Guild Wars 2

It requires TOO much skill… you realize how many players haven’t reached Diamond/Plat in 7 seasons or know a single meta build? The skill gap is stupid! Even when we had more players in this game… matchmaking wasn’t any better at all.

Either people are good at 1v1’s and can’t rotate
They can rotate but can’t 1v1.

The skillgap is much much higher than Overwatch that’s for darn sure. Only reason why i’m Plat in soloQ GW2 and not SoloQ Overwatch is because a single class in OW can’t 1v2 / 1v3 and carry the team. The skill gap is half the reason why the consistent top 250 keep playing this game. It’s cause we can remain the top 250 each and every season.

He’s a Rev where 1 click can teleport and do damage regardless of ping. Another click does an auto-target 3k burst.. stop trolling the OP

He’s posting because he’s frustrated just like the rest of us and has been posting about his ping frustrations prior to making this post. I witnessed his map chat vent after the game. I too was venting about my 2k random ping spikes. There’s no conspiracy here folks…

Everyone, please post in this thread just as I have because we’re not the only ones… obviously.

Profession Based MMR Pole Source Thread

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

The idea is that, just because you are a great mesmer, doesn’t mean you know how to play a revenant well. If the professions were locked we could place you into a match that reflects your skill with that class.

If we lock characters on queue, we can do things like use profession-specific MMR, have profession leaderboards, etc.

If professions aren’t locked when you queue, then people would queue on a low MMR profession, then switch to their main profession before the match starts in order to game matchmaking. This is why we cannot currently use profession MMR.

A) Implement profession based locked queuing.
B) Profession based MMR only.
B) Remove class stacking.

Anet needs to just make this happen already.

AT&T ISP here, i’m also a prem technician if that matters.

Still doesn’t make sense how GW2 can be the only game that has ping issues. I have Opened all of my ports in my modem, disabled all firewalls on my computer, factory reset the RG just in case there was a bad setting, restarted my ONT…

In my experience, if it’s only 1 item that is effecting, odds are there’s a problem with that item. This item is only Guild Wars 2.

RabbitUp.8294:

Saiyan.1704:

Jourdelune.7456:

I still want an explanation from Anet for this nerf.

You kidding? We know the exact reason for the Nerf, to prevent a power creep particularly in WvW.

I played Firebrand well enough to know exactly how powerful it is. I’d even use it in SPvP because of F1 and sustains alone if it wasn’t for the range Nerf. It still may be a strong, damaging and support, 2-hander utility weaoon. I just have to see if it’s stronger than a 1-hander/offhand replacement.

Powercreep is becoming an empty buzzword nowadays. If anything, the condi staff build is worse with FB, since the ToJ passive is garbage.

You wanna know why staff was nerfed? Because Firebrand has a 600-range cone auto in Tome of Justice, which you can keep recharging with the Radiance minor.

It’s about selling the new product, don’t act like firebrand would break staff.

That’d be true if it made sense. They didn’t nerf GS#2-Whirl Wind because Procession of Blade’s was the same practical mechanic and had to be better in order to have a stronger selling product.

Never said I agreed with it. I’m just saying we all know why Anet did it and it wasn’t because of some marketing scheme.

Jourdelune.7456:

I still want an explanation from Anet for this nerf.

You kidding? We know the exact reason for the Nerf, to prevent a power creep particularly in WvW.

I played Firebrand well enough to know exactly how powerful it is. I’d even use it in SPvP because of F1 and sustains alone if it wasn’t for the range Nerf. It still may be a strong, damaging and support, 2-hander utility weaoon. I just have to see if it’s stronger than a 1-hander/offhand replacement.

Balthazar’s Brawl is stuck on my screen…. only way for me to queue is if I got in a Duo and my partner does it for us…

Omcrazy.4756:

Saiyan.1704:

Windows Defender for me already lists Guild Wars 2 as a green check mark. Are you saying there’s something else that we need to manually add?

I assume you have tested the ping outside of GW2? My go-to is usually to open the command prompt and type “ping www.google.com -t” (without the quotation marks) and then I see if I end up with packet loss or latency spikes. If you see drops while pinging google then its likely your side. Refresh signal from the ISP might do the trick in that case.

Your server overload comment is interesting. I never thought about the possibility of one instance or another having a higher latency. Will have to keep an eye on that.

Also, for what its worth I am usually sitting in the 20ms range in other games. GW2 is always in the 50s or 60s (also fiber connection).

On another note. Not sure if it would cause lag or not but my CPU was hitting upwards of 90% utilization while running GW2, which was bizarre. I noticed I was often running an FPS of over 100. Setting the FPS cap to 60 has helped keep the CPU utilization lower.

Without any other application usilizing the network on my desktop, I get around 800megs download at a ping of 1ms to 3ms average. Some one in my house streams 24/7 while others play their games but can still hit these speeds

When i’m the only device hooked up to my modem, GW2 still craps out on me so you can rule out my other devices causing an issue. All of my other games are like butter, it just runs super crisp on my 1080GPU & 1440res monitor.

My CPU on GW2 can hit 90% in pvp but that’s usually the norm for a game that demands more CPU time than GPU (cause it’s an older game). Actually… i’m going to see if my CPU % raises when I receive lag spikes in the game. Maybe there’s a memory leak some where or something….

Yup, by another “New Builds Available” – Patch: “Fixed server crash for the 1000th time”.

I mean the expansion is around the corner and we still have numerous players at random who can’t connect to Anet’s servers well. Then there’s servers that crashes entirely, like the Daily AT’s.

Only game i’m having issues with. It can’t be on our ends only.

Yea, just stuck in HotM “Waiting for opponents”

/15CharGotDoSSed

People are stuck in Balthazar’s Brawl. Numerous of PvP players can’t queue ranked and having “Errors”.

Been like this for months. What. Is. Up???

cptaylor.2670:

Anyone know of any gear that goes really well with it? Light armor?

Best thing I’ve found is bladed but it doesn’t mesh extremely well.

Hellfire would be nice but it’s locked behind achievement points.

It’s heavy armor with the exception of the shoulder and gloves; for the other heavy armors, maybe you can find a similar concept in light armor.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Warrior would need Burn as well because otherwise the whole theme behind Berserker is worthless…that being said I agree with the concept. Right now many classes have access to tons of different conditions. They may not all be able to stack them in high numbers, but the extra conditions make cleansing them much more difficult. I think we’ve all had a situation where we have 14 torment and 4 other conditions but the game cleanses the blind, cripple, and a stack of 2 poison.

I would suggest breaking conditions down into Damage and Inhibitor categories. Damage would be your burning, bleed, poison, torment and everything else would be Inhibitors. You could do a lot of fun things with cleansing that way by having some cleanses only work on one category.

This would also allow them to go back on the old design principal that some classes are inherently weak to certain things. You can have Warrior frequently cleanse inhibitors while having relatively few damage cleanses while Ele can cleanse damage for days but be very weak to inhibitors for example. It would be a way more interesting system and allows for the devs to reign in condis in PvP/WvW while still keeping them effective in PvE.

They also need to look at the damage vs duration aspect of damaging condis. I understand Burn being high in damage but it still lasts ages when it has no reason to. It should be for a burst of damage and then quickly fade. Meanwhile, poison and bleed should do much lower damage but linger. Again, you can balance this by having cleanse skills prioritize certain damage condis.

Sure there’s always a smarter way to improve GW2’s condi & cleanse mechanics but what you’re asking would introduce so much code and change PvE so much that it would probably be cheaper to just make a GW3 lol.

They just gave them perma dishonor on their main accounts and the known alts at that time. Anet never said anything about them not using alts to compete in future tournaments.

AFAIK Jebro still has them banned from his future tournaments indefinitely unless they send him a letter filled with lipstick kisses.

!?

Second Syg.7219:

UPDATE: Following a 500-60 loss in the AT, the following players ratings have been adjusted (Please see new values below)

Olrun (Ele) – 4
Zorh – 83
Steel – 79
Kronos – 75

UPDATE: Added a new Community Contribution algorithm to the equation, decided by the esports PvP Team Association located in Unicorn Fairy Land.

We added Jebro on the list as Rating 97 because of his Community Contribution and overall Communication skills. We’re pondering a “Weight” addition as well because health is an important factor. Stay tuned!

I have to watch the vid when I get home later this evening but to add, I feel FB is a very capable spec in Ranked queue for sure. I never felt the spec couldn’t achieve a Plat level rating.

That said, I 1v1’d Wars (albeit a close fight)when I don’t feel that should be possible on high level play. So although I consider myself a good player on the elite spec, there’s a lot of other players who are still learning theirs.

When the patch hit mid season I may have the advantage but it’ll be interesting to see how FB fairs once everyone is on the same page (no pun intended).

Arcaedus.7290:

The biggest downside is its inability to escape focus. All it takes is a bit of CC and movement impairing conditions and you’re done.

I think Saiyan has the right idea here; devoting utilities to mobility/condi clear/stunbreak and stability while leaving the main dps/burst on f1.

I’d argue the master-level trait Stalwart Speed is a better choice if you’re taking both the mantra heal and mantra elite though.

I just couldn’t stay away from doubling your 1 stack burn ticks damages by 100% :p

There is however, a Radiance/Valor/FB Sage Spec that utilizes quickness and perma retaliation for 50% crit chance. It does really well, actually, but I still prefer the proposed condi build though.

PoF Beta Weekend, 2nd day.

Created a new post considering it’s a completely different build and topic. Addressed the expectations of Firebrand and how the new elite is intended to be played.
(Have not touched any other power-type build variants as of yet)

Condi – Mantra Medi Burst Build

Virtues/Valor/Firebrand -Sages + Balthazar Runes

Sword/Shield – Sigil of Agility/Smoldering
Scepter/X – Sigil of Annulment/Smoldering

Heal: Mantra of Solace
Utility1: Mantra of Lore (cleanses)
Utility2: Smite Condition (dps, heal, cleanses)
Utility3: Judges Intervention (dps, heal, stunbreaker)

Elite: Mantra of Liberation

Traits
Firebrand: III/III/III
Adept: Activist of Whispers
Master: Legendary Lore
Grandmaster: Loremaster

BUILD NOT FOR EVERYONE
1.) A higher skill cap due to Mantra skill management, using Elite(1) before casting Virtues, Keeping your sustains up with F2 and F3.
2.) And/or general dislike of the Mantra skill management playstyle.
3) And/or general dislike of Virtues cast times.

Answering Forum Complaints
“Virtues cast times are to long.”
I agree as well, especially with some of the major healing skills like the 3/4 cast Shining River. That said, the CDs on some skills really only needs a 1/4 cast time. The biggest issue is players not knowing what to immediately cast when entering F2 or F3 in certain situations (i.e casting F3 -> #3 for bubble reflects when thief is about to snipe.

“Axes suck!”
Yup they do! It could use an additional range boost for a viable mid-range weapon. That or it needs to hit faster. I don’t like “uncertainty” to the 33% bleed proc Axe trait. If it was something more guaranteed, that’ll be more enticing.

“Firebrand is the worse Elite”
It’s absolutely the most balanced one among all the elite specs. Certain other elite specs have insane power to them while also having great self sustains, to the point where people are stacking professions (holosmith).

“Everything in Tomes is bad”
The abilities in tomes are situational where planning ahead is key. I mentioned the Deadeye thief earlier where reflect in F3 can do wonders. We also have the ability to outlast Warriors 1v1 through F2 -> #5 + Smite Condition Meditations, mantra heals and kiting.

To Conclude
I don’t mean to contradict myself by saying this, but everything that everyone is saying is correct because Firebrand can use quite a few tweaks when looking at all the other professions. I listed the comments above because I feel these tweaks are more minor than major. Especially when considering other professions are needing a tune up as well and players don’t know how to optimize Firebrand just yet. More importantly, I hope players learn to use a build they’re uncomfortable with; using Virtues in conjunction with Meditations and Mantras for something a lot more powerful.

The assumptions were true in that Firebrand are generally considered the new Necros in terms of relying on teammates for survival while dishing out aoe damages. We survive long enough in a team fight, people are getting dropped like flies. Focus us and we don’t exactly have an F3 shield or F2 mobility for peeling off and self sustaining ourselves.

It’s shown that Necro’s were able to survive a season even though they weren’t the best 1v1 side-point holder class. Are Guardians, who’s never been entirely dependant on others, able to accept this new “I need Ele heals!” role just like Reaper?

So the question now is, which classes does Firebrand do the best with? Scourge, Holosmith, and Spellbreaker seem to be a good trio-de-dangers already. Add in Firebrand and you have a fairly strong supportive group of people who sync incredibly well with each other be-it duos or team fights.

I’m loving Firebrand’s overall new play style. Like I said in another post, it feels like Engineer kits but a lot slower rotation and very situational/specific skill sets.

The skill-cap on the class is noticeably higher, something I don’t want to changed. With the exception of axe, mechanically (the way FB is played) FB is awesome. It just needs to be on the same bar as other elite specs.

Alteran.9510:

The main problem with mantras is that you won’t hit any friend of your party.
The enemy is in front of you but all your allies stand next or behind you. So how do you want to give them aegis, stability, condition cleanse, quickness,…?

They don’t need more range, they need to be a 360 AoE.

I don’t want to dumb down the skill-cap of Firebrand because people can’t position themselves correctly. The cone effect is fine as long as it works.

Just fought Crysis, Thermite, & Jeff in AT, regardless if they were using kitten builds I do like the fact I wiped half their team with just F1 alone but I haven’t played the elite spec long enough (got out of work late) to get an overall feel for it yet. So i’ll keep the rest of my opinions to myself for now.

Hands down, F1 is what makes Firebrand.
If F1: #1 gets a nerf then the elite spec (guardian) will simply cease to exist in PvP. We’re basically the prepatch, Necro version of Boon Corrupt burst effect now. In 3 seconds we can do 12 stacks of burns if people don’t control us.

AXE needs serious work… the sluggish weapon doesn’t beat Scepter or Sword in any category. Only thing the 1-hander is good for is, Axe#2 + Judge’s for a niche ranged-stun prior to a burst. I feel the range on each skill needs to be 400 to 600 radius for me to think about using it.

I’m really liking how the new Firebrand elite spec plays in terms of mechanics. It reminds me of Engi in a way, using that 1 or two situational 1/4 cast time Function skills in a given fight, then swapping out of it quickly. Mantra heal for a faster cast, Elite for a guarantee cast of Function skills so you don’t get interrupted. But the 3/4 cd on these skills needs to be reduced by 1/4… at the very least. (pvp)

YuiRS.8129:

I can’t not go Radiance on Firebrand. All that juicy damage plusTome of Justice recharge on enemy death. If you go cancer, go full cancer, I say.

Chose Valor over Radiance because I’m not convinced that FB will self sustain itself very well. Partly because of all the high CD’s making FB skills very succeptible to getting interrupted. That and Smiter’s Boon’s 2k extra heal on Mantra Heal + additional Cleanses is just too good. I chose Mantra Elite because of the lack of stunbreakers, stability and safestomps but we’ll see how efficient the new F1’s are for a Renewed Focus.

Now, if you went full Quickness built then that’s when I’d probably go Radiance maybe. But we still need to see how FB will self-sustain itself without going into Healing power (sage) to set asside Valor.

MiGFiD.1760:

Which one do you prefer?

I prefer stronghold because it’s not so much a clusterkitten than its counterpart.

Fight as a Zerg and the best Zerg will win almost everytime. It’s why the first TDM Courtyard wasn’t as popular even though I loved it. Except with Conquest, zerging only gets you so far.

People who continuously complain about the game mode, simply don’t understand the strategies involved. It’s why players Zerg in two’s or threes because they literally don’t know how or when to rotate to other points.

If you want something strategic and competitive, stick with Unranked Conquest and manage your class in 1v1 dueling servers until you’re good enough for Ranked. If you want something new with little to no progressive goals, go Stronghold.

Add seasonal 2v2 queues Anet!

Sly.9518:

Why anyone with half a brain and some cleanse can easily stop it in its tracks……..

List one Ranger that can ;)

“These are the same people we have played with and hear in voip”.

Fake list. #5 best gerdien in wurld isn’t on there! …But seriously, what he heck is the “PvP Association” lol. A new side-job Abj has going on?

Agree with Moonlight though. Naru is good in kiting 1v2’s, initial bursts, and surviving in between cooldowns. Long enough for a +1 because Power DH wouldn’t be anything without a +1 Thief. Naru is good with his class but not the best player in game. Sad fact is he wouldn’t be #1 without the Thief boosting him. Now, I don’t mean “boosting” in a dramatic “i payed him” kind of way. I mean that Thief could boost ANY competent player to top 10… which he has.

The top ratings will always go to the Thief/Mesmer. These specific classes, individually, controls the rotation on a map, on a ridiculous level. Their individual decision making speed is quicker than a person can micro manage in comms. It’s just facts.

On that note, rating based on comms too? Everyone has their strategies and communications. But put the top 5 comms leads in the same group and they’ll kill each other. Likewise, you can put the best Thief/X duo on one team and suddenly all their ratings will go up. I doubt “communication rating” is anyway accurate on this list.

I’m not doubting these player’s skill by any means and it’s fine to make a popularity contest list based on high level play performances, but this list really is bias nonsense when getting right down to it.

reserved.

Pre PoF build Hype (outdated, see post #2)

Condi Mantra

Virtues/Valor/Firebrand – Carrion Amulet

Axe/Shield – Escape sigil/Smoldering sigil
Sword/Torch – Cleanse sigil/Smoldering sigil
(Scepter if Stoic Demeanor in GM trait is picked)

Heal: Mantra of Solace

Utility1: Mantra of Lore (Cleanses)
Utility2: Mantra of Truth (Additional Condi coverage)
Utility3: Judges Intervention (dps, heal, stunbreaker)

Elite: Mantra of Liberation

Traits
Adept: Unrelenting Criticism
Master: Weighty Terms vs Legendary Lore
Grandmaster: Loremaster

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Firebrand

In PvP, it stays until you die and respawn. Once you respawn you can’t change your utilities around so the bug is a bit worthless in spvp.

I would definitely try to play another game (or several) first before you reformat drives or going as far as flashing your BIOS.

I’ve done numerous troubleshooting steps on my internet packet loss before realizing it was only when playing GW2. For starters my i5 6600k cpu + 1080GPU was bottlenecking performance in just this game. The game’s spegehtii code takes more from CPU than GPU. Anything that said “Character” in graphical settings, I put on Lowest.

I have reason to believe an Nvidia driver or Windows 10 update did something that effects GW2. I’ve yet to solved my connection issue with the game… but I hear others have the same issues.

Exedore.6320:

I’ve had periods where I get a really choppy connection. Lots of half-second lag and occasional spikes of a few seconds.

Whenever I join a map, I do /ip and it seems that it’s only a certain set of servers where I lag. For example, 64.25.33.40 is fine for me, but 64.25.33.82 was horribly laggy tonight.

Server overload maybe? But this doesn’t explain how some people are uneffected while others receive spikes as if it was a satellite connection.

My real time ping would say 19 while my average would be something like 79… It makes no sense (fiber optics connection.) This is the only game I lag and lose packets in.

Omcrazy.4756:

Windows Defender (windows 10) – Open Windows Defender and click Firewall & Network Protection. Click Allow an app through firewall. Click Change settings and then Allow another app. Browse to the Guild Wars 2 folder and select Gw2-64 or whatever your GW2 client is named. I checked both private and public.

Did this tonight and played an entire spvp map without a single spike. I’ll follow up on this post if it starts happening again in the next few days.

Windows Defender for me already lists Guild Wars 2 as a green check mark. Are you saying there’s something else that we need to manually add?

Came to this side of the forums just to see if this was posted already lol

Just to rephrase OP, Zealous Scepter is not granting might to non-scepter weapons like it’s suppose to. It only works when Permeating Wrath trait is picked.

Ramoth.9064:

Saiyan.1704:

Ramoth.9064:

Which is good for increasing the skill ceiling. It’d make pvp balancing easier too.

If you were around during the War/Engi/Double Cele Ele Meta, you would know how frustrating it was to balance around 1 amulet that gave you everything.

Make D/D Ele a thing again, sure, but Cele amulet deserved to die by fire.

I was around for that, but boonhate wasn’t as prevalent back then either, I think celestial deserves to come back in the current meta.

There isn’t enough time for things to settle for there to be a current meta. PoF will hit mid season and a new meta will start before this current meta finalizes.

But regardless, I argue the notion that Cele will bring build diversity. It will flat out kill it, reverting the very reason why Anet added additional, specific, amulets while also removing bunker ones. The moment Cele was removed we saw amulet diversity in a given team comp. The diversity now is even better than it was early 2015.

I don’t want to take a step back and call it progressing forward. Let’s see what PoF brings first.

Ramoth.9064:

Which is good for increasing the skill ceiling. It’d make pvp balancing easier too.

If you were around during the War/Engi/Double Cele Ele Meta, you would know how frustrating it was to balance around 1 amulet that gave you everything.

Make D/D Ele a thing again, sure, but Cele amulet deserved to die by fire.

Lilyanna.9361:

If the Six exists somewhere in this game…
Please oh kitten please let their be a kitten balance patch to this season.
Please, freaking spare us and say there is a balance patch that will follow.

Looking back since 2015, seasons typically run dry until the week or two after they’re finalized. There won’t be a balance patch mid season. Only bug fixes.

^ Agreed. I haven’t touched staff since 2014 and I knew it was an awkward change for the two-handed, mid-long range weapon.

I understand the reason for the change but at the current state of the game, Staff#1 feels misplaced mechanically.

Yea, bug still exists. Zealous Scepter trait only gives might stacks to itself. It will give might to other weapons only if you have Permeating Wrath traited.

Plez fix!

phokus.8934:

So play DH if you want wings. You can’t have everything.

You’re going to give me that cake. I’m going to eat that cake.

Do me a favor, check your connection at Speedtest.net (don’t click the adds). Then start up GW2, alt tab and run a second test.

My computer freezes a bit when running speedtest while playing gw2. Somehow it’s only a download issue when receiving a lot of bandwidth… was wondering if it was the same as your issue.

zeromaniac.4329:

Constant lag spikes for about a month now.

Been having 2k lag spikes for months! Virtually unplayable…For the longest time I thought it was my connection.

Only hint I can come up is, using the “-diag” tool in the Target Launcher, when it runs all tests passes but when viewing the log file there’s a lot of “Connection Time Out” errors…

“-repair” tool is just a temporary fix for me. After a few, it goes back to huge lag spikes.

Issue hasn’t resolved.. tried running GW2 as normal and nothing happens. Game just shows itself in the processes but doesn’t function at all. Not so much as a pop up screen.

Any advice?

But I don’t have the top 100 title o_o

I disagree with the fact that 1 amulet can do it all… high skill factor or not. Besides, this was only true for 3 classes so the amulet was very much unbalanced across all the professions.

If you want to have the Devs pull their hair out again, add Cele amulet back but tbh, no one is truly asking for Cele amy back, they are wanting d/d ele back. A huge difference.

Females always have the best animations… Human Fem on Staff 4 looks like she’s about to go Super Saiyan.

Jagdtiger.2517:

I see that I’ve been brigaded by bronze and silver players so there’s no point of continuing this conversation.

That’s a good reply to have after having no other rebuttal for the convo.

btw Plat T2 here.

I plez haz my title from Season Six? I’m Rank100 m8.

Finally downloaded it and updated the launcher.. didn’t do anything different, it just started working again.. =/

My reoccurring issue for the last couple of months has been lag spikes. The game as of late has been unplayable outside of dueling servers.

I redownloaded the game last night and everything was normal except the following morning. GW2 did not launch at all. I closed all the GW2 executables in my task manager and tried Run as Administrator but still, I didn’t even get a pop up window.

Uninstall GW2 wouldn’t work.
Forced deleted the entire folder.
Restarted computer, Downloaded the game again, still nothing.
Repeated the above steps, Downloaded 32bit version, still nothing.

All these lag and 3k ping spike issues is only on GW2 client. Overwatch & PUBG games still work and I NEVER lag in those games. Port forwarding didn’t help.