Guild Wars 2

If you want somewhat even games, that’s what the Ranked Queue is for.

Tournament in the 1-round elimination format is supposed to be unbalanced; in fact, you want to pit the best team versus the worst at the start, so the better teams stay on for the finals. You use tournaments to reward the best; if you’re facing someone out of your level, then objectively you’re not equipped to win.

The solution to give everyone a fair chance would be round-robin or swiss-system (which would have some of the match-making you want), but it might take longer than it already is to finish 1 instance of the tournament.

I’m personally a slacker when it comes to 1v1 matchups, so I can’t help you with pin-point advice.

If you have a specific class you are really having problems with, there are 2 things you can do.

First, find a good reference point/guide/player of that profession and have them teach you the ropes, then you play that class, with no slacking, to the best of your ability, considering what to do in what situation etc. and I would say 200-300 games in you’ll start to have a hazy grasp of the flow of some of its basic combinations and where your class stands in the matchups.

Second, find a good player of that class you have issues with, and bribe him with oatmeal cookies. Duel him thousands of times until you’ve got your solutions worked out and you’re starting to win 50% of the time.

I don’t disagree that if you find some super key tip against a specific build you can just win off of that because you play sharp anyway, but I don’t think everyone can do that.

You can also ask for advice on a specific matchup, and likely someone with experience will pipe in; if you’re asking for a compendium of all classes vs all classes, it would be a giant write up, and since PoF is on the horizon, all that work would probably go to waste because of the changing meta.

Edit: welp, you got it down below, the MVP.

Crinn.7864:

I record every match I play. Vuln stacking with Bitter Chill is extremely easy and extremely potent.

Moreover, wasting a entire trait just to clear the self-condi from Consume is silly.

The only time I would use Spiteful Renewal is on a YSIM build. Since on a YSIM build you can use the trait to clear stuff that’s actually dangerous to you.

Yes, it’s rather pointless in my opinion to argue about the synergy of Spiteful Renewal with Consume Conditions (head is still hurting from that receptor cross-talk essay I wrote on cancer) over “Your Soul Is Mine!”.

YSIM! has a much shorter CD and with Soldier Runes + Spiteful Renewal you can remove 2 conditions on heal. Time that correctly and you can probably remove some obscenely high poison/torment stacks through a cover condition just after being combo’d.

The 0.5 second faster cast-time is nothing to sneeze at. I mean, I’m extremely bad at Thief but even I can spam Headshot to interrupt Consume Conditions in time, it takes the entire lifespan of GW2 to cast (around 5 years?) and the Necro raises his hand helpfully too. Cuz we’re friendly.

Vuln stacks are powerful and easy to get on Necro, and if they ate your RS5 + 4 combo + Spinal Shivers proc they likely won’t be able to dodge the Axe 2 + Might stacks that comes right after and it’s often GG.

Very entertaining, there’s so much to learn from how mechanically correct Kiri is in the fights. He’s obviously put a lot of thought and practice into his build as well. Longbow never gets boring.

Will be fun to see you throw together something after Soulbeast comes out.

I think what they wanted was to show the tiers with how many pips were on the side.

I like 8-bit art and all my characters look the same (omg why) so I don’t mind the change, but I have a fairly strong hunch robots like me are in the minority for this one.

Substance E.4852:

It’s coming in less than 2 months and no one was going to run both dolyaks and SoW. If the soulbeast elite wasn’t so terrible I’d almost say you wouldn’t even need to slot SotP.

7.5 seconds of stab every 30s (probably even less with a trait) is very solid.

I know you guys understand they did the changes to make the new expac attractive, you just don’t want to admit it because of some high standard you hold GW2 to. Gotta make profit to pay the staff, y’know.

Yes I was wondering as well when the pet refuses to do anything some of the time… you can see how much impact the pet has (duh) when you can’t secure kills without their spike/not even get them close for Beastly Warden which would have saved me and won the close fight.

Regarding the Staff 3 change it’s probably done to weaken Druid and nothing else, just as the Natural Healing change does. Forcing a pet stow + removing all boons means you would have to time the #3 to line up with pet swaps and plan out using abilities like SotP!.

Justine.6351:

It’s funny because I linked this thread in a spoof “hammer is op” thread and hammer damage got buffed while ranger signets got nerfed. It’s crazy.

Any post-update hammer vids to share?

Been secretly switching to Berzerker amulet and the CoRs make me smile. (Until they work it out and chase my ass rest of game)

To make this a relevant post about Rangers, try out Berzerker Amulet + Ranger Runes. The update hasn’t really done anything negative to Lead the Wind LB/GS Signet Power Ranger.

Well you can’t really blame OP for that, the gimmick has been here for ages. Rangers do have a boatload of high damage modifiers, but stacking all of them gives you no survivability.

What’s done is done. Now we should see how we can work with the new changes. I’m liking the unblockable and resistance on pet condi pull. I sometimes run GS with Remorseless and the Tiger burst can still be very entertaining without help of damage modifiers from signets. There’s also the trait rework for synergy and we’ll have to see how that goes into Soulbeast.

Turk.5460:

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

Also, if your team trickles on to nodes 1 by 1 continually, you probably deserve to lose.

Shots fired

Fluffball.8307:

You might even try paladins. The difference between marauder and paladin in terms of damage is surprisingly small, but the survivability difference is noticeable.

Thanks for that actually, Paladins helps me survive where I wouldn’t have with Marauder/Demolisher, and with some Might stacks vs squishy classes the damage is still rather decent. Tiger/Smokescale is doing a lot of the work anyway.

I’ll hop on to the expansion a few weeks in so I can milk all the OP stuff to hell and back, have my fun until they nerf it, then +1 all the complain threads here while I go cook some instant noodles real food.

Then I’ll probably log in very seldomly to check if they put a French Maid or Bruce Lee outfit on sale so I can PvP in it.

Towards the end of the expansion I’ll come back again to an ever dwindling population and great balance and go on about the old days while I play.

Yes it will get you banned, in many games it violates the TOS. Obligatory “if you don’t like it, make your own game” comment here.

It isn’t about what you think is right though, if they say in the TOS you can’t account share, doing so with a family member won’t change that fact. 1 person 1 account because that’s the business model and it’s in their best interest that more people purchase the game.

The fact is you can have your family play for you all you want, as long as you’re not doing so in a high-profile sort of manner, or have people vouching against you e.g. subbing in like Car Crash & Frostball, which will be made an example of.

Basically, you can do anything, just don’t get caught. Justice has nothing to do with it, unless it affects ANet’s reputation.

You are allowed to have multiple accounts, or even multi-box in some games because you are not really going against the profit of the game firm, although some games do crack down on that too (e.g. Internet cafes). It all depends on the company, because they reserve the right to do anything with your account.

“I got what I wanted you got nothing on me” basically.

Just gotta have the last word.

Awe.1096:

And to the guy who posted a rifle build advice. It does not seem to work. I can burst people all right. When they dont expect it. But once they realize what I am doing, they get back at me and shut me down accordingly.

Yes, I do feel a bit guilty for posting it, since smart players will know you are just a slightly faster Necro with no Shroud. And I am by far not anything great on Rifle Warrior, if there’s expert opinion on running one I’m all ears.

Tell your team what you’re playing, good-natured Eles and teammates peel for you sometimes. But the truth is this: you need to land your F1’s under pressure, you need to be aware enemy team might mark you on sight, you need to come into fights late (don’t try to engage a 1v1; don’t run Rifle if no bunkers unless you really know what you’re doing), and you need to choose a good target, like a Necro low on Shroud, a DH you just saw pop his last F3, etc., and have teammates that focus the targets you pick.

The good thing is, because of the extreme burst and unblockable signet, you can down anything that doesn’t run toughness and doesn’t have 40% protection. I’m out of practise, but make sure your key bindings allow you to “quickdraw” Signet of Fury, Berzerk -> F1 + Signet of Might rapidly so you can catch people with their pants down. If you’re facing someone you shot earlier in the game and they get wary, pop a Signet/sheathe your F1s and see what they do, outside of popping invuln or CC’ing you, you can land an F1 after dodges or through blocks.

It’s always a problem when you get focused or blinded on burst, but you have no choice but to bail sometimes.

Some things you can do to increase survivability include switching to Marauder, replace your Signet of Fury with Berzerker Stance, replacing “To the Limit!” with Healing Signet, replacing Blood Reaction with Dead or Alive, using Sword/Shield instead of GS. You can even use Last Stand and Savage Instict. Just tweak it to your liking.

Alternatively, it may be counter-intuitive but you can build even more ham by replacing Defense with Strength, since there’s not much to be gained from building survivable Rifle (Power Ranger has more sustained damage than you), you might as well just go back to melee + stances where it can still be somewhat effective if you’re good at dueling. And the reason Warriors are struggling, of course, is because their best contribution is win 1v1’s.

The truth is, right now everyone else is doing Warrior’s job with less effort. Warrior is Challenge Mode.

Allarius.5670:

In the end, real success cannot be achieved until skills and balance are recognized as the heart of the sPvP experience.

I’ll take Warframe as an example. Because of the endlessly scaling nature of the game and power-creep weaponry, in the beginning PvP there was non-existent when 1 shot from an assault rifle-type weapon can take down all your shields and health. People made do with clan room duels that used underpowered weaponry and armor upgrades to attempt to “standardise” PvP.

After some years the devs over there finally separated out a team for PvP. They roll out updates along with the main PvE patches and tweak things actively.

They normalized all frames into light, medium and heavy with movement speed/health differences.

They introduced PvP-only versions of frame powers.

They disabled all PvE upgrades to put in trade-off cards that allow you to customize your PvP frame, covering weakness or emphasizing strengths.

They normalized all weaponry completely separate from PvE meta. Some of the crappiest starter weaponry in PvE were actually some of the most reliable weapons in PvP mode.

While the game is a lot more twitch and resembles GunZ, where player experience and skill is more important than what frame you choose, the point I wanted to make was that complete separation of PvP and PvE can be doable and fun.

What was done recently regarding sigils was a big step forward.

Yes, at the very least make ATs and other sPvP ventures rewarding. I don’t think “more rewards than PvE” is being asked for here (because we’ll get a very misery minority going sour grapes), but at least something different with a longish investment time.

I know I’m one of those people who like to collect titles and unique skins while I play sPvP, and it’s a significant part of my enjoyment and a measure of satisfaction/success. I remember the wardrobe changes and the rank point gain restructure that pushed me from around R50 to R80 being a letdown. Sharks, phoenixes (was there even a non-farm dragon rank?) were so rare and people celebrated them.

Come for the prestige, stay for the fun.

So after selectable stats we want selectable effects as well.

Crinn.7864:

They are announcing the second expansion on august 1st. It’s not releasing on the 1st.

Skrittdangit, I was so hyped I was about to hurt myself.

Now I don’t trust any of you.

I’m a low plat gold-3 player.

Warrior used to be a premiere side node 1v1 class with either Zerker or Condi. The recent nerfs hit it so hard that all its CC and burst can be easily dodged, and it has a silly lack of sustain.

You can still play it at high gold level most likely, if you outskill your opponent. If you recall back in 2012 Warriors were snipers with Bull’s Charge Frenzy 100 Blades, that’s how you teamfight: you catch someone vulnerable, burst and pull away (keep your GS dash skills for escape). However it is undisputably on the bottom of viability right now.

If you really want to run Warrior, then staying in any teamfight isn’t an option anymore. I suggest Rifle/X Killshot Warrior and roam with it like a Necro, plugging people with unblockable Gun Flame. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQJAURj8cQfHW3BehAnIWqCs3Rbq91is4aABAleQjLHA-TpRaABcu/gwXAAAKDc7hAw0HAQuHBAA Something like that.

Or run Torch burst Condi, catches people by surprise.

I don’t really feel strongly one way or the other, I just want to see good games.

While it’s fairly apparent Jeff’s opponents are not their usual selves, it isn’t much more than opinion before we have solid proof. I don’t think Jebro’s UGO team’s ad hominem/appeal to character stance is directly a logical choice, but we humans aren’t run entirely on logic. And as you can see, people’s opinions are split.

Not big on morality. People can do what they want. I’m not triggered by this happening, life is about getting away with things you want while skirting the law/rules. Yes from stuff in the past we know the alleged players are not very likable. Yes there are social consequences but to the “perpetrators” it doesn’t outweigh the benefits, it’s their decision.

Let ANet use their TOS for behaviour control as they see fit; if they fail to do so we shouldn’t take matters into our own hands like vigilantes, but be disappointed in the system not taking action.

Stow weapon and don’t spam, a lot of Thieves that rely on PI assume you will spam and don’t really headshot in reaction to skills (better Thieves in Platinum). If they fail to fish for interrupt after 2 headshots in a row after Steal daze and you have skills off CD he would have to bail, unless you’re already low.

Use instants, 1/2 second cast skills or projectile hate so you can have some breathing room. You can use stability after they Steal. Invulnerability or Physical Immune like Signet of Stone can prevent the PI proc damage.

Try playing a Thief as well, if the enemy player successfully prevents your PIs or heal interrupt you’re not really doing any meaningful pressure after opening with backstab.

Kaburro.4712:

Dawdler.8521:

In sPvP its hard to CC someone to death – you have nowhere near the damage the same dps/cc build would have in WvW. Most will also build tanky-ish due to stat combos.

So what class or combo are you actually talking about?

yes, you are right, shame on me and im sorry

I’ll take that as accidental passive-aggressiveness. It looks to me he’s trying to help.

I can get upset about CC, and the nerf to pulsing stab too, when I run out of CDs in a bad position; but I try to see what I can do so I don’t get into that sort of situation again. There’s always something you can improve on.

If this is a quality complaint about 1-2 skills that are OP or had an unwarranted change, that’s to be expected here on the forums and we can discuss. If it’s just a generalization made to make the game easier, then anything we say to the contrary will be met with close-mindedness (not knowing what the skills are called being a predictor of this).

Oh and give up on your dream balance regarding GW2 PvP – there just isn’t interest from ANet to make meaningful changes to revitalize this game mode. Just take it as it is and treat everything like unrated battlegrounds in WoW.

huluobo.7036:

In China every day will encounter afk teammates, each encounter I will quit the game, so to do so in order to let the other three teammates do not deduct points

You are too nice.

Sadly ANet doesn’t clamp down hard on afk’ers so the only thing you’re doing is gaining some good karma (and denying your own pips).

There might be someone who can be beastly on Condi Druid, but recalling my experience facing Trap Rangers back in early core, and some embarrassing games in ranked/unranked with non-glyph Condi Druid, my only conclusion is that it is slightly (massively) outclassed.

Long trap CDs, one-dimensional abilities, way too much risk for the rewards of the shotgun playstyle in the current meta. I mean sure, if you have the reflexes to evade everything with Axe/Dagger, Sword/Torch or SB and win 1v1, I bow to you. But it is very apparent that Druid doesn’t mesh well with Condi Druid/Ranger. Trailblazer/other tanky builds is just covering up the survivability issues.

We need some facelift for the other weaponsets and abilities. Like “Protect Me!”, GS, LB, and maybe Sword. A novice Ranger’s 2 cents.

So suppose you encounter a team of Double Condi Necro and Ele, which is just gross with the things they can do. I try my best and sometimes win games against these (they can be wonderful to run with), but I feel like I don’t contribute enough (downed cleave is deadly, sustaining vs them is harder, can only out-rotate or stall 1v2).

Let’s say I’m conscious that I still have a lot of room to improve on Mender Druid. Nevertheless, would running Power Druid with GS/LB be a better choice against them? Or would rotating away from the Necro Ele combo be the correct decision?

I also forgot to switch back to Staff from GS one game (cue shaming), but I shrugged and ran with it. Turns out nobody really expects GS, not even me… good weapon (after the buffs).

Well, in my experience the Smokescale’s 3 and 4 (Smoke Assault/Takedown) have served me rather well in sPvP and WvW. They have 16 seconds’ CD with Beast Mastery or 20 seconds without and largely line up with a pet swap.

With the swap, Smoke Assault has always been cast ~1 second or even less when the current target is within the range of the ability, with the knockdown coming in just a few moments after that. So I’d say at least it works properly with some pets.

^^^

That’s the mindset I’m trying to achieve. I can’t change external factors, but I can work on improving myself. Just be sportsmanlike, and never give up.

Kunzaito.8169:

If I had to generalize an issue across many of the matches it would be the mid fights. My teams seem to always lose them (whether I am at mid or not) and things fall apart from there. But again, it’s always something different – sometimes it’s overwhelming condi pressure, sometimes it’s getting interrupted so much can’t even get a skill off, sometimes we’re winning the fight but they are able to run back quickly and meantime their roamer has capped sides on us, sometimes we have someone go far without saying anything first and then we get blown up 3v4. Always something, but shouldn’t the other team be facing these issues as well if MM is working well? And as I and others have said, we see these streaks even playing just one single class, and the results don’t show closer matches when I’m on my strong classes to justify a “oh, it’s because I wasn’t doing well on X” theory.

Better players please throw in a few cents about rotations.

I still want to mention that you can’t just separate MM and player performance. You seem confident that you have your classes down or at least consider matchup a non-factor in the match results, so I’ll just assume you’re a decent multi-class duelist.

One of the things we learn rather late into PvP after all the micro stuff is learning to back out of fights, especially mid; you have to ask if after 1 of you is stomped, can you win the 3v4, and should you begin to push far, is there someone there and can you win that matchup 1v1? If they get 1 stomped, do you really need to commit 4v2 or should you be watching where the mobility class of theirs is going (backcapping you) and position yourself to intercept early?

Watch the minimap and the deaths, they tell you where you should/shouldn’t be and you can guess where their Thief is, for example. You should also keep in mind portals on an enemy node and be ready to kite off if 2-3 pop out.

Now onto the flexible part of rotations.

If you’re where you need to be on Engi/Druid/Ele , you can soft-carry your team if you pull enemies into a 1v2 after you lose mid (nothing exciting, anyone on these classes can) for 1-2 minutes (you need Oscar acting skills, let them see you go far) and sometimes it’s the thing that turns a losing match into a win (dependent on if your team can even win 4v3).

However on those same classes, sometimes it’s detrimental to try 1v2 when you get hard-countered (Condi Mes, Necro etc. for Druid/Ele), you know they already have a bunker on-node defending, so you switch to team-fight support and look for 2v2 etc etc… and so it all depends on class matchups.

What I’m trying to say is there isn’t really a rule to go far go mid, you want to imagine what their comp can do, how a certain class would want to rotate, and react to them. They have a tanky slow comp, you rotate and outright avoid the Ele sometimes (destroy Ele if you have decent Necro + support); they have Thief Mesmer and you know they will cross, so you want to put someone tanky there to stall for a neutral and remember to force portal later etc.

Once we had a Double Necro/Engi/Druid/Thief team vs Ele/Engi/DH/Necro/Druid, and we weren’t doing well at mid at the start, so we played sides (Thief decapped far right after one of us was getting stomped) and rotated the Necros + support into the Ele to keep him respawning the whole game (friend: who tf runs Ele going into that sort of thing), while Druid/Engi 1v2’d at home or far otherwise and the Thief would decap mid whenever he could between +1s.

(Yes, distinctly average plays)

There won’t always be optimal situations, e.g. a devastating full wipe at mid, but if you know your matchups and you push other points for the outnumber, you will eventually recover if you outplay your opponents (attached picture is a won game with said wipe; seriously tf happened at start).

Some of the worst players to encounter are the “reliant duos”, where they feel safety in numbers and will “follow” you or always run in their pair instead of thinking how to rotate independently, disrupting 1v2s, over-rotating into an already outnumbered fight, prioritize friendship death rezzes etc.

Don’t duo because you want to win, but because you will.

Abazigal.3679:

Actually, i would not mind if my strategy was followed and we ended up losing 500-400. But it isn’t fun when people refuse to listen, and you get rolled by double guard ele necro 500-150

If they don’t have the concept going in, it’s not likely they will be willing to/can/stoop to follow instructions.

Sadismo.7508:

Good for you! Spray your knowledge upon them unexperienced players!

My knowledge is fluid gold!

*I’m talking about the fluidity of speech.

kiwituatara.6053:

eight rangers

Thanks, those beefy 11k autos made my day. Bull’s Bear’s Charge new meta.

To be honest, it’s probably fun for them and is the reason they do it, to get a cheap laugh.

It’s unfun for the people watching though.

I know, I know, “it’s just a game I can’t take it serious is why we troll” and I’m not saying top players have more responsibility than the rest of us to play clean. It just makes you go, “really guys?” and reaffirm your maturity.

If you are trying to play 1 class well you will reconfigure keybindings to suit that playstyle. If you choose to use generic keybindings for all classes and play all of them, there WILL be lags in your decision making, and you are fighting not only your opponent but with the familiarity of your class.

I have been there before, when I thought the fault is with the class but not my decisions, and keep finding “the best class” “the best build”. The truth is it’s a bit of everything but class familiarity has a bigger impact than class composition. When your experience with a class is no longer the issue (even pro atheletes don’t make 100% correct decisions), then you can worry about class switching.

Don’t fall into the thinking that “I switch to this class now I counter comp why am I not winning” “I’m supposed to win this matchup so xx class is broken” “I can play all classes at the level of my main class because I do well on my main class” the things that these statements have in common is that we forget to take into account class familiarity.

There is also no situation as the above have point out, that warrant switching around ALL 9 classes. Normally when you switch to a different class you will lose a bit until you gain control, because how you play that alternate class doesn’t belong on the same division. For example a player can be Platinum on Mesmer but trash tier on Engineer, and if he plays Engi he’s going to drop all the way past bronze until he can play that class on Plat level.

Some players above have also offered to help with your matches, and if you can give us situations where you are struggling or tell us what you normally do on x or y class, experienced players can help you improve.

Don’t focus on ridiculing matchmaking, that is out of your control and you should focus on changing what you CAN control: your in-game performance.

1. Foefire: we win mid, Mes dies 1v2 at close (a third one comes in after that for some reason so he can say it’s a 1v3). He gets mad we didn’t rotate back in time to help him and decides to afk after that. At least that was clean and early.

I’m fine with it as long as he’s losing rating with us, to be honest.

2. Forest: Gold/low plat players, we full wipe mid at the start. We didn’t say anything, it was like 75-100 point lead, but we kept playing. Don’t worry guys… we had a plan.

I have a sister and the self-assured Taimi gives me a chuckle. What’s wrong with a bit of rudeness when you’re young?

suffish.4150:

Unfortunately though, people come back after a dc for some reason which is why the current system needs to change.

The only case in which these don’t become an auto-loss is when you have a giant lead in points, and you know your team is generally better.

But that is frankly 5% of cases (happy ending screenshot below). As of now, trying your best to log back in is pointless for you and detrimental to your teammates.

I don’t know what could be the solution.

1. Reducing the rating protection time to 30-45 seconds? The shortened time could arguably be abused, if it was a close game and your 4-man team is determined to stall for 30-45 seconds.

2. Cut rating loss in half after 45 seconds, and gradually reduce to 0 at 2 minutes? This could possibly make logging back in not a pointless endeavour (at lower tiers) and make it so that people will at least try a bit more to recover from the 4v5.

I think the first thing many will notice is the multi-classing you have going on.

I don’t think that’s the best way to play; get familiar with 1 class in the current meta first. Unless you’re way up in the divisions you don’t need to worry too much about counter-comping, you’ll contribute more if you are familiar with your class mechanics, and rotate according to your role.

Even if you’re not the best player mechanically, know what classes/builds you can push into and survive (this changes with the meta). Actually, just stay away from the matchups you can’t win.

I also tend to get into lose streaks, but I made a rule to bow out at 2-3 consecutive losses and take a break (and also queue dodge). If I get a close loss with good players on both teams though, I queue back in immediately, because the games will be exciting.

I don’t disagree with matchmaking problems because we all experience the cross-division matching sometimes. It’s great to discuss here hoping ANet will somehow reconfigure their MM algorithm, but that’s not everything.

We lose because the enemy team played better. If we think we don’t belong at a certain rating, then we have to learn from mistakes and try to improve. Don’t be so fixated on winning and neglect learning.

Lately I’m busy so it’s one game a day…

Posting my current stats as a very ordinary player. Cheer up man!

AliamRationem.5172:

Am I frustrated? Sure! I spent all day playing PvP and got basically nowhere. But it felt competitive. I didn’t feel I was losing to bad matchmaking for the most part. The competition just felt tougher than usual to me and I think the record reflected that.

You have basically found your 50% win:loss rating then. Still playing Ele? How’s that going matchup wise?

These games are the best to learn from because some can be soooo close, and you will be disappointed with yourself for this poor rotation, I should have landed that, this is bad play on the stomp etc etc… the best experience you can get. Because the difficulty is not insurmountable and if we can fix those clutch mistakes and overcome the challenge, we improve noticeably.

In contrast to blowout matches vs legend/plat players in top teams (the gems of the queue system), where most of the maneuvers will fly over your head as you get destroyed remorselessly and can’t even make out what happened (well an exaggeration but you will be quite a few steps behind).

atheria.2837:

Don’t post a link if you aren’t going to post the build itself.

>11 months ago

Uh… I think if you want to dabble in Necromancy, there’s an appropriate subforum for that.

Vitali.5039:

Our necromantic power has just increased!

You can see that he has Lightning Reflexes on 32s CD, random poison procs -> Wilderness Survival

20 second pet swap, 20 second WHaO!, 60 second pulsing pre-nerf SotP! -> no Beast Mastery

Super long boon duration and Protection + Weakness on hit, Vigor on pet swap -> Nature Magic

Druid trait line is pretty rigid in that you want 1, 1, 3 if you run LB.

You’ll probably want sigil of concentration as well, and boon duration foods.

There’s random resistance + protection so it’s Durability runes. The boon duration from this set also makes sense.

I would say Commander armor, but it can also be just Marauder + Berzerker if you really want to go ham.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBjYD7kSFolFskFwWQgrFswJYwt0ZaPtZY13CAOBuQ1hrkpFG-TlRfABhq8bznAwjq/4qSQA0NM4+DkCIwpWA-w

This guy switches stuff around like the Warhorn trait, TU heal, Entangle, Sic ’Em etc. and I think any player that likes his/her class should experiment.

That’s an educated guess, I’ve only recently started playing Mender Druid in PvP (Gold-3 scrub).

Guessing builds can be fun.

Actually Axe was a pretty scary weapon in PvP back in 2013, the Warrior can just pressure you with axe auto crits. The whole chain had even damage on each swing.

That was why the damage was moved quite a bit to become back-loaded (double damage) on the third hit of Triple Chop.

Sean.8921:

In the end, our team won by 12 points. I’d like to say it was a close match, but that’s a sore spot when the whole match was a roller coaster of anxiety with all the disconnects.

In terms of sheer in-the-moment horror, I think yours is pretty high on the list. Nobody expects the rolling disconnects.

Lord Velar.1509:

Lets not mention how you cant pvp as a thief without someone getting on you about decapping or capping

Can they shut their trap and play Thief seriously, playing to win, for 300 games then talk? You don’t have to like the class but at least appreciate what it does and how it goes about doing it.

Being ignorant and demanding the impossible, and antagonizing your teammate/play-maker isn’t going to help you win…

It’s the best feeling when you watch the map, see your Thief get a sneaky decap, come back for +1 and we finish off someone. That’s basically a guaranteed 50-100 point lead if we don’t go dumb suddenly and do stupid things.

*gold tier 2 cents.

You can dodge obvious setups, or hold your cleanses until they condi-burst. Burn Guard is obvious (torch, fire ring, don’t clump), and Condi Mes as well. Necro can be a bit more icky because of corrupts but try to kite that Shroud.

Sometimes you see a lot of conditions on you but it can be mostly non-damaging conditions or low stacks. It can be tempting to just cleanse immediately but you need to watch for players that count your CD and wait for you to use up your cleanses.

If it’s an outnumbered situation and you feel you might get bombed, it’s okay to leave point, LoS/kite and try not to get hit by conditions.

Condi builds beside meta Condi Mes are fairly squishy and die quickly to focus, so they aren’t perfect.

stick.7258:

Also i’d like to know if there is a way i can prevent the f2 from totally missing target.

There was an old post on this, basically the Wyvern tries to flank targets so if it’s turning and you hit F2 it will just miss.

The solution is to hit pet-attack (F1) to orientate the Wyvern directly at the target before you hit F2.

You get dishonor when you leave a match for whatever reason over 2 minutes. There is a hidden dishonor stack that determines how long you will be unable to queue for. There’s information on the wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm#Dishonor

As a side note, if you get pulled/pushed into a wall, go to the character selection screen and log back in on same character immediately, ignoring the dishonor warning (under 2 minutes is ok).

sephiroth.4217:

That means I can block everyone who is better than me and win all the time!

Stop stealing my totally original ideas that I got after reading your post!!

It makes you feel better I guess?

Just ignore them, there’s more of them out there and you can’t silence every one.

Helly.2597:

New video is now out! Only group roaming this time. We were running a bit more than we normally would, but we got some good fights in against guild groups and larger groups.

Video 4

There are a lot of tasty comments over at the video. Nice gameplay again cheeky jumping.

Ele does an amazing job of keeping you up, the team coordinates to stomp and get you rallied, you have great positioning for your AoE spikes… and other stuff I might have missed.

Oh yeah, I saw a Charr Viper Necro crowd-diving, just when I thought I saw it all already. stares off into the distance

Some things I liked were the shroud swap bursts (as always), build changing, and the sneaky stealth Elite. Axe and GS aren’t bad weapons on their own, and is so much more effective in a group setting than scepter and staff due to the AoE boon corruption. The LF generation is also important, and we shouldn’t forget that Shroud has a 50% direct damage cut built-in, which can be considered to scale better the glassier you are and the more vitality you have.

rubs nose “Pfft we had it all along!!”

Must have been exciting.

Alehin.3746:

Its almost like dying in a game = dying irl. lmao

That’s when you know you’re living too vicariously through yourself.

Chorazin.4107:

But without voice coms it’s common i lay down my function gyro/stealth gyro, begin a rez. Only to have the downed player auto attack and get stomped.

You basically have to compensate for your teammate as well and pop Gyro at the very last moments before the stomp so that even if the guy is spamming skills he gets stealthed at the moment the stomp finishes casting.

Sometimes you can try to get an early stun in as they begin stomping, before they pop a CD to secure the stomp (invuln/stab/blind/aegis). If you do it right you can get them to pop the CD for nothing right as they get cancelled. You just have to look at your teammate’s HP bar to start casting right as he goes down.

Or, you can spam team chat with “STEALTH REZ DONT SPAM 1” a few seconds before he goes down so he knows you’re there and you can help him.

They support in the form of +1s and decaps, which no other class can perform better in at the moment. Good thieves (1 in a team) can carry our mediocre ass through a winnable game.

Thieves are very polarized to their role and can’t hold a point due to having a naked HP bar (low defense uptime, thus low effective HP), and if you have more than 1 in a team, they have to spend so much time off point recovering there’s nothing to +1 to.

Having a Thief means that the share of attacks/CDs meant for him will be distributed to their 4 other teammates instead until his +1 comes, meaning it’s generally better to have more sustainy classes or players that can kite to stall for him. If you successfully hold out though, a good thief will make sure the enemy is always 4v5 because he nails the +1.

This is why having 2+ Thieves won’t work, because if you are getting 3v5’d all the time and dying, there’s nothing for those Thieves to +1 to, and if they get focused they have to bail and waste time doing nothing.