Guild Wars 2

MM Necro is a joke, Turret Engi must be a new player (not just to the class, but to the game lol), the only tPvP viable spec you have listed is a spirit ranger. Also, I have no idea what you have been doing in the past few weeks, but warriors are the rising star of pvp as of late (since half the population has quit their mesmers and elementalists). Try the standard 0/10/30/0/30 hammer/longbow build, watch some vids of better players playing the build (phantaram or teldo both ran it for a few matches) and then tell me that warrior is weak

is this one of those “I am bored, so I will make an incredibly stupid topic on the forums and watch people discuss my rubbish idea” posts?

Warriors stack multiplicatively, while other classes stack additively (in terms of damage output). You take two guardians (that focus on… let’s say protection uptime). The protection uptime doesn’t get increased significantly, because the first guardian could already cover most situations where it’s needed. So basically the benefit is 1 guardian’s prot uptime + 1 guardian prot uptime. However, when you take 2 warriors, this doesn’t apply. Applied might stacks, banner bonuses (provided they take different banners) and weakness on the boss both stack, therefore they increase each other’s damage by a certain coeficient. So it’s closer to (1 warriors damage * coeficient increase in damage from other warrior’s bonuses) * 2.

So while it’s true thieves (for example) can outdps warriors, this doesn’t apply within the maths of group synergy, since 3 thieves will never outdps 3 warriors, since as I said before, thieves’ damage stacks additively rather than multiplicatively.

Now this doesn’t mean that other classes don’t stack multiplicatively at all, they just do so in different aspects rather than pure damage. But for most dungeons all you need is brute force and one poor guardian taking all the hits. That’s why warriors are not overrated for dungeons

Solution: Characters get locked upon entering the queue → Build templates are implemented → templates can be switched before the game starts → promotes variety (otherwise non-optimal builds see some play, because of necessity) → promotes balancing (developers are under pressure to bring up to standard non-meta builds on most classes)

/thread

Let me put it this way: if you loose against a hammer/mace+shield warrior, it’s a l2p issue.

Both gap-closer stuns, that this build possesses are highly telegraphed and easily dodged once you know what to look for (and it’s really not that hard, believe me). Without landing a gap-closing stun, it’s pretty much impossible to land any other hammer crowd control skill (unless playing against a total bird brain that stays in melee range while fighting a warrior). The mace stun and daze are easier to land on melee targets, because of shorter animations, but are essentially the only two crowd controls you can make use of, if you miss your gap closers (which don’t really close that much of a gap in the first place, one is 600 range and the other is a mere 300 range, both highly telegraphed, predictable, since you ought to kind of open with either of them) and won’t keep you stunned for all that long anyways, considering the hammer warrior doesn’t have any sort of burst damage.

Basically said, any and all warrior builds have such massive counterplay options, that seeing the class as not balanced is just being biased and stupid. Any single skill that seems strong is either very telegraphed and FULLY negated by a dodge, or full melee range that requires you to run into the midst of the enemy team that will tear you anew one, if you are not playing properly well (and if he doesn’t have to, you should really work on your positioning). If all classes were as true to their design manifestos as the warrior is, this game would see much more counterplays and counterstrategies, and overall be way more interesting than it is now, because right now, every single viable meta-spec relies on spamming either damage spells, or dodges, or both without any form or sort of deeper team coordination to pull of bursts or anything else.

Complaining about a hammer warrior is exactly the same, as complaining about 100b warrior when the game first came out. Look at yourself in the mirror and you will see the kind of person whose solution to any problem he might have, is having others solve it for him, even if the question asked is: how much is 1+1=?

Love the post, also what I’d like to see eventually is a tone-down of this sort:
- all stats are removed from trait lines (power, vit, …)
- trait system is reworked, so that passive and proc traits are removed, and only imortant/role defining traits remain like illusionary persona, altruistic healing ect.
- boons can only be gained actively from utilities (maybe increased durations, but nerf stacking/application, but not from traits), and from some weapon sets
- damage is determined more by stats and weapon sets, rather than all sorts of bonuses (e.g. thief has horrible damage unless traited for it, but the number of traits that increases damage is kitten high)

Simply said, traits would determine build potency (utility in order to do what you want to do), amulets would determine build orientation (damage/tankiness), weapon sets would determine playstyle and sigils + runes would only complement them (you want to get a bit more survivability or damage, you pick specific runes/sigils)

It would be fun to see AoE changed, so that it hits your team just the same as the enemy team, that could provide for some coordinated play. Also, hotjoins would be full of dead bodies

Current state of the meta isn’t good at all, I agree. But in all honesty, is reverting back to greatsword mesmers an improvement at all? It’s the same thing with just a different form of damage (power vs. condi). AoE all across the board needs to either go down in damage, or be more predictable and counterable (dragon’s tooth-like), ideally a combination of the two. Also, as long as ranged damage stays at it’s current place, melee needs to have those teleports and evades (even mesmer has blurred frenzy and distortion, while keeping stupid amounts of burst damage, the reason they are seeing less spotlight is because of condi-heavy meta). Simply said melee needs to be rewarded for the risk it needs to undertake, and that will only happen by either melee being significantly stronger than ranged damage in terms of damage done (old era backstab thieves), or simply being tougher to kill (evades, bulk, boon uptime, invulnerabilities, disengages,…). This however, doesn’t promote the plays that people want to see and players want to play. There is too much damage and too many dodges/evades/invulnerabilities in this game, making it all spam-based and not skillful at all.

The change to s/d thieves that I would like to see is through differentiation rather than direct nerf. The evasion (at least considering the current state of the game) needs to stay as it is . The true problem with the build is that it’s doing everything at the same time. Evasion, damage and boon stripping are all tied to one single skill, with the added value of condition cleansing and disengage on another. Buff tactical strike to deal acceptable spike damage (provided it’s a daze, the damage should be a bit lower than backstab yet still better than what it is), nerf larcenous strike damage accordingly (evade + buff stealing shouldn’t be the primary source of damage anyway). It would also be good to nerf shadow return (and make infiltrator’s strike ground targeted) to the same distance as phase retreat once the AoE and ranged damage is brought in line, so that thieves have an alternative to shortbow (which is kitten now anyways). Either way, I am rather convinced that it’s neither the dodges, nor the damage that is overpowered. It’s their combination, and the only right way to go about this is to separate the two aspects and take another look how it would affect the build.

Just remove burning and give necro the sustain that it needed and asked for in the first place. Honestly I don’t think necro should be the condi bomber that it has become now, that’s an enginner’s job. Necro should be an attrition class that can’t burst you, can’t run from you, but makes up for it in bulk and presence via sheer tankiness and utility. What we have now is far from what necromancer was supposed to be…

still looking for a team

Hello, I am looking for a serious and dedicated EU team, after parting ways with my previous group (TSB).

My current rank on leaderboards is ~330, my in-game rank is 42, majority of which has been earned via tournaments. I am fluent in english and outspoken. I rarely-if ever rage and am always open to suggestions/take criticism calmly.

I have had experience with several lower-tier teams, forming a few of them myself, so I can understand and help lift some of the burdens connected to such endeavors, if necessary. I am communicative and responsive, so getting info across to me in the heat of battle should not be a problem.

Currently I am 25 years old, so if you are looking for a mature player, you need to look no further. As a university student, my schedule should be versatile and could be shaped so that it meets the one of my team.

In regards to my character choices, I have played all classes to a decent level, although I have been focusing on dps roamers in the past few months (thief and most recently a mesmer). I have also been a long-time guardian player, although I tire of the class quite easily, if I am to be merely a point holder for my team. I should have no trouble picking up and mastering any of the classes, although I am not very fond of being a point holder (if it meant joining a really good team though, you can scratch that part xD).

You can contact me in-game by whisper or mail, or here on the forums via PM

@Adry: and how do you expect Anet to cover their expenses from development of the features they release, as well as any future development? SPvP community already spends almost nothing on the gem store compared to wvw and pve players and if we are ever to see proper development there needs to be money in it for anet. Yet still, you are complaining about kittening $4 a month for a feature that is not even essential for playing pvp. If you played WoW for comparison, you would have already paid $135 since release of GW2. How much of that sum have you already spent in the gem store? Judging by your whining, not a single cent. Nobody likes to pay for stuff, but whining about few dollars a month for a feature you don’t even kittening need is an overkill, even after anet has stated that there will later be ways of getting the feature in-game as a reward for some activity (so basically for free), you still whine and whine and whine. If you really can’t afford those kittening $4 then go and farm pve and buy it for gold to gems option, another free way of getting stuff that you normally have to pay for, in other games. Yet people still find fault even in that. Not only do you have a method of getting all paid stuff anet has to offer through in-game gold, anet has made an investment towards minor part of the community that already provides no revenue, but you still feel compelled to criticize it.

Your dream sounds like a nightmare to me…

RedSpectrum.1975:

…
There isn’t one DP build, just like there isnt one DD build

In pvp, there is only one DP build, as well as only one DD build. Coincidentally, they are the same. They have been played from the launch, tested endlessly and proven to be the best. Now if you are basing your argumentation on WvW, let me stop you. WvW is a game mode that is in it’s core based on abuse of principles, that were supposed to make PvE better for the people playing the game, like ridiculous maximum critical damage, fully geared players being put against newbs and similar disgusting things.

Sifu.6527:

I disagree.

Pulling off Steal CnD + BS is harder than 5-2 then Steal/InfilBS.

d/p : use basilisk venom, mark target, detarget (depending on whether you have already been seen, as using basilisk by hitting enemy with black powder prematurely can utterly funk your whole combo up, giving enemy more time to stunbreak or even having the effect pass), use black powder, retarget, use assassin’s signet while using heartseeker (if you use it before this point you are loosing one or more of the empowered hits by black powder), use steal, use backstab

d/d : use basilisk, use assassin’s signet, use CnD, use steal, use backstab

I fail to see how possibly any combo ever could be more simple than pulling off CnD backstab. You might have in mind pulling off just a backstab without usage of any combos or stuff like that (seeing akittenting CnD can be tricky… as I have previously stated), which would be quite pointless in spvp/tournaments seeing as if you fail your burst combo the first time, you gonna die babe, unless you run real fast. In regards to pve : backstab builds suck. There is also the WvW thing for which I hold no regard whatsoever, since basically everything and anything works there (player skillbase is somewhere in between the floor and satan’s bathroom.

@RedSpectrum: there is only one D/P build and it’s 25/30/0/0/15 with full zerker and scholar’s runes. There is a remote chance you might be talking about WvW, where stuff like being upleveled from level 13 matters much more in a fight than having a weird trait setup.

You want to kill people in hotjoins and have lulz: caltrops (use sig of malice, assassin’s reward and shaman’s amulet for teh immortal effect)

You want to actually win games and go tournies: don’t ever, EVER touch a condi thief build. It’s plain horrible. You will get laughed at as you spin like an idiot, crippled/chilled/on top of various forms of nasty aoe like necro wells and stuff. You might actually get to run away but you won’t amount to anything to your team as you will get decapped in 3 seconds and fail to kill anyone or anything.

Jack of all trades is a master of none… if ele gets to do damage comparable to thief or warrior, anet would NEED to remove their ability to heal and do AoE crowd control effectively, if spec’d for damage, otherwise it would just disadvantage other classes. Such a change would be exactly against the philosophy of ele being the jack of all trades. With anet’s philosophy in mind, ele should be specced for one thing, at which it would be somewhat inferior to other classes specced for the same thing (damage for example), but in return still have access to all the other things like healing, crowd control and defense while the other classes do not. That is what it means to be the jack of all trades, and that is what the ele is now.

To be honest there is absolutely nothing wrong with elementalist in tpvp. It has an incredibly good burst build (0/20/0/20/30 s/d 2 arcanes can pull off a burst combo that brings down any non-tank target while still being tanky itself and having access to team support and awesome crowd control), tanky build with cantrips and a mixed d/d build that works just fine.

In WvW elementalists used to be a niche that worked wonders at times and was decent but nothing special at others. This has not changed, the only difference is that you need to spec 20 in air now to get 32 sec cd on RTL instead of 20s before, but that’s not enough to kill a class completely, just hinder it a little. There are many classes that are far worse at this point, but only a handful of the ones that are actually any better.

In PvE elementalists were never especially strong, but I fail to see where the problem is with that arrangement. PvE has no competition, nobody is going to steal your boss, kill you, win over you in any way if you take 20 seconds longer to finish off a group of mobs. I have leveled my elementalist the good old way and there was no content I couldn’t handle by myself just fine. If you are a PvE speed freak, just roll a warrior anyway, no other class is going to make the cut compared to them.

What D/P has:
- same burst, if not higher than D/D
- on-demand stealth
- on-demand gap-closer with really good damage (people underrate that skill, it’s even better than using heartseeker prematurely to use it, since it also blinds the enemy and increases your survivability)
- instant daze (whoever doesn’t use this skill at all is wasting D/P’s potential. Ever tried dazing people as they were about to cast their important spells like heals or ulties? Daze is perhaps even stronger than a stun, since you can stunbreak out of a stun)
- blind field (destroys other thieves and melee classes, also makes taking down boss objectives like svanir a breeze)

Now as to the other reasons why it’s better than your D/D build:
- as you said, you are using “constant high damage backstabs”. You can do that on d/p too the same, with the exception of not having to actually hit anything with CnD. In WvW people just might find a critter or something else to hit, but in tournaments you have to hit your opponents and that doesn’t work out well without a gap closer, since they are obviously avoiding your CnD (which costs a lot of initiative, so missing even one makes blind field stealthing more cost-efficient). Also, if you hit a critter with CnD, you are loosing damage that still gets done with blind field stealthing through a heartseeker.
- now as to the way other thieves actually play: in tournaments slowly killing by backstabs is not viable. You MUST burst somebody down, or you go down yourself, or even worse your whole team looses the teamfight, not even mentioning that taking your time killing enemies on point slowly looses you the game. Also, other classes like warriors can pull of better damage over the time you stealth and backstab 3 times and don’t need to stealth for that, so there’s basically no reason for any team to want a thief that plays the way you do.

Basically the only thing d/d has right now is the ease of pulling off the combo, which isn’t really hard in the first place.

Make the leaver take all the mmr loss for his team and give him 1 hour penalty. You’d see much less leavers.

LonelyReaper.8075:

“The only right situation is the one where I stand victorious, and if I don’t, it’s not my fault. It’s the balance that’s broken. Nerf whatever gives me a hard time, so that I may beat it easy mode, and everything will be right again”.

Fix’d it for ya.

This is one of the reasons why duels are so low on the priority list. It sure as hell would be popular amongst the folks, but I can already hear the whine about professions being overpowered or weak. It’s already proving to be hard to nail down the balance for the main game mode and it’s been 8 months since release, expecting balance changes to take into account 1v1 prowess is just asking too much right now.

You know, just sayin’

@Parisalchuk : while I do agree with some of the points you have made, you forget the influence market has on the development of software. While some large products may have the luxury of test-driven development (which is usually the products being developed on contract), some products need to arrive at the market at a precise time to be successful, which is the case with all games. In such cases, testing usually moves down the priority ladder and further fixes and polishing is done once the product is released and revenue is secured. While the quality of the product may suffer this way, from the financial point of view, this is the only reasonable strategy one can choose. GW2 was released with pvp being far from finished, so further development had to be done down the road, but you yourself should be aware how detrimental it is to your quality of work when you have multiple responsibilities on your shoulders, all of which need to be taken care of simultaneously. Also you should be aware, that test-driven development is much more resource and time demanding than other development methods, and it was the player base which demanded products be released as soon as possible, while developers were asking for time to make sure things were ready. Well guess what? They listened to the demands of the community and now everybody’s kittening about it.

Most importantly of all, GW2 has already established itself as a successful product, with pvp being almost insignificant, if not detrimental to it’s success. Promises being made and broken is nothing new in the industry and honestly, looking at this from the viewpoint of a company, it’s surprising they have even invested resources into bringing pvp back to life. If we want this trend to continue, we should show our appreciation for being given a second chance rather than throwing contempt at the devs for listening to what we asked of them. I don’t get why people are so full of themselves. First of all a customer is only worth to the company as much, as the potential amount of money he can spend on it. At the moment (while we still can’t purchase custom arenas), that makes us pvp players almost worthless. And your point of view also baffles me. Have they not taught you at school, that different marketing strategies require different development methods? Doing business is not about making a fine product, it’s about making money. Think about it a little, as a software engineer you should be intelligent enough to get my point.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Custom-Arena-Starter-Kits-Time-Tokens

“There will also possibly be ways of earning these items in game through PvP in the future as well.”

It’s already been said that there may be a way to get custom arenas outside of paying for them with gems, not now though (seeing as they need their investment into programming them return).

Loved your stream mate, good job!

Just a lil’ feedback from me: this game has too many things going on simultaneously to take note of them all. It might actually be better to pick an interesting fight and stick to commenting on it rather than jumping from a fight to another and not seeing either of them unfold. Otherwise all good, best of luck Blu!

Some players are also likely to make dueling servers with large number of player spaces with rules like : interfere with a duel = ban.

/problemsolved

Let me tell you a story, about how this all came to be (in my opinion): ANet is intent on making this game an e-sport. Not now, but in the future. Maybe distant future, but still. That is the goal they are working towards. All e-sport games are 5v5, therefore that is the format of the initial game mode. They did internal testing, even before there were beta weekends, and assessed, that conquest mode offered what was needed to make the matches dynamic, strategic and interesting to watch, as opposed to deathmatch, that was stale and boring to watch. Even if maybe more fun to play (the other game modes being traditionally more of a “for fun” modes). As the game neared completion, there was more and more pressure from NC Soft to get the game released as soon as possible, since it would be the only new MMO on the market at the time (ideal situation) AND the game didn’t need polished pvp to be successful, seeing as WvW and PvE were ready and finished. ANet didn’t like this, however they had little choice in the matter, so they went along with it and released the game. The game was a great success and earned huge revenue, however seeing as pvp was not polished, people didn’t play it as much as the other game modes and hence, was generating no revenue. So ANet didn’t really see all that much of a reason to invest money and work into finishing pvp, since it wasn’t generating any money. This has changed somewhere around Christmas, when a decision has been made to give pvp a second chance. Some development time has been invested into turning the old, unpopular 3 match 8 team system into 1 round 2 team system, and all of a sudden pvp became very popular (for a short while). This has shown ANet, that there indeed is potential in keeping the pvp player base, and further development has begun. In the last three months, we have seen more pvp features than in the other five combined. So basically, pvp hasn’t been of interest for the major part of time the game is out. The little of what was left of the community that once came to the game to play pvp was, and still is, expecting features much more important to the health of the game than different game modes. And as we can see in the mists, it’s starting to bear some fruit (shoutcasters coming to the game, old good players returning, ect.).

Now let’s imagine, that somewhere in all of this, a GvG would be implemented, or 1v1, or something different. There is a significant enough number of players yearning for such a game mode. Now, they are saying that having a game mode in itself is enough, and it wouldn’t matter if it was balanced, since it would be just for fun. Remember when ANet released spirit watch? I can still smell the aftertaste of all the tears about ele and/or ranger running the orb. And it was supposed to be a step towards gametype variety with implementing a “capture the flag” style map, where you didn’t actually have to use conquest mechanics to win at all. People are lying sods, that don’t even know themselves enough to think it all over and admit what they truly want. The simple and undeniable truth is, that the prevalent game mode is, and always will be 5v5 conquest. I am wishing you all GvG junkies good luck with having your features implemented, I truly do. Just think it all over though, and consider if it’s worth having an unbalanced, unpolished game mode that wouldn’t receive any further attention, and would be only detrimental to the true mode of the game, because that’s all you are EVER going to get from this game.

Disclaimer: Anything and everything that I have written in this post is purely a matter of opinion and is in no way criticism of ANet, seeing as I came to like in the past few months, where this game is headed. Cheers ~

I don’t understand this community. I am getting disgusted by all the whiners who have never had to do a piece of programming code, but all are full of themselves spouting advice at the developers. Have you ever truly done any coding on your own guys (all the ones who are complaining)? With programs that are 1/1000 of the size of gw2, it’s already hard to avoid bugs, and the difficulty of that grows exponentially. It’s beta, there WILL be bugs, deal with it. As a community, we’ve been asking for faster feature releases for the past several months, and anet listened and in 3 months we’ve had matchmaking, mmr, leaderboards, custom arenas, spectator mode, they even started doing some proper balance changes with impact this last patch.

Thanks for the effort ANet, keep up the good work, you are headed the right way.

@MIrra

1) ever since the good stuff started coming (mmr, matchmaking, leaderboards, now custom arenas) pvp has been growing more and more (at least EU), so calling something that is JUST STARTING to thrive dead, is a big oversight.
2) pvp forum, pvp discussion. If you don’t expect people in the pvp forum to reply to your posts from the pvp perspective, there is something amiss with you.
3) judging by your reply, you must be a gw1 veteran. We will never agree on what good pvp is, because I kittening hated gw1. E-sports doesn’t need 1v1, 10v10 or GvG, e-sports needs one balanced game mode that is interesting to watch and fun to play. Anet is doing good job on that part with the newer maps, although they do need balancing. If you want to run around in a 10 man zerg, go back to WvW where you belong, there you will find the game modes that you want combined.
4) Yes, we are all paying customers and they do give all 3 game modes consideration, that’s why we pvp players have to wait for balance updates for a whole month.
5) I don’t care how RTL works outside of pvp. Go ask devs on WvW forums or class discussion forums for a change. However if you keep defending ele mobility on pvp forums, expect people to show little understanding of your cause.

Do you dodge all normal damage hits? NO. Should you be able to cleanse all conditions? NO. Deal with it omfg. It’s as valid a source of damage as direct damage is. Condition removals are just a sort of “dodge” against condition spikes. Learn when to cleanse and when to let them tick. The only problematic class with condition right now is HgH engi, but that’s only because of might stacking.

MIrra.3604:

… Also, in WvW, the warrior has some of the best combat mobility, best sustain, best team fight support, best spike damage, mulitple ways to disengages, aoe instant rez, aoe cleanses and heals.

WvW is a different animal than s/tpvp. I get it. I just hate it that balancing is based on s/tpvp which is a tiny portion of the population and no consideration is given to PvE and WvW.

So you are talking about balancing a game mode where scrubs run around in one, two and three-stat gears of varying rarity, in groups of various sizes ranging from soloers to massive zergs, with different actual character levels, on maps the size of all the hotjoin servers combined AND complaining that balance is based on pvp (WvW is no pvp, it’s a hybrid mode), while us pvpers could have gotten balance changes weekly if devs didn’t have to consider fractal junkies and wvw zerglings while doing those changes.

Stahp… breathe…think…think again…don’t forget the breathe part… get it?

EDIT: Oh, and by the way, do you all still think this change is about ele? It’s as much, if not more about thieves and warriors. Anet needed to boost thief mobility (since they’re taking their damage) and warrior mobility (since they need it desperately) while also bringing down elementalist overall (since they were too hard to kill while doing other stuff well enough). This is about thieves getting to shine as roamers more and warriors being less kite-able, while also preventing eles from escaping with low HP to heal back up. The alternative to this change would have been increase in range and decrease in cost of other classes’ mobility skills, but that’d be just crazy. Would you like to see a thief infiltrator arrow from one point to another, or warrior finishing you off with whirlwind just as your RTL ended?

Let’s all run duel builds now, because 1v1 matters! ~

NOPE! xD

Well, anet has clearly stated they don’t want one-shot builds in their game. I just hope thief gets the tools to make it through those prolonged fights, because now it’s just lacking in every possible way.

It can’t hold a point seeing as it relies on stealth heavily to survive, therefore it’s absolutely useless as a “bunker”. If you were thinking of going somewhere around the line of cantrip eles and indefinitely contesting far point, it’s not going to work either, seeing as the enemy will slowly cap the point under you as you stealth yourself to survive, so no “far bunker” either. You cannot survive focus fire, cannot hold a point and your damage is suffering because of the trait choices, so no burst damage either. You threw away shortbow, so you lack in any sort of mobility, and the choice of soldier’s amulet implies you have no reliable sort of HP sustain (as it lacks healing power), so if the enemy catches you, you will die regardless of those tanky stats.

This build might work in hotjoin, if your purpose is just to “survive”, but I wouldn’t even try it in tournaments. If you want a tanky build that has actually proven to work (even if only against opponents of lower skill level), try the 0/0/30/30/10 d/d signet of malice bleed caltrops build, or get a dps friend (warrior for example) and run venom share build with him.

Don’t take this too harshly please, I am just trying to save you from wasting your time learning to play a build, that isn’t going to work in the end.

It’s nice to see this game moving in the right direction, it’s even better to see people dedicated to make it happen. Good luck mate!

“RTL change is going to ruin our mobility”. RTL change is supposed to ruin ele’s mobility. Currently the only played thief build is burst, which is getting destroyed next patch, and there are no warrior builds that are being played at all (in tournament pvp). One of the defining factors of those two classes is their mobility, which however is not attractive enough to teams, because there is ele, that does everything better (except for burst in thief’s case). That needs to change in order for thief and warrior becoming truly viable for competitive teams, even with their upcoming buffs. Elementalist is supposed to have some mobility, and they will retain just that (don’t forget that ele still has traits that can help them gain access to fast movement, they will just have to invtest something in order to get that now). The defining quality of elementalists is still their ability to heal and deal damage + crowd control, which they still do get to keep. Their strength in those aspects does remain, and they will still be more useful in a fight than a warrior or thief will be, they are just going to have harder time getting there, which is the exact point of the change. It is true that roaming dps eles are going to get hit the most with this patch, but as it seems, the plan with “every class being able to do anything” just didn’t work out, so anet has to assign roles to every profession, and ele just received the pidgeonholing treatment other classes had for a long loooong time. All we can hope for, is that eventually build variety will work it’s way into the game once meta game is closer to being balanced with every class having it’s own defining qualities and role on teams. I am no happier than the rest of the community to see a viable build go, but if it means I can finally get to play a warrior or a thief in a tourney without being looked down upon, so be it.

<Team looking for a player(es)>
Team name: none yet
Region: EU
Amount of members: 2
Practice Times: open for discussion, at least 3 times a week though
Class(es) you are looking for: With the upcoming changes (that may be drastic enough to change the meta, or disappointing enough to not do anything at all), we would like players who are willing to explore the possibilities the changes bring. We would like to get people willing to try the buffed warrior and necro. What we definitely need is a mesmer, but all professions are welcome as long as the player handling them is good.
Other (Anything else that you would like to add): Teamspeak is mandatory. Although the team does not consist of well-known names, we would like to climb the ladder once we get down the strategies and team composition down. Although it is not an absolute requirement, rank 40+ would be great, though anybody who displays the needed levels of skill would be welcome with open arms. We do not want to make just a working PUG to farm tournaments and get up the ladder, so expect to spend time exploring our options and preparing/training strategies. Seeing as all of us are humans, we won’t always be perfect and we are not expecting you to be perfect either, but in order to get over our shortcomings, we need you to be communicative and friendly. The ability to speak and comprehend english is necessary.

Looking forward to hearing from you guys, let’s make a great team.
Contact me in-game if you are interested (Silferas.3841)

UPDATE: there’s a last position on the team open. We need a bunker guardian. Cheers! ~.^

@Travlane: I am not saying your build is bad, I am saying it’s not viable, and there is a reason for that. There are basically two things you ought to do in tournament pvp. First is to hold and defend your points. In order to do that, you need a character that concentrates in defense and survival, and is therefore capable of remaining on the point, even if focused by 2 or more characters for a longer period of time WITHOUT allowing the enemy to decap it. That is why Guardians, with their constant blocks, healing dodge rolls and invulnerabilities are considered the best bunkers. Or rangers who can evade for about 60% of the total time they fight.

The second objective is to decap and take the nodes enemy holds. This needs to be done as fast as possible, otherwise reinforcements will arrive for the bunker, and you might not get the point at all. For this purpose, DPS roamers are the best choice. As much damage as possible in as short a period of time as possible. You cannot argue the abysmal difference in DPS of a condition thief and backstab burst by anything you could ever say.

There is a third type of setup people sometimes run, and that is support/healer (mainly bunker eles, but sometimes engies or guardians).

Either way, your build doesn’t fit into any of these roles. It doesn’t defend a point against/without the enemy capturing it. It doesn’t get the point nearly as fast as other builds do and it doesn’t offer any team support, therefore it’s not viable. It does kill people, that’s for sure, but it takes a prolonged fight to have the enemy bleed out, and some enemies are just downright impossible to kill.

Now, as to the solution of the thief survivability problem, the issue is much more complex than blindness being weak. While I still do strongly believe, that blindness fields need increase in radius, it’s also important to note, that thief already has some awesome damage mitigation options (like 15 trait points in acrobatics with withdraw as a heal and vigor on heal trait lets you dodge almost indefinitely), that if coupled with for example valkyries amulet would allow for some great playstyle options and good survivability. Now the problem is, that current meta-build (25/30/0/0/15) has such incredibly strong synergy, that just by taking those 15 points from first or last traitline (you obviously need 30 in critical strikes with valkyrie amulet). You may loose up to 30% damage output (23% exactly just on backstab) NOT counting the 20% + decrease in critical chance from berserker’s amulet. To many, this might seem like a solid trade-off for such an increase in survivability, but it’s not. Remember, this is a thief, even with 2600-ish armor, you gain maybe the ability to withstand 2 more decent hits from an enemy, and your only chance to win a fight, is to burst the enemy down before he gets to you. But now, you are critting 20% times less than before, your damage output is 25%ish lower and you have probably traded executioner for hidden killer, so those 20% extra under 50% health is not coming. All of this given away in exchange for not dying to crossfire in teamfights (slight exaggeration, but not that far-off). Ultimately, what thieves need to get, is to move some of that DPS potency down the trait lines, so that we can actually invest some of our traits into defensive trait-lines without completely killing our burst off. Make the 15 point difference between 10/30/0/15/15 (just an example) maybe 10% tops, not 23%+ and thieves won’t suffer nearly as much as they do now. Just let us access our other traits without ruining what we are.

@Travlane: just to clarify stuff… Condi thief is not viable, because it is essentially a bunker/damage hybrid, that gets countered by a single condition removal skill at a right time (all bleed stacks go puff!) and it is enough to cc you 2 times to kill you. As a damage dealer, you are sub-par to engi, necro, ranger, mesmer, and even longbow warrior, as a bunker, you are sub-par to any other bunkerish build, because you rely on stealth to clear conditions and get out of tight spots, which guarantees you will loose the point eventually (and possibly very soon). Basically said, the only thing that thief does better than other classes, is single target burst, and therefore it’s the only thing they are expected to do in tournaments, where min-maxing means a lot, and where nobody cares how much fun you are having playing your build (believe me, I’ve had my share of fun with bleed thief, I’ve just been forced to accept the truth). Even if you still do find a measure of success with your current build, if you keep winning you WILL meet people who will have no trouble dealing with you swiftly.

Also d/d is not viable anymore, because offhand dagger has been nerfed so much, it’s damage output and utility just don’t amount to anything anymore. People only play d/d at this point, because they find /p too hard to manage and/or pull off the combo.

Now to your preposterous idea about blindness nerf. Any mechanic that relies on RNG is a bad mechanic. It’s not reliable and you cannot count on it. Can you imagine trying to prevent an enemy thief from killing your teammate with his burst by blinding his basilisk venom strike, when the blind has about 33% chance to work? No, you would use something more reliable, like daze or stun. Right now, blindness works just like aegis does, except with 2 differences: the first one is, that you have much easier access to blindness, and second being that it’s much more easily counterable. As a potential solution to this, I would suggest increasing the radius of black powder and similar skills, so that a movement within the blind field would be possible and would allow for better gameplay options for the thief.

@jportell : I don’t understand what your point is man. I play both a mesmer and engi and I hardly see either of the two as stronger than the other. You have to understand that meta build mesmers simply cannot stand in the same spot as hgh engineers do, simply because of the team utility a mesmer brings to his team. All an engineer can do for his team to win the fight, is to drop supply crate and do damage. He does that outstandingly, but it’s all he will ever do. Mesmer has THE best revive utility in the game, it has THE only teleport skill capable of transporting yourself AND help onto your point and giant quickness field, that in spite of all everybody says about quickness these days, does a lot for your team. You still have a free utility spot that people (much to my confusion) sacrifice for a stunbreak, when all you have to do is hit #2 on staff to avoid most dps combos that would ruin your day, while you always have the option to go for distortion from F4 (which recharges when you get too low), and could instead use the slot for condi clear utility like null field. Hell, if you’re good you can even avoid any trouble by timing your #2 on sword with enemy burst. With an incredible setup like this, you still want to dominate other classes in 1v1s? Get real… And in spite of what I just said, good mesmers still win many, if not most 1v1 matchups against people, who sacrifice no utilties for their teams…

If you want to beat an engi 1v1 easy mode, drop one of the utilities (IoL or portal) and take null field + arcane thievery, believe me he’s not going to like his conditions sent back to him (he can only cleanse one condition at a time IF he has his cooldowns up). If you want his effectiveness in a teamfight, you don’t even have to try, because mesmer still IS superior in terms of what he brings for his team. You can effectively strip boons, insta-ress people, teleport across the map (you can be the extra dude in 4v5 fight, while if the engi holds close point he’ll loose it to any roamer if he goes mid). Oh, and have I forgotten to mention that mesmer burst is still one of the best in-game (with shatters having AoE effect of similar if not bigger radius than grenades, while stacking vulnerability the same), or that you can go hybrid condi and still wreck face?

Just wake up already and realize, that mesmers’ primary role is not a damage dealer, but team utility character, that just specs into damage to perform his role better. If you want to be a duelist or damage dealer, swap those team utilities out for something that helps you with the role (and good luck finding a team that’d take you in once you do ;P).

EDIT: I have also forgotten to add, that those 25 stacks of might look juicy enough to consider arcane thievery full time.

How about this: d/p is currently the only viable tournament weapon set. If you buff blindness, you will need to nerf access to it, which would mean destroying the only viable weapon set thief has at the moment, since black powder is the base for stealth, and therefore the whole burst of this build. You are ultimately asking devs to finish the class off in competitive pvp.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Just like confusion. With a single exception. You can actually, clearly see when you’re taking damage from confusion. The same can’t be said to retaliation, especially in crowded areas or when a lot of aoe, condition damage and multi-hit attacks are involved. And you won’t always have the opportunity to watch the five or six tiny boon icons on the guardian to look for the retal’s fist.

You mean to tell me you are fighting a bunker guardian expecting him not to have retaliation up as much as he possibly can? With a build that does multi-hit attacks and no boon stripping? Or even better, are you telling me you are teamfighting and not aware of presence of a bunker guardian? I wonder, could it even be, that you are suggesting that conditions trigger retaliation?

Ele can just [/care] about retaliation and shrug off the damage with attuning to water, or even casting two spells. The only way ele would die to retal is if he’s retal®d, determined not to ever use his water attunement.

Thief won’t die to retal either, since retaliation hits you for each hit you do on the enemy, and your whole combo Black powder → HS → Mug → Backstab → HS HS HS HS hits like 8 times max, which is nothing close to killing you. Unless you are running a bleed thief. Never run a bleed thief, it will just give you grief once (if) you start playing tournaments and find out just how useless that build is.

The only profession that has any right to complain about retaliation are engineers, because it counters their primary damage dealing mechanic in the only viable build (grenades), but it’s k cuz engis are crazy OP atm.

Retaliation is there to make you pay attention to your enemy. It counters bad play and button mashing of skills on cooldown. Do I even have to mention that retaliation has already been nerfed and most guardians just use it to relieve some of the pressure during dmg spikes?

Why not buff other classes’ utility/survivability builds? Heals on shatter/mantra, venom share, leeching wells on necro, or bomb detonation heals on engi? Current build diversity is already so limited that it makes one weep, with the introduction of boon-hate there won’t really be anything left to play other than a DPS spec on any profession, which is effectively killing the game for anybody who doesn’t fancy playing a glass cannon. I don’t believe that elementalists need survivability nerf, I believe other classes need build diversity buff. What the current balance strategy is doing is just cutting costs in order to achieve a state of “balance”, yet current meta has been stale for months and hardly anybody is ever going to enjoy an e-sport that will bring such little variety. Imagine League of Legends with just 8 champions that do the same every game…

I laughed. In my head, but I did, so it’s nice

What I say about WvW in this post relates to the average Bob the Zergling, and takes no regard for players that actually do try hard inside WvW, since there isn’t really all that many of them to begin with.

The reason WvW is vastly more popular than spv kitten imple, and has to do with human mentality. First of all in WvW you don’t truly loose. There is no big window that pops after 15 minutes and tells you that you have lost, and even throws your score in your face to see how much you have failed yourself and your team. Second thing to consider while evaluating WvW is that responsibility is a vague concept to be disregarded there. In a tournament, if you are a close-point mesmer, loosing your close point means you have personally failed and everybody holds you accountable for that (and will feel free to rage on you once you loose). In WvW nobody cares if you just log out, go afk suddenly or something of the sort, because in the end unless you are a commander, your individual worth is nil, and therefore your “duty” and “responsibility” are nil as well. Simply put, you are free to do whatever you desire within the realm of WvW without anybody giving a flying funk or raging at you for loosing your side the fight.

The third, most disgusting thing is alibism. When your server looses, it’s “THEY” who have lost, the other players, the rest of your server, it’s not your fault at all, because you are insignificant compared to the vastness of WvW. But when you win, all of a sudden it’s “US” who have won. After all you have contributed to the victory just as much as the next Bob in the zerg. This human trait can be observed across the whole of human population in this world. The rejection of responsibility, diminishing of one’s worth so that nobody has to care. It’s just human nature to avoid having to feel bad or stressed. It’s also the nature of those who never amount to anything themselves.

TL;DR : people play sPvP because they want to stick out, to mean something and prove themselves… be competitive. People play WvW because they don’t want to have a reason to feel bad about themselves, while gaining the opportunity to feel like they contributed to something.

1) Game is not balanced around 1v1, but around the conquest mode 5v5. “The Immortal Build Mesmer”, to which you are probably referring to, is by no means considered overpowered, or even strong enough to be competitively viable within the conquest mode meta, because it’s not a proper bunker (it lacks the sustain of a bunker), and it doesn’t burst (killing yourself on confusion/retaliation is not considered bursting).

2) Now to the question of handling one, it will depend on what situation you are in:

a) mesmer is defending a point: you need another person together with you, just like you would against a trap ranger, bunker ele, bunker engi and pretty much any proper close point defender build. It’s just not gonna work out if you are attacking him alone, but why would it? Attacking a node solo is just a waste of time anyway. If you really really wanna waste your team’s resources though, you MUST dodge the first shatter combo (retaliation building), as it gives you a lot of stacks of confusion. Avoid using AoE skills that would hit the phantasms too, because phantasms have 100% retaliation uptime skyrocketing the damage you would take. Pick a target (warlock or mesmer, ignore wardens unless you are a projectile based profession like ranger, because of reflect) and focus down that target. Avoid using multi or fast-hitting attacks like ranger shortbow #1, grenades or flamethrower, because that’s the highway to hell, even if it costs you damage. Wait out your opportunity, because unlike what paper says, this build usually does not have 100% retaliation uptime, as it heavily relies on reapplication via combo fields (asynchronic cooldowns between skills) and RNG from chaos storm, either of which is not certain, so sooner or later, mesmer will be without any retaliation and that’s when you strike at him.

b) mesmer is attacking a point: easy mode, he’s not going to kill you unless you try to kill him really hard. That’s the problem with this build, people wanna kill retal mesmers way too hard, thinking they’re shatter spec, and that’s why they fail. As long as you keep standing on your point the mesmer is not going to cap it, and he’s not going to kill you if you concentrate on defending yourself, just wait it out until reinforcements arrive (with a defensive build you could effortlessly wait all game), and dodge the shatters just like you would normally.

c) mesmer is contesting an uncapped point: if you are there, he’s not capping it, but his friends are coming. Unless yours are coming too, get out as fast as you can. It’s a good idea to focus this mesmer down at the beginning of the fight, as he will do heaps of mayhem from all the random AoEing and bashing and smashing at all directions during a teamfight (I daresay even more than a normal shatter spec).

The bottom line is, that retaliation is only as strong as you make it out to be. Remember that it does not mitigate any damage at all, and that the one killing you is nobody but yourself.

Suggestion: make boon hate scale with condition damage and rework sword main hand into a condition weapon.

Absolutely brilliant xD

Mixed queue is a solution that caters to casuals and kills off all competitive players. They don’t even have to test it, the prime example of why it fails has already happened. During the Temple of the Silent Storm week, there was a team forming, composed of some of the best individually skilled players EU had to offer (my good friend with whom I’ve played a lot was a part of it). After MMR hit the servers, to my understanding they mostly got matched against pro teams (I remember watching on Teldo’s stream a few games against them, when he was playing with full TP lineup), which resulted in their downfall and an end to potentially another pro team on the scene, which only proves that without properly over-time developed team skills, individual skills mean nothing. To my knowledge some of them have already quit the game without the intention to come back unless a proper solo queue is implemented and event that won’t be true once they find a substitute game for GW2. But in the end it’s just logical, why waste their time playing a queue that will end up doing something they have already tried themselves? (put them all on a team and match them against a proper one to see what happens?) And guess what? With no more than a few dozen top players on both EU and NA, competitive scene will be all about half-teams or PUGs matched against full teams. I can feel every solo player’s motivation to go competitive prepare to take a dirt nap.