Guild Wars 2

I don’t understand the OP problem. 500 AP are irrelevant for a new player starting today, compared to 10 months of missed dailies/montlies.

If you think the only viable option we elementalists have is a D/D bunker build, you might want to stop playing hotjoin and see some high level play.
There are several viable specs right now, and most of them are with S/D, and a S/D dps elementalist is capable of dealing pretty high burst damage (I can 100->0 a necromancer with rabid amulet if he has 0 life force)
Moreover, if eles were so terrible right now, then top tier teams would be stupid to have AT LEAST one elementalist in their team composition (Denial Esports runs with 2 elementalists, for example).

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k34;2B2-P0w4-N-Z0;9;5J-JT;159;245-45AUN;4Ewk2Ewk24BQ
This spec will take you far if you learn to play it, and it’s just an example.

uberkingkong.8041:

kitten s.7421:

uberkingkong.8041:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Instagib mechanics aren’t necessarily bad. It depends largely on how they’re designed – the GW1 version of trebuchet could insta gib you under certain conditions, but it was never considered OP or cheesy, or uncompetitive, for that matter.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Warrior%27s_Isle

That said, instagibs for a single push off a cliff do sound kind of over the top.

You know what every profession is capable of doing, if you don’t want to get feared off fight with your back towards the wall. If you don’t want to get pulled into a pit don’t be in the vicinity of the pull as well as don’t have a pit in-between you and your foe. Seriously some people need to stop whining and L2P.

Its funny today on my engi i would go to a point step on the glass switch to tool kit and used my #5 skill magnet and pull people into the pit. This map requires no skill. If you think pressing 1 button and instantly killing someone requires skill you must be a hot join hero.

Funny. Because I don’t have a skill that pulls someone, but when I get chased like that, I just run over the glass and the glass breaks by time hes on it. You know what, that guy that fell needs to pay attention to detail. As well as when I bunker side nodes I always keep the glass broken and I’ve been playing necro now because I place a mark on it so I deal some damage and get credit now when people just run into a pit because they didn’t expect the glass to be broken.

People just need to learn to pay attention to detail you’ll get outplayed if you don’t.

Here’s a tip for you, 9/10 when someone breaks the glass on purpose in the middle of the fight, they are setting you up for something, so be ready for it.

Most of the people complaining about how this map sucks aren’t those n00bs you’re used to fight against in 8vs8 hotjoins and that would run into a necro mark.

Grackleflint.4956:

Because you don’t balance the game around the 1%, that’s why.

You actually balance a game based on classes used at their full potential by people with opposible thumbs.
Otherwise, warrior’s bull’s charge+frenzy+100b would have been removed from the game like 10 months ago with all the people whining. (just as an example.)

Ashanor.5319:

Well, tPvP becomes just that much less interesting. Every time a new map is release, the tPvP community whines until it is removed because they don’t want to adapt. I guess if you want to play new fresh maps hotjoin is the only place to do it as tPvP gets more and more outdated. When they finally (hopefully) release a capture the flag map, the tPvP elites will probably complain about that as well. It’s too bad fun is thrown out of tPvP for what the “elite few” perceive as balance, which is in actuality just because they don’t want to play another way besides what they already know and use regularly.

Temple of the silent storm was not removed and was only tweaked to eliminate certain exploits (cough portal channeling cough), and it is still in rated match rotation, because, guess what, it’s a fun and balanced map.
Raid on the Capricorn, Spirit Watch, and not SkyHammer, are just bullkitten. Maybe SkyHammer will be able to return to map rotation with some (a lot of) tweaks someday, but as it is now, it’s not a map for competitive play.

Have you actually played this map against decent people? Considering your non-existant leaderboard ranking, I guess not.

Then you could tell me how a D/D Elementalist / Dps Guardian / Warrior are supposed to “position” themselves when they have to go into melee range of someone using the cannon…yeah, that puts them right in the middle of the cannon platform.
Or maybe you could tell me how a melee class is supposed to hold a side point with his back to the wall, all the time…hoping a stealthed thief doesn’t pull you down

sorrow.2364:

Banish is pretty slow and obvious. You can avoid that skill. Updraft, on the other hand, isn’t, but the blowout is far lower.
Another way to completely negate updraft, banish or whatever is just not position yourself in a line in the following order: enemy – you – cliff.

You focused on a single point of my mistake-list completely ignoring the others. You won’t proving my argument is invalid in that way.

Shield of Absorbtion (instant skill, good luck dodging that, you have to rely on luck) → Scepter immobilize → swap to hammer → Banish (if you didn’t already get immobilized on the breaking glass)
Congratulations, you’ve successfully managed to kill someone as a bunker guardian, rinse and repeat when more people come up there.

google.3709:

the game itself needs some improvements but… what about the community ?

with the release of skyhammer a few things came to light, one of the biggest one is how much the “loudest” members of our community hate change, skyhammer is far from the perfect map but… the map itself serves as an example for different, more creative play-types. but then you see all these members of the community completely rejecting and shutting down just because they don’t want to adapt.

these players want to continue running (example) the same shatter build they have been runnimg from launch, the same DD ele build from 7 months ago, same cheesy BM Ranger, etc on the same team comp they run for every map, every month… completely ignoring the unique mechanics of every map.

skyhammer is a step on the right direction, the playground actually played an important role on the meta, driving it away from the bunker- condi heavy into a CC-1v1 meta. It could be awesome if every map had such an impact, it would make map rotations meaningful and help shift metas while keeping things fresh…

but.. until all these loud members of the community learn to adapt and stop being so ignorant towards their class (LOL at all of those who sware their class don’t have any CC or stun breaks), doors will continue to close for both GW2 and the community.

What do you guys think?

• do you want more fun and creative maps, with innovate mechanics ?
  OR..
• plain boring maps with meaningless mechanics so you can run the same build and team comp map after the next?

I’ll show you how I will adapt to this map. I’ll just need to log in my thief and use scorpion wire while stealthed, instant win.
Or I could log on my engi and bring all the knockbacks I can and go dominate the cannon
Or I could log in my mesmer and focus pull groups of people down the hole

Yeah, it’s hard to adapt to a poorly designed map.

Lopez.7369:

It’s great and vindicating that Skyhammer is now out of tournament rotation, but I think the playerbase really needs an explanation for how such a terrible map got through the QA process and straight into the tournament rotation in the first place.

This gives me very little faith in ArenaNet’s vision for Guild Wars 2 as an e-sport.

I hope that, at the very least, this humbles overzealous developers in the future.

Because this map can be a fun troll map to go into hotjoin and have a laugh while playing the golf minigame.
But I guess they didn’t consider how boring that would be, playing that map 10+ times in a row each day for 3 to 4 days.

They removed this map because it became something like this:
1) Elementalists running tornado and dominating the skyhammer, forcing you to leave the room until the skill wore off, or spam stability
2) Engineers running full tanky CC builds just trying to knock people down without even trying to kill their enemies in a standard way. Why would they, it’s faster to spam your knockbacks anyway
3) Guardians running hammer/sceptershield, but this is pretty normal anyway on other maps so it’s fine
4) Mesmers running greatsword/swordfocus, but again, it is normal on the other maps…however, usually mesmers at least attempt to kill you, now they just focus pull your entire team down (if there is more than one up at the cannon)
5) Necromancers spamming fear or running spectral grasp to pull you down on side point, good luck fighting with your back to the wall if they can just pull you
6) Rangers running fear pets and knockback weapons, when the day before they were all BM with either feline or bird pets and no one would use longbow (because it sucks)
7) Thieves pulling you down with scorpion wire from stealth, because they suck and can’t kill you 1v1 even with cheesy S/D builds
8) Warriors running Stomp…who the kitten ever used stomp before? Or even fear shout which hasn’t been used for like 6 months at least

In the end the main focus became to just push people off the edge, no one was trying to kill people, only to push them down. And this is a PvP game, not a gold mini-game.
This is all of course because the secondary mechanic, the kitten Ion Cannon, is too strong and forces you to stupid cc fights up there.

And it’s not “a few” people who complained, all my friends hate it and were refusing to play on it, competitive teams stopped playing on it after like the first day, everyone was complaining about how stupid of a map it was. Hell even my team, after the first day in which I was the only one complaining, started saying how kittenty that map is.

Finally. That map is just a golf minigame, it’s not pvp.

because it sucks balls and is a troll map.

It’s so fun trying to avoid stealthed scorpion wires.

Complaining about hotjoin balance, and posting a 8vs8 kittening zergfest screenshot in every thread as “proof”…the new frontier of fail™

Did it ever occur to you that those top leaderboard players aren’t always online, all 5 of them, to play rated matches? Or that maybe, just maybe, one of them logs on, is alone, and goes to play a bit in hotjoin to kill some time?
Or maybe they’re waiting for the queue to pop? Or testing new builds? Or any other reason?

ArenaNet never learns the lessons

You CANNOT put achievements (2) in a kittening WvW JP full of griefers and/or zergs that will make it impossible to even get down from the spawn.
You have either to wait till late night (and hope your faction holds a keep) or be kittened.

Allie Murdock.8152:

What I was trying to gauge by asking the template question was whether or not folks are open to changing their build if it was more convenient for them or if it was a matter of them only wanting to play one build for eternity. I can see that it’s a mix of both, now.

The reason why the Cannon control room is small is because the cannon itself is powerful so we didn’t want to make it easier for players to dominate the cannon and continuously hammer those on the field with no consequence. With that in mind, do you still feel the space is too small? Also, with the small space in mind, do you still feel that the shots should be dodge-able?

Are you guys saying that you would prefer to have a less powerful cannon that is easier to defend?

Space is fine (altho camera is a kitten when you’re trying to keep your backs to the wall to avoid getting blown off), I think. Just make the shots avoidable and/or reduce the radius

My main gripe with the map is actually the cannon. It deals too much damage (and knocks you down as well) for something that is undodgeable/unblockable, it makes the secondary mechanic too powerful and FORCES you to use it. On Kyhlo you can choose to not use treb, but on Skyhammer you HAVE to control the Ion Cannon™ or you WILL lose the map.

TL;DR: make the cannon shots dodgeable/blockable.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Keep discussing, but I’m curious: Would having templates alleviate the issue of not wanting to respec for certain maps?

We do see teams shift their comps around for certain maps (and it seems to be very effective), would this not be along the same lines?

Keep the feedback coming, this is great!

Templates would help, but the map is really bad, everyone now runs with full CC build (well, almost everyone) and the main focus is to throw people down instead of actually trying to kill them…it’s just a game of golf :|

A fun troll map, maybe, but I would never want to see a tournament where everything is “red team throws blue guardian down…blue guardian throws red engi down…” over and over :|

google.3709:

People who like the map
People who play classes with lots of cc to throw people off

People who DON’T like the map
People who play classes without cc or that refuse to play the fotm class just because of an ugly map

fixed.

tarcheg.4872:

Did you actually watch any streams of recent paid tournaments? Which maps are being played and which ones are not?
Forest+Foefire+Kyhlo are the ones that are the most balanced, deal with it.

And Foefire is actually the best map to watch.

@OP: because it is stupid that the most effective way to KILL someone is to CC them instead of, you know, actually dealing DAMAGE.
Oh, and 10k undodgeable Ion Cannon™ hits.

“Hi, I can’t kill you in a straight fight, but I’m gonna spam my fears on you and make you fall, lol pwned n00b, kkthxbye”

Isaac.6041:

Hearing PvPers complain about “instant-death” mechanics is like hearing PVE noobs complain about the lasers in CoE. Learn to avoid the instant-death mechanics.

Lol come back here when you get pulled into a broken glass by a stealthed thief with scorpion wire
Or by a necro spamming fears on you after stability wears off (because, you know, you can’t have 24/7 stability uptime)
Or by an engi spamming their knockbacks

This map is awful and should be taken out of rotation right now.

I got bored with this map after the first game. I can’t imagine playing it till friday.

Lordrosicky.5813:

It is fun but why can’t you dodge the gun?

I think you can dodge it, but the timing seems weird, will have to try again

Btw, if I wanted to play Command and Conquer, I wouldn’t log in GW2…. -.-

dzindzinier.6138:

Duke Hanry -best whiner in EU imo
but that topic XD

There, I fixed that for you.

gaspara.4079:

Actually the 5% damage vs bleeding foes was merged with the +20% bleed duration trait. So that doesn’t explain the half effectiveness.

Being able to use it at any range (staff mostly, scepter users might want to use stone splinters anyway) explains the difference in damage between the 2 traits (also, more bleed duration means more damage)

It will be awful and will be removed from rotation like Spirit Watch was.

Just wait for the kittenload of whines about people getting knocked down over and over by fears/long kbs/mesmer pulls/whatever. It will be like Tor Anroc over and over again, but without lava (who played Warhammer Online knows what I means).

XII.9401:

For roaming just switch out of your hammer or mace/shield into sword/warhorn to travel then switch back when about to go into combat.

yeah, swapping weapons in tPvP….it was removed months ago.

Celtus.8456:

Spectral wall needs a red warning outline like every other hostile area spell. Besides that, I think it wont be OP at all once necros get their nerf. The extra fears are just too much to deal with right now in addition to everything else necros are dishing out.

This.
You can’t even tell friendly SW from enemy one, it should be fixed asap XD

I think that has to do with database space
PvP weapon locker should be based on bits (either 0 or 1, you have or you haven’t the item in there) while bank collections are based on bites (0-255 max, but it caps at 250 anyway).
There are far more weapons/armors in the pvp locker compared to the pve mats stuff, so I don’t think they can afford the database space to let us have multiple copies of the same items.
An idea would be to make weapons/armors work like pvp runes/sigil, which doesn’t appear to be removed from your pvp locker when you collect them. So every weapon/armor would just be unlocked and be stored as “1”, forever.

Kryshade.6075:

Shar.3402:

Biggest issue with current soloQ (which will remain an issue even after A.net makes the split) is that people just plain suck.

It is either they’re bad at playing, or they play with the chat closed and don’t even attempt to communicate, or they simply do stupid things.

I’ve lost too many games because people won’t wait for regroups and go fight 1vs3, or you see random_warrior attempting to 1vs1 a side point holder (with the point not even neutral -> waste of time), or they don’t even attempt to res when you mist form towards them, and so on and so on.
And then, of course, is the problem of people not wanting to defend points and just run around hotjoin style…

True, but if both teams were solo q, then you’d have an equal chance of this happening on both sides thus off-setting the bad play. When you have this against a premade team of high quality, then it only exaggerates the problem even more.

I do agree that the biggest fear of Anet is probably going back to the days of paid/free tournies when there were extremely long wait times and very few teams queing. There is the definite possibility that you will see lots of solo q and very little team q if they split the queues. You may also wind up with teams only facing the same 1 or 2 teams all night which makes for a stale environment. How you handle this is probably the biggest key and why it’s taking so long to get solo q going.

yeah I know that if both teams are soloQ, it would balance out in the long run…but you often face bad premades as soloQ (at least in EU primetime, either pvx guilds or newly formed teams of whatever), and you end up losing by 50 points for stupid mistakes like those I mentioned above…if kitten es me off XD

Biggest issue with current soloQ (which will remain an issue even after A.net makes the split) is that people just plain suck.

It is either they’re bad at playing, or they play with the chat closed and don’t even attempt to communicate, or they simply do stupid things.

I’ve lost too many games because people won’t wait for regroups and go fight 1vs3, or you see random_warrior attempting to 1vs1 a side point holder (with the point not even neutral → waste of time), or they don’t even attempt to res when you mist form towards them, and so on and so on.
And then, of course, is the problem of people not wanting to defend points and just run around hotjoin style…

And you would end up like you are now, with regen healing for 300hp/s on stacked intensity

sorrow.2364:

What if Regen stacks in intensity?
Make it works exactly like bleed but it gives health instead of dealing damage.

So that I could have 1000hp/s regen? yes please.

Horrible idea balance wise.

LeGi.3921:

i like the idea with glory/rank dependent on the points your team actually got in the map. but 2x is too much.

i would go for 250 winbonus + 50% of the teams points as glory/rank. add a winchest to that and it would be fine. remove the extra rank/glory for individual actions in tournaments.

for the losing team 50% of the teams points as glory/rank.

+1

Xsorus.2507:

Umm…I get almost 350 Regen Tics from Regen boon with healing gear…

288 tells me you’re not actually speccing for heals.

you need 2160 healing power to get 400/s regen ticks, so it IS kinda impossible to get to that number :p
even for 350/s you need 1760, also a pretty high number for tPvP (I’m not even sure you can get that high even with fully stacked sigil of life)

You’re all missing some important points here

Assuming that:
1) Toughnes + Protection + Damage Resist buffs (frost aura, dolyak signet, whatever) counter direct continuous damage (as in, effectively reducing incoming damage)
2) Vitality counters Condition Damage (as in, reducing the relative health loss)
(I’m leaving healing out of this since you can’t have V/T/H gear anyway, or that would be the perfect counter to anything.). Also, there is condi reduction % (melandru, hoelbrak, whatever).

There is a main difference between direct damage and condition damage: it is the ramp up time.
If I hit you for 5k fire grab (or phoenix, or whatever hard hitting spell you want), you lose 5k hps istantly.
If I hit you with 10 stacks of bleed (let’s say 100 damage each) for 5s (but it could be 100s, doesn’t matter), but you cleanse it after 2s, you only lose 2k hps.

Of course, Healing is going to counter/heal both type of damages, but a cleanse will totally negate potential condition damage (becoming invulnerable after being hit by direct damage or condi application is not going to help either way). If you run with 0 cleanses in the current condition heavy meta, however, you’re asking for it, and are going to take full damage (mesmers are kinda screwed in this regard tbh, unless some new viable dps build with condi cleanses gets discovered).
It is really no different than running with 916 toughness and then complaining that “omg I got hit by 10k backstab! that mind wrack hit me for 2k each clone! wtf 14k whirlwind, nerf warriors!”

Of course, I’m not talking about 8vs8 hotjoin zergfest, but actual decent level play.

P.S. If you do the math you’ll be shocked at how balanced the current stat combinations are.

Pff, soloQ is fine

what’s wrong in meeting the same premade 3 times in a row while being in a full soloQ group XD

I tested all the weapon sigils on the training golems with all the attunement swaps, they are all working (using sigil of force on offhand to avoid conflicting cooldowns)
I also tested DT after getting cc’ed by the knockback golem, invulnerable pops up → it would have dealt damage (if you get cc’ed before cast ends, no invulnerable pop up)

watch your cast bar
try it in the mist
1) dodge while the cast bar is not finished -> you won’t deal damage
2) dodge after the cast bar is finished -> you will deal damage
also, you can’t cast other stuff while dragon tooth’s cast bar is not complete

it works the same way when you get CC’ed, if you don’t finish the cast, you won’t deal damage (Dragon Tooth has 1s cast time, fyi)

this is a video that shows you how if you interrupt your 1s cast time, it will never do damage, even if you dodge.

if you want to test with CC, you can try to hit the dodgemaster golem. If you get knocked back after finishing the cast, you’ll see the “invulnerable” scrolling text; on the other hand, if you get knocked back before finishing the cast, you’ll see nothing → the cast never completed → you’ll never deal damage.

Leaderboards are so broken that you can lose positions after going 3-1 because you lost a 4vs5 game vs lower ranked players, and you gained next to nothing by defeating the following 3 teams.
So you should really stop caring about this fail mixed team/solo queue, play and play some more to get better, and wait for a proper soloQ matchmaking+ladder to climb that one.

Josh Mitchell.1596:

Scepter
Dragon’s Tooth — Function Issue
Deals no damage if player has been CC’ed after casting it but before it lands.

This is not a bug. Dragon Tooth got a cast time, if you get cc’ed before the cast time ends, of course it will deal no damage. It is actually just a visual bug (it happens if you dodge before cast ends as well)

Josh Mitchell.1596:

Superior Sigil of Doom — Function Issue
Does not activate on attunement swap.

Superior Sigil of Leeching — Function Issue
Does not activate on attunement swap.

Superior Sigil of Intelligence — Function Issue
Does not activate on attunement swap.

These all work fine. Please remember that all sigils share the same cd, and that “on weapon swap” sigils only work while in combat.

Josh Mitchell.1596:

Evasive Arcana — Function Issue
Does not proc while in Mist Form in certain instances.

Seems to be working fine for me while in mist form.

Aether McLoud.1975:

Churning Earth goes on full cooldown if you get CCed while casting it instead of the 4 seconds cooldown other skills go on if you are interrupted while casting them.

It is intended, Churning Earth cripples at each pulse, if you get interrupted before the first cripple hits, it will go into the normal 5s interrupt cd. Same as when you get interrupted while channeling Ether Renewal, the spell got cast, even if partially, so it goes into full cd.

then you should stop trolling.

MithranArkanere.8957:

I’ve seen lots of engineers with Elixir S and Thumper turrets.
1-5 seconds of stability may not be perfect, but with a little luck you may get the 4s from the Elixir S utility and make CCs useless for a while, as warriors have absolutely no way to remove boons.

random hotjoin n00bs don’t count.

ARM.3912:

The Goat.1940:

Demon.5082:

I would not say Elementalists are garbage since we do have it better than some classes. Sadly, our build diversity is down the toilet with fire/earth just not being as powerful as air/water and arcana just being too good respective to the others in spvp/tpvp.

how do we “have it better” than some classes? which classes and how?

This^. I would LOVE to hear what class we have it better than.

Warriors, to name one.
Also, having it better than some other classes doesn’t necessarily means that we’re stronger 1vs1. And that leads us to be far better than rangers in team fights.

Elementalists are fine, but I agree that RTL should be reverted to 20s pve only, not even WvW.

Why don’t you make another class and see how conditions are a problem for every class if they don’t spec for them? Every player of every class adapts to the current meta, but somehow warriors think they’re special

Same goes for burst ofc, one can’t simply run with 916 toughness and then complain they get hit for a 10k shatter combo…

It’s all a matter of tradeoffs, you want high damage? you’re going to get hit for high damage as well. You want to not die horribly? You’re going to hit like a fly. You want to spec for top conditions? You’re going to either have low hps, or low toughness, or zero healing power.

Avead.5760:

everybody is weak to cc and focus fire..plus necros dont run alone.They have a team to rely on so that they peel for them.Engi still has the same broken self rezz only now its fixed and more op than it ever was which makes it a very very hard 1vs1 match up.Basically if you play against a team that has an engi dedicated to invading your close point i dont see what else you can send there to kill him other than necro or…an other engi , perhaps with automated respond.If you need to send 2 people because you cant 1vs1 it then the invader has already won..

Necros and engies are weaker than say ele or mesmer to cc and focus fire, they don’t have blinks or invulnerabilities (usually, no engi runs elixir s anyway), and literally no stability. Sure, they could break stun, but that doesn’t make them immune to other ccs.

As for the engi harassing your home point, there are ways to counter it.