Guild Wars 2

Lordrosicky.5813:

Skyro.3108:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Skyro.3108:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Ulalume.9584:

That’s what I took away from it:

-nothing is being done to increase the pvp population until the “core game is solid” whenever that may be.
-leaderboards will not distinguish between solo queuers (3v5) and premades. Basically, they track the win/loss ratio which means solo queuers = bottom feeders. This might kill what’s left of the population.

Thanks for asking good questions, guys. I wish there had been a polite way to interrupt Karl whenever he tried to explain the classes or other basic stuff. First rule of public speaking: know your audience.

The leaderboards are going to be a joke like QPs. O so your top of the leaderboard? Great! That means you just are super selective and always play with your guild on ts. Whereas those of us who solo or duo q alot (I do and I know alot do) will have bad ratings.

End result = leaderboard is a joke.

“O so your top of the solo/duo q leaderboard? Great! That means you must’ve just been lucky with the people you were teamed up with.”

Seriously though there’s pros and cons to every approach. Solo q rating? So add a duo one too? And a trio? What about 4-man rating? Fragmentation of the population is a big concern with such a small population.

Plus I think a separate solo q rating is a bit pointless since it won’t take into account who you are being teamed up with, and if it does, then what’s wrong with everybody being in the same queue? If it’s the lack of TS, they could do other things like assigning teammates before placing your team in queue to coordinate to get everybody on TS.

And if it’s chemistry between players who regularly play with each other, these players should benefit from their playtime together.

No because statistics dictates that sample size will average out the standard of people in your team during solo q. This doesnt happen when a player decides to actively only play in premades/good premades.

Its a mathematical issue. Thats why what you said in the first line here isn’t a strong arguement but what I said was.

You make a lot of assumptions of how the matchmaking will work. Perhaps you only play at late hours when nobody else good plays and you are consistently matched up with teammates who are worse than you. There are tons of quirks that a simple large sample size cannot account for. And I put that in quotes for a reasons. Perhaps you missed the part about me not being serious. I was basically saying there’s pros and cons to every approach.

What I was being serious about is nobody is going to care about solo q ratings ikittenv5 game mode (or rather it’ll be a joke that nobody will really take seriously). It would be a much better solution to structure the rating system to account for the skill level of who you are teamed up with than to have a separate ladder right now.

And the main point I was trying to make was playing well with your team, executing with your team, etc. IS part of the skill in playing this game. The skill ceiling of just playing your own character in this game is relatively low (say, compared to SC2) due to the very limited amount of things you can do.

I think right now the number one concern should be the health of the playerbase. Any fragmentation of the currently miniscule playerbase should be avoided for the time being. When the playerbase grows to a healthy size is when you can start to consider things like a strict solo q with its own rating if there is enough demand. I don’t believe people will care much about solo q once custom servers get implemented as I bet people will make a lot of dueling, 2v2, 3v3, etc. servers that will appease that crowd.

Ok fair enough. I suppose you are right in some ways. If they had a system where you got MORE rewarded for solo queuing that would be cool. I think you should do tbh…irrespective of the standard of your teammates which should again give more rating.

Well think of it this way. If the rating system takes into account the rating of who you are teamed up with, and if you get teamed with players who are worse than you but still win, your rating should go up MORE than if you were teamed up with better players. That in essence does reward a solo q’er as they likely pulled more weight in that particular match.

I really do not see what people are getting all up in arms about. When was the last time you heard anybody complaining about piercing skills in sPvP? You don’t because it is hard as kitten to aim piercing attacks to hit more than 1 target.

If custom servers are implemented and like 90+% of the servers are all 5v5 TDM then ANet will have no choice but to implement it (and they pretty much said as much in the SotG). I think once people start playing TDM though they will start to see the issues TDM has with this kind of game.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Skyro.3108:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Ulalume.9584:

That’s what I took away from it:

-nothing is being done to increase the pvp population until the “core game is solid” whenever that may be.
-leaderboards will not distinguish between solo queuers (3v5) and premades. Basically, they track the win/loss ratio which means solo queuers = bottom feeders. This might kill what’s left of the population.

Thanks for asking good questions, guys. I wish there had been a polite way to interrupt Karl whenever he tried to explain the classes or other basic stuff. First rule of public speaking: know your audience.

The leaderboards are going to be a joke like QPs. O so your top of the leaderboard? Great! That means you just are super selective and always play with your guild on ts. Whereas those of us who solo or duo q alot (I do and I know alot do) will have bad ratings.

End result = leaderboard is a joke.

“O so your top of the solo/duo q leaderboard? Great! That means you must’ve just been lucky with the people you were teamed up with.”

Seriously though there’s pros and cons to every approach. Solo q rating? So add a duo one too? And a trio? What about 4-man rating? Fragmentation of the population is a big concern with such a small population.

Plus I think a separate solo q rating is a bit pointless since it won’t take into account who you are being teamed up with, and if it does, then what’s wrong with everybody being in the same queue? If it’s the lack of TS, they could do other things like assigning teammates before placing your team in queue to coordinate to get everybody on TS.

And if it’s chemistry between players who regularly play with each other, these players should benefit from their playtime together.

No because statistics dictates that sample size will average out the standard of people in your team during solo q. This doesnt happen when a player decides to actively only play in premades/good premades.

Its a mathematical issue. Thats why what you said in the first line here isn’t a strong arguement but what I said was.

You make a lot of assumptions of how the matchmaking will work. Perhaps you only play at late hours when nobody else good plays and you are consistently matched up with teammates who are worse than you. There are tons of quirks that a simple large sample size cannot account for. And I put that in quotes for a reasons. Perhaps you missed the part about me not being serious. I was basically saying there’s pros and cons to every approach.

What I was being serious about is nobody is going to care about solo q ratings ikittenv5 game mode (or rather it’ll be a joke that nobody will really take seriously). It would be a much better solution to structure the rating system to account for the skill level of who you are teamed up with than to have a separate ladder right now.

And the main point I was trying to make was playing well with your team, executing with your team, etc. IS part of the skill in playing this game. The skill ceiling of just playing your own character in this game is relatively low (say, compared to SC2) due to the very limited amount of things you can do.

I think right now the number one concern should be the health of the playerbase. Any fragmentation of the currently miniscule playerbase should be avoided for the time being. When the playerbase grows to a healthy size is when you can start to consider things like a strict solo q with its own rating if there is enough demand. I don’t believe people will care much about solo q once custom servers get implemented as I bet people will make a lot of dueling, 2v2, 3v3, etc. servers that will appease that crowd.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Ulalume.9584:

That’s what I took away from it:

-nothing is being done to increase the pvp population until the “core game is solid” whenever that may be.
-leaderboards will not distinguish between solo queuers (3v5) and premades. Basically, they track the win/loss ratio which means solo queuers = bottom feeders. This might kill what’s left of the population.

Thanks for asking good questions, guys. I wish there had been a polite way to interrupt Karl whenever he tried to explain the classes or other basic stuff. First rule of public speaking: know your audience.

The leaderboards are going to be a joke like QPs. O so your top of the leaderboard? Great! That means you just are super selective and always play with your guild on ts. Whereas those of us who solo or duo q alot (I do and I know alot do) will have bad ratings.

End result = leaderboard is a joke.

“O so your top of the solo/duo q leaderboard? Great! That means you must’ve just been lucky with the people you were teamed up with.”

Seriously though there’s pros and cons to every approach. Solo q rating? So add a duo one too? And a trio? What about 4-man rating? Fragmentation of the population is a big concern with such a small population.

Plus I think a separate solo q rating is a bit pointless since it won’t take into account who you are being teamed up with, and if it does, then what’s wrong with everybody being in the same queue? If it’s the lack of TS, they could do other things like assigning teammates before placing your team in queue to coordinate to get everybody on TS.

And if it’s chemistry between players who regularly play with each other, these players should benefit from their playtime together. They put in the extra work/time to form the team and get good chemisty, and contrary to what solo q’ers might think a big big biiiiiiig part of being good in this game is team chemistry. IMO the skill-cap of maximizing your character’s potential as a single player is low enough that a lot of people will hit it given the repetition, but it’s that chemistry with your teammates, team strategy, team execution, etc. that separates good teams from great ones.

Well that is one issue, but I feel the bigger issue is the cast time of Echo. A lot of times you’ll absorb a useless skill and just want to get rid of it, thus it feels punishing to the player to absorb weak skills. Making it instant will make it so that no matter the skill absorbed it still is a positive for the player using mimic.

Making it instant will also allow the player to combo it during other skills, making it a better tool to burst or combo with, opening up interesting play possibilities.

Right now it also blocks skills for the duration after it absorbs a projectile, which you can trigger with your own bounce skills. I think this should be removed because I think this makes it OP for bunker builds, making it essentially a 4s block with a 25s CD which can be traited for less.

I say just make it absorb the first projectile and reflect projectiles for the rest of its duration and make echo instant cast. I was possibly thinking making it absorb/reflect projectiles in an area around the mesmer as well, but then you would need to increase the CD.

You’re probably rated low enough where there are still a lot of people who leave, have no idea of team strategy, etc. As you move up in rating you’ll see these issues less and less.

This would be true of any similar game (e.g. LoL). But of course the issue with GW2 in comparison is its tiny playerbase in sPvP, which is possibly the reason for the skill range disparity you would see in a team of solo q’ers. It’s really hard to say at this point if it’s the match-making system itself or the small playerbase that is the primary cause. It may help once ANet implements visible ratings which will deter people from afk’ing/leaving and giving more incentive to attempt to win the match by coordinating with your team.

No, toughness/armor does not affect retaliation damage. To my knowledge nothing reduces damage from retaliation. I tested it vs 2 different players/classes and got the same results, so it isn’t some interaction with a damage reduction mechanic.

I’m surprised nobody knows/cares about this. 1/3 damage reduction of retaliation is pretty large, and the fact that it does normal damage on the NPC’s in the mists shows that it isn’t due specifically to the sPvP game mode itself. Has literally nobody ever tested retaliation damage in sPvP before to see if this has actually been the case since release?

I believe something along these lines was mentioned in the last SOTG wasn’t it? There was definitely some discussion about dailies and the prospect of rewarding I think badges or something for the PvP daily as a way to bring PvE players into PvP.

Hmmm… I thought this was a simple question that would have been easily answered.

I looked at all the release patches (but not beta patches) and none of them mention a 1/3 damage reduction in sPvP for retaliation.

And no, my targets did not have protection on, and protection doesn’t affect retaliation damage anyway (it’s like conditions I think where the damage isn’t affected by anything).

And retaliation only procs when you get hit with a direct hit (doesn’t proc off blocks/invuln for instance) and doesn’t proc off condition damage ticks.

Maybe somebody can chime in if retaliation has EVER been working and doing full damage in sPvP before? Because if it has then either it’s a bug or a stealth nerf because it’s certainly not in any patch notes.

edit: another interesting tidbit – confusion does the expected damage in both the mists (1/2 of pve/wvw damage) and in normal matches. Retaliation however does normal damage in the mists, but 2/3 of it in normal matches. I think this is a bug.

So I was testing retaliation damage in the mists vs the class NPCs and it does
315 damage per proc, which with my power falls in line with the formula in GW2 wiki which is 198.45 + (0.075 * Power).

But when I was testing it out vs players in games it produced procs of 209 and 210, which is 2/3 of the damage it is supposed to be. I was going through past patch notes and did not see any mention of nerfed retaliation damage. Has it always been like this?

Pendragon.8735:

Sorry, but Anet’s. Because ‘leveraging the strength of my class mechanic’ actually makes my build weaker, and the traits and abilities to make it (DS) better are not competitive to what I would be giving up to gain more LF regen. And they should be competitive, it should be a hard choice, but its not, I just don’t want them. There isn’t much strength to leverage there once you don’t go power.

Of course it’s not useless but it not being useless is not the litmus test for if it is versatile or good enough either. I.e. Some people like Dark Path, and I find uses for it, but for an attrition class, they should have left it the way it was in beta, as a port.

I think you are going off on a tangent here about balance. There’s a difference between design intent and current balance. There’s nothing wrong from a design perspective with certain builds leveraging the strength of their class mechanic more than others builds. That’s by design. Each class even has a trait line devoted to their class mechanic.

Lack of mobility is even more punishing in WvW, where the mode is not won by fights on a small circle and where getting someone else to run away does little for your overall objective. It is even more punishing for power builds with high LF regen, because needing to escape sudden bad situations with 100s of players on a map happens all the time.

You’re confusing two issues here. The original assertion you were trying to make was linking power necros not being viable due to having to be in meele with what Symbolic said on BoC. First of all power necros don’t have to be in meele, cuz axe is also a very strong power or hybrid weapon after the recent buff. And second, like I pointed out above, Symbolic’s comment has nothing to do with power necros or being in meele at all (Symbolic feels power necro’s weren’t viable due to being very “all-in” with their burst). His comment was about how necros are not good roamers because they cannot disengage from a fight. It doesn’t matter what spec it is, necros cannot disengage. Your condition spec isn’t going to be running away from anybody either.

Well in comparison to crit damage it’s a lot. 100 precision will give me another crit about every 20 attacks. The crit alone might be worth 150-200 damage on average. It will then be worth about another ~140 from Barbed Precision on a 2 second bleed (66% proc). It will be worth about 480 damage considering my Earth Sigils will proc 84% of the time on that extra crit. So about 750 damage in total.

By comparison 10% more crit damge over 20 attacks, again for condi build, might add between 100-200 damage, depending which abilities crit, but which can be averaged.

Sigil of Earth has a 2s cooldown. Once you get a high enough crit to proc it consistently adding more crit has very little effect on it. The main bonus of precision outside of that is barbed precision which does not have a cooldown, but the DPS difference between precision and crit % will favor crit % (a very ballpark figure is >50% crit, +1 crit dmg % adds ~2x the direct damage as 10 precision, with this discrepancy getting higher the more precision you have). Go and put it in a spreadsheet with the DPS formula in there and you can see for yourself.

Sword 4 = Damage is pretty insane for power builds. It hits almost as hard as a full blurred frenzy. Don’t think of it as a defensive skill. Think of it as an offensive skill with a block trigger.

Sword 5 = Highest DPS Phantasm in the game, so a Phantasm build trying to squeeze out the most DPS would use a OH Sword.

Rump Buffalo.2594:

KrisHQ.4719:

Rump Buffalo.2594:

No… people just want the actual builds and traits to be balanced. The vast majority of traits are absolutely useless or at the very least sub-par to all the standard builds. This has nothing to do with the players. The balance is not quite good and that is why we’ve had the same broken meta for nearly 7 months with the same op traits/professions/builds and the same team setups.

Additionally the best roles in the game are glass cannon and bunker… the 2 things you said shouldn’t exist and they currently RULE the meta. They are extreme builds. There are no extreme support builds, they dont exist.

I agree that there should be more viable builds and weapon-sets, but the meta is not BROKEN because Axe/Axe ranger is kitten (for instance).
The balance is not completely broken, more builds just have to be made more viable so that we see a bigger versatility in the game.
So glass cannon builds rule the meta? If i recall correctly (and i’m pretty sure i do) D/D ele is considered OP due to it being the jack of all trades. Nice dmg, mobility, defense and healing it has got it all. It’s not a bunker nor a glass cannon (though can be specced being a bunker).
Trapt rangers have recently made a come-back as well. GC? Nah I dont think so.
Im sry, but it seems you dont really know what you’re talking about. At least this makes me believe so.

I like how you responded to half my post.

I’ll keep this simple. The same builds have been used for 5-7 months now. There has been no change in the meta, which many consider to be extremely lopsided and broken(including pros), since release.

I don’t think you’d find any high level tPvP who would agree with you that the meta hasn’t changed since release. Most high level tPvP’ers don’t think balance is extremely lopsided either, if anything it’s the opposite. Also lol @ pro, because nobody is a pro since there is no money being made in GW2 at the moment.

I think the meta has evolved quite a bit. Glass cannon specs are used much less in high level tPvP now and there is a clear trend of sustained DPS builds becoming more and more common the past few months (which many top level players predicted would happen).

The only thing I agree with is the lack of varied builds within each class. This is the result of broken/underpowered traits. Not every trait/weapon set/etc has be to balanced, but there has to be enough so that there is enough variance in builds to keep people interested.

Ultimately the game should not be balanced neither around 1v1 nor 5v5, it should be balanced around roles. Some classes will excel at far point assault, some at bunkering, some in team fights, etc. If you balance around roles you cannot go wrong.

@Pendragon:

re: crit dmg – I think you may be overrating how much damage precision adds to condition damage builds via crit procs. Any build will have some form of direct damage, and as a condition build you are already maxed out on your precision line regardless. Why power adds more damage than crit damage even at high levels of crit however is quite valid, and I’m not sure why this is so. I definitely have to have much higher than 50% crit for crit damage to approach the level of power (assuming a 1% crit to 10 power trade-off).

re: LF generation/DS usage – It is a conscious choice to choose skills/builds that have low LF generation, which was sort of my point on my interpretation of what the ANet devs meant when they said DS was underutilized.

And DS being relatively useless to a condition build isn’t much different from shatters being relatively useless for phantasm mesmer builds. If you make your build in such a way that completely avoids leveraging the strength of your class mechanic, whose fault is that exactly. Like you often see suggestions to add more condition based damage on DS skills to better compliment condition specs. Ok, then what about minion specs? Should we add a minion skill as well? And it’s not like DS is useless. It will always be a defensive tool regardless of the build.

And while yes dagger auto-attack does generate a ton of LF in meele, there other ways of generating LF quickly. The 3% LF from marks is one, focus 4 skill is another, as well as the LF on crit trait.

re: Symbolic on BoC: He was speaking strictly from a tPvP perspective, and his comments regarding mobility were in relation to Necro’s role in tPvP, and how they were not effective outside of a team-fight environment (e.g. they are poor at assaulting the enemy’s close point due to lack of a way to escape from the fight), and I agree with him.

And his point about DS not being there when you need it as a defensive mechanic was in response to a build idea brought up about triggering “X on DS” traits by constantly popping in and out of DS. I assure you he did not mean that DS should never be used in an offensive manner.

Rump Buffalo.2594:

Skyro.3108:

The devs intentionally put the majority of boon stripping ability on mesmers and necros. It was the same way in GW1. If you simply add boon stripping abilities to each class that would nerf mesmers and necros (relative to other classes) and would mess with the class lore.

The classes without boon strips were balanced around the fact they don’t have them. They even specifically said so in some of the class design philosophies they put out a while ago (i.e. warrior damage was balanced to “power through” boons). So while adding boon strips to every class would add that counterplay for that individual class vs boons, it reduces the synergy between classes (i.e. timing your spike with your mesmer/necro’s boon strips), and if anything I think this game needs more of this class synergy.

See that’s all fine on paper… But in practice it doesnt work and hasnt worked.

The issue is that not just 2 classes have boons. Not just 2 classes assign boons or have the majority of boons. Almost every class has access to almost every boon. Due to their availability every class should have some capability to counter them, which they currently dont.

How does a warrior handle protection? he doesnt… how does he handle regen? he cant poison… so… more damage? I guess he can stun/knock heals if they dont have stability but the main weapon GS and the main utilities dont use interrupts (except Bulls Charge which you cant use for that cuz u need it for UR 100BLADE BRO) Those things aren’t counters warriors just do damage to begin with. It isn’t well thought out or solid gameplay.

how do rangers handle boons… well they have poison for regen… they have unblockable traps against aegis?

how about thieves? well either take bountiful theft which is awesome OR USE THE TERRIBLE SWORD DAG COMBO!!!!!! yeah…

See where the problems are?

Boons make up a LARGE part of pvp mechanics and need to have some feasible counter on a 1v1 basis. Not all the time, not in every build, not in every situation or at great lengths… they just need access

You are missing my point. Warriors handle protection by just DPS’ing through it, which is why 100B hits as hard as it does. Warriors are balanced around the fact that they DON’T have boon strips. Are Warriors balanced? Many would say they are not. But my point isn’t about current balance. My point was that by adding boon strips to every class is too simplistic and would make balance even worse and mess with class lore a great deal (I know a lot of people don’t care about lore, but it is something you would have to consider as a game developer).

Like I said above, it was the same way in GW1, so you cannot say from a design standpoint this cannot work. Yes the two games have vastly different, and there is much more team coordination in GW1 due to how the combat system worked, but as I said above I think GW2 could really use some more team coordination, instead of everybody rolling strong 1v1 classes as most people seem to do currently.

Well I don’t necessarily agree that mesmers/thieves aren’t fun to play against, but I do think the fun-factor of a game should take precedent over balance. Balance is something that should be focused for a mature gaming scene. Early on in a game’s lifespan when you are creating a playerbase, the fun-factor needs to be emphasized. This means not only class mechanics, but variance of builds, maps, game modes, etc.

The devs intentionally put the majority of boon stripping ability on mesmers and necros. It was the same way in GW1. If you simply add boon stripping abilities to each class that would nerf mesmers and necros (relative to other classes) and would mess with the class lore.

The classes without boon strips were balanced around the fact they don’t have them. They even specifically said so in some of the class design philosophies they put out a while ago (i.e. warrior damage was balanced to “power through” boons). So while adding boon strips to every class would add that counterplay for that individual class vs boons, it reduces the synergy between classes (i.e. timing your spike with your mesmer/necro’s boon strips), and if anything I think this game needs more of this class synergy.

Pendragon.8735:

This is disappointing (LF 60% of HP) and I think continues to make the Soul Reaping tree less desirable, especially as a conditionmancer.

If I put 10 points in Blood Magic I’ll get 1000 real health and 600 LF health. 1600 EHP. While if I put 10 points in SR, I’ll get just 1200 more LF (at 20K HP) and of course it degens.

Whereas if LF was 120% of health or even 100%, then at 20,000 HP you would get 2000 LF health for 10% into SR.

Also think the other attribute in SR, crit damage isn’t too helpful since most necro abilities have low direct damage that doesn’t scale well with crit, and near useless for condition builds. All that on top of the LF abilities just in general not synching up well with non power builds.

What really galls is a lot of condi necros are going to want 20 into SR for that 50% terror trait, since terror gels with high condition damage. Yet Death Shroud and its trait tree offer little else for you. Thus, our trait trees remain very jumbled and messy.

The DS mechanic needs some work, and by that, I mean improvement.

Well you also have to factor in that the equivalent EHP gain in LF is much easier to build up than healing for an equivalent amount. And while crit dmg isn’t great on a conditionmancer it is far from useless since you would have a high crit % anyway. I have a DPS spreadsheet that I look at for stat optimization and the higher your crit is, the close crit dmg approaches power in terms of added DPS. At high levels of crit chance, crit dmg is starts to get fairly close to power (but power is still superior).

Looking over the LF skills it definitely shows a design principle of the longer range/safer skills and weapon sets provide less LF than the shorter range/difficult skills do. I think this is what that ANet dev was implying when he was saying Necros generally weren’t utilizing DS to it’s maximum potential, in that high LF generating skills, and thus LF itself as anything other than a defensive-mechanic, is underused.

@Arvid: thanks for testing. Much appreciated.

Lopez.7369:

Pendragon.8735:

Balancing for bad players is impossible yes, but I’m pretty sure its not the case that more bad players randomly roll up Necromancers than other professions. Because it seems clear that more people struggle with this class (and maybe 1 or 2 others), up until or unless they stick with it long enough to get very good, vs certain other profs.

If enough people are ever going to care about this game to be interested in high level tourneys, you first are going to need a flourishing casual game to cultivate that interest. Which is harder to do when any Joe Shmoe can easily jump on a warrior or thief and do well off the bat, but not so much with Necro or other professions. In fact, I think it hurts a profession like the warrior to be so built or dependent on such simple good/bad mechanics like 100B, where there the dividing line of its effectiveness is so much in the hands of the opponent.

This actually isn’t true at all. League of Legends has ridiculously complicated mechanics that most people don’t come close to understanding, and it’s hugely successful. Some heroes and positions are completely impossible for bad or new players to manage.

Same deal with Starcraft 2. One race in particular is considered much more difficult than the other two, and some of the strategies and tactics professional players do would be simply impossible for low-level players to grasp.

If there’s one profession that most new players don’t grasp but the best players can pick up later and really get a use out of, that’s fine. It’s normal for any competitive game or sport.

A game needs to have some level of casual play, but it doesn’t have to include every class and role. It’s fine if some classes just aren’t accessible to worse players. That kind of diversity in challenge is good for the game.

You are aware that the devs for both LoL and SC2 actually DO balance for all levels of play right?

Anyway I thought it was a good podcast. The interviewer said he was rank 40 so he’s far from being an inexperienced player. Good interviews are supposed to have back and forths, it’s what makes them interesting. Like I just watched the one with Khalifa on this power dagger necro and it was boring and I learned absolutely nothing because it was just the interviewer asking Khalifa what his traits are, what his equipment is, etc. You can just link a build calculator for that.

Embolism.8106:

Bouncing attacks seems to be a sort-of Mesmer specialty, so I don’t think they would change that about the iMage. Fixing the bugs and inconsistencies: making +CondDuration/BoonDuration affect Illusions, make Illusionary Elasticity affect iMage/iDisenchanter, and maybe changing iMage’s bounce logic to enemy-ally-enemy instead of whatever weird logic it has now…

Couple that with changes like making the bolt more accurate and reducing iMage’s ridiculous CD and it should be fine. It doesn’t need an overhaul.

Yep I think these changes would be enough.

FYI the current “bounce logic” it has now is enemy-ally-ally.

I honestly have no idea if it’s needed or not. Downed state is needed for sure otherwise the game would devolve into a “who bursts who first” meta but rallying I’m not sure. Hopefully there will be an option in the custom servers that allows us to turn rallying off so we can see for ourselves.

This is one of the reasons why custom servers will have a big impact on the PvP population. People will find out for themselves the game modes/features that they enjoy the most if there is enough customization implemented, and if one particular mode/feature gets very very popular it may convince ANet to implement it into their official game mode.

bhagwad.4281:

Hugo.9743:

Haven’t seen so much bullkitten in one topic in quite some time. I have to tell you folks, this is impressive. At least you had the balls to call it a rant post.

Clones are clones, they’re not humans. when mesmers got clones they are not 5 players against one, it’s still one player against another one.

The main reason you do not understand when people tell you thief and mesmer can be dealth with just fine it’s cus you haven’t reached the minimum level to do so (or at least it would seem like so). Now I get that you can’t play, but I’m sure you can see the clones infront of you, and therefore u can dodge em if they charge, you can time ur attacks, you can time your heals, you can destroy them easily if you have aoe (ex: eles and necros), blablablabla.

Thieves? thief is the squishiest class at this moment, and all they really bring to the table is burst and stealth, you take that away from them, they are useless and worthless, so dont wave me that nerf flag, they are totally fine in my opinion and they are doing the job they should be doing, period. You can’t avoid bursts? what happened to predicting moves, what happened to stun breaks, heals, avoidance?
Stealth has no counter? with the health pool on thief being so low its easy to just aoe and/or predict where the thief went, thieves dont stealth and get out of the map, when they stealth they are at that same spot (obviously trying to get away which most of the time is predictable pathwise).

Now I’m note responsible for stealth calltrop kitten thieves but honestly it doesn’t even concern me, since its hardly viable in competitive play.

The way the game is set up, you can’t really look at classes on a 1v1 point of view (in most scenarios anyways), but rather insert it on a team and think of what it brings to the table. And in that line of thought, I’m ok with the roles and don’t think thers OP stuff going around (gotta give a lil edge to eles but its all good).

Ima be an kitten now and go TLDR: stop crying like a kitten, man the kitten up and get good, ull stop having these lame kitten complaints I promise you. work around it instead of resigning.

EDIT: oh ye and stop playing hotjoins, i mean jesus kitten how do u even come here complaining about stuff that happens on hotjoins, no1s gonna bother with that.
EDIT2: people play mesmers and thieves more because they have an exciting and dynamic playstyle to it, fancy shadowsteps and flashy clones, thats all. because at the level your speaking of, which is hotjoints (otherwise you wouldn’t be talking about majorities), skill is the less of their concerns.

Sorry, but 1v1 fights are almost all that really matter. I say this as an r32 mesmer who does pretty kitten well. Screw team contribution – if a class can’t win a 1v1 against another, it’s no good. End of story.

Condi Necro says “hi”

@OP: You see so many thieves and mesmers b/c that is hot join. People like to run around solo and go pew pew in these types of game formats. It happens in every single MMO I’ve ever played. Hopefully ANet gets rid of hot joins once they implement custom servers.

So many of these “Ele OP” threads completely miss the point. Good players know how to “counter” Eles, or in other words what is effective at killing them. Burst condi is very strong vs low HP/high toughness class/builds like Eles. When top players/teams say Eles are too strong they aren’t talking specifically about killing them or their 1v1 capability which a lot of these forum posts seem to focus on.

The strength of the Ele is and has always been their versatility. They are one of the best roamers, one of the best 1v1 classes, one of the best sustain DPS classes, one of the best support classes, one of the best lockdown/CC’ers, one of the best far point assaulters, one of the best flag carriers, one of the best treb assaulters… all in essentially the same build.

Note how I don’t say “the best.” Every other class/build does not have nearly the same versatility. OTOH that is supposed to be the Ele’s strength, their attunements were designed to provide Ele’s with this flexibility. But a lot of people feel (myself included) Ele’s are just a little bit too strong (I don’t think they are grossly OP at all) when you combine their relative strengths in all these areas. This versatility makes them essential in almost any team composition/strategy/map you run. You cannot say that about any other class. The 2nd closest would probably be bunker guardians.

Ele’s were supposed to be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, but they are more like masters of everything.

mbh.8301:

Skyro.3108:

The OP asserts that the number of options in GW2 causes imbalance. I’m arguing that that doesn’t really matter that much in terms of the health of the game, and that good balance doesn’t have to mean every single skill/weapon set/etc. must be balanced. As long as enough things are balanced, the fact that some things are underpowered is ok because they are enough other balanced options for players. Variety is key to keeping players interested in playing. There are always underpowered things even in very mature, balanced games. However currently the proportion of things that are underpowered in GW2 right now is too high.

Yes “you” is the devs obviously.

I don’t mean each hero has only 1 role. I mean the possible roles they fill are clearly defined. Some are semi-carries, some are full-carries, whatever. But people know their strengths and weaknesses right off the bat.

I hope we all agree that OP’s idea is the opposite of true. It is untruthy or, as some would say, false.

As far as the possible roles that any gw2 class can play; what roles do we even have? There’s bunker and damage. On top of that, every class can play both of these roles. The player-imposed convention is that guardians are bunkers, but some players don’t care about that opinion and play sword/torch + scepter/focus (I think) and do fat damage.

To a large degree roles in mobas are also player-imposed. They see a top team, who has crafted a strategy based on some idea / their own playstyle, and shove it down the throat of every public they get in a game with – complete with loud hissyfits and capslock.

Example which exemplifies the nonsense of player-imposed roles:
There’s a player in HoN, Emperor. His favorite hero was considered to be only good for tanking. One day he decided to unleash a carry build on that hero so fierce that it was nerfed shortly thereafter.

When all classes have access to the same palette of abilities (healing, damage, damage mitigation) then the only roles you have will be decided by players.

I can assure you there are more roles than simply bunker and DPS. Roamers (Ele/Thief) is a very clearly defined role. A “carry” role (condi necro, 100b war) is also pretty clearly defined, where the chance of winning the team fight highly correlated with that team’s ability to protect their carry.

Then you can get even more specific such as point assault, treb assault, flag carrier, node defense (backpoint), etc. that is map specific.

My point is, a lot of the optimal classes/builds for each role have been figured out already, and that’s good and can be used as a starting point. So if they have a stated class design philosophy of which classes can serve which roles (each class must be able to serve mulitple roles since there’s only 8 classes), then focus balancing around buffing up the underpowered abilities to help serve those defined roles.

The reason I think this is a good idea is because is gets straight to the reason why I believe people get bored and leave the game (outside of the lack of PvP systems that ANet already stated are coming), because most only play one or two classes and get bored when there isn’t much variety with that class.

mbh.8301:

Skyro.3108:

Yeah I’m with you here. Restricting options isn’t a good thing. Options are just that, options.

Can you expand on this? What is this meant to convey?

Skyro.3108:

You can maintain balance since you can only equip 3 utilites + 1 elite and equip 2 weapon sets.

Who is “you” ? Is it the devs/balance team? Did you intend for it to refer to the player? My first quote in this thread shows that the burden of balance falls entirely on the dev/balance team.

Skyro.3108:

LoL/DotA have a ton of heroes/options, but that hasn’t stopped their success. What LoL/DotA does have however is clearly defined roles of each hero.

There’s a fair number of heroes who can play any position. They can play support roles, they can be in push teams, they can babysit, they can initiate and sometimes even carry. The only things that define your role in a moba is how much gold you have and how your team wants to use your buttons.

Also; can you expand on this? Are you saying that classes in GW2 need to be more defined? How would you try to do that? By no longer having the holy trinity be consolidated into each class? Is there another way to do it?

The OP asserts that the number of options in GW2 causes imbalance. I’m arguing that that doesn’t really matter that much in terms of the health of the game, and that good balance doesn’t have to mean every single skill/weapon set/etc. must be balanced. As long as enough things are balanced, the fact that some things are underpowered is ok because they are enough other balanced options for players. Variety is key to keeping players interested in playing. There are always underpowered things even in very mature, balanced games. However currently the proportion of things that are underpowered in GW2 right now is too high.

Yes “you” is the devs obviously.

I don’t mean each hero has only 1 role. I mean the possible roles they fill are clearly defined. Some are semi-carries, some are full-carries, whatever. But people know their strengths and weaknesses right off the bat.

mbh.8301:

Zinwrath.2049:

i know i’m rambling now, but compare this game to other mmos pvp.
Usually the player has a WALL of icons across their screen showing 30+ abilitys at any one time they can click during combat. Is guild wars 2 pvp LESS competitive because you only have 10 (to 14) abilitys on your screen? No, the game doesnt need it, theres enough going on.

The number of abilities doesn’t directly correlate with being competitive, but the players don’t get to choose any of them. You decide which weapons you want to use, whether or not another weapon does that better, and then build your traits and runes around a skill set that someone else designed. This balance decision makes GW2 pvp less competitive, since the creative option is yanked away from the player so that they don’t use skills in an unanticipated way.

This is a (shaky) analogy, for those of you who still think I’m full of it:

Imagine if blizzard released sc2, but you could only choose between one of three builds. You could cheese, do a timing, or macro. That’s it. The players have no input in balance because the meta is dictated by blizzard and a counter meta isn’t given the opportunity to evolve. What do the players do now? They can’t make new and exciting builds because blizzard has given them 3 to choose from. The only task that remains is to find out which of the 3 builds is strongest for your race.

The analogy isn’t perfect, but I already referenced gw1 above and nobody seemed to care.

Yeah I’m with you here. Restricting options isn’t a good thing. Options are just that, options. You can maintain balance since you can only equip 3 utilites + 1 elite and equip 2 weapon sets. LoL/DotA have a ton of heroes/options, but that hasn’t stopped their success. What LoL/DotA does have however is clearly defined roles of each hero.

Actually I think ANet should take a different approach:

1) Focus/readjust class design philosophy. ANet has already made a post on this, but I mean get really specific on this and assign roles to classes, such guardians, eles, engis are the possible bunker classes, warriors and thieves are the burst DPS classes, necro and warriors and the “carry” classes, ele and thieves are the roamers, etc. Each class will have multiple roles they can fill, but not ALL of them. This makes it so you don’t have to balance every class to be able to fill every role and makes it easier to balance and gives the playerbase a clear picture of what each class does/excels at. They could then even list out what spec they are during the warm-up time before the tourney match, so PUGs can adjust their roles to match their team.

2) Balance/fix bugs WITHIN a class, rather than across classes. I think this is the #1 issue why sPvP has gone stale. Most people stick to 1, maybe 2 classes that they play regularly. When each of those classes only have 1 viable build in sPvP it gets very old very fast.

3) And of course they need to add the PvP systems around it like a true ladder/leaderboard, custom servers, etc.

Esplen.3940:

Skyro.3108:

samski.5194:

Had a chance to test it out a little more tonight, Protection just isnt procing at all for me.

Blind seems a bit strange, it maybe working. I tested with and without the trait Blinding Befuddlement and confusion stacks seemed higher with the trait than without but I cant be sure due to the fact the fights are random in the mists.

Why don’t you use the Chilling Darkness trait? It chills on blind so should quite easy to see.

We’re mesmers…

LMAO wow. Yeah I play a Necro too I must’ve got my wires crossed. That’s my excuse anyway lol.

samski.5194:

Had a chance to test it out a little more tonight, Protection just isnt procing at all for me.

Blind seems a bit strange, it maybe working. I tested with and without the trait Blinding Befuddlement and confusion stacks seemed higher with the trait than without but I cant be sure due to the fact the fights are random in the mists.

Why don’t you use the Chilling Darkness trait? It chills on blind so should quite easy to see.

It’s useless traits like this that makes me wonder what whoever was balancing this skill was thinking. Compare to the evasive arcana proc in water attunement, which the base heal for about 8.5x more, AND scales more with healing power even AFTER the recent nerf to it. PLUS it removes a condition! Both are AoE and both are on 10s CDs (untraited). Absolutely ridiculous.

Yes I know Evasive Arcane is a GM trait and this one is a master one, but there is no possible way to justify the incredible discrepancy between these two traits.

Bellamy.9860:

If you don’t like sigil of earth you can also give sigil of blood a try. It doesn’t scale with power and always deals around 450 dmg, ignores armor and heals for the same amount. Also it only has 2 sec internal cd.
Earth on the other hand deals around 100-200 more damage. (anyone knows the internal cd?)

IIRC sigil of blood has a 5s cooldown (tooltip is wrong).

War Mourner.5168:

I was under the impression the x2 force sigils won’t stack.

Last time I tested they did not stack.

Also lettuce I think you are doing your build a great injustice by not using sigils of earth. It does a lot more damage than force even if force sigils did stack.

Leadfoot.9071:

milo.6942:

Malcastus.6240:

Arenas are the most boring thing in existance. No real means of using the surroundings, being limited to a small space is just annoying and mindnumbingly monotone.

i don’t get how ppl like you think. do you find combat to be boring?

It’s just different strokes for different folks. Diversity of game modes is definitely a good thing for this – but at the same time it has some severe implications on balancing the professions. I can imagine that is part of the reason why we only have conquest and no duels.

Well I do believe the vast majority of people want some way to duel or practice team fights and stuff. Dueling is fun. Arena is fun. Practicing with your guildies is fun. Testing out wonky builds with them is even more fun.

But I think all these things are best served via custom servers. In SC, the majority of the playerbase didn’t actually play on the ladder, most were playing custom games.

Yeah… there’s countless other cross-class examples. Compare the necro’s crit on bleed trait with say the Engi’s. It’s like night and day.

Well I see more similarities (disappears after skill use, long duration) between your proposed confusion change with blind than differences (that it stacks in intensity rather than duration).

And I accept that you don’t understand how confusion is currently already very powerful in PvP. I prefer it’s current implementation than the one you propose. I feel your change WEAKENS confusion’s burst potential and its ability to alter fight dynamics. It punishes players who continue to spam skills.

Also not having any duration on confusion is kind of silly. I kind of thought you meant just a really long duration that waiting it out would essentially not be viable (e.g. like blind) but if you really meant confusion with no duration then that essentially means as the attacker you apply confusion on a “fire-and-forget” basis and as the target you simply just eat it or remove it without giving it a second thought.

I personally wouldn’t want to make one of the truly unique conditions in the game so bland like most other DPS conditions, but I do see how if you truly wanted to build around confusion alone then your change would produce more consistent damage which would be particularly helpful for PvE players, but it would certainly make its use in PvP less interesting.

bhagwad.4281:

So…essentially a huge rant about mesmers and thieves alone and wrapping it under the guise of genuine criticism. Nice.

Anyone who thinks that Null Field which only an idiot would remain in for more than one second should be an elite skill…I mean mind blows. If it was so kitten awesome, every mesmer would be running with it. But they don’t do they?

On the weakness of that observation alone this entire “OMG nerf thieves/mesmers” post deserves to be ignored.

If I were to guess he’s probably just going by the incorrect skill description implying that null field removes ALL boons/conditions per pulse, when in reality it only removes one per pulse.

But yeah you would think a “pro” would actually know what the skills of other classes actually do. “Know thy enemy” and all that good stuff.

Yeah… I mean I’m pretty much on the verge of taking a break from GW2 myself but it is not for any of these reasons. Arena is the most shallow type of game mode there is and would be horrible as an official game mode.

If I were a decision-maker/dev at ANet, I would try to model the game after similar successful competitive games, and the only thing similar would be MoBA’s (LoL/DotA). These games have 1) a strong match-making/MMR system, 2) a ton of hero options (GW2’s equivalent would be builds), 3) a robust scoreboard/player stat tracking system that allows player to visualize how they are doing.

All this other nonsense about deathmatches, duels, 1v1 balance, various game modes, holy-trinity is moot. If anything, these things have been proven to NOT work as no game with these features in it every exploded on the competitive scene. And this is coming from a hardcore GW1 player who loved that system as well. Both were fun, but if I were to bet which system would have more success to explode on the competitive scene, I would bet on GW2’s system.

Right now what’s holding GW2 back can be mostly summed up as:
1) lack of PvP systems (custom servers, ladder, player stat tracking, and only recently was a rudimentary match-making system implemented, etc.)
2) lack of varied builds/balance between builds. You can have the best combat system in the world, but anybody will get bored if the class you play only have one viable PvP build.

Necro’s “defense” is supposed to be their high base health pool + DS. Obviously at the start of fights DS is at zero, so obviously they are at a disadvantage at the start, but at full DS they are relatively competitive 1v1.

Also Necro’s are one of the strongest team fighters in the game, able to do massive sustained AoE damage. If you play any MOBAs, necros serve the “carry” role in a team. The game is not balanced around 1v1, and the sooner people understand that the better.

Savant.5276:

Skyro, I did not suggest a “1-time proc (like blind)” at all.

Instead, what I clearly suggested was 1 stack of Confusion dropping off the total number of stacks, per attack. Which means that if an enemy has 6 stacks of Confusion on them, and attacks once, the total number of stacks would go down to 5 stacks. Then when the enemy attacks again, it goes down to 4 stacks. etc… And the Confusion remains on an enemy indefinitely until either enemy attacks sequentially remove all stacks, or the stacks are cleansed.

So there would be no loss of the unique aspect of Confusion which currently allows one to time large stacks right before multi-hit attacks.

Maybe I’m confused (haha, get it?), but what you describe here is essentially how blind works if blinds could stack (granted blind isn’t indefinite, but it is generally long enough that nobody really waits it out).

And apparently you didn’t understand what I said, because clearly how you describe it it would indeed take away much of the burstiness of confusion, which is one of the unique aspects of confusion how it is currently implemented. There would be much less incentive to wait it out or carefully manage skill use. It would be as I said much more of a “fire-and-forget” condition at that point, which for the sake of diverse game play is bad.

edit: Also I don’t understand people’s desire to make a build entirely revolved around confusion. You don’t make builds that revolve around ONE condition. Confusion should simply be a strong tool for Mesmer’s who spec condition damage, which it currently already is. While a full condition Mesmer isn’t all that viable, that has more to do with Mesmer’s lack of condition application outside of staff, which is why I am a proponent of changing scepter to be more condition focused (currently it serves as a much stronger power-based weapon).

Savant.5276:

To me, the all-around fix for Confusion would be to have it stack – and absolutely remove the automatic deterioration/duration rate.

Instead of an auto-deterioration/duration, make it so that one stack of Confusion is removed every time an enemy attacks – regardless of how long it takes for any enemy to attack. The strength of the punishing attack will increase and decrease as usual depending upon the amount of Confusion stacks on a target.

No standardizing the punishment damage per Confusion stack.
No changing how frequently we can apply Confusion from how it is now.

The enemy players will have three options:

a) Attack, take the punishment, and heal; and/or,
b) Get the Confusion cleansed off them; and/or,
c) Not attack.

That simple change would go a long way to making a Confusion based build completely viable without being OP.

While that would even out the effectiveness of confusion across the different game modes, you do lose the unique aspect of confusion, which currently allows you to time large confusion stacks right before multi-hit attacks for instance. It would also take away a lot of the “burst” of confusion as well, which is really needed in sPvP (which is currently filled to the brim with high toughness/healing classes like Eles) as the only other bursty condition damage in the game is burning (or necro’s traited with terror).

If it was just made into a long duration, 1-time proc (like blind) as you suggest, it would more or less become a fire-and-forget type condition which we already have plenty of.

I really don’t see why this is such a big issue to people. I play tournies with my guild but it’s a fairly large/active guild so I don’t run with any particular set of people or comps or whatever. It’s more or less like an extended friends list. And outside of the first few days after the patch where everybody’s ratings got reset I’ve been matched mostly with teams, occasionally they might have 1 PUG and most matches are fairly competitive.

I think people get discouraged just because they see a premade. If you only solo queue, and the premade only queues together and you’re both collectively equal in rating, you should have a 50% chance to win if the matchmaking is correct. The fact they might have communication/synergy or whatever is counterbalanced by the likely higher individual skill of each solo queuer in the other group.

People also have no idea how the matchmaking system works, e.g. if there is some sort of adjustment based on the proportion of the team that is premade.

Hybrid Shatter Confusion build is great in sPvP. You have to play it a little bit differently than pure glass shatter and utilize your CoF at the correct times (for example after Ele’s switch out of water attunement), but it is devastating vs certain builds. Also just 3 staff clones and staff auto-attack (with Illusionary Elasticity) already does a lot DPS. Confusion is pretty unique in that it can act as both damage and defense, as anybody spamming attacks on you after a full CoF is going to die really really fast.

The problem a lot of people have with confusion is trying to completely design your entire build around confusion and go a pure condition build, which you can’t really do because staff is the only true condi weapon mesmers have (scepter is horrible in sPvP and is a stronger power-based weapon than a condi one). Confusion is very strong if you use it to supplement your build in a hybrid shatter build using carrion amulet.

I think warhorn is just on the cusp of being awesome. If they changed the daze into a fear I think you would see much more use out of it.

Khalifahaze.6045:

Defyx.3956:

Khalifa i’m interested in you 30 points in soul reaping for you terror build, could you explain what trait you picked and why ? Maybe for the 3s stab ?

This is one area where I feel a lot of necros go wrong. You will almost never see a condi necro not take the 30 pt trait in curses for 33% increased condi duration. Most people believe this to be a vital part of a condi build and any build that doesn’t use it is garbage. In my opinion this could not be more untrue. While that trait is nice for your bleeds to last longer making it easier to stack it is very far from necessary. I almost never take it in my condi builds. I feel as a whole 30 pts in SR for 3 sec stab is much more important.

Necro is almost always the first target to be focused in tpvp. This is why you need to focus on being able to survive rather that doing a little bit more damage with increased condi duration. Being able to shroud stomp/rez is incredibly important in tpvp and without stability it is very hard to do. Also the fact that you will be able to anticipate CC and pop in and out of DS so that the enemy does not cc chain you into burst dmg.

This is why I feel my build is much more successful with 30 pts into SR. I know many people will disagree with it, but being able to nullify CC will allow you to put out more damage in the larger picture.

While I agree with this it’s Reaper’s Protection that I feel is sometimes overrated. I like to flip flop b/w Reaper’s Protection and the Scepter trait depending on the comp.

I can attest that this build does indeed work in high level tPvP given the current tPvP meta filled with high toughness/low HP classes (COUGH ELES COUGH) where burst condition builds reign supreme. Combo’ing Death Shroud fear with Ghastly Claws pumps out a nice little burst.

My personal preferences/adjustments:
-Rampager Amulet with Sigil of Earth on weapons, which will pump out a lot of bleed procs.

-As the Runes of Nightmare condition duration bonus is currently bugged, I’ve switched it out with Runes of Melandru. It gives me a very noticeable bump in survivability (extra toughness + condi/stun duration reduction), which the build lacks.

-While I like the Focus for power dagger builds since the fast vulnerability stacking and boon strips supplement the burst of dagger auto-attacks so well, I don’t feel it’s needed for this type of build. The build is decidedly a ranged build, and you already slot Corrupt Boon. I opted for off-hand dagger, the merits of which I’m sure everybody is already aware of from playing conditionmancers. Also the focus cooldown reduction trait causes spinal shivers to not receive the extra damage from stripping boons currently. I’m using the retaliation on DS trait instead, giving yourself some pretty high retaliation uptime combined with Axe 3.

-Lich still hits pretty hard with this build and is certainly a viable elite with this build, especially if you have a mesmer in your group with time warp.

With downed state management being such a huge factor in the outcome of large team fights, how do the devs feel the balance between the downed state abilities of the different classes is?

I understand that ANet designed it so that it is easier/better to stomp higher HP/armor classes and DPS down the lower HP/armor classes, but I do not believe it is a coincidence that Warriors and Necros are among the least played classes in high level tPvP and also have the worst downed state (or why Eles exploded in popularity after their downed state got buffed).

Unfortunately the condition duration on nightmare runes are currently bugged. Whether you consider that a good thing (since it will eventually get fixed and your build will be even better!) or a bad thing (cuz broken stuff sucks!) I leave up to you to decide.

@Bas

Rage on Dagger is awesome. I’m not sure where this “dimishing effect on fast attacks” theory came from but it’s not true. I believe there might be some de-syncing of the attack animation (similar to the de-syncing of quickness stomps) but I assure the difference in damage is significant.

Also the cooldown on Rage isn’t that big of an issue as it can be mitigated with careful usage of your weapon swaps (which is roughly 2x the CD as your immobilize). You’re not really going to be chasing people in meele with Dagger the whole match in tPvP. You’re still pretty squishy so you’ll be at range a lot.

I once reflected a 100nades engi’s burst using Feedback (yes it can be cast while KD’ed). Many lulz were had.