Guild Wars 2

Here is a vid by shinryuku_ku.
Berserker stuff starts at 10 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_lk03XPeVA&start=598

Well with the recent Free to Play move, seems there are a good number of new players trying out sPvP, which is good.

Meta wise, not terrible but not great. D/D cele Ele needs a few good nerfs to be sure.

Solid suggestion Wilson, +1

This guy did a ton of testing on Berserker, and his video has a lot of solid feedback IMO.

Berserker specific starts at 10 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_lk03XPeVA&start=598

Worse than hoped
Not that great

Coming from an sPvP standpoint (not WvW or PvE), i think the berserker is pretty bad.

A lot of the feedback offered in this thread already touches on nearly all my thoughts as well, so yeah

Male Norn, don’t have one of those yet.

Staff is good in sPvP due to the Soul Marks trait, which makes your staff marks unblockable and generate life force. Don’t just blindly spam your 2-5 staff, use #4 to transfer conditions, use #5 to interrupt Guardian heals, aka play smart.

Axe is terrible. Like the worst weapon Necros have. Especially since the trait that buffs axe in Spite line competes with Chill of Death trait, which is an amazing trait.

lol, why are you discussing balance before anyone has actually played it?
Bad thread is bad.

lol, killshot is so easy to stop.
Blind him, or dodge the killshot, or block the killshot, or evade the killshot…

Good. D/D cele cantrip Ele is stupidly OP in sPvP right now, so much so that stacking 3 or more of them on a team is getting common. Nerf it HARD plz.

Josh Davis.6015:

So, I can’t go into much detail on things quite yet, but I just wanted to reassure you folks that we’re actively discussing a number of issues that are affecting balance in PvP – including, but not limited to elementalist sustain/damage. Per the usual, we’ll be talking to you folks about the changes once we’ve finalized them.

Sorry I haven’t been that active on the forums lately – we’ve been pretty busy around the office.

“Thanks, Grouch. You’re the worst!”

Edit: Also, just because this is an elementalist thread doesn’t mean we’re only looking at elementalist, and it also doesn’t mean we’re only looking at doing nerfs.

TY Grouch Please make sure to get in any balance changes to ele in before HoT comes out, so that any balance issues with specializations can be handled separate.

I have been hating PvP for the last month thanks to how OP the cele d/d ele is, so the sooner the balance the better IMO.

‘Play now’ / ‘join now’ puts you in hot joins, which are full of people who stack on the same team to crush the enemy team, and other people who abuse the ‘switch now’ by leaving the losing team, forcing a re-balance, and spamming the team swap button to get on the winning team as the re-balance happens.

You are much better off playing unranked and waiting in the queue for a few minutes.

However, if you factor in Weakness, Precision and Ferocity fall flat. That is why in sPvP you see people run Marauder over Assassins or Berserkers, because relying too much on critical hits is a bad idea when weakness is getting thrown around a lot.

There is no condi meta in sPvP, WTF are you talking about?

Lol, ATM in the ESL #93 EU there is a 5 man ele team vs another team with 3 eles.
The 5 ele team won 2 games in a row Horrible meta.

Lol, ATM in the ESL #93 EU there is a 5 man ele team vs another team with 3 eles.
The 5 ele team is up 1 game and winning.
This meta is so bad

Looks really fun

Firebird.8324:

Also, as this is an Easily exploitable bug, just like grenadier 1 shot, lets have vamp runes + ele a banned combination in the upcoming ESLs and AG tournaments.

Good call.

Agree with most of what you said.

What about the heal “Blood Reckoning”? Personally, I cant see it being used over healing signet in PvP, since it is hard countered by blinds and dodge rolls.

I think the new Rage Burst for Rifle and Longbow will be great for WvW. They both work better on stacked groups, thus discouraging people from bunching up too much.

Yikes!
/15 char

Evan Lesh.3295:

Wanted to pop in and say that you did fight premades a handful of times, but there was an almost equal amount of 3+2’s you fought as well. You also had some 4-queues on your team. There are many ways matches can be made, and you can’t always trust the party check.

There are some changes we are exploring that would further reduce the number of uneven roster sizes in matches, but nothing concrete on that yet.

Bimpnottin just got told.

Tim.6450:

Berserker is basically a build locker .

In PvP Berserker will run defense (with as grandmaster cleansing ire, most will run defy pain and dogged march) and discipline (with grandmaster burst mastery, brawler’s recovery and most likely warriors sprint)…..

Funny, I was thinking the exact same thing, Berserker + Defense + Discipline in PvP.

As for weapons, that new Rifle Burst looks really good, basically an AOE killshot that dazes and burns but does a little less damage.

NO thanks, it is pretty good as is.

As a Ranger player, I think most of these proposed changes are completely uncalled for and would make ranger far too powerful.

My concern is Rage skills. They are like physical skills (but grant adrenaline on use), and as such blind spam will completely hard counter Rage skills.

Berserker should address warriors main failing in PvP, which is that blind spam hard counters warriors. It is no secret that popular ele and mesmer builds have frequent access to blinds, and man handle warriors.

Nerf Ring of Fire, add a 1s internal cooldown, change to 2 stacks of burn instead of 3.
Nerf Blinding Ashes by increasing internal cooldown to 10 seconds.

These 2 changes would solve a lot.

Continuum Split OP.

Not that great.
Longbow needs work.
Traps kinda suck.

Mesmer torch is Rarely used, lol.

With that statement you basically discredit your whole post.
Mesmer torch is all over the place in PvP.

Umm, a TON of feedback threads I read mentioned the LBow auto attack being to slow and easily avoided by players. There is even a YouTube video linked somewhere above this comment. Please address the DH LBow auto attack speed issue.

IMO, probably sometime in late September.

Well either way you slice it, something (a buff) needs to happen with banners.
Maybe on the Trait, maybe something baseline for all banners, maybe both.

Rampage is useless? LOLOLOLOL.

Very nice post Bhawb, well written, makes sense, and good points made.
+1

Double Cele Ele won? What a surprise :P

Please ANET, tone down some parts of the current OP Cele Ele build.

So I have 2 major gripes with the dragon hunter.

First, making the virtues have a cast time just feels awful. Please make instant cast again.

Second, the projectile speed of the longbow auto attack is too slow, in PvP it is easy to avoid. Please increase the projectile speed of the LB auto attack.

So I have 2 major gripes with the dragon hunter.

First, making the virtues have a cast time just feels awful. Please make instant cast again.

Second, the projectile speed of the longbow auto attack is too slow, in PvP it is easy to avoid. Please increase the projectile speed of the LB auto attack.

IMO, just 3 changes will go a long ways:
- Drakes Breath, reduce to 2 stacks of burning.
- Ring of Fire, reduce to 2 stacks of burning.
- Trait Elemental Attunement, reduce boon duration by 25%.

Well according to http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Patch they are releasing patches every 2-3 weeks. Maybe that is too frequent in the mind of some people? I would love balance tweaks every 2-3 weeks

IMO the 2 biggest changes:
- Elemental Attunement was made a minor in the Arcane trait line
- Burning is much stronger than it used to be since it now stacks

D/D Ele can grab celestial gear, stack might with fire fields, do great damage, be tanky, and be very mobile. It is stronk

Overall a decent patch, but no Ele nerf is strange…

I really like your first 3 suggestions, solid.

S+
Elementalist

S
Mesmer

A
Guardian
Thief
Necromancer
Engineer
Warrior

B-
Ranger

I think your suggested changes are solid.

Torch, dagger, or pistol are the most likely, IMO.
But I really want main hand shield

Warrior main here. Maybe switch out Signet of Rage for Rampage, combined with switching Restorative Strength with Peak Performance. IMO Rampage is much more powerful than signet.

As for trouble in fights, GS + Axe/Shield will always struggle against builds that have access to blinds, blurs, or dodges. This a big achilles heel in the current meta, because most of the top builds right now have a lot of access to , you guessed it, blinds, blurs, or dodges. See -> http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki and open the Ranked Arena tab, and look at the META Ele / Mesmer / Thief builds. It is an uphill battle.

But at the end of the day, play what is the most fun and enjoy the ride. If this warrior build is frustrating, never be afraid to experiment!

I don’t think Necromancers are top tier in sPvP, but they are not on the bottom either.

The problem in sPvP is that a certain Ele build & 2 Mesmer builds are dominating too hard right now. See http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki and go to the Ranked Arena Tab

DrDivine.5378:

Serdoc.7261:

Well you get a lot of CC and a bit of mobility from hammer, with good damage. Then with Greatsword, you get a lot of mobility, great damage, and hundred blades is really good down state cleave on other players. It is just a solid combo, sorta like Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

A good point xD, what would you say favors this build over the celestial mace/sword lb?

Never played celestial mace/sword lb, but the biggest difference I think would be mobility. Using mace main-hand w/ sword off-hand + Longbow, you would have no mobility, which can be a problem for warrior.

Personally, unless you are on a high end PvP team (which almost no one is), play whatever you want and have fun!