Guild Wars 2

So I was playing around with new range on Illusionary Counter/Riposte and it seems they also changed the mechanics making them much smoother. There is still a “cast time” of the actual counterattack but it seems shorter, and the teleport effect seems to be less pronounced (you only move very slightly now when performing the counterattack).

Also the clones seem to spawn right next to the target now, where IIRC previously it would spawn next to the mesmer.

All in all the block skills seem much less cumbersome to use, but I still wish they made the counterattack instant so that you could dodge roll immediately afterwards to avoid multi-hit attacks.

Did this get fixed? Was using it earlier today and it seems more responsive and the targeting doesn’t seem as iffy as it was.

I just think the whole “premades stomping on PUGs” issue is overblown if the matchmaking system is implemented well (which remains to be seen). If the solo q playerbase is sufficiently large, then solo q’ers won’t be running into premades anyway.

What you’re really asking is “I’d rather wait longer in the queue instead of going up against a partial premade” or something to that effect. Now sure some people would rather wait, but I don’t think the entire playerbase think that way. Plus I’m sure there are lots of people with just 1 or 2 friends they regularly play with, what game mode do they go to?

The point is if the playerbase is sufficiently large, you don’t need a hardline b/w solo queue and full premades because the matchmaking system should be able to match you up accordingly.

WoW PvP developed, with a very large playerbase, and still failed. GW2 PvP is still developing. It may fail as well, but at least it still has potential.

Gilgamesh.2561:

Skyro.3108:

Gilgamesh.2561:

I thought ANet said the match-making system would preferentially match single-queues with other single-queues? If that’s the case then it should be perfectly fine.

Correct, but it’s only going to appease those in the lower brackets. If you’re a PuGer and you reach a high enough bracket, there might not be enough solo players to pair you with, and you’ll be faced with premades. You’ll hit a wall with nowhere to go.

Until the queues are entirely separated, creating an environment that skilled PuGers can compete fairly in even the highest tier ladders as they do in League of Legends, the system is flawed.

I honestly do not see that as a problem at all. A pug’er will never reach the highest levels of competition because they don’t have the team coodination/chemisty to ever actually get that highly rated. There’s not going to be some super duper skilled pug’er that is in a league of his own where no other pug’er is in his bracket or something, provided of course the playerbase is not abysmally small (which may very well be the case, but then you got much bigger problems than this anyway).

You’re misunderstanding.

There would be two ladders:

- Team
- Solo

Solo queued players only face other players who queued solo. PuGs vs PuGs.

Team queued players only face other teams who queued team.

That way teams can compete to their hearts content against each other and rise in the team ladder. Individuals can compete against PuGs to their hearts content and rise in the solo ladder.

Players can and should play both. Solo means it’s personal, your ladder ranking is for your player. Team means your ladder ranking is associated with your team.

There would need to be a check to prevent teams from queuing solo queue at the same time and gaming it.

Yeah if the playerbase was sufficiently large that would indeed be the way to go. I think a lot of what ANet has been doing lately is testing different matchmaking systems and seeing how the playerbase responds. I don’t doubt that that may very well end up being the system we end up with if the playerbase ever picks up steam.

I thought everybody’s MMR was reset so it’s going to take a while for you to get matched up correctly.

Leave deathmatch/dueling for the custom servers. An official deathmatch game mode is the last thing GW2 needs.

Gilgamesh.2561:

I thought ANet said the match-making system would preferentially match single-queues with other single-queues? If that’s the case then it should be perfectly fine.

Correct, but it’s only going to appease those in the lower brackets. If you’re a PuGer and you reach a high enough bracket, there might not be enough solo players to pair you with, and you’ll be faced with premades. You’ll hit a wall with nowhere to go.

Until the queues are entirely separated, creating an environment that skilled PuGers can compete fairly in even the highest tier ladders as they do in League of Legends, the system is flawed.

I honestly do not see that as a problem at all. A pug’er will never reach the highest levels of competition because they don’t have the team coodination/chemisty to ever actually get that highly rated. There’s not going to be some super duper skilled pug’er that is in a league of his own where no other pug’er is in his bracket or something, provided of course the playerbase is not abysmally small (which may very well be the case, but then you got much bigger problems than this anyway).

Yeah what daydream said. They already said at the last state of the game that they were figuring out the best way to do the map rotation (map vetoes, etc.). I think it’s also because they feel the 3-round tournament structure has merits, e.g. it feels like you accomplished more by winning a 3-round tourney than 3 straight single rounds.

Whether that is true or not we’ll see, but I suspect this is another endeavor by ANet to gather data on player preferences and if their data shows nobody queues up for the the 3-round tournies they will probably remove it.

To me it seems like a lot of the current sPvP structure are just placeholders until they get better systems in place. What I eventually think will happen, say 1 year down the line, is that hot join will be replaced with custom servers, the “ladder” will be the 1-round tournies, and then your MMR will qualify you automated 3-round tournies which then qualify you for regional tournies similar to what ANet did with GW1.

I thought ANet said the match-making system would preferentially match single-queues with other single-queues? If that’s the case then it should be perfectly fine.

The funny thing is is that ANet’s “slow and steady” approach to balance is the exact opposite of what they need right now. Slow and steady balancing works for mature games with healthy populations. Games where there are ongoing tournaments and whatnot where drastically changing the metagame would have significant ramifications.

What ANet needs to do is actually focus on significantly buffing underpowered weapons/skills/traits. In fact, many balance teams overbuff underpowered aspects of their game to draw interest in them so people use and test them out so they can get a large set of data to then gauge if a following nerf is necessary.

The PvP balance in this game is in its infant stages, and wild swings of the metagame should not only be expected, it should be welcomed. At the end of the day, the teams playing 12hrs a day are the minority, and balance at the top should be of very little concern. ANet should be focused on the casual playerbase and making the core game fun, and that is done by having multiple effective builds and roles for each class.

It was never clear to me if the devs meant a skill that actually behaved identically to portal (e.g. multiple people could travel through) or if they just meant some sort of long range teleport skill would be added to some classes. If it’s the latter they could simply increase the range of the flesh wurm teleport (currently at 1200 range) and be done with it. Flesh wurm as is is already a fantastic skill, but an increase in range would give necros more flexibility in the roles they could fill.

The slower LF drain trait is pretty underwhelming because you spend so little time in DS most of the time due to damage taken. The piercing trait is better to take advantage of the life blasts you do get off. I also rarely ever cast more than 3-4 life blasts in a row in sPvP as that is the uptime of your Fury if you spec’ed 15 in curses.

The 3% LF gain on marks trait is a much better trait for utilizing DS as it is a big improvement in LF generation for staff builds.

Compounding Power’s effect will decrease in stages as you said for shatters.

And all % dmg modifiers affect shatter damage as it counts on your own personal DPS. % dmg modifiers do not affect phantasm damage however.

Well I’ve been abusing the hell out of mimic in tPvP after reading this thread. 4.5s channeled block/reflect every 25s or 20s traited? Yes plz!

But seriously this will get nerfed to the ground.

Gaiawolf.8261:

iMage is intended to be the GW2 version of Backfire/Empathy, so I doubt it’s basic function will change.

We can only hope for buffs, and the problem there is that the confusion mechanic in general is borderline OP against noobs in WVW, decent in sPVP, and woefully UP in PVE. So any scaling they do for him will have more effect on some game modes than others. He does need a buff for all game modes, but confusion in general needs a PVE overhaul to bring it in line with it’s usefulness in PVP.

That’s exactly my point. Backfire was great in GW1. The player had control of when to use it, and using it at the correct times crippled teams and took good game sense to use effectively. Having it auto-cast by a phantasm takes all of that away and it just becomes a clunky phantasm that nobody really likes or uses.

They could easily replace the #2 scepter skill (which seems very misplaced on the weapon, and a near duplicate of the sword #4 skill) with a backfire-like spell. If it had a short enough cast time it could be used proactively or reactively and would be very fun to use just like the old GW1 skill.

One of the keys in dealing with burst thieves is staying above 50% health as any burst thief will have the trait that does 20% more damage to targets under 50% health. That combined with the bonus damage from heartseeker to targets under 50%/20% health and you start to dig yourself in a hole you can’t get out of. So popping your heal after taking the initial burst is very important. As a power necro I highly recommend you don’t gear for pure glass but have lots of vit in your build as well. Vit benefits both your HP and LF pool and helps the necro sustain and survive burst.

Remember Necro’s rely on tanking damage with their huge HP/LF pool, we don’t really have access to many escape options, so it is important mitigate the damage we do tank. This is one of the reasons why weakness is so good for necros. The enfeebling blood on DS trait is a good trait for putting weakness on meele that get on you.

If you’re above 50% health you can generally just burn the thief down. As said above if you catch them with your dagger 3 immobilize even if they stealth you can just dagger auto-attack the spot you immobilized them (you’ll know you’re hitting them if you see your full chain go off) unless they shadowstep.

What thing I like to do with the fear mark is strategically casting my fear mark in a spot where I can retreat to later in the fight. That way if I need to catch my breathe to heal or they go into stealth to try to land BS or whatever you can fall back into your fear mark. Casting it early is beneficial since it will start recharging immediately so that it may possibly be up to use again during the fight.

While yes conduration duration should affect phantasms/clones that really isn’t what’s holding back torch and scepter. What’s holding them back is that they are poorly designed and underpowered.

Confusion itself is fine. The fun thing about confusion is that they are short-duration, burst-type damage that if you time correctly right before skill spam it is very powerful. Having it on a phantasm that just auto-attacks is very lackluster. IMO the iMage should just apply burning.

The prestiege should also apply burning first and then blind. Blind at the start makes no sense since you don’t have to worry about getting hit in stealthed and the enemy can just swing at air and it removes the blind. The channeling portion of it is pretty lame as well. It should be a second activation that reveals you and applies the blind.

As for the scepter it isn’t even a condition-based weapon. It is much stronger when used in a power-spec, and is essentially a ranged power weapon which also happens to have 5 confusion stacks on it’s #3 skill. They need to add confusion to the auto-attack, change the #2 skill to a true defensive skill, and probably change #3 possibly into some sort of AoE-type attack which the Mesmer is currently sorely lacking.

Interrupted skills go on a 5s cooldown don’t they? That is pretty strong already. Making them go on full cooldown would be grossly overpowered. That means all you have to do is interrupt their heal and they are dead, and it isn’t hard to interrupt heals. This isn’t like GW1 where there are healers with multiple heals that if one gets locked out they can still heal. In GW2 we only have 1 self heal per char.

A total lockdown of all skills for 5s would essentially be a 5s daze. There’s no such thing as a 5s daze in the entire game, and that’s because such a thing would be OP.

The only thing I agree with is the Mesmer interrupt traits are pretty weak. I do not think I’ve seen a Mesmer ever spec in any of those traits.

plasmacutter.2709:

Skyro.3108:

-Increase RTL CD to 20s, reduce range to 900
-Nerf Evasive Arcana’s version of Cleansing Wave
-Reduce duration or movement speed of Ele’s downed state vapor form

That’s really all that’s needed.

Reduce all thief MUG/backstab combo damage to 7k total.

Reduce thief to light armor

increase cooldown on stealth to 20 seconds.

See how long they last.

Because this is what you are asking for on eles (everything but the analogous stealth cool down is already in the live game for eles!).

Or you could build to kill eles rather than selfishly demanding nerfs because you don’t want to be put out the cost of a new build for an evolving meta game.

The defensiveness of Ele’s on these forums is quite hilarious. 2 of the 3 changes I suggested have nothing to do with Ele survivability in fights (obv RTL nerf is a nerf to their escapability). Evasive Arcana’s Cleansing Wave heals the same as the normal skill does, which is balanced around a 40s cooldown. Evasive Arcana has a 10s cooldown. Think about that for a second.

And Ele’s STILL have the best downed state in the game by far. If you can’t see that then I don’t think it is possible to have a rational discussion with you.

And I don’t have a problem with fighting Ele’s at all. The only problem I have is that you pretty much are required to bring an Ele (you can even bring 2 or 3 no prob) to field a competitive team in paids.

-Increase RTL CD to 20s, reduce range to 900
-Nerf Evasive Arcana’s version of Cleansing Wave
-Reduce duration or movement speed of Ele’s downed state vapor form

That’s really all that’s needed.

The only thing OP about Ele’s healing is the fact that Evasive Arcana’s version of Cleansing Wave heals for the same amount as the normal skill version. The normal skill version is balanced around a 40s CD, whereas Evasive Arcana’s CD is only 10s. This runs counter to nearly every “dodge does X skill” trait in the game where the dodge version is usually a less potent version of the normal skill.

The only thing OP about the staff is the 10s cooldown on phase retreat. Back when I ran full glass shatter I preferred Greatsword over Staff because it was a much much higher DPS weapon and iBerserker and the AoE knockback are pretty kitten good.

Also a big reason why Staff is used a lot is because it is the only defensive ranged weapon we have. Scepter was supposed to be our 1h’ed ranged defensive weapon but currently it functions as primarily a DPS weapon.

Yeah Chaos Armor does not proc protection. I think it would be a bit OP if it did because it would likely mean near 100% protection uptime.

But the Protection on regen trait isn’t bad, though not nearly as good as its previous unnerfed form of course. It gives you 3s protection with a 15s cooldown, and if you have high chaos uptime it will proc a lot because Chaos Armor procs regen when hit. You don’t necessarily have to combine it with the phantasm regen trait. I use it w/o that trait and it still procs all the time.

As been said multiple times in the thread if a zerg is training on you there’s nothing that any class can really do. You have to rely on your teammates. How you relate that to skull fear being OP I have no idea. You can virtually be caught with anything and die in a zerg battle because you’re not going to be able to recognize the animations of an entire zerg to react properly.

The point about the stability was that he’d unstealth by the time your stability runs out, so the whole argument of being able to do nothing about stealth + skull fear is false. I’m not suggesting you run the trait (though it is an awesome awesome trait, and like I mentioned Life Siphon is always nice in team fights and hits stealthed targets as well), it was merely a counterpoint. People focus on too many singular aspects of the game and miss the big picture. Necros are beasts in team fights.

They should really just remove hot join and have the hot joiners solo queue frees once they put matchmaking in for frees. This would solve 2 problems – the hot mess that is hot join and the long free tourney queues.

CHIPS.6018:

Skyro.3108:

Not sure what the point about being low and out of cooldowns from a zerg and then dying to a burst class. That would happen to any class.

And while Necro’s aren’t the greatest 1v1 class due to needing LF to be competitive in 1v1s, the game isn’t balanced around 1v1 anyway. Necro is among the best team fight classes in the entire game.

If you’re simply asking how to deal with stolen skull fear one thing you can do is place a fear mark in a strategic place so that you can retreat to it when they stealth. Simply running away in a straight line is also effective since skull fear has a long cast time and the duration depends on the distance from the target (farther away = less fear duration). Since their steal will be down they will likely need to have another shadowstep utility skill equipped to actually get close enough to fear you which they may not have equipped or is on cooldown.

Another option depending on your build is the stability on death shroud trait. The stability will outlast his stealth outside of shadow refuge (which you can use your fear mark on or again simply run away). Plus your life transfer will hit stealthed thieves.

Also if you suspect a skull fear it isn’t actually all that random to dodge. Skull fear has IIRC 1.25s cast. Most stealths are 3s. If you dodge anytime after 1.25s you’re actually very likely to dodge the skull fear.

But I wasn’t dying though. I had 10-12k hp. But that Skull Fear combo drains all that hp to zero, while I cannot do anything at all to defend myself. 10-12k hp aren’t dead man walking.

Fear mark doesn’t end their Skull Fear nor does it end their stealth. They can walk into the mark, get feared for 1 second, and then continue with the combo. And randomly putting AoEs down is the worst thing you can do against a thief. You are basically shutting yourself down due to skill recharge. The only AoE skill that should be spammed is Mark of Blood. That won’t help you against the Skull Fear combo.

You cannot run away from a thief. They move way too fast and will easily chase you down. You are “relatively” safer by staying with your teammates.

Skull Fear has a short 0.5 sec cast time, which aren’t that long at all. Neither can I confirm that the further you are away from the thief, the less time it affects you. In those 3 times that I got killed, the thief managed to get all 3 seconds (or more) of fear against me. I had no idea how far the thief was when he used Skull Fear because I couldn’t even see him.

Stability doesn’t do anything when you are already feared. In the wiki it is stated:

“Stability does not protect against effects which are already in place; it merely provides immunity against incoming disables. However, some skills which grant stability can also break stuns.”

Stun breaks would help you here. But I already talked about why I do not carry stun breaks.

You last part talks about luck; Randomly use dodge and by luck you would happen to dodge his Skull Fear. This aren’t a suggestion anymore. It is more like wishing me luck since I would need a ton of it.

You’re basically just making stuff up now. Skull Fear is not 0.5 sec. Why don’t you just test this yourself? It’s not hard.

You also like… didn’t understand half of what I said. Stealth duration outside of shadow refuge = 3s. Stability duration = 3s. What’s hard to understand here?

And you are so wrong about dropping marks. There’s a ton of stuff you can do. Fear Mark was one example. Hit him with a chill mark and dodge away. You can easily get out of the range of the skull fear unless they use some form of shadowstep.

Why am I wasting my time.. this is a L2P issue sadly. Necro is one of my mains and I have no issues with skull fear.

Not sure what the point about being low and out of cooldowns from a zerg and then dying to a burst class. That would happen to any class.

And while Necro’s aren’t the greatest 1v1 class due to needing LF to be competitive in 1v1s, the game isn’t balanced around 1v1 anyway. Necro is among the best team fight classes in the entire game.

If you’re simply asking how to deal with stolen skull fear one thing you can do is place a fear mark in a strategic place so that you can retreat to it when they stealth. Simply running away in a straight line is also effective since skull fear has a long cast time and the duration depends on the distance from the target (farther away = less fear duration). Since their steal will be down they will likely need to have another shadowstep utility skill equipped to actually get close enough to fear you which they may not have equipped or is on cooldown.

Another option depending on your build is the stability on death shroud trait. The stability will outlast his stealth outside of shadow refuge (which you can use your fear mark on or again simply run away). Plus your life transfer will hit stealthed thieves.

Also if you suspect a skull fear it isn’t actually all that random to dodge. Skull fear has IIRC 1.25s cast. Most stealths are 3s. If you dodge anytime after 1.25s you’re actually very likely to dodge the skull fear.

If the skill has to behave in this way for balance reasons that’s fine but at least gives us some visual feedback so we can see this projectile/cone/whatever. It’s pretty frustrating when it doesn’t work even after doing everything in your power to ensure it works. It’s already hard enough to hit with players being keenly aware of the skill and dodging a lot after they use their “insert boon spam skill here.”

Nimraphel.7819:

The Necro builds are laughably bad. Really. This gotta take the prize as worst conceived guide I’ve read in a long, long time.

Yeah it is just plain silly. No condi necro is ever going to skip the GM scepter trait. I’m assuming his logic is the condition duration increase isn’t a big deal vs ranger’s full condi cleanse every 10s but that’s what I was trying to explain in my post above about his mesmer builds/tips (which were even worse TBH… giving out builds for a class he admits he doesn’t even play)… you’re not going to see/use these wacky builds that are specifically tailormade to “counter” trap rangers in tPvP because nobody is going to slot things like feedback just to deal with 1 trap ranger.

Not to undermine your effort because it’s always nice to see people trying to teach the community, but if you don’t play the class your trying to give advice to then I’d steer away from doing so. Good advice must be practical to be of any use.

For example condi mesmers are actually pretty terrible in tPvP to begin with, as is confusion (on the Mesmer) in general. In almost any scenario you would deal more damage with just mind wrack rather than using cof and praying your opponent spams a bazillion skills during the 3s confusion is up. And while it’s true confusion is strong vs the ranger’s auto-attack if the ranger blindly spams it, you’re simply not going to face many condition-based mesmers in high level tPvP because they are terrible overall, and you certainly shouldn’t be advising Mesmers to do so.

Arcane Thievery is really only useful in 1v1, and even then it is debatable to take over null field due to being able to combo null field into another 5s of chaos armor. Similarly I would never take Feedback simply to help combat a trap ranger. It is not really needed.

Personally I don’t think the standard glass cannon shatter mesmers have much of a chance to kill a good trap ranger, but I don’t think trap rangers or OP or anything like that. It has more to do with glass cannon mesmers (and glass cannon builds in general) becoming less and less effective in high level tPvP. It’s amusing to me how the majority of the forum posters here still believe glass cannon shatter mesmers are OP when most high level tPvP’ers think they are pretty UP now.

It’s not really that big a deal. Hitboxes are the same size. All heals can be identifed by a bright blue glow when they are cast. Also most of the big skills that need to be reacted to the asura animation is usually more over-the-top than the larger races (i.e. blurred frenzy).

Yes it is an advantage in some cases, but not all. I have an asura mesmer, but I’d argue the largest norn or charr model is the most effective in pvp due to large clones cluttering up the screen. I would be all for normalizing the size of character models in pvp a little bit more however on both sides of the spectrum since I think the size difference between the smallest and largest character models is IMO a bit too much.

Well for me personally it’s not really an argument than it is a desire to see scaling on vampiric traits to give the necro a bunker build/stat optimization option built around healing power, something they currently do not have. It’s pretty much universal opinion that the Blood trait line is the most underpowered and rarely spec’ed traits lines for the necro. Siphoning in general is also one of the necro’s thematic calling cards, and it would be nice to see a build revolved around it.

I also feel the weakness of the blood line is also tied to other issues with the necro, such as the much-maligned axe MH. I think the axe was designed/tailor-made for minionmancers and bunker builds, both builds that currently aren’t very viable in high level tPvP. If the blood line is adjusted to open up new build possibilities I’m pretty sure we’ll start to see more and more necros using axe.

Even if you hit a target at 1200 range (which is very hard to do) it doesn’t even pull the target all the way to you. But >900 range or so and you should be ok.

Andele.1306:

Skyro.3108:

I think people are confused. Life siphon skills have 2 components, the damage component and the heal component. They are 2 separate figures. The healing component of some life siphoning skills is affected by healing power, but it does not affect the damage component. So there is no offensive power gained from stacking healing power.

Bottomline is right now all life siphoning traits do not scale with healing power, which does not make any sense. Fix these traits (along with bloodthirst not affecting all life siphoning skills either), and then we can talk about more drastic changes if necessary.

Not true, just like in the original game, the prime definition of life siphon (vampiric) deals 25 additional damage and then gives you 25 hp pre hit at level 80 being a single component of transfer, Signet of the Locus works the same since it heals for a base of 936 hp at level 80 pre target, despite the additional heal component being 778 because the first 158 is actual siphoning, same with wells and on crit siphons. Ironically the Dagger Life siphon isnt a actual siphon but a 2 component spell that heals upon tick check ignoring if it deals damage while the other skills if blocked dont heal for the siphon. Currently some scale of healing power, some from power and some dont scale at all past your current level (or the fractal/other level 81+ zone bloodlust bug).

The definition of siphoning life is simply dealing damage while being healed at the same time. There is no hard and fast rule saying these 2 figures must be equal. In fact all siphoning skills have both a damage and healing component that are separate, just like I stated. If they were tied together then you would get healed for doing more damage (e.g. crits), but you don’t.

It is the 3 siphon-related necro traits that do not scale off anything (neither power nor healing power). This is what does not make any sense as healing-related traits from other classes scale just fine with healing power. The viability of siphon is mostly revolved around these skills because there really aren’t many siphoning skills in general (really only the dagger 2 skill, the others are underwater/downed skills or combos finishers and other misc sources).

Once these 3 traits are fixed to scale then you have to look at the degree of scaling. If the GW2 wiki is correct, the dagger 2 skill scales at 1/25, or .04/tick for 9 ticks = .36. The most comparable healing skill is the Ele’s cone of cold, which scales at .32. While there are various differences between the 2 skills this gives you the impression that ANet’s thought process was the scale siphoning roughly along the same degree as healing skills. So if they scale the siphon traits along the same lines as similar healing-related traits then we might actually see Necro’s spec into the blood line and gear healing power every once in a while.

I think people are confused. Life siphon skills have 2 components, the damage component and the heal component. They are 2 separate figures. The healing component of some life siphoning skills is affected by healing power, but it does not affect the damage component. So there is no offensive power gained from stacking healing power.

Bottomline is right now all life siphoning traits do not scale with healing power, which does not make any sense. Fix these traits (along with bloodthirst not affecting all life siphoning skills either), and then we can talk about more drastic changes if necessary.

The ANet devs made some really good counterpoints on why they focused on conquest mode… that the other modes simply weren’t fun. In particular I think an official deathmatch game mode would be disastrous as every would just immediately pop their elites and it would be a huge cluster… well.. you know what.

I also agree with their statement that some of the other popular game modes can be implemented within the conquest framework, but we shall see for ourselves with the next map which will be CTF-oriented.

I also believe they can make a GvG-esque game mode within the conquest framework since if you really think about it, GvG was essentially a hybrid game mode in itself with 1 capture node (flag stand), a CTF element of flag running, and the end-game guild lord mechanic. That said, I do not think the current map layout of LoF would do it justice. The outer points on these maps are simply too close and too easily accessible to both sides at all times.

Yes this is OP in hot join because everybody plays full glass cannons and runs around solo and nobody rezes.

The conclusion? Nerf hot join.

There is no trick really you just need at least 70% fear duration to get the 2nd tick. I think it behaved a bit funny in that you don’t get the 2nd tick if the target doesn’t have another condition on them, but since you always want a second condition on them anyway for the extra fear damage it doesn’t really matter all that much.

I think the reason why this is so is because the damage from Terror actually occurs before 1s and/or there is some rounding going on since 2s fears (which would be 3.4s with 70% condi duration) only tick 3×.

I have 2 main gripes about Scepter/Torch (this is from a sPvP perspective, I don’t PvE much so there may or may not be issues in those areas of the game):

1) The devs stated in beta they wanted it to be a condition-based, defensive weapon. Yet currently it actually dishes out more damage in power/crit-based builds, and in no way shape or form is it a defensive weapon as the #3 skill functions much better as a DPS-skill with a block trigger than anything else.

2) I’m unsure why Torch is channeled, and why it is blind → burn. The initial blind isn’t worth all that much since even if you swing at air it wipes the condition off you, and guess what you’re stealthed anyway.

What the devs should do:

1) Scepter – align the intended design of the weapon with its actual abilities. Right now condition-based Mesmers are severely underpowered, and a true defensive, condition-based 1h’er is much needed.

It’s difficult to say what exactly is needed since this will require a total rework of all 3 of the Scepter’s skills, but given that the Mesmer lacks the cover conditions necessary to combat cleanses I think the focus should be on the shorter, higher burst conditions like burning and confusion. This would fill a needed niche in the current meta as well (a bursty condi-based class). I think a good baseline to work with would be an auto-attack that applies confusion, a DPS-oriented ability that applied burning, and then lastly a true defensive-oriented ability (such as a channeled block). Also either the DPS or defensive-oriented ability would create clone somehow.

2) Torch – It should apply burn on activation and then blind upon return. The blind upon return makes much better sense as it would now is useful since you are no longer stealthed. Also they should remove the channel and just make the unstealth portion an activated secondary trigger so you can perform actions while stealthed. I also think iMage cooldown also needs to be brought into line with the rest of the Phantasms. It’s kind of ironic how the weakest Phantasm also has the longest cooldown.

3) Illusionary Elasticity – They need to make this trait affect iMage and Staff clones.

If they do these 3 things then I believe condi-based Mesmers could be viable in high-level sPvP.

Overall I think trap rangers are more or less fine, but of course they should fix all their traits like empathic bond. As for point #2, I think the core issue there is quickness affecting stomps (and caps on temple, etc.), more than anything specific to rangers. They should really change quickness so that it only affect skill cast times. I’m somewhat surprised this issue has never been brought up to the devs in any of the SotGs.

People who are saying they can kill an Ele in a 1v1 or push them off a node or whatever are completely missing the point. It isn’t their 1v1 ability or any other singular thing that makes Eles good, it is their strength in 1v1/sustain/burst/aoe/support/mobility/downed state COMBINED that makes them strong in the current meta. This is pretty much what ANet devs were saying in the last SotG so they understand the problem, so let’s just hope they do not go overboard with the solution.

Here is an example of what I’m talking about. Look at how effective an Ele who zones the beach area in FoN map is. The Ele can both guard the pathway to their close point and threaten the far point, thus forcing a defender to stay there. The ele can do this because he has the 1v1 ability + mobility + sustain to neutralize the point + escape options when rotates come. The only other class that comes close is the thief, but they are less effective in a number of areas (not as strong in support if they keep a bunker at home point, not as effective neutralizing points due to their defense/sustain revolving around teleports/stealth, etc.)

So what is the best counter to this? Why, that is having your own Ele do the exact same thing. If that doesn’t mean there is a problem with Eles then I don’t know what does.

Yeah more end-game statistics would be fantastic. Look at all the different end-game statistics you see in games like DotA 2. Not only would it help top teams, more importantly I think it helps the casual playerbase see their effectiveness and progression as a player, which is very important for player retention.

So I was playing around with this idea some more. The long channeled block procs Retaliatory Shield trait (3s Retal per block) and 6pc Rune of the Guardian (1s burning per block). I think this might have potential as part of a bunker build. Still playing around with it. Anybody else find any other tricks/uses for this?

I use Runes of the Ogre. Power adds a lot more DPS than precision point-for-point, and Ogre provides similar burst DPS compared to the 10% bonus damage vs opponents side/back that Rune of the Thief does. Also the Rock Dog is pretty cool as when it dies it gives you 10% LF too ^^

Numerous life stealing skills already scales with healing power, but for some reason many of the necro’s traits that siphon life do not scale for what I can only imagine is a bug. If they did we might actually see some necro’s who actually spec into their blood line.

They just need to fix the traits. IIRC none of the life stealing traits scale with healing power. Also bloodthirst doesn’t affect all life stealing skills either. And lastly some life stealing traits are just woefully underpowered like vampiric rituals.

Yeah 5v5 is about downed state management, and yeah 5v5 is dominated by AoEs… but how in the hell does that lead you to the conclusion that you should be able to stomp ppl 1v5 LMAO. That doesn’t solve anything other than you being able to dominate hot joins even more.

They need to balance out the downed states among the classes first and see how that plays out and then take it from there.

Ojimaru.8970:

Quickness speeds up everything. The “cast time” for the first 2 strikes is the animation and quickness speeds up the animation. It really increases DPS on the #1 attack for those 3s.

I can’t agree with that, especially after going through subcrazy’s video. There are scant few moments when Sigil of Rage triggers and most often he only gets one chain in, but there is no difference between Chain hits #1 and #2 with or without Quickness.

While I haven’t specifically tested the speed of each individial attack chain, the DPS (which is the only thing that really matters) is night and day w/ and w/o quickness. I suspect what you may be seeing is that quickness might be causing some de-syncing between animation and damage dealt (e.g. quickness stomps) so it may appear the same animation-wise but DPS-wise the difference is still there.

q = heal
e = dodge
skills = 1-5 and r,t,f,g
f1-f4 skills = shift-r,t,f,g
c = interact