Guild Wars 2

Static match ups are boring. I’ve seen a lot of people lose interest when playing the same team for the 3rd week

Each week the winning team should go up and the loser down.

Yes there will be some bad match ups. But there would be a greater purpose to winning or not losing.

You only have to look at all the missing guild features and ui features, common in every mmo, to see how they have cut corners.

This is not even looking closer at maps, mobs, rewards, classes, etc. which are all pretty thin.

In the above example with the 100b warrior. Most likely he would down his target in a couple seconds… Yeah that’s op but… Get immobilised and shot down by the various range before even getting a kill.

The thief dumps his damage, turns invisible, stomps his foe and ports away. Or dumps his damage, turns inv, ports to safety.

Maybe I am the only one who can see why the warrior one is not being raged about.

I agree. Gw2 does indeed feel like a tawdry f2play game. I’d rather it was better made and paid a sub.

I am interested in game balance. Thief has far and away the most damage, mobility and survivability (through its stealth mechanic). Something has to give.

Veldan.4637:

Yep posting this was a bad decision, though in the long run it won’t matter. What matters is the February patch, I hope it’s some great stuff cuz if not, WvW population might just take a big hit…

Have any of their patches had great stuff?

So far their patches have been a bunch of pumpkins and snow men and frivolous crap. Everything meaningful they have put off or done nothing about or ignored.

I think he was trying to be polite. All those things are pretty annoying.

Number 2 is the biggest reason spvp is unpopular. The game play mechanics are based on Moba games, yet you only have 10 builds to pick from that actually work. In whatever your favourite class is you might have two.

It also feels like a time waster because you get zero rewards for it. Could I level alts in pvp, I would spvp to do so.

I’d do Juggernaut. But I like and use the Hammer a lot.

I imagine you will need to buy a crafting piece with karma and another with badges to make a piece of ascended gear in the forge. So I would stop wasting it if I was you.

Tbh I think a legenadary would be worth 2.5 million Karma if you could buy it that way. This would take people 6 months to a year of hoarding karma. Its supposed to be a long term goal.

Niim.9260:

Personally I felt after listening to the interview that the devs are somewhat out of touch with the game and its players. Specially the part when they were talking about the rewards for going to WvW. What they said was true 4 months ago, but I would say it is not true now. Server pride… but then they say transfers has no impact… tell that to one of the servers now dead.

Overall pretty disappointing interview for me personally.

Funny. Here is the one aspect of the game that people loved in Beta, still has a large following and participation, and could be awesome with some improvements, but these guys are just out of touch with what pvp is and why people do it.

Try looking at the Honor and Virtue lines

A 0/10/0/30/30 build would help your team out a lot. It would rely on using your Virtues a lot, Symbols, Shouts and Dodge Roll to Heal.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAW5dlYgqCHFSLEf4ES2jVCBTQrCEE2DM6j2IA

I would go 2 Monks, 2 Dwayna and 2 Water Runes for Massive Boon Duration. You would want to get a set of PVT and Cleric gear with Sapphire Jewellery. Cleric Weapons. Your main weapon will be the Staff, but you can chuck down the Mace Healing Symbol for your Mates to Stand in and Use the Focus to apply Vulnerability. You might consider the Scepter instead of the Mace and use the 2 skill to root your target in place for your group. I would use the Focus for the Blind and Healing and because I hate shield without the -20% CD trait.

Between your Shouts and your Virtues you are helping your group out a lot.

You might experiment with different healing abilities. I always run the Signet but I can see why others might be effective.

I am running 0/30/30/5/5
Running both Perfect Inscriptions and the Valor trait to remove Conditions. Combined with -40% duration food you take ALOT less damage and are under the effects of Conditions a lot less. Basically, its the Conditions that are often killing you and stopping you from being effective a lot of the time. This build does great damage and is very survivable. Has lots of tools to stay within mele range.

Other trait Signet -20%, Vulnerability on Blind, -20% Mediations, -20% on Shouts.

Gear
Knights Helm and Gloves, Beserker Chest and Legs, PVT Shoulders and Boots
Emerald and Beryl Jewellery
Beserker Hammer and GS
Hydromancy Sigils

Over 16k health, 63 Crit Damage, ~50% crit, 2900 Attack and Armor

Class abilities
JI and Smite Condition of course
Swap in and out: Retreat, SY, SYG, Wall of Reflection

Food
-40% condition duration +70 Vitality
Maintenance Oil of course

I also run the
0/15/30/20/5 build and like it a lot. But I am amazed at the amount that Conditions are wrecking me in WvW.

I get ripped apart in seconds by ranged.

Toughness seems to help a lot vs autoattacks but very little vs other abilities.

Exedore.6320:

Relentliss.2170:

When you only have 10 skills actually having it on the bar taking up a slot is lame.

Not really. The point is that you can’t have everything at once. In other MMOs with a lot of skills, they become very specific very quickly. GW2 limits your available skills so that the ones you have won’t be as limited or if they are, will be more powerful. It also preserves the idea of different builds that have strengths and weaknesses and allows for team play to cover those.

As such the classes are more like Moba characters in design. In Moba games you do Not have your autoattack taking up a slot. You also have much more character customisation than this game offers. Its like they took one or two things from Moba but left out the fun parts.

Even if you L2play.

The thief will still win if reasonably competent.

This might be tolerable if in groups were they countered by a balanced set of classes. Nope. Best set up is a handful of thieves and some sort of Control. The more thieves the better your chance of winning.

You can go and roll your classes best pvp build and it will still lose to the thief’s best pvp build every time.

Its not a L2play issue.

Its a one class is stupidly OP issue.

Exedore.6320:

Relentliss.2170:

Will go on record saying having an autoattack as one of five abiltities is lame in the extreme.

Depends on your point of view. Many prior MMOs require you to repeat ability sequences over and over again to be efficient. However, that has a low skill threshold (it can be easily automated) and leads away from have an interactive game – you’re playing the UI instead. What GW2 does is remove that and make it all automated. However, in order to be efficient, you need to use the other abilities when interacting with enemies to allow you to damage them unopposed or prevent damage, etc. Decisions made about when you use those abilities and which of them you use determine your success – not how well you can repeat 1-1-1-2 all day.

When you only have 10 skills actually having it on the bar taking up a slot is lame.

Tulisin.6945:

Relentliss.2170:

My suggested fixes
Spamming Abilities other than the 1 costs increasing initiative with each back to back cast
Remove Stealth from all weapon skills

More suggestions that’d break the profession. Thieves aren’t just built like every other profession but with initiative instead of cooldowns, they’re fundamentally balanced around the initiative system. A huge revamp to the initiative system (like scaling costs up for repeated ability use) would require a huge revamp of thief skills as a whole.

And removing stealth from weapon skills means rebalancing every build that relies on combat stealth.

Your just in denial defending the most broken class in any mmo.

Being able to stealth repeatedly is OP and everyone but thieves know it.

Having to use class skills would bring this ability, which when tied only to Initiative is incredibly OP, into line with other abilities in the game which are all on CD.

Twil.6307:

Dungeons I feel are a bit dry and almost repetitive, for quite small reward in my opinion, and currently the only remotely “fun” dungeon to do is a higher level fractals.

Guild Wars 2 just doesnt seem to have a grip or something to do outside of logging in for dailies, a couple of events with your friends and guildies. Guild Wars 1 I felt like I always had something to do, and something to work towards, whereas in Guild wars 2 now, I find it hard to log in because there isnt as much to do.

Does anyone else get this sometimes and how do they get around it? I want to play but each day I just feel compelled less and less because I have the things I want. Sure you got them in GW1 too, but it was fun just hopping around endgame because you could. This game just doesnt seem to have an end game as GW1.

Most things in this game besides the pvp remind me of this video -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESE-QzPpZ50

I was promised epic dragon battles and huge world events. What I got was puffball collections.

My suggested fixes

Spamming Abilities other than the 1 costs increasing initiative with each back to back cast
Remove Stealth from all weapon skills
When in Stealth Initiative does not regenerate
Cap the damage that can be done to any player at 8K by any class, that is 1/2 a glass cannons health and 1/3 of most tanky classes

Would love to have some shorter cd skills that provide group buffs. Something like a 10 sec Aura on a 60 sec CD.

Why would AOE or other abilities, like ones with a leap attatched, do more damage than a single attack ability?

Will go on record saying having an autoattack as one of five abiltities is lame in the extreme.

Move to T4 or T5 severs where things are less zergy.

Its hardly Anets fault that everyone has settled on 5 or 6 servers.

There are a lot of good times to be had elsewhere.

I am not seeing what T1 would offer except a massive zerg fest.

Most of the videos showing good fights come from lower tier servers.

Setch.2398:

I am not going to lie, I too have had friends leave the game because of thieves.

Same.

Lately, I have seen a lot of people log out and not return to WvW because of thieves. Some moved onto other games.

Thief with good spec and gear >>> all other classes with whatever gear you can imagine.

I have the same problems with the 1h weapons. Staying on your target is a nightmare.

JI + Hammer

This gives you Ring of Warding, a Root Skill, a Teleport and a nice Short Range Leap attack.

Hammer is pretty cool once you get over the speed of the 1 chain.

Couple this with either GS or Scepter and you will have less problems.

Anyone find themselves punting people out of the Ring these days.

Typically, I try to trap the person in the ring then MB and punt them into the walls. Lately, most people have been flying right out. This has never happened before.

Is there a change I am not aware of?

I think the 0/15/30/20/5 build is a great choicefor most people. Does everything and can switch between ah and monks focus for variety.

Hostility.4961:

So i replaced my rune of melandru with rune of speed and traited 2h mastery.

Swapped out my soldier runes for runes of speed. Pretty nice. Going to stick with them.

lucktacular.9704:

Here is the build I run:

http://bit.ly/TwrwBj

The must-have traits are:

Radiance II
Valor VI and XI
Honor VIII
5 points in Virtues

That is the basic build. Never have to respec again if you don’t want to. You can swap AH and Monk’s Focus to make slightly different builds and play around with different skills. You can use it with pretty much any weapon at our disposal. Good for both pve and pvp.

There is nothing selfish about it. Someone has to charge into the front lines, disrupt and then retreat. Even in a dungeon nothing gets the mobs attention faster than the 5 skill followed by a WW.

As Brutality said in his guide using a weapon like Staff and trying to be a buffbot is basically leaving your team 1 man down on dps and you are not making that up with your boons. This made a lot of sense to me and changed the way I thought about combat quite a bit and the guardian in general.

GS has a strong AOE, an Initiate, a Symbol and a nice CC.

In WvW I see it as THE weapon of choice. Why? Ok there are a ton of guys with sticks all waving them at each other. There are only a few dudes with enough gumption to carry a blade these days. Once the foes health starts dropping, portal in where your guys are firing and lay down some smack. Nothing makes the little red arrows faster than WW. Nothing causes terror in the enemy lines like this. If you are just dying, you are not picking very good targets or running enough survival skills.

I don’t think its acceptable to equip a weapon for 1 skill. Its not so bad with an offhand like warhorn but if you are using a 2her you have to buy into the general design of the weapon. Let’s face it the staff does not really fit with a lot of our playstyles and beyond speed, is a waste of a weapon slot.

Be nice if we had a speed signet like everyone else.

I am finding it unnecessarily hard work to run around WvW and I don’t really think it is fair.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJASBlUg6CHHSNkiIXg1DASwCiL46BEdYDB;TgAqiMFJKyWkrIZRrLGFA

Its funny but Silentstorm and I ended up with a similar split but different traits. For GS/Hammer in pvp I have run this build and like it a lot. The condition stripping is a massive survivability boost. You could simply swap in the toughness to precision trait and anything else you think might boost damage to make it do more damage in pve. I swap out the first skill depending on the situation: Retreat, Save Yourselves, Stand Your Ground.

Lucky.4263:

would someone like to post this monks focus build… and also what ability/triat gives us the chance to dodge more? i run AH build and always dead on endurance for dodge.

There are lots of MF builds. I like these 2:

0/15/30/20/5
0/30/30/5/5

The 5 in honor allows us to dodge more. A lot more than other classes. If you really like dodging put an energy sigil in your weapon too.

dreztina.4820:

I’m not looking for duels; I’m looking for someone who can put up a fight. I’ve been running around a week and a half in this matchup, and I’ve seen a ton of Maguuma out solo/small group, and I’ve seen a ton of EB doing the same, but Yak’s? One person. You can try to say that doesn’t mean everyone on YB is a bad zerger, but at the very least it means the proportion of good players from YB is so low that actually finding one is like looking for a needle in a very green, very large haystack.

But hey, on the bright side, I did run into an elementalist from YB that was pretty damned tough. I almost had to use my elite, and that doesn’t happen often 1v1.

So let’s get this straight, you roll up a dueling spec DD ele or theif and you wander around either by yourself or with a mate and you wonder why people who likely have group orientated specs, maybe even pve specs, maybe I’m a noob spec, don’t stop to duel you. Makes perfect sense.

Most people have learned by now to just leave the dueller players alone.

Want to duel. Go play spvp.

It strips conditions off your mates. Maybe I am the only one that misses this. In a game with tons of conditions, this can prove very valuable.

My friend and I levelled with 2 sword and torch guardians. I wasn’t even aware there were conditions in this game till I started running solo.

Finally bought the Hydromancy Sigil and it is the bomb in WVW… just what the doctor ordered with all our movement woes. Not a fix but a bandaid to say the least.

I switched to Meditation. Works ok for my playstyle.

Wonder if Bunzy was the DD ele from his guild who had 5 goes at killing my mates lvl 20 Guardian from TOG the other day and failed each time. Elite skills shown there btw. So masterful. Attack spam off 5 skills run like a kitten, from a lvl 20 guardian no less. I am just quaking at the mere thought of 5 of those elite guys roaming around together slaughtering people who are afk or something.

I expect that the comments by the Devs are based on Spvp, where if the Thief is not fighting in or around the point, they likely are not accomplishing much. In such a situation their advice might work.

They clearly do not understand how the thief is ruining WvW. Where they can head off in any directin and the AOE is not a fix it. You would think they would understand how most thieves can strip off their Conditions and come back for a second go at their target.

Overall, they seem to think the entire game is Tpvp and are not in touch with WvW at all.

I thought the whole point of WvW is getting the right number of people into the right spot at the right time. I have yet to see a side pull back when they have the other outnumbered and say “You 10 guys just wait there, we don’t want to be unsportsmanlike.” The 3 servers have similar populations. Yaks just has been doing a better job of of getting their people into one spot. Perhaps if you guys didn’t have small groups of gank squads roaming round draining your population from key fights, you might do better.

I expect if EB gets a big population boost like they say they have, they will shoot into T3 in a week or two.

DreamOfACure.4382:

…

I’m currently on the fence about the Altruistic Healing build.

The recent nerf to Vigorous Precision is why I learned about it in the first place (you forum-goers whine and moan like crazy~), and of course, the nerf is one of the big reasons to why I’m reluctant to switch over.

I love the chill-condition, so Glacial Heart seems really neat, but that 45 second cooldown dampens my enthusiasm. Is it worth using, or should I wait until it’s buffed?

I have been thinking about trying it. I mean I usually leap into combat and chuck down some smack. Then retreat and try again if their line does not break. Usually, I have to wait the CD of Judges Intervention. That is about the same as Glacial Heart.

You might get some good stuff from using Glacial Heart and/or Hydromancy Sigils if you run a GS/Hammer build. Something I have been thinking about lately.

For PVE its pretty worthless. You would get more out of Purity and the Toughness to Crit trait.

George Steel.1804:

Major traits that are bugged and REPORTED to be bugged still untouched. Weapons that direly need projectile speed buffs are ignored, and other classes are receiving them instead. Literally the entire Zeal line is useless.

It’s just saddening to see.

This is my major gripe.

Things I’d like to see:
- a speed trait or signet like everyone else
- removing the Beta nerfs to our leaping abilities
- scepter speed buff, brought up on par with everyone else’s scepter
- shield reworking
- CD’s reduced somewhat on lots of defensive abilities
- some bugs fixed on the mentioned traits

TBH I don’t think that is too much or too overpowering.

Long term:
- some shorter duration Elites added
- proper ranged weapon
- Zeal reworking

dizzyd.5213:

The problem with the “feel powerful with boons on” idea is that boons have the same effect on every class – it’s not like we get some special benefit from them. If they really want us to feel that way, then the solution may be to make it easier to stack might/fury/regen/prot/whatever on ourselves while nerfing our base stats. Not sure I’d like that, tbh…

agree

Most classes provide similar boons to themselves and others. There is nothing really special about what we provide.

What we Had going for us was a constant stream of healing coming in. Enough to mitigate some burst and sustain us. Now that is really been neutered. I am not sure where this class is going now or what to roll with. While the patch may have made us more acceptable in PVE where we might have been OP, it has gimped us quite a bit in other sections of the game.

I am only interested in WvW performance, I couldn’t give 2 kittens how we perform in SPvp or in Pve. We need a boost here, somewhere. We need to be able to survive some focus fire or we really have no place on the battlefield.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

That clearly was not my entire point. Just going to remove that from my post completely.

AH was extremely powerful. It needed dampening, so it got some. We still have plenty of high-survivability builds. Players who relied entirely on AH will simply have to adapt.

We don’t. We have AH, Monk’s Focus and Shouts. That’s it. Ah took a massive nerf. It went fom healing hundreds per second to maybe 150 per second. Coupled with the previous nerf to boons only affecting 5 people and AH is now gone from awesome to below average, like 90% of our traits.

You might not notice this nerf much in Tpvp or even in a dungeon. But you notice it a lot in WvW. I am tired of them doing their balancing around tpvp. This game will Never be an esport, sorry but not enough like spvp.

Hostility.4961:

Use -40% condition duration 70vit food and:

More dmg and -20% condition = Hoelbrak

More tougness and -25% stuns and -25% condition duration = Melandru

We talkin bout at least -60% condition duration of imobilze chill and cripple.
Do the math lol. Helps tremendously. Conditions wear off ya faster and stun time feels like it gets halved in duration pretty much.

You can remove those conditions all day long, they still get reapplied Better make them stay shorter if they gonna keep coming back imho.

Been running Perfect Inscriptions, Purity and the -36% condition (much cheaper than the 40) food and the survival increase in WvW is quite nice. Been debating Melandu Runes but not sure if the -25% condition duration would be better than losing 165 vitality from the Soldier Runes. Something tells me no.

For all our lack of skills, Yaks is winning. I’ve collected tons of badges this weekend. TY for running in your small groups, it makes things easier.

This is a very odd and pointless change.

Sjadi.6589:

You try pvp 1 time and then state ur oppinion without further practice, even u should be able to see whats wrong with that picture…

I have played around 800 matches and didn’t ever find pvp in this game very fun. I kept waiting for it to get fun and it never really did. It was ok but never really excited me or gave me any thrill.

In contrast, I have played probably 1500 games of LOL and still find it fun.

I think it comes down to lack of play modes and lack of character building options.

I am not sure I am getting the point of a low health tank without a decent flow of healing coming in. Seems like its not goung to be tanky at all.