Guild Wars 2

Yes, we know how to kill bunker Guardians now. I can do it too without too much sweat. But it took time to make a balanced setup that also could take down the largest constant in GW2 PvP. And part of the reason they’re beaten is because they’re a very well known constant and so you already know what they’re going to do before they do it. Same with bunker Elementalists.

I feel that it’s currently the same way with Necro. I’ve had decent success just doing a few tweaks to my current builds.

I mean, what do people expect to happen when a class jumps up to tournament viable? Nerf Necros now, and they’re almost guaranteed to no longer be seen in tournaments ever again.

Aether McLoud.1975:

If it takes a special class with a special build setup to even have a chance of killing a necro, that’s a sure sign that the profession is OP and needs heavy nerfing.

Awesome. Let’s get to nerfing those bunker Guardians then.

It’s not the only grandmaster trait that’s specific to countering condition builds. Mesmer’s have a trait that cause every shatter to remove conditions. It’s still not a great choice because of how much you’re giving up to get that grandmaster.

It made more sense when you could earn gems from tournaments. I still wish that even with free tournaments you earned 1-10 gems per victory.

Oreoginal.1580:

lmaonade.9207:

Oreoginal.1580:

People get Warrior’s Sprint (at least I do) because you keep that 25% move speed increase while in combat. Swiftness move speed buff doesn’t work if you’re in combat. At least this makes Warriors harder to kite, especially with the added Dogged March.

Anyways, just my two cents. (:

lolwut…

When someone hits you while you’re in Swiftness, you lose the move speed increase whereas Warrior’s Sprint move speed increase stays with you even when you’re in combat.

Uh… with Swiftness, you still move 33% faster in combat than someone without swiftness and in combat.

Fade.9124:

my main question is why would you play a condi warrior in s/t-pvp when there are 2-3 other classes that are much better at condi builds? if you enjoy it great but really condi warriors are probably at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to condition builds and when you can choose necro, engi, etc

GW2, outside of top tier play, is a lot about doing a strategy or role (in this case, conditions) using a style you enjoy (one of the eight classes). It’s not supposed to be all about min maxing, which was also one of the original goals of the game.

Another thing… why do clones have to be so useless outside of being shatter bait, and then make it so hard to get more clones without using traits like Deceptive Evasion?

A great example is also the Warrior’s Flurry and a number of other skills that cause Immobilize. A person can still dodge roll as it’s being applied.

My only problem with Deceptive Evasion is why it wasn’t a Master or Grandmaster trait in the line that actually decreases shatter cooldown. Couldn’t they have made some other type of build for Mesmer’s to use and take advantage of crit damage?

I can only hope that they’re modifying all of the other clone generation weapon skills to compensate.

I’d say high burst isn’t balanced. The main counter to it is to use a bunker build+class, which is also countered by high burst. There’s no middle to this game, so almost every decent build has to either hit some burst threshold or some bunker threshold.

Burst builds cause fights to be a game of rocket tag. Bunker builds make the game boring for most people. And I don’t understand why people want to go to WvW for 1v1 fights beyond the great divide PvP has from WvW and PvE.

Ajaxx.3157:

shinreigari.7318:

I’m sorry – is it just me or does anyone else think that talking about current builds in depth is kinda “late” (didn’t wanna say “useless”) considering that in 4 days some major changes are going to be made in every class’ trait lines? Just asking, no offense or anything…

Simply Yes

We still aren’t 100% sure those notes are real, and people still need something for right now. WvW reset is tonight.

Wait, we aren’t supposed to constantly complain about matches becoming imbalanced in the other direction?

Blackhat.4016:

Maybe this is a stupid question but what’s the point of leveling in PvP? Am I completely missing something here?

Here are the reasons why I think Anet doesn’t want you to gain huge amounts of XP in PvP:

• Has no influence on PvP at all. => Doesn’t matter.
• If you play PvP first and then start playing PvE it would be even easier than it is right now since you are already high level. => PvE is even more “faceroll” and would be less fun since you automatically start with a high level char.

The only reason why XP in PvP would be nice is for WvW. There would be less disadvantages for PvP players compared to PvE players once they start playing WvW.

In the end it would spoil PvE though since you don’t need to level anymore. Believe it or not, leveling is a huge part of the PvE content even though it doesn’t seem like it. Just imagine starting with a max level char in PvE. It would be boring.

All areas are level scaled for the purpose of not making the PvE content one use.

You’d still need money for the armor to make yourself overpowered.

Most people who enjoy PvP enough to spend little time in PvE would prefer to just WvW anyway.

As I posted in a similar thread, part of the problem was because the old system created stagnant ratings. Part of the reason they’re doing this is because the only way to get more accurate ratings is to mixup the matchups more.

Are people listening to him? He’s saying that server ratings decided these matchups. If these matchups are bad, it’s because the server ratings were bad. If the server ratings are bad, then you need to shakeup the matchups in order to get more accurate ratings, because the current ratings were gained from stagnant matchups.

Really, the only viable way I can see of punishing larger groups is to make it harder to revive defeated people. That’s what keeps their momentum going and makes it impossible to wear them down. It becomes an all or nothing type of game, which is more fun in PvP than in WvW.

Eh, don’t forget that there are legit differences in builds you can make and stat thresholds you can reach.

To be fair about the tooltip fixes, a lot of them seem to be dealing with hard coded descriptions that need to be recoded, then rewritten, then re-checked for every language the game supports. And then they need to be bug tested to make sure that they’re accurately changing along with stat changes, and as soon as you involve bug testing like that you get mind numbing work combined with meticulous paperwork to catalogue everything with. That’s the main reason we only get a couple tooltip fixes per class each update.

However, balance changes are a whole different bag of tricks… At this point I think they somehow still don’t have a full game plan of how they want the classes to work together in the end, so they’re just doing tweaks here and there while they experiment behind the scenes as to what may work. As people have said, the Warrior and the Necro both need changes almost at a structural level and they’re deathly afraid of going in the wrong direction and then having to rescind any changes.

Adian.8756:

Daecollo.9578:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Defense-Grandmaster-Trait-Indomitable/page/2#post2092358

Destruction of the Empowered
Deal 5% bonus damage per unique boon on your target.
Each time you hit the target, heal yourself for each boon he has.
(At level 80, the amount healed per boon is 49 + 0.01 * Healing Power.)

Example:
If your target has 3 unique boons, each hit will heal you for 150.
This would allow warriors to have an Anti-Bunker Role in SPVP/PVP, but not overpower them in PvE, because most mobs do not have boons except bosses.

Most mobs, trash mobs don’t even have boons, so in PvE they would not gain a bunker increase.

100Blades on an activated Lyssa Rune; 3600 instant heal and 45% extra damage. In the same trait. Woop woop.

Definitely wouldn’t mind seeing that. Another issue in the game is how few of the runes and sigils get actual play. Lyssa and Ogre are way too strong compared to everything else and if you’re not going to nerf them, at least give a strong counter.

Yes
There’s no good reason it can’t work if the secondary objectives are interesting enough and the rest of the game is made around it.

Underwater combat can be very fun but it’s 1v1 balance is even worse than the 1v1 balance on land. As soon as you get a teammate or two things become a lot more interesting.

There’s also the fact that there are people out there so ignorant about underwater combat that they don’t even know you can equip utility and elite skills underwater… Yes, I met someone in one of my guilds who didn’t know that.

There’s still a backline in this game. Rangers with bows, Staff Eles and Necros, a lot of the 900-1200 range classes make great dps and support backlines. The problem I see is more of the midline. It’s only purpose at this point is for the frontline people to back off a bit and wait for some skills to come off cooldown.

Revealed debuff should last 5 seconds maximum. I’m still back and forth on 3 seconds…

fivekiller.1432:

if you build your character from the ground up with the goal to defeat thieves, you can do well as any class in WvW.

This way of thinking has led me to many fun times in WvW.

Sunreva.8714:

For me and my friends, ‘affinity’ culling resulted in the following:

3 of us in the middle of no where, away from any action. We see a 3 shadows on the ground approaching us (no character models have loaded yet, no nametags). As the shadows get to about 1200 distance away, the character models finally load in, still no nametags. They proceed to run by us, not realizing that we are enemies (they must of been having the same culling issues). As they run by us, the nametag loads in, and low and behold, they’re enemies.

It was this bad. I dread the thought of this returning.

This. was. asset. load. delay. That’s what’s being fixed with this update.

I turn off auto-attack and have my 1st skill rebound to an extra mouse button. For both Sword, and timing Greatsword evasions, Ranger is one of those classes where you don’t want to have auto-attack on for melee.

Ojimaru.8970:

And the armor ignoring part (for killing guardian and warriors) is very overrated.

This line tells me a great deal of how much misconception you have regarding game mechanics and class builds. Armour, as in the stat provided by actual armour pieces, mean little to nothing without Toughness. Toughness, on the other hand, is being stacked to kingdom come on most class builds, and more often than not at the expense of Vitality. This is a good thing for Condition Damage builds of any profession.

People prefer Power builds because it provides quick bursts of damage that secures kills; Condition Damage builds do consistent damage throughout the fight while kiting, dancing, etc but run the risk of enemies fleeing, i.e. zomgnobadge.

People also absolutely adore the BIG NUMBERS that pop up for Power builds, but can’t appreciate the string of small numbers spewing off the enemies’ heads.

Oy, Mr. I-Know-My-Game-Mechanics. Bring up your Hero Panel. On the right you see Power, Precision, Toughness, and Vitality. Under that you see Attack, Crit Chance, Armor, and Health. Pay attention.

The best gameplay element I’ve seen: call in map/team chat that you’re starting a squad, or would like to join one in progress.

Leo G.4501:

Hmm, am I confusing Vengeance for Rally?

I figure whatever can rally you can count for Sweet Vengeance and I know those gravelings have rally’ed me before. On path 3, I’ve been rally’ed to death on more than one occasion :P

That’s the other form of the general rule. If you can Rally off of it, Vengeance can proc off of it.

The bleed duration bleeds work, but they’re very slight. Since Flurry only ticks bleeds for a few seconds, you need need a lot more bleed duration to make it worth while. Remember, the game rounds all duration down to the quarter second, and then bleeds only do damage once per second. This pretty much means that only extra bleed duration you need comes from the +50% bleed duration Major Adept Trait in the Crit/Cond Damage line.

If your build focuses more on using the auto-attack in combination with Frenzy and other sources of Quickness, then I’d stack runes and sigils to increase bleed duration.

Lachanche’s experience is similar to mine. The Warrior has few conditions, but it’s not like he’s building them up for an Epidemic. He’s applying them continuously throughout the fight so unless the opponent becomes immune to conditions the entire time, they’re going to bleed out. This means that Guardians and Eles give the most trouble, but they also have the lowest base health.

Atreus.5429:

@Proven even if the sigil of strength has an internal cooldown (of two seconds according to the wiki) wouldn’t you still get more out of the longbow since you get two attempts at getting a might stack with the longbow as opposed to one attempt with the rifle? Or am I missing something with volley because I think that is where most of the DPS of the rifle will come from…

On a related note, if say I’m not going with superior sigil of strength, what sigil(s) should I use to maximize DPS?

Basically, you shouldn’t be depending on Sigil of Strength. It’s an extra bonus, but it’s not something you specifically aim for. You want to blow people up using a high Power build? Take the Rifle. The Longbow is a well rounded weapon with combo finishers for support and two skills dedicated to control. But the Rifle blows people up.

General rule (there are exceptions of course) is if the monster gives you XP, it can count for Vengeance or Sweet Vengeance.

I’m pretty sure the sigil has an internal cooldown, so the rifle should give you more single target damage.

The way I see it, even if the PvE is seen as worse, changing to a trinity system will not solve that. That’s the primary problem I see with Vasham’s argument.

Instead of comparing to other MMOs, why don’t you compare GW2 with it’s focus on dodging and self-healing to other games entirely? Like action games? Or FPS? Or anything not an MMO? How do fights and encounters there get much more interesting?

In any game, there are player mechanics and enemy mechanics. You’re hating on the enemy mechanics while proposing the solution is in the player mechanics. It’s not. It’s in the enemy mechanics.

And stuff like this:

Disclaimer: I am a former WoW raider with realm first world top 50-100 kills for 6 straight tiers. You can hate on Blizzard all you want but you can not deny that they masterfully design amazing encounters, something ANet has not come remotely close to.

Is an opinion. I don’t like Blizzard style encounters. But, Blizzard did design encounters that you found masterful.

digiowl.9620:

I find myself starting to wonder if the problem is control, or lack of suck, of the battlefield. Tanking is in a sense about control, being able to control who the mobs focus on. Or similarly deny them the ability to do certain things.

But with the aggro mechanic being a virtual black box – join one PUG and you can’t shake the mob no matter how much you try, join another and you find the exact same mob ignoring you completely – and what controls we have, interrupts, usually being on long cooldowns – making them timing of their use a life or death issue – the players end up having a distinct lack of control over the battle.

End result is that we are fighting on the mobs terms, rather than our own. For some that may be exciting, and i would not want to deny them the right to do things that way if they so choose, but for others it becomes a real frustration.

For an example outside of the dungeons, i can’t really deal with more than one mob aggroing me by locking down most of them while dealing with one. I have to deal with them all constantly or i find myself back at a waypoint with damaged armor.

End result is that i learn that if i want to get anything done i need to find ways to dump a massive amount of AOE damage on them in a short amount of time. This because i can’t really compensate for lack of AOE via crowd controls.

It sounds like at the very end, you learned the wrong thing. Fight smarter, not harder. If you don’t have enough control to take them all down by yourself, you either need to compensate with more support options (protection? vigor?), better dps targetting (whittle down their numbers), or just avoid that situation entirely and/or escape.

Alipius.4783:

Well… I can’t edit to add this… too long…

Silentsins.3726:

Geren.1945:

The point is with most effects so ridiculously short in length, you might as well not bother with em’, since they won’t probably make much of a difference and your time could probably be better spent just smashing stuff in the face instead.

Then, your enge drops glue shot for another 3 seconds before going back to DPS, followed by your ele, who also happens to be paying attention, extends the control even further by throwing frozen ground in front of that. Meanwhile, the whole enemy group tries to run at your group in a ball the whole time.

You don’t get it. The above is a common example of how the game is intended to be played. How it IS played by good players. Most people would rather complain then figure that out though…

It is control, indeed, I can’t say it isn’t…
But god, you say it is the way “good players” play, it seems to requiere everybody’s attention, and it’s only… what? Snare? to be able to run in front of mobs? Nice for melee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyYmN2dzJ18
Last time I used it, it was for D3. Here’s another sign

That’s not what I’d call control, or with many more things acting on at least cast/attack, in different ways

Just because you don’t call it control, does not mean is it not, in fact, control. Just as everyone has to heal themselves, everyone needs to control together. That means linking one person’s snares to another person’s. Interrupts and stuns aren’t the only type of control.

You made a typo in the Eternal Battleground section. The southern camp of NPCs is not filled by Quaggan, but by Hylek (the frogs).

Two out of the three modes in GW2 are about fighting opposing players. So I just build my gear and traits towards fighting players. I test some builds in sPvP first, but otherwise I build for PvP/WvW only since PvE content is easy enough no matter what kind of spec you are.

Okay, sorry I took so long to come back to this. Someone did a test in the Necro forums, and there is definitely a multiplication somewhere in the condition duration formula as it relates to using your traits, or else Fear just ticks off damage weirdly.

Anyway, I’m wrong somewhere, and it’s probably with the multiplication. I know that damage ticks once per second, which was why I was aiming for a 2 second burn rather than just 1.blah. But since it seems pretty much impossible to attain in sPvP I’ll leave it alone and not rely on Virtue of Justice’s passive so much.

Thanks for the help everyone.

I’ve been trying different things in sPvP, but I end up with only one tick of burning damage popping out.

2 Runes of Flame Legion, Baelfire, and Forge each, giving 15% extra burning duration each.

Two Sigils of Smoldering on a dual wielding setup giving 10% duration each.

+20% condition duration due to traits. I can’t afford to go to 30% and still have the build I have in mind work.

On a calculator, 1.15 * 1.15 * 1.15 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.2 > 2, but when I actually do a burn I only see one tick of burning damage jump off the person. Maybe it’s actually doing two ticks of burning and I can’t tell?

I can’t even trust the tooltip, since tooltips never show the condition duration applied from Runes. You can only see the extra duration due to traits and sigils bringing the 1 second burn up to 1 1/4 second (rounded down).

A MOBA mode would only work in GW2 if they did something similar to the Halloween MOBA game mode: instead of farming for RPG type bonuses, you’re carrying out an objective to make your overall team stronger.

Coincidentally, that’s the only way I’d enjoy a MOBA; too much RPG and build orders.

As someone said before, they were made simple to get people into hotjoin pvp more, and the rewards were aimed to get them to keep playing even after the achievement was gained.

The point is to get more people into sPvP. Right now, sPvP already has some of the most accessible titles and achievements in the game. They’re just stacking on more reasons to keep playing.

Oozo, man, it’s not worth it. As with everything else in GW2, especially in the aftermath and the crying over the lost shores final event, it’s more productive to go have fun rather than argue here. Make your point, then head on out. If the devs read the forums, they’ll see it and know it.

WvW and PvE have different rules. WvW is meant to be a 24 hour thing. Special Events don’t all have to be 24 hours long. If you get concert tickets, you expect to be able to drop in at any time during a 24 hour period to enjoy it?

I was pretty sure it was 100%…

Either way, it’s been a combo finisher since launch.

lettucemode.3789:

5% additive would be wayyyy too much. Marks giving 8% life force per enemy hit? Spectral Walk/Armor giving 8% life force every time you get hit? That’s OP.

If it was additive they’d have to adjust the number down to 1%, maybe 2%.

Now that I actually have a 30% extra life force pool, I’m finding it very hard to fill that bar at times.

Gumiku.9760:

nerva.7940:

the major problem with 5v5 now is that people ragequit very often, so all servers have high turnover, which causes more serious balance issues before autobalancing kicks in. or even 5vs4 is really bad. small team imbalances arent felt in 8v8. so after playing 5v5 for about two hours tonight, i think im done with it. going back to 8v8 for better rank leveling.

Yeah, this is a very serious problem.
Very often, I join a 5v5 match with 4 people on each team. The next round usually become 2v2, and have to wait until half of the match passed to become 5v5 again. It is extremely unenjoyable.

This is pretty much why 8v8 was made into the main hot join mode in the first place.

Distances on borderlands do need to be longer, as it’s already too quick for large 30+ groups to run across the map, and map capacity was increased months ago without increasing map sizes.

The only thing that’s going to work is changing the incentive structure.