Guild Wars 2

2: Downed state is still in, and will be untill the servers shutdown. Just my 2 cents.

3: Culling is being fixed, stealth consumable removed from wvw, and if you can´t see shadow refugees you´re just blind…that should cover all invisbility options for large amounts of people?

Legendaries will get bumped up to ascended once they release. They always were on par with exotics, i don´t know what you´re talking about there.
Recipes are all known and documented, and have been quite a while, you must´ve left rather early.

Pvp balance has had slight changes, nothing groundbreaking though.

Melee competes, always has(well, there was some trouble in betas), and will continue to do so.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Otaur.9268:

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Shadowsteps doesn’t cross jumps. The ledge jumping you refer to flyfunner is only when there is a way up to the ledge within certain distance. And you’ll still have to aim the shot on the edge or it’ll fail.

I have seen in sPvP from below the keep in the map with Svanir (name escapes me at this time), a thief teleport up to the Capture point from down by the statue on the ground where the 2 teams roads meet… I have also seen them bypass the gates to get to the lords by shadowstepping onto the walls of the bases. Or shadowstepping onto rock ledges that have a 0 chance to get to on normal means. Or even shadowstep at keep cap point up onto the little ledge (the part where u come from behind the keep). Where Lightning Flash will show a green marker it just flashes us below the ledge and not up onto it. I believe this is what the OP is referring to.

This isn’t a bug in LF but a bug in shadow step. Except the first one, like I said, if there is a road nearby, it works as intended.
I’ve seen youtube of people using it quite creative.

Also, more onto physics than actually ingame. Another difference between shadowstep and LF is that thiefs are supposed to be teleporting while LF is just a very fast movement speed. The shadowstep is limited to (or should be) only places that are reachable if there is a path nearby, but it doesn’t change the fact it’s a teleport with actually 0 seconds difference between casting and reaching the place. LF on the other hand has to run all the way around, up the stairs, to get to the same spot.

Nah, LF is supposed to be a teleport aswell, judging from how you can channel while casting it.

Negativity.5801:

scepter is more focused on condition dmg

dragon tooth you have to be smart about using

shatterstone is bad

Shatter stone? Ooooooh you mean that skill nobody ever uses? I almost forgot it was there.

Lightning flash is the one single thing that makes casting e5 worth it. If it wasn´t for that one spell a blind man in a wheelchair coul dodge the thing.
Not that it´s too much harder to dodge even the lightning flashed version. Just look at the ele, see him start casting, take out half of the eles hp bar in the few seconds before dodging right before the blast. No damage dealt to you, ele is near death, enjoy.

As for the topic itself, yes, it´s annoying as hell, and seems pretty random sometimes where it let´s you flash. Most likely restrictions are there to counter flashing on walls in pvp and such exploity tricks. Would i prefer it not restricted? Obviously, but i think it´s good enough as is. At most i´d reallylike if they upped the range just slightly.

You just need to stomp ´em to the ground enough during daytime.

That´s rather epic

reikken.4961:

but you do 0 damage if your attack doesn’t hit. That trait is important. no way I would ever use staff without it
additional attunement swapping and boon duration helps a bit with damage anyway

Blasting staff is imo the one of the most overrated traits for ele. It seriously isn´t that hard to keep mobs in lavafonts if you just practice a bit. I never equip blasting staff, i feel it´s more than often just not needed and takes space from better traits.

I run 0/0/10/30/30 support staff build for group pve.

Depends on a build really.

But i would say condition damage gives you more damage all in all, but critical damage has the lol big numbrz factor.
If you want to do pvp, invest in toughness/vitality/healing power, otherwise you´ll just be dead when someone as much as glances at you, unless ofcourse nuking from behind the walls in wvw is your thing.

Rhaj.5261:

I’ve played a few games with nice roaming PvP. It is completely possible, but a matter of will arenanet be willing to implant a feature like this into the game?

Like i said, wvw is more focused on siege warfare, it would need many fundamental changes and hell of a lot bigger map for proper roaming pvp to happen.

Open world and 1v1 don´t mix.
Those who want small scale will run in smallgroups and those who want large scale run with zergs. Those who want solo action will generaly be squished between.

That being said, gw2 isn´t a game for openworld pvp anyhow. Wvw focuses more on siege warfare, with some roaming elements here and there.

You might want to consider seeking another game(df:uw is a strong cadidate) if open world pvp is your thing, but you won´t find your 1v1 heaven anywhere i dare say.

reikken.4961:

Nonlinear.9823:

I’d rather pump out 13.8k eruptions every 5 seconds

every 7* seconds if you have the earth cooldown reduction trait
8.5 if you don’t

it has a cast time too, not just a cooldown

this is why it’s better to swap attunements
for maximum condition deeps, open with fire for flame burst (may as well throw down a lava font while you’re at it. it has a super short cast) and then switch to earth for eruption. eruption again once it’s ready and swap to fire during the cast, and flame burst again (and lava font under your eruption if anyone is in range to get the might) then do other useful stuff while earth cools down. most of the time that earth is on cooldown, eruption is too. Assuming you have some points in arcana. which you should if you’re using a staff. Just make sure to swap out of earth as soon as you start casting eruption to get the cooldown ticking sooner

Personaly i think it´s better to start in earth for the blastfinsher, and cycle through water for icespikes vulnerabilitystacks.

Nonlinear.9823:

You could probably do something like 10/0/30/0/30 and dodge for 8 more stacks…

8 stacks?
Ea only gives 1.

Dolan.3071:

I like it. However I was looking through traits and saw that at 30 in arcane you can add things like churning earth to the end of a dodge roll, surely that would slide in nicely with your bleeds and would be worth shuffling 10 points around to achieve? HAVNT actually tested the trait though, but in theory it sounds good.

30 in arcana is never wasted when you swap attunements frequently, but the true strength of evasive arcana is the blast finisher of dodge roll in earth. The bleed and fire´s damage effect are rather pathetic, water heal is nice and the blind is kinda meh.

Ele hasn´t changed all that much.

Few bug fixes, amongst them the EA nerf, but toehr than that nothing major.

Occam.9841:

zip

What the s/f intro does, is not mad damage, not everything revolves around damage.
Your opponent won´t be just sitting there dodging, he will havetried to damage you during those skill chains, but instead he was cc´d damaged slightly, forced to use energy for dodges, if he´s bad/doesn´t know ele skills maybe he even used utility and most of the time you´ve been completely safe and fully in control.
Now as you swap to d/d, you´re propably nearly at full health, your skills are all there, no cooldowns used, no energy wasted, buffed with stacks of might and the remaining invulnerability.
Your opponent however has wasted his energy dodging your attacks, if not he´ll be starting at much lower health, he propably will have used some of his cooldowns, his self buffs will be running out and all the time he´s been froced on defensive.

That´s not equal footing to start a fight.

On the staff part…you apparently have not seen staff bunkers, or have any concept of what a bunker is?

doublecup.5469:

Strang.8170:

….but i can´t refrain from commenting that staff really is group support weapon rather than dps tool.

err…I dps like nutz with fire/staff. Of course I’m only 50 and still mostly solo leveling around the world, but I haven’t yet run into something I couldn’t take down. I’ve tried switching in and out different specs and weapons, but for me nothing goes down faster than fire/staff. Everyone plays differently but for me, I don’t have any complaints with the dps of the staff.

Oh, don´t understand me wrong, staff is capable of dealing damage. Infact i levelled my toon with staff, and regularly use it for pve. Aoe is awesome against groups of mobs.

But strong point of the staff is not damage, most of other classes can deal better single target and many come on par even against 2-4 enemies. And those are what matter in dungeons and against bosses etc.
Real strength of staff is that it can keep 4 other members of your team dpsing and not running around for their life.
But support role ofcourse doesn´t mean that you´re not throwing around damage yourself, it just means you don´t spec for high numbers or priorize it over cc/heals.

Occam.9841:

zip

Ok, how about this, aura build with 30 arcana and ea, s/f and d/d

start in s/f water, 3s chill,drop comet, swap to fire, shield, firewall, drop dragons tooth and phoenix on it, earth and roll to wall, magnetic wave, obsidian flesh, earth 3, air 2 3 and knockdown, swap weapon to d/d rtl, updraft, normal d/d combos yada yada.

Throughout out the fight your opponent has been cc´d, dazed, knocked down, blown away or forced to dodge your spells. You gained 12 stacks of might and invulnerability for 4 seconds before entering d/d, after that hell of alot more boons.

Or take another scenario, bunker d/d and staff.
D/d bunker which is arguably one of the best bunkers, suddenly notice that your key skills are on cooldown? No worries, swap to staff and you have a clean set of skills and heals to use.

…well, i really wouldn´t need to say anyhting but obsidian flesh.
4 seconds of invulnerability at the start of the fight, without sacrificing any cooldowns or utilities. That alone would be insanely powerful.

About as long as it takes for the hamster wheel crowd to start complaining there´s nothing to do i´d say. Then release previous armor everywhere and “accidentaly” add new armor somewhere grindy.

Junkpile.7439:

D/D ele only job is scare PUG zerg away.

It does a marvelous job at that though…all that lightning, fire and ground shaking…they flee before noticing that 90% of their healthbar is still there.

I´m actualy curious about what exactly is it you feel is not in line? All you´ve said is pretty vague synergy/pressure/etc.

What skill combinations exactly are too easy to fire rapidly? What defensive cycles allow for too much offense at the same time in your opinion?

Chuckles*
Keep telling that to yourself.

I´m sure the guardians and warriors i roll with are more than happy to tell you that they disagree while scraping the remains of an arrogant dubble d ele from their boots.

Since the discussion isn´t about what´s more effecttive for ele trait wise, but rather which stat is better for dealing damage, i´ll just say condition damage 9 time out fo 10.
Precision requires good amount of crit dmg to work, so condition damage (which is plentiful in our skill sets) give a lot more bang with lot less investment. Add to that the duration boost from fire and the choice is clear.

….but i can´t refrain from commenting that staff really is group support weapon rather than dps tool.

Hynoris.3684:

Let me put a utility skill in my elite slot that all i need…

Oh god, YES.
This thousand times over, just let me take one more normal utility skill.
…that should say something about elites

Honestly, with anet, who knows?

But it was changed without being mentioned in the notes, so we can hope it´s a bug.

solarisnox.8521:

Is this not the case?
If not, has anyone been bug reporting it?

It´s been reported aye.

Crits and dots generaly don´t combine as they gain practicaly no benefit from eachother. Ofcourse there´s some builds dealing with bleed/burning on crit and such.
Not enough synergy is the reason there´s not many builds like that.

starting in earth to do bleeds, cripple and to get the blast finisher speeds things up in pve, though it´s not required.

Bones.5762:

Dude i think you need to relax, i said if, i’m just trying to respond constructively in a nice manner and you are just full out raging on a forum post.

Even so, would you just have it gone with? what would it accomplish? would you rather 5-6classes run around with portals, easily portaling golems anywhere on the map in a the flash of 20seconds with coordinated guilds?

o_O raging, what part gave that impression?

I wouldn´t particularly want it gone, nor would i want more portal skills. Like i said before i would want more skills with similiarly great effect on gameplay, not with same mechanics.
Failing that i think it needs to be toned down. Having 1 single skill define strategy, is not good.

Bones.5762:

It doesnt to be honest, but its unique is what i’m trying to say. If honestly your server is losing because of portal and portal alone, then maybe you guys need different tactics. portal will either be a death trap to those that use it when countered correctly, or a way to destroy siege with inferior numbers. how do you destroy siege with 10 players vs 30? just curious question.

How did you conclude that we´re losing?
Just so you know, we use it too and more than often succesfuly. I personaly don´t have any problem using it or having it used on me.
What i have problem with is that one single skill can define battles this much. There ought to be more skills with similiarly profound effect.
Mechanic being unique to some profession has nothing to do with it. Ele conjures are unique, but unless they add conjure trebuchet i don´t see them even compareable to portal.

Lordryux.9785:

Nanoha.3892:

you can get egar with wvw stats (power/vit/tough) from doing any of these dungones: Ascelonian Catacombes, Sorrow’s Embrace, Honour of the Waves. AC probably being the easiest. Jewelery can be crafted your choice of stats (this will take a fair few ectos)It’s not hard to “gear up” for wvw.

Get yourself a rare back item from the TP (spineguard of..) for a mere 15s or so.

uhhh i looked in those dungeon gears and i didnt see any PVT armors at all just the weapons.. thats why i just got clerics instead untill i get enough badges for the WvW set. but meh clerics is actually working out pretty good

You know that each vendor sells 3 different armor sets?

Bones.5762:

I don’t mind expanding but each class also has something that makes them unique in their own way. Portal would be the mesmers, or you could argue timewarp. I don’t know about the other classes except engineers in which would be weapon kits and no cooldown swaping. elementals and their 20skills on attunements. so on.

…because swapping a kit/attunement has just as big of an effect on battles as portal…

crewthief.8649:

Leal.4973:

Yeah don’t buff guards, I love being able to solo them as a ranger. Circle strafe, circle strafe, circle strafe, if only the US army learned of this technique we would have no problems at all with war!

I’m not even sure what your last statement means. Pretty silly to be honest.

Slight jab at the ridiculousness of basing arguments on “realism” ?

Daggers are the best ele setup you can pick for pvp. According to some, best for pve too.

Bones.5762:

Very few people know how true this is, mesmers are only as good as the players, and most players who pick up mesmers don’t know how to play it, which is why a majority of the players are good at being mesmers and people cry OP. Everytime i see a thief in wvw i have a feeling that 70/30 that the thief is bad because stealth+hs doesnt equal win.

There´s plenty of good mesmers, but the majority? Nah.

People have trouble playing eles.
Eles can be played well.
Ele is hard to play for those people, maybe not you or me but for many it apparently is.

Baelish.9850:

Wanted to put this back up as a reminder that the people raging/QQing about mesmers are a minority.. and having a thread to focus the nerd rage doesn’t reflect the community as a whole.

A thread about how good it is doesn´t reflect the community any better though.

When one single skill is the extent of strategy…i´m not all that happy.
I´m not against portals themselves, but for gods sake, we need more similiar skills (similiar in their effect on gameplay, not similiar in mechanics).

Kraken.7514:

Sorry English is not my native language.

Does this answer mean they are not even gonna start TALKING about WvW untill February?

They will be lucky if anyone is playing WvW by then lol

It means that they MAY talk when it´s closer to february.
I´d say propably at the end of january or start of february. But i don´t really have all that high hopes for it…

Greatsword in wvw

Tornado is situational and elemental has too many times offered my enemy an easy rally.

Most often i use it for bit quicker travel and taking out npcs, so that my own skills won´t be on cooldown incase i get jumped.
Sometimes i charge in a clueless zergs just because it´s funny.

Near glasscannon spiker, s/d.

Slayer Lord.5023:

Doing this would destroy any strategy in the game. Spying would be very fast and easy. The matter of harassment is also an issue.

Spying would be faster and easier, how exactly?

NevirSayDie.6235:

I’m not trying to troll your thread, but it’s pretty easy to browse forum topics and see which professions most people view as “OP.” If you actually DO want to see people bicker some more, that’s cool, but just be up front about it.

I just wanted to go lazy about it and maybe even gather some of those guys who just ignore those kinda threads

insanemaniac.2456:

might as well leave the list empty then because a “discussion” about who is OP is pretty worthless without the bickering.

The whole question is in fact rather pointless, it´s the results i´d like to see

List in following format.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Leave the bickering about reasons and opinions for other threads please.

Stiv.1820:

None of that stuff works at 2K+ range that they get in about 2 seconds :P

I don’t think it’s true about stealth. I use C&D on stelathed thieves with a lot of success to mess them up. It’s particulary easy on Glass Cannon thieves. I also kill them while in stealth with ClusterBomb AoE. Maybe playing one gives me more insight as to where they will be, but it works.

I ran into a group last night that was built to murder me. The mesmer had greatsword and sword/focus, guardian had all his knokcback/pull toys and a warrior that spammed killshot whenver he was at full adren. I never once got stealth from my SR I was bounced around like a ragdoll and hit by 12K killshots when I was on my back.

Groups always prevail over players.

Problem is that when people don´t have access to powerful enough ground targeted aoes, fighting stealthed players becomes a drag.
Even with aoes it comes down to guessing. When target uses movement skills, there´s no doubt about their intentions. When target stealths, he could be doing anything, going anywhere. Many people don´t like being forced to gamble, and even less when wrong answer punishes them severly.
One can ofcourse practice guessing, but point is that it takes the results out of the players hands, or atleast it feels that way in many cases.

Siscast.6497:

I meant significantly reduce it in relation to what it COULD be if it is turned on. I imagine if it’s implemented, trolls/or anyone really can easily whisper to the opposing team whatever the commander is relaying at a whim. I think this possible game breaking mechanic is not worth the features.

That goes both ways though, anything said over it can as well be false information.

Stiv.1820:

Not sure why that is. I don’t even try to chase a d/d ele because it’s so annoying. They will endlessly outrun you, get in range of a keep door then stand their ground and even if you do down them, they mist form inside the keep and self rally.

At least with stealth you can try to predict where they are headed and set up a lockdown or keep dpsing.

Mainly because targeted skills still work, immobilizes stuns etc remain effective, you don´t need to re-acquire target, you can immediately see if it´s worth it to chase…lot´s of reasons.
Though by far the biggest reason in my opinion is that stealth forces players to guess where thief might´ve gone. It´s not about skill anymore, just down to pure luck.

Siscast.6497:

It’s not to completely prevent an exploit but to significantly reduce and limit it and not make the exploit worldwide (gamewise) to the general population.

I´m not sure it significantly reduces it.

For it to significantly reduce the spying aspect, there would need to be large amount of players prone to doing this. Players that are motivated enough to support some server through unsavory means and yet not motivated enough to find out a single playername from that server.

Stiv.1820:

FourTwenty.4268:

ITT: People don’t like it when players can escape.

Yea, D/D eles and even warriors are just as good at fleeing as a Thief if not better.

Thieves are more frustrating because stealth is a lot more annoying mechanic than endless mobility skills.

Drago.1634:

Drago.1634:

ren yon.4679:

Lol papscooldown this already happens

Yes, this is already happening. So why make it any easier for them to do this?

At least the way it is now, those ppl that jump server just for this cause are stuck on that server for 7days. Instead of playing with thier friends/guilds on their own server.

o_O exactly what does this have to with the whole thing….

Drago.1634:

ren yon.4679:

Lol papscooldown this already happens

Yes, this is already happening. So why make it any easier for them to do this?

Aguess it´s easier for some people to type rather than talk…

FourTwenty.4268:

ITT: People don’t like it when players can escape.

….so much warm feelings of people raging at me back when playing my kity kity ranger in alliance battles