Guild Wars 2

Wintel.4873:

The bottom line is that if they were playing rangers, thieves, warriors, mesmers or guardians you would’ve stood a FAR higher chance of winning. You may actually have won.

I’m not disagreeing with that. I’m saying that the problem goes beyond just blaming one class.

The real core of the problem is that only experienced players know how hard it is to make a really good ele. Regular people don’t. You asked why so many people are playing ele in PvP and I’m telling you.

I’m not going to tell anyone what to do. But I’ll just relate the experience I just had as I too just had 3 ele’s on a team, first time I can ever recall that happening.

Not only did we lose.. we got demolished. And here’s a hint as to how bad it was. We were on Skyhammer, and for some reason nobody on either team went for the hammer, so I did. I must have gotten at least 10 shots off before anyone from the other team challenged me.. and in that time, the rest of my team didn’t capture a single point.

It’s pretty obvious what’s going on here, and I don’t blame the ele’s. They had low ranks and were clearly not regular PvPers, they came in because Arenanet is trying to entice people into PvP. But they didn’t know that ele’s are underpowered in PvP now, and they didn’t know what to do on the map.

The bottom line is the same as always: the basic mechanisms (matchmaking, tutorials, education, limits on who can join the queues) need fixing before drawing new people in (many of whom will just feel discouraged and leave.)

Been here two months, have maybe spent a handful of hours grinding a couple of things I wanted to.

Grind is self-imposed.

Just completed a match.

Our team ranks: 10 – 36 – 18 – 20 – 14
Their team ranks: 61 – 49 – 54 – 64 – 41

A dartboard would do better.

Oxygen.5918:

You are objectively bad at your job. This is costing you money and potential players. This is frustrating people. And yet you do absolutely nothing to address the problem. You don’t even talk to us. Any clerk in a store acting like this would’ve been fired. So why are you not? The fact that you’re hidden behind a screen doesn’t make you impervious to criticism. Devs like this are the problem in this stale gaming industry. And there are no ways of reaching out because you overmoderate anything that would be seen as a stain. And there are no ways of reaching your superiors.

Actually, they do talk to us. And TBH many of them seem as frustrated as we are.

This suggests that it’s not that they don’t care, but that they aren’t being given the resources necessary to fix the problems.

I do think it’s VERY disappointing that rather than fixing core problems like 4v5, they put gold in matches, attracting tons of new players who are more likely to create 4v5s.

Hehe.

Thanks. I will give that a shot, though having played only a couple of hotjoins as warrior my guess is it will take a while to get up to speed on a build like that one (esp the weapon combos.)

Olrun that is cool as I’m a new warrior PvPer and was myself just trying to create a bunkery-type warrior and wasn’t getting anywhere.

I’m confused about your comments under “Utilities” as I only see one banner slotted but you mention 3 different ones?

Qaelyn.7612:

Could try the disenchanter or condition removal mantra, but they’re not as good, the meta is heavily oriented around conditions and mesmers aren’t that great with them at the best of times. I might give that a shot but it will make the build much less tanky.

Yeah one hotjoin was enough to convince me not to bother with that. The mantra is too slow and the disenchanter too unreliable for the current meta.

Thanks takatsu, sounds similar to Blackdevil’s hybrid.

I like DE (because it simply works) but the real killer is Sharper Images, I can’t imagine any sort of phantasm build without it. So that’s 15 mandatory in Dueling. In Domination you need 20 for torch condition removal, or if you go to 10, need 10 for Mender’s Purity. Could try the disenchanter or condition removal mantra, but they’re not as good, the meta is heavily oriented around conditions and mesmers aren’t that great with them at the best of times. I might give that a shot but it will make the build much less tanky.

What exact build are you using takatsu?

As an aside, I’ve been trying to work IC into my PU-ish build without success. I just can’t find anything else I can give up without seriously damaging the build.

Yeah I’m thinking you may be right. Thanks.

I’ve played warriors that are hard to kill, but in retrospect, it’s usually because I was defensive myself.

Maybe I need a more straight “in your face” GS-based DPS build or something, and try to get used to a more berserker “lifestyle”. (Deathstyle?)

II/IV/XII, which I think is the same as yours.

I may just be expecting something unrealistic from a class not really designed to handle 1vX encounters.. or I’m just bad at warrior right now. A couple of good offensive characters will always take me down, even if it takes a bit of time.

kornfanxx.3751:

Id advise looking into you defense line and swapping out your traits with the ones i just mentioned.

Sorry not sure what you mean here. I was already playing 0/10/30/30/0 which is about as defensive as it gets.

It may just be my lack of experience with warrior. I’m somewhat used to trickier classes like mesmer/thief where we have lots of “get out of jail free” cards.

Seems a weapon with stuns/dazes like hammer might also be a bit more forgiving. But I’m a sucker for condition builds, what can I say.

kornfan, just ignore the complainers. Always good to see new builds and ideas.

I just tried this in PvP, granted I’m inexperienced but I noticed that in hairball fights with many players I had a hard time staying alive despite the very high toughness I was able to gear up to. Maybe due to a lack of CC? How do you handle that?

I’ve never played a heavy class in sPvP, warrior will be my first try. I’m looking for something super solid that can take and hold a capture point fairly readily, possibly against even 2 opponents (when I’m good enough). Any suggestions?

Thanks.

xoom.4918:

This game’s balance is stupid, buffing PU mesmers because “mesmers are not viable in the condi meta”.

Again with this? PU mesmers were not buffed in PvP. Heck, I play one and wish I could find a way to make use of the changes.

I PvP a fair bit and I still mostly see hambows.

Also depends where you’re using it. In PvP the signet is a bad idea IMO, regardless of build. I mostly play a PU hybrid and there’s no situation I’ve come up with where I’d rather have the signet than EF — one extra phantasm every 35 seconds is inconsequential, but being without a heal for that long in a match is deadly. Standing around between fights with no ability to heal is not a good feeling. And few builds use signets enough to justify wasting a precious trait slot on shaving 7 seconds off that to a still-too-long 28s.

I can see it being of use in PvE, but there I have a different issue, which is trying to keep my centaur runes activated, so I still use Mirror.

Look for Blackdevil’s hybrid build on this forum.

Just went into solo queue. Our team was organized, we made plans.. we capped points, we killed guys, we stayed alive. The other team was not organized, they kept zerging and leaving capture points unoccupied, they didn’t seem to know our builds well.

And they won.

Why?

Because they started with 5 players and we started with 4.

There’s no one best build. What sort of playstyle are you after? Very experienced players go shatter/lockdown, phantasm can do tons of burst damage, PU/defensive builds make opponents dance around, there are hybrid builds, etc…

Check out the Build of the Month contest thread for some ideas.

Why are you even trying to argue for a buff to a weapon considered one of the most overpowered in the game? Good question.

Why all the nasty responses? I think it looks pretty cool.

And I often think of mesmers as “caster thieves”.

Lopez.7369:

I think at lower ratings, assuming one deserves to actually be top rated, it would be possible and even easy to carry entire games.

I think that’s unrealistic. There’s only so much one person can do.

More to the point, if you’re good but not “the best”, it seems the current system will keep you mired in the lower echelons forever. With half the players not even really there for PvP and/or having no idea what they’re doing, you’re going to lose a lot of games.

In team queue, it’s even worse.

Cyninja.2954:

Try playing every class to 20 or 30. If you find one that you really enjoy, stick with it.

But again, that’s not a good way to judge mesmers, because they are not at level 80 like they are at level 20.

Thanks, I’ll take a look at it.

Fine, give it a condition like other weapons — and then also tame down its damage and CC abilities to be like other weapons.

Oh wait, nobody here wants that.

The whole system is a complete mess. I really hope fixing it is at the top of the dev priority list, because no number of bells, whistles or rewards matter when the matchup is a laugher.

I know that in the last week my personal skill level has improved, I get more kills, I die much less frequently, I hold points — and I’m losing 2/3 of my matches and my rank is dropping to where it was when I started.

I think there’s also some problem where once you get mired near the bottom of the rankings, it’s impossible to get out. I’m going to be paired with people who aren’t really here to PvP pretty much forever now, and at best I’m going to win 50% of my games, and I don’t see how my position is going to improve. I could be wrong about that, though.

Thanks.

I suppose I could save them until I actually win more matches than I lose, assuming that ever happens. I can feel that I’m getting better, but I’m losing more matches than when I started.

Any chance there will be some use for them in the future? I’m fairly new so I only have 20 or so.

People are actually asking for the hammer to be buffed? Now I’ve seen it all, heh.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Mob attacks are predictable and slow, you can easily dodge/block/blurred frenzy/ignore with aegis them.

Maybe you can. I sure can’t.

At least not in more difficult content like fractals and dungeons, and certainly not so perfectly that I’d be willing to sit around with no healing because I blew a 35s cooldown on a heal just to get a tiny percentage of extra DPS.

Pyroatheist.9031:

… proper play in pve means that you really should almost never need to heal …

Okay, I’m definitely missing something here.

Hi there,

Relatively new player, about two months. First two characters were mesmer and thief, and while I like the tricky playstyles of both, I rolled a warrior for some more direct “in your face” action. I normally like to level up to 80 to learn the class before diving into sPvP, but she’s level 42 and I’ve grown impatient. I want to try sPvP now, especially since the utter chaos in sPvP right now makes it less enjoyable for me on my mesmer/thief.

Any suggestions for a direct high-damage warrior build I could pull off as someone new to the class? My favorite weapon has been the GS for a while. I also recently discovered sword/sword, which seems to be high condition damage… and sword/axe is pretty cool too.

But I am not sure how effective these are in sPvP, nor what traits and exact gear would be best.

Thanks for your suggestions.

You can’t even get PU until level 60. And it’s not so easy to play a PU build at that level anyway.

Mesmer was my first character.

The learning curve is very steep, and a lot of key traits aren’t available until the higher levels. You have to be very patient while leveling — this is a class that really does get much better later on.

Just tried to join team queue. I sat there for over 5 minutes, it wouldn’t even pair me with anyone.

Went to solo queue. Other team had a r40 and a r33, we had nobody r20 or higher. They had 3 warriors/guardians. We lost 502-79.

And people wonder why PvP is empty?

Luman.2380:

a skyhammer complaint would be brought into this lol

It wasn’t a complaint about Skyhammer specifically. More that this fix is evidence they can make simple changes quickly, yet they ignore issues for weeks and months for some inexplicable reason.

You could just take the 10 out of Domination.

What trinket would you use for this in PvP?

Why is it that this could be done so quickly but other obvious fixes, like removing Skyhammer from the queue rotation, cannot?

Darnis.4056:

Play team que; Most of those problems go away.. Hotjoin/Soloque is supposed to be casual play..

As Romek said, it’s even worse in the team queue. I end up getting paired with 4 random people, half of whom don’t even know why they’re there, and have a good chance of facing an organized team.

Awarding coins for the winning team only would be just as bad. When a match started to get lopsided, half the players on the losing team would quit and join a new match hoping for better luck.

The entire matchmaking system in PvP is an utter mess. It’s the #1 reason why most players avoid PvP, and for good reason.

Maybe if you’re talking since the launch. I’ve only been doing PvP for a month and this past week has definitely been a move in the WRONG direction.

None of the rest matters when you can’t get a decent match because of people joining queues by accident, leaving in the middle or AFKing because all they care about is completion.

The dev team is deafeningly silent on this, too.

I honestly don’t care about all the bells and whistles. If they don’t do something about the awful state of matchmaking and play balance, and soon, PvP will slide down even further. I mean, I actually like PvP a lot in GW2 and increasingly find myself not wanting to participate.

Interesting. I’d have to try it. I try seemingly a new build every day on my mes.

Have you played with it in PvP yet yourself?

My immediate reaction though is that on a defensive build I’d have a hard time putting 20 into Chaos and not finding 10 more for PU. It’s a strong trait. Would cost you some damage to steal 10 points from elsewhere, but might be worth a try as well.

Meglobob.8620:

Anet need to make those new skills HIGHLY DESIRABLE, ie…a little OP and then later on after everyone has had fun with them balance them/tone them down.

..so that everyone can spend the following year screaming about nerfs and how they want their 25 skill points back.

faeral.7120:

if you really can’t stand it, then it’s time to man up to teamQ.

Ever tried getting into a PvP team as a rank 20 player with an uncertain playing schedule?

The team queue just pretty much guarantees a loss. I get paired with the same random people as solo queue, except now half the time I’m up against a real team.

Right, since the topic was healing I was thinking of Mirror.

Need more sleep.

Valarauka.2719:

If you’re going phantasm based, I’d take almost anything else over Mirror Images – that skill is actively counterproductive to keeping phants out.

Not really understanding what you mean here.

1. What sort of time frame are we looking at for when glory disappears? Weeks? Months?

2. Are the current glory traders, including the Wintersday one, the only means you plan to put into the game, or will there be other ways to convert glory once it is removed as a currency?

I don’t think these answers would reveal any great dark secrets, and they’d be immensely useful to the playerbase. Thanks.

garethh.3518:

Anet listens.
Anyone can listen.

The hard part is actually find out an overall beneficial way to change the game to accommodate to what you hear.

There have been tons of very simple constructive suggestions for fixing PvP. Many of which would require little or no development effort.

How about “open the file listing the maps used for solo queue and delete ‘Skyhammer’ from it”? Seems pretty simple to me.

If they’re listening, it doesn’t show.