Guild Wars 2

Camera is still way too smooth, still no setting. =(

I guess I’ll get banned for bumping an old thread now.

You’ll get different answers from different people, i personally think the game is extremely boring if i play anything other than my main class mesmer. And even that is boring if i play PU meta.

ColinJohanson.2394:

TorsoReaper.8530:

The current system is making the player base smaller by the minute.

While I’ll let the PvP team respond to the other points here, I do want to take a moment and address this:

PvP has steadily grown in population and play hours going on nearly a year now. It’s sky-rocketed since the game went free, and the two weeks before this have been our best weeks literally since the week the game launched. We anticipate this week will be the best week login/play wise PvP has ever had in the history of Gw2.

I don’t want to trivialize your points – and our competitive team has some great reasons why things operate the way they do they’ll lay out and explain in relation to leagues soon: I do want to call out you’re using false population data to support your point.

From an ArenaNet perspective, PvP is the fastest growing part of Gw2 and had more success for us as a business in the last year than it’s had by far in the history of the Guild Wars franchise. Next year is going to be even bigger because of that success.

I’m really proud of the work the team has done and the work our amazing player community who has helped grow competitive PvP just as much as our dev team has and would hate to see that lost in this discussion.
-CJ

Great news about the free to play thing, but when 90% of people on the forums REALLY want soloq, there is no denying it

Ristillath.6745:

Sorel.4870:

style.6173:

kdaddy.5431:

Quadox.7834:

Nooooooo, don’t go “all in for soloq or teamq”. Unacceptable. We had soloq in the past. It worked. Give it back.

yeah it worked so well we had 20 min que times and no one ever used it at the end. I dont know if the “all in” thing is the right way to go but currently the player base is still to small and we wont know what we have until the exp comes out.

You keep complaining about solo queue in every thread. We get it. You only win as part of an organized team and enjoy facing pugs. Not everyone feels that way though. Some want to fight on a more even playing field.

The thing is, he’s right. You didn’t address the issue he’s raising. We had 20min queues in soloq. The match-making was even more random than it is now. Most soloq players, myself included preferred to PUG in teamq, and in those days there was no mechanism to make sure you don’t face premades that often. And STILL we chose that over soloq. Why the nostalgia mate?

That logic.

“It was kitten last time because it didn’t work, don’t try it again and make it work!”

Only because anet kittened up the last implementation of soloq doesn’t mean it’s bad in general.

Yeah their arguments are pretty kittened. Uranked/ranked separation makes the queues long just like soloq/teamq separation does. Guild wars 2 is free to play and the expansion is coming out. A good soloq system is SO IMPORTANT to draw in players to PvP. The old soloq had its own problems, such as skyhammer and spirit watch. These wouldn’t be in the new rotation.

Remember when Mesmer played close point defender with staff sword in PvP?

Embolism.8106:

Yeah GS had Phase Retreat, except it was called Feigned Escape or something. I think Staff also had a teleport but it was forward… can’t remember.

Pity this sort of “trivia” isn’t documented in the wiki.

I think this is right yeah, https://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Feigned_Escape&redirect=no

tsuyosugiru.7634:

No one should have access to passive invuls, no ONE

I already QQed about this here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/This-is-bad-design/first#post5487368

indeed /15chars

Embolism.8106:

After three years of iLeap being unreliable, I think it’s time to scrap the idea and just give Mesmers a normal Immobilising Leap that conjures a Clone on landing. There’s absolutely no reason not to Swap immediately given that with MH Sword you’d be doing kitten-all at range.

The reason to now swap is to bait a dodge. You should NOT always swap instantly. That said, the delay is just annoying and doesn’t help at all.

Embolism.8106:

Fun fact: a long time ago Staff 1 was called “Chaos Strike”, uses the current Chaos Armour icon and simply hits a target with a random condition/give yourself a random boon. No projectile, no beam, just point and bam. Back then Winds of Chaos was Staff 4.

And wasn’t phase retreat on greatsword in place of mirror blade or something? I have forgotten.

They probably should have from the start, it would percent many balance issues now though.

“every profession should get access to passive invuln traits.”
No, none of the professions should get access to passive invuln traits. One of the biggest problems with the game as it is.

Something that would mesmer more skillful, enjoyable to play and allow for a higher skill ceiling is ground targeted phantasms. Phantasms and phantasm builds have always been “bad” throughout the game’s lifespan. They are way too unreliable, fighting a phantasm build feels cheesy in 1v1 and useless in a team. All of them would still keep their appropriate range and require you to have a target.

These is my suggestion that in my opinion would improve mesmer alot, on all builds:

- Phantasmal Warden ground targeted allows a choice between a projectile defense and whirl finisher on you, or an Aoe attack depending on where you place it.

- Phantasmal Zerker can be positioned smartly as a whirl finisher and positioned in a way so that it hits more enemies instead of spawning randomly. This increases the skill on this ability. The way it would work is that you would place it on a location, then you would direct its spin like greatsword #3 on warrior. So you place it, then choose the direction of the attack.

- Phantasmal Swordsman is a single target phantasm, but by making it ground-targeted you can position it in a way so that it hopefully doesn’t die instantly. Also, the leap finisher can be positioned in a smart way.

- Phantasmal Mage, Warlock, and Duelist are also single target skills but with ground-targeting they could be positioned smartly on for example a rock or a high-ground to make them live longer, thus increasing the skill on these abilities.

- Phantasmal Disenchanter can also be positioned in a clever location to keep it from getting wrecked by cleave. Phantasmal Defender could be positioned close to a teammate that needs it. This would improve these unused utilities for good mesmers who play smart- a more fun buff than simply increasing the HP stat.

Since i would love if arenanet read this and considered it, i will make a short version:

TL;DR
Ground-targeting on phantasms would vastly increase skillcap on all mesmer weapons and builds by allowing clever positioning of the phantasms. This would make mesmer more fun to play, more fun to play against and would allow a good mesmer to shine as opposed to the class being pushed towards “fire and forget”. All in all an awesome and skillful change to mesmer that is more fun than simply buffing or nerfing numbers.

Thank you. =)

More like “Orb of chaos” or “Chaos orb” actually sounds like something they would do xD

Aside from that, it would be cool if they removed the bouncing phantasms like they did with the shield one- thinking about torch. Also, focus phantasm ground target MY GOD that would be sweet. Phantasmal disenchanter and defender should also be ground targeted imo.

tobascodagama.2961:

I wonder how Rebound interacts with Illusion of Life. IoL usually redowns you when it expires, while Rebound (Chaos, check the thread in the Ele forum, it’s different now) is supposed to prevent allies from getting downed in its duration.

If those two skills interact the way it seems like they should, then Chronomancer with Tempest could end up being the trolliest of troll comps, especially if they both use bunker-style builds.

For (potential) real effectiveness, there’s already another thread about pairing up Chronomancer and Herald for megaboonsharing, which sounds pretty neat.

Holy shiet thank you im gonna test illusion of life + rebound. Aoe res my god.

Yeah bulwark gyro is not too strong, it needs to compete with kits. Pdefender is too weak however. I liked the suggestion to make it just reduce damage taken in aoe so the enemy actually has to kill it. But this would be tricky since it would be op in 1v1 and bad in teamfights. Unless there was some scaling HP on it depending on how many enemies are in a 1000range area.

Dolt.2731:

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Rev and berserker will get a lot of taunt once HoT hits. If you defend the unavoidable taunt with narrow mind thought simply because of ranger’s vulnerability, then you’re in for a big surprise.

Change taunt to be evade-able/blind-able and compensate ranger for other soft CC (eg. 2s chill/slow etc) along with taunt to make pet more useful.

Most rangers here aren’t debating on whether it should be blind-able/ evaded, as most use combo’s to set it up in the first place. We are sick of hearing of how it’s a faceroll skill that requires nothing more than the bat of an eye to land.

Play a ranger and go pvp. Try and get it to consistently land EXACTLY when you want it to w/o using some sort of prior cc, or getting in face-tank range/ pet swap to land it.

You can’t balance around bad players

Mesmer is a slow paced class, you got that past right. When you are good at ranger/warrior/engi you will combo your abilities together and chain ccs and whatnot, on mesmer you will mostly stay back and then go in to shatter and go out again. It is fun, but quite different and for many people, too slow.

Nooooooo, don’t go “all in for soloq or teamq”. Unacceptable. We had soloq in the past. It worked. Give it back.

Saiyan.1704:

Quadox.7834:

bhagwad.4281:

BLUna.7928:

Hey again guys, just had a chat with some of the other admins. The rule we have set in our GW2 events is mainly to circumvent EU participation in NA and vice versa, not disallow SA/Brazilian players from participating. Brazilian and other South American players should not have issues participating in future events from this point forward as “NA players” via our rules.

The problem that occurred last weekend should no longer occur in the future so long as teams have 3/5 representatives from NA/SA when they initially sign up. Apologies on my part for the problems that may have been caused by this confusion last weekend, and we hope to see you guys participating this Sunday.

If a person sitting in the EU tries to play an NA tournament, won’t they face unacceptable amounts of lag at a competitive level? Isn’t that enough of a demotivator for them trying to participate?

If the lag is not a problem, I find it weird that Anet wants to prevent players from EU playing in NA tournaments. I mean – in this context, real world locations signify nothing. Is there some kind of patriotism, or loyalty or something at work here? Are we really looking at artificial things like “American” and whatnot?

Unable to understand the logic…

All i know is that half the classes in the game can be played at 300 + ping

I’ve lived with satellite broadband the majority of my young adult life. On the best of days, I had 150 ping rate average with an instant spike of 400+. My jitter was insane but I’ve played on that ping for so long, I learned to attacked ahead of time, predicting what the other person would do when my screen freezes for 2 seconds. If that’s not conditioning for Esports idk what is!

You can soloQ fine but don’t think about competing competitively with a ping of 250+. It just makes it frustrating trying to do something instantly, only to find theres a mini delay. It’s a difference between throwing an attack before an Engi Gear Shields, or during it.

I was just playing on the fact that Guild Wars has officially become Passive Wars with this specialization patch

Swamurabi.7890:

Targuil.3741:

ebslike.1852:

Swamurabi.7890:

Actually, Chess has 20 possible opening moves, which is more than GW2 has, and I’m not counting surrendering or asking for a draw. Chess modeling also has to take into consideratin the zone of control that a piece will have when moved, which will affect the opponents options or even set up a move later on.

As for when to do an action, NOT ACTING is an action and can be accounted for, so can moving to optimum range (kiting/closing).

Movement to a point and distance between points are also things that can be put in the decision matrix of the program.

You don’t have to model realisitcally, just by crunching the possible combinations you can judge the level of player skill needed to achieve a certain level of a build’s TTK.

What do you consider an opening move? Elementalist has 20 skills from just their weapon that they can open with and that is just 1 class….

To take it further, you could wait 1 frame, 2 frames… etc before and between excecuting skills, making them different actions. Add in ability to move in any direction at any point (relevant when judging skill ranges) and you already have thousands of options per skill per second of game time passed.

So let’s say eles have 30 moves, others have less than 20, there’s still a finite number of actions a player can take. Since it’s a finite number, you can come up with a model that looks at all the possible actions of one player against another and combines them in the best outcome, for both sides.

You can simplify movement as move towards, move away and strafe.

Self driving cars have more possibilities than GW2 combat.

And what is the point of this post?

abc.5790:

I still can’t justify using it over Strength or Hoelbrak. The marriage between the d/d trait structure, might based runes and celestial amulet is the closest you can get to a flawless alignment of synergies. The build is near perfect that the downed state becomes the least of my concern.

This is why I’m not in favor of gutting the d/d ele. Let me remind you that the devs do not nerf, they gut. Instead, what I’d really like to see is a buff on the classes that are trailing behind. I don’t know if any class could reach the level of near perfection as the d/d ele but I’d be very happy if the gaps were made smaller.

We have enough power creep already, nerf ele.

apharma.3741:

Yeah chaos with better stealth and some decent minors is absolutely not a trade off against heal on mantra cast, cleanse on heal use, heal and cleanse on shatters or resistance/super speed on glamours or idefender.

I mean, nearly every interrupt build picks PU over CI right? Right? [tumbleweeds]

I don’t understand what you are trying to say. PU is better than inspiration, agreed?

Curunen.8729:

NeroBoron.7285:

To get back to the invisble problem:
First of all mesmer is one of my mains and I have to say pu was to strong early then they fixed boons so it was still strong but not as before. And now they give 100% invis duration? WTF?!
That is crazy. Without veil I can stay 45 sec in perma stealth. Yes infight usually you dont chain up that invisible that long. But for hiding in a wvw keep its ridiclous. And infight it’s way to strong as well. You are way to long invsible and also get so many more boons than before due to this change.

So my suggestion: PU should increase stealth by 33% instead of 100%. You can increase mass invsible to 6 sec by default and fail to 4sec.

So weapon and utility trait are are like before that last patch 4sec. And Veil is like currently 4 sec, while mass invisble gives 8 seconds. 2 less than now, 2 more than before the patch. So you can better stealth your team mates.
Compared to shadow refuge which isn’t an elite spell you make still 2 seconds less invsible. (Yeah okay you can make 5 more people invisble, but it’s an elite spell with even higher cd than SR)

Also I’m not sure with the torch trait, that is one of the main reasons why you could chain up invsible that long. But maybe the pu change will already normalize that. If that’s still not the case it should get nerfed as well.

I agree with your proposals (although think Veil should be 3s base, so it would increase to 4s with PU).

Torch trait just needs to be flat 20% cooldown, they don’t need to reinvent it tbh.

In PvP, pu is only broken because there is no tradeoff. Mesmers should have to go illusions for the damage to be enough in a roamer spec. Chaos traitline should be used for other specs. PU is boring to play against though, that’s something to look at.

bhagwad.4281:

BLUna.7928:

Hey again guys, just had a chat with some of the other admins. The rule we have set in our GW2 events is mainly to circumvent EU participation in NA and vice versa, not disallow SA/Brazilian players from participating. Brazilian and other South American players should not have issues participating in future events from this point forward as “NA players” via our rules.

The problem that occurred last weekend should no longer occur in the future so long as teams have 3/5 representatives from NA/SA when they initially sign up. Apologies on my part for the problems that may have been caused by this confusion last weekend, and we hope to see you guys participating this Sunday.

If a person sitting in the EU tries to play an NA tournament, won’t they face unacceptable amounts of lag at a competitive level? Isn’t that enough of a demotivator for them trying to participate?

If the lag is not a problem, I find it weird that Anet wants to prevent players from EU playing in NA tournaments. I mean – in this context, real world locations signify nothing. Is there some kind of patriotism, or loyalty or something at work here? Are we really looking at artificial things like “American” and whatnot?

Unable to understand the logic…

All i know is that half the classes in the game can be played at 300 + ping

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Quadox.7834:

Puck.9612:

Quadox.7834:

Puck.9612:

Quadox.7834:

Puck.9612:

Quadox.7834:

Puck.9612:

Embolism.8106:

My main gripe with taunt is that it forces your targeting on the taunter, which currently means Ranger pets. In that sense I’d say it is better than stun.

Yes but it’s much harder to land than most of the stuns in this game since it relies on an npc with terrible pathing to land it.

It is much easier to land than most stuns in the game since neither dodge nor blind works*

There are a ton of stuns, immobilize, etc. that can be activated from stealth giving you no warning what so ever. All you have to do to avoid beastly warden is be moving…. that’s it… you can literally avoid all damage from ranger pets by moving your character. This is especially easy to do in PvP where almost every point has small ledges or obstacles that a player can jump over but the pets will spend 20 minutes trying to get around.

Players have spent the past 3 years ignoring ranger pets because they were nerfed in PVP and there crappy ai, terrible pathing, and lack of cleave make it so they rarely hit anything. Well now you are forced to pay attention to them. Once you start doing that taunt becomes much less of a problem.

No, with beastmastery the pets are monsters that deal more damage than the ranger and are quick. Ranger needs teamplay buffs (teamfights, mobility) not the taunt which is overpowered in duels by far. I would prefer the taunt to be much bigger radius but trigger at the end of the pet f2 skill (so you can’t cancel cast it).

So you think pets deal more damage than rangers, they are fast, and rangers lack mobility……. riiiiiight…. You haven’t spent too much time playing a ranger have you?

Thousands of damage from pets is not uncommon to see in duels (if they use a bird). Ranger sucks in teams, not in duels, where the taunt is absolutely ridiculous.

Yeah I used to have a problem with taking damage from pets in 1v1’s too until I found this really helpful tactic. I put my fingers on the wasd keys and started pressing them, suddenly it was like the pets could barely hit me! You should try it out, it’s almost broken how well it works against pets.

Anet please nerf moving, it’s a hard counter to a pretty big chunk of ranger damage.

Now can we talk about taunt again? Great. It absolutely cannot be undodeable. This is my stance, what’s yours?

Make the pet capable of pathing to its target without getting stuck to a wall for 10 seconds, and we can talk about nerfs. Until then, it’s still a clumsy, broken mechanic on a profession with zero tournament viability and zero dungeon desirability on top of that, and therefore making it weaker in any way really isn’t improving game balance the slightest bit.

It isn’t improving profession balance, no, but it IS however improving the game. When you balance in a PvP environment, two of the most important things to consider are these:
-How fun something is to play.
-How fun something is to play against.

Taunt fails extremely hard in the second category. Keep in mind i am all for ranger buffs in other areas and traitlines. Also keep in mind i just suggest things based on making the game better. I know Anet probably won’t improve other traitlines based on my suggestions anyways, so nerfing taunt would kinda kitten over ranger even harder which sucks. But then again, i don’t think they will nerf taunt based on my suggestions either! =)

PS. i know the AI is annoying as a mesmer myself. It was worse for mesmer in the past than it is now, though.

zapv.8051:

The problem with feedback in this game is that most of the community has no idea how to remove themselves from their perspective when considering opposing views. That and much of the community doesn’t actually realize that holding points wins matches, not attacking them.0 It’s the same in pve where 90% of players are always several steps behind the best players. In all gamemodes the overwhelming majority isn’t using all their defense correctly, and that skews viewpoints of balance right their.

Many players think about balance in too limited a scope. Even just in 1v1 pvp, there are so many variables it’s extremely hard to pinpoint what made you lose a given fight. For instance, many players rage about burn guardians and how much damage they do, but it is very easy to counter. I’d wager most players complaining about dieing from burn guards are the same ones blowing all their cds on the guards blocks and invulns. When so much of the population comes from an uninformed background it is hard to sift through all the information that is biased and what is not.

I can’t be that judgemental of Anet because at the end of the day appealing to the masses is important. What I do think they need to do is bring in a lot of really high level players from all gamemodes and ask what they think. In general, the people who are best at this game spend the most time on it and have the best ideas about overall balance. Looking to those players who have already played the game extensively for knowledge would pave the way for other players to enjoy this game.

I agree some, but i don’t like burn guard, not because it’s too strong (it isn’t) but because it has such a low skillfloor its not even funny. In this patch rank 20 players with a good build can kill top tier players depending on build and luck. I think the balance had improved from the start of the game until just before patch, then with the specialisation patch everything got reset back to the start.

Seifer Thalaen.7869:

Josh Davis.6015:

Josh Davis.6015:

As a note, we’re aware of the odd interaction between elementalist downstate and Vampirism runes and are tracking a fix for an upcoming build.

Rune of Vamp downstate bug was fixed on Tuesday.

Yeah too bad that now you can use F skills while in vamp mist

GG

That’s good

Edit: no it isn’t

Puck.9612:

Quadox.7834:

Puck.9612:

Quadox.7834:

Puck.9612:

Quadox.7834:

Puck.9612:

Embolism.8106:

My main gripe with taunt is that it forces your targeting on the taunter, which currently means Ranger pets. In that sense I’d say it is better than stun.

Yes but it’s much harder to land than most of the stuns in this game since it relies on an npc with terrible pathing to land it.

It is much easier to land than most stuns in the game since neither dodge nor blind works*

There are a ton of stuns, immobilize, etc. that can be activated from stealth giving you no warning what so ever. All you have to do to avoid beastly warden is be moving…. that’s it… you can literally avoid all damage from ranger pets by moving your character. This is especially easy to do in PvP where almost every point has small ledges or obstacles that a player can jump over but the pets will spend 20 minutes trying to get around.

Players have spent the past 3 years ignoring ranger pets because they were nerfed in PVP and there crappy ai, terrible pathing, and lack of cleave make it so they rarely hit anything. Well now you are forced to pay attention to them. Once you start doing that taunt becomes much less of a problem.

No, with beastmastery the pets are monsters that deal more damage than the ranger and are quick. Ranger needs teamplay buffs (teamfights, mobility) not the taunt which is overpowered in duels by far. I would prefer the taunt to be much bigger radius but trigger at the end of the pet f2 skill (so you can’t cancel cast it).

So you think pets deal more damage than rangers, they are fast, and rangers lack mobility……. riiiiiight…. You haven’t spent too much time playing a ranger have you?

Thousands of damage from pets is not uncommon to see in duels (if they use a bird). Ranger sucks in teams, not in duels, where the taunt is absolutely ridiculous.

Yeah I used to have a problem with taking damage from pets in 1v1’s too until I found this really helpful tactic. I put my fingers on the wasd keys and started pressing them, suddenly it was like the pets could barely hit me! You should try it out, it’s almost broken how well it works against pets.

Anet please nerf moving, it’s a hard counter to a pretty big chunk of ranger damage.

Now can we talk about taunt again? Great. It absolutely cannot be undodeable. This is my stance, what’s yours?

Ara.4569:

warherox.7943:

Anet must love rangers because they took a balanced weapon, Longbow, and buffed it a ton for no reason at all.

At least they acknowledged rangers are lacking.

In the same bottom tier, there’s necro. Being bottom tier didn’t stop the nerfs to come and bite the dead meat again and again, to the point where necro was only perceived as a threat when downed (because stuns don’t work anymore! they can finally play with a wide variety of skills like 1 and 1 and also 1 and, if they’re not stomped right away, even 3!). To remedy that “issue”, downed damage had been drastically reduced as well. Fun times.

This leads me to the best quote of 2013 from Jon Peters:

Keep in mind that some professions are harder to master than others. I believe Necro is the hardest, opinions may vary, but just keep this in mind. No we aren’t ignoring Necro, but once people start mastering DS, I’m afraid of how strong Necro will be. Give it some time for the average player to learn these things. For example early on in LOL master Yi was dominant until people learned how to counter him.

Apparently, necro players were just average peasants that couldn’t find their butt with both hands for almost 3 years.

To be fair it was strong in the past, even almost mandatory for teams (when helseth rerolls from mes you know something is wrong) in the previous meta pre patch it worked but was not optimal and now it is a really strong profession that just doesnt see much play anymore. Partly because we have lost some necros who were previously regarded as “top necros”. Ventari, zombify, posi, the prototype. If i recall correctly the latter two have recently started playing again (correct me If im wrong). Even so, necro is a niche that the team has to know how to play with, unlike for example ele. This is something barely any EU teams do (anymore).

Guess noone is interested at discussing a big flaw with the game. Here are some links to a time when even devlopers joined in on this chat:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/48100-unresponsive-camera-mouse-acceleration/
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/59951-camera-control-issues-summed-up-for-you-reading-enjoyment/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Camera-control-issues-a-documented-list/first
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/48374-need-a-disable-camera-smoothing-option/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Give-us-an-option-to-remove-the-smooth-camera/
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/43746-camera-smoothing-is-annoying/

Devs:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Camera-Smoothing/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Camera-control-issues-a-documented-list/page/3

Sure, many of these were long ago, and while the issue was later improved upon, it is still in the game!

abc.5790:

Anet loves:
-eles
-guards
-mesmers

Anet is neutral towards:
-thieves
-warriors

Anet hates:
-necros
-engies
-rangers

I can’t even count how many of these lists i have seen. As soon as Anet nerfs someones favourite class and buff another, that “someone” says that Anet hates their class. This is how it has always been.

Anet doesn’t love or hate any class more than any other. Mesmer has been the strongest, it has also been the weakest. Ranger was strong in the past, it is now not used in teams at all. The only profession that was always used is probably thief- and it’s not because Anet loves thief.

VICTORY
or…
DEFEAT

With a big button “Exit to Heart of the Mists” under it.

Great topic OP.

Puck.9612:

Quadox.7834:

Puck.9612:

Quadox.7834:

Puck.9612:

Embolism.8106:

My main gripe with taunt is that it forces your targeting on the taunter, which currently means Ranger pets. In that sense I’d say it is better than stun.

Yes but it’s much harder to land than most of the stuns in this game since it relies on an npc with terrible pathing to land it.

It is much easier to land than most stuns in the game since neither dodge nor blind works*

There are a ton of stuns, immobilize, etc. that can be activated from stealth giving you no warning what so ever. All you have to do to avoid beastly warden is be moving…. that’s it… you can literally avoid all damage from ranger pets by moving your character. This is especially easy to do in PvP where almost every point has small ledges or obstacles that a player can jump over but the pets will spend 20 minutes trying to get around.

Players have spent the past 3 years ignoring ranger pets because they were nerfed in PVP and there crappy ai, terrible pathing, and lack of cleave make it so they rarely hit anything. Well now you are forced to pay attention to them. Once you start doing that taunt becomes much less of a problem.

No, with beastmastery the pets are monsters that deal more damage than the ranger and are quick. Ranger needs teamplay buffs (teamfights, mobility) not the taunt which is overpowered in duels by far. I would prefer the taunt to be much bigger radius but trigger at the end of the pet f2 skill (so you can’t cancel cast it).

So you think pets deal more damage than rangers, they are fast, and rangers lack mobility……. riiiiiight…. You haven’t spent too much time playing a ranger have you?

Thousands of damage from pets is not uncommon to see in duels (if they use a bird). Ranger sucks in teams, not in duels, where the taunt is absolutely ridiculous.

Moonlit.6421:

Map chat is great and all, but put you really know you got em when they whisper you afterward with hate then block you so you can’t respond or just log, then you know you made em mad. X3

Thats when you go on your free to play account and do the same to them! #tactics

Really amazing changes from what i see so far (of course i need to test first!)
The heal is going to be VERY interesting, condition removal without inspiration.

Puck.9612:

Quadox.7834:

Puck.9612:

Embolism.8106:

My main gripe with taunt is that it forces your targeting on the taunter, which currently means Ranger pets. In that sense I’d say it is better than stun.

Yes but it’s much harder to land than most of the stuns in this game since it relies on an npc with terrible pathing to land it.

It is much easier to land than most stuns in the game since neither dodge nor blind works*

There are a ton of stuns, immobilize, etc. that can be activated from stealth giving you no warning what so ever. All you have to do to avoid beastly warden is be moving…. that’s it… you can literally avoid all damage from ranger pets by moving your character. This is especially easy to do in PvP where almost every point has small ledges or obstacles that a player can jump over but the pets will spend 20 minutes trying to get around.

Players have spent the past 3 years ignoring ranger pets because they were nerfed in PVP and there crappy ai, terrible pathing, and lack of cleave make it so they rarely hit anything. Well now you are forced to pay attention to them. Once you start doing that taunt becomes much less of a problem.

No, with beastmastery the pets are monsters that deal more damage than the ranger and are quick. Ranger needs teamplay buffs (teamfights, mobility) not the taunt which is overpowered in duels by far. I would prefer the taunt to be much bigger radius but trigger at the end of the pet f2 skill (so you can’t cancel cast it).

Lord Kuru.3685:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Mods are much more flexible because people can pick and choose exactly what version they prefer. Since we don’t have that luxury, we need a catch-all solution. Or customizable UI.

GW1 had a pretty much fully customizable UI. Not sure why GW2 has one that’s pretty much completely uncustomizable.

It might just be because they don’t want certain people to have an advantage in PvP because of some Mod. It is not a problem for me, as long as they work on implementing some options, such as the ICD thing (which there is clearly interest in by devs and players!).

It would be pretty awesome to have in time for Heart of Thorns as well as it would make the game look much more professional and “serious” which would attract more players from other games into PvP.

Keep in mind i am not trying to bash Anet for being slow here or anything, i think the recent changes have made PvP much more easily accessible for new players! Changes like the one we are discussing right now instead focus on keeping people interested in PvP and cater to dedicated high skill players who want to optimizing their play.

PS. I don’t know anything about marketing but i feel like Anet should use the WTS to market Heart of Thorns PvP. It would be much more attractive to a PvPer from the outside if they see that Guild Wars 2 has competitive sponsored LAN tournaments. However, they might already be doing this, i don’t know, just a thought!

Edit: the first part of this post is a reply, the second part is just some idea brainstorming.

Grimreaper.5370:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I would love to find of a solution to this problem. Its a big barrier for new players learning the game.
Brain dump:

How many of your own cooldowns must you know to be effective. Skills? Traits? Sigils?
Runes? Attunements? Kits? Transforms? Everything?
Naturally you should know every ICD you have to play most effectively, although some ICDs are less important to pay attention to such as trait ICDs, Sigils and Runes. This is because these procs are usually either a.) too much of a burden to keep track of while you’re executing your strategy to win (No visual indication of when they’ll be up again) AND/OR b.) Not worth trying to time with other abilities if the ability also includes random proc after its off ICD

How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
Some players prefer having a short list of abilities they can frequently use to their advantage while other players prefer a multitude of abilities at their disposal, it really comes down to personal preference on how many is too many or too little.

Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
This depends on the skill being executed, you should determine how quickly the skill can be executed(cast time), how effective the skill being cast is vs you and how available the skill is. Some skills can be avoided via reacting accordingly to a skills animation, knowing a skills ICD which can be avoided via reacting accordingly is not as important as knowing an instant cast skills ICD. Skills like “steal” must be anticipated at almost “random” since the cast time is instant and available immediately off cooldown, there is no other indications such as a weapon swap which might inform you of when a skill like this can be used. This is where knowing an ICD becomes much more important, some sort of indication of when skills like this were available would be nice

Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
This depends on how hardcore PvE gets, I would love to see encounters which took a solid understanding of X enemy’s combat mechanics in order to succeed

Where could this UI live?
*A few ideas on how to portray when a spell is off ICD:

unique auras surrounding,*
-targets feet( http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n375/N1gel/dugg.jpg)

-Surrounding targets body (http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140824173131/lookout/images/5/51/288772-super_saiyan_2_veigto.jpg)

I don’t like the auras, the screen will get VERY cluttered with those. In my opinion, one’s own icds should be shown in the UI in some kind of list configuration. Seeing enemy cooldowns is something i don’t see the need for. The only thing could be to show wether the opponent has his elite skill up i guess- that could work pretty well and be quite easy to implement (i think).

Wolfey.3407:

True, this is a video game; however, it is still subject to local laws.
Sadly, no country recognizes Tyria as an independent country maybe one day…

Hahha yes this needs to happen! I guess the problem is that Tyria i technically has a dictator, the queen. (some pve-person correct me if im wrong )

Hahah nice highlights! I don’t even play warrior but there is something very satisfying with seeing dd eles go down for once

I bumped the thread but i did not yet state my opinion.

I would love to see all icds over a certain cooldown’ for example 10 seconds. I am not exactly certain how these would best be presented but off the top of my head, i think of a kind of list of icons (for exanple the icon or the rune or trait) to the left of the screen with a cooldown timer on it. The Icons are grouped in sets: one group with trait cooldowns, one with Rune cooldowns and one with skills (portal background cooldown, the time left on a two part skill lke Flanking strike).

Each of the groups would have a small arrow button adjacent to it that allows the player to minimize each group individually- there are prpbably some players in PVE and such who wouldn’t need the cooldowns.

This way we can keep track of out abilities which raises the skillcap in the game. At the same time, it removes some of the clutter from the condition bar since skills such as portal or shadow return would appear in their own location to the left- which is more logical anyway!

In terms of enemies cooldowns, i don’t see why. I can’t think of a single other game that does it anyhow. However, a small QoL change would in my opinion be to move the skill effects from the enemy’s condition bar in the UI to the left of their character portrait ( when you have them targeted).

Lastly, something i would like to ask the forum users as well as the developers: what do you think about showing enemy cast/channel bars?

Puck.9612:

Embolism.8106:

My main gripe with taunt is that it forces your targeting on the taunter, which currently means Ranger pets. In that sense I’d say it is better than stun.

Yes but it’s much harder to land than most of the stuns in this game since it relies on an npc with terrible pathing to land it.

It is much easier to land than most stuns in the game since neither dodge nor blind works*

A long time ago there was talk about adding a toggle/slider for the camera smoothness/inertia. There were even some threads that developers commented on. A developer raised the “tension” of the camera to fix the issue somewhat, but to this day, the camera inertia is still in the game and greatly affects the feel of the game.

I believe that the reason not many people care anymore is partly because they learned to live with it, but the problem has not gone away. If you play Gw2 for a bit, then swap to another game (cs, wow, any game almost), you will notice the huge difference in Camera responsiveness.

The camera in Guild Wars 2 feels like constant mouse acceleration or like the camera a console game would use (they do this to improve analog stick control). Maybe it doesn’t affect all players, but for me and probably other too, this is one of the major issues with the gameplay in Guild Wars 2. It would be amazing if a developer could chime in on this! =)

Super old thread, but i thought it was interesting that an Anet developer once commented on this! This is still something that should be implemented in my mind, or at the very least discussed!

bhagwad.4281:

Wait – you mean tournament rules actually check WHERE a player is from instead of which server they’re on?

Why? Why would anyone care which country someone is from?? Who’s business is their citizenship…? What is this some government sanctioned event or something?

Video games are borderless people! Countries do not exist. The only real thing is lag.

mind blown

The world is kittened up

laquito.5269:

Quadox.7834:

Then DP needs nerfs/changes

Wait, what? Yeah lets make CS D/P even less viable. The only thing that needs to be changed is going back to the old Trait System with 7 possible choices instead of 9.

Other than that you’ll need to nerf SA, because – as of now- it completly overshines any other build.

Then CS needs buffs. Remember these are not my Opinions, i am just making a logical suggestions from what others are typing at the moment. I answered someone who said SA isnt too strong at all, apart from when ran with DP. This doesnt mean SA (meta trait spread) is too weak

Dirame.8521:

Hammer damage is crazy no doubt about that but so is Mesmer GS and Ranger LB and Warrior Rifle.

Hammer is slow, clunky, doesn’t have enough evades to save it’s kitten or a fast enough CC to prevent focus fire. The evade on Shiro takes a lot of Energy and if you see them pop their Glint heal, just walk away from them for 3s and burst them down right after.
Half they time, when they pop that heal, they die immediately after. Seriously, there has been rarely a point where a Rev popped a Glint heal and managed to survive right after, unless his teammates were around to save him.

I’m not saying Hammer shouldn’t be toned down, everyone can agree that it should, but in general, the Rev is just a flashy profession with a lot of holes that can easily be poked that.

I would love someone to do a dps camparision between rev hammer and mes gs

Sagat.3285:

Quadox.7834:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Quadox.7834:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Quadox.7834:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Chapell.1346:

the viability of P/p

Clearly player skill issue

topkek.

Chapell.1346:

My declaration of war

War against Thieves in favor of keeping them just as they are? If so then topkek.

Thief is fine in Conquest, rumors says Practice makes perfect.

Topkek.

Thief is fine anywhere but the pvp scene, which is mainly comprised of conquest.
Telling someone to practice when their only gripe is that they dont have the sustainability to do so feasibly is what I can only chalk up as great ignorance.

I’ll say it again: We’re asking for time to fight, not free bags. It’s shocking how many people think that SB #5 should disqualify thieves from being able to do anything -but- port, and even more shocking how people shy away from taking as valid any claims that other classes can be just as mobile without also being trash at 1v1.

And for those of you regurgitating the “But thief is used in hi tier tournaments so it must be fine!” Stop it. That’s stark false cause. Thief being used in any respect does not mean it is fine at all.

Thing is, the meta thief build as it is can’t have more sustain, top players are already calling it unkillable unless they make mistakes. If you mean non meta builds, i agree.

Again, I have not said anything about builds. I don’t think I’ve mentioned a specific weapon except SB and its #5, because that seems to be the linchpin that is preventing people from thinking that thieves should not be free kills when encountered alone.

I don’t care about meta anything. The class itself needs a way to sustain.

Your first statement intrigues me, though. Who specifically said thief is “unkillable” unless they make mistakes, and was it before or after the recent patch?

The combo of SA and vamp makes them super survivable, but nevermind that, since you don’t care for meta, that’s fine. Thief as a class has way too low sustain for bruiser playstyle outside stealth

I’d still like to address the meta build, even though I am not focusing on it.

SA is nice, ill give you that. It could be better, but its good as is.

Vamp is an external factor that people are looking to have nerfed anyway, so I wouldn’t say that makes thief viable in itself. If they nerf vamp, not even the burst playstyle thief has will be viable.

There’s a lot of little tweaks that could be made to help us just plain live.

SA cannot be better, the traitline is kittening strong man. If anything acro should be the “bruiser” traitline, since daredevil does the dodges.

SA is only acceptable if you are using d/p SE nerf and CiS and SRej next to each other killed it for other sets.

Then DP needs nerfs/changes

zapv.8051:

The current TTK in 1vs1s is fine for the meta builds when the players are of equal skill. Even in like the worst realistic situation (3vs1 opening from stealth), you can survive on all classes for a decent amount of time or disengage. 1vs1 TTK times are great for all builds that bring a decent amount of defense. The only time you’ll ever die too quickly is when you are buildcrafting or playing a pve build. That’s probably okay, and while there are certainly weapons, utilities, mechanics, and traits that need work most of the meta builds are well balanced.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ele

I would like to know why some people are defending this. Say an ele gets stuck between a mesmer, a theif and a marauder engi with no way to get away, They CC, immob, coordinate a spike but suddenly the already hard-to-kill ele get’s vamp rune invuln, survives the burst, heals up. Grats, the vamp just carried the match. Or say a mesmer or a thief running marauder amulet is out of position and gets spiked down. Instead of being punished for their poor gameplay, they get invuln, move to the team, get healed, and bam- the game just became about 30 times easier to play even with full squishy specs.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

D/D thief with scholar runes, zerker amulet and 2+ signets can kill things in 1 second. Does that make that build OP?

Not if the opponent plays perfectly defensively