Guild Wars 2

Down state was a terrible decision for many reasons, but it doesn’t have to be totally eliminated, if they have decided it is part of their game.

Having people deal damage while in down state THAT is something that should be removed. If I am fighting a mesmer for example and I down him and there’s a buddy coming for him, my first thought is “crap, I can’t finish the guy in time for him not to deal massive damage via #1 and especially #3” and I mentally prepare to dodge the rogue at that point, because if that rogue hits me once, I am done.

So not only can’t I focus my attention on his team mate, who will try and revive him, I also can’t deal meaningful damage to the downed body, because I will not be able to outdamage the healing and I am likely to get smacked for 6k, if I stay close to the body.

Not only is there no reason to go single-target, it’s pretty terrible to do so, which is why dagger/pistol thieves actually aren’t meta again yet.

The fact that the dagger has no cleave is the biggest drawback one can imagine and why sword thieves are still the prevalent build.

Body blocking is incredibly frustrating, closely followed by the feeling of helplessness you get when you down somebody and they are getting revived. You can’t build pressure on both, which means as long as they can revive faster than you can damage, you are just taking damage for no reason.

cuge.5398:

The game evolved ? compared to “the burst meta” ?
Its like saying that if tomorrow we will turn into one-celled organism we evolved and its time to adapt to our new lives. lol.
Burst meta required many steps of coordination (ex. picking the target, count down to burst togheter, 3.2.1 – combo cc on it, vulnerability stack and shatter/backstab/100b)
Now its more like everyone looks at which skills are not on CD and press those buttons untill somone fall down.

The problem with the “burst meta” was that the spike damage of a single class was/is way too high. Sure, there was the possibility for a little more coordinated play, but not only didn’t it take any more than two people coordinating and often times only one player unloading their burst, it also made combat feel very front loaded.

If you got hit by a spike, you were pretty much forced to use all your tools to escape, rather than being able to counter attack and go of the offensive, because there were a lot more glass cannons in the meta.

The main issue combat-wise has always been that the extremes are way too strong.

This was probably done to make combat very fast paced as advertised, but they didn’t realize that not only do you eliminate one of the main aspects of good pvp, which is the back and forth between opponents and the looking and waiting for openings, but you also create an environment where in order to counter one extreme you need to buff the other and vice versa.

Combat in MMOs is not as fast paced, not because players are slower at reacting than in fighting games, but because the slower pace opens up a myriad of possibilities in terms of class synergy and smart play.

The secret to good team pvp lies in creating team oriented combat where killing the opponent is not a result of them making a single mistake, but rather the result of your team making things come together perfectly.

Giving every single class as much self sufficiency as they do have in gw2 and allowing them to avoid or escape 80% of the damage, means you need to design the classes in a way that landing 20% of your damage will kill the target. Yet if 20% of your attacks are enough to kill a target, we obviously must also allow them to escape the majority of them or fights would be decided by who executes the first strike.

A single phantasm from either sword, greatsword, staff or pistol is going to outdamage any healing from warrior’s healing signet, as long they don’t use bunker typical amulets. Even with soldier a phantasm is going to at the very least neuter all the healing done by the signet.

And that’s using a shatter build without any traits to increase phantasm damage.

This went to page two a little too quickly for my taste. I feel this could be happening to many others, which is why we see so many leader-board questions. It would be nice to know why this is happening.

Caffynated.5713:

mini.6018:

I really expected this from necros.I mean this was as perfectly prevedible like them stacking rabid gear and spam scepter auto in complete safety of full toughness paired with two healthbars.

I just wonder that instead of complaining, anyone considered rampager? I a using it on my warrior since a few days and works nicely.Except i need to actually know what i am doing because no armor at all.Why instead of free easymode nectos would venture into a more risky/skilled play? Someone might even find fun to actually have to do other except facetanking and spam condis/ds/condis/leech form/condis i win.Just saying.
Some risk maybe?
Wars were nerfed into less than useles for spvp again and still don’t complain as muh. (Probably because they got back to their necro main afwr they saw the patchnotes).But then they realised diamond skin said hello.

You realize the guy used a carrion amulet and had 30 points in his power line. That’s 944 power, which is more than a zerker amulet. He still couldn’t put out enough damage to get the ele under the diamond skin threshold.

People see what they want to see and I am sure my post will be drowned in the sea of ignorance, but, if you have an open mind and still clicked this thread, look at the duel starting at 6:25 in the video. That duel shows everything you need to know about the mechanics of Diamond Skin, if you know what to look for.

The Necromancer wins the duel and he is using rabid, which is a perfectly fine choice for a condition build.

What people need to understand about Diamond Skin is that an Elementalist, while seemingly unaffected by conditions over 90% health, is using every cool down to stay above that threshold in the same way, he would be using it, if he didn’t have Diamond Skin. All that changes is that he is front-loading them rather than using them throughout the fight.

This front-loaded cool down usage comes at the expense of being defenseless, once the Necromancer overcomes that barrier. The particular duel I am referring to at 6:25 in that video illustrates that rather well. The very second the Necromancer breaks through the barrier, the Elementalist is out of cool downs entirely and drops like a stone without being able to defend itself.

Expand your horizons and realize that a fight and kill doesn’t always have to involve slowly and steadily taking health out of your opponent, till he succumbs to your damage, the fight and kill is just as legit, if you can force your opponent to use all their skills to keep themselves at close to full health and then kill him in just a few seconds, when an opening has presented itself.

This video and thread is nothing more than Lordrosicky or his buddies from Team Team Team or whatever their name is trying to manipulate developers and readers into thinking the trait is overpowered and/or passive and quite frankly it is neither.

Well, the real problem, if there was one, is the signet healing on skill activation rather than on connect. Though we see the necro winning a duel with rabid later on in that video.

If the ele was to use a different heal, this would hardly be an issue. The devs could alos increase the healing on the signet and change it so it heals only if you connect.

zone.1073:

Slim.3024:

Diamond Skin can work, though the Elementalist will have to use several cooldowns just to keep it running. Cooldowns they won’t have later in the fight.

Nobody would pop a 2k heal with 500 HPs missing on their Elementalist. With Diamond Skin, you will have to, if you want to keep taking advantage of it and that “overheal” will be missing once you run out of cooldowns and drop below the threshold for good.

Having 100% uptime on Diamond Skin is not important, nor is it necessary for the trait to be useful. It’s like a Guardian’s blocking. It can happen suddenly at any time, and no amount of anticipation can counter it. This is how Diamond Skin will be useful. The Ele can suddenly have immunity to conditions at any moment, which can waste important cooldowns from opponents. Warriors can no longer Pin Down (immobilize + bleed) an Ele whenever they feel like it, because Diamond Skin can kick in and negate it. Same with many other classes’ abilities.

Diamond Skin encourages anti-face-roll gameplay, basically.

That makes no sense, whatsoever. Smart Elementalists will try and stay above the threshold from the start to reduce overall damage tremendously. Dropping below the threshold opens you up to way more damage in just a split second than the overheal you lose from working the trait as frontloaded as possible.

I have a lottery ticket I would like to retroactively be rewarded for in real life. Any chance?

The numbers are only from 6 weeks ago.

Diamond Skin can work, though the Elementalist will have to use several cooldowns just to keep it running. Cooldowns they won’t have later in the fight.

Nobody would pop a 2k heal with 500 HPs missing on their Elementalist. With Diamond Skin, you will have to, if you want to keep taking advantage of it and that “overheal” will be missing once you run out of cooldowns and drop below the threshold for good.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Arganthium.5638:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

<<Evolving players>> like Helseth + Caed , pwn Piunny maths and speculations !
Asian ppl too soon !

You’re speaking nonsensical gibberish.

You are right
I should better find new players and link a math list about <<100 power increase, increase the dps by % , so the battle log your linked is false and you are lying>>
I am saying globlerish
Can you use ur Math skills to enlight us for your class list ?

Be a casual with no << good name>> to protect , i am having a lot of fun on the forums :PP

You may knock on math and theory all you like, fact is that 95% of the top players in this game are not playing optimal builds. It ranges from the wrong sigil to rune set or even traits and utilities, which almost always could be improved within the parameters of their own playstyle and role.

They do not know that, though and thus they stay “ignorant” and assume their success is based on their very specific choices, which often leads to them actually convincing themselves of the choices they have made with nothing more to show for it than anecdotal evidence.

The worst part is that less successful players believe this to be true as well and thus blindly copy whatever has been successful.

At the very top of this game, builds, skill and precise, evolving or advanced gameplay is very much secondary to actually knowing how to rotate the capture points correctly.

GW2 is more a strategy game than a PvP combat oriented one.

Arganthium.5638:

I am. I assume what I assume because warriors are arguable the most beginner friendly (and similar to classes in other MMO’s), so it would make sense that many warriors are bad for that particular reason.

Well, there are two sides to that coin as well. A class that is easier to play leaves less room in terms of playing badly or making mistakes. Which leads to the same conclusion as before.

If you see Warriors losing to Mesmers quite often, the logical conclusion is not that these Warriors are bad, which in fact they aren’t considering that it’s the more experienced players who have rerolled to them mostly in the competitive PvP scene, but that Mesmers do in fact have the upper hand against Warriors.

And yes, it is implied here that only the performance of meta builds is being evaluated in this, for the poster who accused me of being nonsensical.

Arganthium.5638:

I’d say that that’s only partially true. IMO mesmer has very good matchups against warriors only because a lot of warriors are really bad at the game.

I was under the impression you were a numbers guy. Assuming Warriors are somehow worse players in general is nonsense.

Mesmers have the upper hand against Warriors, unless they insist on using staff and greatsword, which are two range weapons, and try to fight them on a node in close combat.

And even then, you can often win by pressuring them to follow you and often succeed in keeping the node contested as well. A Warrior who chooses to stay on the node is going to die without a chance to the off node pressure a Mesmer produces through phantasms and ranged damage. And that’s with a shatter centric build.

Arganthium.5638:

So, y’all know how these work just remember to consider how different profs will be after the Dec 10th patch

Tier 1- meta or OP
Tier 2- average or near meta
Tier 3- below average or practically unusable

Also remember to order classes by number, i.e. 1. Mesmer is stronger than 2. Warrior

For example, here’s my list:

Tier 1:
1. Mesmer
2. Warrior
3. Necromancer

Tier 2:
4. Engineer
5. Guardian
6. Ranger

Tier 3:
7. Elementalist
8. Thief

And… Go.

I find this list very interesting, since the first tier is comprised of classes that basically counter each other. Mesmer counters Warrior, Warrior counters Necro and Necro counters Mesmer.

So I have seen a lot of people complain about the warrior’s healing signet and while I personally do not believe it to be problematic, I must agree that there is no actual counterplay to the healing skill itself.

Now this is not a game breaker, since countering a heal over time completely like you can with the regular burst heals would be devastating simply because interrupting an active burst heal will only delay that heal, while being able to counter the full effects of a passive heal over time, would negate the effect entirely.

So what we are actually looking for in order to do justice to both these arguments would be to find a way to only partially counter the passive heal over time from the healing signet. This would introduce counterplay and put both, passive heals over time and active burst heals on the same level (both are already affected by poison equally, in case somebody wanted to argue that poison is a counter to the passive healing signet).

Suggestion: When you activate a signet, the passive ability obviously goes on CD. This is nothing new. However, some of you may have noticed that the passive is also disabled if you cancel your signet cast before it activates for the usual 4 seconds. During these 4 seconds, in case of the healing signet, you are not being healed by the passive.

Thus my suggestion follows the same line of thinking. Since apparently signets are not meant to give the passive while on cooldown, why don’t we simply make this universally true and have crowd control, which temporarily put all your skills on cooldown, disable the passive effects of signets and thus the healing from the healing signet for as long as the skill isn’t useable?

Food for thought.

This has to have a three second interval.

You were complaining about the very same condi classes two months ago, Lordrosucky.

You were kittening and moaning about how Anet wasn’t doing anything to stop them and here we are two months later, classes haven’t been altered, the meta has just adapted and evolved, and you are claiming that Anet is behind the times?

Lordrosicky.5813:

Read it again. This isn’t what he said at all.

Healing Signet
currently the only heal being used by warriors. why? because its the best. this need to be nerfed for anyone using zerker amulet lke was originally intended. with 300 healing power or less (300 is easily acheivable going for cleansing ire, merciless hammer) this skill should be TOTALLY unviable.

I suggest you read it again, because that is clearly what he stated. If healing signet was to heal as much with 700-800 healing power as it is now with 300, then it would be as overpowered as it is considered now when adding 400-500 healing power.

If the healing scaled tremendously well with healing power, so that the heal was to become unviable at 300 healing power, it would be healing for exorbitant amounts by these forums’s standards if you go up to 1300+ healing power.

dday.9532:

im saying healing signet should not be viable ONLY to zerker warriors, but great for bunkers.

jus like how a mm necro may use summon blood fiend, but it would be unviable for a condi necro.

im not crying abount imbalance, im trying to be constructive

So how do you make healing signet unviable with 300 healing and deem it overpowered with 700-800?

Do people really think the difference between unviable and completely overpowered is 30 HP/s?

Spread that rumor, perhaps people will start using Dolyak runes and become game-breakingly OP from one day to another.

Zenith.7301:

A stun is a stun. The utility of the stun from UF is hardly an issue considering the stunned person is taking mainhand axe levels of damage, which actually outdamages UF hammer.

Indeed, a stun is a stun, not a knockdown.

“mainhand axe levels of damage” means absolutely nothing considering how backloaded its damage is. You are working with a 2 second knockdown on a 25s CD. Axe/Mace warriors will be chasing their targets 80% of the time and have very low crit chance, making Eviscerate pointless other than for the fire aura after combustive shot.

There is absolutely no evidence for Axe/Mace + Longbow being anywhere close to on par with the current Hambow in terms of survivability, damage or control and that’s what this argument has been about.

Zenith.7301:

Axe/mace has no stun? Do you even play the class? You got a ranged conal stun on it.

Tremor is a knockdown, not a stun, thus Unsuspecting Foe’s condition is not met. It’s one thing being wrong and another one making an kitten of yourself.

And axe/mace users run that setup with hammer, the rationale being that targets only have so many dodges that force them to choose between eating axe auto+eviscerate or use the dodges for the hammer lockdown.

Whatever.

We were discussing Axe/Mace + Longbow, because Sensotix assumed that Hambow warriors would migrate to that weapon combo after the hammer was nerfed.

I guess mini is not pressing his heal skill better then?

People keep claiming the 400 HP/s the warrior’s healing skill offers is too strong to overcome, though when two warriors die to one or whatever and they all use the same passive healing signet, one can’t just argue that the player made the difference, without having to realize that the healing signet is not the problem.

azuzephyr.7280:

Slim.3024:

Yep, which still means that your sustain with an Axe/Mace + LB is lower than the current Hambow build, while at the same time losing a ton of damage from Unsuspecting Foe.

Yes it will be, and that needs to happen. Healing signet is still going to be very strong post-patch, something has to give

Damage
Defence
Control

Pick one.

If you follow the discussion a couple posts above yours, you will see that I never stated the changes as proposed in the december 10th preview are unwarranted.

I am simply trying to convey that nerfing the healing signet on top of the changes that will undoubtedly already affect sustain and damage would be premature and probably turn out to be too much.

Sensotix.4106:

when i talk about mobility i talk about 25% movement speed increase while wielding a melee weapon all the time

Warrior’s Sprint in a Hambow build only increases your movement speed while using the hammer, which might not seem important, but it means half the time you are not getting the bonus.

and when i talk about sustain i mean immunity to condi dmg immunity to physical damage and the signet in combination with lyssa runes as well as healing signet

Yep, which still means that your sustain with an Axe/Mace + LB is lower than the current Hambow build, while at the same time losing a ton of damage from Unsuspecting Foe.

Sensotix.4106:

nerfing hammer is a good way to start but after the patch warrior will still be a truck running over everything with his sustain mobility

Hambow has very limited mobility. Not sure how this is a problem.

and just with a different weaponset i predict longbow and axe mace and these weaponsets are hardly touched so nerfing hammer will not change the state of the warrior after the patch..it will make him a little bit harder to play since he cant rely on his cc but it will still be too tanky for the dmg he does

Axe/Mace has no stun and given the fact that most Hambow Warrior’s are using Soldier’s, there is no way that the damage is comparable to what it currently is, as you are not able to take advantage of Unsuspecting Foe.

Sustain will also drop in such a build, because you can’t lock down the opponent like you can with the hammer.

They can’t do that, even if they wanted to. People would exploit it to manipulate rosters for solo queues by syncing with friends. Just block your friend and unblock him as soon as the queue pops.

Rinse and repeat.

Sensotix.4106:

Slim.3024:

Sensotix.4106:

are you serious man? whats wrong with my torment suggestion? do you agree with punishing players for moving lolz

You are looking at it the wrong way. Torment is not punishing you for moving, it is rewarding you for standing still. The decision is on you to understand when taking advantage of it is actually going to be “advantageous”.

The condition is meant as a deterrent for people who decide to run away from you. Its purpose is for the aggressor to stick to their target more easily, which is exactly what it does. If Torment did less damage for targets who moved, this purpose would be voided.

you just can’t stand still in this game it’s your instant death man…the way torment works is just wrong

Why bother quoting me, if you do not even make the slightest effort of understanding what I just explained to you. Torment was designed to encourage you NOT to move. It’s like an immobilize that you can choose to ignore for a little extra damage.

For the love of god, take a step back and read, you might learn a thing or two. There are abilities in this game that force you to stand still and take whatever you are about to receive. Do we want to remove these too, because this game is “move or die”? It’s their exact purpose to not allow you to move.

Furthermore, you simply can not advocate an intensity stacking cripple and then proceed to argue that you need to be able to move in this game or you are dead. You demand that a movement-impairing effect should be made stronger, yet you want torment to be changed in its purpose, when the arguments for these individual changes are worlds apart and incongruent.

Sensotix.4106:

are you serious man? whats wrong with my torment suggestion? do you agree with punishing players for moving lolz

You are looking at it the wrong way. Torment is not punishing you for moving, it is rewarding you for standing still. The decision is on you to understand when taking advantage of it is actually going to be “advantageous”.

The condition is meant as a deterrent for people who decide to run away from you. Its purpose is for the aggressor to stick to their target more easily, which is exactly what it does. If Torment did less damage for targets who moved, this purpose would be voided.

Cripple stacking in intensity takes the cake. How did you come up with that nonsense?

The only reason why shatter mesmer was considered “out of the meta” is that a few frustrated individuals with a fan base of lobotomized sheep have been preaching it.

It’s back in the meta because the same frustrated individuals have now either left the game or portrayed themselves as the saviours of a broken class.

There, you just got educated.

You falsely assume your credentials mean anything. Watching your video of the shatter mesmer, I still see you mouse clicking mirror images and it’s bound to E.

Before the thread got deleted in the other section you also made the argument that even the devs think sword + dagger thieves are op, yet you forgot to notice the fallacies in that line of argumentation, ’cause not only are the devs not changing anything about the abilities you are questioning, but you also missed all the negative changes that the developers have made to classes throughout the year and for which people at some point or another have made an argument and subsequently claimed that the devs agreed with them.

You also claim thieves to be pretty much incredible duelers, yet in your recent video showcasing how to beat a sword + dagger thief, the necro kicks the living kitten out of the thief.