Guild Wars 2

suprNovae.5410:

DeWolfe.2174:

btw. for the blob comment, more number’s of equally geared and leveled players should always have a high probability of winning an engagement. Again, its the reality of the situation.

You have clearly never played in an organized group.
I would agree with you if you talked about equal skilled players but
an equal geared blob should lose against a much better organized/“skilled” guild group.

Same goes for the small scale guild. Where is the point in running with 2 friends in ts if the system doesnt allow you to win against 3 pugs?

I believe you should be able to win with a skilled zerg. The problem is, everyone being on TS with good gear, good group compositions, and following the commander closely is an advantage of course, but if you use the same tactics as a PU blob (buff, pop stab, run into the blob spamming CC, blasting water fields, repeat), you can’t really call yourself skilled, and you deserve to loose against a much larger force using the same strategy.

In the new system however, if you are coordinated enough, you can use this coordination to really take the advantage. I’m not a commander so unfortunately I will not be able to try it myself (though I’ll suggest it to my commander, of course), but the following could work:

- Faking an impact to bait out the CC (static fields, etc.), and stopping brutally mid-charge.

- Carefully time your CC to stop the zerg (easily done now). Maybe bring more CC to the battlefield (venom share thieves? focus mesmers?)

- Popping your stab one skill at a time to increase the duration.

- Bait out a blob stab. In a blob, a commander will say “pop stab”, and you’ll see 25 stacks of stab lasting for a ridiculous 5s, and then the blob will be vulnerable.

Kasteros.9847:

We used stab during fight against SFR blob( 5 guard party) all used every stab they had during clash, we didn;t even run 2m, stopped at spam of walls etc. THANK YOU ANET FOR THIS CHANGE!

Next time, put a veil in front of your zerg, take it, brutally stop, and watch them waste every static field/fear wall they have. Then pop stab and roll them over.

Thank Dwayna, I thought I was going crazy!

Bad players will always complain when the meta shifts. Good players will define a new meta. You should expect organized guild groups to come up with interesting new strategies in no time.

Joey.2769:

They are just pushing WvW to be more and more casual. They didn’t like the fact that smaller groups were wrecking their zergs full of 1 button mashing casuals.

Yeah sure. Cause there was nothing casual about pushing ONE button and having your entire party run through any number of static fields, fear walls, etc. that you encountered. Filthy casuals wanting zergs to watch were they step, how dare they. Let the hardcore players press one and follow a dorito, please.

Man, this 0.03% will get you killed, mind my words. Better take some lvl 10 food to fix this.

RoseofGilead.8907:

I really hate this change. It’s pretty lame of them to do that, and it’s doubly lame that they didn’t even bother to put it in the notes.

I feel just like you. I mean, it wouldn’t have bothered me if it was designed that way when the game first came out (I mean it makes sense: my mesmer isn’t in the vigils, why should he wear a vigil armor set?), but doing it know without notice is just mean. The choice of the order is irreversible, so know some armor sets might be completely unobtainable for me without doing the personal story on YET another alt. Without even mentioning the fact that dong the same personal story arc twice is boring.

Is this real? Because if it is, I will need to scream and punch walls a bunch of times. Fortunately I bought a light vigil chest piece with my warrior two days ago, but it seems completely unreasonable if it’s true. Have you checked that it’s not an option you can disable somewhere in the option panel?

I really, really hope you’re wrong, because this will somewhat spoil a really awesome patch.

Well, at least now, Blink doesn’t go on full CD when it fails, so that’s nice. I’ve heard than Blink spots in pvp still work and some were even fixed to work more smoothly. So I’d call it a Blink change, not nerf. To be honest, I was really afraid they were gonna remove all the vertical blink spots in pvp, so I’m a bit relieved. It sucks for the camp doors though.

To be fair, it’s not like stability in zergs wasn’t an issue prior to the patch. Try do play in a few zerg fights in the next few days and see how it goes. Don’t forget that stab doesn’t stack in intensity anymore, so just saying “pop SYG” in TS will result in an awesome 25 stack, 5s long stability for your zerg.

tyrellian.3706:

From today’s patch notes:

• Fixed an issue in which players could take repeated falling damage when running down steep inclines

That. Is. Awesome. They took their time, but good job on that one.

Wilco.1458:

Sunfish.5970:

“only thing they care about: pvp” wut?

He’s obviously trolling.

But I’m super scared of the Necro elites right now. Luckily Banner is too broken for most people to take Juggernaut but that’s also super scary.

Elixir X new meta ftw!

Wile.5024:

Trying to blink across the glass panels on skyhammer still fails, end up standing next to the panel….every time -.-

That bug is so annoying, and has killed me many times. However, I’m so relieved they didn’t nerf the port locations that I’m gonna let this one slide.

Celestial for one good reason: the time gate. In any case, you’ll need 30 days to get a celestial ascended set, so why not do an ascended armor at the same time?

Celestial in PvE is absolutely fine. If you prefer to play berserker, just get an exotic set: in PvE the stat difference means even less.

Another thing you’d like to consider is if you would want to use your ascended gear on another character eventually. But of course, chances are that the sigils won’t match.

sw-t/GS shatter PU mesmer. (drools)

Were you playing at strange hours? Usually I get good matches, but if I play late I get teams with very disparate skill levels.

By the way, I think you’re comfortable enough on your thief to start playing ranked. Don’t duel bunker/celestial builds, get a decap on far only if you see that your team is winning at mid, and you’ll be fine.

I recently bought GW1 Prophecies, and imo this henchmen system is lame. Sure, it’s useful now that nobody is playing the game anymore, but in a lively game like GW2, why is it so hard to just find four people to play with you? It’s a collaborate game! MMOs are boring if you play them on your own. If you really want to solo dungeons, get really good and you still can.

I don’t like this idea. I feel like in PvE and WvW, you need to feel like you OWN your gear. I would much prefer a system that would allow us to extract a sigil from a weapon, or a rune from an armor piece, without having to salvage it. It should be something rare, with the drop rate of a transmutation charge for example.

Nate.8146:

Or popping an elixir X and getting lucky with a tornado

First time EVER an engineer thinks that^^.

You’re completely right. They tried to mitigate the damage by removing the old BL when HoT goes live, but you can expect some HUGE queue times. You’ll have time to become a god at Stronghold, unlock all the specializations and masteries, explore the entire jungle and finish the entire story before you set foot on the new BL.

B-B-B-B-B-Build templates!!!

Maybe you picked the wrong target. Backstab is not a very hard hitting attack, even in full berserker gear. If you backstab a warrior in full PVT ascended gear, with mercy runes on top of that, chances are you are gonna see a ridiculous number. Don’t try to kill these guys: they don’t want to fight out of their zerg, and you’ll just waste your time trying to kill them. Focus elementalists, mesmers, other thieves, necromancers, and any guardian that wields something that doesn’t look like a staff.

Chaba.5410:

Why should I buy the expansion then? Seems like they’re stripping stuff out…

I can think of a few reasons, even if you only play WvW.

- If you want to play the specialization of your favorite professions

- If you want to play a revenant

- If you want a guild hall

I think it’s great that people who don’t buy the expansion will be able to play with people who do in WvW. That’s a great gesture from Anet. Personally, I’ll buy the expansion, since I really like the game and want to see what the new specializations will look like.

Impossible. The coverage issues would be unbearable, especially since (almost) every one will be willing to play on the new BL.

ToT farmers are the worst. I play a lot of PvP and the rare times I step into PvE is for some casual fun. I’m doing my map exploration and I see these three guys using a bunch of potions to transform ambient creatures into candy elementals, and candid as I am I think they are just having fun and I start slaying them with them… BAD IDEA! These guys were more mad than the most raging pewpew ranger nerd in the most ill-frequented hotjoin server. I learned my lesson: instablock these guys as soon as I can select them.

Guys, you’re way off topic. He asked if guardian was the only profession for which certain skills were weaker in pvp.

The answer is no. On the top of my head:

- Confusion damage has three different values across game modes. PvE damage > WvW > PvP

- The revealed debuff lasts 1s longer in PvP. 4s instead of 3.

- Cloak and Dagger damage is reduced by 50% in PvE.

So it’s safe to say that some mesmer and thief builds are more “nerfed” in pvp. But anyway, pvp is supposed to be the balanced game mode, so if anything these skills are “buffed” in WvW and PvE.

Ravenmoon.5318:

That’s the issue here coming from a thief. I can engage bunker guard, i can engage a shoutbow and evaluate if I can take them out or not (i can takeout the noobs for example) but that I can’t do against turret engi. Some nub that read a build off the internet, putting a tank-ish rune on him and dropping bunch of high dps turrets is perfectly capable of killing me regardless of how well I play. My only way is to move away and +1+2 that guy whenever i see fit. Even rocket turret takes me a good 5-10 seconds to takout, while being shot with a rifle or pistol condi spam. If i disengage to restart that fight, he’ll just drop another rocket turret because they have them on ridiculously low cooldown.

You should play how you enjoy playing, and learn at your pace. Nevertheless, I’ll just add that as a thief you shouldn’t be dueling people that much, especially if you play d/p. You’ll never decap a point, and chances are the node you’re fighting on will be capped long before you duel ends. You should take decaps when it’s possible, and burst down low targets in fights. You can however duel rangers, mesmers, other thieves and sometimes necromancers if you feel it’s needed. So don’t try to duel a turret engi: come with your mesmer friend and erase him in 5s: chances are he doesn’t even run Tool Kit to defend himself.

It’s common in WvW. Even worst than in spvp, and that’s saying something. Ping them a packet of salt, then block them. If they get killed by a zerg, they are bad, or they got caught off-guards. In both cases, it’s certainly not a reason to be angry.

Be civil, don’t jump on corpes, don’t laugh when you kill another player (nor teabag it), and if you still get abuse, don’t respond: bad players will be bad.

Ravezaar.4951:

Maybe read up on offical release info then, cause they are starting off with a rotation of the new Map and REMOVING Border maps even thats temporarily its a removal, so YES we are being forced to play new map or EB

Only temporarily. On the release, most players will want to play on the new map, that’s probably why they are removing the alpine BL: the coverage issues on these would be insane (it’s already ugly on some servers). How would you have done it? Furthermore, EB is very similar to the alpine BL. The towers are identical, there are big, flat, open fields, zerging is a valid tactic on it as well. Even the environment looks similar.

Benjamin.8237:

Mesmers have always been melee range duelist classes, especially looking back at gw1. Shield makes a whole lot more sense than scepter or greatsword in my opinion.

“Always”. Basically, there were in GW1. In GW2, every profession is supposed to be good at range AND in melee, with only a few exceptions (engineer being somewhat between the two). Mesmer is no exception.

I mainly play an engineer in WvW, mostly for solo roaming, and I am overly exited about the new map! It’s obviously designed to break zergs apart, but why should I care? I don’t belong in zergs. Bring EG to deal with your conditions a bit better if needed, but apart from players, there’s nothing to fear on this new map. Let me explain why you’ll have a great time.

- Engineer excels in taking objectives solo. You can take a fully upgraded camp in under a minute. So if the mechanics annoy you, just take the shrines!

- You have superior mobility. Just move out of the way of the new siege weapon, avoid the knock-bakc gargoyles, etc.

- Engineers are insanely strong in confined spaces. In some chokeholds, you’ll be able to 1v3/1v4 warriors, thieves, rangers, mesmers, you name it!

- The verticality! One of the things I enjoy the most on my engineer is running away from a large group and taking out enemy players one after the other, in a stream. Vertical maps allow you to LoS your foes, knock them back from cliffs, and spam bombs/nades behind you as you kite.

The only thing I’m worried about is the burning immunity near the fire keep. If it’s just the lava burning, then it’s fine. If it’s burning per say, my flame legion runes say no!

Delcat.1245:

I just hope the devs are introducing this map because they play www know what the player base want and not some brain dead restarted no thinking map like eotm is .

If open field fights are not possible , I’ll leave , which is not an issue its 1 person , the guild I run will continue I hope , that’s only 60 people , this is also not an issue , the 10 other fighting guild on the server stop as well 600 people ,

servers empty not an issue for me ,

Thanks for the 2years plus I’ll be playing cu ,

I’m curious. I don’t know you, so your departure wouldn’t sadden me, but why exactly would you stop playing? Classic open field WvW will still be a thing in HoT. Nobody is forcing you to play on the new map.

I don’t own a Legendary and probably never will, but I do think this is a good idea. It would have to take a reasonable form: you would have the ability to remove the sigil, not the one to choose any sigil you once bought. That way, it would still take inventory space. Stat changes are good on Legendaries, but it’s true that without being able to change the sigils, this advantage is somehow negated. I already have this problem playing on multiple professions with just a few ascended weapons.

Why would it be balanced? Well, if you think about it, you wouldn’t have an advantage over ascended weapons. You can freely change sigils on ascended weapons: it just costs a lot of money. Yet, it’s not nearly as expensive as a Legendary: you could have 5 identical ascended swords with 5 different sigil combinations and it would still be A LOT cheaper than Bolt. So where is the advantage of the Legendary? Convenience, mainly. And the skin.

phokus.8934:

Thief is getting a rifle. Mark it.

Preach! I’m so thrilled.

SerStickman.5369:

Will there be one for this expansion?

Certainly. Think of HoT as just another DLC. The core game is supported on Mac, so imo HoT will be too, just like every other content added since the mac client was added.

The real question is: will we get a final client one day? And can we get our sub forum back please?

Do you think people would use it? I mean, I can see PvE players coming there for convenience (not having to WP), but when I want to craft and chat with random people, the megaserver LA is good enough for me. Even in the old LA, there weren’t many discussion about WvW. Only call to arms (which I kinda miss) to defend certain keeps.

Orochimaru.4730:

Nokaru.7831:

Orochimaru.4730:

If EOTM was tested by real WvW players, it would never have become the karma train ground it has become.

There were many, many WvW guilds invited to the beta for EotM.

Obviously the wrong ones seeing what has happened to EOTM. When it went live everyone was complaining about EOTM even pugs on my server!

So why didnt these guilds see the problems which would occur when we found them within the first couple of days.

Because PvE and WvW players are not like-minded. Of course, the beta-testers were all WvW players. As such, they experimented with the map interesting mechanics, and liked them because they were actually playing as intended. Little did they know that the PvE crowd would see this as an opportunity to gain karma, badges of honor and EXP for their alts, and that’s when it all went downhill. It’s unfortunate, but the WvW population did ask for better rewards, after all.

Terrahero.9358:

Larynx.2453:

Yeah but what if I bring zero stun breaks, zero condi removal, and zero stability. What then!?

Then you come on the forum and complain, obviously. That’s what the pvp forums are for.

Of course an argument can be made that the game is pretty kitten bland and restricted if you need to bring all of that just to not get facerolled. For most professions that’s all their utility skills set, with no opportunity to bring something with a bit of flavor.

But duuuuuuuude, why do I have to slot Lightning Relflexes while I could use Zephyr and pew pew supersupersupersupersuper fast!

Seriously though, I think defensive abilities, stun breakers in particular, give the most flavor to the game. Mesmers do not only use Blink because it’s powerful: they use it because it’s fun!

Coedeax.2567:

oh looks, this topic…. again….

Anyway, I happen to love the idea of a mesmer with a shield….Although, tbh, I love the idea of anything new on my Mesmer..

So do I. But aren’t you a bit disappointed of getting an off-hand weapon? We have so many good choices already, while having only two main-hand weapons. A ranged power MH weapon would have been nice: like a MH shield for example.

Wanze.8410:

Because before they had more mobility than intended.

If it is true then they are massively under-powered. Think about what thief and mesmer brings to the table besides mobility. If you remove the vertical ports from the thief, you’ll deal more damage and be more mobile with a GS warrior.

Rym.1469:

More;

-Engis
-Guards
-Eles
-Warriors

The better your chance of winning is.

More;
-Necros
-Rangers
-Thieves

You have, the worse your chance of winning is.

Odd, but Mesmer fits in both brackets.

With slight exceptions, but I found out that this general rule of soloq applies pretty good in ratings below the peak ones.

;)

I don’t find it true for necromancers, unless they play lich. Thieves are bad (myself included) in mid tier because the profession requires skill to be useful. Rangers are bad, but no one really knows why. My guess is that their brain melted listening to the annoying sound of RF.

The engi part is partially true. If you get a turret engi on your team who decides that settling on your home node is good idea, it’s safe to say you lost the game.

xDudisx.5914:

OP tries to put 3 different skills in the same group because 2 are balanced and 1 is not. So that way he tried to falsely claim that slick shoes is a l2p problem. Let’s put in the same group orange, apple and watermelon. Orange and apple are small so watermelon must be small too……

Entangle: 1 dodge can avoid the skill completely. It has a long cast time with obvious animation. Even if you get hit 1 condi clear can save you.

Ring of Warding has a long cast. For the guard to catch you they will need to use JI. Even if you get trapped inside you can do a dodge roll inside the circle.

Slick shoes: unblockable, you cannot dodge the oil pools, it is easy for the engi to do a circle around specially with super speed and people fighting in a node. Has no cast time.

Sorry but l2p.

Slick Shoes is a superior utility skill. Why so? Engineers rely on utilities to win. It’s part of their mechanics: not only these utilities are FAR better than the ones the other professions have, they also have a secondary skill attached to them.

Noone questions the fact that engineer’s utilities MUST be better than other classes’, just like noone questions the fact that thief’s weapon skills must not be too good (since they are spammable) or that warrior weapon skills must deal extreme damage (since they don’t have many other things to rely on). Take Tool Kit for example: it’s hands down the best utility skill of the game: a short CD block, an AoE cripple, a single target projectile finisher damaging cripple wrench, a damaging melee skill that applies confusion, and a 1200-range unblockable pull.

Sure, some players would like to see minor changes to the TK (to the block mainly), but even if it does get nerfed it would still be a HUGE deal better than every other utilities in the game, but that doesn’t mean it’s OP, it just means that the profession is balanced around powerful utilities (just like an engineer: bring the right tools for the job).

It does make the balance for engineer difficult: since the game came out, kits was the best option for engineers, since they brought so much. Slick Shoes is the first EVER gadget to be used in competitive pvp. Just think that instead of Slick Shoes, I usually use EG.

Slick Shoes: a long duration AoE CC, possibly one of the best CC in the game. A short CD stun-breaker that increases speed.

EG: The best AA for a condi engi, poison application in a spray, massive condi cleanse to your allies in a spray (this skill alone makes EG great in team fights), a decent-damage leap that gives you superior mobility AND a blast finisher on a 15s CD (how insane is that?), a short CD AoE field that heals you and your allies, gives you regen, cures a condition, AND is a lighting field, allowing you to cure one more condition on yourself with Throw Wrench, which is huge for engineer whose main weakness is condition and last but not least a short-CD stun breaks that gives you YET another regen (scaling with cele amulet, of course). (edit: oh yeah, and that useless skill #2 that really needs to see its velocity increased)

A lot of engineers, myself included, prefer EG over Slick Shoes, since it brings SO MUCH to the table. If Slick Shoes was OP to the point it would hinders build diversity, I would say it needs a nerf, but it doesn’t so let us use our only good gadget!

tldr Engineer’s utilities are MEANT to be better than other professions’. Slick Shoes is good but balanced, it’s the only viable gadget, and comparing it to other skills on other professions makes no sense.

Orochimaru.4730:

If EOTM was tested by real WvW players, it would never have become the karma train ground it has become.

What’s a “real” WvW player? Does one have to be in a press-one-pop-stab-crash-your-blob-into-theirs guild to be a “real” player?

WvW is more than GvG. You’re part of a (too) loud minority, to which EB and the current BL already caters: open fields, easy to take/hard to defend objectives, blob tactics. Many players would like to see some diversity in the game mode, is that to much to ask? Would you be happy to have a new map with open fields and zergs, just like the ones we’ve been playing on for years?

As for the original topic: the closed beta will come soon, followed with open betas. It has always been the case. EotM was tested by WvW players, but ended up being abused by PvE players when it went live: so be it, time to move on. The new BL will be part of the competitive side of WvW, so it is less likely to become a karma train.

A good thief will escape one he put down his refuge. He’ll blast a SB2 in it for the blind if you’re not in range, and dodge whatever comes his way.

But you’re in luck: most thieves in WvW are terrible! I assumed you were speaking about WvW, because in PvP you wouldn’t duel a condi thief. Usually they put their refuge ate the very last moment. Here are some things you can try:

- Do damage: Maul is a good candidate for that, since it hit hard and in a big zone. It’s easy to dodge though.

- Wolf’s fear. I know you said “aside from”, but it’s still your best bet.

- If all else fails, when dueling a thief, have your inventory open in a corner of your screen, and drop a nasty stealth trap under your feet when the thief’s health drops to 60%. Cheesy, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.

I get that the Infiltrator’s Strike nerf is very bad, but why are you complaining about Basilisk Venom? Of course it won’t work against targets with stability, but it never has? It might even be better in Venom Share builds (to engage zergs in WvW with a small group).

Steal doesn’t work when out of range, apart from certain traits attached to it (Thrill of the crime, mainly). The teleports that now work (meaning: move you for some distance in the chosen general direction) even if the target is out of range are skills like Judge’s Intervention, Infiltrator’s Signet, thief’s sword #2, etc.

I won’t lie, I’m not looking forward to this change. Sword thieves are already rare in PvP and WvW, and confined in one build. This change will affect them most, because it affects their most important skill: Infiltrator’s Strike. Thief is the only profession apart from ranger that had two different builds played in WTS, I’d hate to see one of these builds disappear. Nobody likes to play against the same build every time.

Everything works in PvE. If you like playing necromancer, don’t do speed runs with PUGs. If you like speed runs, do them with your guild/friends. Granted, you probably won’t establish a record, but the DPS you give is sufficient, you have a few blinds, and I can see it work well. Hell, you could even run a condi necro in dungeons and you would still get to the end, but slower. Don’t let the zerker elitists get to you: play what you like to play.

timmyf.1490:

Destroy all the turrets? I just take out the Rocket Turret then go for the engy. Seems to work.

That’s actually way better to do it that way. To the guy above complaining about taking ages to destroy the thumper turret: don’t! It has a big health-pool, but is not that dangerous. On every capture points but the one on Niflhel you can be outside its radius and still stand on the point, and even so it has an animation before it knocks you back, so dodge that. Rocket turret is a lot more annoying, but it has low HP and long CD. But if you feel like you can’t beat the turret engi, just leave him there. As soon as he’ll move, he’ll be vulnerable, and if he doesn’t, well, good for you! Just 5v4 his team on the other two points.

The only reason to play a turret engi is to get high on the LB without skill. Indeed, you’ll loose more than 50% of your matches, but you are guaranteed to score at least 250 points even if you are terrible, since the other team will avoid you. It makes you score a great number of LB points. I believe the #1 on EU LB is a turret engi with less than 50% win, it doesn’t surprise me. But if you care about winning more than being on the LB, don’t play this build.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

I liked a lot of what I saw…until the end. I get where Anet was trying to go with that Oasis event. I do. And on servers that that have equal enough populations that play during the same hours, it can be interesting.

Problem is that isn’t the reality in WvW for any servers. Problem is that there is a greater chance that a havok group on a not so populated server will meet a much large force during peak hours that will simply roll them, get the cannon and immediately take what few structures the other team has. Problem is that servers that have their numbers fighting in the off hours of other servers can use this to take objectives faster and hold them for longer in those off hours further shining the spotlight on the coverage/playtime/PPT issue.

I just don’t see this cannon as a good thing for WvW except for possibly the top 2-3 servers in WvW. In bronze it will be an absolute nightmare.

Yes, that’s the only thing that bugged me a little with the presentation. I really hope Anet has an army of devs ready to make some hot fixes during the betas and when HoT goes live, because there is no way to know how this will play out.

WvW has a history of changes turning out to be very different than expected. EotM was everything we asked for (except for the return-to-spawn-on-death cheese), and yet we turned it into a karma train. Siege disablers were announced to be the end of WvW, and now everyone use them and adapt their tactics around them. We’ll see.

The proof that EotM can be fun at times! Get a bigger group next time and wipe them.

P.S. Be nicer to your keyboard. Don’t take it for granted.