of cooldown. If you see where the Mesmer is and know that the 60 Seconds are almost over, try and fight him: knock him back, CC him etc. so he can’t use his Portal and collapse with another Group to the guarded Point. If you time it right, this can work out well, because as stated above, if the Mesmer doesn’t need to use the Exit, he won’t put it down.

Unfortunately, these Strategies don’t really work if the opposing team is playing strategically correctly: Good Mesmers know of these Tricks and react appropriately:

1) They will use a Semi-defensive or Bunker-Char to guard their point and let the Mesmer use the Portal offensively.
2) Same as above
3) First of all, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to win a 1v1 with almost any build against a good Mesmer, secondly, good Teams will punish you heavily for letting a Char roam around, doing nothing but forcing Portals to be used. They’ll also sniff out attempts to collapse on your Point and react with either good defensive Play or they’ll just trade their Point with one of your team. Against Traps and Marks, they’ll just send a tank through to absorb the DMG and then let the Mesmer through the Portal.
4) A good Mesmer knows exactly when his presence is not incremental to the outcome of a fight or when it’s better to retreat to the home-point, so it’s easily possible, that a Mesmer might return well before the Portal Ends and coordinating your attack without assuming what the mesmer will do in a certain time-frame is almost impossible, so it becomes a guessing-game.

Giving the Portal a drawback would definitely be very helpful to balance the game…

[Mesmer] Confusion/Shatter Hybrid (shoutout to Helseth for giving me the initial Idea! ^^)

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-N3dFR;0VPV1127JVV71;9;4JJ;0T06-49;545ALJV44;1sV2DsV2D0By

Equipment: I use Celestial Amu, because first of all, it’s the most effective one in pure stats; There are diminishing returns (and certain stats even start at a lower „base-level“ than you get on the celestial-Amu) on all Amulets besides Celestial Amu the higher you go up on one stat (besides Crit-Damage). So if you can use all the Stats provided by Celestial Amu, it’s often a good choice to go for it (unless your build is specifically designed to do lots of condition-DMG to kill a Bunker-Guard or you are going for a Healing-build with lots of Healing Power and Toughness). Secondly, it would be stupid to fully pass up on the great Spike-DMG provided by Mind Wrack and with the Celestial-Amu, you actually still get decent Spikes. There is nothing really special about the other Equip – on the Scepter-Offhand, you can Experiment a bit though and go for the one that works best for you, they’re all valid options. I went for the Focus, because you can’t switch to it for Quickness anymore and a Mesmer with Portal and reduced CD on it, I really think Swiftness is very powerful.

Skills: The only Interesting part is that I didn’t went for the Decoy and that I’m running Blink instead. Both Decoy and Blink are good Stunbreakers, but Blink is better, because you get out of Spikes that use Immobilize (other Shatter-Mesmers, certain Warrior-builds with their Sword-F1, Offtank/Pointguard-Guardians, certain Thief-builds – there are actually quite a lot of ’em). Besides that, I love Teleports because they are so versatile: You can use them for Movement, defensively as Stunbreakers, offensively to get near a Target faster and they are great to somp Thieves, Mesmers and Eles (use stomp -> cancel it immediately -> stomp again, thereby forcing the opponent to use their escape, but still giving you enough time to blink on top of them before your stomp ends).

Traits: Pretty Self-explanatory, nothing special….

Playstyle: You use it as you would use other Shatter-Mesmers; mostly Portalguard your point, maybe Portal offensively and Help out in teamfights. This build in particular is very helpful when you’re trying to get rid of a Guardian mid or when you are engaging in big teamfights and you have a Necro spreading your confusion. Seek out MU’s against Engis, Bunker-Guards, other Shatter-Mesmers and Shortbow-1-spamming Rangers but avoid Eles with Ether renewal, Necros and anything with good Condition-removal. Because you aren’t really tanky and your Spike is weaker than that of other Shatter-Mesmers and it’s hard to channel the Confusion-stacks onto a Thief going Invis constantly, Thieves are a Problem for this build as well.

[Mesmer] Sustain/Shatter Hybrid

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-NZ-FR;0VPV1127JVV71;9;4JJ4E906-49;21;05;0U-V44;1JF04JF044By

Equipment: Valk-Amu is a decent choice for Mesmers, because their Main-Heal benefits quite a lot from the Healing Power and I specced it in a way that I get lots of reg from Metaphysical Rejuvenation, Phantasmal Healing and my Chaos Armor. In order to still have decent Spikes, I went for lots of Precision on basically everything else

[Thief] Stealth my A** Condition-Roamer

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-cR3V;1Vw-a06-wOFd0;9;49J-T94;025;229B2;0KJF4;2KJG4KJG49Zv

Equipment: I run the Shaman-Amu, because the build is pretty squishy and you’ll need the Sustain you get from the Toughness and the Bonus-Heal from Assassin’s Reward. The Runes are Lyssa, because I get good use out of the Boni from Set-Pieces (4) and (6), because both my Heal and my Elite have very low CD’s (it’s actually so low, that you’ll need to w8 5 Seconds after the CD of Basilisk Venom for the Effect to trigger, but still: All condis gone and all buffs for more than 5 Seconds is insane – I don’t even care that much about the Effect of the Venom itself!)
I also run Pistol/Dagger, because it does decent stacks of bleeding and the only time I stealth is because I want to use the first Skill of the Pistol when I’m in stealth.

Skills: I got the Signet for the Movement Speed and 2 Stunbreakers, because you’ll need them to not die to every Burst. Together with the Healing Skill and the Roll for Initiative, you are basically safe against Mesmer-Spikes and Immobilize altogether.

Traits: What I was looking for in Traits was mostly sustain, because the Build should be very versatile and I didn’t want much stealth, so you’ll be able to defend Points as well. And booooy does the Thief have great Sustain! With Vigor through the roof and Feline Grace, I can dodge around like a madman and Assassin’s reward works very well too! I also went for Potent Poison, because the amount of Poison you can put out just by stealing and your Poison-field is amazing. 30+ Seconds of Poison on a Bunker/Pointholder on small points within a few seconds of them standing in the poison field and the 5 guaranteed projectile-finishers of the stealthed „1“ of the Pistol AND Stealing is nothing Special with this build. On Critical Strikes, I was looking to get up to a decent amount of Crit-Chance and the added Vitality helps out a lot as well.

Playstyle: This build is designed to do well against most Pointholders like Mesmers (it literally is probably the most direct counter to Shatter-Mesmers that Portalguard I know of – you can easily escape their spikes, you do condition-dmg, which is always good against Mesmers and you have enough AoE and Bouncing-Attacks to kill their Illusions), Engineers (you can stay out of bomb-range if you want and again; Condition-DMG works well against them), Eles (Poison does wonders and you actually have similar sustain to semi-defensive ele with all your dodges and healing) and Offtank Guardians (just spam them full with conditions from far way with your Shortbow). Also, the build helps out a lot if you try and kill a Bunker-Guardian and on top of that, you can even hold a point to a certain degree (definitely better than a glasscannon-Thief that relies heavily on stealth). It just is an overall great build and it kinda plays like an Ele-Roamer, just with condition-DMG: Similar Movement around the Map, similar DMG-Output (although not as bursty obviously), similar Sustain and the Team-Support is decent on this build as well with your Poison-Field and good AoE, even from a distance (and you will have to stay a bit in the Background in big Teamfights to avoid heavy DPS).

If you use this build together with 1-2 Chars that have decent combofields (like fire-fields on Ele and Engi, Etheral Fields on Mesmer or sth.), the build really starts to get ridiculous, because the guaranteed 5 Projectile-Finishers within 1 Second on the Pistol-1 Stealth is absolutely insane!

With so many ppl complaining about a lack of valid Builds and a stagnant Metagame, I wanted to give some food for thought and experimentation.

I’ve been Theorycrafting and toying around with various Builds a lot in GW2 and here are some of them, I’ve actually deemed worthy of playing in sPvP and tPvP and that have actually worked well.

Somehow the Links dont seem to work if you just click on them, so you need to just copy them into your browser

[Ranger] Combofield Teamfight-Build

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-FV-g;1wEFy-u2JEk-0;9k2I;2TT44;137A29A;4K-F4;28ZF18ZF10Zt

Equipment: Yepp – Celestial-Amu: You get decent Condi-Damage, but can do effective DMG on the Greatword as well and again: You actually can use all the stats on this build! Rune of the Ele works great and you get very high stacks of chilled and burning on targets on small points and in Teamfights. You can also run the build more tanky with Shaman-Amu and/or use more than 2 Traps, if you feel you don’t need the stunbreaker.

Playstyle: It’s more or less not a roamer, you do as little roaming as possible but try to search Teamfights on smaller Points and run with Players that can actually utilize your combo-fields. Most of my Quickness I get from petswapping, I try to use for Quickness-Rezzes – it’s amazing to have a Quickness-Rezz every 20 Seconds and it’s a huge part of why this build is so good in Teamfights.

[Ranger] Cleric-Amu Bunker/Pointguard

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-Fg-o;1wEFu-q2JEV-0;9F5E;2ETJ4;13;029A52;2X-V7;2Rk06Rk063NV

Equipment: Since one of the big Aspects that make this Build work is constant reg, going for the Cleric-Amu is a good choice. It’s also a valid option to run this build with other Weapons and Shaman-Amu (I’d at least keep the Greatsword though, cuz the Leap-Finisher and the Block+Knockback are just too amazing), but getting either the Shortbow or Axe/Sword and a Torch works well. I really like the Knockback on the Longbow though – it’s actually one of the best in the game and with Greatsword 4, your Immobilize on Muddy Terrain and the Spider and the fear of the Wolf, you actually have more ways of getting a cap or a decap than any other class.
For the runes, I use the Runes of the Forge, cuz even if you have no Burning whatsoever, it’s IMHO the best for Bunker-builds. I also don’t really need to go for Dwayna, because I have constant reg anyways. I’ve also experimented around with rune of the Guardian (if the opposing team has lots of ranged attackers you can stack up the burning quite a lot and if you use an Offhad-Axe, which works pretty well on this build because of the very long whirl-finisher, you get an insane amount of blocking-time against ranged Attackers).

Skills: Nothing set in stone here – the skills selected work well for me, but there are good alternatives as well: Like the Selfrezz on the Elite, „Protect Me“ or even Quickness for stomping/rezzing.

Traits: If your Team plays Teamfight-oriented, it would maybe be a good Idea to get the pet-swapping down to 15 Seconds, because Quickness-Rezzes on a Tank are just amazing in Teamfights. What’s really important though is the Empathic Bond (all conditions go to your Pet every 10 seconds!) and the 33% longer reg-duration, which enables you to have reg up at pretty much all times, if you are able to stand in your Healing Spring for the whole duration.

Playstyle: Like any other Bunker….. ^^’

Jonny.9370:

I’m not an expert on making games. Heck not even a novice. I have 0 knowledge other than maybe making simple 3D models using C4D. But technically for something to be truly dynamic must it not also, by nature, be complex? How do you build a “dynamic, simple” combat system in the first place? Press 1 for attack and 2 for defense is simple, but not dynamic, and Press “X+A+1+Q+5+22+J” if enemy does action “Y” or just “I+U+9+2” if he does action “X” seems more dynamic but definitely not simple.

The way I see it, a dynamic system has multiple variables and even more solutions to account for any combination of those variables, becoming more complex rather than “simple”. If this is true, then wouldn’t their whole premise for a simple and dynamic combat system be false or just a simply unattainable goal? Am I completely wrong?

I guess what ANet wanted to accomplish was creating a game, that is easy for newer players to understand (the basic concepts), but offers a lot of depth for more experienced players.

It’s true that it’s less demanding in terms of Teamplay than GW1, simply because of the Game-Mode not being 8v8 and the fact that there are no designated Healers. But in Terms of 1v1 or simple In-fight Gamemechanics, it’s almost as Skill-Intensive as Fighting-Games like Street Fighter or Tekken. ^^’

In GW2 and fighting Games both, it’s a lot about dodging and inplementing this mechanic into an MMO alone makes it much more dynamic and Skill-intensive if you want to play well.
GW2 also requires you to adapt your playstyle depending on the Matchup and different Situations and knowing the Matchups properly is a science in itself. Just knowing what to dodge, what to interrupt, when to use important CD’s etc. is incerdibly hard to master.
There are also a lot of Skillshots and Skills that do Bonus-DPS when attacking from behind etc. that movement and anticipating your opponents next move becomes really important, which if also a huge part of basically every fighting game.

In GW1, 1v1, or even 2v2’s were basically decided before the fight started, as 90% of the outcome depended on your builds, there was no dodging, little decent Selfheal on most classes, no real Skillshots, less skills on an individual Character etc.

So in terms of smaller fights, GW2 is much more dynamic and skill-intensive than GW1 and who knows – If ANet implements the GvG-Mode, it could even get way more skill-intensive in Teamfights.

Atlantiscalz.8205:

This game’s pvp system is dry, very repetitive, and nothing but zerge after zerge of players mindlessly beating killing each other, has 0 skill involved in it, mainly who ever has the most numbers wins a fight, the pve gear is = to pvp gear and takes much less time to get. The only reason I still play this game because it’s free. The maps are horrid, you hardly ever find a solo kill without 20 other people involved, so there is hardly any room to explore you toons potential at all unless you try it in pve or find a way to set up a battleground with you and friends only.

Why don’t you play sPvP then? D’you really think that WvW or Hotjoin will every be anything more then mindless zerging?

Players from my Guild that mostly play sPvP have said that they beat like 2-3 times the players in WvW as a small group, because they are all just terribad…. And Hotjoin isn’t better – you get ppl that farm their r40 in hotjoin and actually think that they’re good, when it’s much more likely that they are worse than an r20-player that got his rank from sPvP with full groups only…

That’s by no means a Problem of GW2, but the fact that all good players are in sPvP and that’s how it is in basically every MMO, MOBA etc. – you won’t find much strategy or good players in open PvP or Quickjoin-Modes…

It’s absolutely ridiculous that ppl in here complain about a game as great as GW2, which has clearly the best structured PvP-Mode of any MMO that came out in the last 5+ years and is only not as good as some established games, because it is so young.

The potential and the basic mechanics and engine of GW2 is without a doubt absolutely amazing and I have no doubt in my mind that with a bit of time to implement necessary features, GW2 will be a contender for a great e-Sport Title.

I really feel that ppl in this Thread are just trolling, because it’s mindboggling to me how you can bash a game as great as GW2. And I’ve played tons of games like GW2 in the last few years for their PvP-Mode and I got nothing that came even close to GW2….

Rezz.8019:

There is no real teamplay or necessary team composition. There is no need to use combo fields, it’s yet another fail from Anet. Combo fields are just ignored.

Well, that may be true for you and your Team, but our Team heavily relies on Combo-fields in various different ways:

- Buff/Stealth-Stacking at the beginning
- Stealth-Stacking when collapsing on a Point
- Teams of Chars runnig together that utilize each others combofields well
- With the recent Weapon-Swapping change, it also gets more important for certain Chars to give others swiftness, so Swiftness-Stacking, even during games, is very useful.
- We also use certain builds, that only work well on their own, because they have good combo-fields AND good finishers on themselves: try running a tanky Ranger with Ice-trap and Healing Fountain and a Leap-finisher every 10 seconds and tell me the Frost-Aura from the ice-Trap und the added Healing you get from the Fountain isn’t just awesome and a big part of why the build works!
- I even have a Ranger-build I use quite often in tPvP where one huge Aspect of the build is to constantly put down Combo-fields (fire, Ice and Water) und we use Chars in the Build with enough combo-finishers to utilize the combo-fields.

It’s not like the abilities with combo-fields or finishers in them are inherently weaker and only good when you use the combo’s, so it doesn’t restrain your build in any ways – it’s just a quite sizeable cherry on top and you would be stupid to pass on that cherry.

People that are still denying that Mesmers and Thiefs are way too strong in PvP are kidding themselves… I often play Mesmer in tPvP and during the time the Illusions were bugged I actually thought to myself: “This is kinda neat, I like it; my class feels more balanced!” I don’t want to play an OP class and even if Mesmers would be completely dominated by every other class, they’d still be used on certain Maps, just because Portal is soooooo kitten strong and more or less forces every Team to use a Mesmer in tPvP.
Don’t get me wrong: I like the Portal, but I don’t like the fact that it forces every Team to use a Mesmer… Why not give 2-3 other classes sth. like a Portal or just make the Portal a Skill that every class could use – seriously: Unless you nerf Portal or the Mesmer to hell (which wouldn’t be good either), you’ll see 90% of all competetive Teams running a Mesmer with Portal. Why wouldn’t you, in a game-mode, that’s to a huge part about Movement on the Map?

But again; atm. the Mesmer is too strong by itself, which just doesn’t work if he has THE BEST SKILL in the game. If Portal remains as strong, Mesmers should just be squishy supporters that loose in every 1v1, so that at least another Person would have to go through the Portal to def a Point.
But with Mesmers as strong as they are right now, a well Portal-guarded Point can basically only be recapped if your team collapses on it and how do you collapse on a point fast without running into the Problem of loosing your other point(s)? Exactly: with a Portal! ^^’

phfresno.1230:

Heart of the Mists becomes Free-to-Play
Pretty self explanatory, but I’ll break it down how I envision this working. Anybody that downloads HotM F2P would only get 2 or 3 character slots but would have complete access to ALL features currently enjoyed in HotM (and the new game modes I suggest below). Full use of the Gem Store would make HotM F2P a viable solution for ArenaNet and what makes this work. If you have one of these accounts you will also select a server but you will not be able to go through any portals nor be able to ‘Leave the Mists’. If you attempt to leave through the Lion’s Arch portal, WvW screen, or ‘Leave the Mists’, you will be given an option to purchase the full game for the retail price. Essentially, sPvP is free-to-play, PvE and WvW are not.

Dude, I love this Idea!

I mean, all the stuff a F2P-Game needs to create any revenue is in place already (with that I mean a functioning ingame-store) and If you only give the ppl 2 Char-Slots max and PvP-access only, they most likely will buy some gems.

It’s extremely important, that the F2P-People will get no disadvantages when it comes down to raw PvP though, but there could be several ways of making money nonetheless:

- F2P Players are unable to use the Glory Vendors: No real disadvantage, they’ll just don’t have the nice and cool-looking Equipment.
- F2P Player will only get 2 Char-Slots Max: Any1 who takes PvP serious will most likely buy some more, but it will give no disadvantage to the F2P-Players.
- No free weekly Server-transfers.
- Maybe give them less cosmetic Options when building their Char or let them only choose “Human” as a playable race (doesn’t really impact the gameplay).

If they’d get the word out there about sth. like that and make it a quick and easy download, GW2 could potentially explode. ^^’

But I think this is sth. that should get done after the good PvP-features have been implemented: There’s no use of getting tons of ppl to play your game if they leave right away because of a lack of features they are used to from LoL, HoN, Dota2 etc.

Nueshak.2437:

Those of you using SWTOR as a “balanced” mmo you are absolutely kidding yourselves. Need I even go into when Illum was 1st implemented? Grav-round and tracer missile spammers left unchecked for months until some what slightly rebalanced? Lets not get things twisted here people. Most MMOs have their pros and cons but to say PVP in GW2 is flat out bad is simply not an accurate statement.

/agree

I had two PvP rank 80+ Chars in SWtOR (Shadow and Sage) and the balance in this game was a joke compared to GW2. Actually, comparing SWtOR to GW2 Illustrates perfectly how well designed GW2 is in several Aspects:

1) SWtOR did the “Capture Points-Mode” wrong, ANet did it right: There were no secondary Objects in the SWtOR conquest-mode AND there were Points in the Map, that one Team could get too significantly faster. This resulted in most Teams getting 1 Point for free and a mindless Zergfest in the Middle.
2) Open-PvP was absolutely horrible in SWtOR – on our server, the Imperium was about 4-5 times more people and there was simply no way of getting any daily’s done if you didn’t want to wake up at 4 AM and do them on an empty Map. ANet, brilliant as they are, came up with the 3-factions-design, which is just so smart and would counter a lot of Problems that occur from one side being dominant.
3) The Controls where horrible in SWtOR as well – you couldn’t target anything with your Mouse, because of weird delays/lags and crappy hitboxes, tabbing was bad as well and there were way less skillshots, ground-target skills, no dodging etc. making the controls feel stiff and the gameplay slow compared to GW2.
4) The Support of Bioware was so bad, I’ve sworn to myself never to buy a Bioware-Game again. I was on a dead Server for a loooong time, where it was nearly impossible to play PvP – yet, it took Bioware MONTHS, to implement server-transfers and server-mergers and no global (or at least cross-server PvP) was in sight. And I paid monthly for that crap!

Bioware did one thing right though – Huttball was one of the greatest PvP-Modes I’ve ever seen in a competetive MMO and It would’ve been perfect for e-Sports, because it’s easy to understand (Get Huttball into opposing teams Base → Point), there was a possibility of nice chain-passes and good positioning was instantly rewarded if your team worked together well.

Anet is doing an amazing job with GW2 and it has enormous potential as an e-Sport Title and I couldn’t disagree more with 90% of posts I see in this Thread: IMHO, GW2 is fast, fun, skill-intensive and for such a young game, the balance isn’t too bad as well.

Levetty.1279:

If a Mesmer is using Scepter/OH Sword then he isn’t running a shatter build.

Or he is running a very bad one.

Have you ever tried a shatter/condition Hybrid with Celestial Amu?…. You do very similar DPS with your spikes, but get tons of confusion and it’s actually better than standard vanilla-shatter in certain MU’s or situations (vs. engis, other Mesmers, bunker-guardians and in every teamfight-oriented setup with necro and epidemic). Overall, I still think vanilla-shatter is better, but it’s definitely a viable Option to use Scepter/X and Sword/Pistol in your shatter-builds with celestial Amu.

In fact, I’ve been running it yesterday in free’s and we got 3x gold in a row against decent teams and my illusions were naked (I actually had no big problem with the naked illusions and I thought that Shatter-Mesmer was pretty balanced that way ^^’).

To summarize: There are tons of builds out there no1 uses that are pretty good if you know what situations and MU’s you have to seek out or avoid in order for the build to be effective.

Levetty.1279:

Mesmers OP? Warriors UP? Necros Fine? What?

This is incredibly funny. The whining killed Phantasms long ago and now Mesmers can actually stack might like every other class they are OP again?

If you are referring to my post, I don’t think Mesmers are inherently OP and I chose not to comment on other balance-issues, because Anet just takes it’s time. I just commented about the changes that go in the wrong direction and that concern the most common builds.

So Shatter-Mesmers where always very strong and now they get two of the biggest buffs and no real nerf besides Bugs – that’s what upset me.

On another Note, the amount of Might a Shatter-Mesmer can stack is just too high and requires you no different traits or playstyle or anything – you just get them by doing what a shatter-mesmer does.

Those skills don’t create any tension while coming up with a build, nor while you are playing it, it’s just a needless buff – you might as well give Shatter-Mesmers double endurance reg and a buttload more Power/Condition-DMG, because the might-stacks and the vigor lasts forever anyways.

There is only one thing I like about those Buffs and that is that Removing Boons will get more important and knowing which class plays which builds and when to remove the boons requires a lot of skill and timing.

Besides: Few other classes/specs get Might-Stacks as easy as the Shatter-Mesmer now and certainly not ones that are as often played and as strong kittenter-Mesmer in sPvP.

Until now, I was actually praising ANet for their Patches – they weren’t too huge, but they all were in the right direction. With this recent Patch, there were 2 Patchnotes in particular that were both huge buffs and both in the wrong direction in every way possible.

1) Critical Infusion: Vigor duration increased to five seconds. This can only trigger once every five seconds.

WHY? This basically means, that 99% of all the Mesmer-builds get perma-vigor… It doesn’t require Skill to use this and it doesn’t even force you to make any decisions when choosing your traits, because you get this Trait anyways!
There was another skill like that on the Guardian, which isn’t as bad as the one on the Mesmer, because most Bunker-builds don’t have that much crit-chance, but with an off-tank with 1-Handed-Weapons and tons of crit-chance from 1-Hand-Strength, this trait is just ridiculous as well.

2) Shattered Strength: Increased to three stacks of might and ten second duration.

How in the hell do shatter-mesmers need another buff?

-> I was actually proud of myself not running a standard shatter-build in tournaments: I used Valk Amu and a 20/20/0/30/0 build where I got Condi-Remove and lots of Vigor when I shattered the Illusions and was just much more durable than other Shatter-Mesmers and had decent team-support (of course my damage-output was lower). But with the 2 changes above, I don’t need the Vigor anymore and I would be stupid to pass on the huge amounts of might I get from shattered strength.

So, the changes are dramatic, they buff a build that was actually too strong anyways, they don’t require you to do any choices while speccing, cuz’ you get those traits anyways, it doesn’t require any skill to use these new buffs and it actually diminishes the chance of anyone running a different mesmer-build, than the Vanilla 20/20/0/0/30 Shatter-Spec. There is absolutely no reason for this and I just can’t wrap my head around why they made those changes.

Mhmmm…. Thats a though one…

On the one Hand, I like that you are forced to make certain decisions in your build. It has always been a part of GW1 to analyze the Metagame and plan your teamcomp accordingly.

It also helps to make builds more distinguished from another, like if I wanted to run Staff or Focus on Ele, I was still able to move around the Map really fast with Ride the Lightning, this mobility-aspect is a factor on almost every class and it’s gonna be harder to decide not to run sth. like a Warhorn etc.

On the other Hand, the Switching of Traits, Skills and Weapons was a good counter to potentially OP and Extreme Team-Setups, like Mass-Condition, 1-2-3-Spikes and stuff like that (we haven’t seen a lot of that in GW2, but think about all the weird builds we had in GW1, which forced players that played a more balanced build to implement some sort of counter to that build).

What I would’ve liked to see is a mixture of the two extremes, treat weapon-, skill and traitswitching sorta like Trading Card Games did with their Sidedeck:

Players choose 1 extra Weapon they can swap to while out of Combat: You can set a Number of Swaps if you want to mitigate ppl just swapping it for Swiftness or sth. Same goes for Skills and Traits: Choose 1-2 Extra Skills/Traits you can Switch to.

There would also be other, maybe easier ways to balance this out, like giving cooldowns of a few seconds to all skills on a weapon you switched in or a Skill etc.

TL:DR
There are IMHO positive and negative effects to this change, I would have preferred a not so drastic change, but sth. in the middle of now and what it was before the patch (give a certain number of swaps, restrain the amount of weapons/skills/traits you can swap to or sth. like that)

I kinda like that, but only because Necros are themselves very strong in the current Meta and because they have the strongest Insta-Rez in the game. This gives the opposing team a strong counter to that advantage.

I see the Problem with the jagged Horrors though – most Necro-specs need the bigger Marks and there’s no way to get around the Trait for the Jagged Horrors. Maybe make them stronger (much much stronger) and move them up on the Trait-Line?

It’s really really hard to dodge shatterspikes, but it’s not too easy to land them as the mesmer as well, but here are a few tricks I’ve picked up in countless 1v1’s with Top-Mesmers (I often 1v1-train with Top-30 EU-QP-Players):

1) First of all, don’t let them get near you if possible. It’s way easier to dodge the immobilize, if you actually see the Ilusion that does the leap, it’s harder if the mesmer stands near you and just presses “3” two times very quickly.

2) Everytime they get near you – dodge. Yes, this is only possible on chars that can potentially stay out of Melee-Range with the mesmer, but it’s IMHO the only safe way to avoid being immobilized, because everytime a mesmer is in Melee-range, he can potentially Immobilize you within the blink of an Eye.

- There are certain mediating Aspects to the Rule of Thumb above: Count the Illusions; if he doesn’t have 2 (1 he’ll get from Illusionary Leap), it’s not as likely that he’ll shatter you, or he’ll have to dodge somehwere in between to get a third one or he’ll spike without the full potential; In each of the cases, the spike won’t be as scary, because it’s not as fast or doesn’t deal as much dmg. These tips are only important if you don’t have enough dodges – if you have a high-endurance-build, it’s still best to always dodge if the mesmer is in Melee-range.
- Count the time between spikes and constantly know if Mind Wrack is up: Yes, being spiked with other shatters might still deal a bit of DPS and rip off boons, but MW is the Damage-Dealer: No need to use up dodges or Cooldowns on the other F-Skills of the Mesmer. If the Mesmer spiked you, you can easily go into Melee-range for like 10 Seconds and punish him, then just stay back out of Range when MW is back up.
- Watch where the Illusions are and try to control the Illusions with Movement: Most Mesmers use the Pistol-Duelist, which is ranged and the one on the Staff as well – the other Illusions are most of the time Melee: Try and spread out the Melee-Illusions as far as possible from the Ranged ones; this way, the spike won’t hit all at the same time and even if the Mesmer hits his immobilize, you might even be able to dodge some of the Shatters, because the Ranged Illusions had to walk 2+ seconds to you.

3) Kill the Illusions: This is mostly an emergency-plan if you run out of defensive CD’s, dodges or have to go Melee with the Mesmer and staying alive is more important than actually dealing DMG to the Mesmer.

*Edit: if you simply wanted to know how to dodge individual Illusions: They stand still for maybe half a second and kinda charge up their shatter, that’s when you have to dodge them. So they need to be in that state of charging up the shatter, so they’ll actually explode. You kinda have to stand still for a moment and let them get near you or they’ll just keep running. ^^’

I hope I was able to help a bit. ^^

Jarlaxe.4607:

PowerBottom.5796:

Warriors were always Damage-Dealers, it didn’t matter if they had 1-2 or 2 different Skills that basically always tried to enhance his Damage-potential.

Monks were always Healers, it didn’t matter if they had Dark Escape or Shadow Return, the Warrior-Stances, or Mesmer-Skills or whatever, they always where either Mana-Management-oriented or gave the Monk itself more survivability.

There was time with backline hammer warrior – way less focused on dealing damage and much more stoping spikes and appply pressure on enemy frontline.

There was time when ppl run 3rd smiter monk – he did not heal, serverd as condition/hex removal + dmg.

Gw2 have few viable builds for each class but the main problem is that most of the skills are very flat and uninstresting. GW1 was all about making builds and finding synergy between skills – often creating stuff that even developers did not predict while creating game.

In GW2 there is no surprise or real choice – there are templates and u just play what they tell you. For some ppl its enough, but most competitive games are about creating interesting combinations – i honestly doubt gw2 got enough player choice to rly make the difference. We’ll see – so far its going down the hill to oblivion.

As if I don’t know what a Backliner or a smiter is, I’ve played GW1 competetively in Top-20 Guilds for years…. -.-°

GW2 of course lacks in game-modes and features, but those will come eventually, but the core-system of how you build a character is just extremely deep and is heavily underestimated by 95% of players. Even top-players don’t necessarily have a clue about what possibilities the different chars have, what specs are viable, they don’t even know all the runes/sigils properly and how they interact with different skills.

There are both runes and Sigils in the game, that make a bigger difference on how a character is played or should be played, then many, if not most, Skills you could have from your second class. The Trait-System changes builds drastically and GW1’s attribute-system was basically the pure stat-part of the trait-system and offers much less versatility than GW2.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOOOOVE GW1, I played it like crazy and I still think it’s unmatched in terms of a competetive team-based MMO, but I think GW2 has the potential to be just as good and in terms of versatility of chars and how different a char can be built, it surpasses GW1 even in this early stage of the game.

I mean: I’ve played Monk in GvG and sometimes Ascent for 3-4 years and where in Ascent you had 2-3 Monks with quite different roles, you had 2 Monks in GvG with a bit of a different role, but not as big of a difference as in Ascent, cuz you had to split often and a Protter without healing that was only good if you have a fullhealer/Infuser near you, wasn’t very viable in GvG. But there really were like 3 defensive builds that only changed a few skills over time or had a few interchangable options you could choose from based on the Metagame and there were maybe 1-2 other Monk-builds (Flagrunner, smiter etc.)

In GW2, there are vastly different Guardian-builds (and Guardian is one of the classes that is the least versatile IMHO), you have Holder that rely on toughness vita, that play out quite differently from those that rely on healing power. You have POint/def-Roamers with lots of Teleports and good DPS, you have Support-Guards that lie somewhere in the Middle etc. You can play a DPS-Guard with Zerker-Amu and get insane burst DPS (on the standard Oppa-Pointholder build with Meditations and Sword/Fokus and Scepter/Shield), or you can go for Soldiers Amu and be quite tanky; only this little switch of an Amu changes drastically how you have to play the Guard…

I strongly feel that you can make a good DPS, support or Bunker-build with pretty much every class and you can go for either conditions or Power and in terms of DPS, you can go either full glass-cannon or “half-tanky” – I really do believe that with very few exceptions. And those are only the rough Roles, each has like 2+ specs that makes them play out rather differently – theres no way GW1 can come anywhere near that amount of depth in creating an individual build. And I haven’t even talked about teambuilds, where combofields and finishers and synergies between the builds play a huge role.

It’s gonna be hard to get as much depth in teambuilds though, simply because it’s 5v5 and not 8v8 and because there are no real Healers, but hey – maybe we’ll even get an 8v8-mode…

Btw. don’t misinterpret my passion for GW2 build versatility as being PO’d or not taking other opinions seriously, I just love trying out new stuff in GW2 and feel that ppl that think GW2 is stagnant and only has a few good builds, are just afraid to try out new builds.

Phira.3970:

Simple math will tell you that having a 2ndary profession system allowed for much more builds vs weapon system that gives us 5 new skills that are 5 SET skills..

Yeah, but GW2 has Sigils, Runes and Amulets and a much more refined trait-system.

Besides, almost no secondary class was able to drastically change the role or even playstyle of any given build.

Warriors were always Damage-Dealers, it didn’t matter if they had 1-2 or 2 different Skills that basically always tried to enhance his Damage-potential.

Monks were always Healers, it didn’t matter if they had Dark Escape or Shadow Return, the Warrior-Stances, or Mesmer-Skills or whatever, they always where either Mana-Management-oriented or gave the Monk itself more survivability.

Rezz.8019:

GW1 had thousands and thousands builds available while GW2 only has a few. FACT

teambuilds or individual builds?

Cuz yeah; 8 Man-teams will give you more Build-options than 5v5.

But on Individual builds, GW2 has much more viable options, so you might have to put a little “*” after “FACT” and not talk things you have no Idea about. I’ve played GW1 on the highest possible level for years and I play tons of GW2 on a very high level and the amount of builds that work or at least have potential in certain roles is huge.

FotM’s will not ruin the game and will not necessarily force constant balancing – it’s a natural part of the metagame and will keep things interesting.

Even if you have a perfectly balanced game, certain tendencies in builds will be established, just because ppl tend to copy builds of pros. Therefore, a metagame is being created and stabilized. Until ppl try to counter the metagame or use different builds simply because they are creative and to try out sth. new. Ppl will copy it and the metagame will shift again. After a while (if there weren’t no balance-changes), ppl might return to the old builds, because the current metagame might favour the old builds and without major balance-changes, they will still be viable.

This is the cyclical nature of a Metagame and we see it in tons of very successful e-Sport Titles like SC2, SC:BW etc.

This will also create an interesting dynamic between playstyles on different servers, where maybe another meta was established (because of timezones and the current popularity of streams (not neccesarily in GW2, but gaming in general), US-players could develop a very different Meta of Player on EUServers).

IMHO, it was an incredibly good choice to not hop on the WoW-bandwagon and stay true to the GW1-PvP-Philosophy, where you could play every class in PvP without having to go through gruesome PvE first.

You cannot make a serious e-Sport-Title that requires you to farm gear first. It didn’t even work all to well with WoW and that thing had like a bazillion players and every sponsor basically threw money at ppl to make WoW an e-Sport, just because of the player-base.

*Edit@ People saying that theres no real reward in sticking to a class: Well, theres no real reward for sticking with Zerg in SC2, or sticking with a certain position in HoN, Dota2 or LoL, nor sticking with a Char in a Fighting-Game…. other than, well; getting better at playing it. I see that GW2 pvp might feel strange for ppl used to other MMO’s, but that’s how competetive Games should work: You should be able to jump in and try every build or strategy you like, the only restriction being your skill.

TheGuy.3568:

As far as perma fury goes why not? I can achieve it on Warrior and other classes without much stress.

Look what most players don’t get or tend to forget is that DD has been around this entire kittening time and already got nerfed along with other ele specs. You cant nerf a class because people start playing it due to nerfs in the first place. Anet is about to enter a vicious cycle and should realize from now that there is no stopping a fotm spike. Players like to win and few give a damn about class. They were the ones that made spvp full access any class no leveling required. Its the flaw in the system. And honestly its whats killing pvp. So they may nerf ele again and i realized who gives a kitten. Eventually the pack will more on to the next flavor.

I’m on the same side of the argument: There is nothing, or very little wrong with D/D Eles.

But I have to completely disagree with the fact that no level-requirement and equal footing gearwise is hurting sPvP – it was the same in GW1 and it’s the same in almost all major e-Sport-titles. You cannot make a serious PvP-game in which you have to farm your gear first – PvP-Players that want to PvP and want a serious e-Sport-Title will simply not stand for that. Of course there will be certain minor disadvantages, like ppl hopping onto the bandwagon of certain fotm-builds, but thats nothing to be worried about. Look at SC2, SC:BW and other Major RTS-Titles – there almost always was a metagame that shifted from certain Builds or playstyles to others, even if there weren’t any major Patches done – that’s how a metagame works most of the times.

Of course it’s ANet that has to differentiate between new and strong builds that may appear too strong, but ppl just have to get used to or prepare against and blatant imbalances and I do think that ANet will and has been doing a great job. They actually said that they don’t want to make hasty decisions that they’ll regret and so far, the buffs/nerfs haven’t been huge, but each and everyone of them was in the right direction.

This can and will not stop whiners, nor ppl that actually think about what they’re writing and have knowledge of what they are talking about.

Onto the Topic of Fury: I think ANet will realize soon that they have to treat it like Retaliation – make it a Teamsupport and burst-oriented skill that will be used to spike, but shouldn’t affect the overall effectiveness of builds so drastically or bump up the sustained DMG of certain builds throughout the game.

And yes, this of course isn’t just a Problem of the D/D-Ele, but as I’ve said of the Ranger, as you’ve said the Warrior and other classes. It’s just a bit silly that I can go for the +500 toughness (valk/soldier in exchange for Zerker-Amu, which gives me +25% crit-chance, so equals 400 toughness) and still get above 40% crit-chance (which is the strongest DPS-modifier by far).

I don’t see this Problem as pretty obvious or game-changing, but I’m experimenting around with tons of different builds and on certain ones I can just go full tank in equip and Amu and still do comparable DMG as If I’d use Zerker-Amu and offensive runes, just because they have fury up all the time.

And even though I think that D/D isn’t too strong as a whole, this would be one of the very few aspects of the build where I could see changes happen, probably for the better (if they change fury over all classes and don’t just bump down the Ele)

TheGuy.3568:

I think you missed something you cant be dps and bunker at the same time with ele D/D it doesn’t work that way.

If you mean the same thing as I (Amu-Switching), you’re partially right. If you think about tanking with Valk-Amu, I don’t see a Problem on most Ele-builds, because most of them require you to give up lots of DPS if you go a tanky route. You then just walk on a continuum between DMG and Sustain and most ele-builds don’t burst out of it by being too tanky and dealing a lot of DPS at the same time.

The biggest, or IMHO only Problem, are D/D-Specs with their perma-Fury. You Can go full defense on Runes and have rather defensive traits, which makes it possible to go from DPS, to pretty much Full-tank just by switching out your Amu. This is only a real Problem on Legacy thought, because on small points, the Ele is a pretty bad pointholder, because of his lack of knockbacks and only 10 seconds stability every 70 or so seconds (which would be on armor of earth, which not many DPS-specced eles use anyways).

ANet just has to rethink the role of the Thief for sPvP and I see the following options that could work:

- Use Thief as a fast and hard to catch roamer: Drastically decrease DMG-output, but make up for it (if even necessary) bymaking Infiltrators Arrow cheaper and make Shadowstep (and Shadow Trap) have a much longer Range and Duration, comparable to that of a Portal. This way, Thief would be the Movement-King and very hard to kill, but he wouldn’t deal IMBA-DPS.

- Use him as a Glass-cannon Burst-Char: Keep DMG as it is now, but totally rewamp the stealth-mechanic, so he isn’t as hard to kill… Maybe make it that he can’t get into stealth unless he hasn’t received DMG for a few seconds or make it that he is revealed instantly on receiving DMG (yes, also ticks from Conditions would trigger the reveal, maybe you could balance it by only making certain conditions reveal him, like poison or sth).

Both would fit well into the Lore of Thiefs and both could have viable roles in PvP, but the Thief wouldn’t be as imbalanced and he would have a clearer role, unlike now, where he excells at pretty much everything.

@Ygritte: There is no skill involved with playing Backstab-Thief. You don’t need any knowledge of the MU’s, you don’t need good aim and you don’t need good positioning… I can and have switched to Thief on occasion from Ele, even in Paid Tournaments and it was ridiculous how useful I was, even though I have like under 100 games in total as a Thief… If you just play Backstab-Thief, you can literally play in a top-guild and have 1000+ QP’s and still be pretty bad at the game. You say it’s hard to play cuz of the low life-pool? Well, play a glass-cannon without 100 Shadowsteps, Stunbreakers and perma-invis and the second-best downed-mode in the game (only falling short to Ele and with the +50% DPS in downed-mode, it’s even by far the best one) and see how “glassy” your Thief really is…

NaturalPortman.9562:

PowerBottom.5796:

NaturalPortman.9562:

Devs should definately NOT listen to the ele mainers trying to save their class from another nerf because ele’s definately need one. Ever faced a 3+ ele team? The fact that people are opting for team comps like that alone show how broken ele’s are, they are TOO versatile.

Yes, they are versatile and they are fast, but:

- DMG is nowhere near that of Mesmers/Thiefs.
- The Combos have high recast.
- If you want to use sustain, you have to actually sacrifice DMG, unlike the Thief or Mesmer, which can be extremely hard to kill although they run Zerker-Amu.
- They have weak-point that can be exploited, like with strong Boon-remove – whats the counter to Stealth?…
- Their Heal (Ether Renewal), which is undoubtedly incredibly strong, is very easy to interrupt.
- They don’t have Speedstomps/Speedrezzes or AoE-Stealth for rezzing/Stomping, Mesmer and Thief both have that if they want to run it and those are Skills that actually win you teamfights.
- They don’t have a Portal or 25% Movement-Speed+tons of Shadowsteps, so they aren’t even as good in moving around the Map as Thiefs/Mesmers.

Besides that: I have never ever seen a Team running 3 Eles…. 1 Ele is pretty common, 2 is rare, 3 is sth. I’ve never seen. But I can totally see that working, not because Eles are imba, but because Eles in groups work well together, because of the Heals, combo-fields, chain-stunning and Boons they apply to each other.

That being said: What specs where those eles running that were so hard to beat and are for you proof enough that ele is the new “imba-class”.

ANet shouldn’t listen to newbs that have no clue how the different classes work and cry out for nerfs if a good player beats them in Hotjoin…. -.-°

Err. Comparing ele damage to thief/ mesmer damage is stupid. Ele does constant heavy aoe damage to everyone while being able to tank like a mother, while giving himself and the whole team boons up the kitten while being virtually unstompable with a team that knows how to play the “downed game”, has easily the top mobility in the game.

Should I go on..?

And don’t even bring in stealth to this argument, conquest mode alone counters stealth, you win the point the second the thief stealths.

Pls do go on, because the things you’ve stated are easiyl countered by smart positioning in a fight or on the Map…

- Ele does heavy AoE-DMG? -> Don’t ball up
- Ele has good team-support? -> Draw them out of teamfights
- Ele has a strong downed-mode? (and yes, I think Mist-form shouldn’t heal the Ele) -> don’t kill the Ele first.
- Ele has lots of Sustain? -> don’t kill them first
- Ele gives lots of boons? -> Use Mesmers or Necros or even Thiefs to counter it
- Ele is fast? -> Use portal

Your arguments just solidify my opinion of you that you don’t know how to play GW2. I’m atm Rank40 with 600+ Tournament-Wins and I played in Top-20 GvG-Guilds (worldwide in the main PvP-Teams) in GW1, so what exactly does qualify your opinion to be more valid than mine, besides your flawed argumentation of course…

I have to disagree with you on the availability of different builds very strongly.

The trait, rune, amulet and sigil-system gives you hundreds of different ways to play Chars, some or minor tweaks, some make the chars play out completely different.

I have spent hours upon hours coming up with new builds for pretty much every class that worked really well and I’ve been playing a Mesmer-build (shatter with valk-amu and lots of condi-remove and reg) and an Ele-build (Valk-Amu, three cantrips, eagle-runes) very successfully on high-level paid-tournaments for a long time that pretty much no1 else runs. Ppl. are just sticking to their few builds they know and are afraid to try out sth. new, thats why some ppl think that there aren’t enough new and vastly different builds out there, but thats just not the case at all.

- Ever seen a Trap-Ranger with icetrap and Rune of the Elementalist, being able to chill several targets basically 80% of the time?
- Ever seen a Ranger with greatsword/Longbow and tons of healing as an alternative to a Bunker-Guard?
- Ever seen a Rifle-Engi with tons of knockbacks and Immobilize with the sole purpose of decapping points that have 1 holding-char deffing them?
- Ever seen a shatter-mesmer that doesn’t run Zerker-Amu and 20/20/0/0/30?
- Ever seen a team running a 2-3 PowerRanger-Spike?
- Ever seen a team with no Holding/Bunker-Char whatsoever?
- Ever seen a Char-spec that is build in a way that he can switch from glasscannon to holding-char with the switch of an Amulet?

I have played and tested all these Chars and tons of other builds and they all work perfectly fine – ppl just don’t test out new stuff and that creates the Illusion that the game is stagnant.

Just w8 until the game gets more competitive and the Really good guilds that win everything atm will have to come up with new stuff and rethink their builds, because it just doesn’t work anymore. Until now, the ppl that are on Top, that stream all day and therefore largely form our Metagame didn’t have to change anything in their builds, because it worked. Atm. I see teams getting more creative, mostly because they are bored I think, but If new teams rise up to challenge the metagame, or certain balance-changes forces the meta to change, we will see tons of new builds that work, jsut because there are so many options in creating your Char.

Really, the availability of different specs that are viable in PvP for the different classes is like 20 times higher than in GW1 and pretty much any other MMO or MOBA out there.

NaturalPortman.9562:

Devs should definately NOT listen to the ele mainers trying to save their class from another nerf because ele’s definately need one. Ever faced a 3+ ele team? The fact that people are opting for team comps like that alone show how broken ele’s are, they are TOO versatile.

Yes, they are versatile and they are fast, but:

- DMG is nowhere near that of Mesmers/Thiefs.
- The Combos have high recast.
- If you want to use sustain, you have to actually sacrifice DMG, unlike the Thief or Mesmer, which can be extremely hard to kill although they run Zerker-Amu.
- They have weak-point that can be exploited, like with strong Boon-remove – whats the counter to Stealth?…
- Their Heal (Ether Renewal), which is undoubtedly incredibly strong, is very easy to interrupt.
- They don’t have Speedstomps/Speedrezzes or AoE-Stealth for rezzing/Stomping, Mesmer and Thief both have that if they want to run it and those are Skills that actually win you teamfights.
- They don’t have a Portal or 25% Movement-Speed+tons of Shadowsteps, so they aren’t even as good in moving around the Map as Thiefs/Mesmers.

Besides that: I have never ever seen a Team running 3 Eles…. 1 Ele is pretty common, 2 is rare, 3 is sth. I’ve never seen. But I can totally see that working, not because Eles are imba, but because Eles in groups work well together, because of the Heals, combo-fields, chain-stunning and Boons they apply to each other.

That being said: What specs where those eles running that were so hard to beat and are for you proof enough that ele is the new “imba-class”.

ANet shouldn’t listen to newbs that have no clue how the different classes work and cry out for nerfs if a good player beats them in Hotjoin…. -.-°

Rika.7249:

PowerBottom.5796:

Oxstar.7643:

How to counter glass cannons.
Dodge or block.
Once their burst is done, kill them.

That’s how it should work, but it doesn’t with the two glass-cannon-classes widely considered IMBA; Thief and Mesmer.

There isn’t really an Option to give them any return-dmg, mostly because of invisibility.

Also, dodging is easier said than done, with Mesmer being able to stun and Immobolize you with skills that have a rather short CD.

With Thiefs, the Problem is, that they can just kill everything in an ongoing teamfight, where ppl have used up their defensive CD’s and maybe don’t have enough endurance to dodge. Besides, good thiefs tend to come out of nowhere, which makes it almost impossible to dodge the backstab, even with perfect map-awareness and reflexes.

It definitely works that way.
You can just swing your melee weapon in the general direction of the thief. He doesn’t go super-sonic speed by stealthing, unless he for some reason decides to use a teleport/steal.

If you talk about the MU between Thief and D/D-Ele, you’ll have to consider sth.

→ DD-Ele is pretty much used as a direct counter to Thiefs, because of Shocking Aura, decent toughness and the Point-Blank-AoE’s, which is one of very few ways in which you are able to DMG a stealthed Thief.

If you wanna win a MU with Thief against a D/D-Ele, just stay on Shortbow and only go in for a Backstab if you see that the Ele has already used shocking Aura and then go on distance again right away.

Besides, if the Ele goes for his combo, which has longer recast, does less DPS and is harder to hit than the ones of Mesmer/Thief. he may have decent sustain after it, but at least you have to build him somewhat tanky to use him that way and he isn’t invis the whole time, so with good spikes and the help of a mesmer/necro to get rid of the boons, you’ll easily be able to kill him. It’s a whole other story with Thiefs and Mesmer, cuz you can’t spike what you can’t see….

SAtaarcoeny.8476:

this is so ridiculous. we are sitting in the mist for 2 1/2 hours 4/8 for paids. im literally begging everyone to make a group for 1 paid tournament.

im happy for class ballance and what not. but on a serious side we want real games all day.

waiting 1-2-3 months doesnt make sence. all you have to do is listen to one of the simple ideas that take no time to implement. lower cost of paids. add advanced so we play full groups not random pugs, but please do something this is to much work.

if you lower the cost for other ppl i will pay the difference for them if you make it possible.

we just sat here for 4 dog kittin cat lion bear hours for nothing.

Have you ever played SWtOR? The PvP there wasn’t global, so only server-specific, then, you needed to farm a Char through PvE (which I hate) for 1-2 Weeks before even being able to play high-level PvP and it wasn’t possible to transfer Chars between Servers. I was on a very low-pop Server for months, where you couldn’t play ANY PvP at all 90% of the day. I couldn’t change servers with my Chars, cuz you couldn’t transfer and I didn’t want to start from scratch on another Server and I even paid monthly for that game.

Just to put your “grief” into perspective and paint a little picture on why I don’t see that as a big Problem. ^^’

There will be a natural decline in players until the big e-Sport Features come along, because ppl are spoiled from games they played or are playing atm that have these “basic” pvp-features and more, because they were around for years.

I do think though, that GW2 is a superior game to most of the competitors and just lacks these features, so once they are in place, ppl should return back.

On the other Hand, I do think it’s kinda bad from ANet to artificially split the PvP-community even further apart and make the pools for games smaller, when it’s 100% sure that they’ll loose players until January/february. With paids getting a much smaller player-pool because of the cost, it could be a good idea to reduce the cost a bit….

I actually think that the general forums are mild compared to other games, which means that ANet does an incredible job with the game IMHO, cuz whiners will always be there, but if you can keep it at this level, your game is doing great.

IMHO, you should be able to see ppl’s Ranks, QP’s and Tournament-wins on the forums, cuz I do believe that this game has A LOT of newbs whining about things they don’t understand. ^^’

nerva.7940:

nah, d/d ele is faceroll. you have 50 boons up at all times, you come in, unload, get out, heal up, and repeat. it’s the dumbest spec, only second to d/d thief.

I don’t really understand why suddenly ppl think that D/D is so good, when it only got nerfed in recent history. I play main Ele and I know Ele is strong, but I choose to play S/D over D/D and I play with Valk-Amu and a lot of sustain over Glass-Cannon on both Weapon-Sets. Here is why I don’t think theres a Problem with D/D as a Bursty Spec in comparison to a D/D Thief, where I see huge Problems:

- D/D Ele is Melee only, he can’t switch to a bow for Ranged attacks. This is huge in Teamfights on smaller Points that forces the Ele to ball up with other Players and increses the DMG of AoE-Spells immensely. Also, It’s hard to stay on distance against strong Melee-Chars and Chars you don’t necessarily want to get close to, like Shatter-Mesmers, Engis with Bombs etc. This is a main reason why I play S/D over D/D
- The Burst of a D/D-Ele is rather small. He’s got Fire 3 (S/D has Fire 2 and Fire 3) and Fire 5 with a huge CD. The Rest of the DPS needs to be done by easily kiteable Autoattacks. His burst is also very easy to dodge. Even his knockdown and the Updraft is easily avaoidable by dodging or not being close to the ele: So if he ports or rides his lightning near you – dodge, then kite him and stay out of his range. There is nothing the D/D-ele can do about that.

The only 2 Problems with the D/D that I see, that makes it easy to run him very tanky, is the fact, that he can get Fury up 24/7 (cuz schocking aura + zephyrs boon + Aeromancers Alacrity and the fury you get by switching attunemts lets you keep it up at all time). This is also a Problem with other builds, like some Ranger-builds. I don’t know if it’s imbalanced, but if I build a D/D-Ele or Ranger-build and can go almost full tank in equip and still get 40+ Crit-Chance, I kinda feel it’s a bit too strong. Same goes for certain Traits like “Right-Hand Strength” of the Guardian.
The other Problem is, that you can switch to scepter before a fight and get 200 toughness from rock barrier for 30 seconds, which is pretty sick. Maybe lower the CD a bit but also the duration down to 20 seconds or sth. Or make it a viable option to shoot the rocks at the opponent, cuz as it is now, it does almost no DMG….

Again, ppl just complaining about builds that are maybe popular, but by no means IMBA and the things that could be considered very strong, maybe even too strong, aren’t even mentioned, because those ppl don’t understand the builds, nor how to play against them.

Oxstar.7643:

How to counter glass cannons.
Dodge or block.
Once their burst is done, kill them.

That’s how it should work, but it doesn’t with the two glass-cannon-classes widely considered IMBA; Thief and Mesmer.

There isn’t really an Option to give them any return-dmg, mostly because of invisibility.

Also, dodging is easier said than done, with Mesmer being able to stun and Immobolize you with skills that have a rather short CD.

With Thiefs, the Problem is, that they can just kill everything in an ongoing teamfight, where ppl have used up their defensive CD’s and maybe don’t have enough endurance to dodge. Besides, good thiefs tend to come out of nowhere, which makes it almost impossible to dodge the backstab, even with perfect map-awareness and reflexes.

Thief
- Backstab: dmg reduced by 20%
- Death Blossom: Doesn’t evade, but reduces DMG by 50%
- Signet of Shadows: Passive speed-buff reduced to 15% from 25%

Ele
- Ether Renewal: Channeling-Duration up to 4 seconds (in between what it was before the most recent buff and the old channeling-time). Or make that it has 1 or 2 less pulses in the 3 1/2 seconds channeling time.

Guardian
- Right-Hand-Strength: Reduces Crit-Chance down to 10% from 15% from 1-Hand Weapons
- Base-Armor should be decreased by about 50-100.

Ranger
- Increase projectile-Speed of Arrows by 20%

Mesmer
- Blurred Frenzy no longer Evades attacks, but gives a 50% reduction in received DMG

Necro
- Epidemic: Double recast from 15 to 30 Seconds
- Death Shroud: Increase cooldown to 15 seconds

Warrior
- Increase projectile-Speed of Arrows by 20%

Engi
Make Sigils work properly

Frizz.6704:

Just went into a game and one side was all thieves bar 2 players, the other side was all DD Ele’s bar 2 players. You have gone from having one seemingly OP class to two, and that is not including mesmers. This is ridiculous. You have set up a game where no one gets any type of reward to ‘maining’ a class, and the result is that everyone just rolls the current OP class and it’s boring in sPvP to not have a balanced mix of classes. You need to address this. Now the problem is if I am to have any hope in enjoying the game I have to play a class that copes well with this new Ele/Thief combo, as opposed to playing the class I enjoy.

Being PO’d about FotM is just a waste of mental capabilities, because there will always be a metagame and favourite classes and with ANet not trying to make harsh and quick balance-changes, this phenomenon will continue on. Yes, I do think Thieves are heavily OP and I don’t like playing against them, but if it’s really OP, a change will come eventually and we just have to live with it for now.

Besides that, I could come up with tons of builds no1 plays that are very very strong and hard to play against in certain situations if you’re not prepared and there are always counterbuilds to the FotM (which makes the Metagame interesting and forces certain decisions while coming up with a good teambuild, so theres even sth. good about strong FotM-builds).

Laserbolt.6731:

I have a masters level degree in computer science and in trying to solve hugely complex problems with potentially millions of combinations of factors.

This game’s PvP system feels like that. There are SO many possible interactions among the class attacks, defensive moves, timing factors, and debuffs… that it will never be balanced for all players.

It’s what they call a “combinatorial explosion”.

For one thing, new players and experienced players are playing two different games. New players don’t know how to counter Hundred Blades. Experienced teams now often don’t even bother to bring a warrior to tPvP because the warrior is shut down by players who understand how to counter the warrior.

Balance the game for experienced players, and the noobs get smashed.

In that respect, ArenaNet is absolutely correct to FIRST: get ranked matches working. Let people play against people with the same limited knowledge and skills.

That, and their plans to revamp the sPvP points system to reward a different sort of play style.

That may be all they will be able to ever achieve, as far as leveling the playing field.

There is no need to balance the game a 100% for every scenario, you need to set priorities:

- No game is completely balanced and the one that came probably closest to it (Starcraft Broodwar), achieved their balance mostly by coincidence and very skilled mapmakers.
- Balance is an ongoing process: The Metagame evolves and with it, new inbalances are discovered, changes in balance or just natural changes due to the time-factor and creativity and versatility in strategies will make the metagame shift in another direction.
- a perfect balance isn’t necessary, it just needs to be at a point, where the game is fun to play and skill is more important than other factors. Every sport and game is somewhat imbalanced, but that’s no problem, because these imbalances are small enough not to make the game bad.
- You cannot balance the game for every1; changes that will affect players on a high skill level, might affect lower level players in another way or not at all, thats why you should balance the game towards the top-end of players, because thats the direction the game needs to go in if it wants to be a serious e-Sport and will naturally evolve towards even for lower-level players.
- You can also segment off certain parts of the game, which Anet already did with some skills working different in PvE than in PvP and with certain changes only affecting structured PvP and not Hot-Join as well (15 seconds respawn-timer for example).

→ All that being said, I think that ANet does an incredibly well job at balancing the game: The changes might not be big ones and some changes that we think necessary might take a little while longer than we hoped for, but pretty much every change was one in the right direction, which is a good way of balancing a game which isn’t very old, nor much figured out by the top-players as of yet.

Gintoki.6405:

sounds like a massive buff to lazy mesmers who prefer to just dodge about and let the clones do the damage.

It’s a buff to phantasm-builds yes, but no1 uses them in spvp anyways – I see no Problem there….

I’ve been thinking about the F1-F4 Skills of the Mesmer and came to the conclusion, that they have a fundamental Design Flaw that basically forces Mesmer to use Shatter-Builds.

Looking at the Traits and Skills of the Mesmer, I think that ANet had 2 distinct ways of playing the Mesmer in mind; either going for Shatter, or for Phantasms. The Class-Skills though, only help the Shatter-builds and are useless (in almost any scenario, with few exceptions, for example using Mind Wrack to finish an Enemy) if not even counter-productive to the Phantasm-builds. There exists no other Class that has F1+ Skills that so heavily favour one type of build.

I’ve come up with a solution for this problem that would also fix the most common Mesmer build, which is widely considered as being too strong anyways, without diminishing the strength of other Mesmer-builds.

Give the F1+ Skills of the Mesmer a passive (like on sigils or the guardians virtues), but reduce the effectiveness of the Shatter-skills (actives) a bit. This would also create an interesting and skill-demanding dynamic where choosing intelligently whether or not to shatter could change the outcome of a battle.

Some examples that could work:

F1 [Mind Wrack]: Reduce the DMG of the skill by about 20%, but give it a passive that only works when the skill isn’t on CD like: Illusions deal 10% more DMG (both physical and condition)

F2 [Cry of Frustration]: I don’t really see a need to nerf the active, but you could easily just lower the duration for the Confusion. Give it a passive that gives Illusions a chance of lets say 20%, to inflict 1 stack of Confusion for 5 seconds or sth like that.

F3 [Diversion]: Again, just nerf daze-duration or make the CD higher or sth and give some passive for the Illusions, or maybe for the Mesmer, like getting immunity to the next control-effect, every 60 seconds the skill hasn’t been used or sth.

F4 [Distortion]: Make CD higher, but give it a passive so that Illusions have 20% more health.

What do you guys think about the Design of the Mesmer F1+ Skills and my proposed fixes?

Mark Hayden.4235:

This is just getting kitten** ridiculous, it is no wander the pvp in this game sucks, the community is just as worse as the devs, nerf this, nerf that, this OP, this is UP, from this point on I’m convinced this game is going down and it won’t get back up again.

Instead of just learning the game and make a kitten* effort to win you just complain and your wish is granted by the devs, the result: mesmer got nerfed to kitten and the game in general sucks this community deserves what it is getting.

I really enjoyed the game and i wished it to grow but my hope got shatterd just like the phantasms, so it’s time to move on. I really don’t care what happens to this game anymore even if their servers crash tomorrow for good.

You say the community and devs and pvp in GW2 sucks, yet you are the only one that wasn’t able to bring anything constructive to this post and is basically just blurting out crap…. -.-°

Make Blurred Frenzy negate DMG, but not any sort of Control-Abilities would be an easy fix iMHO.

The only thing I don’t really like about the current meta is the prevalence of glass-cannons (Thiefs and Mesmers are probably the most common ones).

Glass-Cannons are frustrating to play against, any kind of random numbers generater and procs make it more random in those short fights and they require less skill than other builds. Especially if the Glass-Cannons have stealth (which both Thief and Mesmer use), it becomes very hard to see them before they attack and almost 1-shot you (or 1-combo you), which shouldn’t be the case. At least you should be able to see the glass-cannon with good Map-awareness, if they have such powerful burst. Also, Mesmer and Thief Burst are too hard to kill (because of stealth, shadowsteps, blurred Frenzy and so on) for the DPS they deal and even though they are just 1 class each, probably every good teambuild needs to put in a lot of effort to be able to deal with them properly. Against Warrior, Power-Ranger, Power-Nec or Ele, I don’t need to put in any special skills/traits to be able to deal with them on most classes, which is kinda not how it should be and shows the obvious power of those burst-specs.

blurred frenzy needs a fix, but not because of what you’ve said, but because it’s one of the best skills in the game: I cannot understand how an attack that deals so much DPS can give you full immunity to return-dmg on top of it and have such a low CD.

Blurred Frenzy also negates the effect of many defensive abilities like most auras, blocks with some sort of knockbacks or return-dmg (like 4 on greatsword with the ranger) and it even negates any attemps of allies or the targeted player themselves to interrupt the spike of the mesmer by knockdown, daze etc.

I’m cool with Blurred frenzy giving some sort of defensive buff, like that you only get 50% dmg etc. but it shouldn’t negate control-abilities at all.

Ppl might think it’s maybe not a big deal, but Blurred Frenzy is one major part why Glas-Cannon Mesmer are so good right now -> spiking with pure impunity and low CD’s is what makes glass-cannons possible and I strongly believe ANet should move away from making those builds as good as they are right now. Glas-Cannons require less skill than a build with less DPS and more sustain, they are frustrating to play against and any sort of random triggers can totally distort the whole fight (for example: you die in very few hits of a glas-cannon-thief, so the chance of “on-getting-hit-ablities” triggering in that fight are much more random, then when a fight is longer. It also distorts the effect of crits and other stuff like that, which just makes the game more luck-based, frustrating und less skill-intensive).

And ppl that say a fix for the glass-cannon would destroy mesmers (or thiefs), don’t have a clue – there are very strong shatter-builds with less DPS, but a lot of sustain.

Ember.4326:

But first in order for us to have an Esport we’d need enough of a playerbase to form that around, which Anet is actively been destroying since betas sad but true.

Don’t get ur panties in a knot; that’s how it was for most MMO’s in the “post-WoW-Era”…

GW2 is doing fine compared to pretty much any other MMO I’ve played since GW1. ^^’

Tabula Rasa: Did this even have PvP?….. -.-°

DC Universe Online: PvP was total crap and there were no improvements being made or in sight at all.

Aion: yeah… right….

Age of Conan: It could’ve been good, but it just died off cuz nothing was really done that made me want to continue playing it in regards to PvP.

Final Fantasy Xwhatever: c’mon… total failure from the start

SWToR: Good foundation for PvP, but the support of Bioware was soooooooo slow on issues that are MUCH bigger than the ones GW2 is facing… Ppl were stuck on Servers with almost no population and PvP was only possible within your own Server… I couldn’t even play random hotjoin because there weren’t even 12+ ppl around on my Server to play with. And it took BW literally months before you were even able to switch Servers with your Char and that game cost me money monthly! Really, ANet is working at lightspeed compared to Bioware!

GW2 is pretty much the only game even worth mentioning in terms of PvP in the last 5 or so years and I have enough faith in ANet that they won’t F* it up. Also, we’ve seen a lot of changes in PvP already and they keep us informed about future projects etc.

nurt.5401:

1. Most of the best TPvP builds are also strong 1v1 if played well, but that isn’t their primary purpose. A build that is only good 1v1, but brings low damage and no support to a team fight is probably not versatile enough to fit in a tournament comp. Being able to reliably win a 1v1 against almost any matchup is useful, because it forces teams to overcompensate for you, but if you instantly die when it becomes 1v2 or are dead weight when a fight escalates to a 2v2 then it’s not really accomplishing much in the long run.

2. Yes. 2 Bunkers is not even good. You want 1 bunker and some support, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a “support” build on your team, it’s not like you need healing, so you just bring a dps ele and necro that also provide good support with aoe heals, CC, condi removal and resurrection. The ele could be semi tanky, but it could also be glass and still do all that.

3. If you aren’t gearing for support it hardly feels right to call a build a “support build”. But like I said, eles, necros and mesmers all bring a lot of utility to the team even in their damage builds. I think the danger of setting out to make a “support build” is that you might sacrifice damage when it’s not really necessary, you can be a damage dealer and provide some support at the same time.

Couldn’t have said it better,

Thinking about this topic, the Staff-Ele was pretty much what one could describe as “pure Support”:

- His Healing and even DPS is mostly AoE, therefore it was only worthwhile in teamfights.
- The Staff-Ele, disregarding what some ppl think, is neither a tank nor a pretty good pointholder: in a 1v1 vs. a glass-cannon or any1 with good knockback/fear etc. it’s only a matter of time before you loose the point, just because you deal no DMG in a 1v1 and a pointholder cannot rely on ppl coming back to him within 20 or so seconds in a simple 1v1.
- He has decent CC and combofields, but again, this doesn’t get you any kills.

-> This is probably the best example for a pure Support build and it’s no wonder we almost never see him getting played on maps other than Khylo, where he gets a pretty important bonus-role; treb-control.

So I don’t think that in the current Meta, pure support is really viable, or in other words, more viable than builds with maybe less support, but other roles they can fullfill.

*Edit: Being an oldschool GW1 GvG-Player (most noteably having played in Bruderschaft der Verdammnis [BdV] and Capita Cerberi [CC], in Top-30 and Top-50 respectively) I even messed around with other “support” builds and tried making equivalents of a GW1 Mesmer (lots of interrupts and CC) or Support Eles (I tried making a S/D Blinding Bihatch) or Rangers with Interrupts and CC, but it was always the same: It’s just not worth sacrificing DPS or tankyness for those kinds of things and the more I focused on DPS, the better the builds worked in general… But I guess thats just because it’s 5v5 and the attention is spread out between 3 points and another “point of interest” on the Map.

Maybe if we had a simple deathmatch or King of the Hill Scenario or sth like that, we could see some more support-builds popping up, but not in the current meta and game-mode.

Not to say that thats necessarily bad, it’s just how it seems to work out.

I heavily agree with combining Servers and adding some sort of “LFG-System” or a global lobby or sth.

Why not just have it like in GW1, where you had EU Server 1, if that one is full ppl are directed to EU Server 2 etc. for the Mists. It’s just a sad sight to watch if I go on a heavily popuated EU-Server and there is no1 around in the Mists – therefore making it much harder to find players that are stuck on other Servers and therefore reducing the number of players actually playing PvP, which makes it in turn harder to play for every1, even those that have team rdy to go.

It’s not about just balancing the speed, but balancing it while taking other aspects into consideration: A Thief isn’t just good because he’s very fast and has tons of shadowsteps, but because he also deals huge amounts of DPS, is hard to kill for a so-called glass cannon und is even good in teamfights.

Eles are fast for example, comparable to thiefs in that aspect, but they deal much less burst, their combos are harder to land and have longer CD’s etc.

Why would you come up with the Idea to make all the classes move around the map at the same speed? There should be specs/classes that move around faster, you just have to balance it with their strength in other aspects of the game.

Very valid concerns indeed, but there are multiple solutions to this problem:

- Make Matchmaking intelligently (or make an option in which players could decide themselves) decide between accuracy and duration of the search-time. In HoN (much better game than LoL btw. but lets not get into that one ^^) there was even an option in queuing where you could slide a bar around between duration and accuracy.

- By implementing an ELO-system, which is pretty standard in all competetive games, you could also easily mitigate the effect of unmatched teams (ELO-wise) by giving the winning team less points if they stomp a noob-team and the noob-team would get less points deducted. This way, even unmatched teams fighting would have a certain impact, because the better team had much more to loose and the lesser team a lot to gain.

- global queuing: GW1 had it, why not GW2? Yes, there will probably be lag-issues, but it’s better than not finding any games.

- Player-density: By adding new features like ranking-system and better eSports-features, the player-base will most likely begin to raise and maybe stabilize. GW2 has been in a natural decline in players, which shouldn’t shock anyone, but if they bring new features, ppl will most likely return.

- Changes to the Tournament-System: Yes, this tournament-style Matchmaking has several advantages, but maybe it could be beneficial to “revert” back to simple 1 team VS another team. Matchmaking could be quicker if you’d just need 2 teams instead of 8 and with ELO-system in place, you could distribute rewards according to the strength of your opposing team in relation to yours, not by how far you’ve gotten into the tournament.

1) Most Specs/classes that are considered “imba” are ones that excel in various different scenarios. If I’d make a rough categorization of “roles”, I’d call them: “Burst/DPS”, “Movement”, “Survival/Sustain”, “Teamfight/Support”.

Lets take Thief for example, widely considered as IMBA and very frustrating to play against (I think it’s by far the most imbalanced class and for me personally, ruins much of the fun of sPvP)

- Burst/DPS: Thief has by far the most Burst-Potential in the Game, with very short CD’s between spikes, short drawbacks if the Spike doesn’t work etc. [5 out of 5 points]

- Movement: With Shadowsteps “en masse” and the hightened movment-speed from the sigil, Thief is probably the fastest Char on the Map. [5 out of 5 points]

- Survival Sustain: It’s clear that burst-specs with the thief cannot hold points very well, but for it being considered a glass-cannon, the sustain is absolutely ridiculous. The amount of Stunbreakers/Shadowsteps and instants to negate DMG is only surpassed by the vast amount of time a Thief can stay in stealth, negating most of the DMG he would get in between spikes. There aren’t even many “half-DPS” builds like Ele with Valk-Amu, that have such good sustain. [2.5 out of 5 points]

- Teamfight/Support: The Bow is amazing during Teamfights, gives you good AoE and a Poison-field. Besides that, Shadow Refuge is great for Rezzing/Stomping and a hard to kill Burst-Char is always very good in teamfights. Besides, theres no other Char that can “clean up” a teamfight after a late arrival. I’ve often seen Teamfights which got completely turned around within seconds by 1 Thief joining in and kicking butts. [3.5 out of 5 Points]

—> Good builds need to be able to fill different roles, but there are builds that are just too good at too many things and that is what makes them imba… at least in my opinion. The Thief could 1-hit me (which he nearly does anyways) all day long, if he would be slow like a snail or also die with 1 hit, but thats just not the case…

2) I’ve found that in GW2, you cannot be too specific about roles; with just a 5-man team, you cannot just have a char that is only good at Support or Controlling the opponent etc. There are builds that use heavy amounts of Knockdowns and Stuns and such, but they need to be able to deal DMG or tank well or sth. else. But there are, as stated before, builds that kinda do what you’ve suggested: Necro (fear, chilled, crippled, Blind, weakness etc. are all decent control-effects and the Nec has a lot of it), there are also nice Hammer + Mace/Shield Warrior builds around with loooots of stuns and I’ve seen ranger-builds that dish out insane amounts of chilled during teamfights and have good interrupts and Knockbacks etc. too.

3) Again, you will not find a build that is simply there to provide buffs and support (the closest one would maybe be the Staff-Ele, but we don’t see them as often anymore and the main thing about them was the healing to make it almost impossible to get a guard off a point). There are also quite a few builds that make it their sole purpose of supporting others if they have to sacrifice their own power for it. There is nothing like a blinding-bihatch, a water-ele, a oldschool GW Diversion/Interrupt/Manadrain-Mesmer, that on their own don’t deal much DMG, don’t have high sustain or are particularly good at anything and only work in teamfights. The Teams of 5 are too small and the game-modes make it easier to avoid teamfights – those builds would simply not work in GW2 (at least I haven’t seen one pure Support in that “oldschool-sense”).

4) I don’t necessarily see a big discrepancy between condition-dmg and power and I personally think that COnd vs Power is well implemented in the Game as a mild “rock-paper-scissors” or “metagaming” component with cond being good against certain builds, but pretty bad against others and vice-versa (with power I mean). But it’s still not too drastic to make it a pure rock-paper-scissor-meta: just a sort of little advantage/disadvantage you have to adapt and learn to play with as a team against certain other builds.

5) My Fav team atm:
1 Guard (Bunker – guarding mid)
2 Eles (S/D or D/D, which roam around and cap points on Glass-cannon, then switch to a toughness/Healing-Power Amu for Holding)
1 Mesmer (Portal-guarding 1 point)
1 Thief (cuz they IMBA and you’d be stupid not to play at least 1)

I feel like the individual Interrupts should have certain “CD-inflicting-timers” on them… for example one Interrupt would set the skill back to 10 seconds, another to 5 etc.

This would also enable better class-specific balancing. Full CD could maybe be a bit too strong against certain Elites….

Since the recent Patch, I’ve been playing around a lot with Ranger (I also played it a bit before) and I really think that there are various situations, in which the ranger totally excells other classes:

1) Quickness: Just the Quickness rezzes and Quickness stomps you get from Zephyr’s Speed are absolutely amazing in Teamfights and because the Ranger has it all 20 or even 15 Seconds is just awesome for Teamfights.

2) AoE: With either Traps, Piercing Arrows, Pet-Skills or other Skills/Traits, the Ranger has huge AoE-Potential, which is again very good for Teamfights.

3) Combo-fields and finishers: I’ve ran a build with Ice and Fire-Trap, Bonfire and the Healing Spring and the amount of combo-fields you put out is unmatched by any other Class. In addition to that, the Ranger has also a huge amount of combofinishers – the obvious ones on the bow, but totally underrated ones on for example Greatsword (leap every 10 or so seconds) or Offhand Axe (afaik the longest Whirl-finisher in the game and a two-way Projectile-finisher with rather short CD).

- Knockbacks: I’ve toyed around with Holding builds or offensive Point-cap-builds on the Ranger as well, because he has very strong Knockbacks or other options to get enemies off points: Fear on the Wolf, one of the strongest Knockbacks in the game on the Longbow, a decent knockback on the Greatsword (skill 4 when attacked in melee).

- Traps as counter to Portals: Another Option to use an offensive Roamer is with 2-3 Traps as a counter to Portals; It’s really nice if you can spam those traps on the Portal and have that insta-DPS on the ppl that get out of the portal, you simply start a fight with a big advantage and depending on how long it took for the opponent to get to the portal, you also have the CD’s almost rdy again very often even before the actual fight begins (just spam the traps and w8 a few seconds before you actually get on the point if the opponent doesn’t have vision of you, so you can get 4-6 traps on them right when the fight starts).

- Good Survivability: There are actually certain Traits and Skills available to the Ranger, that make him very very hard to kill:
1) Signet of Stone + Signet of the Beastmaster
2) Empathic Bond: All conditions transer from you to your pet every 10 seconds? There is no better Anti-condition-skill/trait!
3) Natural Vigor: a 5-traitpoint Skill that makes your Endurance reg 50% faster? Do ppl even realize how good this is?
4) Lightning Reflexes: A very underappreciated Stunbreaker.
5) Signet of Renewal: Stunbreaker and all Conditions away? Hell yes!
6) Companions Defense: Very nice Dodge-effect that works well with Natural Vigor, Lightning Reflexes (cuz of the Vigor) etc.

All in all, ppl just like to play their FotM-builds and are afraid to experiment with other classes – I don’t think that Ranger is a bad class: I’m not even sure anymore if he even needs any buffs at all, because I think he has potential that hasn’t been discovered or fully understood and tested out yet.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I loved the talent system in Rift. THAT was the way how to build a character you wanted it was one of the best talent systems i have encountered. Sure it had issues here and thier but i loved it.

Since it’s very possible that many ppl haven’t actually played the games you’re referring too, could you maybe elaborate on why it was such a good system to you?

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

So I thought about this and I am curious of opinions. So I have convinced myself that thieves need the initiative mechanic. As a non thief player I thought hey maybe cooldowns would fix the problem.
But now after more brainstorming, why not have cooldowns and initiative. Something like each skill has an icd with it, but you can choose to pay initiative to take it off cd.

Would that work? Solve and problems? or just complicate the system?

CD+Cost is nothing new for MMO’s, in GW2, you also had Mana-cost and Cooldowns, so I see no Problem with it.

I also think that the low CD of some of the Thiefs abilities are essentiel to why the Thief is so strong in PvP atm: For the amount of DMG it does, backstab, Cloak and Dagger and Heartseeker have a way too low CD: Almost any other Class that does similar DMG, like Burst-Ele or Burst-Warrior, have much higher CD’s: Flame Grab, Updraft or other Knockdowns that are essentiel for the Ele’s Combo, have 30+ Seconds CD and Bulls Charge, Frenzy etc. on the Warrior, which often are incremental to the Burst’s DPS and success, have way higher CD as well.

With those low CD’s on the Burst-Skills and the Option to go stealth very easily as Thief, it’s possible for a Thief to go Full-Burst and have no real risk or drawback to it: There isn’t a high CD, there is no Drawback like on Frenzy or other Quickness-abilities and because you can surpass the short downtime in between spikes while in stealth, you are not even open for counterattacks.

IMHO, there needs to be sth. done with the CD’s on the Thief – I don’t really care if they implement actual cooldowns on the Skills or make them have higher Ini-costs, but I do think that the main Problem of the Thief lies in this Aspect.