Guild Wars 2

Nah, Churning Earth in AoE fields is a better idea it seems.

Nice hotjoin buddy.

You’re probably facing the d/p backstab build. It differs from the usual d/d backstab since the combo can be done from stealth and it has more utility. If they caught you unaware it can be pretty tricky to counter.
This is what an average d/p thief runs: http://goo.gl/kFkbT.

Keep an eye on your pet, he’ll often still follow the thief even if he stealthed. Use your traps defensively, entangle will destroy him when he has used up his shadowstep and it should give you enough breathing space to fill him with bleeds. I carry lightning reflexes on my trapranger against backstab thieves/warrs, save that against the basilisk venom opener.

You should play more aggressively when a thief uses shadow refuge, since they usually use it when they are quite low. Head in and always keep autoattacking, spam AoEs, that’s enough to either get him down or make him run. What profession do you play? We’d be able to give better input if we know what tools you have to play with.

EDIT: ranger or mesmer I guess? Trapspam for ranger and you should have more than enough tools as a mesmer to totally mitigate thief burst.

OP stands and waits while thief sits in shadow refuge. That should say it all.
Triple BS thief comp is horrible and very easy to squash with a remotely balanced comp.
Roll a thief and learn its weaknesses, it’s clearly a l2 kitten ue (this is getting old).

It might just be me, but I absolutely love having that “UP” and “bad condition class” at midfights. You can keep your conditionwarriors, I’ll better roll with my necrobuddy kthx.
OP obviously has no idea of the effect that rez signet/corrupt/epidemic has in midfights.

Larynx’s post is pretty much what most of the good 100b warrs run. Some prefer endure pain over balanced stance, sword or mace over axe. I prefer Ogre runes myself, fire on GS and rage+bloodlust on sword+shield.

Oreoginal’s builds won’t work in practice, shouts are useless in spvp. Warr doesn’t need that condition removal in a team setting, although signet of stamina is good for it’s extra endurance regen. The added condiremoval honestly doesn’t make a huge difference in survivability, but a bigger burst will make a difference in teamfights.

If you’re only interested in messing some stuff up in hotjoin, I’d rather suggest going axe+mace/sword or mace+shield and soldier amu. Not tourna viable, but tons of fun in hotjoin.

Med.6150:

They can’t tell, because in if they announced changes to, let’s say, some underwater skills, and these won’t work out, people will be really mad…

I can’t wait till we’re this far into profession balance, so we could start arguing over underwater skills.
Sadly with the current pace of things, that’ll probably happen in a few years or so.

Ruby orbs and fire sigil.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I meant as heavy farming. Seen that kind of stuff way too much in other games.

Bonuspoints for defensive play is needed imo, I’m not sure if passive points awarded is the best idea, since it’ll probably be heavily farmed. I have never cared that much about rank/glory points. Winning the match is what’s important. Even if I end up as last in my team as a bunker, I’m still happy if it contributed to us winning the match. If I’d want glory/rank, I’d just farm hotjoin all day running with the zerg and still suck as a r40-50.

Free tournament tokens come from 8-team tournaments atm. The Leather set that is first in locker aka Duelist/named set in PvE come from this recipe: armor token+powder+crystal+free token (duelist is a non-crit set for crystal, but it can crit to the higher tier armor).

Well done, nice survey. Looking forward to the results after more input.

Sounds more like the fault of your system, than GW2. Though I’ll agree on laggy world events like dragons, those are awful.
Maybe try some single player games for a change?

I love the gameplay mechanics, it’s very fluid and it “feels” really nice. I think I could never go back to any clunky MMO which has the static casting and where the damage mitigation is based on stats rather than active abilities to avoid damage like dodge/evasion skills. GW2 has the best melee combat so far in any MMO I’ve played. I don’t consider TERA as an alternative, its combat looks awfully clunky to me.

To be honest, overall balance isn’t that bad, though there are some imbalances between classes and some lack more than 1 viable build. Some balancing is certainly required, but there isn’t that overall imba feeling about some professions as it is in some other games. I’ve never cared much about rewards/shinies in competitive games (mostly shooter history from UT99/Q3/Wolf:ET era), imo PvP just needs some new features and a bit of tweaking balance wise.

What I’m currently looking forward to most are new features (custom arenas, spectator mode mostly) and regular balance patches (not small meaningless fixes for tooltips every month or two months). No point in other shinies if the core is still incomplete.

http://youtu.be/DJQ_7jKIm24?t=12s

New meta: unstoppable wallmesmers.

What it is there to reproduce? (honestly I’m going mad trying to figure out the exact setup to hit 2959 armor)
Thieves hit hard, it’s not exactly news. Honestly, I think this is fine, if they miss their burst, then they become pretty much useless and need to run or they’ll get mauled by enemy glasscannons. This is from spvp pov ofc, things are different in wubwub.

You mean swiftness I guess and yes it’s still available. Recheck your build.

I’d say this is purely a experience issue, you’ll develop a twitch breakstun reflex overtime against bursters. Anticipation plays a huge role in this also. I don’t usually get backstab combod, unless I get hit from behind without seeing the thief or there are latency issues between us. I play a GC warrior and that combo globals me, but I still rarely only die to that. Watch out for the basilisk buff and anticipate the combo.

How you can die to a backstab combo on your guardian is a mystery to me. I sometimes play bunkerguard if we don’t have anyone available and that thing barely tickles me.

Our team’s mesmer has had this happened to him a few times recently, only login/logout helped.

Ah that’s why we see you in tournas all the…oh wait.

I accidentally trap ranger yesterday, how fix?

Also, how do I offhand skritt?

• Make mobile strikes cleanse slows aswell
• Fix endure pain bugs (3s DP even when traited, 4 sec EP when untraited) and make it into a true invuln that is similar to blurred frenzy/mistform
• Make rampage ignore all conditions and buff it’s skills
• Change GS burst skill to something proper or increase it’s damage greatly
• 3% burst damage at 30 discipline is rubbish, buff it

I still fail to see how server tactics is any way related to cross-profession balance in individual level. Your argument is purely related to groupbuilds and high scale tactics.

Are you suggesting that we should balance cross-profession based on how they for example soloroam/scout in an openfield setting or based on groupfights where the surrounding environment is a big factor in group effectiveness? Everything you mentioned above can be done with any build and any profession with the “right people”. It’s natural some professions/builds are better for some tasks than others in a large scale tactics. What’s the idea of cross-profession balancing then? Trying to bring everyone down to the same abilities is not good balancing. For example a thief is a much better scout than a guardian. Thief is more evasive, has good 1v1 power, has excellent escape abilities. Does that make the slower moving guardian worse than the thief? I think not.

You’re not talking about individual balance cross-profession, you’re talking about fitting the right profession+build to the right role in a group. That’s a totally different matter and is related to server scale tasks that need to be done and is no indication of balance differences between classes.

High-end WvW usually consists of organized guildgroups that run around 15-30 member parties, organize their attacks and movement with other guildgroups, use superior siege, smart movement, false baiting and mostly groupbuff->portal/stealthbombs->meleetrain iniatators followed by combofield spam and casters, hit and run group tactics on a high scale play. I fail to see how individual 1v1 balance between professions plays a role in a group build?

Do you think a group filled with for example mesmers and thieves who are excellent duelists don’t get rolled by a balanced group that consists of all of the above?

Should we balance around which professions can kill npcs/dolayks faster, how someone who is upleveled gets oneshotted by a fullzerker 25/30/0/0/15 thief in wvwvw or balance around a closed setting where gear is equal, there are no additional factors like random buffs, statoption and extreme min-maxing is regulated due to the amulet choices and professions can be evaluated both in a balanced 1v1 setting and equally numbered teamfight setting where there is no player difference in opposite sides?

Rednik.3809:

Scotto.3609:

weakest class……… 14.5k evis…………yeah no.

And Killshot! And 100Blades! So much damage, thats why all tpvp teams want only warriors and no one else.

Referencing this? https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Eviscerate-is-brutal-when-it-connects

What an eyeopener, I guess we were all wrong, warrior is totally fine, because we have damage! We just failed to think of the double shout/signet of might meta in tournaments. You’re clearly more experienced Scotto and totally didn’t get a lucky crit of a naked guy/frenzied warr in hotjoin.

Ah here’s a comparison that means absolutely nothing btw:
http://youtu.be/x2z0mN09m_8

Well wubwub isn’t a closed and a limited setting, it’s filled with numerous factors like food/lvl&gear inconsistency and ofc the increased amount of min-maxing you can do with PvE stats, so individual balancing between professions from wubwub point of view is not wise. Also due to the higher number of players in the average fight will reduce the effect of individual skills and more of a combined form of a huge blob that differs from the other blob based mostly on the profession setup. Individual builds have little effect on that. It’s pretty much impossible to do individual balance based on wubwub, certainly not wise and pretty much not important. Wubwub is won with numbers and huge group tactics not individual builds/balance.

or

tl;dr

It’s the only one where individual pvp balance matters.

yes

Rednik.3809:

Psybunny.8906:

Pretty much 99% of warriors in pvp use a GS, BC and/or bolas with frenzy and balanced stance/endure pain/signet of stamina.

In sPvP, yes. But sPvP is not the only PvP option.

It’s the only one where individual pvp balance matters.

xiv.7136:

Sorry guys.

I put banners in there and ………

Surely with next patch we’ll be “viable” 4 banner mobile lbow condiwarriors who destroy boons with banner auto or smth.

Banner buffs….really?

Pretty much 99% of warriors in pvp use a GS, BC and/or bolas with frenzy and balanced stance/endure pain/signet of stamina.

I know how you feel defektive, it can get pretty depressing at some points. I’m actually thinking of taking a break from my warrior if March patchnotes are as depressing as the ones before. Even though my team likes when I play warrior and I think I do good on it, I still feel pretty useless against some teams/specs and most of the time playing one effectively is pretty exhausting mentally.

For me, It helps me relax if I swap on some other profession (for example trap ranger&shatter mesmer wth easymode?) from time to time and think of warrior as “hard mode”. I still enjoy warrior gameplay the most though.

I’d say take a break if you’re tired or just take a more relaxed approach, forget about “e-sports”, play for fun and just wait it out. We’ll hopefully get there eventually.

Pretty much same as NA I’d think, 99% is 100b glass, sword/axe+shield is the most popular, lbow is much rarer. Good warriors do ok against bursty/balanced specs, but against a counterspec, that is heavy on conditions, then it absolutely gets destroyed without a chance to win and unless the warrior is extremely talented it holds the whole team down. Overall an ok choice if you have someone who can play it extremely well with a “handicap”. It is capable of absolutely destroying people if left without pressure, but against some teams it’s not a viable option and a warrior is definitely not someone who can carry a team.

One of the secret abilities that I use with rampage is that I turn my 16 Youtube subscribers into “hundreds” and I get 17 seconds of endure pain without having to slot it, but that’s a secret.

Absolutely useless, whenever I see someone use it in spvp or wvwvw, I think to myself, oh hey a free kill. Signet/Banner are hundred times better in both pvp and pve.

Incredibly frustrating at early game, since you’re basically running around naked and can’t use a huge part of your profession’s mechanic.
I think necro should start with around 20-25% DS at the start of the match.

LastDay.3524:

Softspoken.2410:

Warriors don’t start with full adrenaline, do they?

Actually they just need to use Healing Surge once to get full Adrenaline.

Anyway I think that we should start with like 20% Life Force even in PvE.
Not full though, that’d be kind of crazy.

This is what I sometimes do when I’m running axe+shield as 2ndary set. I use healing surge, get full adrenaline and by the time I get to the point, my heal is almost off CD and I have my adrenaline full and axe burst ready for opening.

I rolled a ranger for tourna play a couple of days ago and I’m incredibly surprised on how strong and successful ranger is in pvp even with very minimal experience with the class. Ranger is definitely not UP in tpvp, but I guess for someone who is used to always fighting with a handicap (I main a warrior in tournas), it was a pleasant discovery of finding a both strong 1v1 and teamfight build from a profession I tried out and liked in beta. I think it’s one of the strongest builds beside the necropeeler to kill bunkers and eles.

I bet it’s obvious, that I’m playing trapper. Anyways this is what I’m using currently: http://tiny.cc/2oixtw

If some of the veteran rangers could help me finetune my build, I would appreciate it greatly. I’d love some information on pet and offhand choices, some comments on healing spring vs troll unget and empathic bond vs bark skin. If it’s not too much then I’d like some tips on how to use sword more defensively aswell, I seem to be stuck on being offensive with the sbow most of the time.

This is purely for tpvp use.

I know the bug you’re referring to Larynx, I heard some talk that they might have a fix for it in the future patch. For me a quick strafe before swapping usually helps canceling channel skills more reliably.

EDIT: about leg specialist, it’s true beauty mostly lies in bladetrail imo, skillshotting and doing a double-immobilize on someone is just wonderful. :’)

dmitrycx.7465:

BTW what are usuall sigils? I use Rage(quickness) for my GS, Hydromancy for my shield,
for A\S its sigil of 100% crit after swap on my axe, for S\S i dont really know, smtm just sigil of accuracy

Sword + Great Sword isn’t a good duel spec. Just putting it out there.
Hint: Mace + DPS weapon = Baseline in dueling
I get you right? it is GS + Mace\X ?

This type of build with a little variations is what most GS warriors run and this specifically is mine: http://tiny.cc/905ttw

Little explanation to sigil choices:

• Fire vs Air on GS: fire is AoE effect and 1.0 damage coeficent, Air is single target and 1.1 coeficent. Since GS is a cleave weapon, I prefer the extra AoE damage against groups, people rezzing etc. I’m using also using fire on axe MH if I have it as my 2ndary.

*Having rage on GS seems not so ideal imo, since you’ll be very in-and-out of meleerange while playing with a GS. Since you’ll want to use whirlwind as often as possible and having it proc after you just did a whirlwind and are trying to close the cap again will leave you with a “wasted” quickness with no extra damage to show for it. Could have it’s uses though.

• I use rage on my sword mainhand, since the role of sword in my playstyle is to setup my burst, to catch people and to keep mobile pressure on them. When rage procs (ideally at the start of a flurry), I swap to my GS right away and I can get off a “free” quickness 100b without having to use my traits or utility.

• I personally use bloodlust on my offhand, but that is purely to anyone’s preference. I just prefer the extra 250 power I get from stacks (it’s 5 per kill in s/tpvp so 25 is not so hard to reach). Energy/Hydromancy/Geomancy are very good “on swap” choices, I’d choose energy from those 3. Alternatively you could roll with for example force axe with fire shield, since axe mainhand will get both the 5% damage bonus and at the same time all the axe skills will still proc from the offhand fire sigil.

Overall about the build:
Warrior is very weak to slows and conditions overall, so you’ll have to play on mobility and “drive-by” attacks. Get in, burst and pressure, get out and move on, if it’s not safe to stay. You’ll most likely be the first one to get focused so smart play in being “invisible”, but still getting your job done is quite difficult in teamfights.

Usually the way to distinguish smart warriors from bad ones, is that a smart one never blows all of his cooldowns right away and he knows when to run. Combat with a warrior is all about baiting opponent defenses, pressure and waiting for an opening. Since you’re quite vulnerable and eat everything face first it’s usually a timed battle for you.

As Schwar said, mace+shield is better for dueling, since it requires a lot of baiting. And consider using it if you need a bit of setup for your bursts. My personal favourite and in my opinion best dueling spec is a bit tankier axe+mace/mace+shield build, but that build falls very short in tourna play due to lack of mobility and it has it’s glaring weaknesses against some builds. Fixing it with sword mainhand always felt like a poor man’s greatsword.

About runes:
I’m using Ogre runes myself, only for the extra damage they bring and your rockdog can be a decent ally in combat. I have also used Lyssa and it can be useful for clutch condi removal and stability for stomping.

Biggest Ogre downside is the thief’s sbow or any other bouncing attacks which will bounce between you and your dog, the other one is since it’s a damage rune it offers nothing else except damage.
Biggest downside to lyssa is the DPS drop from less power, constantly feeling forced to keep your elite on passive and saving it for some condiburst, since you’ll never know when you’ll need it and ofc the dreaded corrupt boon which hardcounters it and causes your death most likely. (Although from first hand experience from someone who also alts a necro, corrupt boon is a miracle to hit reliably -.-)

Lbow is so-so and it’s good for AoE pressure when you’re offpoint in a teamfight, gameplay with it mostly resembles thief sbow clusterbombing. It requires you to focus more on lbow when playing like that and keeping GS mostly for mobility/extra finisher burst. I think quite a few NA warriors play with GS+lbow, not so popular in EU.

Rifle seems to be pretty horrible in a closed setting like spvp, since the hard hitting killshot is easily avoidable by enemies, even by accident when they go behind terrain/object.

Warrior meta has pretty much made 0 changes since beta, only noticeable thing is that people run even more glassier, since the extra survivability from defense tree didn’t count for much. Axe/mace/sword+shield is what 99% of warriors here in EU use, you’ll sometimes see the occasional hammer warr and “wtf clearly from PvE” signet users. Main hand for 2ndary set depend on if you want damage/CC/mobility, it all depends on enemy team setup and map.

I strongly recommend grabbing leg specialist trait from tactics 10, dropping the arms 30 (you have quickness there I assume?) to 20 and using mobile strikes in discipline 20 if you don’t already have it. I strongly suggest grabbing some sort of stunbreak (balanced stance and endure pain are the most popular). Balanced stance is the overall every-situation choice and endure pain is used mostly against thief/burst heavy opponents.

If you need heavy condition removal you could swap bull’s charge for signet of stamina or have a look at lyssa runes. Lyssa removes all conditions/give all boons if you use your elite.

Overall warrior is a team fighter and needs other people to patch his downsides, else he is very squishy. He has better AoE pressure than a thief, very good rez denial and can stay in midfights a bit longer. Not a very good duelist though and most of the 1v1s you encounter you’re practically playing with a handicap unless you caught the enemy with his pants down. There are a lot of times when you have to disengage and run and refocus on other point or regroup with a teammate, since there are a lot of professions/builds you will never win 1v1 against a equally skilled player.

In the case of equally skilled players, necro should never lose to a warrior.

But for tips against minionmaster, I suggest you spin-to-win his minions down, make sure to avoid the flesh golem rush, keep constant pressure on him to force him to go defensive, but save your main burst when he has used up his DS or when it’s on CD (10 secs untraited), make sure he doesn’t have fear on CC traited.

Never open with a frenzy burst, he’ll mitigate it easily with DS and it’ll leave you very very vulnerable. It’s better to bite chunks out of him with whirlwind/bladetrail&flurry (good with leg specialist) to non-frenzy 100b. Constant pressure is important, because if you leave him any breathing space he’ll kite or fearcombo you and burn you down with conditions while easily outlasting you. Burst him with frenzy 100b at the end of a dodgeroll when you’re sure you’ve got his defenses down.

Imo axe mainhand is stronger against necros than sword, since sword bleeds can bite you back when he transfers them, but pure direct damage from auto/eviscerate forces him to go defensive. Though using a lot of immobilizes and swapping to a greatsword is very effective form of pressure also.

Fighting tanky condi/minionnecros is similar to fighting mesmers, it’s pretty much a race against the clock where you have to keep constant pressure and kill him in a set time, otherwise you’ve already lost the fight, since he’ll kill you with conditions and outlast you.

I didn’t say it wasn’t entertaining, I agree it has pretty nice cinematic value and it kinda gets you pumped up. But by posting this video for everyone to see in this forum, we have every right for constructive criticism/feedback. Having a subjective and honest opinion doesn’t make us cynical and bitter afk-warriors. I see no disrespect in the feedback so far, just varied opinions on what we were presented.

Cinematics: 7/10
Audio/atmosphere: 6/10
Player skill: 5/10
Kills/opponents: 3/10
Overall: 5/10

I’d see this as an okish trailer for an introduction to a warrior class, definitely not a “pvp movie”. Hotjoin and baddie opponents, didn’t see any special show of skill on warrior either, no baiting/no pressure, just random BC+100 or SB+Evis that most of the people learned how to evade back in beta.

This would buff unicorn thieves way too immensely. This would be way too OP.

“No, no, no!”
“Shiniiiies!”

Longtime mending user in tpvp, but converted to surge a month or so ago. I felt that the extra condition removal didn’t offer much to my survivability, I prefer the bigger heals and full adrenaline for evis/flurry. I’ll grab signet of stamina or lyssa runes if I absolutely need hard condition removal. Lyssa+restorative strenght is a nice choice also if your team already has very high DPS.

For PvE/dungeoning longbow never leaves my side as a 2ndary and a AoE opener/might stacking, mobs just melt to the AoE. For wvwvw I’d either use sword+shield/warhorn as extra mobility, rifle only if I’m glass specced and if I use it as a main weapon to pick off single players, otherwise longbow for extra pressure and setting up kills/combofields/AoE burn. Rifle is good with piercing with a high adrenaline and glasscannon build, but in big fights it often offers less pressure, since people will just massrez whoever you sniped.

A bit lackcluster in my opinion. I’m guessing this is for PvE/WvW focus. Ruby orbs are much better for damage than divinity and the survivability bonus that you get from all stats is really nothing. I’d sell them and just get orbs or runes based on what you need.

For wvwvw I’d take the 10 points from Tactics and put it to discipline, grab leg specialist in tactics and mobile strikes from discipline. You’ll also get the best minor trait Fast hands like this. Bull’s/signet of stamina/balanced stance as utility for wvwvw. I wouldn’t use frenzy, unless it’s a 1v1 situations, you’ll melt way too quickly.

For PvE I’d keep FGJ, grab signet of might and either OMM/frenzy or signet of fury as 3rd. Keep 10 points in tactics if you don’t want to keep swapping builds, otherwise move it to arms 30 or discipline 30. Grab signet CD from discipline and empower allies if you keep the 20/20/0/10/20 build.