Guild Wars 2

Thanks to everyone for their replies. Lots of food for thought, and at some point I may compile these observations to see how the more common objections compare.

My personal story.. I had never engaged in PvP in an MMO for many of the reasons already outlined: lack of personal familiarity, difficulty, and especially, the attitudes of the players I saw whenever I dabbled in it in other games. With GW2 I planned to avoid it as well, but I thought WvW was a cool concept and wanted to try it out. My lack of experience made it not fun at all though, as I would somewhat panic whenever enemies were around and just get slaughtered.

I went to PvP basically to practice getting better at fighting other players. For a while it was a lot of fun. I definitely learned my class better and got much more comfortable dealing with player combat. For a while I thought I might even enjoy PvP for its own sake. I also liked being able to tinker with builds “for free”.

But that bloom is rapidly falling off the rose for me as well, due to many of the complaints listed here already. Increasingly I find PvP more frustrating than enjoyable.

My main complaint is the flawed matchmaking system and constantly being put on teams with players who have no idea what they are doing, don’t care, or both. This has been made worse by the addition of PvP “dailies” and gold rewards that encourage people to play for reasons other than actually wanting to be there. And despite that, the rewards are still fairly awful.

You have the same few maps over and over and only one style of gameplay. People have been asking for months to have the worst map, Skyhammer, removed from the solo queue — something it would take minutes to do — and they are ignored.

As for other players, to be honest, I found them a pleasant surprise. Most are fairly decent folk and while you do encounter some abuse, it’s the exception rather than the rule.

entropy.9613:

Basically, the rewards for winning 25% of team queue matches are the same (gold) or better (glory) than for winning 50% of solo queue matches.

At the cost of having to deal with being on the losing end of frustrating blowouts much of the time.

If I want gold, I can get more of it wandering around level 20 areas with a set of collection tools than I can in any sort of PvP.

Heizero.9183:

“I lose over and over again because my team is awful and my matchups are awful, there’s no possible way my own gameplay could be improved and I would never even think about looking at my own effectiveness on a team because i know I am better then all of them.”

- The code of the QQ

“I jump into threads and make snarky remarks about other posters because I think I’m so clever that I need to try to belittle others, there’s no possible way that the OP was making a different point that I didn’t really read carefully and understand correctly and I would never even think about whether my post adds anything constructive to the thread because I know better than everyone else here”.

- The code of thoughtless forum warriors

I never said that the problems were entirely with other players and not with me. But very often it is. My skill becomes irrelevant when my team is outmatched by the other team, and especially when they do stupid things (like ignoring capture points).

Ant.3415:

Geff, why do that when you can do Team Arena for much higher reward and avoid the annoying maps in the process?

Because as I mentioned in another thread, at least there’s a chance that the clueless people on your team are less clueless than the clueless people on the other team. In team arena that’s much less likely if you are solo.

Dee Jay.2460:

Welcome to soloQ.

That’s why most people just solo-play teamQ.

Where instead of having a chance of the 4 people I’m matched with having a bit more of a clue than the 5 I’m fighting, I get matched with 4 random people who are there for ‘rewards’ against organized teams in a match that’s a guaranteed loss from the start.

Geff.1930:

The matchmaking gets better as you get higher ELO. The first 10~ games you will be matched with utter noobs. As you get higher you get matched with people who actually know what they are doing.

I’m now pushing 200 matches in solo queue and the caliber of the players is so random that I’ve pretty much given up on getting much higher. Team queue I have 100 matches and as mentioned above at least 1/3 of the matches are over before they begin so I won’t be moving up in that as well.

Only reason I’m still here is that I’m stubborn. 100% understand why 99% of GW2 avoids PvP — it’s a bloody mess.

They may be strong at the very high levels. In the games I play, having 2 thieves on my team is a loss 90% of the time.

My first time playing 3 matches in over a week as I decided to take a break.

First match: We lose by a lot, in large part because my team decides to run the orb in spirit watch despite us not having control of more than 1 point for more than a few seconds at any given time.

Second match: Utterly obliterated. I’ve repressed the details but it started out 75-0 and didn’t get any better.

Third match: I zone in to find 2 thieves on my team and 3 warriors on theirs. Went as expected (even though the warriors were absolutely skillless, they just spammed CC and won anyway).

And I said to myself.. why am I doing this? It’s annoying, I can’t find a team to play with, the rewards are better doing pretty much anything else.

I couldn’t care less about spectators, and if I never heard the ridiculous term “esport” again for the rest of my life, I’d consider it a blessing.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

The problem I have with minionmancers and especially spirit rangers is that they are entirely passive on the pet players side. So in essence the other player doesn’t play against the pet player but against the guildwars 2 game engine in this regard. Which makes this such a frustrating mechanic to me. And which is also why I don’t mind fighting mesmers, as they need to be much more active with their clone generation.

Are they? I don’t know because I haven’t leveled a necro or ranger yet. And I do appreciate that you differentiate their minions from clones, because as a mesmer I know those are not passive. Yet I often see mesmers criticized in the same manner.

I’m sure the minions are passive to some extent. But lots of classes have passive abilities and traits.

Your argument still hinges on the idea that it doesn’t take skill to spot what a caster is doing when he has summons, which isn’t true.

Hindering you from seeing what they are doing is part of the point of having summons. Just like any other mechanism that hinders players.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

The minions aren’t the problem. Not being able to see what the enemy is casting and not being able to select him swiftly to interrupt him is a problem. Because it removes skill from the game.

You’re claiming that something being difficult means that skill is being removed from the game, when it’s pretty easy to argue the exact opposite: that it provides more of a reward for those who are skillful at dealing with the minions.

Arcturus.8109:

Qaelyn.7612:

And this is why.

I’d say that rank 1 ele is much worse than empty space. Not to mention rank 8 mesmer. So actually you was like 3.5v4 or so.

And we never would have known that if we had seen the 4v5 and us down by over 100 points and just given up.

Thus the point of the thread.

Another reason.. sometimes a 4v5 is a disconnect. A week or so ago I was in a match, noticed we were in a 4v5 and grumbled about it in chat.. but kept fighting. It was a D/C, the guy came back and we came from behind to win.

This is one reason why I think people who quit or AFK 4v5s deserve punishment just like those who create 4v5s.

Master of Timespace.2548:

That’s a trivial statement with no value. No matter how badly a given mechanic would ruin an otherwise interesting game, the statement “it’s part of the game” would still be true. Thus it can’t work as an argument when debating whether if a given mechanic should exist in a game.

I did specifically acknowledge the validity of the complaint for a reason, you know.

I just think the whining about this is overdone, because people act like the presence of minions is some overwhelming issue that can’t be dealt with, and it simply isn’t. So I don’t see how this is any less a “L2P” issue than any of the others that get tossed around.

People complain about all game mechanics that are effective: summons, clones, stealth, burst damage, conditions, AOE spamming, high mobility, tankiness, etc. It’s all basically just whining because people somehow want things to be easy (though how they themselves would kill others isn’t thought out too well). Variations in ways of killing opponents are part of what makes the game interesting, for me at least, and I wouldn’t want to see it neutered.

So I simply find ways to deal with minion classes. I’m far from exceptional (63% in solo queue atm) and I don’t find it that big of an issue, so I find it hard to believe that better players do. Most of the complaining is based on some philosophical objection about “how things should be” – even though my understanding is that GW2 has always been like this.

That’s a reasonable complaint. But really, I just see it as a part of the game.

That’s false in so many ways that it’s not even worth listing them all.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Are you seriously trying to argue that screen clutter is fun and good for the game?

I think it’s an entirely valid game mechanic that’s available to what, half the professions in the game. It’s part of those classes and people need to learn how to deal with it – just like all the other game mechanics that everyone constantly whines about.

redslion.9675:

Then don’t be surprised tanks are dominating the battlefield (as it ended up in real open field warfar).

I’m not.

But before the game ended we didn’t know what the ranks were. That’s pretty much the point.

They rushed our lord early. I looked up at one point and noticed we were down something like 300-120. We still won.

Thanks that might be worth grabbing then. They aren’t cheap but I can get the major for maybe 1.5g and 5% extra condi damage is pretty nice.

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

That’s why we play makebelieve battles on computers where they can be fun and fair. Instead of gruesome and fatal like actual battles.

What’s fun for you may not be fun for others.

Not to mention that WvW is far more popular than PvP and features much less balance in every respect.

And this is why.

You know what’s also chaotic and confusing?

Actual battles.

Ah interesting. Okay I can do that, my weapons are cheap junk anyway. Thanks.

So then maybe bursting on the other one? Wonder if that would stack with the corruption stack.

That’s a good point. I would be putting it on my scepter, but then I don’t usually auto-attack much with that. So I’m better off with something on weapon swap. Like energy, as you suggested (which is what I use in PvP since there are fewer options.)

And maybe corruption would be better on the off hand since I don’t die in WvW all that much.

Recently switched to fire for my GS and really liking the small AoE.

I never see these mentioned in builds, even though they seem pretty potent (and have price tags to match).

Is it just because they’re costly? Perhaps it’s spending 50g on traveler’s runes but I find myself looking at these as a nice way of boosting condition handling on my mes.

Though I have no idea why the minor one costs 3x the major one at least right now.

Also looking for something to put on my off-hand, which means it can’t be cooldown-based. Maybe bursting?

Well, it’s done. Ah.. I can breathe again.

juno.1840:

I would like travelers runes but they are expensive and you will take a hit to power (serious hit compared to centaurs). The +bleed duration is nice with sharper images (assuming that actually works).

Based on my calculations, the hit isn’t as great as I thought it would be. Yes you’re looking at -135 power, but +30 on everything else and the boost to critical damage compensates to some extent.

From what I can tell, the overall damage reduction comes to around 2.5% on my hybrid build. That’s taking into account the slight nudge in critical chance and the significant boost in critical damage.

But the traveler’s also give other benefits at least to a hybrid mesmer. My condition damage modifier is 5% higher, and I’ve got a 10% condition duration boost across the board. The centaur runes give a 15% bonus to bleed which complicates things for sharper images, assuming it works as you said.

Overall, I think the centaur runes probably would give me a slight boost overall in terms of damage output compared to travelers. The travelers give a slight boost defensively (30 more armor, 300 or so more health). Basically it’s a wash, at least for me.

But I can run.

Okay I bought the runes. Now I just have to convince myself to soulbind them on my exotic rabid armor (which I’m pretty settled on, mind you).

Alissah.9281:

Introducing: tab targetting!

Tab targetting skips npcs, and will immediatally target players.

The “I cant click asuras” argument isnt really valid x.x

I use it myself, but I’m pretty sure it does not skip minions or summons.

Helping out other players is the only thing I’d miss about the centaur runes. But it doesn’t matter when I’m solo, or in a zerg, and when I’m in a havoc group there are usually other players doing it anyway.

Might just be me but having to do something every few seconds drives me out of my mind. Also, aren’t those things consumables? That would add up quickly.

Guess I’ll just cough up the 50g.

I honestly would never play my mesmer in WvW or PvE if I had to open my inventory to click something every 15 seconds.

Dawdler.8521:

- Centaur runes
+ Traveller runes
= perma 25% without having to pop your heal at inappropriate times

Swiftness may offer more speed but it only works in theory. In practice, its great when running randomly (though you do get tired of it) and fail as soon as you enter combat.

You could go with cheaper Speed runes as well (one of those traveller runes will pay for that), however what they give is really meh aside from the 25%. Traveller runes are pretty much omni runes, any build has decent use of the stats.

Either way they are well worth it and a quality of life improvement beyond anything the Mesmer can get.

Yeah, pretty much coming to the same conclusion. It just stinks that I just read in another thread about how much nastiness people can dish out with perplexity runes. Hate having to make the choice, though I still think the speed will be hard to pass up.

The runes themselves do seem to have some nice general purpose stats so I guess I’ll just cough up the cash.

One of the main problems I am finding in WvW is finding room for all the utilities I need. There are some that I really need/want all the time for dueling but others that are really useful for helping the team, like portal.

So even though I usually dedicate a slot to something like the Disenchanter in PvP, I don’t have room for it in WvW. Just too many other things.

Have to make hard choices and give up some things for others. You’ll be good at dueling, or better at zerging, or provide more support to a havoc team. And have to be prepared to change things around too.

After spending a couple of months in PvP getting more comfortable with player combat I recently started spending some time in WvW. And boy is the slow speed of this profession painful. :/ It seriously makes me not want to log in sometimes.

I hate having to not put the runes on my armor that I really want because I have to use runes to give me some semblance of speed. I’ve been using centaur runes but even that is annoying. I even changed my build from 20/20/30 to 0/20/30/20/0 to use the mantra to help power the runes… but it’s still every 12 or 15 seconds I have to hit the button again, and then check how many charges, and then recharge the mantra, and hope some enemy doesn’t come out of nowhere while I’m recharging.

That’s mostly just whining, I realize. But it’s incredibly tedious.. especially when my other main WvW char is a thief that can zoom from one end of the map to the other.

Anyway, I’m thinking of splurging for a set of traveler’s runes. I have 1 that I actually got on a lucky drop, so 50g for the rest. I can afford it, since I’m somewhat of a miser and I don’t spend $ on cosmetics or luxuries normally, though it will mean a good chunk of my ‘net worth’ in 6 runes. But it’s still a lot.

And while the runes are pretty nice overall, they’re not ideal for my build by any means. (I’d love to try runes of perplexity.)

So before I drop what’s a mint to me on these things.. anything I should reconsider?

Okay, that is sort of what I was doing.

Is this really faster than a power build where I can autoattack for much more damage? Asking honestly, I don’t know.

Also… is it just seeming slow when I fight one opponent? Because the DB and so forth would work on multiple enemies at once while dagger swiping won’t, so maybe that’s why it seems slow?

Okay, so at least for now, I’ve got a build fairly similar to what Viking Jorun posted, except the gear is a bit different:

- Shaman weapons (only yellow for the moment)
- Settler’s armor with runes of the undead (because those runes are cheap)
- Settler’s trinkets with apothecary gems.

This seems to give me a nice balance of toughness, healing power and condition damage. In WvW right now I have about 3100 armor, 1060 healing power and 1350 condition damage.

Also puts my vitality up at a more comfortable 15k-16k; a lot less than the 21k I had before but a bit more breathing room.

I just went scouting around a bit. Actually ran into a full zerg and was able to escape which was amusing.

I also killed a few NPC sentries. I found this took longer than I expected because, well, we’ve been talking a lot about doing damage with Death Blossom, but I can only do that a few times and then what? I can stand there swiping with my daggers but my power and precision are both very low so the autoattacks don’t do much. This is part of why I was wondering if I’d be better off with a power build.

Switch to the shortbow and kite?

Seriously, not sure what to do when the initiative is gone as it seems to go painfully slowly.

Thanks.

Ipan, you do understand that because of how conditions work, more types of conditions are more valuable than more stacks of the same condition?

In fact, I sometimes run with a sigil of doom on my scepter just to help “hide” the torment from condition removal abilities.

Well, my experience with it is mostly in PvP, where people who don’t clear that torment quickly and regularly die quickly and regularly. It’s basically 800 damage per second that can be applied nearly continuously, and forces the opponent to deal with it immediately or they are pretty much toast. Then you can just apply it again?

How is that not strong? It may not be as strong as Impale, but that skill is brokenly OP and we can’t expect other classes to compare to the Uberprofession.

Dustin.2793:

Sorry for the matchups like this, believe me when I say its not fun even the slightest bit. We just waited in queue for a while and after so long like ken said it just puts us against somebody.

If I’m not mistaken, players who score 0 get no rank points and no glory for the entire match. If you’re really sorry about stuff like this happening, you could show it by letting them cap a point once you’re up by 400 or something.

Oh man, now we’re all over the place. That’s okay, it’s educational to hash this stuff out.

Arganthium, I wasn’t going to use that “unicorn” build. I’m looking at some variation on the build Viking Jorun linked: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fen.gw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfYAQNAoYVlcmiP3ey8E%2B5EB3ji60m6p4rltTBWlPA-jUyAIOBRaBI5BgCBlHLiGb1sIas6Zioa1Nm5uIa1CBsYNA-w

If there are specific issues with that build, can you tell me what you think they are? I do already think I will lean a bit more on the vitality side, but I see the advantage of buffing healing power.

If you know of a better build, please share it!

Just to summarize, my goals with this build are:

1. High mobility, to move around very quickly as needed.
2. Easy disengagement and avoidance of player combat.
3. Ability to yakslap, tag keeps, and eventually take camps on my own.
4. Be able to hold out in a fight against players for a period of time.

Roughly in that order.

I realize there are different ways to accomplish these goals and I like hearing what you guys have to say on it.

I use voice comms whenever possible but sometimes type into chat. I still need the stealth right now even with voice chat because I’m new to WvW and don’t always know the landmarks or how to describe what I’m seeing.

Well it means you do the damage a lot faster, obviously. The drawback is that there’s a hard limit of 25 stacks per condition (for reasons that are constantly debated) so in a big fight with lots of players, condition damage can become ineffective quite quickly.

Bleeding is a straight damaging condition, it doesn’t impede movement. Note that there are some conditions that stack intensity (like bleed) and others that stack duration (they don’t get stronger, they just last longer).

It’s all covered pretty well on the wiki.

If you want, I’d be happy to restructure and reformat the guide so it’s easier to see what’s in it, organize related info together, add bookmark navigation on the side, etc. Again, I do this stuff for a living. Just let me know by PM; I’ll need the original document.

It means two stacks of bleeding are applied. Condition damage is a function of your condition damage modifier and so is not tied directly to the skill. With your character at this level you do 5 damage per bleed stack per second.

For example, my character right now (level 80) shows Caltrops with the same icon, 2 stacks, 3 seconds, 667 damage. And the D/D Deathblossom is 3 stacks, 10 seconds, 3333 damage. In both cases it comes to 111 damage per stack per second.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

I honestly think chaos storm really does need to be fixed. While having constantly 7 stuns from this ability is hilarious, it kinda is overpowered. The first time that happened to chaos he raged. But anyway, I do like the idea of the stun after the daze. If chaotic interuppt was applied the same way I would be happy.

FYI to all, from a thread in the PvP forum:

Josh Davis.6015:

We should have a fix for this included in the next update, barring any complications.

Thanks Mabuse.

babazhook: I think the difference is that your build doesn’t have the secondary heals of the more defensive ones we’re talking about. The Shadow Arts line provides significant additional healing and condition removal.

On runes and sigils: would scavenger runes be a good choice? I know there’s a bug when you get killed but I don’t plan for that to happen very often. (EDIT: Just realized it’s not a great choice when using a passive heal!) Also wondering about maybe a sigil of energy since there’s plenty of bleeding in the build already.

ETA: What is the advantage of extending steal range in a defensive build like this one?

The other day I did a sequence of world events in Hirathi Hinterlands on my mid-level engineer and ended up with around 650 luck after I salvaged all the blue, green and yellow items I got.

That’s quite literally more than I’ve gotten from all the PvP items I’ve ever salvaged, across maybe 40 or 50 chests, and it took under an hour. (I have about 100 more chests I can’t be bothered opening until they make it worthwhile.)

I can’t understand why you guys made the deliberate decision to add luck to PvP salvaging (smart) and then made the rate a tiny fraction of what it is in PvE/WvW (not).

Great stuff guys. Thanks a lot. I’ve actually done the DB/signet thing before and get the concept.

I will be happy to get “tired” of being invincible. I should have such problems.

So do you think I should go with that build you linked, Jorun (with some adjustments in traits to taste) or were you still thinking up something else?

My two main concerns…

1. I’m a little nervous about 12.8k health as it just seems I might be “burstable”, especially if I get jumped by another thief.

2. The DB method with the signet makes sense but requires me to be doing damage to heal. If I’m running from a zerg then I won’t be healing. But then I guess the regen while in stealth and so forth is there for that?

3. I’m a bit of a coward in melee, lol. But I guess I can spam hits with the SB too, yes?

I’m definitely going to try some variation on this. Thanks again.

I might suggest starting with Blackdevil’s roamer, which sounds fairly similar, and tweaking from there.

Oh and I had to chuckle at this line from your “Cons” list — “If you are forced to 1v1 defending a node , it will almost always get neutralized in the process” — because I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve been told that a PU/hybrid mesmer is “useless” in PvP for that very reason. (Not saying anything about PU vs. shatter effectiveness in PvP, just that it’s nice to see that other specs have similar issues.)

Supcutie.2538:

Wow thanks for the kind words everyone! <3
Also Qaelyn, sorry if you can’t access it, here is another download link: hopefully it works!
http://bit.ly/mesmerguidebackup2

Much better, thanks!

I’m frankly astonished at the amount of content in that document. There’s probably more useful info and tips in that PDF than the total of all advice I’ve read on this forum about running a shatter build since I started playing.

I write long technical documents for a living and it takes a lot to impress me.

TBH your play level is so far above mine that my main problem would actually be finding a way to put all of that into practice. You should offer tutoring services for gold or something. Need an apprentice?

Okay that all makes sense. I do want to be able to take camps as that seems a useful contribution. And my other build wasn’t close.

I realize now also that using condition reduction food is overkill when I don’t plan to engage in combat very much. I have enough ways of “getting out of dodge” when I need to.

Still unclear on the idea of using apothecary instead of dire. I get that the extra healing will work well with the signet but that seems to apply mostly for fighting NPCs where I’m not all that worried about being killed. If I get jumped by a couple of players it seems to me my healing will be overwhelmed regardless and having low vitality will make it easy for me to get bursted down.

Thoughts?

Thanks for the advice so far.

Thanks for the replies.

Viking Jorun.5413:

The above build would be more of a damage soak, not really for anything that would sustain you in any way. I’ll be back after I’ve theorycrafted a somewhat viable guild for you; posting here to remind myself where to link it.

Thanks! Look forward to it. And yeah, that would be a pretty soaky character, the idea just being enough to allow me to get away from a pursuer or small group.

Viking Jorun.5413:

With it, you can either hold a zerg at a point for days, or hide in the shadows constantly, even applying your bleeds without having to leave stealth.

How do you mean, by using CnD?

I’m running condition-based now and it just seems really slow even on the NPCs. But my gear is rather crappy (not even exotic) because I didn’t want to spend lots of gold until I figured out what I want to do.

Why the signet? Just for when fighting NPCs? It does make sense now that I think about it.

Mabuse, dire is what I’m running now and I could see that or soldier’s working. I just thought power would be more of a “direct approach” than condition damage since I don’t plan to be doing a lot of fighting.

What do you mean by “quick triple teleport”?