Warrior… only class that plays very well in all styles of play (roaming, skirmish and large group play).
Runner up: Guardian. Not a good roamer but is the backbone of nearly all group combat.
People QQing about thieves probably don’t play one. Having played one for over 1k hours along with a myriad of other fully geared 80 classes, stealth can be annoying but the trade offs are significant.
I have long advocated that waypoints remain uncontested until outer is breached and then remains that way until it is fixed.
WvW would be better off. I like the downed state but dislike the rally mechanic. I can live without either but would prefer rally be gone.
if down state is gone then a rez mechanic would be needed, on gw1 everyone had access to a rez signet and another specific rez skill, in this game rez skills don’t work on dead people, only downed ones.
GW1 is not a good comparison. That game had instanced PvE which would completely reset if everyone died. GW2 has waypoints and almost nothing resets. Group wipes in GW1 were very painful. Group wipes in GW2 are inconvenient at best.
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Yes, guardians can disengage from a fight (Sword 2, Judges, GS 3). If you have problems with little access to swiftness outside of retreat/staff, then pick up runes of the traveler or speed.
Guardians can keep swiftness up almost full time but they still cannot escape from thieves, warriors, elementalists or rangers (ok this last one they probably don’t need to escape from). Getting away requires burst speed and the guardian only has one of those. Their best escape mechanism is getting to safety through bunker which does not make for good roaming.
As for their ability to beat any dueling spec, yeah no. Guardians are powerful group fighters but lack the spike damage of many other classes, do not deal with condi-spammers and have zero answer for condi-bunkers and shatter mesmers.
Yes, Warrior is easier for beginners to play and harder for beginners to counter, but in higher-level play it is fairly balanced and even considered somewhat weak.
Skilled players counter a hammer based warrior easily. They also have massive blind spots. A decently played power mesmer will smash most warriors. It takes exceptional skill to a good beat one.
While warriors are almost always dangerous, the don’t really shine until they are with 2 or more players and their big telegraphed windups are harder to catch.
cool video, but it is sad that thief has to go wvw for duels instead of spvp becouse of point mode and stealth not caping mechanic
The crit dmg cap in sPvP is a deal killer for CnD.
I have been playing this build with a few small changes for months and still not nearly as good as he is.
Putting Rams on top of walls is useful for Fearing people off.
Building 10 trebs and 15 rams in front of a supply depot in SM isn’t. This isn’t about a single rogue siege. This about certain players burning massive amounts of supply on mostly useless siege often just before attacks on T3 keeps.
I think i should repeat myself, i am not talking about zergs i hate zergs, i am talkinb about small group fighting, also why pvt gear? the hp doesn’t seem that necessary since warriors have highest hp in the game. Why not just few knight items and few berserker items kinda mixed up but doing a 0/0/30/10/30 build with endure pain and few other defensive utilities.
WvW has become a world of extremes. Either a player needs to be able to withstand a massive amount of burst or burst themselves. Take zerk rifle warriors… they can pop a decently armored player for 20k in a few attacks. Same for thieves. 22k HP seems like a lot until a player gets focused. Condibunker necros can drop a ton of conditions that can reel off a ton of HP before the cleanses hit.
I’m surprised there isn’t a ‘Griefing’ option under reporting yet.
Agreed. I dislike having to call in the police but this behavior certainly falls under the griefing category.
Immobilize, stun, daze, etc should all have a player cooldown that prevents stacking. Many other MMOs successfully implement this system. No player likes being on the receiving end of being stuck for 10+ seconds.
Condition damage in GW2 was a mistaken design. They should have made condition damage DoT like some other MMOs which means no ability to increase duration and damage would be keyed off Power/Precision just like direct damage. Players could increase total damage output but not the duration or frequency. Conditions would all be non-damaging such as those that effect movement, healing, etc.
This change would eliminate the need to have capped damage stacks, high damage would always come at a cost of being brittle and balancing DoT to direct damage would be much easier.
Ryan gets it! I`d switch the warrior for elementalist or shoutmelee-ranger, because warrior doesn`t bring much to the table synergywise apart from being an overbuffed, selfsustaining powerhouse.
I don’t think you understand how a PVT shout warrior works. Their shouts heal everyone near them (almost 2k per teammate), they are constantly applying team fury/might/swiftness/vigor and even come with decent group condition removal. They show up with 30k+ HP, 3500+ armor and a 4k+ attack. Then they throw in near full time crowd control, built in stability and an elite banner that rezzes/buffs.
There is a reason RedGuard ran with shout warriors. Oh and Rangers have the WORST shouts of any class in the game… bar none.
^Pretty much this. BL keeps are still important because they’re worth way more than a couple of outer towers in EB. Plus, you can treb NW and NE tower from Garri and Lake from Hills.
Defending a home BL T3 hills/bay would be near impossible since few would scout it. By the time a server realized golems were on the gate, the fight would be over. Having to run from citadel to scout would preclude a lot of the current scouting.
The home BL starting waypoint is further than the enemies waypoint to hills and bay making it more valuable for a server to hold garri on their own BL then hills and bay on the enemies.
ANet clearly wanted to correct the silk trade imbalance and did not anticipate supply/demand correctly. They need to fix this either by upping supply (more likely) or dropping the amount needed (less likely).
I don’t have a select the wrong target problem as much as the inability to easily clear target. Having to click a random location to untarget is sometimes quite costly when that random click lands on a random mob.
Few would give a crap about hills, bay or garri if they did this. The only reason they are strategically important is the waypoints. Holding them for points is secondary to that. A lot of servers wouldn’t even bother trying to hold their BL since the run to the bottom half would be mostly pointless since they could lock down their entry points on BLs easier.
Since they won’t/can’t lock the FoV, they should unlock zoom for everyone. It solves the problem since then nobody would have an unfair advantage.
If they went this route, I would suggest they put in cover so ACs couldn’t hit without a line of sight on a target.
Signet Zerker ranger seems to be working very well too. Been running it for the past two days.
18k (high spike) cleave on maul isnt bad. And generally doing 5.2-8k on each maul (low spike). Not to mention. LB AA with quickness. Spamming 2.8k crits nearly as fast as rapid fire can fire.
Almost no skilled player is buying the Ranger thing and anyone dying to one in a solo roaming fight needs to practice more. They are far too easily countered by any of the substantially better roaming classes.
Dodging and strafing won’t bring a hammer train down. Because they can stack, move constantly, heal while moving, run with near full time stability, dish out constant control, tons of AoE DPS, lots of CC and soak up tons of damage they are near impossible to bring down without a substantially superior force.
Adding to this is that inexperienced and low skill players can be highly effective in these as long as the remain stacked. Even when they start to fall banners tend to bring them back up. I have seen the Agg guild come back from almost a complete wipe.
How to solve the problem… that would mean rebalancing heavies almost entirely.
1 guardian, 2 warriors, 1 necro and 1 thief would be my pick. The warriors would be hammer sword warhorn shout banner builds with PVT. The guardian would be staff GS heal/support. Thief would be venom share or DPS but also stealth for stomps and reset. Necro would be there for boon striping and conditioning.
Elementalists are too squishy in 5 man IMO. Rangers are mostly useless. Mesmer could be slotted for the thief spot. Engi while decent doesn’t have much utility here. Either the thief or necro could be removed for an additional heavy but utility would be lost.
If the group is relatively inexperienced, 2 guardians and 3 warriors would be REALLY hard to bring down. Hammer lines are strong for a very good reason. 2 guardians also open up the possibility to run zerk warriors which are also powerful.
I know it has been brought up before but players purposefully burning massive amounts of keep supply on useless siege creates a lot of animosity. It stings quite a bit since there is nothing current players can do about it. We just had a guy drain over 2k supply building rams and trebs in SM for the express purpose of killing all the supply in the keep. The placement made them completely useless.
Any thoughts on how to handle this? Do you fellows consider this to be a problem?
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Roaming Guardians… tin cans that are easy kills. Just bring a can opener. The best they can do most of the time is hold out for a superior force or run to safety. The class doesn’t have the spike DPS for roaming in the current meta. Even worse they cannot escape a fight gone bad most of the time.
Mix in 2+ players though and they become beasts.
I have enjoyed some strong skirmish fights including that CD gank squad trolling Eternal right now. Watching you guys pick off the pug force and whittle down superior numbers was impressive.
Keep up the good fights. Know that many BP understand the unbalanced matchup we find ourselves in.
If you can handle slow, shatter mesmers are one of the best going. Condi bunker engis are very powerful but are a harder to master. Thieves are still powerful but plenty of classes counter them now.
Warriors are kinda meh. They can blow up crappy players and escape easy enough but are best in small or large groups. Skilled players have learned the big windups so they know what to avoid.
Condi bunker engis are tied with shatter mesmers for the hardest fights a thief can get. If a bunker engi cannot beat a thief they just need more practice. It really should be an easy fight for them. Most thieves will just run at the first sighting of a bomb or grenade. Virtually none will engage around an engi elite.
Also thieves can burst about 5 conditions away and then they can drop 1 every 3 seconds while in stealth. This is well below what a condi bunker engi can apply.
Still going to hold that going 30 into earth to get DS in WvW is generally a bad idea. WvW has very few solo duels without NPCs or other players in the mix. Also a build that has to change a couple things up to handle another build should be common. No build should be able to walk through everything.
There may be a point in sPvP, but this isn’t the sPvP forum.
… and the most unbalanced fight of the week goes to … T6!
Hey we gave it the old college try with a 2nd place finish. See you, oh crap, probably next week.
dude if a warrior ever beats your mesmer then you are really really bad, there is no way a skilled mesmer ever get killed by a warrior.
reroll other class, mesmer isn’t for you.
Truth to that. If I run into a mesmer particularly a shatter mesmer, I am solely dependent on that player making a series of mistakes to win. I frequently disengage since they are the paper to my rock. Evasion builds and bunker builds are basically stalemates. Thieves are beatable but only if they stay too long. Fighting other warriors and guardians is like trying to catch a fart.
Yeah gs has more mobility but who the hell is stupid enough to stand for 100b? Well maybe they are in wvw i don’t know i am only r41 in spvp and this 100b thing with gs like i said they have to be stupid to eat that.(are they? )
Uhmmm… those people that just got stunned by earthshaker or backbreaker. Hammer warriors output more stuns than players can stunbreak and despite a long attack chain even part of HB is serious damage. Even better now that immobilize does that stacking thing. Most importantly catching a GS warrior is REALLY hard… even if someone does run one down by the time they catch them their passive heal has put them back in it and their utilities are closer to reset.
Your are only changing to bow if they 1) they start runing and kite you, so you can damaged them while your hammer skill recharge and 2) The bow has a lot of aoe and a lot of conditions so you are only using that to apply those and than switch to hammer to continue the pressure
Any warrior lacking mobility is dead as soon as the numbers turn against him. I am sure the bow is a fine weapon but trying to range a condi-bunker, shatter mesmer, thief or any number of other builds will quickly find a warrior dead. This isn’t sPvP where power caps are in place. Thieves can burst down even PVT warriors. Don’t even get me started on the problems with the hammer or bow versus evasion builds.
In zergs, a bow warrior is kittens on a bull. As I stated originally… viable yes… efficient no.
Something else worth mentioning is this trait doesn’t exist in a solo fight vacuum. This is a GM trait requiring 30 points into earth to have new condition invuln for about 10% of a WvW fight if that. How often does a player only fight one other player without NPCs or others in the mix? This is a trait that is useless for much of WvW fighting.
Maybe in sPvP but WvW taking this over other GM options is probably a bad idea. I hate to say it but when was the last time when someone said “oh crap we are in trouble it is a D/D ele headed this way”? I am actually impressed now when I fight one that is good because they have been nerfed in the nerf. Some of their nerfs have been re-nerfed to make them nerfier.
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Yeah. I can’t imagine what compels people to defend such passive, thoughtless play. It’s disappointing.
Having to keep your health above 90% for an entire fight isn’t exactly passive. To get this trait they most likely have slow attunement switching. Once they leave water, a condimancer with a modest adjustment has ample opportunity to beat them. Now a fully dire condimancer might have a tougher time but IMO a player should not have it both ways… full bunker and good DPS with no blind spots.
Still waiting on a couple videos… the one you listed wasn’t really a good test. Post that on the necro forums and see if I am right about that.
Or when he used a minion…did we watch the same video? Cuz I saw him drop the ele below 90% quite a few times. He just was really crappy on applying conditions when he did. Even when he had help from the thief and the ele was below 75% for quite some time he only got one condition on the ele. One. I think this guy is just a kittenty necro.
My favorite is when he dropped him below 90 and left him with all the boons up despite have Corrupt on his bar. He didn’t even use his signet to load him up. Cannot fix bad play by removing or nerfing a trait.
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This necro wasn’t a good condimancer. When he finally cracked diamond skin he didn’t even SoS or CB. Minions… really? Was there even a weapon switch? Can you post something in WvW and possibly someone that isn’t hamming it up?
Your description is still incorrect. Marks trigger once for the first player that enters. If I trigger a mark, the next person that walks over where it once existed will not be affected.
So if someone triggers the mark when a necromancer is blinded, the mark will have zero effect.
Marks are only unblockable if they are traited. But, again, only power builds take that trait.
You also seemed confused, at least earlier on in the conversation, as to what wells actually do. You implied they’re taken by condition builds when that is simply not the case.
And we didn’t even get to the fact that grenades — the cornerstone of a condition engineer — are also susceptible to reflect and deflect.
In other words, in your attempt to show condition-applying abilities aren’t susceptible to block and blind, you proved you only think that way because you don’t understand how condition-applying abilities actually work.
I am not surprised that someone who ends posts with insults cannot see past their own… oh wait this is the internet. I proved you wrong when you said the ONLY thing a necro has that can ignore blocks is a trait and I was right about wells pulsing and blindness only effecting the first pulse. I have never tested it but I always assumed that when 4 people trigger a mark and the necro is blinded it only effected 1 player but I cannot find anything in the wiki to support it either way. I will test tonight.
All that said… my original point of that reply stands… there are plenty of ways to reduce direct damage.
It is literally impossible to break Diamond Skin. There is plenty of video evidence out there.
a couple links would help make your point
People adapted to condition builds by changing a couple traits or utility skills. You’re telling condition necromancers to adapt by changing to power necromancer, which is a completely different archetype. That’s why Diamond Skin is a hard counter to condition builds.
Besides, there are better ways to balance condition builds without adding blanket immunities. More condition cleansing or duration reduction are just two examples. An immunity like Berserker Stance, which is time limited, would work as well.
No I am saying they may need to adapt if this is really a problem. I actually run a straight condimancer necro build and delivering 2k of direct damage isn’t that difficult. I am not saying the fight isn’t stacked, but I am saying it isn’t impossible. Also when a player constructs a one trick pony, don’t be surprised when their trick doesn’t work that they lose.
D/D eles have been getting nerfed into the ground so it is REALLY difficult to imagine this is a serious problem. I don’t know much about engis aside from the condi-bunker variety are a problem so I would find it amusig if they are hammering other condi builds with this trait.
Oh and still want to see videos demonstrating Diamond Skin problems.
Also, marks only “pulse” once. They don’t function like wells or traps.
Marks trigger once for each player that enters. If a necro is blinded, the trigger wears off on the first player. Subsequent players are effected by the mark. It may not “pulse” like a well but blindness goes away on the first missed activation generally speaking. My statement about blocking is accurate (at least based on the wiki). My rebuttal to the original statement “You can’t take away from a power build hitting you with a sword” stands (and this was what started this part of the thread)… there are lots of ways to reduce direct damage IMO more so than condi damage.
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No, it’s demonstrably impossible. Necromancer and engineer players with both rabid and carrion gear have posted videos showing that they literally cannot penetrate through Diamond Skin if an elementalist has any notion of what he’s doing.
You are implying you should never have to adjust a build to handle another build. Not being able to do 1.5k of direct damage to another player is the limiting factor here not Diamond Skin. Adapt… everyone else had to when condi-bunkers started roaming around all over the place. These two traits aren’t even build defining and any player that loses to an D/D ele stuck in water should just quit playing that build.
oh and since there are a lot of videos showing this problem… care to link a couple?
Marks are not blind immune. They can bypass blocks with a Death Magic trait, but that trait is only taken by power, not condition, builds.
Wells also aren’t blind or block immune. They do bypass those mechanics more easily, but a constant source of blind, such as a blind field, or block, such as a two-second block, can negate wells. Also, wells are taken by power builds, not condition builds.
Area-of-effect abilities aren’t blind or block immune either. By default, they can be blocked and blinded. In fact, if a necromancer is blinded before casting an AOE like Grasping Dead, the AOE misses on all its targets.
Come to think of it, the only ability I have as a condition necromancer that bypasses block is Corrupt Boon. The only two abilities I have that bypass blind are Deathly Swarm and Putrid Mark, which only transfer conditions.
Whatever the case, it’s helpful in these conversations if you only talk about balance when you actually know what you’re talking about.
Oh for Fs sake…. Blindness does indeed effect marks and wells but only one pulse worth. Wells, Corrupt Boon and traps avoid the block altogether. Read the wiki here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unblockable
I do agree it is helpful when someone knows what they are talking about.
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First of all, Diamond Skin elementalists are unique in that they are a total counter to condition builds. It’s normal for some builds to soft counter others, but Diamond Skin elementalists are the only build that are literally impossible for another viable build.
Second of all, the developers have repeatedly stated that they want to avoid the rock-paper-scissors philosophy. Diamond Skin elementalists are the first time the developers ignored those promises for class balance.
Impossible… sorry no. Any decent condi is going to have some direct damage. They just have to chew through 1.5k to 2k worth of health to apply their conditions. Once on Diamond Skin does nothing to remove them.
I do not recall any dev saying that but even if they did it makes no sense. Some builds/classes are always going to be a counter to other builds/classes. To my knowledge there is no class/build that doesn’t have an opposing class/build that is extremely difficult to win against.
Oh, so you are saying that you can’t block, dodge, invuln, blind, reflect attacks that put conditions on you? Interesting.
Only some of them not all of them. Most DD invulns do not work against existing conditions, many conditions (such as wells and marks) are blind immune, condition application frequently ignores blocks, etc. Many conditions are applied when you hit someone or walk over an area which cannot be avoided aside from these two trait lines and the right circumstances.
There are FAR more ways to mitigate and avoid direct damage. There are even more direct damage invulns than there are condition ones.
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But condi removal is that dmg reduction. You can’t take away from a power build hitting you with a sword, you have that dmg. If you get hit by a mark, you can cleanse.
Ways to decrease direct damage:
block, dodge, invuln, toughness, blind, weakness, reflect and I am sure I am missing more.
Ways to decrease condi damage:
remove the condition (which we have very little control over), reduce the duration, use one of two traits that make a player invuln to them
Conditions have no passive mitigation.
Tell that to the many people out there who use Melandru and Lemongrass. That is what I use on my guardian.
Both are easily offset by Veggie Pizza/Koi Cakes and several runes and traits that increase duration.
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This thread seems about as dead as WvW in BP lately. At least it looks like Kalkz will stay one more week. He was feeling the pain when EBay was beating us in the score. Unfortunately (to me) the new variance math means we will probably have this same matchup again.
I know this is somewhat worn out but rock meet paper.
Hard counters are terrible design.
Condi-bunkers are also a terrible design. Damage increases should always be countered by decreasing the sources survivability. I accept condi-bunker players since that is how the game is designed and now avoid condi-bunkers since that is the best course of action for the builds I play. Had my class access to these skills I would seriously consider adding them into my build and wouldn’t feel bad about it for a second.
I know this is somewhat worn out but rock meet paper.
so how do the buffs offset new builds’ dps
all i see is “they add to dps” “i agree” here
AF is typically 2500 more HP for each player that has it activated. That is a decent buffer that frequently offsets the higher DPS we are seeing with the latest builds particularly now that toughness bypassing condi damage is back in full force.
GL is a damage buff but not much more than 3% additional DPS in most cases. Sure it is a noticeable difference but won’t make a substantial difference in most fights.
The buff is achievable with a modest effort by everyone, the buffs mostly effect everyone equally and they are earned from WvW play as opposed to a cash shop or PvE play. These are all good things. The only players who “suffer” are those that are working their way towards these buffs but that can be said for any tiered system.
Have they fixed the immobilize yourself bug? Our D/D ele and my thief kept triggering it to the point we just stopped playing them. Weapon switching supposedly fixed it so I guess it was like the building siege bug but that isn’t possible on an ele and was annoying on the thief.
But what is the point of having 2 melee weapons, just so you can run away? also combustive shot can be shot very easy once they start to melee you or when you do bow 5 skill wich roots them for 3 sec, i mean i will probabyl use sword+horn but once i sport enemy i will change them for the bow , if it works so well in spvp why wouldn’t it work for wvw, yes they can run but they can run in spvp also.
There are multiple reasons for two melee weapons. The most obvious is that the hammer is great at control but not so good at delivering focused damage. By switching to the GS a player gets two high mobility skills, the biggest damaging skill in the game against non-mobile opponents and more overall AoE DPS than the hammer. If they go with Sword/Warhorn the get some mobility, group buff, limited condi-cleanse and drum roll please… a Blast Finisher. The first is great for roaming while the later is excellent in large group play.
Other classes do ranged far better so why keep a warrior at a distance when they will always be out gunned there?
Your suspicion is wrong. I have been playing primarily wvw for months now, so not being able to obtain these buffs through PvE had nothing to do with it
And you very much can “lazy” your way to it. Run with a blob, pvdoor and flip towers. Eventually you will have both
When I say lazy I mean players cannot buy it. They have to play WvW for it. I don’t care how they play WvW. At the end of the day, it still takes time in WvW to gain. IMO not too much time to feel overly difficult and not too little to feel easy. It is a WvW earned buff and there are so few of those.
While I agree with the bulk of your post, getting all of the right ascended weapons and armour for yourself just isn’t realistically attainable by wvw play. The crafted ones should be tradeable, and there should also be a wvw badge scheme, and laurels should be les of a bottleneck grind for wvw customers.
It’s failed design. Playing wvw should be a viable and realistic route for having zero stat disadvantage in wvw.
Dragonite is really the only thing that is significantly difficult to gather in WvW but it is still possible. Money to buy crafting up is also somewhat difficult since WvW players are generally at a cash disadvantage. Everything takes longer… a lot longer… but it is possible.
I would vote against buying ascended armor. Ascended items should be a reward for length of play not how much I can spend in the cash shop. They should have used something time gated and something only attainable from play. Laurels with karma, badges or tokens would be preferred. The process should also be dead simple. Get the stuff, talk to XYZ vendor and receive item.
Yes. Allow the golem to work underwater, transform to another critter, bring it back when we exit water or reset the skill if it was alive when we went into water would all be a much better solution. Killing it and putting the skill on cooldown for simply touching water is a bad mechanic.
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