Guild Wars 2

“Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™, introduces the ultimate challenge: our first raid, which is made up of three distinct raid wings. Raids are 10-player, instanced, elite dungeon content that’s a challenge unlike anything we’ve previously released in Guild Wars 2. These raids are meant to put you and your teammates to the test and challenge you to grow your skills as Guild Wars 2 players. Raids are our answer to what skilled PvE players have to look forward to at endgame—the ultimate test to overcome and defeat.”

Raids are by their definition in GW2 to be the ultimate challenge in PvE.

If they are something a majority can do with little effort, I believe by that very notion they have failed at their intended function.

Here’s what I would do:

- Obviously, create alternative means to acquire certain ascended stats like Viper’s trinkets outside of raids. The devs have already mentioned this was coming in the next Living Story, however I believe they should address this need before the next raid should they introduce more stat combinations going forward.

- Legendary Armor served a very impressive carrot for getting raiding going, GW2 Raiders now know what to expect from Raid Content with how wildly received it was for raiders, they did a phenomenal job bringing Raiding to a GW2 format. However, like other Legendary items such as Backpacks, I believe in Legendary Armor being made available in another area of the game. Imho, having a Legendary Armor tied to WvW specifically would be an incredible way to instill an incentive for WvW which needs the help. However I am perfectly able to accept a Legendary Armor set that takes place much like how the Vanilla Precursor Crafting works. This Legendary Armor set naturally is not the Envoy set.

- Raid rewards can be tempered still, but I do not believe in something like a bronze, silver, gold system. That can easily instill even more toxicity as different factors to gauge how well the raid does the encounter could be as easy as 1 person denying the raid a gold medal, whereas right now it is less obvious. Wildstar had a similar format in their dungeons, it was some of the most elitist and toxic PvE ever seen in an MMO. I prefer my ‘Ulduar’ formula a page ago that I mentioned. Have the encounters give you additional non-required rewards like Ascended Ingots/Planks/Leather if you decide to go the extra mile and do a ‘hard-mode’ variant of the encounter. Technically speaking, that would give the hard-mode raiders an edge over their normal mode raiders in terms of individual wealth and horizontal progression.

…Of course, Nike pointed out earlier that the current first raid was perhaps a bit too easy, but I wonder if that was because raiders in GW2 had just gotten better at realizing metas and recognizing mechanics? What if Wing 3 was the 1st Wing that came out for everyone, would we be saying the same things about it then since raiding was a new concept and metas weren’t being created?

I think GW2 Raiders have gotten profoundly better, Arenanet is going to have a lot of work ahead of them to make engaging encounters to fuel the ever improving raiders.

WotLK was riding off it’s own lore, and the implied raiding basis that was in its predecessors. The design decisions such as LFG and severe content droughts or worse, reused content (Naxxramas) caused many players to make WotLK their last expansion in WoW.

The only acceptable raid that correctly implemented Easy Mode and Hard Mode in WotLK, in my opinion as a pretty hard-core raider during that time-frame, was Ulduar. Ulduar was magnificently done, as the hard mode encounter toggles were anything from doing the normal encounter but with a strict DPS check for a timer, not killing certain kinds of trash or in a more literal aspect, pressing a button. There was a seamless transition for easy and hard mode, yet the encounters in their hardest versions were definitely the next level of the encounter.

The Bandit Trio Encounter in W2 of Forsaken Thicket tried something like this, but Arenanet felt the numbers were impossible for the original iteration so now the normal encounter for full loot is extremely easy, while the achievement for a one-time additional box of loot is more in-line with a typical Raid Encounter. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of what Ulduar brought in WotLK over in GW2 since that seamless hard-mode trigger doesn’t actually involve different instances (Meaning you could do easy mode bosses and hard mode bosses in the SAME instance, you pick what you want) but the rest of WotLK was utter garbage for PvE.

If they remade Forsaken Thicket as above, they could incorporate repeatable weekly achievements for those Raider’s Boxes so there’s a fairly substantial reward for the hard mode raiders (Technically Raw Gold), these achievements naturally would be something that inconveniences the raiders however it is not required for any of the collections or getting the normal loot. That would be a pretty good compromise.

Ellie.5913:

Ryou.2398:

I don’t get why so many feel entitled after getting 1000s of hours from this game, I have never seen so many make such a deal and claim the sky is falling over an mmorpg releasing some harder content before, usually people understand why there needs to be a mixture, your just going to have to be patient, you aren’t paying a monthly fee if you don’t mind it, then play something else until they release the content you want.

Its not doing any good making thread after thread as how you think the game should be, there is criticism and there is entitlement.

YES perfect solution, I agree. We should all leave the game and come back in a couple years (or longer) after they’ve added something we’d enjoy doing. Eureka!

Hyperbole isn’t your strong suit.

With the raid fully released, everyone can now look forward to lots of Living Story and the side-content that comes with! Aside from upcoming months of this content, the next expansion given how the HoT Revamp patch included members from the expansion creation team, looks to have a better focus on what did and did not work for HoT Launch. Again good news!

With the sole exception of maybe fractals, the supposed ‘hardcore’ folks people are labeling all raiders from those who spend maybe 2 hours of 2 different days going into Forsaken Thicket to the progression guilds who have craved something like the raid in this game for a long time will actually likely have more than a year to wait for the next raid. But I think most of us on this raiding side won’t hate the devs for it, we are mature enough to understand that there is a balance.

More or less what Varga said. Matthias tests how flexible your comp is, how sustained it is when everyone is taking lots of pressure from various sources. Necros help with that sustain with Plague Signet, which can peel the rampant burning and poison going around especially in the last phase, they just need to use the signet when they get 9 or more burning stacks (imo).

Double Chrono, Double Necro (You could have one go reaper for the additional CC if it’s needed), and Druid with a tempest occasionally popping water to sustain, you can fill in the other blanks. If you don’t have the 2nd chrono, a guardian with a well-placed reflect wall helps, and who doesn’t like Protection?

MauChann.3081:

Guys, i thought it was really well clear said that raids were not going to be an “important endgame thing” Well, I can congratulate you, you made it exactly that.
Now let me sum up what has been happening in my game over the past few days around the announcement of raidwing 3.
Insane amounts of ping, lag, and i’ve updated all my drivers, run all the pingplotters, and the problem is not on my server
The “Known issue tracker” would have been such a huge thing to keep bugs well fixed.
Citated from the known issue tracker post: A few times every week!
It hasn’t been updated for almost a month now.
How about you guys go fix what you already have going on instead of bringing out huge things only 1% of the players is interested in.

No worries about me complaining about “not enough pve content” I am happy with that. I just cant play it if there are no bugfixes happening.

Exactly the kind of irrelevant complaint I mentioned. How is the Raid Content team responsible for your ISP issues?

I literally don’t even. This has to be a troll.

Izithel.6853:

The treatment by some people here as if development is some kind of zero sum game were any kind of work on content you don’t like directly takes away from content they do like is silly and betrays an ignorance on how development for video games work.

It’s more or less venting I presume from people. I don’t really blame them, a lot of things with HoT went wrong with all the good it brought, I would even say the Magumma Legendary debacle was the worst for a lot of people.

But for a practicality sense, if this were flipped around in that say…Adventures were a glorious success (not saying they didn’t do a good job) done by maybe 3-4 people, people would still complain about the few people who aren’t doing something else.

If we assume Arenanet is staffed with I believe 350ish people as mentioned before, only 1.5% of the company is purely dedicated to Raids and can request assistance from other sections like everyone else. What was the percent of players at least doing the Raid content again or trying it once? Pretty sure that even if 5% of the population were ecstatic about how Raiding was and are sticking around just for more GW2 raids, that 1.5% of the company is sustaining a much higher percentage of investment into the game in a section.

And we can probably assume the raid content is being done or attempted or enjoyed by more than 5%, that was a low bar I set.

STIHL.2489:

Sykper.6583:

STIHL.2489:

That Guy.5704:

Rednik.3809:

That Guy.5704:

tl;dr ANet’s raid team is more efficient than the people on my content, so ANet must be lying

When they gave the 5 people number they said in addition to the audio, modelers etc. that help them not full time, just like how those developers help all the other groups.

So basically they are taking shared resources from other teams, because raids was Anet priority.

until you can provide real data showing that the amount of resources “taken” from other teams is very disproportional or that the other teams dedicated to a different piece of content are being bottlenecked by art, audio, loot tables, etc (whatever else you listed) as a result of the raid team. you cant legitimately assert anything like this.

Of course he can, if they are asking the Sound Team to make stuff just for the raid, then whatever the sound team was working on needs to be put on hold, for them to work on the raid, so obviously they are pulling resources away from other projects.

Should we complain when the Sound Team gets pulled away from Living Story to work on a few new WvW sounds for a few days? What about the Environmental Design team taken away from new PvE maps to work on revamping SPvP? (We saw reworks already of this)

Well of course not.. PvP is more important then PvE stuff anyway.

It’s nice of you to give your opinion, but that really doesn’t answer the question.

Furthermore, I have a different suggestion for those still upset, how about complaining about the other teams in charge of content you want instead of the Raid team? You might get further along if you start asking questions directed at the devs in charge of a particular piece of content, we saw this on the SPvP forums when a dev confirmed the PvP balance and Profession Balance teams were separate. Why not address that controversy instead of barking up this tree?

STIHL.2489:

That Guy.5704:

Rednik.3809:

That Guy.5704:

tl;dr ANet’s raid team is more efficient than the people on my content, so ANet must be lying

When they gave the 5 people number they said in addition to the audio, modelers etc. that help them not full time, just like how those developers help all the other groups.

So basically they are taking shared resources from other teams, because raids was Anet priority.

until you can provide real data showing that the amount of resources “taken” from other teams is very disproportional or that the other teams dedicated to a different piece of content are being bottlenecked by art, audio, loot tables, etc (whatever else you listed) as a result of the raid team. you cant legitimately assert anything like this.

Of course he can, if they are asking the Sound Team to make stuff just for the raid, then whatever the sound team was working on needs to be put on hold, for them to work on the raid, so obviously they are pulling resources away from other projects.

Should we complain when the Sound Team gets pulled away from Living Story to work on a few new WvW sounds for a few days? What about the Environmental Design team taken away from new PvE maps to work on revamping SPvP? (We saw reworks already of this)

Again, you aren’t proving that Raids are the priority here, they are a branch of content that gets attention like any other when something is needed from another team. There’s zero chance anyone can know the exact amount of time is invested by other teams on a particular piece of content is leaning towards favoring a certain kind of content. Only Arenanet knows that.

IndigoSundown.5419:

STIHL.2489:

IndigoSundown.5419:

STIHL.2489:

Healix.5819:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Would the ones complaining about “only” getting raids have wanted that HoT content delivered over time instead of all at once?

Personally, I would have rather had HoT release 1 zone every ~3 months with double the story so it could run bi-weekly, then transition directly into season 3 shortly after. It would have lasted a lot longer for me, compared to burning through it within a month, which is also about how long just the Silverwastes lasted me. On the bright side however, with nothing new, I’ve had the chance to burn through several other games.

You know, that would have been a good idea, to have released only 1 HoT map, to see player reactions to it and make some minor adjustments, and then release the second map a month later, and make adjustments to that one, then release the 3rd map, and span out the whole HoT release over a few months.

I think that would have been a great idea, that way players could get used to VB, for a while, before moving on other maps.

Thanks for the responses. So, it seems that some players, at least, prefer a more regular, smaller release cadence for PvE. What I wonder is whether, if Anet had gone that route, we’d still be seeing complaints about, “Not enough content.” Probably, I guess, but I do wonder.

Well the main thing with HoT was how drastically different it was from the Core game. The way the maps work, with their many levels, I think would have been much better to introduce in smaller doses so that it would have been much easier for the masses to swallow as well as given Anet time to respond to feedback, it’s lot easier for them to respond to the critique of one map then 4 of them.

Personally, I think slow continual growth of a game is a good way to make things happen. That way Anet can work it out, and adjust, and make it fit right, before moving on with their next addition.

I can see the value of that approach. As it is, ANet seems to have taken the XPac approach to sellable content, rather than a DLC model with smaller packages and smaller price tags. Since a lot of people complained about HoT’s content amount for its price, I can only assume that there would be backlash at smaller packages unless they were priced really low.

There’s probably a lot of overhead with this approach as well. Imagine if a certain update had a map release, but you never purchased that content yet needed had purchased content beyond that point. That map would be a blur on your map, breaking your immersion.

I do hope Arenanet keeps to the prospect of LW, then Expansion, and repeat. They just need to release LW at a much quicker pace after the expansion, but I believe the HoT revamp had a massive priority and caused everything to be pushed down the line.

I like Raids a lot, but I love a lot of the other content in this game, I want to get back into the story again.

STIHL.2489:

Sykper.6583:

STIHL.2489:

I’m hesitant to use an analogy here because they are nit picked to death. But try to empathize: How would you feel if I, who play 0 WvW, criticized a WVW-related decision? Take server-linking for example

As someone who is very heavy into WvW, I can honestly tell you, feel free to toss your voice into the storm. And I can say with certainty that at least some of us, will be far more polite to you, then you have been to us.

You know very well what he meant STIHL. We can discuss the finer details of etiquette and language, but ultimately you slightly dodged his question. How would you feel if someone with zero knowledge of a part of this game, began demanding changes to that part? Should that feedback be considered?

Here’s one, let’s say I am a complete novice at SPvP, and yet I hate fighting Warriors in SPvP because an asuran warrior gunflamed me once in my first match, is my following suggestion ‘Can we remove Warriors from SPvP…’ to be taken seriously? Should Arenanet even listen to those kinds of voices?

I didn’t see anyone demand changes on this topic, You must be getting your topics confused.

But really, go give it a try, see what happens. Some might take the bait, but there is a good chance most would simply ignore you as opposed to get into a tizzy over what you said.

Depending on how inciting you can make your post and how well you can fake it. But new players getting killed and then throwing a fit demanding game chances, is like Tuesday to us PvP players.

Right so…

What if it were to grant players in the instance provisional status for those masteries, and only while in the instance? That would make it more accessible.

Given that i cant trade my thousand tomes for experience, could i maybe trade the thousand hours i waste waiting for que for the just few hours of headless running around hot maps that awaits me?

Pvp mains doing pve occasionally rant aside,

I dont like the idea.

Its a hard gate of low difficulty farm.
Just make raids hard, its why poeple like them not cz they have an /age limit to enter.

Yes, really. Missing the point much? The ones I know don’t WANT to PvE in order to raid no matter what “advance notice” they are given. Is that a hard concept? Several of my friends in raiding groups have not even bothered to step foot in HoT other than to raid. They don’t care one wit about PvE content other than raids.

I agree with the use of masteries like gliding and mushrooms. I would not agree with requiring multiple end tier masteries or all of them.

Are not disagreements with the system in place? And it’s funny that when you say ‘Some might take your bait’ as that is entirely my point. You think it’s a ridiculous idea, but remember what I said about feedback and giving Arenanet a bad message?

The mere possibility that the devs could entertain the idea and implement Warriors being removed from SPvP is completely out there due to voices on the forums is exactly why people are reacting here to ‘raiders’ complaining about how Ley-Line Gliding is just too much for them. It’s absurd, plain and simple. And there hasn’t been one remotely constructive feedback for an alternative other than ironically, as I quoted from a previous page, ‘Just make raids hard’.

What do you think these Masteries are intended to do other than provide unique and potentially difficult encounters depending on what masteries you need to implement?

STIHL.2489:

I’m hesitant to use an analogy here because they are nit picked to death. But try to empathize: How would you feel if I, who play 0 WvW, criticized a WVW-related decision? Take server-linking for example

As someone who is very heavy into WvW, I can honestly tell you, feel free to toss your voice into the storm. And I can say with certainty that at least some of us, will be far more polite to you, then you have been to us.

You know very well what he meant STIHL. We can discuss the finer details of etiquette and language, but ultimately you slightly dodged his question. How would you feel if someone with zero knowledge of a part of this game, began demanding changes to that part? Should that feedback be considered?

Here’s one, let’s say I am a complete novice at SPvP, and yet I hate fighting Warriors in SPvP because an asuran warrior gunflamed me once in my first match, is my following suggestion ‘Can we remove Warriors from SPvP…’ to be taken seriously? Should Arenanet even listen to those kinds of voices?

Absurdo nailed it.

Why bother posting an uninformed opinion, it’s very, very close to forum trolls who make ludicrous claims that degrade discussions. It doesn’t help anyone, saying ‘I just don’t like it!’ is not constructive in the least.

And I still extremely doubt there are raiders who refuse to PvE completely given certain most effective builds in raids require participation in at the very least Auric Basin. For such a trivial task as well, I believe it is outlandish that they wouldn’t.

Honestly, the mastery system works quite well with the raiding paradigm Arenanet has, where they can design encounters around certain capabilities the raiders might have earned while doing the easier content. It’s a lovely flow from just starting out in Verdant Brink to gliding like a boss against Gorseval.

You know what? You’ve got a point. Why bother introducing this single time-investment into something you hate, and let’s make it more straight forward that anyone can do anywhere.

Let’s uh, do what every single other MMO did, introduce massive currency sinks for your raiding.

Let’s bring back armor repairs, scale them up specifically for raids so that after a few wipes you have to put in a few gold to repair your armor. Because gold’s something you can get anywhere, that’s more universal!

Oh, and how about we sell tonics for gold as well, that temporarily grant you say, Ley-Line Gliding! Yea! Screw going anywhere near Mordremoth and let’s have costly resist pots- erm I mean Mastery tonics that cost like, 5g a pop for a solid 30 minutes of that mastery working. Though, careful if they run out mid-fight as you aren’t watching buffs.

Costly Armor Repairs and Costly ‘Pot’ Requirements on top of our food and utils, mmm, lovely. I can already sense your drive to work with this system than this silly mastery requirement nonsense.

Jahroots.6791:

You lot would be surprised how many experienced and skilled players are at endgame and don’t have 100, let alone 166 mastery points. I’ve run T4 fractals with quite a few people in the 10K+ AP range who fit this description.

To be fair though, it really isn’t hard to max gliding, unless you’ve made the mistake of spending all your points on the other mastery lines. For months people have been advising others to make sure they max gliding first, both here and in-game, so I don’t think this will be much of an issue for the raiding community.

That said, earning masteries isn’t a simple matter of ‘playing the game’. Let’s be honest – many of them require completion of a number of unsatisfying and often frivolous achievements that under other circumstances, would be entirely ignored.

You said it yourself, this is a non-issue for the raiding community. Anyone with an interest in raiding understands masteries have an involvement for many bosses, with the entry-level bosses of the first two wings not requiring any.

It would be utterly different if it were a hard requirement like a forced gear-check, not even allowing you to zone in without everyone actively wearing full ascended gear. This mastery approach is the least intrusive option for seeing if the players raiding are competent at the Magumma Masteries, much like how they have been for the previous wings.

I believe that those willing to raid who have already gone through and leveled gliding, shrooms and updraft specifically because the previous wings requested them, would not find any issue leveling Ley-line.

Some of these raiders likely participated in Auric Basin for Viper’s gear, and I would say given the food and utility costs that most if not all raiders would participate in the now quite rewarding HoT zones as compared to farming Silverwastes all day.

And I bet those complaining about the hardcore ‘raiding only’ players not being capable of getting masteries and experience are they themselves not of that type.

I am more than certain that it’s those who really hate raids just trying to find another excuse to trash on them more.

Nah, I’m running this ‘Macebow’ on metabattle.

…Because I ran it at the Start of S2 and carried myself to Diamond. It was strong back then folks with Merc’s. Though I was running a Baltazar (with King of Fires) and then Krait Runes (naturally Eternal Champ).

Nothing made me more happy to see my teammates who didn’t afk during S2, watch me carry them to a win and then they either said nothing the rest of the rematches I had with them, or complimented me.

I do however think I might flip into a Power build here and there for fun times, Power has the slightest edge in a 1v1 over the condi variant imo.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Sykper.6583:

Shiyo.3578:

Sykper.6583:

Cynz.9437:

“booohooo wars are so weak”

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Conquest

Meditrapper needs a slight buff, then we will have one for each profession!

Let’s make their traps Stun gg!

Delete DH.

Class essentially plays itself for you at this point.

Ehh, I roamed in WvW on Perplexity Dire Mesmer pre-HoT.

THAT was the most it plays itself. Literal aids, and it was hogwash in SPvP.

Strong comparison. Only there was no Dire or Perplexity in SPvP to run the build there XD

Well that’s why I said WvW! I believe there might have been trolling PU builds using other stats though…

Shiyo.3578:

Sykper.6583:

Cynz.9437:

“booohooo wars are so weak”

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Conquest

Meditrapper needs a slight buff, then we will have one for each profession!

Let’s make their traps Stun gg!

Delete DH.

Class essentially plays itself for you at this point.

Ehh, I roamed in WvW on Perplexity Dire Mesmer pre-HoT.

THAT was the most it plays itself. Literal aids, and it was hogwash in SPvP.

Cynz.9437:

“booohooo wars are so weak”

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Conquest

Meditrapper needs a slight buff, then we will have one for each profession!

Let’s make their traps Stun gg!

dominik.9721:

Sykper.6583:

Gonna have to agree, Moa had to get hit. Anything less than 6 seconds I would have called foul on though.

Nevertheless, Dominik, care to enlighten us how exactly Warrior comes close to S2 Reaper?

You have the same kitten mobility,way more survivability and in 2v2s etc. you are as strong as reaper was in s2. On top of that warrior has much more matchups that are in his favour than reaper ever had

So the better question is how exactly warrior doesn’t come close to s2 reaper?

Sykper.6583:

Edit: Let’s take it a step further. Give me some competitive comps you might see PL show with this Season’s buffs. I see Tempest/Warrior/Thief/Engineer/Druid, or Tempest/Warrior/Mesmer/Necro/Engineer

Those are basically the worst comps you could list here tbh. Nobody has ever played it and nobody ever will play one of those comps. Allthough I have to admit you didn’t make a dragonhunter + core classes comp, so I will give this to you.

1) Way more survivability? You kidding bro? With Berserk being literally the only thing to keep the condis from this meta out of our face, because aside from Berserker Stance and NOT Endure Pain since Endure Pain does jack against the bombs, we have roughly 50% uptime on the natural defenses we get from Berserk. Outside of that, we are boned, much like how Reapers got kitten on without their shroud. Absolutely comparable. Not to mention Reapers would love to transfer our conditions not back to US, but to our ally in a 2v2, nothing like making my ally bleed eh?

2) List every single matchup a S2 Necro had in a teamfight, and compare it to what a Warrior has right now. Waiting for this brah.

3) Do you have issues reading? ‘This season’s buffs’ means that obviously the comps I listed weren’t played before you dolt. Try again, think about what got hit, and give me what YOU think will be the comps played competitively.

Finally, let’s pretend for a brief moment that IF Warrior was compared to S2 Necro. What of it? We can still only have one Warrior on a given team, however S3 balance has shifted drastically with the removal of Merc’s and the nerfing of half the used professions in Top Tier play. It’s an utterly different environment.

Gonna have to agree, Moa had to get hit. Anything less than 6 seconds I would have called foul on though.

Nevertheless, Dominik, care to enlighten us how exactly Warrior comes close to S2 Reaper? Especially since we are still seeing Necro play in this season fair well? If Warrior was as broken as you said, do you think Necro would be outright removed from competitive play until Warrior gets addressed?

Or maybe, just maybe, both Warrior and Necro would be swapped out on any given team for composition and meta-building variance? There were heavy nerfs handed to everyone (save tempests, but I think Tempests have massive balance issues already) so I am willing to gander multiple roles just got more than one capable profession.

…Except DH, methinks DH will be reserved for SoloQ (Been seeing this weird Bunker Variant however, anyone know what the deal with that one is?).

Edit: Let’s take it a step further. Give me some competitive comps you might see PL show with this Season’s buffs. I see Tempest/Warrior/Thief/Engineer/Druid, or Tempest/Warrior/Mesmer/Necro/Engineer presuming every team will have a Warrior and Tempest based on the outcries on these forums. Thief and Rev might be interchangeable, as although PT won’t be able to combo into anything without build-up, Rev is still potent against these glassier comps.

Furajir.3815:

HEY GAIZ WARIUR IZ OH PEE BECAZ TEY R ENVENCIBUL 99 PURCENT EF DA TIM UND DEY LUTERALLY 1 SHOOT YU END AR SIRIOUSLEE OHH PEE

HUUURP DURRRRP

Literally this entire thread is filled with people who haven’t played warrior for more than 25 seconds. They lack basic gameplay and skill knowledge and it’s insanely apparent. Hurt my brain to read it more so than typing that sentence.

The fitting irony is that if they fought a warrior for about 25 seconds, he would be out of CDs and they would probably stomp him outright on their own 1v1.

Not even going to mention the ‘condi-meta’ floating about gets absolutely shrekt by CC-opener (Thief +1) outside of Berserk.

With the countless tells a Warrior gives off, there’s plenty of counterplay already involved, and truthfully, going to be real here. People just can’t admit they got outplayed by a Warrior, they dodged something like a Pommel or an autoattack that they didn’t need to. It’s pretty clear at this point.

Hell,
https://www.reddit.com/r/gw2esports/comments/4jtix5/10_pvp_tips_vs_berserker/

Go inform yourselves.

Bazooka.3590:

Another class balanced match happend just before.
No one has changed. 200-500 Warriors lost.

I understand ther are not enough player yet to get a decent match, but this kind of things just makes more ppl to leave pvp.

Careful now.

If you start saying Warriors can lose games in this Season people would think you are crazy.

After all, Warriors clearly op.

Raccoon.5876:

Sykper.6583:

Raccoon.5876:

It isn’t so much that warrior is OP, it’s more that it’s a mongo-mode class. Something that easy should not be that good. Warrior needs to be made harder to play, not weaker.

We need to clear the air about this.

Tell me, do you know the intricacies of playing a Warrior competitively? What a Warrior has to do compared to other professions? I’ll give you a hint, it involves perfection. Literal perfection if you want to compete with anyone proficient at another profession. Because you have less tools than everyone else. That’s what it means to play a Warrior, it might be the easiest to pick up, but you have to be the god-kitten best at it to even compete with an elementalist of a slightly lower caliber.

This hasn’t changed since day 1.

I have an 80 warrior I leveled the hard way. It’s not may main, my engi is. I stand by my assertion, warrior is easy mode.

Edit: I saw your edit. Yes, what you said is my point. ANET need to make warrior more challenging with more depth instead of a nerf-buff to OP-nerf cycle to appease the oven mitt crowd.

I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t a misconception. IMO I would love there to be more depth, but they better give us as many tools as everyone else. This kind of discussion has been raging on the Warrior forums for years, the dozens of suggestions have been made and I have read oh so many of them.

At that same point, I am definitely seeing some extremely lack-luster warriors in SPvP over the past few days that prove my point, sometimes not even playing FOTM will save you. And I certainly don’t want what happened to Warrior in S1 and S2 to happen to anyone ever again.

Raccoon.5876:

It isn’t so much that warrior is OP, it’s more that it’s a mongo-mode class. Something that easy should not be that good. Warrior needs to be made harder to play, not weaker.

We need to clear the air about this.

Tell me, do you know the intricacies of playing a Warrior competitively? What a Warrior has to do compared to other professions? I’ll give you a hint, it involves perfection. Literal perfection if you want to compete with anyone proficient at another profession. Because you have less tools than everyone else. That’s what it means to play a Warrior, it might be the easiest to pick up, but you have to be the god-kitten best at it to even compete with an elementalist of a slightly lower caliber.

This hasn’t changed since day 1.

Edit: I wanted to follow-up and say I agree, warrior could use more depth and by that function more tools. It is because we are so simple that our opponents use that against us so easily that we can’t afford mistakes, ever.

Brighteluden.2974:

Warrior is not OP as much Necro wasn’t OP and you saw what happened there, good luck.

And yet we still see Necros being played.

In fact, a lot of professions except for maybe Guardian are seeing play right now, just because Warrior is now viably a threat doesn’t scream that it needs to never be seen again.

Zodryn.4216:

I’m not saying they have no telegraphed skills. Gunflame is a great example of something I am totally fine with, even if I get hit and it one shots me.

I’m not sure what exactly happened in the fight I referred to. Me and a war were going back and forth a bit. I evaded a good deal of what he was throwing at me and everything seemed fine. Then I went in to put on a little pressure and within about 1/2s I had a myriad of condis and died to the first tick. I didn’t look at the combat log unfortunately, so I can’t say what it was. Any ideas? I imagine there was a geomancy and doom proc on weapon swap, but that’s all I got.

If I had to imagine how it was pulled off, or rather how I would go about it, this would have been a perfect Skull-Grinder after a swap from LB or perhaps SwTr. He was likely in Berserk while you were pressuring him, and was building up adrenaline and waiting for your next act. Skull-Grinder would pepper you with conditions, and if he interrupted you and was running Distracting Strikes, you would take an 8 stacks of confusion tick on your next action.

Zodryn.4216:

I wouldn’t say a condi warrior vs something with 12k health really needs to do much outplaying. If anything I was at a severe disadvantage based on my build. I had plenty of defenses left, but when you get hit once and die in one second, there’s not much you can do.

I believe someone in another thread described it best, a Warrior in Berserk is something you absolutely do not want to be in melee of, in fact aside from the constant CI cleanses, many of the build’s defenses kick in like Last Blaze (5k heal from fatal blow while in Berserk) and likely enough, he’s running Eternal Champion for the 1 Stability every second while in Berserk.

The best course is kite the Berserk Warrior and bring him down around half, and while he is out of Berserk for 15 seconds is your best opportunity to condi or burst him down. In fact, the build runs no Stability outside of Eternal Champion, the Warrior would die fairly quickly under unblockable CC. Thieves are an excellent +1 against warriors for this reason.

Zodryn.4216:

Just because it’s possible to beat them doesn’t mean they aren’t overtuned. The way I see it, there are three problems.

1) CI bug that cleanses 6 conditions. Should be fixed so you can’t lol nope other condi.

Agreed.

Zodryn.4216:

2) Extreme condi burst that is poorly telegraphed. I’ve received enough condis to down me in one tick with barely any tells. If I need to get close because I’m a melee class, I should be able to count on animations I can react to.

Of all the professions you complain about Warrior Telegraphs? You serious? Go duel a warrior, have him throw a few Skull Grinders at you, it’s beyond easy to tell.

What’s probably happening is that the Warrior is outplaying you here, baiting your defenses out and comboing you at the end of your dodge. We kind of have to in order to be competent players, everyone else is trash.

Zodryn.4216:

3) Passive invuln. Whether or not it’s actually OP, it’s just no fun to play against. This isn’t just a warrior issue either.

I hate to really bring it up time and time again, but Warriors do not have an invuln. In fact, the closest thing right now to that would be Endure Pain since Berserker Stance got reworked to a Resistance giver. Condis are still going to wreck Endure Pain.

Trust me when I say this, the moment CI gets fixed for Scorching Earth procs Warriors will definitely be easier to deal with in this meta. 6 condis cleared is obscene for anyone, 3 condi clears is something anyone can work around.

Ironically enough, Power Warrior also does a great job at handling Condi War, which speaks volumes about how close Warrior is to being fine.

I been having this win-streak, with games as close as 20 points.

Today was some of the best games I have played in PvP. I did see the occasional stomp here and there, but I think I am seeing much more tighter matches overall.

Going to assume it might be impossible to weed out all the stomps, it’s definitely better at least for me in Sapphire right now.

Celine.6857:

Okay guys that’s really useful, thanks. I think I will do as suggested and swap my gear in the mystic toilet :P…

I can’t for the life of me find where my trinket(s) from LS are, so that’s another project to find those.

Really appreciate it, thanks.

Yea the stat swap to ascended vipers from ascended anything would be the best bet, especially now that black diamonds are about a fifth of the cost compared to pre-april patch.

You can get sinister trinkets from LS2 unlocked, and buy extras from Silverwastes or with Laurels (look at the bottom of the accessory tab for the proper stats).

Also, if you are running something like a necro needing to hit 100% bleed duration, look into maybe making an exotic Viper’s Amulet, that takes 400 jewelry and the recipe comes from Auric Basin.

Hope this helps!

Daala.4258:

Last season’s legend div player here. So far 10 matches: 4W-6L. Most matches with scores around 400 on the losing team. Looks like we are going to spend a lot of time climbing to legend.

Having a very similar result here. Only 1-2 of my lost matches could be considered something 200 or less to 500.

The rest are high 300s to literally 498-500.

I would say the ratio does seem to match 40-60%. I cannot say its a clear 50/50.

However this is only the first day, let’s see how it pans out after a week or two, if it keeps this value I would dare say MM is better than S1 and S2.

Actually I ran into this guy named ‘Rom na’ in MM today in Sapphire.

It’s probably not the same rom, throwing it out there folks.

Forum Bug Crit Sykper for his exact health.

Sykper is downed!

I have a proposal.

How about we see what happens tomorrow before making any hasty judgments?

I expect at the very least slight buffs / nerfs with maybe 1 profession getting something meta changing.

I doubt they would hit Warrior, unless they hit the sustain of everyone at once, imho.

Azukas.1426:

Sykper.6583:

Azukas.1426:

Warriors were always fine 1v1 in season 2 vs most classes. They also could do seriously bad things to other teams running a burst build. What they didn’t have was sustain and that alone kept them from the meta.

They were very fair in 1v1s, as you said. However the moment it turned into a +1 against the warrior, they fell faster than even Reapers. It’s exactly why Warriors excelled in fights when they weren’t focused, and the better warriors got to diamond or better early on by learning how to peel as a Warrior when they got focused even a bit.

That doesn’t mean the Profession was good, there were other professions that could do a 1v1 just fine, and do many other things as well.

Azukas.1426:

Thing is I played with warriors who were paired up with eles and druids. With that kind of support in season 2 I saw warriors WRECK teams.

So essentially they were running what Necromancers were doing in S2. Great, I know the builds that Warriors at that level did, and yes they had to duo-queue just to make it work. Anyone solo-queuing a Warrior however did not have that luxury, they were fodder. The mere fact a Warrior needed a support just to be effective is proof that they were flawed.

Azukas.1426:

Now we fast forward to now and warriors have once again become a faceroll easy as kitten class. What warriors REALLY needed was to have the other classes brought in line with their specialization. Instead anet once again misses the mark and makes warriors the class for beginners.

You dolt, the former Adrenal Health was more faceroll than the current one, which relies on the Warrior being skillful enough. Good players were already using methods to mitigate a Warrior landing a burst, or pouncing on them when they flipped to bursts that were counted when they didn’t hit (SE or Combust). The bad warriors are actually worse off sustain wise, the reworked trait promotes playing a Warrior good enough to maintain a sustain that finally matches what a warrior needs to survive in the new meta.

The fact you think playing a Warrior competitively means its a face-roll profession is proof you have zero idea of the competitive warrior scene. We need more traits that promote active gameplay like the new Adrenal Health.

Thank you for proving my point.

And thank you for arguing to the stone. Good talk.

Fivedawgs.4267:

Sartharina.3542:

Exciton.8942:

But that is the state of PvP currently, you need something broken strong to content in the meta. Adrenal health is now obviously that thing for warrior.

And it is interesting that warrior’s thing is not in their elite spec. If now we restrict everyone from playing elite spec, warrior will be the obvious OP one out of all.

Actually – the warrior trait sort of is in their elite spec, because the Berzerker lands bursts 3-5 times more frequently than a normal warrior. I get all three stacks of Adrenal Health within a matter of seconds with Discipline, Defense, and Berzerker.

Also – in PvP: I love Necros, Rangers, and Mesmers on my warrior. FEED ME YOUR PETS AND ILLUSIONS!

Doesn’t really matter, you cant get more than 3 stacks and the stacks are on a 15 sec cd.

Exactly, even Base Warrior landing just one will compete with Berserker most of the way. Base Warrior has an advantage of rolling another base traitline where Berserker needs to run the elite spec with all the perks and downsides.

Azukas.1426:

Warriors were always fine 1v1 in season 2 vs most classes. They also could do seriously bad things to other teams running a burst build. What they didn’t have was sustain and that alone kept them from the meta.

They were very fair in 1v1s, as you said. However the moment it turned into a +1 against the warrior, they fell faster than even Reapers. It’s exactly why Warriors excelled in fights when they weren’t focused, and the better warriors got to diamond or better early on by learning how to peel as a Warrior when they got focused even a bit.

That doesn’t mean the Profession was good, there were other professions that could do a 1v1 just fine, and do many other things as well.

Azukas.1426:

Thing is I played with warriors who were paired up with eles and druids. With that kind of support in season 2 I saw warriors WRECK teams.

So essentially they were running what Necromancers were doing in S2. Great, I know the builds that Warriors at that level did, and yes they had to duo-queue just to make it work. Anyone solo-queuing a Warrior however did not have that luxury, they were fodder. The mere fact a Warrior needed a support just to be effective is proof that they were flawed.

Azukas.1426:

Now we fast forward to now and warriors have once again become a faceroll easy as kitten class. What warriors REALLY needed was to have the other classes brought in line with their specialization. Instead anet once again misses the mark and makes warriors the class for beginners.

You dolt, the former Adrenal Health was more faceroll than the current one, which relies on the Warrior being skillful enough. Good players were already using methods to mitigate a Warrior landing a burst, or pouncing on them when they flipped to bursts that were counted when they didn’t hit (SE or Combust). The bad warriors are actually worse off sustain wise, the reworked trait promotes playing a Warrior good enough to maintain a sustain that finally matches what a warrior needs to survive in the new meta.

The fact you think playing a Warrior competitively means its a face-roll profession is proof you have zero idea of the competitive warrior scene. We need more traits that promote active gameplay like the new Adrenal Health.

Don’t even touch Adrenal Health until you touch on the sustain other professions are running.

It’s keeping us in those fights now, I don’t want to hear about some very trashy players not dodging easy bursts, or dealing with the Warriors running LB to keep it up (pro-tip, LB defenses aren’t high).

Honestly, you want to know why PvP is so imba? These threads are a factor, when such drivel gets in the way of good suggestions it creates a vague direction that Arenanet can’t take with balance.

We literally got this as our only significant buff from S2, where people were quitting matches before they began due to us just playing a Warrior, demanding we flip professions or we lose.

I expected as much.

I do think that their next expansion will be a significant improvement over HoT overall, albeit I wasn’t one of the ones who really had a issue with how HoT played out.

A year ago, I wager there probably would have been only two responses, bad or abysmal.

I predict it will continue to be harder from here to improve SPvP as an ESport until more things are concretely set in stone and finished.

Spectator Mode is not nearly good enough, and the competitive scene needs more help, not on the ‘Tournament Cash Reward’ end but the structures to facilitate and bring in teams to compete. If they want to do that through the League System, that too needs a major overhaul at higher levels.

Burn.5401:

sephiroth.4217:

I’d rather they get rid of Merc.

Warrior, Mes, Rev, Druid, Guard, Ele, Thief…… Pretty much all my builds currently have merc + Intelligence sigils.

So you play merc on all characters even though half of them don’t even make any use of it and that’s supposed to be an argument?

Merc’s actually limited build diversity, it was too good at its job being the go-to for anyone wanting to run a ‘dire’ setup, while giving really decent power pressure.

We are going to see substitutes now, likely Carrion, Vipers (was being run in a few select builds), even Sage.

Average.

There’s nothing breath-taking that makes SPvP stand out over other competitive games.
Yet for whatever reason we all continue to play in it because a) the combat system is just too good, and b) we have invested a lot of time into the game, in the slim chance it becomes better.

There’s never been a balanced competitive E-Sports, any small changes can completely shift the meta, breaking something or making something much too strong. What actually matters is if despite these changes there still exists a skill-curve for running something versus another player running that same exact thing, and if it is fun for both sides to do so. If someone complains about how they just lost their main, or someone else gloats about how their build just became op, welcome to the never-ending cycle of balancing. Just promote healthy competitive gameplay, and all is well.

What’s actually the worst thing is how difficult it is to get players to watch competitive games, the spectator mode needs the most work and there needs to be information pointed at the spectators about what is going on. No one new can go into an ESL stream and understand everything, it needs a lot of help.

Another thing that likely should not even be mentioned is to foster a healthy competitive tournament format that should hardly ever change, especially in mid-swing. Standardization is key.

Oh no! Not Merc Amulet! That’s a direct nerf to half the top professions!

The horror! Not another Meta Shift.

Works for me, good warriors were running Viper’s anyways if they were condi. Power Warriors won’t see some of their tough matchups running Merc’s, everything just got a lot glassier for the power warrior to kill.

Calling it now, this just moved Warrior up a tier.

Cerby.1069:

I mean its kinda tricky with hammer. In duel and small group situations such a thing doesn’t seem justified at all. In wvsw in zerg fights its completely justified though given how little it brings to a fight when everyone just blocks the important strikes and using an unblockable with any hammer build takes away too much from the rest of it.

I think with the advent of Shield being a more defensive/CC tool that Hammer lost quite a bit of its utility. GS/Hammer Warrior or Zerk have been taken over by every warrior running AxSh, SwSh, or even MaSh for their purposes. It’s not a bad thing that Shield has gotten so good, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Hammer gain a more offensive based cc use where your proactive attacks on a blocking target can turn the fight around for you.

You might have to explain a bit on what you mean by the 2nd half of your proposal here. The hammer trait should kick in when any hammer attack gets blocked, lending your next three attacks, or maybe a very well-timed earthshaker on a frontline or backline, to be unblockable.

Cerby.1069:

I feel it might get by, but only if the enemy player is made very aware of when its active and how it works. So maybe a colour outline for when merciless hammer is proc’d and ur next 3 attacks or whatever are unblockable (glow red like the rangers do or something).

That’s fine, I didn’t work out the animation details, but mind you if this trait existed, enemy players would have to be a bit more cautious when the warrior they face is wielding a hammer to watch for the ‘Merciless’ Strikes buff, much like how Revs have their own charges.

Cerby.1069:

But noooooo I don’t see it justified to allow that unblockable to be carried through a weaponswap. You can imagine the potentials with gunflame and what not.

Feel free to let me know how a Hammer/Rifle build will work out for you. You are taking Disc/Bers at this point since you said Gunflame. That leaves either Defense for something along the lines of sustain, or Arms so you might as well have a lot of unblockable, but without the greatsword or main-hand sword that you often see Gunflame Warriors run to escape.

Lastly, you have the lovely task of:

- Landing a hammer strike on a blocking foe
- Have your merciless strikes off CD
- Have your weaponswap off CD
- Have your Berserk ready

There’s a lot of set-up just to pull off the Gunflame combo with Merciless Strikes.

emkelly.2371:

There is already a signet to make your attacks unblockabe. So no. Besides hammer is a great cc weapon. I’ve run in serves with a warrior front line and on our commanders order we all leaped on on tag and followed up with a wicked assault. I agree the weapon is weak in PvP, but I’ve used it to great effect there as well. You can’t ask for everything from a weapon (unless you are an element a list of course).

It’s a little more tricky than just saying ‘Oh just go Signet of Might, same thing’. It’s not. The unblockable that Signet of Might is definitively stronger than this trait, as there are no charges tied to it. Furthermore, as the Warrior you would have to track the ICD of the trait and be able to trigger it. It’s almost always going to be triggered in a large-scale fight. And no one is disputing that the Hammer on it’s own and on paper is a great CC weapon.

…But there’s a lot more mitigation than there was Pre-HoT. If you were able to bait out blocks or dodges or stabilities before, you could know to go in and definitely get the CC out. Now it’s less so, with boon-sharing and the sustain out there, the Hammer has lost a bit of its luster. Giving it a skill-based Unblockable trait that can be nullified easily by an accidental following auto attack into a zerg (Yes, it works quite like Intelligence Sigil) means you need to play with it correctly to maximize it’s effectiveness.

Current Tooltip:
Hammer damage is increased when attacking a foe that is dazed, knocked down, launched, or stunned. Reduces recharge on hammer skills.
Damage Damage Increase: 20%
Recharge Recharge Reduced: 20%

Revamp:
Hammer attacks that are blocked will make your next three attacks unblockable. Reduces recharge on hammer skills.
x3 Merciless Strikes (duration 10 seconds) (ICD: 20 seconds)
Recharge Reduced: 20%

Please consider other factors on what a Warrior has to do with hammer now, versus if they had this effect instead. And yes, that unblockable can be carried through a weaponswap.

It’s better to fix it, remove any of these inconsistencies in how siege work on alpine.

When all the small bugs are fixed we can look forward to potential improvements on Alpine (if any), although I think we need to have the map be played on for weeks before any informative feedback comes round.

Not sure about you but just a 10-man requirement just to enter the raid and attempt it is quite a bit accessible. There’s no real hard gates until after the first boss, and the 2nd boss hard gate in Spirit Vale requires Updraft, something you get early on playing in HoT…but I digress.

OP is actually requesting a nerf, you can drive it any other way but giving people who cannot do mechanics properly or manage their incoming damage an option to run more vitality or even toughness (if not in SV) demonstrates you want the bar reduced, even if the actual mechanics of the fight are not changed. It’s simple math that an elementalist who would go down standing in a red seeker before would now likely have an extra second of not being afk in it for instance…

I propose if you want to do this:

- Remove the Legendary Armor progress for this easier mode.
- Drop the shard acquisition and cap down to about half. Personally I would say make the cap 25 shards a week but I want to be at least generous here. Also this cap shares contribution with normal mode so you can’t just farm 150 shards between the two. If you did 100 shards in normal mode, you shouldn’t get anything for doing easy mode.

I suppose the big issue I have with this toned-down mode is that it won’t help train people who get accustomed with their health pool and/or toughness safety nets if they decide to attempt the real normal fight.

Have fun.

Forum Bug ahoy.

I actually thought that an 8 second Moa and having Staff 5 on Rev knock you to the sides rather than be abused to push to the front for maximum damage would have been pretty solid fixes.

Didn’t think they would make Moa 6 seconds, for a single target. It would have to take more skill now to utilize it, I don’t think we will see double-moa again.

Pfft, I would say Warrior has the most. Hell, even some of our decent ones like Bull’s Charge are still pretty bad because they bug the heck out.

Don’t think we will ever see pathing fixed for Rush or Bull’s.