Guild Wars 2

Hi anet,

There’s a lot of speculation about an incoming port change and it’s impact on Mesmer, Thief, Elementalist, and Necromancer.

The questions people have vary. But I think if you could just provide some information as to whether or not this is going into the live build that would be great!

If it is going into the live build some information on the idea behind the changes would be great.

One of the main Concerns I’ve seen is that power Rangers reaching positions that can’t be ported to will push all other Zerkers out of the meta.

Another concern I’ve seen is that ports that have out of range targets won’t be viable because you won’t be able to port to targets out of range. Infiltrator’s Signet, Infiltrator’s Strike, eFlashing Blade, Judges intervention, and Flesh Worm utilize this mechanic often.

So to ease the rampant speculation, fears, and concerns it would be great if you could engage the community in some conversations about these potentially meta changing mechanics.

Thanks
:)

Wouldn’t want the game without down state.

Fortunately it’s too late to change anyways.

The bug is that you can be hit when you’d think you’d be dodging if you dodge while using the warrior steal.

It’d be nice to have a bug fix so we can dodge when we need to instead of wasting endurance for nothing. I don’t know if the evade frames are off or what, but dodge while using the warrior steal has been heavily bugged for a long time and it’s frustrating.

I thought this might be an interesting discussion.

Weapon skills on the the Revenant cost energy, as do the Legend Skills. Interestingly, the Revenant is the only Profession that will be able to swap skills while wielding a bundle.

This might have some interesting applications. Currently in the meta elementalists normally run Fiery Greatsword. Which can save the revenant on energy, allowing it to use more legend skills since bundle skills have flat recharges.

It all seems to allow for some interesting play. For example, with the Dwarf Legend air field you could combo a dazing strike for yourself. Or with the taunt skill you can make enemies run directly into your FGS Autoattack making them take all hits from it.

Could this lead to other conjure weapons showing up in the meta on Ele/Revenant teams? What are your thoughts?

I’d like to see a way to drop stealth early in order to attack earlier while avoiding the revealed debuf. Imo forcing a drop target and just auto attacking can often times be more effective as you have the option to stealth again during those 4 seconds you’d be revealed.

Revealed is like a 4 second ATTACK ME sign in big neon lights hovering over dagger thieves’ heads. After a dagger thief is revealed you should often focus them (assuming they’re in dagger), because you’ll force them to blow cooldowns, or initiative via swapping to bow 3/5 or you’ll kill them. Either ways it’s value for your team.

Bhawb.7408:

Shockwave.1230:

1. Since it seems that lots of condition removal is Last condi In is the First Condi out, or LIFO, it’d be nice to get a LIFO indicator of some kind for conditions in the effects bar. Potentially the same for boons, if it’s the same behavior but I don’t know much about that mechanic.

This isn’t the case, both removals have built-in priority systems.

Right, also more information released about the removal priority mechanics would be great ANet. Seems to vary for certain skills.

This is two potential improvements I’d like to see to the effects bar.

1. Since it seems that lots of condition removal is Last condi In is the First Condi out, or LIFO, it’d be nice to get a LIFO indicator of some kind for conditions in the effects bar. Potentially the same for boons, if it’s the same behavior but I don’t know much about that mechanic.

I don’t know if it’d be fair to show the LIFO indicator for enemies on effects bars, but I’m not advocating that at the moment, just seeing LIFO for yourself is all I’m talking about.

Maybe even make this configurable so people can see different depths of conditions, up to 3 deep or something.

2. Show the second counter with the effect icons instead of only in a tooltip, could be a config option if people like the current view. There’s so much that happens in PvP, and PvE sometimes, that it’d be great if information for various effects could be read more timely so that players can react properly more often.

ronpierce.2760:

I think what he’s saying is instead of it being the Class 1 ability (F1) allow it to also function with the weapon swap key (’) or whatever default is.

I think that’d be nice if both were usable so no extra configuration needs to happen, since otherwise one will just be unused anyways, might as well enable both to function the swap mechanic.

Yes, sorry my keybinds are weird. editing the post

Since Revenant doesn’t swap weapons and can only have 2 legends, instead of having to change my keybinds can there be an option to toggle the Weapon Swap keybind to swap legends?

Would save some time when swapping between professions <3

Please see title, that is all.

knyy.6427:

Just wanted to know what you think about:
Unyielding Anguish – Shadow steps to enemies and remove them from that point. Applies Torment on landing.
It has no CD, costs 35 energy and it pulses 4 times in 4 seconds. so basically you could get teleported outside of the aoe 4 times. you have normally two dodges.
So this skill is a hard counter against shadow refuge?

Is the displacement only during the initial strike from the revenant or each pulse?

It seems too strong in conquest if it displaces every pulse. It seems more likely it applies torment during the pulses, but I don’t know what it actually does. No cooldown also seems too strong on this skill, that’s easy to change though.

As long as there’s a tell on the leap all you need to do is dodge, and as long as it has a cooldown of more than 4 seconds, and as long as it doesn’t displace every pulse it seems simple enough to avoid. Otherwise, yes this ability would completely hard counter refuge.

Invoker.5462:

florence.1674:

Everyone, please remember: Thief and Stealth are 2 separate issues.

Stealth as a mechanic is stupid and overpowered.
Thief is a horribly terrible profession that is leaning on a overpowered mechanic.

Fix Stealth and Thieves will finally be recognized that they need severe help.

Just as i began to lose hope in these replies- a good re-wording for those (if not all) readers of this thread that don’t seem to comprehend my mid sized wall of text.

If stealth is OP then Invulnerability is more OP. If you say you want stealth removed because it’s OP then you also want invulnerability removed.

Additionally I see a huge fallacy in that the OP of the thread is trying to argue with stealth as a concept and not arguing about it’s implementation in the game.

Arguing about the concept of stealth is irrelevant without it’s practical implementations in the game.

Given the implementation in conquest, it’s not OP. For stronghold we’ll see.

SoulSin.5682:

Shockwave.1230:

Slow might wreck Dagger, but I’m going to love slow for Flanking Strike, Pistol Whip, and Disabling Shot.

We are about to find out how invulnerability actually works in this game:
1- We get invul for the whole animation
2- We get for the first second and get rooted-rekt in the next.

It’s the duration of the channel. I don’t run quickness on S/D because of this.

Slow might wreck Dagger, but I’m going to love slow for Flanking Strike, Pistol Whip, and Disabling Shot.

Bhawb.7408:

Anet, please look at boon removal priorities on the various skills. If you want to add new boons that’s cool, love the idea, but they need to be removable, and you need to rebalance the removal priorities of skills. We even have boon removal skills (Unholy Feast) being blocked by Aegis…

But Unholy Feast removes Aegis XP

Weird question. Shatter bursts take setup but is better than both.

So you can easily say shatter is the hardest to do.

Backstab though is the least rewarding for its risk of the 3.

Yet even for how easy rapid fire is to do, power Ranger is the weakest of the associated builds in the meta.

Would it be possible to include answer to this in the deep dive of the Revenant? Thanks

It’d be recommended you start with Meta builds, can be found various places but metabattle.com is a good source.

Take a look at those builds. They’ll carry you a bit as you learn. There’s a lot to know and time will teach you a lot, no easy way to communicate everything that needs communicated in 1 forum post, but I’m sure people will have tips that will help you out.

Reposting my feedback from the main thread here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Ready-Up-this-Friday-Stronghold/page/6#post4794647

Feedback
Separate conquest from stronghold

Reasons:

• 1. There will be players that prefer a specific profession comp between both game modes.
• 2. Players will prefer one game mode over the other and may not want to even play the other game mode. This will probably lead to an increase in AFKers
• 3. Matchmaking and match quality, this should be split between game modes. You can’t track different MMRs if you have the option to pick between two different game modes. Numerous players will likely want to specialize in one of the two game modes after matchmaking occurs.

I understand that you want to mizimize fracturing the playerbase, however, your choice solution risks putting players in situations they don’t want to be in or situations where they aren’t setup optimally.

This is a highly unfavorable matchup. Avoid this 1v1, but if you have to take it ever Shortbow is important to use here to stay alive.

If Greatsword interrupt the whirl. Dodge the pull. Blind the 3rd auto attack. Don’t stand in the symbol.

If hammer blind skill 2, avoid the immob, shadow step out of the ring.

If scepter focus, swap to shortbow, and strafe the auto attacks. Don’t stand in smite. Cluster bomb the shield. Expect the immob right before they weapon swap back into their main set.

That’s all very basic, but it’s challenging to deal with smite condition and the air fire procs. You can’t compete with the 20k+ healing they’ll have available from meditations and virtues with shelter.

Don’t waste initiative on shelter or renewed focus. The only thing you can try there is to poison field shelter.

As a D/P thief if you win that 1v1 you just flat out played them. It truly is a hard counter, one of the hardest in the game, but you always have the option to run away.

The biggest difference between S/D and S/P is the survivability and damage. S/D’s evade frames are immediate on demand and provide mobility. S/P’s evade frames come after a wind-up and root you in place. This makes S/D much more survivable. S/P meta builds spec for more damage and quickness since it naturally sets up it’s own burst.

S/D is more bruiser like, whereas S/P is burstier. That’s a basic way to put the play styles.

From when I read the rank calculations a while back I recall that every hundred points is effectively a tier of progress towards rank scoring.

I feel very few people actually know this exists in the game of conquest. To keep people from getting discouraged and giving up as often, it would be nice to create visibility into your progression along these tiers.

It could be something as simply as a 5 star system where every 100 points gives you a star on the UI and maybe improved later.

This wouldn’t eliminate people giving up, but at least it would reduce the frequency imo.

If you are able to keep track of transmute in this fight it’ll help you know when you’re blinds will fail. This is important because you’ll go from avoiding an attack to getting hit by crits when you give them fury.

Save shadow step in case you get caught in slick shoes. If you’re step/return are used before they use slick shoes you are best off just leaving the fight at that point.

There’s a lot you need to avoid and you don’t have enough defenses to avoid it all, which is the main reason the fight is so unfavorable. You won’t have enough initiative to blind and daze everything, and they can get around the blinds with grenades.

Superspeed is a good way for them to make you use initiative on a port by creating distance. Smarter engi’s do this when they proc burning on you and will be strafing for distance with auto attacks. You should condi clear here, and if you can’t it’s another sign you likely want to run away.

The match up is basically a hard counter at similar skill. You can outplay them heavily even if they make mistakes and still not bring them down. It’s better for you to avoid that 1v1 in most situations, save holding a point while playing defensively until someone rotates to you if you’re ever in that situation.

This has been discussed heavily within the community since launch, ANet at one point mentioned they thought about it affecting initiative gain, but that it was too effective.

I’ve done a lot of analysis on this myself comparing the global resource pool of initiative to being able to double dip on time with skill recharges and comparing the amount of weapon 2-5 skills that can be used over time, and the result is that thief loses currently in the amount of skills that can be used over time (even to warrior which has the least amount of skills that can be used).

Basically because every other profession can double dip and beyond on time for recharging skills (aka having multiple skills recharging at the same time) and thief can’t (because it has a global resource pool), it doesn’t matter that thief weapon skills aren’t impacted by chill.

Justin ODell.9517:

ronpierce.2760:

But think about the potential income of PVPers! We could take part of the population from WoW’s arena base who would love this type of freedom and skipping the leveling process. And bring back old GW2 players and convert at least some PVErs. I thinks a bit short sighted to just think it’d be fracturing the player base, when in reality you could just be growing it. Bringing in more players and ex players could do wonders for both arena AND conquest populations at once.

It isn’t off the table, and we have most of the tech for it. I expect at some point we will do it, just not now. I don’t know when either.

Edit: This isn’t a promise we’ll do these type of arenas, just my opinion based off of previous discussions with the team. We may never do them, or we may do something like them. Nothing is planned at this point.

I <3 this kind of openness with the community, thanks Justin

I’d be against the suggestion. If you want to break through boons you can combine with steal to steal 3 at once.

Steal prioritizes Aegis and Stability first. I don’t know what larcenous prioritizes, but last I checked vs elementalists Might is the lowest priority vs them in a fight.

I think if it were clearer how boon steal prioritization works with larcenous and steal we might be able to utilize it better. Or if larcenous prioritized boon steal based on last in first out the skill would be fine.

I wonder if there is a bug where new might stacks don’t reset might as the most recent boon added.

HelloPandaKitty.9410:

I’ve tried every build but right now I am set with d/p. But if the build is the problem. i’ll just change that.

Since you’re D/P:

When you first engage get 4 heartseekers into a black powder while outside their range. Or use shadow refuge. Apprach from stealth. Hopefully you are able to stealth out of site.

If you get jumped from range you’ll want to quickly gap close or LoS if available. Be quick, you’ll likely need to stun break and headshot (steal if stability) rapid fire, or Shadow Step behind cover.

Once you engage keep up your blinds with shadow shot, dont use shadow shot vs rapid fire or auto attack chain 3 on greatsword. Don’t use it vs swoop either, but often you may mess this up.

When they use their invulnerability, stealth and LoS. Do this immediately.

Figure out as soon as possible how many stabilities the ranger has. It’s going to be 0, 1, or 2. It’s usually never 0. Their stabilities are Signet of the Wild and Rampage as One. Only ever use steal vs rapid fire when stability is up. The only exception to this rule is if you are low on health and are close to dying.

If you can’t avoid a CC immediately stun break it.

Keep in mind you’ll probably die more to the pet and not the actual ranger in this fight. Assuming you react correctly to rapid fire and barrage and keep up your blinds.

Vs hunter’s shot your options are limited if you don’t land a shadow shot after the ranger enter’s stealth. If you didn’t land the blind you’ll probably be hilt bashed, mauled or point blank shotted. In this situation your options depend on position and cooldowns. You can Refuge, you can random dodge, you can shadow step for distance/LoS, if you are landing your auto attacks you can keep autoattacking and probably trade damage, and that’s about it.

If you did land the blind after Hunter’s shot your best options are to either kite out the stealth and dodge when you see miss or to keep autoattacking if they’re landing and dodge after you see miss. However, in my opinion the best option is to kite out the stealth if you landed the blind, because while in stealth a ranger can proc their invuln so if you’re antipating a damage trade you might be dealing 0 damage.

The biggest threats you need to be aware of from the ranger are rapid fire, barrage, maul, counterattack, hilt bash, dog howls, and dog swaps.

• Rapid Fire: Headshot this immediately (or steal if stability), if you can’t then LoS it, if you can’t then double dodge
• Barrage: Headshot this immediately (or steal if stability), if you can’t then Stealth and LoS until the AoE is gone.
• Maul: Blind this with Shadowshot or dodge.
• Counter Attack: Your best option vs this in 1v1 is to kite the pet and wait 2 seconds getting free initiative. If you’re not 1v1 you likely don’t want to wait the 2 seconds. Shadow shot this as you feel the block winding down. You’ll either blind and avoid the counter attack or blind and land some damage.
• Hilt Bash: Dodge this, unless you already have a blind up.
• Immobilize Howl: You might be able to eat this because of shadow shot and other gap closers. Your biggest risk is the ranger getting behind you while immobilzed. In which case you can shadow step behind them, or if you have withdraw use that.
• Fear howl: Dodge this
• Dog Swap: When a dog is swapped in if they have their knockdown off cooldown the first thing they do is use that. If you see them about to pounce dodge it.

In short, a power range with double dogs vs a D/P thief is ultimately decided by whether the thief can avoid enough of the 8 things listed above and stealth during the invuln. The 6 (7 if you include the immob howl) hard CC’s power ranger has make it hard to avoid them all, but you have 3 stun break opportunities between Step/Return and Signet. It’s a matchup that is often determined by who gets the jump on the other.

Added
Forgot about Roots. You’ll want to shadow shot your way out of this if it lands from range. If it’s used point blank vs you, you’ll want to autoattack your way out of it as you’ll cleave it and the ranger. React asap, because the immobilize will stack up.

What is your build?

Basket of Boxes.1976:

I would hope for at least 10v10 otherwise what really makes this map any different from a glorified Legacy of the Foefire?

If this is the perspective one is to take then legacy is glorified gw1 GvG.

Fernling.1729:

I honestly wouldn’t expect anything less than $49.99. It is possible that it will be only $39.99, but that likely depends on how much content is actually in the expansion.

These two values would be my guesses as well for the basic edition.

Justin ODell.9517:

Shockwave.1230:

Justin you should target your query to matches where there are MMR outliers of some kind. 5 v 4+1 in the top quartile of players for example.

I enjoy advice like this. I wrote a ladder sim a week or so ago that basically replays the season with different rules. I’ve also found it a very handy, and faster, way to get stats out of the data. Been adding all sorts of reports to it as I get time.

I don’t know what the data is saying, but there are probably identifiable tiers in it. I’d imagine at different tiers there are different outliers that create lopsided matches. The more of those you can isolate the more 1-offs you can try to plug into the matchmaking algorithm to improve how competitive matches are.

As the playerbase improves over time outliers at lower tiers become less important, whereas outliers at higher tiers become more important to minimize. However with an upcoming expansion on the horizon, lower tier outliers will be important to resolve until the influx of new players slows.

These are just my thoughts, I’ve never tested or implemented a matchmaking system before (unless you consider playing them in live games such), so they are thoughts without experience.

My suggestion I’ve been posting in threads is to have a Revenant starting zone, and a very small personal story specifically for them due to the way things have happened chronologically.

uberkingkong.8041:

Simon.3794:

5 people can represent a guild of 200+ people
but you will never find 6 people to represent a 5 men guild

get it?

I dont really consider 5 people a guild, I consider that a team under a name.

Also, its better to get a bunch of people together than it is to get a few people together.

I see 10, 15, 20 people a reachable and easily maintained number for fights.

More people that play together (in an actual guild/party, not solo que with other randoms and play many games with the same people, not a random pug), the better the community is, the more fun they are having.

There should be a thing in this game that promotes that, like friendship. If you play with friends you get bonus like +10% reward track, +10% gold, +25% mf, etc. max. Should judge your friendship. Should make something like friendship grinding, keep playing with friends and see how far you can make your friendship go (have something to measure it).

This is an MMORPG, needs to promote people playing together and not bunch of solo que’ers, they can go play single player games. I dont mind people solo queing every now and then, but if they have a friend on, there really should be incentives that make them play together.

Stronghold needs to be more than 5 people, should be 8 minimal. Should get more points based on larger fights like 20 v 20, to promote larger battles because they obviously require more thinking and strategy due to larger amount of people.

Anything more than 20 I see hard time having 21+ people actively engaged in something and not being interrupted, unless its full of hardcore players. Safe to stay 8-20 range.

Your game mode you are describing is for a different target than competitive pvpers.

I would challenge you to find any successful competitive PvP game or even live sport where there are 15+ players of the same team actively on a playing field.

I would like to see a Revenant specific starting zone, regardless of race. Maybe give them some kind of very small version of a personal story.

Chronologically it doesn’t make sense to put them into the existing story plots before Rytlock returns.

Whenever a Revenant enters a dungeon they could do like the original guild Wars did for players starting in certain campaigns and display something that says you are viewing events from the past.

Teutos.8620:

Shockwave.1230:

Since you beat them by more than 400 it’s possible that you’d get +3, but only if they were heavily favored to win.

The two factors in determining leader board point gain are spread and chance of victory. Your spread meets the criteria for +3, but since the chance of winning is always unknown there’s no way to know if you did get +3.

No, the difference from the end-score does not matter at all.

You’re right it’s not spread, it’s where you end your points at.

Since you beat them by more than 400 it’s possible that you’d get +3, but only if they were heavily favored to win.

The two factors in determining leader board point gain are spread and chance of victory. Your spread meets the criteria for +3, but since the chance of winning is always unknown there’s no way to know if you did get +3.

Atherakhia.4086:

Serdoc.7261:

GvG in GW 1 was 8v8 with normalized gear/stats, and my gut tells me that is what ANET is going for with Stronghold.

Weren’t groups in GW1 just 4 players though? So it was effectively 2 groups? So 10v10?

No and yes. Party size varied in PvP and PvE depending on game modes and areas. gvg in gw1 was 8 man parties.

There were two zones in PvE that allowed for 12 man parties.

There was 1 mission in gw1 factions that had 2 8 man parties that would start in separate parts of the mission and join halfway through.

This whole thread is the wvw community not understanding that in competitive pvp (even in live sports) you don’t have a huge amount of players actively participating on 1 team for numerous reasons. Hard to spectate, too much happens to comprehend, difficulty in coordinating, the feeling of a strong individual performance is diminished if not completely eliminated.

It’s also partly Colin’s fault for not being clear that when he says best Guild, historically for ArenaNet in competitive play that means 8 man team scenarios. That doesn’t mean Stronghold is 8 man as party sizes are currently 5 obviously, but it doesn’t mean it’s 5 or less either.

If the WvW death match scene is looking for some kind of official leader board, this is not it. Stronghold is for competitive Pvpers that play objective type games.

ArenaNet has chosen not to invest in death match heavily. But if you wish to participate in it you do the 15v15/20v20s in wvw or do 10v10 death match or smaller in Courtyard custom arenas.

Sorry that Anet does objective based PvP, and doesn’t have leader boards for death match, but that’s the choice they’ve made.

Feel free to let them know you want more officially supported death match, but stop hating on objective based competitive pvp please.

Justin you should target your query to matches where there are MMR outliers of some kind. 5 v 4+1 in the top quartile of players for example.

AsmallChicken.9634:

I find it funny how when the top EU and NA GvG teams fought in an unofficial and unsponsored gvg, it had a comparable number of viewers to the official Esports tournament Anet had to bribe people with precursors to watch.

Did GvG actually have 3k+ viewers?

Turn some of your in game gold into gems to get a character slot for free?

What’s broken from the story of the core game?

There will always be minor bugs in everything. It’s impossible to not get them all out.

I’d rather they spend more time developing new content, than fixing things I’ve done over and over.

They can fix any big glaring problems, but new content is more important to me than minor issues in the core game.

I’m excited about specializations. I think those will be easier to balance, kind of like Heroes in a MOBA.

The core professions will likely still be more flexible.

That’s my hope at least, specializations that are easier to balance and if you don’t like that specialization you can pick the core profession to play so that it has more flexibility to build in a different way.

misterman.1530:

*Revenant

And I hope we do get a change to the starter missions for this new class. Kind of like Death Knights in WoW did.

Thanks, fixed. Death Knights start at a high level once created. Depending on how they would do a Revenant story branch, they could do something similar, because new players who are coming to the game just because of the expansion pack, may want a means to jump right into that content, and the Revenant could be the way to accomplish that for brand new players.

Is there going to be a different story branch for when people create a Revenant?

Instead of the 5 starter branches we have now, maybe we get a different branch that involves Rytlock in this new beginning instance and new small scale story maybe going through the Journey of becoming a Revenant?

It would be a shame if Revenant follows the same starting branches that already exist, as it wouldn’t make sense due to Rytlock Chronologically becoming one after Zhaitan is killed.

Darkbattlemage.9612:

Zaxares.5419:

Ehh, I suppose I can grant that. I just think it’s quite unlikely given the Master’s duties and their public persona would make it difficult to go skulking around and quasi-groping sexy DR detectives.

Or perhaps she isn’t the true “master of whispers” but rather the figurehead claiming the title? Also the physical encounter could have been to place either a magical or technological bug on her, leaning towards magical as the spell wouldn’t be washed off or otherwise compromised unless Marjory was to actually die or entered a region where magical effects was negated.

Shockwave.1230:

(obviously a Mesmer then! CONFIRMED!!!!!!)

Incorrect it only confirms the person was not a necromancer, it does not even confirm if the person was a spellcaster. It could have easily been a rogue, or even a profession that may be revealed later on. Perhaps the person was a ghost that was brought from the mists by magic similar to what bound the ghosts of Ascalon, hence why no “necromancy” was detected and why the person requires outside aid. Perhaps it the Queen herself using Marjory like the unwitting pawn she is to be her dagger against the Ministry?

I need to use more sarcasm

Dixo.3876:

I’ve had this happen several times and just verified with logs. I wasn’t interrupted, heal just went on full cd with no logged healing.

Ether feast on mesmer if that matters.

Were you at full health?

I forgot how much nerfing Thief has received.