Guild Wars 2

warduke.1780:

Duellers should be banned, like they are in other games.

I make it a mission when I see a duel going down to disrupt that duel. The abuse I get is priceless.

I don’t care about people interrupting my duels, when I have some. I just let my opponent kill the guy and go back to my duel. I don’t get why you’d get abuse.

Dawdler.8521:

And if the Thieves by chance meet that Engineer, they will be gone and 100m away in 3 seconds. If just fancy dagger flailing made a good roamer a Necro would own too, but yeah… it doesnt.

No way. They always think that because they are two, they are sure to win. By the time they realize their mistake, EG+Magnet Pull is enough to prevent them to run away. And if you have to run away every time an engineer comes by, it’s still a bad team: no decent roaming pair should loose a 2v1 against a player of their skill level.

unlucky.9285:

^ then stop running to far from the start of the game then fighting off point constantly killing the beasts at the start of a match leaving a 3v4 at mid on foe fire… that should be the only reason people start to get angry at you.

oh and that one guy that keeps suiciding into a turret engie who holds the point till his friend turns up and ganks them…

Dude, it’s a game that comes with a learning curve, and that’s exactly what’s fun about it. You never suicided to a turret engi when you were new? Sure, you can tell them, without insulting them, via map chat, what strategy you think is best (and should do so). You can be annoyed to get bad players in your team. But why insult bad players? You’re harmful to the community. PvE players always complain that insults and bad sportsmanship drive people away from PvP: well the matchmaking will not get better any time soon if people are discouraged to learn and progress by comments of the type “go back to PvE/WvW zerg”. I don’t get why you feel the need to belittle these players. Ask yourself that question the next time you get angry.

Tricare.2946:

Support Guardian and Condition Necro IMO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm--IZqqEs8

That works really really well in squirkmishes, but the problem is the mobility. You can’t really chase targets, and you can’t really escape when the situation becomes delicate imo. For me, that’s the main reason guardians, necromancers, or rangers without sword are not great for roaming.

Dawdler.8521:

Thief x 2.

As long as you can heavily exploit stealth there is no need to “complement” another class. Plus, only another Thief or possibly Mesmer can match a Thief. The rest will just be giant targets and unable to keep up.

You can of course spice things up by using one of them as tanky first hitter vs groups and one as the sneaky follow up backstabber.

Really? One good engineer and you’re both lying on the ground. It happens to most thief-thief pair I run into, and I don’t consider myself good. But then again: there aren’t many engineers roaming in WvW, so if you want to kill PU mesmers or rangers, that will work.

Mesmer/thief is more balanced. Warrior/engineer is deadly is good hands, and disengage as easily as a thief and better than a mesmer.

Ithilwen.1529:

VOIP is known to be easily monitored by a third party. A certain free VOIP provider that rhymes with snipe is infamous for the practice of allowing governments to listen in. I have some personal experience with this issue and the former Thai government.

The technology is untrustworthy and is known to be monitored by third parties. I definitely would not like to see it in game on principal.

Well, no one would force you to use it. I personally would have no problem with the Thai government knowing I suck at the game.

It would be incrediblofabulously cool. I would love to chat with the people I play with! I doubt that half the people solo queuing would really use it, but for those who would, it could seriously increase the average skill level in soloq.

Shomaruki.7395:

Not work if you under a condition like Bleeding? OR at least it won’t make you as stealthy as a certain distance because you are leaving a trail of blood.

Welp, everyone roll with the idea. …GO

It could have been a fun implementation of stealth. Anet chose a different path, making Bleed easy to apply and balancing stealth around its current implementation. During two years, there have been countless balance changes around stealth and the thief and mesmer professions. Why would you want to modify a balanced mechanic so late in the development of the game? Even if your idea is amusing, it’s not worth spending another two years on stealth balance.

nacario.9417:

I wish they could just redo obsidian sanctum into a pure dueling arena without the possibility to get killed. It was meant for gvg but is it really being used for that? Would be a nice place to hone ur skills n make it so u can duel ur own server. Im just trying to think of the quickest n less resourcedemanding implementation

I don’t like your idea, but I’m still replying because one thing seemed strange in your suggestion: why don’t you want to be killed? It’s not like it matters or anything: just walk one minute and you’re back.

Location filter is a must! I’m sure I’m part of the good swiss players, but I’d like to know for sure.

@Flumek: they changed the LB because they saw that players didn’t like it. One more test season and we’ll finally get something meaningful?

I think a lot of people didn’t understand what WindFall meant, maybe because not everybody is supposed to know what the engineer’s weapon skills are.

@WindFall: that’s a pretty dope idea! The particular example you gave is not very appealing since the current legendary rifle is already sic-fi based, but I’m all in favor of more animations on skills.

Currently, the Predator affects every shot with a specific sound and effect and even Grenade Barrage gets its own animation! But the animations still have the feeling of being profession-based. There is a lot of coding underneath the current Legendaries, and changing the animation for every skill, while changing the description as well would require a tremendous amount of work. In addition, learning these animation for unranked/WvW would be a bit annoying, especially if they are too flashy. But I hope Anet added cool effects to the new Legendaries, and I look forward to seeing what they look like, since I’m not really into the old ones.

I think historically, the transmutation system had to do with “realism”: you couldn’t just change your armor appearance on the go like that, but you could use a “spell” that made your current armor look like an armor you had in your inventory.

Of course, with the wardrobe, this realism is gone (and I don’t mind, I think it was a great change), but the stones stayed. Will Anet get rid of them in the future? Maybe, but I think they are still earning money by selling them on the TP, even if there are plenty in the game (I changed the appearance of 8 characters in two weeks and still got some).

I doubt it, especially since they seem to have changed their way to approach the way they deliver new features. The stability and camera changes for example were kind of a big deal, the sort of things they could have included in a feature patch, or even the dye preview. They didn’t, and released the changes as soon as they were ready. I prefer this approach: if it works, just release it!

Yasha.5963:

How would 5 minion-mancers go? At least it would be great to see how the AI slugs it out.

That would be some serious e-sport kitten right there.

Zende.1704:

Juba.8406:

All warrior’s stances are instant, why this one is different.

its the only thing stopping this skill from being a really good healing skill.

Had the same idea yesterday! A buff like that would be pretty cool for defiant stance and wouldn’t make it OP in my opinion.

SC spotted!

In all seriousness: yes, good suggestion.

Ragion.2831:

Ranked, Unranked, Hotjoin the builds i create based on my playstyle consistently outplay meta builds, why? because i know how to make them pay for their squishiness.

People should just build based on their playstyle, if meta happens to be it then gg, if not, then custom build.

Preach.

I’m pretty sure I was asked in the online form for the activation of my account to give the main reason I had for buying the game. So I guess Anet has a first element of answer on this question. Unfortunately, as they do on many subjects, they keep this information to themselves.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bountiful_Theft

Aegis problem solved. Aegis granting skill have cooldown, steal has a cooldown too. And if you didn’t trait mug your steal will not reveal you, letting you land that backstab.

There is no Aegis problem. The passive Aegis is already extremely powerful against dagger thieves. How braindead do you have to be to not dodge/block/about face when you see a “blocked” message out of nowhere?

P/P (and conditions in general) is actually a very good idea for leveling if you don’t mind killing stuff (relatively) slowly. The reason for it being that condition damage scales with your level and not with your weapon strength (unlike power). So even if your weapon is a bit outdated (it happens to the best of us), you’ll still deal good damage. I run a lot of different builds on a lot of different professions, but in WvW, the spec that takes the less time to cap a fully upgraded camp is by far my condi engineer, that’s why I said it was “relatively” slow.

I would also use Elixir Gun. You have to wait till level 40 to have speedy kits (which is the ABSOLUTE first trait you have to unlock), and if you practice your about face -> EG4 -> about face (or turning your camera during the leap), you’ll move a bit faster, which is always nice. In addition, the AA is the strongest condition AA the engineer has, and EG5 can rely save your live sometimes.

Finally, use bomb kit. It’s fun, it deals good condi AND power damage, it’s AoE, and it has some defensive capabilities (Big Old Bomb into bomb4 will grant you stealth). The third utility is up to you.

edit: don’t use grenades. Grenades are useless without the “Grenadier” Grand Master trait, that you can’t unlock till level 60 or so.

1000$? Isn’t that a bit much for a video game? Frankly, if you like the game that much, paying something like 50$ for an expansion might be worth it. But hey, do as you want.

Arikyali.5804:

Someone should make one for the current meta. XD

Engineer, guardian and thief are still awfully true. Might add something about rifle

Wow. This is pure genius. I just realized I needed to stop jump dodge-rolling on my thief.

fracture.9754:

Go to metabattle and use staff conjurer. Your build is about as bad as it gets DPS-wise.

Without being as negative, you should really take a look at the builds on metabattle, see what they include, and see if your build can be improved with the elements you’ll learn from there.

Shoutbow (look it up on metabattle.com). But a lot of other builds still work if you find that boring.

It’s fine imo. It really fits the profession well: you’re not supposed to arrive in a fight with Adrenaline built up. You’re supposed to gradually enrage, and liberate all this rage in one burst. As soon as your enemy is dead, there is no reason for you to still keep your adrenaline level up.

dodge?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Supply has a something to do do with it. The strong leather pants have a supply about 50-60. The privateer has a supply about 200-225. Higher supply means that people are underbidding each other more often and the prices drop.

Strong https://www.gw2tp.com/item/11615-strong-leather-pants
Privateer https://www.gw2tp.com/item/1464-strong-privateer-pants-of-divinity

Exactly. Some people need to buy the strong leather pants to unlock the skin for their wardrobe (their is an achievement for that), hence the difference in price.

Ok guys, consider this. In pvp, it is well known that a thief’s role is to decap points and to +1 team fights, and to avoid 1v1s as much as possible. It means that thief is probably not OP war machine you think it is. Don’t you think you’re doing something wrong?

Not only would that be crazily OP (If I could swap for a quick SB3 or SB5 every time I needed too, not many build could resist me), but I think it would step on the specific mechanics of the warrior and the engineer, who can swap weapons really fast. In addition, Anet won’t change core class mechanics when the game is already 3 year old.

1) Play SD
2) Faceroll the motherkitten

I’ve been playing with my rapier for eight months, and I’m not planning on changing now. I might get the katana for my mesmer though.

Some runes have a bonus that is just so good other elements may be overlooked. Hoelbrak gives you a reduced duration on conditions applied on you. That’s huge.

As for Pack runes, yes the swiftness uptime is useless. But the fury uptime is so good that you don’t really care about that. The interest being that you don’t need the sigil of intelligence with that rune, and are free to choose an other instead.

I get it, you want a condi rune. But Krait, really? I get the reasoning behind “bleed is more spiky”. However, you apply bleed so scarcely! If you take the trait for the bleed on crit, you lack precision with a celestial amulet. If you don’t, you have a super short bleed on Box of Nails, and a long bleed on grenade #2: that’s not enough to justify your usage of the rune. If you really want to go into conditions, try the runes of the Flame Legion (I play them in WvW, but I think they exist in pvp as well), or Adventurer, or even Balthazar, since effects that trigger with your healing skills are better on an engineer. I still maintain that Hoelbrak is the most solid choice.

Conncept.7638:

EDIT: Oh, and they heavily nerfed two of our three elites… none of which were particularly useful in any game mode in the first place. Yeah…

Not only was glyph of elemental recently buffed, but Fiery GS is and always has been amazing in WvW, so your statement is simply not true. I would agree however that elementalist didn’t get the best elite choice in the game.

Conncept.7638:

Forgetting to mention something? Like the fact that we are only such with one single build, the same single competitive build we have had since launch. I guess we have two if you consider the WvW staff build a ‘build’ at all, I don’t see how though with how little individual build hardly even matters in WvW.

Do you play in NA? Because if you play in EU, you’re way off. In fact, elementalist is probably one of the professions that has the greatest number of viable builds, with ranger maybe, but while rangers technically have three good builds (LB power, SB condi survival, melee condi survival), none of them are meta. Elementalist has DD, which is probably the strongest build in the current meta, but you conveniently forgot celestial staff, which is widely used, and clerical bunker staff: 55HP Monks, one of the best team in EU, has two in its roaster. In addition, scepter-focus zerker elementalist is still good, but a bit too vulnerable to thieves to be really competitive I’ll give you that. You run into a lot of zerker staff in unranked as well, but I think this build is just bad and the people who play it just can’t get over the big numbers their meteor shower shows.

jportell.2197:

There is a difference between trying new things that MIGHT work, over trying something ridiculous that just makes no sense. Like at all.

Sure, but some people’s minds work in mysterious ways. There’s a guy in this thread pretending that p/p zerker is viable. I know there’s no way because I (probably) main engineer, but maybe a pro ele player would laugh at me for ever believing that a Lightning Rod SD build was a good idea.

Exedore.6320:

Sorel.4870:

Ranked or unranked? If it’s the latter, please let people play the game the way they want.

Why do people think that unranked = hot join?

It shouldn’t matter if it’s ranked or unranked. Players who don’t understand profession/build mechanics should be rated and matched with other people who don’t understand profession/build mechanics. Let players fail; just fix the matchmaking so they don’t bring others down with them.

This particular instance is really the OP’s fault since it was a pre-made group. But his point that “Meta builds exist for a reason” is valid, though harsh. If you’re new to PvP, then looking at what others have done already is a highly recommended starting point.

Nah. If I played that p/p zerker build in hotjoin, I would still face roll everyone. That’s an extreme example, because you can pretty much see why it’s bad, but for example, there is a lot of engineer, ranger and warrior builds that are probably pretty good, but need to be tested somewhere else than hotjoin. In hotjoin, you can easily win 1v2/1v3 with a mass-sw/sw-shield interrupt celestial warrior with three physical skills (just try it: I have). So I bring these sometimes good, sometimes bad builds to unranked. Sometimes they fail (RIP Lightning Rod SD elementalist), but sometimes they are pretty good: a ranger friend of mine showed me a melee cleric ranger build that works so well we’re now playing it in ranked with success! If people never tried new things, how would your precious meta ever be found?

I’m still a bit bad at roaming with my mesmer, but I think I can help you since I also begin to play mesmer on a power shatter build in WvW, and it wasn’t easy.

One thing that helped me a lot was practicing different burst combos, in sessions of 15-30 minutes, on golems in HotM. Then playing a few matches when I got bored, and back to practice the shatters. Especially for the Blink shatters, it really helps getting the combos into muscle memory, so you can perform better afterwards. Then of course you have to practice on real players.

zaced.7948:

or a powernade engineer.

Wow. Where do you find such a rare bird? Since 100 nades was nerfed, I don’t see any powernade build anymore. You really haven’t played for a while

Ario.8964:

I would change it further, you are getting 0 might stacks so your damage won’t be sufficient to kill a foe quickly. I’d recommend a setup along these lines:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpErlcx+KseNCbBNyx0GRuxq85IEgkC-TJBHwAAuAAGeAAl2fAZZAA

P.S. Some people will say battle sucks, but they are wrong. It’s still amazing and the resulting damage capability you have is wonderful. Try it out and see how you like it.

Edit:
For fighting mesmers try to land your cc and really put a ton of pressure on with grenades as their condi removal is rather weak.

Rangers you need to dodge entangle and block rf, between that just utilize all types of damage you have to melt them as fast as possible.

100% agree with this guy. This is exactly the build I run (with EG instead of Elixir S), and it does wonders.

If the shatter mesmer is good, you’ll loose. However, he can’t fight on the node so he probably won’t try. The real trick is to place your Overcharge Shot. I found out that one good way to do that is to use Gear Shield when he switches to GS, and when thinks he’s smart and runs to you to try and damage you with his unblockable GS2 (mesmers always assume you don’t know that, silly animals), OS him (and watch out for the shatter he might activate while stunned). Usually, one well timed OS if he has his stun-breakers on CD and he’s dead.

ArrDee is right on that one. Condi runes are a bad choice in this case, apart from flame legion maybe, but that’s just a power rune with some burning duration increase, and without bomb kit it’s kinda bad.

In reality, the real variations you can have with the celestial rifle build are in traits and utilities: EG or Elixir S over Slick Shoes, Bomb Kit over Grenade Kit. For the rune, I’d say your best bets are still Pack (precision and fury for you and your allies, so you can drop the intelligence sigil), and my favorite Hoelbrak, since the reduced condition duration is fantastic given it’s our main weakness.

Stand The Wall.6987:

4 zerk necs all rotating lich at mid.
lawl.

Aaaaaaaaand they all run reflect bubbles on turrets.

gg

Trevor Boyer.6524:

snip

You’re exagerating. I never get deers and rabids on my team (apart from rank 80 players pretending to be new, which I always found kinda silly). I sometimes get really bad phoenix/dragons, but it ends there. I don’t play in ESL, I don’t have the “Champion Brawler” title, and if you say your MMR is very high and as a result you only get new/terrible players on your side, I believe you. However, a lot of others self-proclaimed high MMR just have an ego issue and don’t seem to realize they are just as bad as their team. Have you ever win a match by a huge margin just to have the terrible thief in the other team say in map chat “worst team ever”?

rainisword.7860:

Condi’s have always been capped in sPvP and still have an integral part in the meta. They are very strong against certain matchups(condi pressure from double engi is huge). This should tell you enough about how bad it would be in sPvP if there was no condi cap.

Well, I don’t think Anet should remove the condi cap in pvp, cause there is no use for it. However, if you have 25 stacks on bleed on you and you don’t remove them immediately (what you could theoretically do with 100 stacks also), you will die in seconds anyway. I play almost only pvp (with a bit of WvW), and I NEVER get 25 stacks of anything on me. If I come close, I remove it or insta die. So I bet this would change absolutely nothing, much like the stability patch changed nothing in small scale pvp, elite transformations aside.

About the uninterruptible heals: that is kind of the point. For example, Ether Renewal is amazingly strong for the condition removal it offers. It is also really easy to interrupt, that’s why most favor the signet. The turret heal is interruptible, but it’s the only one with a built in condi removal, that’s why engineers take it (otherwise they could take the uninterruptible healing kit). Withdraw and Hide in Shadow are both excellent, and you see more tanky thieves (mainly WvW condi thieves) take HiS, but Withdraw is just more adapted to the squishiness of the meta builds. Mesmers and necromancers are almost forced to take the easy to interrupt heals, because there is no better alternatives.

Well, I kind of agree with you. The problem is, if you don’t use sources outside the game (like Backpack’s excellent video on rotations, that every new player should watch) or if you don’t join a pvp guild, unranked won’t help you to get better. Just consider that the people who ping ferocity or the bosses on Niflhel are somewhat close to your MMR, if they are matched with you! I’ve seen dragon rank players systematically killing bosses just to get them stolen by a thief every time it respawns. Bad habits are contracted in unranked: when I was learning the basics (in old soloq), I’ve had more experienced players writing to me angrily in map chat because I wasn’t killing bosses on Niflhel. The basics of the maps are written on a description, but what the players do with them is a matter of experience. I’m all in favor of a rank requirement, but it won’t help bad players to get good.

Oh, and we didn’t need the stab change: it was directed at WvW, for once.

jportell.2197:

Pistol pistol engis running 2/2/0/6/4 bomb kits with a zerker ammy. You aren’t impressing anyone.

I understand that people like coming up with their own builds, but before you theorycraft one, make sure you have a solid basis of understanding for your class please.

Ranked or unranked? If it’s the latter, please let people play the game the way they want. Sure, it’s bad, but he’ll soon come to realize it and improve (hopefully).

edit: it’s sad really. With a celestial amulet it would be okayish, providing he takes HGH. I’d still go for IP though.

I like berserker duels, unless it’s against a power ranger (I don’t like the noise the LB makes). In particular, I love mesmer duels: patiently waiting for the opening, CRAZY BURST, and lurking back into the shadows, waiting for the next opening. Or SD thief vs SD thief: crazy war dance!

I also really like fighting celestial rifle engineers, no matter the build (of course, on some I just don’t fight them). They are really strong, their cc chain is somewhat hard to read, but when you see in their game and reflect that OS and burst them down, it’s an immense satisfaction. It’s better than fighting a condition engineer, when you feel like you’re the one doing most of the damage by walking at the wrong spot and hitting yourself with confusion.

Trigr.6481:

I know quite a few people would agree with me by saying that deceptive evasion should be added into the mesmers class mechanic.

Definitely. And mesmer is my fourth favorite profession.

With any comp:

1) Decide of one point you don’t want to cap. Let one of their engi sit there for the entire game.
2) Send four players at you home node and wipe the two guys there. Give targets.
3) Snowball to mid. They are 4 and you are 5, and some of them are on respawn.
4) Profit.

Best skills: every stab skill, AoE, MOA!

There seem to be a lot of threads these days about mesmers being confusing because they have so many clones, about thieves’ stealth spam, about scepter elementalist burst, and about vertical teleports. Sure, some of us are probably thinking that the pvp forums are about serious issues in pvp (leaderboards, cough cough), but I really welcome the return of these threads. It means new players have joined pvp, and that’s always good news! Welcome Zef! I hope you’ll like it here.