Guild Wars 2

JTGuevara.9018:

Damage is out of control. Back then, you actually had to consider which skills to use and how to manage cooldowns. Now it’s just all spam. Elite specs are just too low-risk and high-reward.

Back then you could play one of the many brainless easymode bunker specs, sit in a point and just contest it for the whole game. Wow, so much skill.
People have nostalgia glasses. They don’t remember hambow, d/d cele ele, turret engi, bunker guardian, spirit ranger and many others. It took almost a year with a pretty bad balance, but the balance we have right now is just as good as it was just before HoT hit. Of course there’s adjustments that are needed (mostly DH and druid a bit) because the game will never be perfectly balanced, but the balance we have right now never have been this good.

T1 was JQ, DB and BG at the linkings. TC swapped with JQ briefly.

I’d argue the opposite. In NA at least, the tiers haven’t been this balanced in a LONG time. Just notice how much servers are rotating and staying somewhat competitive.
Perfect balance will never, ever happen. No matter links, population resets and such. What we have right now, I’d say, it’s pretty good. What hurts is how long it takes to relink. In 2 months, so much can happen.

I’d rather open world duels than a 1v1. As it happens in other games, people would gather in the same spot and duel all day.
2v2, 3v3 and I think that 10v10 deathmatch could be interesting. But it would dilute our already small PvP population, and people would complain A LOT around the balance. We don’t even have a good balance in 5v5 conquest, with more different sizes and gamemodes it would be hell.

I didn’t know this too. Guardians have been hard countering thieves since always but this is kinda too much and probably not intended. Must be the way that shadowsteps are coded and try to find a path between your initial and final point, triggering them on the way. Does it also happens with Lightning Flash from eles and Blink from mesmers?

You’re right, sword has damage modifiers that makes all the difference. Initially, at HoT release, the low auto damage bothered me a bit. But as time went on, I learned to love the staff for what it is. With Shiro quickness you still can cleave people ressing downed bodies just fine.

I don’t think that 5 needs a CD reduction. The skill has been nerfed two times and people still complain about it. Number 4 is indeed clunky because of the cast time, but I guess it’s fine? I’m not sure, but it doesn’t bother me that much. It’s balanced, I believe. But I do agree about number 2. The cast is too long to reliable interrupt exactly what you want and the second cast is indeed to expensive. I wish ANet look at it sometime, because right now is hard to interrupt key skills with reaction when you have this long cast.

You don’t need to be loyal to a server, what is just a name by now, to be loyal/enjoy the community from it. That’s why many people transfer in groups: what they really enjoy is each other’s company, and not a subjective virtual space that is the server. I transfered many times, I’ve met many people and many guilds. My loyalty is only to my guild and friends (that also transfer everywhere), but I learned to appreciate people and communities from many servers by transfering many times.

Walls are supposed to delay attackers, not to make defenders win combats lol.
You’re trying to tell me that if a group has enough people to build 5 catas, rotate bubbles and protect the catas, it is wrong or unfair? I’d say that wrong is one guy in a piece of siege hold 20 people just because he’s a defender.
Siege, walls, traps, siege disablers and such are supposed to delay. Not to win. If they have enough people to nuke the wall, it’s because you’re trying to climb the wall solo against a zerg. It’s totally fair that 20 people nuke 1 if this one takes a risk.
To properly defend against attackers, to repel them for good, you need to kill them. And for this you need matching numbers and to go down and fight, instead of hiding behind a wall and complaining that the game is unfair.

I do agree that the cata splash range is totally nuts, like hitting a wall from the map and damaging the wall from a tower, though.

I wonder if they don’t wanna make this a priority or if they just can’t fix it. Remember that several mechanics have been, or still are limited because of the amount of calculations that the server/engine has to do. Like the old culling and rendering tons of people, or the old 25 condition stacks limit, or the 5-man AoE damage cap.

Skill lag is awful. Really awful. It sucks. But I guess that they will need a lot of manpower working on it to fix, or just spend more on server structure.

I’m sorry, but what kind of drugs you’re using? Hahaha.
There’s no system for scouting/sentrying in the game and I doubt it will ever be because it’s so subjective and because of it, it could be extremely exploitable.
Also, GW2 would never create a system to players punish players, as it goes against the core principles of the game. And again, it would be easily abusable.
And the positive side of it also works. People would sit in the front of a camp, issue orders, and everybody would cap it. 5 players got more rewards than the rest. And if you limit the earnings to be only delivered if those players with orders captured it, a random player (or 30) could help and screw it.
I mean, there’s so many things wrong with this, and this is just the surface.

WvW systems have never been this good: world links, reward tracks, better stability, skirmishes, better squads, some UI changes and more to come.
WvW balance is pretty bad: the meta is brainless and boring.
WvW population is hit or miss: way less skilled guilds around, more blobs instead. I don’t know how EU is, but NA most servers are quite well balanced for once in their own tiers but theres one or two servers that imploded/raised that no one accounted for before the new links.

preacher.9370:

I was actually asked to run a staff on an AC run for skill 5. I don’t mind using it from time to time in PVE just for something different, but honestly my main dislike for staff is the boring animations for it. I unlocked daredevil and really never touched theif after that until yesterday, and was really liking the animations for their staff, wish rev’s could get an overhaul.

Really? Are you playig different races? Because I really like the animations from staff on humans. At least the auto, 3 and 5.

And on topic, I really like staff. Of course, I would love if the autos hit for more, but it is a great weapon in PvE, PvP and WvW. Being defensive/suportive is quite good sometimes.

Boonshare mesmer are the best boon providers by far, followed by revs. The thing about tempest is that while they provide less boons, they have more ways to support. With heals, auras, AoE stunbreakers, many combo fields, projectile destruction and such.

I don’t know exactly what you’re saying. Are you talking about invulnerable buff spots in the WvW maps or skills that make you invulnerable?
Both are completely fine to me.

Do you remember in the previous meta, when not only many necros reached legendary playing solo, but it was actually one of (if not) the easiest class to do so? And you woud find 3~5 necros in each match?
I do. The meta changed, some things got stronger and other things got weaker. But necro weaknesses by class design were exactly just the same.

This is thursday night after a pve patch. People not showing up to play is pretty normal.
As much as JQ NA is historically small and DB is dead, the only thing that this screenshot means that the YB PPT train has no breaks.

Sunshine.5014:

• Capture point starts big, around 420
• Whenever a fight happen around the point, it gradually becomes smaller over 20s
• Min radius is about 180
• When no fight is happening, gradually becomes bigger over 20s

All numbers can be tweaked based on data.
P.S: take a look at my other suggestions in the signature.

I like it. It would not work in every map (because they have physical barriers around the cap circle) but I like this mechanic. Could be something in a new map, or points that have no physical barrier like Capricorn and Coliseum. It creates a sense of urgency as the fight goes longer.

I really, really, reeeeaaallly think that giving rewards attached to server’s performance is a bad idea. Remember the bandwagon to winner servers before the WvW tournaments.
The devs already said that they’re thinking in ways to reward players with skirmishes, and I think it is a fun and good idea. But I really hope that it is attached to personal performance (like participation in reward tracks) instead of server’s performance.

That might be it, I know that once it was true but I didn’t see it happening in a looong time, so something might have changed.
And I agree with you. If we gonna talk about underwater unbalance, rangers are still by far the worst offenders.

LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE.

I don’t know if they changed it because I don’t play my thief in a long time. But I know for a fact that back in the day, there was a build with more initiative regeneration that you could spam one after the other and you had almost literally perma evade while underwater, with a very very little downtime.

+1 for a WvW themed reward track without tomes or a option to trade tomes for siege.
Just gives us something to spend tomes besides leveling.

The perma evade underwater thief build has been a thing since release of the game.
It was a huge problem in the old Raid on the Capricorn map. A thief could capture the underwater middle point and just evade to win. No one could kill it and capture the point back.
As very annoying as it is, there’s not much sense in complaining about it at this moment in the game. Underwater combat is broken beyond balance fixes. Only a overall rework could fix all of it’s problem.

Guardian and tempest is what you’re looking for.
Tempest is better if you wanna be a dedicated support, focusing on actively supporting before anything else, while guardian would be more like if you wanna play “normal” but doing a buttload of support naturally without much effort.

Aihao.5824:

ok,i’ll try) but what advantages has sw/sw over sw/sh?
I had thought about taking retri instead of invo, but I like that stun break.

Remember that as retri you gonna have pretty good stability uptime, so you gonna be less stunned overall.
Retri is easier to play. If you’re having a hard time, might be good go retri until you get used to revenant. Is much easier to play against DH and thieves, specifically. But invo is better overall, so I suggest for you to go back to it once you’re feeling comfortable.

Samug.6512:

Just go druid, and tell your friend to go druid as well, and cheese the kitten out of everyone. You will be unstoppable in pair as well as solo.

This. Druid is the answer. Just one druid is already a pain in the kitten . Two of them is just a nightmare.
You will have mobility, stealth, damage, condi clear, sustain, and you can support each other much better than as a pair of thieves.

The old one was god kitten awful, but the new one is okay IMHO.

Yes. It happened in NA. The requirement I believe is just the server rank/glicko. The ones on the top become host, the ones on the bottom become links.

I can’t say much yet from the map design perspective but the map assets look very boring and bland. This might be way too late in development for it but the map needs a new coat of paint to look more interesting.

They should increase the list of ranked maps soon. Skyhammer after the rework is enjoyable and might suit ranked play and Capricorn might need small tweaks and soon join ranked map rotation.

- Bring back the interest of hardcore WvW/GvG/RvR players to the game

It’s hilarious how people are overreacting. Saying that this was supoosed to be build templates, or that ANet should not spend resources over this and more.
This is not even close to a build template. Not even 1/10. It barely scratchs the surface of the complexity that a build template would have. Build templates will need to be customizable, savable, to account your gear, your bag and much more. Build templates aren’t coming only to pvp where everything is already streamlined, you know.
This default build system could have been the work of a single programmer in it’s spare time (like MANY other features and content in this game, like the action camera or the hungry cats in PvE) and it actually looks like it.
I’m usually the first to call ANet out in their mistakes, but this is just dumb. Take a chill pill, guys.

PS: build templates only became an idea with HoT, not in the last 4 years. Previously you could not even change traits without a NPC, or people don’t even remember? And while a year is more than enough to come up with a build template system and I get kittened that this doesn’t look like a priority, we need to wait for feature packs for new big features. Not LS releases.

I play WvW for fun, because I enjoy fighting and killing people.
Giving disavantages to the losers in a unfair gamemode that plays 24/7 is one of the worst sugestions I ever heard.
Giving too much stuff to winners is also bad. Remember that WvW is unfair at it’s core design. It would make it only even more unfair with people stacking in the winner servers. That’s why rewards in WvW should be given for the acomplishments of the player itself, not the server. Reward tracks are a good example of this.
Showing names will only create more toxicity and salt. People will whisper each other for the smallest things. You can already identify people by other means. And if you really wanna know the name of someone from the enemy server, just right click him and block. The name will show up in the blocklist.

WvW looking healthy right now is a good argument to NOT have any tournament. It does more harm than good. And ANet said that they are looking into different ways to give the tournament rewards to players, like in reward tracks, skirmish wins and such.

You should totally try, unless it’s a obvious suicide. How else you gonna improve? I don’t think that rev is a counter to DD (it can be quite the opposite) but I’ve won enough 1v2 thieves while roaming around. The thing is that I have been playing rev since HoT release.
Stick to one class, find a good build and keep fighting and eventually you will learn what you have to do against each class/build, not only thieves.

Warrior suits what you’re looking too.

My mistake then. I didn’t know.
Something else that bothered me on Discord and I forgot to mention is that there’s no whispers/C-coms, what is pretty important. Or does Discord also now have something similar to it?

That’s why stunbreaks exists. And the taunt is a slow walk, plenty of time to react to it.
I’m yet to see someone instadying from it.

Just make torment do full damage moving or not in PvE and everybody, not only revs, will be happier.

You guys must be joking that Discord is better than TS for WvW purposes lol.
Discord latency and sound quality is worse. Discord capture and sells your personal info. While Discord also have bots and such, TS ones like auto-verification that are super useful aren’t there yet. Discord admin control options are also way behind in comparsion to TS.
All these features where TS is ahead of Discord are kitten important to a server-wide VOIP. While Discord is great because it’s free and easier to use (I use it a lot for small things), to large scale WvW, TS is clearly better.

It’s not just about killing the thief, but also surviving. A thief can easily hit and run a necro. Like just disengage or sit on stealth while the necro is on shroud. Against a DH, in the other hand, he would hit aegis, blocks, protection, retal and such. While having to deal with huge bursts and pulls.

The squad is his and he can do anything he wants.

Give Salvation a trait (or just baseline it) where the tablet effects also happens on the rev, like if he’s a tablet himself. Just like the old Illusionary Persona trait from mesmers before it became baseline. Then balance the numbers around it.
Bam. Ventari is saved.
Sorry, too lazy to format.

Guardians/DH are good counters. Good burst and cleave, aegis, blocks, sustain, burning and retaliation.
You can kill them easily but you might not prevent them running from you. But honestly, no one can.

One server with 1000 people nightcapping against 20 for 6 hours could, for example, create a 50k lead daily just in that timezone. I’m just making numbers up.
Now, they will get 3 points for each skirmish. The others servers will have 2 and 1 point for each skirmish.
So if before they could have 10x more points in that timezone, with Victory Points, the difference will be closer. 3 to 2 to 1. Making it more even.

tldr: no matter how much PPT someone makes, they’re capped to 3 VP for each skirmish

Suppposed to? I don’t think so. Same as guardian staff 1 and many other cleaves.
ANet have a hard time fixing this stuff. Same as using Unrelenting Assault near a wall, wasting 2/3 hits on it and showing up at the other side of it.

The problem with condi rev is that Mallyx had just a half rework. They changed the legend skills but didn’t change the traitlines.
Original condi Mallyx was amazing. Pretty strong, with a higher risk but also a higher reward. Then they changed it because for them the mechanic of giving conditions to youself to make you stronger was a necro thing. So they rushed and slapped a half rework and called it done. And what we have now is this…thing.

Just bring the old Mallyx back and give rev a ranged condi weapon option and you’ll see that they could be as good as any other class.

I’d love to see it. But for them to do it, they would have to add them to PvE first, what is more complex. Creating new recipes, ingredients, drops, npcs and other ways to get it and craft it.
Or they could give us WvW players a hand and just add a npc where you could buy the recipes with badges. That would be cool.

But buffing what is bad to the same levels of what is good creates even more power creep. Is the DotA way of balancing.
Balance is something very, very delicate. In GW2 even more. 3 different gamestyles (with many subdivisions, like raiding, open world, bunker, far-pointer, zerg, roaming etc) and the actual huge amount of customization in the game (traits, stats, weapons, skills etc). I believe we are actually pretty close to the point that the game was at its best balance (few months before HoT) but true balance is never achieved in MMORPGs, when they have so many variables. We still have some serious balance offenders but balance is actually getting better, not worse.
There’s also the factor that this is Build Wars 2. And no matter what you play, something will counter you and make it feels op.
But in the end ANet will release a new expansion and all will be in vain.

Yes?
I mean, if they rather stay in their communities instead of having fun with competitive matches, no system that ANet creates can change it. Unless they kick everybody out or we go in full EotM style and merge everything.