Guild Wars 2

RonDonJonVanDam.1289:

Power builds are dead because of the abundance of “block block immune evade block invulnerable block chill block”.

You do realise most of the stuff you just listed also affects condi builds right?

Zoltreez.6435:

one of the issues are revenants with their 100% AOE Team protection uptimes if they decide that his team needs it…………. they just press that 1 button…………

This is not nearly as much of a problem because of this:

Zoltreez.6435:

if they decide that his team needs it

They would not normally do this and they have to sacrifice offensive capabilities as well as some personal survival via kiting/cleansing/evade skills.

The three things I listed gives AoE protection without sacrificing anything to get it.

In addition to this, Glint isn’t even the meta currently.

So let’s look at this protection buff.

This is a buff that about 1.5 years ago was used to actively mitigate burst damage, being available on demand for a short duration. Bunker guardians are a good example of this, able to give AoE protection on demand to actively counter burst on allies through a variety of skills.

Fast-forward to now and 90%+ protection up-time across entire teams is now normal, nobody has to think about using protection on demand because they can simply spam the buff to maintain it. This basically means that all of the power damage in the game is permanently nerfed by 33% (40% with a tempest in the fight).

Protection needs to be brought back to being a buff that is used on-demand to actively counter power bursts by reducing the amount of passive access to this buff. Main offenders are the following:

Rune of Durability (4): 25% chance when struck to grant nearby allies protection and regeneration for 3 seconds and resistance for 1 second. (Cooldown: 20 seconds)
Who even thought that this would be a good idea? Every twenty seconds you and all nearby allies randomly mitigate power damage by 33% for 3s and become immune to all condition effects for 1s (bear in mind this includes both damaging conditions AND things like immob that are used to set up a burst). This is only a single effect on a rune that every class has access to. In a fight where three players are all using this rune, each of these three players all have 50% protection uptime from this rune alone. This needs to be completely reworked. Even just making it only apply to yourself would be a good step to take (though a rework would be better).

Elemental Shielding: Grant 3s protection when applying an aura to yourself or an ally. No cooldown.
This was already a really solid trait for self-sustain before AoE aura spamming was a thing, now it’s just way over the top. This needs an internal cooldown (even 5s icd would make a difference to the current aura-spamming tempest without breaking the trait for other builds).

Chaotic Dampening: Chaos armor grants 5s protection. No cooldown.
This trait is largely responsible for the permanent protection uptime on bunker mesmers, much of this protection can also be shared with allies due to the Illusionary Inspiration trait. The 5s duration is needlessly long when you consider that chaos armor itself already gives protection. I’d like to see a reduction in the duration from 5s to 3-4s. Realistically if you’re being focussed with chaos armor on, you’re going to get at least 1 proc of the 5s protection that chaos armor itself gives anyway. (For those who don’t play mesmer, bunker mesmer has plenty of access to chaos armor through 2 short cd leap finishers and 3-5 ethereal fields).

There’s probably other things I’ve missed, but these are the largest culprits of the AoE protection spam in this meta.

Early July 2015 was quite fun – not because of the balance (the balance was horrible) but because of how fast-paced everything was.

Ah, I remember having a lot of fun on zerker staff ele before that nerf haha

I personally liked the meta during summer 2014 the most (when hambow/bunker guard were meta). There was a lot more to gain from actively reacting to things and less of this passive nonsense. Only things that needed to change were turrets (can receive condi and crits) and a slight reduction on fire/air sigils (which we’ve had since then).

I have completed ‘The Bells of Wintersday’ 3 times, but it is not ticked off when I click on the meta achievement. I have also counted all the ticks and it definitely has not counted towards it.

Loop.8106:

Current playerbase wont be able to support it.

I do understand people would probably come back to the game if a soloQ actually made it into the game.
However.

The queue-times in diamond – legend are horrible as they are atm. (Up to 10-15 minutes). With the introduction of soloQing the que-times would increase even further and eventually result in a diminishing playerbase.

With the introduction of soloQ, far more soloQers would be in diamond…

Does ANet realise that they are killing their own playerbase by not having a soloq? It’s even worse with leagues and people are quitting the game because of this.

XGhoul.7426:

70% luck, 20% personal skill, 10% teammates, but even that might as well go into luck.

Well one could argue 10% personal skill, 40% luck with teammates, 50% luck with enemy players. So 10% personal skill 90% luck.

Spinach doesn’t grant power, get your facts straight.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spinach_Burger
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spinach_Salad

Starfall.6425:

That also brings one to the next question.. what is a bunker? Where does it start and where does it end? Is a marauder rev a bunker? Is a marauder chrono with shield and wells a bunker or is a bunker only defined by the amulet?

Any player knows what they do best on their build, hence why this system is better than purely amulets. Let the player decide what it means, there’s no reason to have a massive philosophical debate about it.

And I don’t know why you’re reading so deep into this, tell me what is there to lose by simply having two check boxes and using it to prevent 4/5 dps teams vs 4/5 bunker teams over the current system?

When soloq’ing, players tick a box out of either ‘Bunker’ or ‘Damage’. This can then be used to aid matchmaking to ensure both sides have a reasonable number of each.

Note: I realise this won’t solve any major issue, but it might help slightly with soloq comps.

Note 2: Yes I realise that you can’t simply divide every role into bunker or damage, but doing it this way makes it foolproof for all players.

Maybe he means death shroud?

Stilgar.6437:

Got a lot of wins vs premades so i still dont get the constant complaints about solo vs. team.

I don’t have any issue at all, I’m purely talking raw statistics that queuing solo results in a far lower win ratio than queuing as a 2-5 (even duoq seems to be better). Apparently other players have been experiencing the same thing.

Also I didn’t notice this being anywhere near as much of an issue before the league system, so I imagine the new form of matchmaking has something to do with it.

Aeryn.9813:

Phantaram.4816:

Definitely possible. I solo queued 8 pips into ruby all the way to diamond and only lost 2 pips the whole way their in one single loss. The other losses I had either I didn’t lose a pip or I even gained a pip.

I know you’re good but one thing you can’t ignore is that your presence in the pug team exudes a halo effect. The teammates have already predicted the outcome of a win as soon as they see you on their side. With no doubt or hesitation, they will end up playing their best.

I have a different theory:

Players on the enemy team see Phantaram and view him as one of the best duellers in the PvP scene. They therefore develop an urge to try to beat him 1v1 (especially if he is streaming) so that they can brag that they beat him if they manage it. This results in poorer than usual rotations from the enemy team as they all strive to beat him in 1v1 regardless of how it affects the rest of the map and can be referred to as the ‘Phantaram Effect’.

As an aside I just did around 2 hours of trioq and won most of my games, so soloq’ing clearly has a negative impact on average match outcome.

So I was nearing the end of the ruby division 2 days ago, but since then I seem to have been constantly teamed up with players who die within 2 seconds of a fight and now I’m back to tier 2. I don’t think I’m going to set foot in soloq again any time soon…

dank.3680:

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Morwath.9817:

Imho it should be 25 per kill minimum, so if enemy team would go bunker composition you could ignore points and zerg them down…

Yes because encouraging more brainless strategies is the way to make this game less brainless.

Encouraging people to actually fight each other is more brainless then spamming invulns and passive bunkering?

No, encouraging 5 man zerging around the map (as he was suggesting) is.

Morwath.9817:

Imho it should be 25 per kill minimum, so if enemy team would go bunker composition you could ignore points and zerg them down…

Yes because encouraging more brainless strategies is the way to make this game less brainless.

Is Profession-MMR active?

Why do both options involve a minion-master system?

Nath Forge Tempete.1645:

it was 1/2 cast time + 1/4 after cast

Now it’s 3/4 cast time + no after cast …

And what’s your point? It still takes 3/4s time from the moment you press the button for the invuln to take place.

Also it was 1/4s cast and 1/2s aftercast. Cast time has been increased by 1/2s.

So as we all know, Well of Precognition was changed to prevent point capture contribution (definitely necessary) and also had its cast time increased to 3/4s.

I personally don’t agree with the cast time increase and would rather see a cooldown increase from kitten to 75s instead of the cast time increase.

The thing with this skill is that it needs to be possible to use this as a panic button just as any other skill that grants invuln. All invuln skills, block skills or skills that otherwise negate damage are either instant cast (Distortion, Mist Form, Obsidian Flesh, Elixir S, Signet of Stone, Endure Pain, Protect Me) or have the invuln/negation/block take place during its channel (Renewed Focus, every block in the game). Being able to have instant or close to instant access to an invuln/damage negation rewards fast reactions.

I would therefore like to suggest that WoP has the cast time returned back to 1/4s (or even insta-cast) and the cooldown of the skill instead increased to 75s. This would also put the cooldown more in-line with the cooldown of other invuln/damage negation skills and encourage more careful timing of the skill.

As a side note, let’s remember that it’s not just bunker mesmer that has to deal with this, but also chrono shatter and also some PvE/WvW builds.

Underwater area in HotM is back, does this mean capricorn is returning?

New MMR tanking meta – spam well of precog in a team fight so that your team loses the cap.

Hahahahahahahaha.

Because pressing dodge is OP.

There’s apparently a challenger cup where the top 5 in leaderboards compete with bottom 3 in pro leagues. When does this happen and which day is the top 5 decided?

tyu.9470:

Are you doing these changes to PvP / WvW only or is PvE again getting randomly nerfed because balancing PvP is apperantly more important than PvE ? Rev nerf is unnecessary for PvE although i was expecting the mesmer nerf.

What’s wrong with the rev nerfs in PvE? The 3 things that got nerfed for PvE were things that Rev shouldn’t have in PvE anyway in its current state (broken level of damage from CoR, broken level of res speed from Radiant, perma resistance).

To be fair, think about how many verbal abuse reports they probably have to sift through every minute

Currently looking for a bunker well mesmer and viper mallyx/herald revenant for the purpose of leagues/guild leaderboard. Must have experience with teamspeak and a solid grasp of the build. Should ideally also be free on Wednesday evenings for AG cups (please state whether or not you are able to).

Whisper/mail me in game if interested.

Agemnon.4608:

They should bring back soloQ or at least have a separate gamemode for Teamspeak since it’s an outside tool that provides an advantage over others who don’t use it. Any bad can suddenly be “good” when a commander issues verbal interrupt commands and a team can otherwise know where to hit next.

This reminds of a soloq game where someone on my team was using a commander tag. Needless to say he was awful…

Also losing 500-151 in a single match doesn’t actually say that much about skill difference between the teams. In WTS3 oRNG lost to TCG 230-500 one round then won the next round 500-176.

that baby stealing dingo.7216:

Community
PvE players tend to be friendly and helpful. (talking about open PvE here, not necessarily dungeons or fractals.)

This is such a pointless statement. You basically just said PvE players tend to be friendly and helpful except when they have to play as part of a team, which is exactly what PvP is.

Kycoo Grim.9463:

a single mes can basically bunker forever against 3 average people, or 2 pro’s.

Not really, ‘2 pros’ will destroy a bunker mesmer if one of those is a mallyx revenant. You can even beat bad bunker mesmers 1v1 on mallyx rev.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Perma reveal? Yea, not like thieves should get to PvP anymore. At least we’re wanted in PvE right….?

Well how do you suggest preventing perma-stealth thief/mes from being OP in my suggested gamemode?

Two things they should have reset when leagues came out were MMR and the personal leaderboard. Make zero sense why they didn’t reset either.

It’s actually active at the moment (play some games and check back in an hour) – they just didn’t reset it before leagues for some really bizarre reason…

You know what would be fun? A free-for-all last man standing game-mode. They’d have to have perma reveal on the map or something though to avoid perma stealth.

Minimum time required to get the legendary backpiece is 60 days purely due to these achievements. And that’s if you play 3 games every day for 60 days consecutively.

The achievement heavily punishes those who play extensively for a few days per week and have a few days each week that they can’t play. Players who play for 12 hours on 3 days per week gain the legendary at half the speed of those who play for 1 hour on 7 days.

This is nonsense – no other legendary has this system in place.

Rodzynald.5897:

Random Weird Guy.3528:

4 players in queue together, obviously higher MMR, higher divisions. Meanwhile we are full soloq, lower divisions, lower MMR.

Also lost a pip at the end of it.

Funny you mention that, yesterday I was soloq as well and I remember your funky name
Your team devastated my random, I guess 2 or 3 times as we were lower tiers and u had a bunch of higher tier randoms. I don’t think that broken MMR bothered you that much back then.

Oh ! Hypocrisy

How is this hypocrisy? This just proves my point even more.

Also if this was yesterday, the only person in the 3/4-man I queue’d with who had any tournament experience was myself and even then I’m not exactly top-tier. In my screenshot we’re facing a 4-man of top ESL/Proleague players as a bunch of non-ESL soloq’ers.

Well the main method of getting llamas is still tournaments. I’m pretty annoyed that they made llamas buyable to be honest, thought those things were supposed to show a certain level of tournament experience.

Starfall.6425:

Leeto was the link between the first two screens. His fault for sure!

Leeto’s abnormally high MMR is raining on everyone’s parade.

4 players in queue together, obviously higher MMR, higher divisions. Meanwhile we are full soloq, lower divisions, lower MMR.

Also lost a pip at the end of it.

Bumping this up

Today I am experiencing ping between 2000-5000ms, it sometimes takes me up to 8 seconds just to weapon swap.

Some of my other friends from the UK are also experiencing similar symptoms.

Hello,

We are currently forming a team to compete in the guild leaderboards and later pro leagues, as such we will be aiming to place consistently in the top 5 on the leaderboard. We will also be competing in the weekly AG cups as practice and would therefore require you to be free on at least Monday and Wednesday evenings for these cups.

Things we are looking for:
Mesmer – Celestial wells
Revenant – Vipers mallyx/herald

Tournament experience is extremely preferable, or demonstrate a solid level of communication and rotation.

Whisper/mail me in game if interested.

Bumping this up.

Progressing in leagues is more luck than anything else. The way you progress a tier is basically to get 5 consecutive matchups that are in your favor, then repeat until you’re in the next division. Divisioin 4-6 are even more luck-based, requiring a larger number of consecutive good matchups to move on.

Leagues are quite literally have nothing to do with how good you are at PvP, since all matches are aimed to give 50% ratio according to MMR.

If we can have build templates. This way we can switch to a tankier/burstier build with ease depending on the team comp we get.

If we can have this, class locking could be a good thing when combined with the introduction of class-based MMR, so that playing on an alt class doesn’t automatically result in 90%+ losses.

Urosh Uchiha.9732:

As a person who killed the Vale Guardian (cause I do have friends who play DPS builds primarily) I also agree that the timer is just a bit silly.
The timer is not an issue if you have 8/9 skilled DPS players at all, but it still kills the point of fighting the mechanics, it’s just a simple race around the timer type of a thing.

Having no timer kills the point of fighting the mechanics, you can just tank through everything and kill it eventually.