Guild Wars 2

A good DH will never lose to a Mesmer much like how a Druid should never lose to DH. That said, Moa is the best chance you have of winning. Use it when he’s mid health then burst him down.

JTGuevara.9018:

ResJudicator.7916:

This thread is ridiculous. A.net is a business. They need to make money. A.net does not have any obligation — moral, legal, or otherwise — to give free trial players an equal playing field. It doesn’t matter whether you want to classify it as P2W, B2P, or whatever. The fact remains the same: A.net doesn’t owe you, the free trial player, an even playing field.

The expansion is dirt cheap and reasonably priced relative to other MMO expansions. In the time you’ve spent complaining about the free trial, you could have earned enough money to buy the expansion.

So basically, a business has no obligation to serve the public….got it.

A nightclub is open to the public for free. The club also has VIP membership that you pay for. VIP members get access to an exclusive section and bottle service in addition to what the public gets. VIP is advertised as a bonus so the public can further enjoy the club experience.

However, unbeknownst to the public, VIP members also get “special privileges” (armed bodyguards). Armed bodyguards harass, beat up and intimidate the other club goers who didn’t pay and they don’t like. The club owners, of course, either look the other way or struggle to keep control of the establishment. I say look the other way because this is self-perpetuating since this gets the public to pay to get SOME enjoyment and protection.

According to you, the club has no obligation what-so-ever to the people who are beat up, bloody and bruised.

…uh-huh..

An even playing field is the LEAST they can do. That OR separate f2p players and b2p players.

Harrassment, seperation and control isn’t the argument here. The ViP membership is still “buy to own”.

Reaper Alim.4176:

Saiyan.1704:

Reaper Alim.4176:

My Season 4 stats are 0 games played. If I want to do real sPvP. I wouldn’t spend my time playing a make believe sPvP game mode. I’d play the real thing in a sPvP game that had balancing for sPvP.

Too much fun wrecking fools while I’m solo roaming in Tier 3 WvW.

So you like the incredibly more unbalanced WvW gamemode than structured pvp.
Cool.

You telling a joke right? Or do you just not WvW roam, and only zerg? Unstructured Player vs Player open field battles are by far the most balanced PvP in this game. Unless you think skill less point denial AOE fire and forget skills or the match maker system in sPvP is balanced.

At least in WvW you can build to counter on the fly. In sPvP you are pretty much “SOL” if match makes just say you ARE going to lose this match. In WvW I can choose to engage or not. I can build fully customizeable builds to cover ANets balancing short comings that loads of players see in sPvP.

The whole conquest concept in this game in general is a very bad ideal with a lot of the skills these classes have. I my opinion if they don’t want to allow for 2v2s or 3v3s then the conquest game mode just needs to be completely revamped to fit the current game atmosphere.

I was going to post something long but.. very irrelevant and I don’t want to derail this thread any more than your initial post. Simply put, I disagree on many fundamental values in regards to WvW vs SPvP.

Reaper Alim.4176:

My Season 4 stats are 0 games played. If I want to do real sPvP. I wouldn’t spend my time playing a make believe sPvP game mode. I’d play the real thing in a sPvP game that had balancing for sPvP.

Too much fun wrecking fools while I’m solo roaming in Tier 3 WvW.

So you like the incredibly more unbalanced WvW gamemode than structured pvp.
Cool.

We cant’ forget how toxic the 30s queue times were when Anet implemented their “low threshold” algorithm way back when. Queues were fast yes, but matchmaking quality was at an all time low. Players raged.

Not that match quality mattered much in S4… we might as well have stuck with 30s queue times :p

Roquen.5406:

Not everyone “can” reach legendary. If the matchmaking favors you sure but there is only so much you can carry solo. You can even watch someone like sindrener (since you guys like to quote pro leagues), doesn’t matter how well you play there are matches you can’t carry. And if you are solo and not as “pro” then you have even less of a chance. It doesn’t matter what class you play as if you are facing any competent team you cannot solo carry wins. If you team up – sure you have much better odds but that is a different story.

You don’t have to attack to get your point across with antagonistic comments like “Better activate that Fire Shield because a lot of people don’t like what you just said, the ugly truth.” I didn’t attack the OP, I just don’t agree with him/her and they don’t have to agree with me. That’s fine, keep the personal stuff out of it.

That said I don’t have much else to say as you seem to gloss over many of my points just to prove yours. No point in my attempting to discuss this further. Have a good one.

One does not simply end a discussion by saying their peace and move on, but feel free to not reply.

No one solo carries as a Thief vs decent mmr teams… You chose possibly the worse competitive class (not the player per say) in the ESL. They’re just a hit-n-miss in all aspects, in SoloQ and ESL both. If it was Lord Helseth on the other hand, that’s a noticeable point.

You make it sound like you got to be some kind of an esports ESL player to reach Legendary… I reached Legendary in S2, S3, & S4, all SoloQ as DH. I was inactive much of S1; the bunker meta wasn’t exactly enticing.

As far as the fire shield comment, I was just being facetious, perhaps a little crude, but it definitely had nothing to do with you in particular. I’m sorry you took offense.

I rather just improve on Signet of Courage.

Considering we’re basically without a defensive or offensive Elite… the active and passive effects are bad. It should heal for 400 and cleanse 2 conditions every 5 seconds.

The active heal should be similar to Staff#5 – Immobilize yourself while healing nearby allies, 2k heals per second, totaling to 10k healing before Healing Power effects.dw

First and foremost OP, I completely agree with you. And no worries, u speak engrish better than 70% of us

Better activate that Fire Shield because a lot of people don’t like what you just said, the ugly truth.

Roquen.5406:

I feel that you are a bit biased…

It seems to me that you create a 5 man so you steamroll pugs via premades and then praise the game for being so amazing. Realistically…you shouldn’t be able to play against pugs as it gives you an unfair advantage. But I guess because the population is so low they merged the two to fix queue times. Of course you will enjoy it when it works in your favor but think about all the people you fight against that don’t have a chance. Would you feel the same way if you were playing premade vs. premade? I’m curious.

The “your in a premade steam rolling us players” comment is always the go to rebuttal right? A typical, one-sided argument that gets eaten up by what i’m about to explain.
Oh and to answer for him, yes, we would feel the same if it was premades vs premades except we’d have a cheesy grin on our face when we’re finally facing competitive teams.

Roquen.5406:

And just because someone doesn’t have the time to practice six hours a day to dedicate to pvp, doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to have a fair chance. Remember we aren’t in the pro-leagues and many don’t intend to be, they just want balance.

Every single soloQ player who hits that Ranked PvP button has a fair chance. Anyone and everyone has gotten stacked up against their favor. What eventually separates the Casuals from the Good is Dedication. I’ve never met a good player who said they couldn’t reach Legendary because it was “unbalanced” or “unfair”. A pro golf player can’t expect to make the leaderboards if he doesn’t compete, yet, players complain as if they’re entitled.

Roquen.5406:

Also, while there is a lot of “rage” as you would say, there are literally pages and pages and pages of constructive criticism that goes un-attended to. It’s a shame that people have to post on another website to get an official response from developers.

In the business world, it’s called Conflict of Interest. Devs cannot and should not get caught up in every single semantic debate that goes on in the forums. They inform the community with major changes and certain inquiries when they can. The “other websites” is a neutral ground where they can bend the company forum politics because, well, it’s technically not official.

Roquen.5406:

Back during beta weekends pre HoT, the class and pvp forums were “flooded” with dev commentary and feedback. Then just as HoT neared its release the forums for the most part became a wastelands again. There is very little response from devs on what’s going on and even less discussion with the playerbase – which can in fact help.

The Devs were talking to the community while simultaneously developing HoT. I’ve hardly ever see this happen in a gaming community. Post HoT, their budget was dwindling; other than bugs, little to no programmable art or coding could have been made. It was back to business as usual.

About the rest of your post in regards to Anet’s business model, player’s poor feedback on the forums, and something about silences… what you’re venting here is subjective and irrelevant.

Ruru.1302:

Stiofan.6720:

Malediktus.3740:

Anet should make more exclusive things, its boring if everyone can have everything

No they shouldn’t.

Yea, they should.

I concur.
/15charzards

Reached Legendary at 56% win rate mostly soloQ but… it really doesn’t matter. That’s pretty much the average even for players who grinded it out.

It doesn’t measure skill at all, just tenacity. Anet said they’ll make it more “skillful” but we’ll see.

If we can pull off the initial high burst pressure while continuing to pressure them on point, we have a chance of winning but no competent Druid will stand there and take all the symbol damages, ToF pull/push damage, etc.

Best we can do is bunk Druid off point with shield#5 + Scepter#3 and maybe force him to go stealth to contest the point, then pray we last long enough for something to matter before he demolish us.

Cheeseball C.8395:

if they add a 1v1 system, imagine since most noobs will bandwagon to ez wins would u really be having fun dueling full tank druids, condis thieves, moa mesmers, MM necros, rampage warriors etc?

MM Necros, Condi Thieves and Wars all get countered by DH

There is none. He’s just talking about DH vs Bad players because realistically, that should not happen.

Edit
Just realized the AG site says 4CST when OP says 5PM EST? Well guess I just missed it?

BTW add open registration so others can join as free agents… it feel the tournament was meant for only the “esl” players in yalls own community…

NotASmurf.1725:

First you’d have to lock everyone in, so no rerolling. What if a profession or 2 becomes required for a proper comp and you don’t have those, or you have too many paper guys? GG afk?

We already have players running off-meta in SPvP such as, Air Ele, full glass Wars, Thieves, etc. As always, no one will switch off even after they get 100-0 on every respawn and their teamates are yelling at them :p It’s business as usual I fear.

NotASmurf.1725:

do you really want people on your team playing something just to get faster Qpops with absolutely no understanding of the build, forcing others out of that slot who can actually play it?

The current class specific achievements & dailies already placed in SPvP still has a worse effect on the current match quality (should be removed imo). Honestly, the suggested Pros out weighs the Cons. The queue times differences between favs of the month classes wouldn’t at all change. Especially if match quality is the same for everyone, no one would just jump on a wandwagon class.

NotASmurf.1725:

Matches would be purely decided by RNG.

Not if Matchmaking did it’s job ;)

As much as I would love 1v1 gamemodes, I still feel 3v3’s can be the easiest to implement without the need to suddenly balance classes for the gamemode.

• A deathmatch with 3 rounds implemented
• 5minute limit per round
• A new algorithm added in match to calculate lowest health averages of each team to determine “draw” scenarios. (much like WoW in their 1v1/2v2 modes)

And if Anet don’t want the new gamemode active during Seasons, make it an Off-Season event in pvp. It’ll at least keep us busy until the season starts

One class per team.

I’m not saying i’m 100% for it, but i’m not oppose to it either. I mean when you enter PvP with a class, it’s exactly that, competing with the class. I strongly believe an MMORPG such as GW2 does not have the class comp diversity like most “moba” games (nor should it be compared as such).

Changes to implement

• Choose a class
• Queue for Ranked SPvP
• Let matchmaking do its job
• Non-class stacking classes on each side
• The inability to swap to other classes mid-game (let it cause dishonor, pip unwinnable, etc)

Pros

• Now each class has their own mmr set rather than per account (removes outliers so mmr potential is more exact)
• Matches are more balanced
• It reduces outliers that governs class’s strengths or weaknesses for Dev class balancing.

Cons

• Class stacking friends have to stick with Unranked, Hotjoins or Custom to play with each other unless they relearn a class.
• Queue times could be longer if there’s a Favorite Class of the Month. That said, if every class has a potential viability on a team and Matchmaking is doing it’s job then there should be no increased queue times a tall.

5v5 Premades
Queue times can be quicker if we were to add Class Stacking vs premades but no more than 2 of the same class per team that’s fighting the premade (as long as these classes are high in mmr). MMR average for the team on the opposite can be changed per the difficulty of the premade. Premade won 5 games in a row? Here, Matchmaking will give you 3 DH, Engi and a Ranger of high MMR because of it.
(Just a suggestion but, you get the idea.)

Thoughts?

I’m quite curious how this season would have been if Matchmaking actually limited class stacking (dragonhunters) to 1 per team or even… stacked them evenly on each side, or just removed class stacking completely.

Anet has said that matchmaking could be a lot better and that they’ll address it. The question is, was it the root cause of player’s issues in S2? My vote is matchmaking itself.

Nike.2631:

Yannir.4132:

After the expansion the Guardian has 0 use as bunker, and his best build (meditrapper DH) is a dps one. And guess what: is far from being the best at that role.

Now this makes a certain amount of sense to me. Which suggests what we might have more luck agitating for a return of the relevance of the Guardian Bunker. With the hope that if the base profession is healthy, the variants like DH become more sound too. Less “oh we needz moar DPS” and more “We needs better sustain in the new Wild West shootout environment.”

Which again makes perfect sense when you have a low health-pool, innate regen class. The shorter time to kill gets for everybody, the less that regen mechanic gets to contribute and regen classes (any regen class) spirals down faster than its peers.

Sure we had bunker guard in meta for a time but dps zerker medi lasted for quite a while.

I absolutely agree that DH was the initial “support” class but evolution was around the corner and changes were inevitable. We’re no longer that class type but a “Guard” slash “hunter” instead (in spite heavy criticism for each).

Static.5723:

Last season it was much better, and probably in the best place it has been for ranked so far. This season after the changes it is a horror show. It desperately needs to be addressed.

Are you refering to Matchmaking or the new Meta?

Matchmaking’s job is to make two individual teams for a fair match. I have seen 4 solo DH get stacked together for no reason at all… this season has really pushed Matchmaking to it’s limits and I agree with you. Match quality hasn’t been this bad in awhile.

Now the Meta, X class is op or Y class is underpowered etc – it’s not nearly as kitteneason1 or previous. Matchmaking is just terrible and I strongly think there should be a class limit in Ranked PvP.

A lot of what’s wrong with Ele is that the class is no longer independently reliable. Sure there’s going to be a gap between high level ESL teams utilizing the Ele class vs the unsyncronized soloQ player experience but the gap between the two shouldn’t be as big as it is.

@Jourdelune
I never said F2P never brought on a huge population. All i’m saying is that population has never decreased queue times; I’ve always experienced normal queue times until Anet changed the algorithm. Even in August, my queues didn’t go below a minute.

Off topic asside, we can talk about how outstanding free to play games are but even that doesn’t keep a player base, so F2P is irrelevant in the long run and it doesn’t change the fact GW2 is b2p.

Cynz.9437:

Saiyan.1704:

DH Bug:
Using almost any ability while using Scepter’s Auto attack, does not cancel the auto attack’s channel. So if I pressed “1” to auto attack and I suddenly wanted to use my F3 block, or F2, or Sce#2, they will not cancel Scepter#1 until the channel ends. There’s no interrupt to the skill like other weapons.

If you press “1” several times then the input lag will channel the skill twice and you can’t use a much needed ability until Scepter#1 ends. This is extremely problematic in clutch situations for a DH.

Pretty sure it affects all classes. I Have similar issue with PP for example or backstab.

It’s just frustrating because my other weapon sets are not the same. Sword#1, and #3 doesn’t prevent other skills from casting during its channel.

kdaddy.5431:

chibbi.3706:

When rev is still a million times more OP ?

Funny you say that

That picture is so sad.. Rev getting hard countered by LB DH? Lel.

Kuya.6495:

What would you change in order to make dh more viable for esl, saiyan? Particularly, i presume you’d want to address the one trick pony problem.

Or perhaps you don’t think dh needs a change and its current predicament is just a consequence of the current meta? Meaning, that without intervention from anet, the meta will eventually change into something that utilizes dh and its strengths?

If that’s what you meant, perhaps we can elaborate on what the strengths of dh are and what exclusive or special qualities they can contribute to a team at esl? If we know what its strengths are, maybe we can predict what meta favors it.

That’s difficult for me to answer and I don’t want to pretend to know it. What’s certain is that the degree of complaints on DH that was brought up this season were hardly issues in previous seasons… but that’s a different soloq vs esl discussion.

As for ESl, these are My Opinions

I would not have picked a thief in the team composition Booms was in. Thieves are in a bad spot and are hard to make work in general.

I think 1-handers is more optimized for DH over Longbow. Longbow is too slugish and can get countered easily by pressured cc bursts. You can utilize LB#3 knockback on downs or stomp preventions, the Virtues treeline support traits is picked over Honor, and the LB#3 combo with ToF is dangerous but you wont pull off the combo 100% of the time (I didn’t see a single DH pull it off in the ESL).

• I prefer 1-handers with Virtues instead of Honor because you’ll gain the same support while remain more resilient without sacrificing damages. Everything else can be accomplished the same, if not better, than LB. The biggest drawback with 1-handers is Foefire’s Middle, the Symbol DH can’t keep up with other class’s mobility.

I feel DH viability is untapped; the meta hasn’t been found partly due to a whole lot of players don’t main the class. Now we’ll have to see exactly what Anet plans are in the coming patch notes.

DH Bug:
Using almost any ability while using Scepter’s Auto attack, does not cancel the auto attack’s channel. So if I pressed “1” to auto attack and I suddenly wanted to use my F3 block, or F2, or Sce#2, they will not cancel Scepter#1 until the channel ends. There’s no interrupt to the skill like other weapons.

If you press “1” several times then the input lag will channel the skill twice and you can’t use a much needed ability until Scepter#1 ends. This is extremely problematic in clutch situations for a DH.

Can free agents join to form a 3’s team?

A few key points that makes DH unpopular in ESL:

Map advantages (not counting the new Coliseum)
DH performs a bit worse in Foefire’s large mid compared to other classes in the meta. We don’t AoE as well as Necro’s and we definitely don’t sustain as well as Engi, Ranger, Ele, Rev in mid.

Players don’t main the class
Alot of players simply don’t main DH. I’ve only ever known Naru, Booms, & Tage main DH in the ESL. Even when Ham builds were meta, esl players didn’t just hop on the bandwagon. The only other player I see using DH is maybe Wakkey buy he hasn’t compete with it yet.

The safe composition
Necro + Engi + Ele is a combo set that’s more favorable. As long as Necro is kept alive, that’s really all the dps & cc you’ll need while also keeping heavy sustains on point.

Lastly, one trick poney playstyles
In spite what the forum SoloQ players are saying, DH has to really play carefully. A poor timed F1 throw and/or ToF means you just lost 1/4 of your cc and dps. If Purification triggers a micro second late (like it always does) then we’ll go down before receiving the heal proc. Repeat the poor dps combo execution after using Renewed focus means we practically lost half our cc and bursts and have maybe 10 seconds to live if we’re lucky.

All honestly, DH can work if players are on the right comp with the right build. With 1-handers (specifically sword #3) I’ve been able to pressure Rev first before he pressured me on point, forcing him to pop defensive cds early. The advantage we have is judges+burst abilities but once they figure you out, it becomes a mind game.

Jourdelune.7456:

Saiyan.1704:

Jourdelune.7456:

We are discussing about a lost opportunity to grow the spvp players base with an underpolish F2P system that got a bad reputation of P2W (even if it’s just 50$) by most F2P players.

There’s no evidence of whether or not Free games would produce higher population growth over Payed or Subscription based games.

Secondly, to say the F2P aspecy of GW2 is"underpolished" is subjective. I personally think it’s doing exactly what it’s suppose to do.

Jourdelune.7456:

If someday you are able to do Mark Parkman Abilities (mass domination) over all F2P so they know this is B2P, please do it. On the meanwhile, why can’t Anet make some little changes so SPVP can GROW out of serious F2P PVP players?

Thank you,

In the PvP scene, GW2 HoT is considered an entirely new game where the core game converted into a demo, practically forcing competitive players to rebuy the game when Anet literally said these Elite specs will simply be “a new way to play”.

Yea I can see why some people are infuriated. There should be two different queues for core and HoT players but we all know that’s not realistic at this point.

The reason why I quoted you was because, although I understand players frustration on Anets decision makings between HoT build’s power creep vs core builds, the game’s business model is still B2P.

Sorry, August 2015 had queue pop of 3 seconds. This is enough for evidence about the F2P population. I don’t need number from Anet, even if it would be cool.

The last time we had queue times less than 2minutes was when Anet deliberately made it so, via the matchmaking algorithm but I forgot which patch that was. Queue times came suuuper fast but with a cost of matchmaking quality so they reverted it. There has been no other event that increased matchmakimg queue times due to popularity.

Now, August 2015 was the first beta weekend. Free to Play players population was at its peak in early Q1 2017, not in August but there were indeed more Beta testers in August and September.

There is no proof that population effects queue times in fact, there’s more evidence that suggests queue times increases more when there’s a higher player population due to servers being full. This was seen during the Beta Stronghold event.

- One of the bigger mistakes, don’t 1v2 for the sake of “killing him faster”. This is a bruiser meta, no class dies “fast”.

Instead, notice the class advantage at hand.
If it’s a Ranger vs DH or Rev vs DH, the Ranger/Rev likely doesn’t need help unless they were weak previously. If a DH needs help instead and you’re an Engi? Swap (change places) with the DH because Engi should never die.

Other than that, a good rule of thumb is to spend no more than 5s if you’re +1ing. Cast your cds, abilities, etc then rotate to other points that truly needs another player.

- Don’t rotate to a point that isn’t yours for the sake of winning the 1v1. You’ll succeed in spending a lot of time dueling a class on a point that isn’t yours. There’s very few strategies that would warrant such a move, most know whether or not they can neutralize a point very fast but be mindful on how much time you spend on nodes you don’t own.

Phil.8901:

- Map promotes too much Blink and teleport skills most of all for taking side buffs and go through the Mid barrier.

I like these only because Thief could benefit in having a map advantage for once. They really didn’t do so well in the WTS so i’m hoping they’ll shine a bit brigher with these map-promoting Shadowsteps.

Tomiyou.3790:

Saiyan.1704:

Galtrix.7369:

Guardians:
-can block, heal, and use invulnerability (consequently they can survive a 1vs1 forever)
-can deal insane amounts of damage in a short amount of time with traps
-can provide boons for teammates
-has an insane amount of mobility for a melee class
-can choose to lay traps and shoot enemies from ridiculously long range

I’ve come to the conclusion that class balance in this game simply doesn’t exist. I’ve been playing mmo’s ever since I was 5, and I have never seen a game come out with such overpowered classes.

Revenants:
-can evade while dealing massive damages as well as heal (consequently they’re the best melee classes in the game with only condi and teef as a counter)
-can deal insane amounts of damage in a short amount of time
-can provide boons to teamates, better than DH
-has an insane amount of mobility for a melee class, more than DH
-can choose to remain mobile while concurrently evading and bursting
-is a direct counter to DH

I’ve come to the conclusion that class balance in this game is based on proper class compositions between each team. I’ve been playing mmo’s for 21years and I have seen several games with poorer class balances. Never have I seen a game with such a skillcap difference between SoloQ casual players and higher-tier Tournament games.

Isn’t so good in a team fights, as his damage is largely reduced against multiple opponents and is very susceptible to condi clear. Has very static rotations and therefore is easily interrupted and killed. Unlike dragonhunters instant dazes, which save him more than revenants damage->heal healing skill.

Revs are known to be +1 fighters, basically Thieves 2.0. They can single out players on point quite well, even countering DH in a skirmish mid fight. Only way we can counter him is if we burst first, forcing him to use his survival skills early rather than later but the rest of your team will be focusing Necro or Ranger. We also pray that ToF hits and the F1 pulls. If not then we’re left with very little dps options.

Revs rotations are far from static. Cele d/d Ele was a heck of a lot more static a year ago but we all know how strong of a class that was.

OriOri.8724:

You should be aware of it, and focus it down first if possible

I’ve saved Focus#4 blind, ToF, F3 for the pet’s Armageddon attack, basically playing 100% right but had no success. I’ve swapped to burn burst DH. If I won once it was because he didn’t expect it. The second time the druid stay cleared of his pet, my attacks, and cleansed everything efficiently.

There’s no “bursting down the pet” strategy and I guarantee you that strat isn’t used in higher tier games because it does nothing.
(If you can burst down the pet fast then you can do that to the Druid)

There’s no “smart play” involved when fighting a Druid 1v1 but I will say Druids are more balanced on point as initial bursts and cc can take them out. It’s why this game doesn’t have a 1v1 gamemode, that area needs a lot of work. (3v3 is plausible though)

kin korn karn.9023:

The explanation of the pathing limitations does not imply that it is meant to be considered “a very fast physical movement.” You may interpret it that way, but that doesn’t make it so.

What’s your interpret of it?

Cynz.9437:

Lucentfir.7430:

You know DH could stand to take a few nerfs. Symbol Damage on one-handers going down, Shaving a second or a second in a half could of Shield of Courage could help too, though Anet is probably going to nerf traps more. Also I’ve gotten around playing base guardian again, and find Wings of Resolve being shorter CD than actual traited Virtue of Resolve a bit iffy. Design was said DH was supposed to be a selfish spec. In short if they’re going to hold true to what was expected, i’d say the active effects of virtues should be selfish, Wings of Resolve should only affect yourself, as well as Shield of Courage. But you know this is only assuming that everything else remains the same in terms of amulets. I’ll bet if you put something equivalent to Dire or Merc amulet in the mode you’ll find necro back inside the meta, and a flood of condi chornos, and condi zerkers. You can say all you want about how badly designed you think DH is, but don’t think other classes are designed any better.

Thief players saying we have too many passives, there’s only 2, Valorous Defense, which is 1 block at 50% and Hunter’s Determination which I think should really go. Bringing in passives of virtues, they’re more used for their actives instead of their passives, unless you’re saying they make such a major impact with, 2s of burn every 5 stirkes, 87-108 healing every second, or 1 aegis every 30-40s. And complaining about instants? Kinda like Steal on thieves, Shadowstep and attacks from stealth? Or Charged Mesmer Mantras? Pretty sure we’re not the only class with instant abilities.

Piercing light is not passive anymore? Because this one, combined with hunter’s defense negates any kind of engage on DH or any attempt on trying to stop them from rezzing someone. Frankly, it is worse than mirror anguish since it is AoE and affects multiple spells. And traps are instant/closer to instant.

Steal is single target attack that doesn’t one shot players, it can be blocked. Shadowstep is utility that doesn’t kill anyone and is on really long CD compared to traps.

Traps are AoE covering entire point and affecting whole team. Traps also have multiple effects including being unblockable or ignoring dodges, besides dealing dmg.

Stealth attacks have cast time, quite long one too, they also go on CD if they don’t connect with target (e.g. someone moved 1 mm or used block/blind/invul etc.) effectively locking thief out of AA. Do traps go on extra 20 sec CD when someone dodges them? No.

Traps are also on very short CD and can be stacked basically. Imagine if every time thief used shadowstep, entire enemy team was getting backstabbed for 5k+ dmg and getting affected by basi venom and blinding powder – this is how traps work.

Darknicrofia.2604:

Cynz.9437:

Kuya.6495:

People have been complaining about full trapper since last year and anet has consistently nerfed traps since then. But traps haven’t been buffed so the reinvigorated hysteria over dh has been mostly reignited by their resurgent popularity due to the new viable builds.

wat?

ToF has literally been nerfed 4 times since HoT launch if you include the trait nerf

And it was justified. We all know too well how overtuned HoT specs (and frankly still are) were upon launch.

You’re comparing butter to a hot knife, they have very different apparent roles. But contradictory enough, the Staff evading Thief builds has the best chance vs a DH who can’t afford to miss their long cd skills. It’s just too bad (greatful) that these thief builds are not rewarding in team fights.

kin korn karn.9023:

Your interpretation of the mechanic description a bit… let’s just say, interesting.

Gw2Wiki:

Shadowstepping is a mechanic that allows the user to move instantly from one place to another.

It’s a set of statements that defines the mechanic, not just one. The last statement completes the definition.

“Shadowstepping allows the player to move vertically as long the position can be reached normally by moving on the ground without jumping.”

They could have simply left it at “moving on the ground” bit but they added the “without jumping” part to emphasize that it’s a ground traveling ability, not a ground skipping one.

Unterkiefer.8372:

- teleporting/shadowstepping over dh traps activates them and teleporting over ToF deals dmg to the player. [unsure/see below]
- teleporting out of dh elite/bow rings/hammer ring knocks down the player. [Don’t know if this is intended, since it has been around for some time now]

“Teleporting” is not a teleport at all but a Shadowstep.

Shadowstep, per the GW2 Wiki definition, is simply a very fast physical movement from point A to point B. You actually move along the ground to get to where you want to go.

Bug: If pulled by a DH spear in a vertical motion, where the target is taken off the ground to reach the DH, that target will flip up in the air instead. If severe enough, the pulled target can take massive fall damages.

Galtrix.7369:

Guardians:
-can block, heal, and use invulnerability (consequently they can survive a 1vs1 forever)
-can deal insane amounts of damage in a short amount of time with traps
-can provide boons for teammates
-has an insane amount of mobility for a melee class
-can choose to lay traps and shoot enemies from ridiculously long range

I’ve come to the conclusion that class balance in this game simply doesn’t exist. I’ve been playing mmo’s ever since I was 5, and I have never seen a game come out with such overpowered classes.

Revenants:
-can evade while dealing massive damages as well as heal (consequently they’re the best melee classes in the game with only condi and teef as a counter)
-can deal insane amounts of damage in a short amount of time
-can provide boons to teamates, better than DH
-has an insane amount of mobility for a melee class, more than DH
-can choose to remain mobile while concurrently evading and bursting
-is a direct counter to DH

I’ve come to the conclusion that class balance in this game is based on proper class compositions between each team. I’ve been playing mmo’s for 21years and I have seen several games with poorer class balances. Never have I seen a game with such a skillcap difference between SoloQ casual players and higher-tier Tournament games.

Ithilwen.1529:

I might point out that none of those links refer to GW2.

Then you missed the relation. GW2’s competitive nature in SPvP is very similar to other, ever more popular, competitive games. There goes your “game wont last if toxicity continues” theory. It’s alright to vent; everyone does it, but that’s all this thread is.
I just wanted to politically correct what you were implying.

EDIT
You said other game’s competitive PvP has nothing to do with GW2’s PvP… now… in what way does a Yacht Club’s development class have ANYTHING to do with Online Gaming’s competitive structure? Goodness man…

Lucentfir.7430:

You know DH could stand to take a few nerfs.

A few nerfs in relation to… Revs? Rangers? Engi’s? Eles? Three of the said classes (arguably) counter us completely. Nerfing DH would mean a change to the above classes as well, for the sake of trinity balances.

We’re inefficient in gluing ourselves to mobile players, it’s why certain DH players use LB. It’s also why we’re often dependent on F1 and ToF landing. With out these we’re basically Warriors the day HoT was released.

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/player-behavior-moderation/n1YPZhWi-why-is-the-community-so-toxic

https://m.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/4ub3k4/why_is_csgos_community_so_toxic/

http://www.overpwn.com/forums/overwatch-general/general-discussion/7940-is-overwatch-community-the-worst-one-ever

Answer to all of them? It’s called Player vs Player AKA a competitive environment. If you can’t take the heat then don’t compete. Besides it’s not like you weren’t warned…

“Game Experiences May Change During Online Gameplay”

OriOri.8724:

ResJudicator.7916:

Ubik.8315:

ResJudicator.7916:

Yes, the size of the points means that some AOE attacks cover most of the point (although there’s almost always somewhere you can stand along the periphery to avoid it). I think the idea is that this places reliable, consistent pressure on the bunker builds that are trying to hold the point. This makes life harder for the bunkers (which everyone complains is boring and passive), and means that teams need to rotate players in and out of the point.

This would make more sense if half the bunker classes weren’t also the prime culprits in the AOE spam battle.

See:
Scrapper fields
DH traps and symbols
Condi Warrior fire fields

Formerly:
Ele fields

The point is that the aoe spam places pressure on the bruisers. That the bruisers themselves are also able to pressure each other just adds to this dynamic. (And of course a bruiser build would spec for cleave.)

(you seem to use the word bruiser in place of bunker). Bunkers should not be doing damage. They shouldn’t have huge access to CC (a control build is different from a bunker build, and one that right now GW2 does not support), or massively damaging AoE. A bunker shouldn’t be able to pressure you off point, they should instead be built to withstand the pressure you are putting on them, trying to make them move off point. At which point yes AoE helps, but relying on AoE means either they are overtuned (which some of them are) or you don’t know how to fight them.

Truth of the matter is that capture points that are small enough to be covered by 95%+ of the AoE skills in the game are far too small. They promote passive gameplay (especially leaving traps behind on a capture node, and then leaving for another node. Those should never be able to cover an entire node) and actively take skill out of the fights. Bunker builds can be slightly overtuned, massively overtuned in a team setting, but that doesn’t mean that the capture point size is the problem, it means that some builds are just too good at what they do.

Capture nodes need to be large enough to remove passive gameplay from PvP. Which means that they need to be larger than most of the AoE skills in the game. Add 50 units to the radius of all of the non huge capture points in PvP and they would be in a pretty good state, certainly much better than they are now.

I disagree with everything you stated. It’s a bruiser meta out there not a bunker one, Resjudicator is correct.

The passive, repetitive plays, takes place on Foefire’s large middle where Rangers, Ele’s and Engi’s have advantages. It’s also one of the reasons Cele Ele received so much scrutiny and was one of the reasons why they were hard to balance.

Now that everyone are bruisers, Large nodes are not as problematic but they still promote repetitive, drawn out, plays. That’s what the devs are trying to reduce here.

Engineers, Ele’s, Revs, Rangers, are at an advantage while DH, Mesmers, War, Necro, even Thieves, are at a disadvantage on large points. It’s a different story on Coliseum and that’s fair in my book.

Darknicrofia.2604:

wvw zerg meta should never be used as a basis for balancing anything, ever.

Thief’s auto buffs were for PvE and DH LB nerfs were because of WvW.

Anet takes WvW and PvE into account when they try balancing PvP. It’s a terrible reality that they do.

The biggest complaints points more towards Matchmaking’s poor quality. Anet said they’re aware and will address matchmaking’s issues.

If it was 1 DH per team then ya, DH becomes less of a problem. But when you have unfavorable matchups where there’s lopsided team compositions then of course it becomes a bad experience.

It’s easy to point fingers at a single, pupular class, but there’s obviously other outliers like poor Matchmaking that’s really blowing things out of proportion.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Saiyan.1704:

Or like Ranger’s Raygun of a pet? That 7k damaging AI skill has no warning and 3x more dangerous than some unblockable pull.
.

The bristleback’s F2 has an obvious tell, if you didn’t see the little turtle thing rear up on its hind legs before firing spikes at you that’s not the game’s problem.

Not everyone is on a 4k 20" monitor, able to see a turtle’s hind legs “rear up” lol. When you’re mostly focused on Ranger and his boons, animations, etc it’s a bit difficult to see little legs stand up =/

Rev’s Glint heal & Engineers black dot of death are more noticeable than Ranger’s pet damages. You don’t know the attack is up until you see your health start dwindling down.

Mikau.6920:

I just bought the bloodstone shield, but looks so ugly with Aegis that I regret.

I already posted in this topic before, but I still want some change.

Maybe a check box on the options? So if someone likes it, they can keep.

There are several cool looking skins that are killed by Aegis.

Never had an issue with the aegis skin until I bought the Bloodstone shield. Agree 100%.

Ayrilana.1396:

Why create a thread to ask a question and then dispute every response?

Source?

My main concern is Stability. It’s 100% the reason why Core builds are unviable in a high mmr game. Anyone and everyone can cc you to 100-0 if they know how to focus target.

Dragonhunter treeline with the F2 heals and F3 block and Stability when cc’d is all sustains. That and it offers Test of Faith, it’s just hard to not take.

Heavy criticism aside, I would swap Radiance with Honor considering you have Zeal’s increased symbol damages so you definitely want symbols to hit as often as possible. I just feel Writ of Persistence is much better than the 15% increased crit chance. At 70% hit rate, you’ll barely notice a difference :p

I’ve been down by 250 points only to make a comeback. It has happened several times this season. A forfeit button is just a lazy man’s way of not trying.

If we had 1 DH per team, there would a whole lot less spam hate and toxicity towards them because lets face it, in ESL they’re not that bad.

Anet said they’ll better the Matchmaking experience (it needs a lot of work) so we’ll see if they’ll actually do it.