Guild Wars 2

I find not playing this season and watching others gets frustrating to be both sad and amusing. Until I find a reliable duo partner I think I’ll stay away from playing this season, it’s too much of a wild gamble on solo.
My goal is to play games with at least low presence of something that is called "balance". There will always be blowouts and underwhelming situations, I just wish that there would be fewer of them.

Liza.2758:

just imo

120 games are fine

but the Decay needs to be adjusted for me…

i was always for real life stuff for only 1 week and got decayed from The top to bottom just like that …

no more playing the season after that ….

Aye, I think that 120 games would fit just right. Competitive quality can’t feature casuals if we want good matches. If someone is casual, that’s fine, just stay in unranked. However, decay could use a little good touch because last season I also lost my resolve after real life deals kept me away from playing and once I came back to a lot of “dice throw” matches, I decided to stay low and save my… friendly attitude towards PvP game mode. Also I’d like to point out that word “casual” falls prey to subjectivity. I’ve seen people who come and go for some dailies and they may look like randoms, but I bet that some of them would beat legendary players into submission. It’s just… not everyone has the time, but the skill is at the right place.

If you die to stunlocks 1v1 then you just have to improve. However, if you get focused into oblivion by multiple players then there is nothing to talk about, no matter how pro you are, you won’t handle 1v2 or more. There are people who claim to kill 1v2’s and even 1v3’s yes, I happened to encounter into such fights myself, but as long as you are of equal skill as your adversaries, you won’t defeat 1v2. If you do, then your enemies are not equal.

Like every pvp community, there are bunch of sissies that know nothing but being sensitive to some OP stuff going on in PvP.
I may not be amused with how balance patches are in practice, but I am sure that I will play PvP in this game for the sole purpose of not being a whiny lil’ (you know what). I left WoW pvp for GW2 and I still don’t regret it. It’s either man up and play what we got or don’t play at all.

But that doesn’t mean that PvP balance team should sit around and do damage/cooldown increase/decrease “balances”. They should go out more into random pvp and feel it on themselves how it is.

Chasind.3128:

I actually tell people who are interested in what gw2 pvp feels like to stay away from gw2. It’s awful.

I would rather let them get their own opinion while playing the game. I am not that dissapointed with the current state of the game. However, it still lacks a lot and has a lot of flaws.
If you scare people off, the developers will have less “material” to work with. Why do you think there are so many games that are mostly utter slaughter on one end? It’s because MMR doesn’t have enough players to make good and balanced games (still, I am amazed that the same system forces team comps where one consists of 1 or 2 good players and the rest are newbies and the other one is made out of decent players – guess which one wins).
In the end, if there is a shortage of players, PvP developers will have it even harder to get quality feedback. Now we basically have a a salty sea of ignorance which waves crush upon this forum every few minutes.

P.S.
Nevertheless I am curious on what foundation they perfom balance changes. Is it data and what they read, or do they really play the game to check things out on their own?

Yeh, it also bugs me a little bit. Polearms would be quite a nice addition to some classes (tho it would be unfair to those who wouldn’t get it).
Still, poleaxe/weapon is basically my favourite kind of arms and I am constantly triggered when in GW2 cinematics I see a fair ammount of fighters using such long weapons, we got skins, we even got a weapon named “polearm” in wardrobe and it looks like merchant quality item. There is even a wiki page that is about polearms.
Moreover, as a roleplayer I even like to pretend that my guardian can use poleweapons but mechanically staff (and its skins) feel kinda off.
I wish they introduced it as a new weapon for some professions. I would be mighty happy if they did.

Reaper Alim.4176:

Honestly at this point. Anybody looking for competitive PvP in GW2 atm. Is just wasting their time. Till ANet decides to change alot of it’s contradicting competitive mode policies. And turn them into competitive PvP mode policies. Like all of the other successful PvP games on the market.

It is high time for Anet to see that it’s close to impossible to make a high quality game that also caters to the majority of casual players. There won’t be any tournaments with casuals. We either have to get it harsh and real or just let PvP mode stay at the bottom so that common playerbase can have their fun.
Currently PvP is too much of a gamble when legendary players can’t carry a whole bunch of headless chickens versus a team of decent/experienced players. This appears to be quite a problem, why MMR tries to balance around numbers so that one team has 1,1,1,1,10 and the other 4,4,1,4,1 it seems equal if you sum it up but in the end the second comp wins because that 10 point worth won’t carry his potatoes. I can’t tell if that is how it really looks in the database, but this is how it looks like when I fight during matches both won or lost.

Kuya.6495:

roamzero.9486:

Master Ketsu.4569:

Warriors counter is kiting. Their mobility is weak considering it’s a melee class.

If anet wants to nerf their survivability they will need to buff their dexterity, otherwise the class will become non-viable in higher play.

It’s kind of a “gitgud” issue to be honest. Players who understand what the cooldowns are on the few mobility skills warrior has can plan around them and easily kite. The only classes that really can’t permakite a warrior are guardian,engie, and necro.

Good luck kiting in a capture point game mode.

I don’t understand this statement. You do realize that you can just break los and use obstacles to ruin their f1 burst and then once berserk mode is gone you can start your dps rotation on them, right?

You don’t have to stand on a point and tank hits like an npc. It better to give up the decap for a few seconds and then win the fight then to get killed, lose the cap and leave your team to a 4v5. Same principle applies if you’re in a 2v1. If you’re in a 2v1, don’t be a fool and sit on the point to get spanked. Even if they cap the point, that’s 2 guys playing goose chase with you leaving your team to a 3v4 on the rest of the map which is in your favor.

I wish to add that (as we all know) it is not a general rule. There are many factors that have to be taken under account such as: your class + your mastery over it, enemy warrior’s skill, both team’s rotations etc… But let’s focus on a strict 1v1. From what I’ve seen, leaving a point to not die and let the warrior have it so that we can kite, is not a very wise thing to do in my opinion. Let’s take a decent warrior with a low ping and about 30 FPS, something common I say. If you play something bunkery/healish it is worth to fight for the point if it is on your team to defend it. However, if it is contested, you may try and do not lot the warrior to cap it if you are sure that someone is coming to help, but if not, then leave it and help someone else.
If you are a squish, leaving a point for kiting is, as I said before, not a clever move.
From my own experience (based not only on my own encounters) such 1v1 ends up in death from warrior’s hands or being repelled by him or by his team’s arrival. In such case if they cap a point, they do not need to kite even if they are fighting someone in ranged combat. If a ranged combatant tries to go for kiting and attacking off point then a warrior who has more than a potato in his head, will go for such an enemy to hit him a couple of times until he can get 3 bursts for adrenal health. If we still keep it 1v1 then a warrior may also hide behind an obstacle (if there is any) and wait. If warrior’s enemy goes for the point, he goes back to the node as well to go on fighting. This is a common thing I saw from at least decent warriors and myself, for I do that too (all that in 1v1, if there are some more players in a fight, then it is an another piece of theorycrafting)
Unless you are a very skilled thief who can drop some mad dps to pop-force cooldowns and hide until they run out just to go into hit-n-withdraw kind of fight (I am not a fan of it, it is cheesy but this is how rogues and thieves mechanics are made to work)

Faux Play.6104:

Should be do you want longer queue times, or a team of similarly skilled players.

I say, I would rather wait longer for better matches than quick randomized games because, let’s say, if it really works well, then even more players may join in for the mode once they hear that the matchmaker is good and then we will have more good matches and less waiting (yeah! Gullible bubble!)

Sins.4782:

Call me when they decide to poll the removal of elite specs from ranked.

As for this… this is not too shabby of an idea. I hear ye, elite specs are one of the selling points but they do good in WvW/PvE and whatnot. But as for PvP it is one of the elements that participated in making PvP how it is now, which is a powercreep fest.
Maybe not removing but temporarily blocking elite specs for beta testing, could give us some insight on where to start balancing it out (be it nerfing elites or buffing cores). Maybe add an additional match option in unranked that turns off elite specs, I dunno (though it might not work that well due to already low PvP playerbase)

True, I left WoW pvp for the sake of GW2 pvp and it is much better. However nowadays pvp has some painful flaws but once I look back at WoW’s combat system I feel that it is not that bad (it needs to get better though).
My best PvP experience in GW2 was pre-HoT, now there is a lot of talk about “muh powercreep” and it appears to be silly at first, but later on it gets tedious and sometimes it really gets down on one’s nerves, especially when you recall good’ol pre-HoT pvp (excluding cele ele).
In the end of the day, I recommend PvP in here. It is still the best of all that I have encountered until now.

I am in tier 2 of gold and I tried something like that earlier. It seems quite good at first and it is, but once enemy team sees through the lack of stab I get eaten up too quickly. Apart from merc intervention (which is also under a circumstance) there is no real on demand disengage and once you get focused even sanctuary won’t help versus condis.
But this is just a possibility, yet for me a quite frequent possibility. Still, it does its job 1v1 but for a support to be good, a competent team is also needed because 2v1 (if you have potatoes instead of teammates) you are bound to slowly die if your enemies know how to get past your defenses.
Overall it is good but only against encounters with not enough burst and low CC output.

I use: “If we start to lose mid, go play side nodes” and it turns out to be quite efficient. Rotation is cruicial if the enemy team’s combat capabilities are greater.

I think that still, some tweaks should be made with those numbers. In a full-blown match full of twists I get +12 for win but it’s so easy to get -13 in a situations when it is a one sided massacre. So tell me, that match that I lost 216/506 we had a guy DC’ed in our team for a about 2 minutes but he came back. The fight took those almost 9 minutes and we lost despite best efforts, losing -13 rating. Of course you can’t check it by yourself and you have the right to not believe me, but database does not lie and it knows what happened.
I wish that this could be looked at in a future balance patch.

Now something that I’d like to talk about as well. I still think that we can get out of this mess, but my thoughts are being gnawed upon on more and more as I find time to play and meet with such terrible quality of matches.
I won’t even move the matter of community. I understand that due to low population our games are very unstable. I know that Anet tries to introduce PvP to PvE players but if there is such an attempt, there should be some educational materials in the game in the first place. I am sure that a considerable bulk players is not fond of doing research by themselves so they have to get those tips shoved in their face somehow. At least make new players understand what is the meaning of “focus”, “rotation” etc.
Also I’d like to pinpoint that trying to create classes without boundaries (no trinity) is clearly not doing well. The best example is druid that has an unproportional damage output to healing and escape capabilities. Sadly I don’t know how to fix this is if you still want to keep amulets and the principle of no trinity.
Warrior appears to be okay, at least he is not pulsing a healing aura, although his survival capabilities are a tad bit over the bar. I am amazed that guardian is made for damage but there are no truly strong builds that offer grand healing or boonshare (except shouts which is used by… does anyone use it anymore? It’s more likely situational) I am amazed to this day that guardian does not fulfill the role that comes with his name. He is just a reskinned warrior with blue coloured spells. Everyone other supp build does a better role with sustaining the team than guard does with whatever he is able to give into a fight. If someone tells me otherwise, then I ask you this: Why is it not meta then, why is it not popular? A handful of exceptions is not a valid argument.
I could go on and on but we all know how it looks like, at least those who still bother with this game mode.

The only thing I can propose might seem brutal. Stop the power creep by turning off elite specializations for pvp and try to tone them down to the level of cores and if it is not what you want, then buff core traits so that elite is not mandatory to be efficient in any given situation.
The reason behind this is that before HoT I could not say a sinlge bad word about pvp at that time. Not only the PvP system, but elites are one of the factors that led us to this situation.

P.S.
I am really curious how would ranked season look like without elites, just one season.

Sometimes you have to fall to think about what went wrong and return once again, better. I think that thanks to this fact Anet may give more focus on true quality balancing instead of trying to power creep everything into oblivion. I still have high hopes for this game mode. Pre-HoT pvp bought me and I had so much fun before elite specs, I wish we could return to those times when you had to carefully time your skills and if you did wrong, you simply died. Because as of now, there are too many mistakes that someone can make, and they are easy to recover from (mostly an overload of passive trait gameplay is at fault here – for example engy’s auto invulnerability).

Right now I tried to get a match after a short break. First thing that happens? The server disconnects me even when my internet is up and running very well. There weren’t even that many players online and the server throws me out? Well there are a few bits on /map chat too, that happened even after I tried to reconnect.
Even at this very moment when I write this message I get randomly thrown out of the game while trying to get back. I am in a dorm right now and my two roommates are playing their online games without any lag spikes or disconnections so I highly doubt that it is on my side.
I wish to know why this happened. Normally I wouldn’t mind but I don’t have that much time as I used to and I thought that I can have at least few matches every now and then.
Of course I lost my rating and I couldn’t do anything about it. However, as long as I still hold current pvp state in a somehow good regard, I am not so sure about other players who also might experience such things.

I’d definitely like three new weapon types. For example crossbows, fist weapons and polearms. The latter is the most likely due to it being already coded into the game, it has many skins that can be borrowed from the “spear” category, all that needs really doing are the skills and necessary traits for even some revenant’s/daredevil’s staff animations could be used for it in that matter.
Plus we got many, many teasing little details that keep on tilting me because we still don’t have polearms, for example spears in some cinematics, watchknights, now recently seraph guards have them.
This weapon might be a definitely good piece for guardians, rangers (ya know, our ancestors used spears in hunting and not only by throwing them), perhaps a revenant could use it and I am not sure about warriors. It’s an obvious choice but they already have a lot to choose from in terms of weapons.

Crinn.7864:

Why would I boycott this season? I’ve enjoyed this season more than any others. The matchmaker works as well as it has any other season. All the rating exploits from previous seasons have been fixed. Class Diversity is better than it has ever been post-HoT.
Rewards are literally the only issue with this season.

Also I’ve been getting some really good fights.

Every rule has an exception. However that was a nice match up you had there, it’s always good to fight alongside those who know their drill, I also get such match ups and they feel right even if it is a loss like in your example.
But overall it’s not that all happy and flowery, as I said in a different thread, matches tend to be a huge gamble, a random dice throw for teammates and games are mostly one sided massacres that are hard or impossible to carry.
Day after day I start to think that it all went down because of introducing elite specs, perhaps suspending them for one season might give us a new point of view on how to fix some things.

I wonder what would happen if they locked elite specs for pvp for some time, just to test things out how they would work out. We can all safely say that everything started to go down when elite specialization power creep was introduced. When I bought the game before HoT I had a few months of pvp and back then (aside from cele ele) it was quite pleasant to play that mode.
However if Anet decided to lock those specs for pvp now, I think it might harm the playerbase somehow. Still I think it may be worth it to turn these power creeped trait lines and focus on core lines to make them better, as well as look at elites to see what might be changed to allow more build diversity.

Yup, I kind of lost the desire to play PvP now because it’s too much of a gamble. We are too dependant on the team and if you want to try hard you gotta go duo with someone who is as equally good as you are (talking about being at least more than decent). I think I’ll have to find myself a PvP guild to drop in for some duos too.

I’ve been playing HoTS recently and I am amazed with how many matches I win, definitely much more than in GW2, ending with MVP from time to time or one of the top stats, even when playing with randoms. When I team up with 1 or two people it gets even better, and when we lose, there are very little blowouts or one sided massacres. There is a feel of equality even when my team loses, that particular feel that makes you think: “We could have won that, but we failed. Still, well played.” and not “My team was bad, lol”.
Yes, yes I do realise that MMORPG is different than MOBA. The second genre is easier to balance, less skills and traits on heroes and the game itself is based on PvP so it’s not for those who are not willing to improve.

However from time to time I show up for some ranked, just to not get massive decay. But I don’t think I’ll be going for a super marathon of ranked matches that look like a dice throw.

What about top players who get about 80%+ winrate? I wish I could check out some more videos beside Helseth’s and some more variety instead of mesmer (who is one of the best to carry a match).
What is taken under consideration to understand why there is such a huge gap between majority of pvp community and top players? I do not see myself as top of the lead that is for sure, but I know that I play well enough and understand rotation in all its meaning to have more impact on the fight instead of praying that my team is not going to get outplayed (a.k.a one sided massacre).

It’s not exactly a rework what I have in mind, but a certain idea that looms in my mind for quite a long while.
It’s for the guardian, a new class mechanic of sorts. I don’t really know how it would work out, but I think that instead of application of burn every fitfth hit, the last struck gives a special sort of aegis that absorbs damage, not protection or block, but damage absorption, let’s say a base value of 2k damage which is an auto attack and a half out of a zerker stat. However this might greatly hinder burn guard so the other way might be F3 activation to give a huge damage absorb of all kinds (power and condi) for a value of about 10-15k damage, and let’s let the this absorb last for 8 seconds base with a possibility to lengthen it to 10 through trait.
This mechanic might be something good for a new elite spec but still, I would definitely see it as a rework for aegis so that instead of 1 time block we get few K’s of damage absorb based on the level of power and condi damage.

Wait wut… 6 wins 4 losses and you got into silver? I had 5 wins 5 losses and got into second or top of the first tier (can’t quite recall now) of gold. How did that happen?

The thing is that PvE players are welcomed into ranked games but they are not taught more about what ranked is, it’s just a free farm and just a different button in the PvP interface. There should be some more info, some tutorials a guide to ranked, some more tips on how to fight even when entering HoTM there should be some tips displayed. If one tries to get into ranked a warning pop up that this is competetive and its serious and not some Mary Sue-sque gameplay like back at unranked.
I think that education and information is the key, if people try to improve, they will get better but they need to see more.
If this state stays as it is now, it might turn out later that quality competitive won’t really go extinct, but will be really, really of low quality.

But in the end of the day, I see that gold, platinum and legendary appears to have normal quality of matches and when I look back at silver and bronze I just see a cluster of PvE players for daily and baddies who can’t swallow the truth that they are not as good as they think they are.

From what I heard, there is no profession lock during the first minute of preparation. When a match REALLY is in progress, then you cannot do it. Seems fine to me.

kdaddy.5431:

Also if everyone is fighting off point you might want to join them. If you are playing a class like warrior, DH, necro and ignore people attacking you then they will proc your passives or take your health down greatly and you are just trying to run to a point. You have to engage them.

In the long run it is true and I approve. However if you have any form of CC, use it if you can. Sometimes you will fight that enemy, but its better to make them chase you to the point and fight over there becuase if you engage in a fight it might end up in a teamfight and if the enemy team is at least slightly better, they will definitely take advantage of it to steal nodes, it happens very frequently.
But in the end of the day every rule has an exception and it just depends on the situation.

This is what happens when there are not enough players and PvE folks want to do dailies on ranked and to farm chests.
I just did placement matches and even though I scored 5 won 5 lost I must say that this was quality, I am happy with it. Althought one match I lost because there was a DC in my team for the whole duration of the match (he didn’t even show up in the first place) and thus we got smacked and I got the red bar (which is not nice). Then one match was full of headless chickens who died 2v1 to a dragonhunter so it really felt like I didn’t deserved that lost. The other 3 were either close calls or our team just got some rotating wrong and a certain moment and that’s all.
I still have high hopes for this season, I hope that devs will aquire even more from observation because I sense that with every season it keeps on getting better bit by bit.

I am going to play whatever I like but is effective. I’ve spent my spare time off season to test out some new non-meta and meta builds. Also play solo because I can and I will.
Oh I’ve noticed that unranked off season is bad in quality (lots of PvE players), but ranked off-season is glorious, but you have to wait a little bit more for matches.
However I’ve got a good vibe about this season, despite some unecessary (in my point of view) buffs for certain classes.
For some reason however I’ve got a lot of instable internet connection both in my dorm and back at home so playing ranked on random ping spikes is not advised for anyone.
As for ranks, as much as I don’t like it, I think that legendary is the top tier while platinum/gold are mid tier. Why is that? In platinum you may still find a fair ammount of people who don’t know how to rotate, how to disengage from combat and just sponge up the damage to die off point. Such people made it to plat playing a meta cheese and just having a tough resolve to farm up to platinum on a more than 50% winrate.
So in my book gold is mid but not really different than platinum.

Drop in some crossbow dual wielding if these weapons ever get implemented.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I6fmvp37TU

Also I agree with the statement above. I wonder why druids got even buffer, they were already doing a very good job and yet they get even more goodies.
Just recently I’ve fought as a marauder symbol guard with a mender druid. I couldn’t out dps his healing while he was running around and tanking me with a pet. Their escape on demand staff skill is really something. I wish they returned to where they were and that was already strong.

I sense a lot of condition and mesmer/ranger/engineer comps. It gets very, veeeeeery hard to counter these comps as even when I build my guardian for all condi cleanses, I still got eaten with condi due to how quickly they can be re-applied.
Can’t quite tell how it will work out in the long run and I don’t think it will be good, but I still have a little hope it won’t be that bad, we shall see.

So… I’ve been PvPing for more than a few years, different games, MOBA’s, FPS, MMORPG.
I heard a lot of good about GW2 pvp and days before I bought it, I played WoW and was not really satisfied with PvP system there. It was 2-3 months before HoT if I recall correctly. I bought the game and went with warrior, as soon as I got to 80 and knew this and that, read about rotations and stuff, I got into PvP. It was a pleasant experience, but later on I changed to guardian, medibuild to be exact and I fell in love with it. Back then it was a ball. But then HoT came and stuff went… well as they went. I did this and that and it was okay, I know how to fight, however it is hard to play on a laptop, yet still I could handle this and that, overall as a pvp’er for a bunch of years I know the common tactics and rotations on both movement and dealing damage.

However recently I feel like trash, I can’t tell if I suddenly got worse, or is the match making system trying to tell me that I am garbage. From what I saw last time I was somewhere on the 60% win rate and now it fell down drastically no matter of my personal effort put in every single match.
I had a closer look at my team, they were doing their best and that’s always good, however there were any mistakes, and let me say MANY, while the enemy team exploited them which is normal to do. I found myself in many 2v1 scenarios, or getting focused into oblivion while I dropped target focus and nobody bothered to even touch the target or even if they did… ehhh… they were trying to hunt down a thief, 3 of them to be exact. And so as the team consists of the strength of each member, if there are like 2 or 3 people incapable of combat or rotation, the team is destined to lose most of the time and not even Helseth can carry situations when: people go 1v2/3 suicide on enemy capped point, or 2 players die to one opponent and keep on doing so. In the end my own performance was bad beacause there was nobody to back me up, couldn’t do any good dps to give any support back for my team as well. Even though on pic attached I was playing a fair ammount on guard, I also play warrior from time to time when I feel like it’s time to take a rest from using active skills and go with some passive play.

Now the question is, am I a scrub and should I git gud? (I think that by this point my “gitting gud” would consist of buying a better rig for smoother fps and trying to set up a better internet connection, as well as an even deeper understanding of other classes perhaps.)

P.S.
Please, honest thoughts about this. Have you experienced something like that as well?

It appears that strong knockbacks such as ranger’s longbow can force someone into a wall on mid node that is located on the top of the stairs (or in the front of the node) thus making players incapable of getting out. However it appears that thieves are able to somehow get out due to their skills. I hope it will get looked into, or perhaps give us a command to let us respawn.

So I did a few things and came to a conclusion that dps buff is nice, but due to current power creep on the whole variety of classes it seems harder than pre-HoT to land Whirling Wrath. People have easier time running away, blocking and overall mitigating the damage that WW does, it’s animation is very easy to acknowledge 0.5 second before we start dishing out damage. Combat run speed is enough to run away from it and if we want to be efficient with it I understood that I have to go with dragonmaw for it to put the whole damage from it and that is quite a lot of dedication to make one skill work out (considering how certain classes just have to pick a weapon and do the thing without many forced trade-offs). I would either give Leap of Faith a 3 sec root along with blind (if trait is picked) or make WW a single cone slash like shield cone strike, the same thing but instead of protection give fury to the guardian and his allies, as well as dealing about 70% of WW’s current damage.
If it’s too overpowered, please look upon scrapper’s hammer skills that grant both dps and defense.

I am not convinced that much. If you wish to land whriling wrath for most of it’s value, you have to go with some traps for force the enemy to stay in, or grab a hammer swap for root and ring. Beside that, WW is not that useful and even if buffed, is not that dangerous. It would be much easier if that was a one slash in a cone for 600 yards range.
Or if WW had a build in cripple that drops on the first hit for 2 seconds.

But why do people climb legendary division on multiple accounts? Who has that much time to do this kind of thing? I consider myself someone who spends a lot of time playing games and I got from silver to platinum. However I had to slow down with PvP due to unstable ping spikes so I barely made it to that division.
What does it give? Where is the profit in practicing something so time consuming?

Ashen.2907:

To be honest, you might want to spend some time learning your preferred profession a bit better before moving on to HoT. The content in the core game doesnt really teach you much about playing well. HoT is supposed to be more challenging for play by those who have a better handle on their characters.

True that. It is not that hard as you think it is, do some dungeons or fractals or even taste some PvP to better understand how to work with your class.

Well hello, hello… as much as I am pleased with Lake Doric and new story, this is the best thing that I saw. Even that we can’t use them on land, there is a new skin (not obtainable) for something that is 100% a polearm.
Although we have Watchknights who also use’em, there is more and more of pole weapons users.
I always feel teased whenever I see anything spear/polearm related on land, melee combat, and despite of that we don’t have anything but a few of somehow pole-looking skins for staves. However a quarterstaff is not a polearm.
I see more and more people interested with this weapon, it’s quite an amazing piece of arms that should definitely be added into the game. We already got skins for them, all we gotta do is to take’em out of the water and dry them (yes, I am aware of making new skill sets and perhaps traits as well). I also think that it would bring a lot of build variety without the necessity of creating whole new specs.

Check out this reddit for more discussions. Let’s show some love to one of the most prime weapons ever created.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5sxxns/spear_in_combat_out_of_water_ingame/

P.S.
I would be happy if at least underwater spear skins could be put on two handed weapons, just for the sake of fashion wars.

I also found the new zone pleasant, the events are fun too. This episode’s story is also on the high level, I enjoyed it a lot

BUT!
There is one thing that caught my eye right away, that kept me the most interested. It’s the picture attached.
How great tell, do some of the Seraph Guards have… POLEARMS?! Oh boi, my favourite kind of weapon. I even spend a lot of time watching their fights, skills and animations.
Is this a hint? I hope it is.
I heard once, that it might be a good idea for a change to bring something new to the game’s armory instead of just elite specs. It appears that Seraph Guards with those polearms use guardian magic, they do some sort of a leap of faith that knockbacks enemies which is ultra awesome! I really hope for polearms to be added to the game at some point in the future.

Why are so many people so soft? It was just a bunch of CC’s flying around. I did this on my glasscannon core-guard with only 2 deaths and 3 pieces broken. It felt harsh at first but as I see it now it was quite a challenge, I liked it.

Oh nononono… definitely not. As much as I love a good 1v1, It shouldn’t and can’t be that way.
Everyone would just roll with the same, best skirmish builds (warrior, druid, mesmer or whatever might be meta) and it would just basically butcher build variety. If anything else, I’d rather add 2v2 which would also result in OP comps but people might come up with some more creative, fun combinations.

Ezrael.6859:

Greatsword – Whirling Wrath – changed to be a single AoE sword swing 2000 damage / 2500 if enemy under 50% hp – no more tiny projectiles that only some races benefit from when standing inside a hitbox.

I would change it to a 1500 damage but a cone strike of 90 degrees in front of the guardian that sends a one penetrating slash projectile for 900 range that also roots those who are not facing it for 2 seconds OR knocks down the first target hit. Great for chasing down along with leap of faith and binding blades.

There is truth in both statements, both of OP and yours @albostan
However it is hard to pinpoint the very middle between all that. I know a bunch of people who PvP and they definitely deserve legendary, I know those who luckily got into higher tiers, and few that rise and fall in mid-tier, climbing back and forth.
Skill is needed, time is needed, at least decent team is needed. As someone said recently, you can’t carry a bunch of headless chickens. Some of us are more fortunate, some are less lucky and that’s how this world goes in every aspect, not only in the game.

As for my personal experience, I got placed in T1 gold at the beginning of this season.
I played my non-meta guardian build which was (was, because now I somehow got bad at it or something, can’t tell myself) surprisingly effective. I fell to silver, climbed back to gold, fell again and came back once more. Got to tier 2 of gold and then my studies and exams happened so I had to make a long pause, playing only 1 or 2 matches every 2 days to not let the decay grab me.
After all this real life stuff ended, I got back into PvP, it was a period of Christmas and the new year and back then I had so many good quality matches, that I really relished it.
We won many times and we lost many times, but lost matches were only our fault, close calls, and so were the winning ones as well, but the other way around. Thanks to that I almost got to plat tier 2 but then another series of exams were near so I had to stop.
The same thing happened, trying to not get decay. So after this recent batch of exams I got back home, fell to gold T3 and couldn’t get back to platinum for about 2 weeks, being stuck in a range of 4-5 matches away from platinum. Also for some unknown reason I had many annoying ping spikes after 1 p.m. that rendered me useless, thus forcing me to stop playing to not let anyone else suffer losses because of my own connection instability. However, yesterday I clenched my butt-cheeks and climbed back up to platinum to T1 just before season ended, and I am proud of myself. All that played solo as a guardian, but only the last day I had to succumb to the meta builds.

As I like to tell sometimes: Each member of the team must be strong, for his strength is his team.
If you think you carry, you are doing about 2/5 or 2.5/5 of the job. Still, you are not doing everything by yourself. I had situations when I got carried, I had matches when I somehow carried, but in the end I realised that if my team didn’t back me up or in some situations If we didn’t show up in certain encounters to help out our carry, we could lose easily.
Also one of the most cruicial things is to NOT focus on yourself and your team, but to see through enemy mistakes in rotation, to exploit them in the best way possible because this is how PvP works. It’s about how good your team is and how many mistakes the enemy comp does.
Some are better some are worse, but as long as everyone is contributing, everyone has a right to say that he or she had their fair share in winning. Carrying player is someone that a team should be grateful for, but such person cannot forget that it is the rest of the team that backs his/her sweet bottom so that everyone can win.

However if you are a potato, nobody will carry you even if they play their heart out. First, not every class is efficient at carrying. The best in doing so are those who can tank a few on them, mesmers with portals, eles and druids for heals, sometimes thieves.
Also it seems that many of those who speak in these forums seem to get 4 worse players, I highly doubt it that it is true. It would be nice to see something more besides our own “amazing” reflection and realise the mistakes we tend to do during a match.

The reason why staff and GS are so weak is because of the HoT power creep. It is much easier to buff than to nerf now as everything is getting stronger and trying to balance things our by weaking them would take too much time and resources. Before HoT greatsword was top tier (at least for me).

Fashion Mage.3712:

Rodzynald.5897:

Now, ranged symbols such as Symbol of Punishment and Symbol of Swiftness if dropped under the casting Guardian’s feet (with Writ of Persistence trait), they would also follow him. That could be of great convenience as there would be no need for the player to stand and wait for swiftness or might stacks.

They’re not melee weapons though. Personally I think a better change to Symbol of Swiftness would be to make it apply a short duration of superspeed rather than swiftness, since stacking swiftness in a stationary AoE makes no sense.

Even though they are not melee oriented, they still deal damage in melee range, but this now is not important. If you cast those two ranged symbols out of guardian’s feet, then it will remain stationary on the ground. However if one does as I said in my post above, such player (or groups of players) will benefit in a moving symbol stacks.

As for superspeed, how much should it give? I think that If it was to be implemented, it would be like 1 max 2 seconds (and considering how easy it would be to drop in an aoe it might be considered an overpowered source of mobility in pvp and wvw game mode.) If the symbol stays on the ground, then you are still forced for a few seconds of superspeed because I highly doubt it that guardian’s would ever have lots of superspeed to drop on him/herself and others in such a short duration.

JimmydT.7281:

4. The weakest symbol in the game with the weakest boon and you get rooted while casting and the highest cd of all symbols. Nice!
I would like to make it groundtargeting in a 600 – 900 radius and leaps the guardian to the aimed location when casted. This would give the GS a unique symbol skill, no other weapon has and a role as a mobility melee weapon.

I usually play with hammer but helloooo there… I’d roll with GS if it had this feature, I like it.

As for a buff for every weapon, I would add a certain extra component for Writ of Experience trait.
Short range symbols such as Symbol of Wrath, Symbol of Protection, Symbol of Faith and Symbol of Blades will follow in the Guardian’s footsteps, thus creating a mobile AoE combo field. That would bring symbols into the PvP spotlight because of a better way to counter kiters in pvp, this might be a good way to counter obstacle hugging as symbols would still pass through them and damage the enemy, in PvE that would also be great during big events if someone chooses to play a supporting role. Not every player likes to stand in healthy AoE, now do they? If we could dispense our symbolic support in a controled manner like I just said, that would be definitely in our favor.

Now, ranged symbols such as Symbol of Punishment and Symbol of Swiftness if dropped under the casting Guardian’s feet (with Writ of Persistence trait), they would also follow him. That could be of great convenience as there would be no need for the player to stand and wait for swiftness or might stacks.

I would rather like aegis not to block damage, but to absorb damage. It wouldn’t make you immune to CC, but for example one aegis could soak in about 5k of damage from all sources. This is like a few strong auto attacks or a good crit one shot out of a strong skill.
I think if aegis worked in that way, it would definitely work out better for some bunker builds.
Also I wonder why some players shout at guardian’s healing. Our passive healing is weak (from traits) and most of our stronger heals have to be activated manually. Though healing trap is strong, you still need someone to walk into it and in 1v1 situations when someone knows how it is, such person won’t get into close range when DH is damaged under 50% health.

P.S.
I honestly miss times before HoT. Mediguardian with GS and scepter/focus or shield was a real balanced beast, true risk reward. If you went in at the right moment and used CD’s right, you won. If you made a grevious mistake, you went down, simple as that.
Most of current pvp is too forgiving.

Divine.3279:

Engineer: Don’t know about you guys, but Engineer has no problems with me at all, can’t think of anything that would be nerfed/buffed. In my honest opinion, it’s in a very great spot at the moment with high damage and high support with that amazing Rezz power.

Well you said it. Great DPS along with defensive capabilities and support. Let’s not forget scrapper’s hammer that has both damage and a secondary strong effects that are used in defense or mobility, very versatile and bunkerish. This seems quite a bit over the top.
+ a passive life-saver.

@ Rhiannon:

Sooo… I suddenly became bad and MMR decided I should fall down? Despite the earlier fact that I crawled out of silver through gold to get to platinum in the first place?
Even now I try to get back and just before the plat I drop into a streak of lost matches.
I don’t think my skill became weaker because of a week of not playing :C

It is strange, that some say it doesn’t affect how games look like after a break.
I climbed to platinum from silver which took me a bit of time and effort, later on real life stuff happened and I was forced to stop playing, once I got back after a week or so, my matches drastically fell in quality and I dropped to golden rank and somehow, despite my best efforts, I can’t get to platinum and I am about 3-4 matches away from it. But I am happy that it will be looked into, progress is always good.