Guild Wars 2

I totally get what you mean with warriors, but rangers are fine. Fighting a warrior for me is like a long kitten boss fight. I can usually beat it, but god kitten it does it take a while and if I screw up, he wins. If he screws up, he still has three more burn phases before he dies.

It’s getting nerfed next feature patch. Only one blind ever 2 seconds. Still might completely cheese some enemies, but at least it’s reduced.

fellyn.5083:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

fellyn.5083:

Bombsaway.7198:

I love the changes. Perfect risk/reward. Please keep proposed changes!

You might have a point if Anet had not spent the last 2 years nerfing every single burst skill.

Especially on mace and hammer. They’re so obvious and easy to counter they might as well not be in the game.

It’s more like high risk mediocre reward.

What are you talking about? The burst skills are some of the best stuns, bleeds and direct damages in the game! Eviscerate hits like a mac truck and it’s pretty kitten fast. Once Arching Slice goes there, there will be no bad burst skills.

fellyn.5083:

I propose that if this change goes through every other class in the game gets cast timers added to their class mechanics skills to use them so they can be interrupted or stopped in some manner. Otherwise they don’t have any drawbacks and can be spammed at will.

After all we want the game to be more strategic and have to force people to think about positioning.

Fair is fair.

I partially agree, but that’s a bit of a wide statement. I think skills like Lightning Strike and Doom should have cast times, but Steal, Death Shroud and Air Attunement should not.

You have to remember that warriors have the highest base health and base armor in the game. They have utilities that make them immune to conditions, CC and damage. They have immobs that can last past five seconds. They have a LOT of stuns and lockdowns. They have WAY more tools than other classes to get their stuff out. Some of which on extremely forgiving cast times. It is completely fair that they should have to get their burst skills off under these new circumstances. Most other skills in the game that have this great of an effect are on classes that have way less health or armor or are way harder to get off.

Warrior’s have been on the easy train for a while now. It’s good that they actually require a bit more skill. If you are a great warrior, not much is going to change for you this coming patch (besides adrenaline dropping outside of combat).

I meant they’ve given them all easy to spot telegraphs making them very counterable.

As it should be. This game is about dodging and mitigating damage.

Not to mention a lot of warriors are asura, so all those animations are just gone.

fellyn.5083:

Bombsaway.7198:

I love the changes. Perfect risk/reward. Please keep proposed changes!

You might have a point if Anet had not spent the last 2 years nerfing every single burst skill.

Especially on mace and hammer. They’re so obvious and easy to counter they might as well not be in the game.

It’s more like high risk mediocre reward.

What are you talking about? The burst skills are some of the best stuns, bleeds and direct damages in the game! Eviscerate hits like a mac truck and it’s pretty kitten fast. Once Arching Slice goes there, there will be no bad burst skills.

fellyn.5083:

I propose that if this change goes through every other class in the game gets cast timers added to their class mechanics skills to use them so they can be interrupted or stopped in some manner. Otherwise they don’t have any drawbacks and can be spammed at will.

After all we want the game to be more strategic and have to force people to think about positioning.

Fair is fair.

I partially agree, but that’s a bit of a wide statement. I think skills like Lightning Strike and Doom should have cast times, but Steal, Death Shroud and Air Attunement should not.

You have to remember that warriors have the highest base health and base armor in the game. They have utilities that make them immune to conditions, CC and damage. They have immobs that can last past five seconds. They have a LOT of stuns and lockdowns. They have WAY more tools than other classes to get their stuff out. Some of which on extremely forgiving cast times. It is completely fair that they should have to get their burst skills off under these new circumstances. Most other skills in the game that have this great of an effect are on classes that have way less health or armor or are way harder to get off.

Warrior’s have been on the easy train for a while now. It’s good that they actually require a bit more skill. If you are a great warrior, not much is going to change for you this coming patch (besides adrenaline dropping outside of combat).

ArrDee.2573:

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

Celestial is fine! It’s the classes that need to be worked on! Basically every class that runs Celestial Amulet also has insane amount of sustain, damage, and conditions all in one! A popular build that runs Celestial is the Eviscerate Warrior! They stack a 327532978 radius fire field that you can’t escape out of, blast it 20 times for permanent max stacks of might, put permanent burning on you (which is like one of the strongest conditions), place a debuff that gives you 5 freakin torment stacks that you can’t remove, and then capable of a huge burst attack! It’s just inthane in the membrane all of the power and condi damage that it has! Not only that but Celestial works best with might stacking and the classes that use Celestial the most are amazing might stackers! Nerf the might stacks and everything will be fine!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Pretty much nailed it on the head.

JinDaVikk.7291:

You need numbers alot bigger than 2k… I have over 4k and I am by no means anywhere near the top of toruney wins.

Marvin, kirito, OE…. your talking nearly 10k or more.

Shame the entire dedicated (beta to now) pvp scene has nothing to work on.

I’ve got about 2.8k wins on engi. I just didn’t feel like making up numbers all the way up to 10k. Hell, you could save time and just imagine everything is spaced out by 300 instead of 150, reaching it a bit farther.

I’ve been dying for something like this for a long time. I wanted multiple tiers for each profession:

1. Champion – 150
2. Grand Champion – 500
3. Legendary – 1000
4. Ultimate – 2000
5. Special depending on Prof – 5000

Or perhaps rebalance the tiers to add more ranks to it:

GW2 Style:

1. Super Genius – 150
2. Veteran Genius – 300
3. Elite Genius – 450
4. Champion Genius – 600
5. Legendary Genius – 750
6. WAY Smarter Than You – 900
7. Einstein – 1050
8. IQ 199 – 1200
9. Mensa Master – 1450

This allows for repeated progression every so often instead of every million years. The more titles there are, the more progression there seems to be. It’s also very easy to come up with new names for this. Fun too!

Then you could have a finisher that represents each profession and gets a little bit cooler each time you rank it up! For example:

1. Elementalist – Drops a single meteor on the target. More meteors and cooler effects with more ranks.
2. Engineer – Drops a giant gear on the target. More gears with higher titles.
3. etc etc

You could even make a reward track that is specific to a profession and an arena! For example if you wanted to go down the “Scarlet Track”, you’d have to win games in Team Arena as an engineer to progress down it. At the end, you would get special rewards that are engineer focused (Weapons, Armor, Minis, Backpieces, Tonics).

I agree that Hair Trigger and Rifle Mod should be combined, but I don’t think that those traits are the ones to put in it’s place. The thing is that if you want true condi, you are limited to a few things:

1. Pistols
2. Grenades
3. Bombs

If you don’t have at least one of those, you aren’t condi. Thing is, the traits for these are all stuck up in explosives (Forceful explosives, Short Fuse, Incendiary Powder, Grenadier, Shrapnel). The only good traits for pure condi builds are Sharpshoot (5 point minor) and hair trigger (Adept trait). Thus there’s no reason to go into that line!

There needs to be a trait worth taking that makes you better at applying conditions, maybe even with a different kit! How could would it be to have a condi build that is focused around the flamethrower or elixir gun?

I think there’s also a lot of vomit worthy traits in Firearms that could use some fixing:

1. Coated Bullets – Affects only one skill. Literally one skill. The poison doesn’t even last long, if it doesn’t just randomly miss anyways.
2. Juggernaut – Encourages sticking to one kit, which goes against good engi play.
3. Napalm Specialist – Runes of Balthazar makes this obsolete. It’s also deep in a line no one wants to touch.

I’d do stuff like this:

1. Coated Bullets – Pistol and Rifle skills cause bleeding for 1s.
2. Juggernaut – You move 25% faster while using flamethrower. Gain might (15s) whenever you use a flamethrower skill.
3. Napalm Specialist – Burning duration of flamethrower skills is increased (33%). Napalm is now a circle (240 radius) and causes crippled.
4. New Trait Deadly Formula – Elixir Gun’s skills cause poison (1s) when hitting foes.

Juggernaut + Napalm Specialist grant a flamethrower user the snare and speed they need to keep up and erase the need for speedy kits which makes you awkwardly swap in and out of the kit.

Coated bullets makes engis less reliant on explosives for condi damage and also less reliant on pistols and Rifle becomes not just a hybrid/power weapon.

Deadly formula attempts to bring Elixir gun more into fire arms and give it a new condi role. Acid bomb is a great way to get poison on enemies who are downed and Fumigate can stack up a good 10+ seconds quickly. Not to mention the auto attack will cause bleeding, poisoned and weakness all in one. Pretty strong.

Right now Warriors can get away with running almost no lock down abilities simply because if they screw up and miss their burst, they can just use it again. Now they probably will have to take some lock down stuff! Maybe even drop some of their defensive utilities!

IvanTheGrey.2941:

This is an interesting discussion. Can Anet just balance PvE and PvP separately?

This is an issue in PvE as well. Warriors simply leave themselves will a full bar of adrenaline and spam skills. Now they’re encouraged to use their bursts and make sure they hit. PvE just got a tiny bit more skillful, and that’s good. Warriors are still probably kings of PvE, but at least they aren’t Tyrants.

This is exactly what warrior needed. They have WAY too forgiving of mechanics.

Have terrible positioning and got bursted? How about a free Endure Pain to save your stupid kitten

Like throwing Kill Shots around until they finally land? Don’t worry, we won’t take your stuff until you actually hit.

Don’t like taking damage while going in for melee damage? No problem! Here’s utilities that can make you invulnerable to w/e it is you want (condis, damage and CC). Use em all at once and go to town! Or space them out and live for kittening ever.

Want to apply a stupid amount of torment with a skill that has a terrible animation and actually looks almost exactly like a certain Axe Throw skill? How does Impale sound for a name?

This was a long time coming, and I’m glad it’s finally here. Warrior is becoming skillful again.

Entangle OP. Everything else is really cool.

proviticus.4183:

Hello all,

I’m sort of a noob when it comes to PvP and I’ve only played it a few times. I enjoy it, and I have a question about reward tracks:

About how long does it take to complete a track if I were to exclusively to do solo play (as in solo join)?

Since tomes of knowledge are rewards in every tier, how would doing PvP to collect tomes to level your characters compare in speed to EotM? How about the rewards per time spent vs EotM?

I expect EotM is more worth your time, but even if PvP can get somewhat close it would be preferable, since it’s more fun and less mindless. So, what does everyone think?

Thanks!

Are you playing GW2 for fun or rewards? EoTM farm trains are boring as kitten. PvP is really fun and you can play stupid builds if you wanna mix things up. Don’t do the EotM trains. It’s not worth the hours of boredom.

uberkingkong.8041:

They already have one.

Courtyard.

Nobody likes 2v2 or 3v3, hence nobody plays courtyard, hence theres rarely a server running courtyard because its a 2v2 3v3 deathmatch style map, which nobody likes deathmatch either.

Truth be told, you could deathmatch in conquest and it would be totally fine, if your winning all your 1v1 and you took that guy out of the game, your not hurting your team, your racking points killing a guy and taking him out of the game. But thing is, nobody does that because again, nobody likes deathmatch.

If 2v2 became competitive it would be 2 guys, one of them turret engy both of them waiting behind the turrets.

Love deathmatch, hate courtyard.

I’m okay with deathmatch in soloqueue or maybe a separate queue, but not with courtyard. I can’t stand that map. It has such bad camera problems.

I purposely push/pull people into corners and walls in Foefire so that I can spam them with nades and lag their screen while I waste them. Call it what you want, but it’s effective.

So basically you want GW1 back.

Kody.3289:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Kody.3289:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Cynz.9437:

so according to gate assassin, any single target classes with low range should just uninstall and don’t pvp…. great idea

and this is massive issue with pvp in this game – it has only one game mode which heavily favors bunkers mindlessly spamming aoe on point

either aoe and ai needs massive nerfs or pvp in this game needs different game mode where it is not just engis and bunkers guards everywhere

oh, what i find even more funny is how engis tell you to destroy turrets, oh yeah GL with that with all the reflects and CC they throw at you while you are at it

Not at all! In fact, only two people on our comp are turret engis. Generally the other three are me (celestial nades), a burster and a condi. It just so happens that condi fits really well with engis so we get another healing turret. I am NOT going to be standing on point, nor is any of the other damage if we know what’s good for us. That is what single target melee ranged people can do. Murder the damage. Turret engis don’t actually do that much damage, regardless of what people say. Rocket turret, the strongest turret damage wise in the game, only hits for like 2.2k at the very maximum. It doesn’t have very much health either.

Really the turrets are a form of pressure, not high impossible to deal with damage. It’s like when warriors put down a black hole sized fire field with longbow. Or when a support staff ele uses meteor shower.

that is so not true. 2 turret engis make it nearly impossible for me to stand on point as an AH guardian.

Sounds like someone needs AoE on their team. This is why teams need to balance themselves out. If you don’t have the ability to AoE a point, then your team build is lacking. If you know you’re going to face a turret engi, you can take things like Hallowed Ground for more stability. Before a match starts, you can change your stuff to match the enemy comp. That’s why it’s there. TCG even mentioned this in their talk. They constantly change their sigils, runes and traits right before a match starts to better fight their enemies.

lol the problem is not stability. we’ve even run zerker staff eles to go against this kittenty comp and still haven’t been successful all the time. hambows just about the only thing you can do atm.

We have pretty much always dominated warriors because they’re SO much easier for us to get down. Eles on the other hand, we have to watch like they’re our kids playing the street. Turn a way for a second and we’re done. The thing about Hambow is that you only have so much stability and sustain and we have SO many turrets. You need strong ranged non-reflectable AoE, and Ele is the king of it. Every time we see someone swap from something to warrior when they see us, I just laugh. We know we can beat it.

Also remember that the turret engi itself is a terrible target to go for in a team fight. You target should be ME, the damage. Not the bunkery guys who stand in a mess of turrets. Get down Thumper, Net and Rocket with AoE, then move on to killing the damage.

Kody.3289:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Cynz.9437:

so according to gate assassin, any single target classes with low range should just uninstall and don’t pvp…. great idea

and this is massive issue with pvp in this game – it has only one game mode which heavily favors bunkers mindlessly spamming aoe on point

either aoe and ai needs massive nerfs or pvp in this game needs different game mode where it is not just engis and bunkers guards everywhere

oh, what i find even more funny is how engis tell you to destroy turrets, oh yeah GL with that with all the reflects and CC they throw at you while you are at it

Not at all! In fact, only two people on our comp are turret engis. Generally the other three are me (celestial nades), a burster and a condi. It just so happens that condi fits really well with engis so we get another healing turret. I am NOT going to be standing on point, nor is any of the other damage if we know what’s good for us. That is what single target melee ranged people can do. Murder the damage. Turret engis don’t actually do that much damage, regardless of what people say. Rocket turret, the strongest turret damage wise in the game, only hits for like 2.2k at the very maximum. It doesn’t have very much health either.

Really the turrets are a form of pressure, not high impossible to deal with damage. It’s like when warriors put down a black hole sized fire field with longbow. Or when a support staff ele uses meteor shower.

that is so not true. 2 turret engis make it nearly impossible for me to stand on point as an AH guardian.

Sounds like someone needs AoE on their team. This is why teams need to balance themselves out. If you don’t have the ability to AoE a point, then your team build is lacking. If you know you’re going to face a turret engi, you can take things like Hallowed Ground for more stability. Before a match starts, you can change your stuff to match the enemy comp. That’s why it’s there. TCG even mentioned this in their talk. They constantly change their sigils, runes and traits right before a match starts to better fight their enemies.

Cynz.9437:

so according to gate assassin, any single target classes with low range should just uninstall and don’t pvp…. great idea

and this is massive issue with pvp in this game – it has only one game mode which heavily favors bunkers mindlessly spamming aoe on point

either aoe and ai needs massive nerfs or pvp in this game needs different game mode where it is not just engis and bunkers guards everywhere

oh, what i find even more funny is how engis tell you to destroy turrets, oh yeah GL with that with all the reflects and CC they throw at you while you are at it

Not at all! In fact, only two people on our comp are turret engis. Generally the other three are me (celestial nades), a burster and a condi. It just so happens that condi fits really well with engis so we get another healing turret. I am NOT going to be standing on point, nor is any of the other damage if we know what’s good for us. That is what single target melee ranged people can do. Murder the damage. Turret engis don’t actually do that much damage, regardless of what people say. Rocket turret, the strongest turret damage wise in the game, only hits for like 2.2k at the very maximum. It doesn’t have very much health either.

Really the turrets are a form of pressure, not high impossible to deal with damage. It’s like when warriors put down a black hole sized fire field with longbow. Or when a support staff ele uses meteor shower.

gesho.9468:

here is my turret engi

most of l2p advice here would so wasted.
aoe – no way, they are all 900 unit apart in a big triangle, not even bounce would work.
take them down? id love that, you’ll be half way through second turret when you go down.
your only chance is to eat my dps and burst me, for which you have under 10 sec of time to live. and then stomp me fast, for if you go down, most likely ill rally.

That’s probably the easiest target for me. I’ll nade you from 1,500 range until all the turrets are dead then come in for the kill. That build has basically no defense. Once you have no turrets, you’re dead. Anyone dumb enough to get into turret range and stay in turret range deserves to be killed by you.

kirito.4138:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Also, don’t run power necro vs this comp. It’s so funny reflecting them xD

Actually wells power necro work great on point with DS4 cleaves. Just gotta time DS1 and or Lich1 plus have brain to cancel or not fire off while shields are up. Turret engis are weak against CC, so a good Dagger3 immob is also deadly with the right burst ready.

Oh definitely, but you’d be surprised how many idiots go into lich form and try to take us out.

MrDark.8632:

On a related note:

I was invited to a team sPvP earlier and we faced a 4 turret engi + necro on the enemy team. As expected when put up a fight but eventually lost. See attachment for more info.

So here I’ll ask a “l2p” question:

How can one beat that comp? Or was the match already lost?

Was one of the engineers a celestial nade named Raine Avina? Cuz that’s probably us.

The people on my team generally like to run very tanky teams (I wish they loved burst like I do =/). The strength of it is that we hold REALLY well. If someone is going to go down, I simply say “Nope, everyone heal” and a bunch of water fields and blast finishers go off, healing that person to full.

The weakness of the comp is that we basically have 0 ability to stomp people. Like literally 0. The turret engis have 1 second of stability each and no one else on the team even has a second. This means if you are good with reses, all I can really do is cleave them down.

We’re also really weak to elementalists, specifically staff. Really any power AoE damage is strong against us, but meteor shower in particular because it blows them ALL up from a range and is NOT a projectile so it won’t get reflected. If you are on khylo, GET THE TREB FIRING! It is our ultimate weakness. Put a condi necro on there and we’ll lose. Seriously. We once faced a team with one good condi necro and there wasn’t an engi on our team that could take him. I tried going only for the treb. Died. Tried going for the necro. Died. Tried going for both. Died. Tried two people…Got it but it was 3 people on points.

Turret engineers usually only have 0-1 kits. This means if you take out our turrets, we’re worthless. We have no defense whatsoever besides other teammates peeling for us. Kill the turrets before you even go into melee range and then jump in. You’ll have a good 30s+ before we can even begin to stop you.

Generally turret teams like ourselves will play three points. We either go 1-3-1 or 1-2-2. This is because we have stupidly low mobility so it’s better to rotate the damage between all three points or a turret engi when they are off cooldowns than it is to try to player 1-4, possibly get crushed by AoE at mid and lose. If you have good burst and mobility, it simply becomes a fight between me (the damage) and you (the damage). We can’t stomp or res, so if you can get me down, chances are you win if you have stability stomps. If I get you down, be on your reses and I can’t pressure you our. Engineers HATE guardian reses because of that ungodly bubble. Take it! I’m seriously cringing as I say that, but it really works.

Also remember the weaknesses of our team. Engineers are weak to conditions. As a 4 man team, we’re good against them. We have multiple elixir guns AND healing turrets going off constantly. Now if you split us up and play 3 points AND you have good condis, we’ll probably die. You really just gatta base it on your comp. High damage? Play 1-4. High condition damage? Play 1-2-2. High bunk? Play 1-2-2.

Overall, I’d say our team build has a low skill floor and a decent skill ceiling. If you really work together with blast finishers, you can pull off some crazy saves. A lot of times tho, it just isn’t enough to beat high ranking teams, so if I see good players, we’ll probably swap out one or two of the turret engis for a guardian and a warrior just to balance it out and give us good stability access. Still one turret engi left.

Also, don’t run power necro vs this comp. It’s so funny reflecting them xD

1. New Hammer Skins
2. New Animations for all five new attacks which must work on the move
3. Localization
4. Sound FX
5. Designing skills
6. Testing said skills in combat for not only PvE, but PvP and WvW. If they are movement skills, in Jumping Puzzles as well.
7. Changing UI to allow for these classes to use such weapons and testing it
8. Time left to redesign/iterate on the weapon.
9. Repeat once for every class in the game because the player base would not be okay with one class getting a new weapon set and every other class NOT getting it.

Adding a new weapon set isn’t easy.

XacTactX.6709:

Give us a breakdown of where all the points came from. Example, red team scored 10 unique kills for 50 points, scored 450 from ticks, won with 500. Blue team scored 6 unique kills for 30 points, scored only 300 from ticks, and capped orb 3 times for 90 points, lost with 420.

So you mean GvG.

It’s already extremely powerful. Use it when you know someone is going to far cast. If you time it right, turret builds can reflect all projectiles for a good 15+ seconds.

1. Templates take a lot of time to make, there was no way in hell they’d make that and put all this other amazing stuff in.
2. They added 40 new grandmaster traits, some of which are clearly more geared to PvP. Variety in PvP is way higher now (Turret engis? That was a joke before)
3. They added the baseline for a really strong reward system. Is it perfect right now? No. But all it really needs is some better tracks to work towards.
4. They unified PvE and PvP. We didn’t lose our PvP look. In fact, if you were a PvPer before hand you got so many transmutation charges to start that it was a drop in a bucket. You got so many skills permanently unlocked for you account at the start including some really rare skins (Dwayna’s bow, Fiery Gladius, The Hunter etc etc).
5. The Wardrobe. It is a game wide thing, but it was great for my PvP character. So many new skins I could put on her! Hell, even legendaries are in PvP now.
6. New Unique Backpack
7. Deathmatch. It’s now in the game. It’s Custom Arena’s only, but it’s just so they can get a feel for how players like it.
8. You can level up in PvP and earn gold in PvP. Gold which can be spent in the gem store and the trading post! The money I earned in PvP got me a tormented shield. I can essentially farm doing something I really enjoy. I use to have no more than 10g at a time. Now I consistently have around 45g or more.

Patches aren’t going to solve every problem all at once. The problems in games this big are massive and expecting a miracle patch is just stupid.

You also forget that previous patches and initiatives have brought us:

1. Custom Arenas (And with it, the advent of 1v1 servers, private tournaments, private practicing and gambling arenas)
2. Newer builds (There are way more useful skills and traits than there use to be)
3. The Tournament of Legends
4. Soloqueue/Teamqueue
5. Shoutcasting support
6. Three maps (Skyhammer, Temple, Spirit)

These aren’t small feats. I don’t think you understand how long it takes to develop things when you are working with a game this large.

Lukin.4061:

Anet does not develop pvp, just stop suggesting things, I know hope is what last the longest, but it is time to let go : )

Dude…the feature patch. How was that not a massive PvP update?

Who wasn’t complaining? Fire and Air is BS and people have said it since before it even came out. A free 4-5k isn’t fair or balanced. Suddenly, that small damage Throw Gunk from a thief could crit for 6k damage.

Penguin.7906:

I would guess pre-match filter.

Pre-Match filter will mean that certain maps will be FULL of the builds that are best suited for it. For example, people who only want skyhammer will be decap engis. People who only want Kyhlo probably are going to be mesmers, thieves and eles. Probably going to be 0 engis on Foefire battles.

I mean, why fight on a map you are sub-optimal on if you have the choice? If this was chosen, I’d set the map filter to be only Forest and go nade engi. That or stick to Kyhlo and go thief.

1. Rifle
   1. Great direct damage. Hitting with Blunderbuss and Jump Shot can easily clear 10k damage total. Easily.
   2. Great condition damage. Hitting with blunderbuss at close range is four stacks of bleed. Mix this with Sigil of Geomancy and you just hit with 7. Take incendiary powder and this becomes 7 stacks of bleeding + burning.
   3. Great CC. Net Shot is a 10s recharge. That’s crazy strong for a skill that immobs for 2 seconds.
   4. Leap Finisher. This, mixed with the F1 for healing turret is a free 1.2k heal.
   5. No poison or burning naturally. You have to find another way to get these.
   6. Great Autoattack. This thing hits for a good 2k on power builds.
   7. Great for decapping. One overcharge shot followed up with a net shot is a near full cap.
2. Pistol/Shield
   1. Poison. Very spammable and great uptime.
   2. Very defensive. It’s hard to kill an engi who understands how to use this.
   3. Not very good at power damage or condition damage. Need to find these from outside sources.
3. Pistol Pistol
   1. Trinity of Condition damage. It has burning, poison and bleeding. All in one.
   2. Blowtorch is AoE. Get that on a person who is resing.
   3. Great Escape. Glue shot is great for it.
   4. Defense is hard to use. It’s all active and requires timing and aiming. Generally only shuts down one person for a short period of time.

Holl.3109:

It’s for PvP. On the videos I saw it go for 2k+ (x4 ), which made me curious on how powerful it could be. Are there any good builds you can reccomend for this?

Any static discharge build at this time is only going to be Hot Join and maybe soloqueue viable. In order to get a reasonable burst, you have to give up a lot of utilities for stuff that just isn’t that good. The best bursts come from Rifle Turret + Tool Kit + Utility Goggles. If you look at the tool belt ability for Rifle Turret and utility goggles, you’ll notice they’re instant, allowing for 2 static discharges at once. Tool Kit’s toolbelt ability is throw wrench, which when thrown correctly can hit twice (once on the way, once on the way back).

Unfortunately, Rifle turret itself sucks. A lot. Utility Goggles as a stun breaker is like using sand paper seatbelts. The only redeeming factor of the build is that the burst is instant, even more so at melee range. Even if you are CCed, you can hit people for a good 3-4k with just Surprise Shot. I’ve seen quite a few versions of the build. Some go full YOLO:

4/4/0/0/6

That’s some serious damage there. Take the traits that are all offensive and help with rifle damage. Obviously take Static Discharge in Tools. The rest are really filler traits. Speedy Kits and Power Wrench are good. I personally like Gadgeteer for the might.

0/0/4/4/6

Way more sustain and a bit less damage. If you don’t feel like shattering to everything that coughs near you, try going more defensive. You can make up for the lost damage by running Fire and Air sigils. Taking both of these adds a good 2-4k to a burst.

Always always always run berserker. Some good runes are runes of strength, eagle, air, ogre, and pirate. Experiment. Some runes, while not necessarily optimal, can be fun to try out. I remember having a blast with Runes of Svanir even though I’d never be caught dead with them in Team Arenas.

bhagwad.4281:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

You want a place with no living story, major world bosses or dungeons. Thus:

1. Ebonhawk
2. Straights of Devastation (This does have balthazar, but it’s like never up)
3. Lornar’s Pass
4. Brisban Wildlands
5. Hirathi Highlands

Would HotM load faster than these? It should be easy to test, but there may be other factors influencing the results that I can’t control…

HoTM has megaserver on it, so definitely not.

You want a place with no living story, major world bosses or dungeons. Thus:

1. Ebonhawk
2. Straights of Devastation (This does have balthazar, but it’s like never up)
3. Lornar’s Pass
4. Brisban Wildlands
5. Hirathi Highlands

Two turrets? Yes. Three turrets? No.

Do you mean you are running two energy sigils on the same weapon or one on each? If it’s the second one, you have an extremely rare bug. If you mean the first one, you can’t have two sigils of the same kind on the same weapon set.

Chaith.8256:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

My Build

Yikes man – Gadgeteer, and traiting Energized Armor for +71 power? I would just go with Rifle Mod.

Whoops! Suppose to be Stabilized Armor, not Energized Armor. Forgot that was a trait xD. Gadgeteer is really just there because I wanted to get it into a build in some way. Overall, I won’t really try to make SD tournament viable, so as long as I can spike down glassy as hell builds I’m happy with it.

Leybi.1405:

Tornado is very strong in WvW. Cast Meteor Shower (until the end) then Tornado, and boom your meteors get all the stat bonuses of the tornado. Which are and I quote the wiki: “Base Power is tripled. Base Precision is doubled. Base Vitality is doubled.”

The new heal is also good, but it’s not easy to use right, and Ether Renewal is still a very good heal in WvW.

Asura Golems are meh, last time I used one was in leveling. Or maybe just for fun. But racial skills in general aren’t good and aren’t used in WvW.

azuzephyr.7280:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

You could do a ton of hot joins and not know what a bunker, far capping, rotating or decapping is. It just doesn’t show up in Hot Join. It’s basically Death Match. How do you expect people to learn that?

Oh, I don’t know. Tbh I did a ton of leveling and didn’t know what might stacking/defiant/agony was but I didn’t really care, just joined a 50+ fractal group because the best skins drop there and the game didn’t tell me not to do it so it must be ok. I know there are vids and guides available absolutely everywhere and I probably could have told them I was new or asked what to do for the best but YOLO WHO GOT TIME FOR DAT, especially when they can’t kick me even if I do mess up. I mean, yeah the group died a lot and couldn’t get past the endboss but I’m new what do you expect, they typed some stuff into chat but meh, if I didn’t read it it’s just a game and they should get over it, at least I got my daily done and got more gold and stuff than if I just went to the stupid champ train in Orr. I should go back and do another!

And if anyone has something nasty to say to me, it’s anets fault, why should I care – I didn’t lose anything and the 4 other people can go swivel.

Straw man argument. I’m done here. There’s no convincing you.

The bridge between what and what? Hot Join is the starting point. Don’t even begin to call PvE or that crap PvP tutorial a starting point because they couldn’t be farther from it. PvE is NOTHING like PvP and the tutorial doesn’t even begin to explain what you do in PvP. You could do a ton of hot joins and not know what a bunker, far capping, rotating or decapping is. It just doesn’t show up in Hot Join. It’s basically Death Match. How do you expect people to learn that? I honestly had no idea what a bunker was until I first started tPvP.

azuzephyr.7280:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Who is good the first time they do a new game mode? You have to start somewhere!

That somewhere is hotjoin. Period.

Please explain to me in a clear format why your view is that it’s fine/forgivable to selfishly join ranked matches knowingly or not with not enough experience/unwillingness to try to play efficiently but not forgivable to be upset by those people’s selfish actions, I’m still waiting for the logic to hit me.

Most people actually do not berate new players, but instead come to the forums [here] to bring it up as a community point. You might not like it, that doesn’t make the OP’s point wrong, it’s a perfect analogy.

Because Soloqueue isn’t the end all be all of PvP. Getting high on Soloqueue isn’t really a big deal and thus losing it isn’t a big deal. Your teammates are random, thus the vast majority of your games are going to be won with a bit of luck. It is basically Random Arenas from GW1. In GW1, there was absolutely no bridge between Random Arenas and Hero’s Ascent/GvG. In GW2, there is. It’s soloqueue. Why do you insist on trying to push players away from that bridge?

1. Hot Join – Totally open PvP. Victory doesn’t matter, just have fun. Good for complete casuals.
2. Solo Queue – Structured PvP with random players. Designed to introduce new players to real tPvP without needing a team. Bridges the colossal gap between Hot Join and tPvP. This game mode should not be taken overly seriously. There are far too many random elements to take it seriously.
3. Team Queue – Highest form of PvP in the game currently.

There are three kinds of skills in this category:

1. Instant – They can be used mid air. Think Arcane Blast.
2. Channel – They can only be used while on the ground and jumping will stop the cast. Think Hundred Blades.
3. Normal – They can be used while on the ground and jumping DURING the cast will NOT stop the cast. Think most auto attacks.

All claims on the forums are going to be anecdotal. Citing some other people who are also assuming that other players are being purposely bad is not evidence for your argument either. What percentage of the GW2 population do you think goes on the forums? This is a tiny sample size to be citing. Look at the facts:

1. Anet put rewards into PvP.
2. In order to get rewards, you can lose and get a smaller reward or win and get a larger reward.
3. There is no reason to purposely lose a fight and the mechanics encourage players to win, rather than simply purposely lose.
4. PvE offers MORE rewards than PvP currently and it takes LESS time. There is no way there are farmers and if there are, they won’t last. PvE is just too lucrative. I’ve played about 12+ hours over the past week and I’ve made about 15g. I could do a few dungeons and blow that number out of the water by doing some easy dungeons. Keep in mind, I was winning most of my matches, not losing.
5. If a player is purposely losing a match, it is highly likely the other team will win this 4v5 in under 7 minutes, reducing the rewards for everyone.

Why, with those facts, would we assume that the vast majority of players are purposely losing? Sure, some players who aren’t spectacular yet will be joining Soloqueue, but that’s to be expected! Who is good the first time they do a new game mode? You have to start somewhere! The only reason to go for PvP rewards is exclusives and because you enjoy it. The rewards are not high enough (probably on purpose) to warrant anything like you are suggesting. Will there be some cases of people leeching? Of course, it happens in every game with rewards, but to assume bad players = leechers is just plain wrong.

Look at that picture above. Who’s to say he’s not a decap engi? Trying a new tactic? I’ve seen high rank thieves play far point, annoy the kitten out of a home point bunker, then push base. Once the home point bunker leaves to stop them from wreaking havoc in their base, they go back and decap the point. They continue this until the entire base is empty! That poster assumed that’s a bad strategy, when really it’s not if done right. Some people assume there’s one way to play this game and there just isn’t.

My Build

azuzephyr.7280:

There’s still no argument in what you’re saying.

Every point you’ve made is basically based on… nothing.

‘Blame anet’ – you blame them

’don’t be a kitten’ you don’t be one by selfishly joining a ranked team game that you can’t/wont contribute to just for the reward

’it’s a nice thing to do’ so is considering other people in ranked before you join

‘not all casuals want hotjoin’ not all high level pvpers have 4 guildies on/available at any given opportunity

’there’s a person on the end of the character’ too kitten right, why are people screwing over 4 others behind their character by messing up their ranked game?

All your points are just what you want. Again; have cake and eat it.

That’s basically it. Please stop trying with the Mother Theresa attitude trying to cover up the fact that people are deliberately messing up part of the game and trying to get away with it by acting innocent and trying to demonize the enemy.

Inexperience isn’t a crime, far from it. But forcing yourself into a ranked game when there is a clear alternative more appropriate for your experience just because you selfishly want the better reward, that is.

No one begrudges you for being mad at people who are purposely going into ranked matches just to get a reward, but to think that all or even just the majority of new players are in that category is completely false. Some players are playing PvP for the first time because it’s rewarding and hopefully because they find it fun. People being jerks can ruin the entire game for people.

If I must be so direct, my point is that you shouldn’t assume the worst in new players. Wiki’s most important policy is “assume good faith”. Unless they are blatantly being bad or jerks, there’s no reason to assume that they are. If you kitten out a newbie for being in the soloqueue arena, there’s no telling if you told some troll in it for the rewards to go away or some newbie who truly just doesn’t get the game just yet and is in the wrong place. Maybe they thought they were good because they were wrecking face in hot joins and get a shell shock from how hard it is to fight in Soloqueue.

too kitten right, why are people screwing over 4 others behind their character by messing up their ranked game?

Because they don’t know any better. Not everyone has the same information you have about PvP. Some have literally 0 matches played. This game does nothing to guide players in the right direction, so you can’t be surprised when players get lost or do things wrong.

Also, what teacher says “Basically based”?

azuzephyr.7280:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

There’s a reason good schools and good teachers don’t just throw you a text book and go afk. They teach. If you can’t teach, then just don’t be a kitten and encourage them.

This is quite an ironic tbh.

I’m a teacher as a profession, I get paid. How much am I getting paid to teach people who can’t pvp but want to join the ranked ques regardless?

There is no argument in what you’re saying, people just seem to want their cake and eat it

‘I know I’m kittening up your game by joining solo que when I could join hotjoin but I don’t care stop being mean’

Soloqueue is suppose to match people based on rank. It’s also suppose to be a bridge to higher end tPvP as the matches are MUCH more structured than hot join. Not all casuals want the chaos of hot joins. If Soloqueue is matching you with new players, blame Anet, not the guy who wants something with a bit more substance and structure than hot join. If you don’t want new players, join Team Arenas and Yoloqueue it.

Again, you don’t have to teach them, just don’t be a kitten. Kindly suggest they get more experience in Hot Join first before joining Soloqueue if they really are that bad. Remember there’s a person on the other end of that character. You’re assuming that every single person who jumps into Solo Queue and is bad is doing it to be a jerk.

And no, you don’t get paid to teach people. It’s just a nice thing to do. I started this game just as crappy as they did and this game does jack kitten to teach players about how to be successful. It wasn’t until 3 months into playing this game that one of the elite engineers of the time was nice enough to spend a good half hour with me showing me a build and the basics of the engineer. I’m now rank 76 and will be playing with my team in the tournament of legends. I have 5 engineers and absolutely love PvP. I probably would have only played PvE if it wasn’t for that session. I owe a lot of that skill to…whoever that person was xD. There’s a lot of times when my skill level stagnated, but guides posted on the forums, talking with high end players and just chatting with nice people in PvP has gotten me to get even better. Instead of spite for new players, be nice and someday they’ll be really good too.

Lelouch Sothoth.1982:

3)Some general guidelines on builds: I played Necro since dayone, and stubbornly playing Condi in PvE since then (I just don’t do dungeons anymore :P), so I’d feel more comfortable playing condi in PvP too. From what I’ve read, it’s okay here,no?

Necromancer is good at Condition damage (All levels of play) and Power Damage (at Low to mid level play). In this last patch, their main condi trait got nerfed, however they are still very strong.

• Corrupt Boon is a must. It’s one of the strongest necromancer skills.
• Other good necromancer utilities are:
  • Signet of Spite – For the active. Super hard to dodge and really great conditions.
  • Spectral Wall – Used well, this is extremely strong. Definitely takes practice to master.
  • Flesh Wurm – Great stun breaker. Allows you to escape from battle. Make sure you place it in a good place before entering a fight!
  • Spectral Grasp – 15% life Force AND puts the enemy in a good range to be feared with Doom (#3 in death shroud).
  • Epidemic – Rarer now, but never got any weaker.
  • Spectral Armor/Walk – Both really good. They give you life force if you are attacked, in death shroud and outside of it.

Traits are generally something like this:

Build

I’m not teh super 1337 necro, but I imagine with the nerf to dhuumfire, someone trying to avoid it would use something like that.

Lelouch Sothoth.1982:

Questions!
1)Some advice on when to stomp?

It depends on the situation and the class. If you are under pressure and think you will either be interrupted or AoEed to death, just go for the damaging kill from a range. Otherwise, do it depending on the class and what utilities you bring:

1. Thief – Almost always DPS them down (Known as cleaving). If you are a thief, you can teleport to them MID stomp and it won’t interrupt the cast! Use either Steal or Infiltrator’s Signet to do this.
2. Mesmer – DPSing them down works. You can also simply stomp, but they’ll teleport away. Once they do, the one with the arrow on their head is the real one. There are more advanced ways to handle mesmers, but for now just stick with those.
3. Engineer, Necromancer and Warrior – They have pretty good health and armor while downed so the faster you stomp them the better. Their downed skills SUCK so blinding them, having stability or dodging it will be enough to finish them. Necromancer’s is especially slow so if they don’t start the cast early in your stomp, it will probably not go through.
4. Ranger and Guardian – Both of these are extremely hard to counter as they are so fast. This is because their base health is lower than most (ranger is mid range). Simply go for the stomp, get interrupted and then stomp them without worrying. Some advanced rangers will use their pet fear to hit you again. Don’t worry about it. Knockback the pet if you can and finish them.
5. Elementalist – DPS these down or go for the stomp. If you DPS them down, they’ll mist form to waste your time. Once that mist form is done, they are done. Their #3 skill sucks.

Remember that poison is your best friend when someone is down. It lowers how much people heal them when they go for the res AND lowers their own healing from downed (skill 4 while downed).

Lelouch Sothoth.1982:

2)I gathered that running around capping points is not something to do, but you should stay there to guard those points. Is this right?

In general, it is better to fight on points or near important objectives (such as the treb). The only exception is if you think that you can attack someone who is going towards a point you are defending. It will increase the time it takes them to get there AND people generally are much easier to kill if they are running towards something. If there is someone standing on a point that is on your team, you don’t want to be on point too. There is a crazy amount of AoE in this game and doing so will be the death of you. Only go on point if you think you can res a downed ally, stomp a downed enemy or if there is no one else on point.

Some classes are just too hard to fight on point and thus fighting just off point while they are on point is the best and sometimes only solution. Mesmers, for example, almost never fight on point. It’s just too easy to AoE their clones down if they all spawn on point. Bomb Engineers are DEADLY at melee range, so they generally stay on point and hope stupid people get close to them and die almost immediately. It really depends on what your build is and how much health you have left. It comes down to this:

• If you have the point and think you can hold, stay on it and keep it as long as possible.
• If you have the point but KNOW you will die if you stay on point, fight off it and try to kill the assailant quickly.
• If you have the point decapped (It’s white), just stay off point and try to end them fast.
• If you don’t have the point (it’s the other teams now), just stay off point and kill them quickly so you can full cap it.

Leeto.1570:

Check the screenie… there is not even point in teaching them…
Ofcourse thief went far, i had to stay back on close and help other guy cap it, so our guys got outnumbered on mid and died, even tho we went from close to mid and wiped 2 of them we still died in the end because our pro thief was dpsing enemy bases door and then got killed by the guys we wiped on mid.

Uh huh. I’m sure that picture clearly represents every single PvEer who is trying out PvP for the first time. I’m sure literally every single PvEer is a kitten bag because the ones YOU happened to run into didn’t play the way you wanted them too.

PvP is hard, especially if you are coming from a PvE world. There’s a difference between throwing out a crazy plan filled with PvP jargon and literally taking a little bit to take a newbie under your wing and show them some cool stuff. There’s a reason good schools and good teachers don’t just throw you a text book and go afk. They teach. If you can’t teach, then just don’t be a kitten and encourage them.