I’ve noticed over the past month or two that matchmaking in ranked queue on the weekends typically creates bad matchups for me.
Yesterday I played 31 ranked arena games, of those my team lost 20 and won 11. About half of those matches I was queueing solo, about 5 of those matches I was queued with 2 or 3 friends, and about 10 of those matches I was queued with 1 friend. The results in all cases were similar.
If this were an isolated incident it wouldn’t be a big problem, but I’ve noticed that this exact pattern repeats itself most weekends. 30 games played, typically about a 33% win rate. And before you tell me its a learn to play issue, or that I’m just bad…. I’m not. I’ve played 5500 matches. I have a 52% win rate in both ranked and unranked arena.
I’ve also noticed in the past week or two that I’ve been paired up more frequently with players that didn’t have a clue how to do pvp. One guy rushed lord at the start and wiped. One guy was running in circles just outside our base (doing nothing) for most of the match. Other people rush solo into fights that they apparently cant win, and die over and over.
Would appreciate it if a dev could investigate why matchmaking is so poor for me almost every weekend.
Soul
In two out of the four ranked matches that I did last night we had the same PUG on our team that went afk after the initial engagement because as he put it the other team was an “aids premade”. Oddly it was just 3 people on the other team whom he was referring to. They were good, but it wasn’t an impossible match… until he quit. Something needs to be done about this, it can be a serious problem, especially when it happens repeatedly.
Suggestions for extra amulet choices:
+1050 power, +1050 healing, +560 vitality, +560 precision
+1050 power, +1050 healing, +560 vitality, +560 toughness
+1050 power, +1050 precision, +560 vitality, +560 healing
+1050 power, +1050 precision, +560 vitality, +560 toughness
+1050 condi, +1050 toughness, +560 vitality, +560 healing
There are a few themes here, but the main two are:
1) there are certain classes with innately low health totals that imho aren’t viable without some +vitality. So let’s give more amulets with 4 stats, one of which is +560 vitality to give those classes more viable options
2) there are a few classes that can potentially excel at healing, but they need more choices for +healing amulets (clerics and settlers are both flawed due to lacking +vitality and also due to being very low damage spec amulets).
Soul
The combat log should still show all the damage that you’re taking, the answer should be there, and if it isn’t THEN there is a bug that needs urgent investigation.
We need more build options in pvp, and zealot’s amulet is another step in that direction. I’d like to see 1050 power, 1050 precision, 600 healing, 600 vitality (or something along these lines) or 1050 power, 1050 healing, 600 precision, 600 vitality. Or better yet, how about both choices?
Soul
Irenio, I agree with the need to add scaling based on healing power for celestial avatar and lowering base heals. That’s just common sense.
These points are also common sense:
1) If healing power is becoming more important (as it certainly will be for the Druid), please consider adding a few new amulets in pvp that have the power/precision/healing stat combo, like +1200 power, +900 precision, +900 healing power. Or Perhaps a 4 stat variant like: power 1050, healing 1050, precision 525, toughness 525. Or, power 1050, precision 1050, healing 525, toughness 525. Or Power 1050, Healing 1050, Vitality 525, Toughness 525.
2) Frankly the vast majority of healing abilities in this game don’t scale well with healing power. Could you guys please review all healing oriented abilities across all classes and give them all appropriate scaling from healing power? If +1200 power more than doubles your power based damage output, shouldn’t +1200 healing power double your healing output for a power (or at least add +50%)?
Thanks!
Soul
deda, I think you’re on to something as I too often see either a lot of wins or a lot of losses on a particular day. Perhaps they need to update MMR more frequently than once per day…
The issues with match making still don’t seem fixed. I played 8 matches tonight, the first 7 in a row resulted in losses (no 4v5s or anything, just straight up failures of the matchmaker to make a good match). I finally won the 8th game and… it was a 4v5 in our favor. I think you devs should recheck things…
Most of the other elite specs have underwhelmed me, however I’m very excited about the Druid spec. Irenio, thank you… and keep fighting to keep Druid this exciting in its final form.
I’d like to be able to see how the game evaluates my MMR for each of the 8 classes. In part, I’d like this info to know which class I’m most successful with. Win/Loss ratio for each class is not enough info, and it’s heavily influenced by when the matches were played and in which venue (hotjoin, unranked, ranked, soloqueue, teamqueue). A developer has already mentioned that you already compute this, though you don’t actually use it since people can swap classes before the match starts. I can’t imagine it would take much effort to add this to the new website that makes use of the API to access in-game stats. Could you please add this?
I’d like to echo what the poster above me wrote. A few weeks ago I was having a very bad run of luck (lost 5 in a row solo queueing in ranked arena). The sixth match was a doozie… my team consisted of 5 random ungrouped people, and the other team was a premade consisting of Noscoc and at least one other of his normal team mates plus 3 other good players. The match was so lopsided that we didn’t score a single point, the final score was 500 to 0. I was struggling just to earn a point on the score board to get credit for completing a match (thankfully at the very end I managed to decap mid to get my points). Now… I can see this type of bad match-up happening every once in a blue moon, but after having lost 5 straight immediately before it…. was like rubbing salt on an open wound.
I’m having the same problem, it seems like the game is freezing up for a few hundred milliseconds any time it needs to pull up a new UI widget, and also for certain spell effects? Not sure how widespread it is, but you see it whenever a new window gets open in game, as well as during pvp combat. It’s nearly unplayable. Started happening after the patch today, and I’ve never seen anything like it previously (I have a very high end system (8 core, 32Gb memory, and a GeForce Titan) and nothing else running in the background).
I prefer using cleric amulet with staff. Pre-HoT, this works fine if I put 300 in Water. Post-HOT, if there isn’t an option to get +300 vitaltiy with cleric ammy, then cleric becomes unviable, there is no way to survive the burst with only 11,000 health. Berserker staff isn’t viable either, and Soldier ammy staff is just a waste… since your heals would be crap, damage would be crap too. Celestial works now, but they said they are nerfing it post HoT by reducing the total stats, so that doesn’t seem viable either.
So if they don’t address this problem it seems like they essentially make staff unviable in pvp. I hope the devs are listening…
(edited by Soul.9280)
I have an incomplete understanding of how HoT will change stats in PvP. What I’ve heard is that trait lines will no longer have stats associated with them, and to compensate they will be adding +50 to all base stats. I believe they’ve said that they will increase the stats you get from amulets to compensate (can anyone confirm this?).
Here are my concerns:
1) Vitality. Elementalist is a low hit point class. We need the +300 vitality we get from Water Traits. If they add +250 vitality to all amulets then we’ll be fine, but my fear is that they wont.
2) Boon duration. A lot of our survivability comes from Protection from Elemental Attunement, will there be an option to pick up +30% boon duration in the new system?
Has anyone heard anything reliable about what the dev team is planning for HoT?
What I’d prefer is that they allow us to choose how to spend the stat points we used to get from traitlines in any way we’d like (up to a max of 250 in any one stat).
Dagr Soulnova, 80 Elementalist, Stormbluff Isle.
This is happening again today. I played many matches without problem. But around 10:15pm CST I queued up and then was mysteriously dropped from queue. Then when I try to reque I see “Network Error. Check your connection to the internet. Error Code: 1033:53:5:1314:101”.
It eventually resolved itself about 10 minutes later, but neither restarting game, nor rebooting computer directly fixed the problem.
Clerics is very powerful for Elementalists because of all of the heals they can provide even without blast finishers:
Comparisons of different heals with Berserker vs Cleric amulet:
Soothing Mist every 10 seconds (950 versus 1410)
Evasive Arcana dodge roll in water every 10 seconds (1600 versus 2500)
Attunement to Water: Healing Ripple every 10 seconds (1432 versus 1913)
Near perma regen with cantrips and attunement swap to water (167 versus 283, per second)
So, over the course of 10 seconds, the difference in healing from just these abilities is: 5652 versus 8653.
That’s not including water #3 and water #5 and two blast finishers: earth#2 and arcane brilliance. Healing from blast finishers is 1380 versus 1520 (so not a large impact).
Knights might be viable, but Berserkers leaves you with too little toughness, so you end up taking 40% more damage than someone with Clerics or Knights.
i have enjoyed zerker staff a lot. what is advantage of cleric/celestial? there are not that many blast finishers for healing, are there?
Well the knock against zerker staff is that they die if you look at them in a menacing way, and that’s been my experience. Against certain teams (lacking thieves), and on certain maps (Kyhlo and Temple in particular), zerker ele can do quite well because they can be hard to catch and wreak havoc on a point if left unchecked for even 5 seconds. But especially against teams with good thieves, or maps that don’t provide protected/hidden places for an ele to hide, a zerker elementalist won’t live long enough to help their team.
I wonder if this list needs to be different for teamq versus soloq. While I’ve heard that Engineers aren’t viable in top tier Teamq, in soloq they do quite well in top tier. Nevirsaydie was top 25 in soloq up until this week, he runs a 3 kit engi, and was very good at point assault with good survivability.
Great feedback, keep it coming. If any of you could start posting links to the builds in question that would also be helpful.
Here is my Staff Ele bunker build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWhMM6c24wyBd0AhAB5tmrRBlrLXB-TJxHAB1eBAQqMAAPAgL2fAA
Variants:
Swap Celestial Amulet in for Clerics (for more health and a bit more offense)
Swap in Rune of the Pirate (for better offense in 1v1)
Swap in Rune of Melandru (for better condition defense)
Swap in Rune of Strength (for might stacking)
Switch to Trait X in water for more group utility
Switch to Signet of Restoration for more sustain (but you lose blast finisher, so a little less group healing, and staff is a slow weapon so doesn’t benefit as much from signet as D/D does)
(reserved for future use)
What are the current spvp meta builds?
And how would you rank them as far as how they perform in soloq and teamq? (hotjoin is irrelevant and shouldn’t be included in this discussion)
Ultimately it would be good if we could add links to common builds to this list (I’d be happy to update this post if the experts would post the builds).
I’m wondering if it would be better to rate each build in two contexts: team fights and 1v1s, since most builds are good at one and less good at the other. If a certain class/build hard counters another class build, please mention that in your feedback.
I’d also be glad to update the ranked list as experts post their opinions.
Note: the focus on this thread is on the higher end side of soloq and teamq. When you post, please state which classes/builds you play, and what your soloq/teamq rank is so we can put your opinions in context.
The initial round of feedback seems to be focused on the meta in teamq, so here is the growing consensus on the teamq meta:
Very Strong
Elementalist: staff bunker
Warrior: 3 stances
Solid
Elementalist: d/d celestial + strength runes
Guardian: bunker
Guardian: meditation (1 v 1/ side node)
Mesmer: shatter
Thief: s/d
Good but only if team supports them
Engineer 2-3 kits
Necro: power or condi
Ranger: Power
Ranger: Spirit of Nature
Good at lower tiers, bad for high tier play
Engineer: Decap
Engineer: Turrets
Mesmer: PU
Necromancer: MM
Ranger: traps
Thief: s/p
Now for soloq, where teams aren’t coordinated, certain builds that won’t survive the coordinated focus fire they’d receive in teamq do much better in soloq. I’d like to put together a list of viable soloq builds, but lacking feedback from the community on that we’ll put that off for now.
It would be helpful if the community could provide the best builds for the various successful/strong builds in teamq and soloq, and then we’d have a single place as a reference for both players new to spvp as well as people looking for ways to improve.
Class/Build List (work in progress)
- Elementalist: D/D celestial
- Elementalist: Staff cleric or celestial 0/0/2/6/6
- Engineer: Turrets
- Engineer: Decap
- Engineer: 3 kits
- Guardian: Bunker Guardian
- Guardian: Meditation DPS
- Mesmer: Phantasm
- Mesmer: Shatter
- Mesmer: PU Condi
- Necro: MM
- Necro: Power/wells
- Necro: Fearmancer
- Ranger: Power
- Ranger: Spirits
- Ranger: Traps
- Thief: S/P
- Thief: S/D
- Thief: D/P
- Warrior: Hambow
- Warrior: Condi S/S +LB
Full disclosure:
- I’ve played Phantasm Mesmer, Bunker Guardian, Hambow Warrior, Engineer “pull/push cheese build” (for Skyhammer), and most recently Staff Cleric 00266 Elementalist.
- My Soloq and Teamq rank varies between 90% and top 300, currently in the 600 to 900 range.
Please add your feedback to this thread.
(edited by Soul.9280)
Please remove skyhammer from the soloq rotation. I switch to either my engi or my mesmer when skyhammer comes up, and I win more than 50% by taking advantage of knockbacks (especially from stealth), but I still would prefer not to deal with skyhammer. As many have pointed out before me, skyhammer has the largest percentage of 4v5s and 3v5s than any other map, that should be indication enough that it’s not well loved by the pvp community.
Each Champ has different mechanics and each class has a different profile of which mechanics it does well against and which it does not.
That said, one easier way to solo champions as an elementalist is to use your elemental summons in earth attunement to draw agro and “tank” for you. Once you get access to the elite that gives you two or three tank pets which is usually enough for long fights.
For Champions that only have melee attacks, you can kite pretty well with either scepter or staff.
Champions with strong ranged attacks can be much harder, depending on their frequency and whether you have enough endurance to dodge all of them. Sometimes strafing and changing direction 180 degrees after the ranged attack is launched can cause the ranged attack to fly wide and save you from burning precious endurance. Also, the vigor on crit trait in the arcana line can be very helpful against ranged Champions because it greatly increases your dodges.
Hope this helps.
That’s because it isn’t fair, and probably not something the devs considered when they decided to make this change. However the good news is that it shouldn’t be too hard to program a solution into the game that does award chests for earned ranks beyond rank 80.
Dev’s this would be a good opportunity to get some good PR through fast damage control, and keep your most loyal players happy by treating them fairly.
Disclaimer: I’m only rank 47 and wouldn’t be affected by this, but my sensibilities are still offended that high rank players would be “cheated” out of rewards that lower rank players would receive with this change.
Everything in my reply refers to soloq only, not teamq.
For NA, you get into the top 1000 Leaderboard at about 93%. I have active friends and guildmates in the 80% to 90% range, as well as top 1000. I have a friend who went inactive 2 weeks ago who dropped from top 100 to 77% (and falling). I’m watching to see how low he drops, that should give an idea of the # of active vs. inactive players on the leaderboard.
At a minimum I’m tempted to infer that we have at least 2500 active soloq players.
Thank you for replying to this thread Justin, I appreciate it.
However I don’t agree with one of your suppositions. T O K I M O N S T A, Reikou, Super Mang Jose, Rizzy Treeziy, and Five Gauge are (or have been) top 25 in TeamQ Leaderboards, so it’s nearly impossible that blue team has an MMR near the default. Seems like the MM system didn’t do a good job here. How long would a team with a top 100 MMR need to wait in the queue before it was matched up with a team that had an MMR near the default? Also, where would someone with a default MMR fall in the current leaderboard? 50% 60% 70%, 80%?
(edited by Soul.9280)
Twice out of about 16 matches today I’ve been in a soloQ match where my side started the match with 4v5. Actually in both cases someone else from our side left early, leaving us with 3v5, and we lost badly. Rather than being fun and challenging it was a waste of 5-8 minutes of my life. That is not how games should be.
Could you please add a feature that won’t allow a tpvp (soloQ or teamQ) match to begin unless there are 5 people on each team who have clicked ready during the final 10 second countdown before the gates open? How can that be so hard?
It would be tempting to blame the people who aren’t coming in to make a 5 person team, but disconnects happen. I’d like to see the developers take more responsibility for fixing this issue. Please do something.
(edited by Soul.9280)
Thanks for the observations. One thing that surprises me, I thought blind did stop a stomp, as I believe blind has stopped my stomps in the past…
Will activating virtue of courage apply aegis to downed allies?
I’ve been trying to use it in spvp to acheive this result, but almost always the enemies stomp still goes through and defeats my ally. Things are usually so frenetic in pvp that I don’t have time to check to see if the Aegis landed and was removed by an attack by another player, or whether the aegis never affected the downed ally at all.
spvp is unplayable at the moment. Don’t bother trying to queue, you’ll likely lose or get disconnected/dishonorable.
I’ve started having better luck winning Skyhammer matches in soloQ now that I exclusively run a class/build (specifically designed for that map) that helps me take advantage of the gimicky nature of the map, namely knockbacks and pulls to make people fall to their death. In spite of increasing my winning % on this map, I hate the map, I hate the gimicks, and almost everyone I speak with about it hates it too. Please remove Skyhammer from the soloQ, or give us the option to skip such matches.
In descending order of power/effectiveness:
1) Ham-Bow Warrior
2) Bunker Guardian (if I’m not playing a guardian)
3) (high skill & high burst) Thief
4) Decap Engi
5) Necro
6) Spirit Ranger
I usually cringe if our team has more than 1 of the following because we’ll usually lose:
1) Elementalist
2) Mesmer
3) (low skill) Thief
4) (sub optimal builds of the classes mentioned in the first list)
The caveat is that you need a mix of bunker and damage on your team. Too much of either and you fail.
So an ideal mix might be:
1) Hambow Warrior
2) Bunker Guardian
3) (high skill high burst) Thief
4) Necro
5) Any other well played and well built (non bunker) class
hambows counter decap engi’s pretty hard core as they have plenty of cc (remember decap engi lacks stability and stun breaks) and they apply more damage pressure than a decap engi does. So that engi is going to die trying to hold that point against a hambow warrior who plays with any skill.
Decap bunker engi isn’t the only issue here. What about hambow warriors, what about bunker guardians? I’m not arguing that decap engi isn’t good at doing what you describe, but they aren’t the only strong class at either decapping or holding a point.
4v5s happen to people with higher ratings too. I’ve been between 70% and 85% rating the past 2 weeks and I’ve seen plenty of 4v5s.
4) Player experience imbalances. It’s not uncommon to see someone with a rank of less than 10 mixed in on a team where everyone else is rank 25+. The majority of the time the people with low rank don’t know what they should be doing, and contribute little to the success of their team, and often cause their team to lose.
Solution: Group people by experience and by rating. Stop creating teams with a large spread of MMR ratings. And stop putting people with rank less than 10 on a team full of rank 25+s. Most people would prefer to wait longer to get a good match, than to get noobies mixed with veterans and an imbalanced match.
I’ve been doing alot of soloQ in the past 3 weeks, I now have over 200 matches played.
Here are the problems:
1) 25% of matches have a 4v5 situation for all or part of the match. This creates unfairness for the team that is short, and normally leads to an unchallenging (and not fun) match for all involved. Sometimes the 5th player starts zoning in just as the gates are opening, which sets one team behind by 10 to 20 seconds, which often is enough to cost the match. Many 4v5’s occur before the match has started, though occasionally some are caused by disconnects mid fight (this is the rarer case).
Solution: Delay the start of the match until both sides have 5 and all players are ready.
2) People occasionally disconnect or afk during a match.
Solution: Give players the option to report people who are afk. If 3 or more people report a player as afk, then the person gets booted from the map and a replacement player is found.
Solution: In cases of afk or disconnect, the game pauses the match, and a replacement player is found, resume play once they have selected “ready”. Any player that comes into the middle of a losing match does not get credit for a loss and their MMR doesn’t go down, but if their team turns it around and wins, then they get credit for the win (as reward for their skill).
3) Class balance mismatches. I’ve seen matches with 5 thieves/mesmers on one team, going up against a balanced team (mix of bunkers, condi, and power burst). I’ve seen one team full of high dps classes, against a balanced team. This is a complex problem to solve, but some of the simpler aspects could be solved without too much debate. Let’s face it, we have a bunker meta. A team with 2 bunkers has an inherent advantage at holding points against a team with no bunkers.
Solution: The matchmaker should look at classes, not just MMR, to create the teams.
Advanced Solution: Add logic to the matchmaker to evaluate not just classes but likely roles (bunker, condi, power) looking at gear and traits, to balance things out. Each team gets a comparable number of bunkers, etc.
Ultra Advanced Solution: Identify OP builds, for example hambow/healing signet warrior, bunker guardian, spirit ranger, MM necro, decap engi and spread them as evenly as possible across the teams. And don’t allow people to switch classes before the match.
I’m not saying the proposed solutions are perfect, but I believe they move soloQ in a positive direction that is sorely needed right now because most people that I talk to who do soloQ feel it’s a real mess right now.
I’ve been hit by this as well. In the past 3 days I went from an 84% rating in soloQ to a 67% rating. This is over the course of about 30 games played.
Too much Skyhammer and Spirit Watch, as well.
I’ve seen a disproportionate number of 4v5s against my team, I’ve even seen a 2v5 at the start of the match (with 3 zoning in just as the gates opened), needless to say even that 10-15 second delay cost us the match. Bad class comps (4 or 5 thieves/mesmers on our team while the other team had a balanced comp with at least 2 heavies), very low ranked players who didn’t even understand the basics of objectives on the maps.
My performance was usually quite good, but it wasn’t enough to carry the bad teams.
I play soloQ to have fun and engage in challenging matches, not to get terrible teams repeatedly and to lose badly through no fault of my own.
I’d rather wait a few minutes longer for the system to find a good match, then to get thrown into a bad situation. Also, the matchmaking system should make an effort to put together balanced class/role comps too.
Question:
hihey.1075 writes:
PU condition is simply unbeatable by a D/D thief. Just remember to shatter your illusions everytime to deny him stealth (which he will need to cleanse conditions).
How does shattering deny a thief stealth? Could you explain a bit more about how you’d use this build to beat a d/d thief?
I’m not sure about the answer to #1 as I haven’t tested it, but I believe it should work.
As for #2, the answer is yes. If you time it right the GS#2 Mirror Blade should activate the blocking state from Mimic when it hits you while you’re channeling it. The challenge is that you have to be within about 600 of the target of the Mirror Blade or the bounce likely won’t reach you.
Some good advice and observation here. Thanks!
Yes I agree, great d/p thieves are a nightmare, mediocre thieves of any type I will beat unless they get the jump on me and even then if Decoy is up I have a good shot at them.
Question about shatter, how do you keep your clones/phantasms alive long enough to shatter them? Good teams just kill them as soon as I summon them. Even bad teams often kill my clones before I can shatter due to all the AE and cleaving.
I play a “phantasm burst build” (30/20/0/0/20: GS+S/P, SotE, Decoy, Arcane Thievery, Signet of Dom., and Mass Invis.; and using Signet of the Ether soon after engage for the extra burst) in solo and team queue, and I’ve been reasonably successful, with 79% rating in soloQ and 89% rating in teamQ, with over 100 games played in each format. But the few times I’ve gone up against top 500 players in teamQ I’ve had a tougher time of things. Yes a lot of that may be due to skill deficiency on my part, but I wonder if some of it is that I’m using a build that doesn’t work well in the top 500 meta. I’m interested in improving my build.
So my question is aimed at the people with a lot of experience in top 500 solo/teamQ. Which mesmer builds are truly competitive and viable at that level? I suspect PU may do well in “duels”, but fear that it’s not helping the team enough in a point capture paradigm.
Comments appreciated!
I’d like to see:
#1: Power (primary), Precision & Toughness (secondary):
+798 Power
+569 Precision
+569 Toughness
#2: Power (primary), Condition Damage & Toughness (secondary)
+798 Power
+569 Condition Damage
+569 Toughness
#3: Power (primary), Toughness (secondary), Precision & Vitality (Tertiary):
+798 Power
+569 Toughness
+284 Precision
+284 Vitality
I’m not sure if this is the right thread for this, but one thing that I’d like to see is some more interesting and challenging pve content that takes the form of open world (ie not instanced) dungeons. Something really huge with many levels, lots of monsters, roaming groups of npcs, lots of veterans, and some champions. Something where there is progress, and it’s difficult, but you get rewarded for going farther in and taking risks. Maybe have each micro area within the larger whole be adaptive, so that if you’re in a group rather than soloing, the # of monsters that spawn in the area increases to keep the relative difficulty constant.
A variant build which is probably better for high level fractals (because it gives you a strong range dps option for fights where melee is suicide) is:
20/10/0/25/15 with Greatsword & Sword + Focus
Similar to the 10/20/0/25/15 build mentioned above, but you swap 10 out of Dueling (losing Sword Training) for an extra 10 in Domination (for Greatsword Training).
This build is not very dependant on weapon choices, you can choose the weapons that suit your playstyle and goals:
Greatsword – AE knockback, AE pressure with iBerseker, boon removal with Mind Stab, burst damage with Mirror Blade.
Sword MH – Evasion, Teleport, Immobilize. Melee power pressure.
Sword OH – singe target damage pressure with iSwordsman + Block
Focus OH – force targets off node with Temporal Curtain, iWarden (has been buggy post patch)
Pistol OH – Stun/Daze and good range dps with iDuelist
Torch OH – Stealth (for stomps against certain classes, otherwise not a great choice due to poor dps from phantasmal mage)
Staff – AE Daze/conditions, chaos armor (good defense against burst classes like thieves), teleport (but situationally might not be as good for holding nodes)
Scepter MH – Block, clone generation, and condi pressure (generally not a good choice for this power-oriented build)
(edited by Soul.9280)
Disclaimer: I do not know if I’m the first to post about this build, but a casual search hasn’t found a build quite like it so I present…
The Mantra bunker build for PvP.
The core:
Greatsword and Sword/Sword (though weapon choices can be tweaked to suite your playstyle).
Soldier’s Amulet + Runes of Melandru
4 mantras: Recovery, Pain, Resolve and Concentration (though you could probably drop Mantra of Resolve and pick up a utility if that suites your playstyle):
Traits: 30/20/0/20/0
III – Empowered Illusions – Illusions do 15% more damage
X – Greatsword Training – +50 power, 20% recharge reduction
XI – Harmonious Mantras – mantra produce 3 charges instead of 2
VI – Mantra Mastery – 20% reduction in mantra cooldowns
VII – Protected Mantras – while charging a mantra you gain 600 toughness
VI – Healer’s Purity – using healing skill removes 2 conditions
X – Restorative Mantras – charging a mantra heals you and your allies for 2700 health
This gives you 3 × 2700 instant heals each of which remove 2 conditions.
Charging a Mantra gives heals you and allies for 2700 and gives you 600 toughness
Mantra of Concentration can be used to ensure that you complete mantra charges under CC pressure. And you can remove up to 6 conditions (2 for each activation) on yourself and allies as needed with Power Cleanse.
Rotation: Start sword/sword, summon Phant. Swordsman, switch to GS, summon Phant. Berserker, Mirror Blade, Mind Stab (cast Power Spike repeatedly while doing this, as you can cast instants while using other abilities). Then charge Mantra of Pain. (while doing this use Power Return, Power Cleanse, or Power Break to remove conditions, heal or give stability as needed). Then use mirror blades again while spamming Power Spike). Rinse and repeat, inserting phantasms and other skills while spamming power spike. Recharge mantras as needed, and use stability if needed to protect the cast. You can stand a lot of condition pressure as both Power Heal and Power Cleanse remove conditions and are instant casts.
Pros: This build is good at holding nodes and staying alive. Glass cannons melt like butter left in the sun on a hot day. Alot of healing and condition removal. And you can apply power pressure at the same time. Great team support in terms of condi removal, stability and heals.
Cons: Much less damage than a glass cannon build. Not much cc, so you can’t push people off nodes like an engineer can.
I have not tried this in SoloQ or Teamplay, but it has done very well in hotjoin in node defense. Does very well 1 on 1, and survives 1v2 or 1v3 for quite some time.
I’m still new to Mesmer, most of my pvp experience is on my engineer.
Any advice is appreciated.
There is a simple solution to this problem, they could change the new Rune to work with both Signets and Gadgets. That would give slightly more reason for Engineers to run Gadgets while also fixing the obvious oversight that we’re the only class that can’t benefit from these Runes in their current form.
Here are my observations:
1) MH pistol #1 should have it’s bleed duration increased from 2 seconds to 4 seconds to bring it more into balance with auto attack damage that other classes with comparable ranged weapons have. . For comparison:
engineer pistol: 118 base damage, 2 second bleed, .90 sec per activation;
thief pistol: 134 base damage, 4 second bleed, .82 sec per activation;
warrior rifle: 155 base damage, 6 second bleed, .92 sec per activation).
2) Turrets need better durability and better targeting speed, an increase to Accellerant Packed Turrets explosion radius from 120 to 180 would also be nice. As it is, it’s very difficult to land the knockback on destroying the turret even against things that are meleeing the turret.
3) If you’re saying that you don’t want perma access to vigor, and hence took it away from engineers, you should also take it away from other classes like Guardians and Mesmers.
4) Engineers lack the defensive mechanics that all other classes (except Elementalists) have. Thief = plentiful stealth, evades, teleports, Warrior = health/armor/signet healing, Guardian = insane healing, Necro = death shroud, pet “shields”, Ranger = healing, pet “shields”, and evades, Mesmer = stealth, decoys. Engis lack all of that.
5) Nerf Warrior Signet Healing. It is inappropriate that as a burst dps SD Rifle Engi that I cannot outdps the warrior passive healing, it basically means if I stick around to fight a warrior with a healing signet equipped I’m 100% guaranteed to die, because I cannot hurt them, and they can dps me down without any risk.
6) Either redesign Rifle to be a long distance weapon (currently skills #3, 4, and 5 are all basically melee ranged attacks), or add a Sniper Kit (as many others have suggested in prior posts). Grenades are a good long range weapon, but 1 on 1 against skilled players in PvP/WvW are worthless at range (except for assaulting a stationary object, and good players aren’t stationary). Basically I’d like an option to do power dps at range as an Engineer, and have a weapon and utilities that synergize with that. I currently use a SD Rifle build, but it doesn’t have the burst, sustained or utility options that other classes ranged power builds have.
7) Decrease the activation time on Toss Elixir S, 0.5 seconds is too long for a skill that’s supposed to help you escape from dangerous situations. It should be more like the Thief Blinding Powder, either instant cast, or 0.25 seconds.
Thank you Jon for reading all of our comments and considering them. I appreciate your commitment to community outreach.
Soul
(edited by Soul.9280)