Guild Wars 2

ReaperJr.5967:

In general, in order of being easiest to kill to the most difficult.

Warrior
Thief (unless this thief is good)
Reaper
Dragonhunter
Power herald
Druid
Scrapper
Tempest
Bunker chrono
Viper rev

This is my experience from amber to ruby. List may vary from match to match.

Condi Rev last? Well, maybe if you all run condi only and no boonstrip… If you play a balanced setup, it’s IMHO one of the easiest to kill. Other than that, I can probably agree with that list.

it’s not a good idea for the long run, but as a hotfix for many current issues, it’s IMHO a good idea.

lucky you – I’d kill for the sweet MMR you have now! :P

I like the bunker mesmer as well. I do think there could be some minor nerfs to the amount of quickness and stability he provides, but not too much. It’s actually a very hard and fun to play build, probably one of the hardest to play bunker/supporters ever. I don’t see a reason to nerf it into the ground.

I think the dumbest and most imbalanced part are the invuln/quickness rezzes/stomps. If they tone down the quickness on shatter, or replace it with sth. else, at least the mesmers would have to go into the chronomancer-runes for the quickness.

Also, the stability on the shatters lasts a bit long.

With the general bunker-power of the build I don’t really have a problem; at least it’s not completely invulnerable to a whole dmg-type like rev and tempest with perma-resistance or diamond skin: These are the things that can completely destroy tons of builds in the meta and I say that as a main-tempest player that is forced to use diamond skin even though I hate it (I hate getting destroyed by condi-revs more though, so I use it).

TL:DR
Less Stability on shatter and much less quickness or no quickness at all on shatter.

I totally grinded to ruby as well, but I don’t think it’s worth to try as a solo-Q’er that doesn’t abuse the system in ruby anymore.

I still try my best in games, but I don’t simply go main-class with tempest anymore and try to figure out stuff that might work in the current horrible meta and maybe only do a few games a day compared to the ~50 I did before to get to ruby.

I like Heroes of the Storm, cuz it offer a more teamfight-oriented twist on the moba-genre. Much less boring laning and more action.

I actually felt more like playing GW1 when playing HotS than while playing GW2. Big part is that I played healer in GW1 though. ^^

yepp, it’s absurd how strong the rune is….. and the undocumented +5% boon-duration has bugged me since it first came out, shows how little ANet cares about PvP if the by far most used rune in PvP isn’t even working as intended…. -.-°

cut the -5% that shouldn’t be there anyways and cut down on the vita it provides.

well, the good thing is that I actually have incentive to play atm. that’s about it though.

had so many games like this as well… Problem is though, that the q’s are like 8 mins and that the pip gain-loss is tied to this completely F’d up MMR-system. Just salt with a pinch of salt served on a salty piece of salt.

I have no Idea how this MMR works…

butch.8136:

So metabattle only copies ESL games now? Lol.

It’s funny because it reinforces that meta. It goes from pro league to metabattle to the players.

DH and reaper are more than great.

Reaper loses to tempest and rev 1v1, does nothing to them in teamfights either and is always the first target downed in teamfights. Cele-reaper, even when you go with dagger and a more power-oriented build, is sub-par at best, nowhere near the alternatives. Also, because the meta moved away from power-spikes, no ele needs to run stoneheart and they can go into diamond skin without any drawbacks. Trust me, I’ve tried some Necro builds I thought would work (similar to the one Nos run in the last ProLeague matches) and it’s just silly to deal no DMG AT ALL to most of the top-builds and only very very little to the rest of them, while being killed almost instantly.

DH was strong because it abused a meta that ran almost no stability: now we have bunker-mesmer and rev’s that use the double-stability trait: Much more stability. Also, the Ele’s offer some absorb/deflect and every build thats used in the meta has so many evades/invulns/distortion etc, DH just does nothing. It also gets eaten alive by Rev’s and doesn’t stand a chance in any 1v1 against the big meta-builds. Literally utterly useless. One major thing for the Guards survival are blocks (aegis, focus etc.), they work great against few strong attacks, like thief, but guess what, a sword 3 of a rev will eat your blocks and then kill you within seconds. The other blocks that block for a certain amount of time like the elite meditation, worked well against focused dmg-spikes with low sustained pressure: But Rev just puts so many stacks of condis on you and applies constant pressure, that you’ll die anyways, just a few seconds later. Concentrated spikes with thief, shattermesmer etc. had a longer “wind-up-time” for the next spike and less sustained pressure.

That being said: if they nerf Rev, things might change pretty quickly for those builds to be very powerful again, but in the current, very specific meta that revolves around rev and bunker-mesmer, they are simply bad. They both just get hard-countered.

I think there might be some wiggle-room with the second chronomancer, depending on how you want to play. Instead of chrono, you’d most likely add physical DMG, like the Scrapper. Scrapper is atm used, cuz it doesn’t insta-die against revs and can actually 1v1 them. It also wins against Staff-Ele 1v1 that’s used pretty often as the support-tempest (it looses to D/D tempest though, but this one obviously has less support).

Anyways, I think there might be some other physical DPS-builds that could work instead scrapper (theorycrafted and playtested some things in this meta):

Shatter-Mesmer with stealth or Thief: Both have good mobility, boonstrip and CC: Mobility is higher than scrapper, sustain is lower. DPS is somewhat similar, but they both add boonstrip which is pretty strong against Rev. Obviously they get countered by the reveal of the Engi though, so they have to know how to dodge that kittenznit.

Kayberz.5346:

PowerBottom.5796:

Forestgreen.7981:

You literally left the best part out. No major balance until Feb 1st. Enjoy.

The joke amulet they put in “Vial of Salt” is for the majority of the PvP and WvWers to put around their necks to remind you that A-Net simply does not care unless its PvE.

yepp, I’ve already invested like 20 gold into the mats for the vial of salt cuz I thaught I would need it for the Backpiece… Well, imagine how well the name fit when I found out it was for a stupid amulet I’m never gonna use.

Of course it was my fault, but it just fit my feeling that I currently have so well; like ANet was literally making fun of me and slapping me in the face for playing their game I actually enjoy for the most part, although it feels like ANet doesn’t give a flying fart about PvP. :P

YAAAAAY! ^^

You actually do need the vial of salt for the backpiece, not the amulet itself but the achievements gained from making it, the win using diff classes achieves dont progress the meta they just progress one specific achievement that does, so to complete all 4 metas you have to make those essences

sweet, day just got a little less salty, I needed that – thx! ^^

looool, top stats means nothing…. You then just had ppl running around for decaps and weird stuff like that. Just a horrible Idea man. :P

You can easily be the sole reason why your team won and played extremely well and have the worst score and no top-stats.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

I mean, you do need it to get the backpiece, so there’s that.

You can get it, just not as fast…. I’m currently ruby and I’m not planning on going for diamond, I haven’t been as salty about a game in years, possibly decades.

Abjured won cuz the other team is lower in skill, ran only 1 condi-rev (other one was glint afaik) and a very weird ranger build.

To be fair, they made very good adjustments to their builds, like noscoc ran a smart alteration of the cele-signet nec (dagger instead of scepter which is used more atm, full bunker runes and crit chance instead burning on shroud1 to maximize power-dmg against diamond skin and perma-resistance). also Tokers Thief is not ideal, but if played very well, it can work, since some physical DMG is needed anyways (again against diamond skin and resistance), reveals aren’t as dominant anymore (less glint and not as many engineers with reveal, on NA at least) and the strong cleave is decent to wear down the bunkers (like chaith said in the interview).

The meta is the worst I’ve ever experienced and ANet needs to do sth. A patch in february would possibly be devastating for GW2 PvP. Yes, they’ve made a decision not to make a patch before february 2016, but this is getting out of hand.

I’m actually thinking about q’ing rev as well, if ppl do this, we’ll soon have 100% condi-rev’s in PvP, maybe then ANet will do sth. about it…. You know, like nerfing warrior…. ^^’

Forestgreen.7981:

You literally left the best part out. No major balance until Feb 1st. Enjoy.

The joke amulet they put in “Vial of Salt” is for the majority of the PvP and WvWers to put around their necks to remind you that A-Net simply does not care unless its PvE.

yepp, I’ve already invested like 20 gold into the mats for the vial of salt cuz I thaught I would need it for the Backpiece… Well, imagine how well the name fit when I found out it was for a stupid amulet I’m never gonna use.

Of course it was my fault, but it just fit my feeling that I currently have so well; like ANet was literally making fun of me and slapping me in the face for playing their game I actually enjoy for the most part, although it feels like ANet doesn’t give a flying fart about PvP. :P

YAAAAAY! ^^

Silverkey.2078:

Why can’t people understand that the MMR is fine, the problem is the low population. There are not so many ruby players, so it ends up having to take lower divisions players.

No MMR problem: population problem

A higher population would just blur the effects of the bad MMR or in other words; with more players, it’s easier for the MMR to make even teams.

Tanking the MMR, deflating it with 1 bad player or the simple fact that sometimes I get terribly weird games where 1 team has lower ranked, lower division players and all solo-Q vs partial team-Q shows it’s not only the population.

Also, which system takes a longer Q if you Q for both modes? This would mean a bigger population so faster Q’s and better matchmaking? Well, It doesn’t work like that in GW2.

can you temporarily disable revenant? IMHO much more gamebreaking than a stealth bug in a 2nd tier game-mode.

atm, no MMR at all would probably be better than the MMR system we have in the game now. At least the q’s would be faster and you couldn’t abuse it as hard by tanking MMR, deflating your MMR with 1 noob + 4 ESL-players etc.

Bjarkov.9751:

Hmmm, i agree with you when talking solo queue, but if you either have a guild or or at least a friend or two to play with, it really makes a huge difference. Also it gets a lot easier once you get out of amber division, and move up in sapphire and emerald, you can really feel that players are more experienced than in amber league, which also makes solo queue easier and basically more fun to play.

Well, if you play ruby league or higher with a team, you have pretty long wait-times and then just get eaten alive by ESL-teams…. The whole system punishes honest tryhards and rewards abusers. In lower leagues, it’s probably not as rewarding either, cuz you’ll simply hit a ceiling where the 50% wins will make it impossible to move forwards unless you’re lucky with the order of your wins. It’s a complete mess.

They’ve taken the worst part of multiple games (like parts of the horrible hearthstone league system) and of GW2 pvp (bad MMR, no solo-Q/team-Q distinction) and made it into one steaming pile of…. salt….. Add the worst balance since the release of GW2 and the possibility to heavily abuse the system in multiple ways and you get a very very salty experience.

yes, stuff like this happens, but what I really want, no – need to see, is ANet reacting quickly and severely. And a patch in late january won’t cut it by a long shot.

yepp, you can actually get leg with a very low win-rate if you just mass enough games or get lucky with the order in which the wins/losses are in.

Absolutely horrible system.

I’ve played only solo-q and made ruby pretty easily (I haven’t played a game over the weekend but pretty much massgamed the other days since leagues started) and I haven’t tanked my MMR or abused the system in any other way.
You just have to play what works now, if you play sth. other than condi-rev, tempest, bunker mesmer and maybe marauder engi/bunker-druid (worse than the 3 others, but playable), you’re gonna loose.

Condi-Rev’s are ridiculous:

- tons of stability
- tons of quickness
- almost immune to conditions thx to unlimited resistance
- decent against physical dmg cuz of evades/blocks
- some of highest DPS currently and it’s mixed thx to viper
- high single-target and cleave
- very high mobility
- some of the best boonstrip
- deny cleave dmg against downed bodies

—> They single-handedly dictate every build that’s currently used in the meta.

And there are some very easy fixes:
- give the boonstrip a higher cost or a CD or give the Resistance on Mallyx-skills an ICD.
- Get rid of viper amu. Might as well add sinister too, since it would just be the next in line and probably almost as bad.
- lower the duration of the insane boons on the rev, like resistance, stability and quickness.

Why condi-meta? The only builds that are heavily condition-focused are condi-revs – it’s a condi-rev meta, since they pretty much cancel out the existance of any other condition-builds with their resistance-uptime.

ReaperJr.5967:

Actually it is true, worse players with low mmr to start with climb divisions faster than better players with high mmr. Divisions then account for 50% of matchmaking.

^Just one more thing that makes me cry inside about the league system.

Ruby being harder could work, but the whole system is so utterly broken, it’s just one more thing added to the very salty diet that is the new PvP.

Broken meta (by FAR the worst in the history of GW2), broken MMR, ppl abusing the system in tons of different ways, good players being punished with longer Q’s, premade opponents, and bad player catching up cuz they tanked their MMR or just were able to play against easier opponents.

ANet really needs to act fast. I’m not saying stupid stuff like “I’m gonna quit if they don’t nerf X or fix this or that”, but I’m saying it’s not very enjoyable for me right now, which makes me a sad panda.

Atm I seriously think the game would be more enjoyable without any MMR whatsoever and only solo/duo-q.

Morwath.9817:

morrolan.9608:

PowerBottom.5796:

morrolan.9608:

I think its a pity Staff Ele has been proven to be too weak. Good luck to Honey as a DH.

?

Multiple teams in the ESL have been using Staff-Ele on just the same play-day…. -.-°

Ele is very strong atm. and Staff-Ele might be the best option in the current top-tier meta.

So why didn’t honey switch to tempest staff?

Ask her…
I think they don’t need two Tempests in double Viper Revenant meta…

that was my best guess as well….

Ragnarox.9601:

You forgot 3 things:
Condi reaper can solo those 3 alone.
DH can kill them with eyes shut.
Druid can laugh at them while at full hp.

Simply not true, all those builds (maybe druid not so much) get countered pretty heavily by condi-rev + bunker-mesmer comps…. That’s why we see almost no DH’s and reapers anymore when just a few weeks ago they were all the rage.

Terrorsquad.4802:

PowerBottom.5796:

Terrorsquad.4802:

I stopped reading at “Dragonhunters are fine; even a bit weak”

They would be strong in another meta, but against 2 condi rev’s, 1-2 chronobunkers and maybe ele/druid/engi, they just do nothing at all. Absolutely useless tbh.

Oooh, guess they realised just putting all traps at once doesn’t work xD

No but seriously, its broken. I’m laughing my kitten off in SoloQ while playing it.

- The Rev’s don’t care about the traps with all their evades and stability and will eat DH within seconds.
- Bunker-Chrono also doesn’t give a flying fart; also tons of stability and invul.
- Most Ele builds don’t care either, they survive a trap-burst and deny pressure with reflects/absorbs.

If the meta would look like the one a few weeks ago with necro’s, maybe only 1 non-condi-rev, no chrono-bunkers etc, it would still be strong, but against the current ESL-comps, DH is just not the strongest choice.

morrolan.9608:

I think its a pity Staff Ele has been proven to be too weak. Good luck to Honey as a DH.

?

Multiple teams in the ESL have been using Staff-Ele on just the same play-day…. -.-°

Ele is very strong atm. and Staff-Ele might be the best option in the current top-tier meta.

hell yes they do!

it’s horrible to play, I’ve probaby blocked and reported 50 ppl in the last week or so. :P

Not only the leagues though; the balance is horrible, there are some major abuses going on etc. It’s just very very hard to enjoy the game right now.

Terrorsquad.4802:

I stopped reading at “Dragonhunters are fine; even a bit weak”

They would be strong in another meta, but against 2 condi rev’s, 1-2 chronobunkers and maybe ele/druid/engi, they just do nothing at all. Absolutely useless tbh.

I bet you guys all play in the Pro League… Oh w8… no you don’t….

I haven’t seen much of the purple noise ppl at the high MMR (and I’ve played against players from all other teams very frequently) so I think they might just not have the time atm. to mass-grind and figure out how to best abuse the meta.

mallyx/shiro viper Rev is completely dictating the whole meta atm:

- Has insane condi-dmg, but is itself almost immune to it -> best “counter” to condi-rev is condi-rev itself, so every team runs at least 1, most run 2.
- Mass Resistance of the rev’s kills all other condi-builds.
- Ele’s are forced to use Diamond Skin, which kills even more builds when each team has ~3 chars completely immune to conditions. Ele’s are also needed to support the revs and cleanse conditions of the few builds that aren’t completely immune to them.
- Bunker-Mesmer is so ridiculous that ppl run it as bunkery as possible so it will survive with ele-support. The Quickness/Invul-Rezzes are also a necessity against the revs with their insane cleave and on-demand quickness+stabi-stomps.

In random solo-Q it’s even more disgusting, since often the little bit of physial DMG needed to tip the scale against Diamond skin isn’t there (bad team-comps and sometimes bad play) and ppl don’t chain-stun or strip Resistance off the Revs. So I’ve had quite a few games where nothing really went below 90% HP cuz everything had diamond-skin, Resistance etc.
And I’m not talking amber league, I’m currently ruby with solo-Q playing against ESL-caliber players.

Both the constant resistance and diamond skin are things that are by design doomed to completely fail, it’s beyond me how ANet doesn’t see that.

got the same problem here….. long wait times and then vs premade of ESL-players….. it is a horribly broken system that forges nothing but salt.

IT’S A SALTMINE!

I don’t think it’s all that great in 1v1’s either, but with a few alterations to the build, it can still be very strong in teamfights. Diamond Skin doesn’t matter if you have a bit of physical DMG in the team and if some player (like the nec himself) packs a bit of boonstrip, mallyc is no prob either.

What does Reaper offer in teamfights: Absolutely insane melee cleave, very strong AoE at range, decent soft-CC, dealing with conditions on your team (in various possible ways; plague signet, shouts+soldier runes, Staff 4, unholy martyr etc.), tons of stability and the possibility of strong boonstrip.

I’m Sapphire Div3 and I’m pretty much stuck now if I don’t get very lucky….. out of 10 games today, until now I q’d 4-5 games against full premade of top-players that added one random amber-noob to tank down their overall MMR – and I loose pips against that when we obviously get trashed…

This is broken in so many ways it’s ridiculous.

Serious Thought.5394:

To be almost 30% better than either amulet? Ye. I’d say AT LEAST a 35 point drop on each stat. That’s stupid. Did you read me post?

It can be stronger as a generalist, but it shouldn’t outmatch specialist.

focused stats are overall better than stats that are all over the place, so it’s totally okay to give cele higher stats overall.

Removing cele would for example basically remove ele from pvp… A small drop is a possibility, but there are much worse AMU’s and imbalances atm than cele.

cele is absolutely necessary and there’s IMHO no problem whatsoever with it.

TGI FRIDAY.6275:

1. If you don’t like to communicate with others,Conquest is not for you.

2. If you don’t work well with other people, Conquest is not for you.

3. If you can’t follow orders/follow the plan, Conquest is not for you.

Also…I’ll just leave this here.

com·mu·ni·ca·tion
k??myo?on??k?SH(?)n/
noun
1.The imparting or exchanging of information or news.
“direct communication between the two countries will produce greater understanding”

If you don’t want to take the time to make a team, like myself, do us a favor and at least try to work with the team. It will make your experience as well as many other’s experience much more pleasant.

Well, maybe I don’t have 4 ppl that have the same scedules as me, so when I wanna q outside of a few hours in the evening, I’m gonna have to solo-Q. And who do I meet with my rag-tag band of solo-Q’ers? Yes, a mix of GnR and vM players multiple times in a row.

Yes, you shouldn’t be able to compete at the very high level as a solo-Q’er, but there is definitely a better solution than the one we have now.

Atm. it’s the worst for decent players that play a lot, but that don’t have an FL full of top-100 players that q 24/7, which is exactly my situation. And it’s pretty rough.

And trust me, I’ve been looking for guilds, trying to expand my FL etc. but if you’re not in those higher echelons of the known players, you’re gonna have a very hard time.

+1….. they removed minstrel before it even really worked and any1 played it, and what do they do with viper that has enabled the most imbalanced build in recent history? Nothing….

It would probably kill a ton of builds that don’t abuse vipers on rev (which is the only build using it anyways) if you nerf mallyx with vipers, so it’s easier to just get rid of vipers.

well, you just need an insanely high win-rate and it’s not that hard…. or you know, you can tank your MMR when you can loose games without loosing pips and then farm some easy wins, like some abusers do atm. -.-°

Maybe they need some more Data…. ^^’

Like, another week of almost 0 Thiefs and Warriors in ESL and roughly 1.5 rev’s per team.

I’ll let it slide for this week, cuz leagues might’ve been quite a bit of work, but I sure hope for a proper balance-patch next week.

me2, but I guess they had enough on their plate with the leagues?….

I hope the patch won’t take too long, or we’ll again have 1.5 Rev’s on average per team in the ESL and the team with more revs almost always winning…. ^^’

The things that are UP and OP are pretty obvious IMHO, shouldn’t be that hard to tweak some numbers and change some traits.

If you don’t play at least 2 different classes, you’re gonna be roally screwed in any competitive team….

Just look at how the meta has changed over the past few weeks, if you were only able to play Warrior, well, you wouldn’t be able to be competitive atm.

I think the auras are visible enough…. Besides, if they keep all the clutter, I’ll just keep having to manually click on every target and check the icons which aura they have…. -.-°

Just w8 until the big visual noise overhaul is complete until you make your judgement. Right now, they might be less visible, but if they keep reducing visual noise, everything will be easier to see.

The viewer base isn’t low IMHO, but I have to admit that I almost always watch the VoD’s and never live, mostly because of unbearably long wait-times.

Not to discredit Jebro, I think he’s doing a good job for the most part, but compare the way he’s going through builds with that of the US-casters: He takes suuuuch a long time. ^^’

Also, for a game to really pick up a decent viewer-base, there simply needs to be more than 1 tournament per week. I mean, afaik, US doesn’t even have a tournament in the middle of the week, or at least it doesn’t get boradcasted.

there are so many good options to cleanse condis en masse; it’s really not the conditions themselves that are good, it’s that certain builds that happen to use condition-dmg are very strong, but not because of the conditions.

the almost constant stability is what makes it incerdibly hard to face mallyx/shiro in 1v1’s, combined with the resistance and boonstrip, you have strong counters against many things currently strong 1v1-builds rely on.

But what ppl have to realize is that you sacrifice a lot in terms of being harder to burst down in teamfights when going for a spec like that. So my best advice is to simply +1 the rev, play for 2 nodes and teamfight as much as possible, cuz in teamfights, mallyx/shiro just fals almost instantly against decent burst and since you have much more CC avalable in teamfights, it actually is possible to CC the rev.

Btw. I think glint/shiro can go for double stability way easier than shiro/mallyx, cuz he is better against burst than shiro/mallyx and doesn’t need the added crystal hibernation as badly. The double stability is sth I’ve thought of being broken since th beginning and I’m glad to see ppl now finally realize that it is just incredibly strong.