Guild Wars 2

pepsis.5384:

Ananeos.4587:

Pets need to have less health, period. As soon as you spend valuable time to focus down a pet and blowing your bar the ranger presses one button and another pet with 22k+ health comes out.

Kinda ridiculous. Pets already take 95% less damage in pve, reducing pet health would be balanced for the damage they do.

Umm right, so who spends their “valuable time” focusing pets ? Im pretty bad in PVP but even I go for the masters ignoring the pets.

Let me ask you this – Are you a NPC ? Is your “ai” so bad that you see only the pet in front of you? Cmon people, enough already.

On my Burnserker I actually do just nuke the pets immediately. It has this effect:

• Forces Druid to burn his heals REAL FAST if he wants to keep the pet alive or he has to swap, which puts pet on cool down.
• 1st pet either dies or 2nd pet is out with swap cool down now. Nuke 2nd pet. Druid is forced to burn more heals if he wants to keep that pet alive and now he can’t swap as an option.
• 2nd pet is downed. If 1st is still alive, when it comes out nuke it. If 1st was already dead, start targeting Druid who now has no support pet DPS and more than likely burnt heals trying to keep his kitten Bristleback alive. Generally equates to an easy kill when you’re running an extreme DPS build.

The point of this is that -> A Druid cannot kill you without it’s pets if you are a half competent player.

If you are having trouble bursting down pets while running DPS, you’re doing something wrong.

I’m not saying to attack pets every time you encounter a Druid but sometimes if the Druid is very good, taking out the pets first in your 1v1 side node battle against him will be the better bet.

Guardian/DH is in a terrible place. It’s not as bad as the Warrior/Berserker during S1 and S2 but it’s close. Here is why:

• #1 – It’s a selfish build. It doesn’t even begin to compare to the level of team support boon/heal splashing that other classes have, such as a Revenant or Druid. This is bad for a class that is slow that can’t even peel. A selfish class such as Thief can get away with being selfish because it often operates alone while peeling all over the place and getting back caps but when a class is immobile and designed to stay in team fights, it needs to be giving team support or it’s a weak link in the team. Trap Dazing is not team support.
• #2 – Not able to disengage. This is a huge problem and largely contributes to why DHs always go down in a team fight first. People know that all they have to do is pressure him in to cool downs and then he’s a sitting duck. Other classes are able to distribute their skill cycling over larger margins of time, while disengaging/returning fresh to a team fight but a DH cannot do this. He is a sitting duck and easy to kill with focus where as other classes are not. Thus he becomes a weak link in the team during more competitive play.
• #3 – Just subpar sustain. Most of the problems with DH’s sustain is indeed because it cannot disengage but there are other issues that contribute to just plain subpar sustain. (A) it relies too much on blocking and too many attacks in the game are now unblockable. (B) Relies too much on boons. With so much boon removal being tossed around nowadays, this is a problem. © It has the lowest health pool in the game. YES this is a problem after the power creep.
• #4 – It lost it’s DPS spike. When it first arrived on the scene, it had a firm and commanding DPS spike. That was the only thing that DH was good for. That was the only thing that kept it dangerous, especially in 1v1 situations. Over time it has been nerfed too much. People aren’t even concerned anymore with rolling in to DH traps. Not only has the DPS been lowered but it has the same problem over time that Hambow experienced and that is easy to spot attack streams. The traps are predictable, they are easy to set off without harm and true shot is easy to sight and dodge roll. Anyone who plays competitively, knows how to deal with the obvious DH animations. This is no good and the class just gets counter played easily.

Ultimately I can say that anyone still playing DH is robbing themself of playing a better class and if they want to sit and defend the DH, they are fooling themselves in to believing their own excuse of not wanting to learn something new. The class really is underpowered in every game mode. Upon this, every other class can do what the DH does but better:

• Raw Damage? Herald, Daredevil, Berserker, Reaper, omfg ect.. ect.. Almost every other archetype has better consistent DPS than the DH. Some with better bursts even.
• Condi Damage? Mixing burn on DH just doesn’t work out well. It becomes too glassy to be practical. Obviously Chronos/Reapers are far superior in this category.
• Healing/Cleansing? Doesn’t even begin to compare to a Druid or Tempest.
• Boons? Revenant is a better Guardian than a Guardian.
• Peeling/Backcapping? phhht… Even slow kitten Reapers are better at this than Guardians.
• Control/Decapping? Honestly those CCs on the DH are not as useful as they used to be. Everyone sees them coming. Only heavy light is useful for a practical & accurate CC with inobvious #1 spamming. So many other classes are actually far better at coordinated CC strikes.

~ It really is in a bad place right now.

Hint & Tip:

Create two different keystrokes.

• Target Nearest
• Target Next

Use Target Next vs. Mesmers. This targeting will initially ignore AI targets and immediately target the player. If you KEEP clicking it, it will then begin targeting AIs.

The pets are exactly where they need to be. If you began changing the mechanics, you would need to buff the ranger/druid in other aspects.

The ranger/druid needs the pets to be as strong as they are now.

Also, it really isn’t difficult to quick kill pets. They don’t dodge roll man, they don’t dodge! Kill the pets and you’ll quickly see how useless the ranger/druid becomes.

Incase no one has noticed, Carrion is virtually the same thing as Mercenary.
In a mostly condi meta, the Carrion is debatably better than Mercenary anyway.

Looking For Group [LFG] is a Jade Quarry based SPvP guild that is looking to extend it’s roots in to WvW. This guild has been active since day one release of Guild Wars 2.

What we are looking for in a commander:

• Someone loyal to Jade Quarry
• Someone who is a seasoned, enthusiastic player who keeps up with change in meta
• Someone who likes to spend most of their time in WvW
• Someone who actually likes being in a TS3 and commanding
• Someone dedicated towards commanding and teaching WvW to other players

What we are looking for in zergers:

• JQ loyalists
• Players who like to spend most of their time in WvW
• Players who use TS3

This is an opportunity for those unrecognized commanders who would love to have organized guild support at their disposal. This is also an opportunity for any players who have not already dedicated to a WvW guild, to join a guild that is relatively new to the WvW scene and learn together with them.

Why am I not doing this job myself? My focus is dedicated towards running & teaching SPvP teams. Upon this, I simply cannot both jobs at the same time.

Interested in this? Check out the link in my signature and contact me for more information and/or discussion on the topic.

Crowd control skills.

Slow down…
Focus…
Use them on the Mesmer…

Funny that Turret Engi keeps being brought up here. Because this recent banter about Mesmer is the exact same thing as the old banter about Turret Engis.

People who used to complain about Turret Engi just simply weren’t slowing down enough to stop and think “ok, how am I going to approach this?” If they did, they’d have realized that Turret Engineer was a lot easier to actually kill than a good Cele/Rifle Engineer. Also, the AI on turrets was easy to read, easy to trick and very easy to avoid.

People now complaining about Mesmer are experiencing a similar issue. They just came from a bunker meta where they were allowed to roll around on a point with great sustain while splashing AoE damage and boons all over the place. This was a forgiving meta for players who never learned to 1v1 focus. Well the bunker meta is gone now and these players are experiencing an issue where they aren’t SLOWING DOWN and considering what they have to do to beat the Mesmer:

• The Mesmer is better at rolling around on point and not dying while spamming damage, than you are. Stop trying to fight him that way.
• The Mesmer is heavily punished when his skills go on cool down such to the point that they usually have to bail when it happens.
• Play defensively and save your bursts for when the Mesmer’s cool downs are apparent.
• Time your bursts and CCs during that vulnerable moment. Mesmers die fast when caught. They are deceiving you by “looking like they are winning” with those initial skills before it all goes on cool down.

The easiest route to balancing this game or at least providing the “illusion” that it is balanced, is by bringing back a stronger sense of class role and purpose. The only issue with this idea is that GW2 doesn’t provide enough types of different play dynamic to fill every class with something unique.

Though if they could, this would mean that no matter if “a thief was under powered or not” he would be the only class in the game that was capable of stealthing and moving across a map undetected. Thus, no matter how underpowered he is, he will always have a role to fill that other classes cannot fill. If every class was like this, it would mean that they all had an ace in the hole that made them important.

However, we have a game where every class can do everything. This just leads to a vicious never ending cycle of buffs & nerfs to twink things to a player base’s preferences in hopes of every class being the same but somehow being different at the same time!
This is a hopeless pursuit and the idea of “every class doing everything” was not so good of an idea after all.

The true answer to fixing this game, lies far far more core to the engine than simply balancing what we have now. We need more dynamic in the game so that each class can lean on being dominant in one category. This would provide a much easier system to form balance around.

Right now we have only:

• Healing/Cleansing
• Boon sharing
• DPS Physical
• DPS Condition
• Crowd Control
• Stealthing/Mobility
• AI Minion Fodder
  ~ This is a small list of dynamic compared to other games of it’s genre.
  ~ Let’s take a look at GW2’s predecessor GW1.

GW1 dynamics:

• Healing – through various different subcategory dynamic methods
• Cleansing – through various different subcategory dynamic methods. Different cleanses for very specific different things. A condi cleanse did not simple remove 1 condi.
• Raw DPS separated in to Physical, Fire, Ice, Lightning, Dark, Light, Unmitigatable such as signet of spite or Grenth’s Balance. This of course comes with different forms of toughness to mitigate this damage.
• Condi DPS separated in to many many different subcategories that were not so easily cleansed from one universal system of “condi cleansing”. You’re talking the difference between bleed from a sword, burn from a spell, degeneration effects from a hex or small life steals coming from an AoE source. Different classes could or could not deal with certain things.
• Enchantments
• Weapon Enchantments “completely separate from normal enchantments”
• Shouts “completely separate type of boons from normal enchantments”
• Stances “completely separate type of boons granted which required stance removal skills to kill the boons”.
• Various in depth forms of CCs. Not so easy to use a universal stability vs. all here.
• Various in depth forms of AIs and actual purposes for them.
  ~ ect.. ect.. this really is just the tip of the iceberg on this one.

You see with the above listed dynamics, there is more to work with in terms of granting let’s say a currently under powered class, more in certain areas to work with so that it is important. Right now in GW2, with the small list of dynamic, it is inevitable that 3-4 builds will become dominant in meta simply because that is exactly what is going to happen when every class is working with a small list of dynamic. A small handful of builds will be identified that just do everything better than the other classes that are also supposed to be able to do everything.

~ Next expansion needs to be a serious implementation of added game dynamics and not ones that are granted to every class but dynamics that are specific and special to individual classes. Things that only a certain class can do or deal with. It needs to happen. Bring back class role.

When you learn to let go of the old bow play, you won’t go back.
This is what I’ve figured out while running Berserker after this previous patch.

Few things that are wrong with bow:

• F1 Burst is only 1 burn stack and most players see it coming easily nowadays.
• F1 Berserker Burst is buggy with firing and how the line appears, depending on if an opponent is directly in front of you or off to the side/behind you. This is extremely annoying actually and needs to be patched so that when it is used, the position of the warrior is considered “no facing” and the origin of the line appears in the direction outward from the warrior’s position. This is not so easy to use to proc Cleansing Ire.
• #1 spam is small DPS on condi, #3 is small DPS on condi, #4 is almost a waste of time to use, #5 single stack of immob is nearly useless in this current cleansing meta.
• #2 triple burn proc however, is a good consistent DPS but overall the LB doesn’t work so well on warrior anymore.

Then I tried rifle
Few things wrong with rifle:

• Kill Shot Basic won’t deal impressive DPS at all but easy to cleanse with if you use superior sigil of speed on it’s weapon side.
• Gunflame however, will deal a lot of DPS with it’s triple stack AoE burn damage. Again, easy to cleanse with if you run superior sigil of speed on rifle. Remember Gunflame is an AoE so this actually is easier to proc Cleansing Ire with than the LB. Players cannot so easily kite away from this as they can the slow moving LB F1s volleys.
• Overall useless pew pew skills if you are running condi, aside from Gunflame, #4 which is sort of like an LR on ranger and #5 which is a considerably powerful knockback that hits up to 3 players I believe? Maybe it’s 5. The #5 I used to think was strong for decapping or interrupting until ->

Started using Mace/Sword
Summary of this:

• F1 basic is at least a CC
• F1 Berserker Burst, first time you land it, you’ll forget all about LB/Rifle. Lots of CC for the lockdown and lots of DPS. Perfect to follow up with after Sword F1 or to lead in to Sword F1. Lots of options to be dominant in melee here.
• #2 is a block/counterattack to stop those important strikes like true shots or the obvious thief coming out of stealth, #5 riposte is the same way, #3 is another CC, #4 is torment damage.
• Between the two extra CCs, Head Butt and the two blocks, this is the synergy that allows a Berserker to be completely dominant in melee combat. The only build that should counter you is Revenant and sometimes DH’s if you don’t pressure their cool downs before going in for the kill. Everything else becomes an easy spank in a 1v1 situation.

It’s a hack called speedhack.
Expect to see it more often in unranked matches, about 1/20 matches ran.
You won’t see it often in ranked but there are videos of it being caught.

What you are seeing is not lag. If the person was lagging, they would start running at a wall and not moving for a long duration of time before making small jolting movements while server readjusts them. Also, If you were lagging you would see EVERYONE on your screen doing weird things, not just one person.

Most players who use speed hack are good at hiding it. Normally people get away with it by running thieves and only using the speedhack when they SR “so no one can see the glitchy fast running” and then they hotkey deactivate when out of SR. Other classes are capable of doing this as well but not so conveniently as a thief can.

Learn to use the win10 record program, everyone has it now.
Great for catching cheaters on film.

If you think that Warrior spec works good, try this:

• Defense – usual stuff
• Discipline – usual stuff
• Berserker – all middle fire traits
  Sword/Torch – Mace/Sword – Bursting/Smoldering both sides
  Mercenary/Balthazar
  Heal sig/Shattering Blow/Dolyak Signet/Outrage/Head Butt

Counters Thieves/Druids/Necros/Scrappers/Glass Ele
Balanced against: Mesmers/Bunk Ele/Dragonghunter “gotta burn their cooldowns”
Gets countered by: Revenants

Powerful as hell in 1v1
Great in team fights if it’s with support which stacks with it’s natural defenses
Rotates just fine with sword #2 and 25% speed increase
Has problems if focused while alone, it’s not a 1v2 point holder
Doesn’t contribute at all to team fight support splashing such as Rev booning

That’s about the break down for current warrior

Nejul.8415:

Why do engineer have a aoe moa attack and mesmer don’t?

Don’t you even start that band wagon.

You should be more concerned with the match making in that match, than the druid or the warrior’s play.

That druid was 1v2 defending far the entire game but was given a team who couldn’t get anything done in an advantage 4v3 between home/mid.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/High-MMR-Punished-For-Solo-Que-2/first#post6140634

Yup, I experienced a lose streak earlier in the day and then immediately hit a win streak afterwards. This happens to everyone in spvp, including you:

FLIMP.8172:

Background info:
- climbed my way to Ruby really easy
- got stuck for a bit
- climbed to Diamond easily
- now stuck in Diamond bouncing between T5 and T1 for a few weeks now

(I had a 25 streak loss once)

So you went through my post history, hand pick quotes from separate discussions in separate threads from different dates & times and arranged them in a way that would suggest that I am lying. Even though you, from your own experiences, clearly understand that a player can go on a lose streak and then go on a win streak. This is all bad conduct my friend and it makes you look aggressive, toxic and a bit pompous.

But since you want to hit my credibility so hard, I’ll go ahead and hit yours:

~ #1: Researched your post history. You are predominately a wvw player and haven’t even posted much in the forum until about 1 month ago when it looks like you started playing conquest more often. You made this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/MM-system-Thank-you to share your vast knowledge of conquest to all of the players who have been doing it for almost four years now and I actually laughed out loud when I read this part of your post:

FLIMP.8172:

Winning your 1 v 1 or holding a point 1 v 2/3 doesn’t mean kitten
Even if you’re successfully doing the above, if your team mates are losing their fights, it pretty much means you’re not carrying. Even if you’re doing a fantastic job winning a 1 v 3, if your team mates are losing the 4 v 2 and losing the other points then you need to join the team fight to help them. It’s a team game so play more like a team and help them.

Seriously though, I actually laughed out loud at this. It woke my gf up and kind of kittened her off.

~ #2: That same point of view in the above quote is the same thing you said to me in your original post in this thread. Now I know the answer to the question that I asked in my response. The answer is -> No, you indeed haven’t actually played much conquest. This much is evident with a review of your post history and your comments about joining team fight wipes, rather than winning 1v3s and holding nodes whilst granting your weak team advantage situations elsewhere. If you don’t understand why this is a good thing to do for a bad team, you’ve got a lot to learn.

~ #3: Your lose streak in diamond went on for 3 weeks. Mine went on for 3 hours.

~ #4: I issued you a challenge to either a recorded 1v1 or a team vs. team and you dodged me. This is disappointing seeing as how you have a youtube channel dedicated to wvw pvp. I’d have figured that you would have taken this opportunity to create hits for your channel. The only reason that you wouldn’t, is if you were concerned that I would beat you.

~ Cheers to credibility bruh

FLIMP.8172:

wow~ someone is a little touchy and sour.

-checks post history- oh right… you were one of those people who didn’t make it to legend and blamed MMR!

Never mind me – please continue as you were

/exits topic

I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t try very hard during S2. I was busy with work, had a few bad things happen IRL to tend to and overall was too tired to give a kitten about GW2 at the end of the day. Not to mention that a good 75%+ of the players I normally play with had quit the game after the disappointing balance patch right before S2 started and that was a bit discouraging as well.

During the last 3 days of S2, I had taken a leave from work and had time again. I grinded as hard as I could in solo ques. I was actually on a win streak and only two games from legend when ranked got closed.

Don’t believe me? Trying to make me look like a bad player? Take a look at this image. There are plenty of players who would vouch that I wasn’t online much during S2. This is also visible from my lack of forum activity during S2.

Great dirt tossing though. It keeps things interesting. You know what would be very interesting? If you formed the best team you could make and I formed the best team that I could make and we recorded the outcome of the match or possibly we could simply record a 1v1 session with you and I.

~ Get back with me on that one. I’m being serious about it. The good old dirt tossing is boring. I like to provide evidence when my reputation is in question. It’ll give the community something stupid to watch anyway. They’ll enjoy it.

It isn’t a perception, it’s a fact that pvp is declining and this much is viewable if you were a guild leader that has paid attention to players joining/leaving the game within the past year and what they say to you before they leave.

Quick summary:

Pre HoT and pre 6/23/2015 traits in to specialization patch ~ spvp was at it’s most balanced. Three years of work towards balancing the game up to that point. The game had a more solid feel. 2-3 builds were at least viable on each class and people liked playing those builds because those were the builds that had always been being played and people were used to this. People enjoyed pvp then more than they do now. So much to the point that I could get my girlfriend, our friend Keri and Keri’s mom to play spvp with me. Along with a list of numerous other players that I can’t even get to touch the game now after HoT release and S1.

HoT release and S1 ~ Many casual frequenters of spvp, wvw and even pve left the game about a week or two after the HoT release. The initial hype was interesting to many of them at first but then the realization set in of “now they need to grind to get gold to pay for new gear, again” “now they need to relearn and adapt to some new build structure, again”. Here are actual quotes from some of the people I know in real life who left this game:

• Amanda my gf: It’s too demanding now. I feel like I can’t get anywhere in this game. It took me a long time to learn how to keep up in pvp with you guys but every time I catch up, the game changes. I think I’m done with this hun.
• Keri our friend: I liked my old cele/rifle engi. I do not like how scrapper plays and I don’t like how other classes play in pvp either.
• Keri’s mom: I just don’t know what the hell is going on at all anymore. <- She has currently been playing RTS games because she says it’s something she can learn that doesn’t change.
• My friend Brandon: Why’s a-net gotta keep stirring the bucket? I prefer games that make me feel like my time invested, matters.
• Various in-game buddies who were much more hardcore than the above players: Mostly claiming that they have had enough with imbalance issues and have had enough with bad match making.

S2 ~ Literally, my entire guild fell apart at the beginning of S2. During S1, I had a great team rolling. Even through the fire & flame of the leaving players, I was able to pull together a strong 5 man crew and we had achieved r29 on the leaderboards just before Christmas rolled around. Around Christmas time, players began getting burnt out and started disappearing. It got to the point that there were only 3 people or less online at a given time and I had to stop running the guild team tag, thus I could no longer progress our team in league due to this. Most of them would sign in once or twice a week for an hour here or there in between S1 and S2 but when S2 rolled around, they just signed out and never logged back in. Here is what some of them said:

• Tai: I think I’ll just go check out new games now <- This guy was always positive and never negative. What I can tell you that what he means by this, is that he is unsatisfied with the direction of GW2 spvp.
• “a name that I won’t mention because he streams”: I’m so tired of these issues in GW2 man. I like this game and I don’t want to leave it but maybe it’s time to take a break for awhile and see what happens.
• “another name that I won’t mention because plenty of you would know who he is”: What the bleep is arena net doing? <-a man of few words but strong ones.
• and countless others who disappeared upon S2 release, claiming complete disapproval of the balance patch that was released at that point.

So S3 approaches. With the above statements and actions trending, there won’t be much of an actual spvp community left other than new faces showing up who are only showing up to get legendary wings. They aren’t showing up for the love of a competitive scene, like the original hardcore players. No, they want rewards and if they weren’t getting rewards, they wouldn’t be interested.

Consider the difference in mindframe between the two different types of players in spvp: “players who are there because they actually like pvp” and “players who are there trudging forward through disgust to get legendary wings”. <- Players who are there trudging forward in disgust to get legendary wings are not going to stay after they get the legendary wings. All of these new faces you see, yeah they are mostly there trudging forward in disgust to get the legendary wings. This is not a healthy way to build population in a competitive scene. The players who actually love pvp are more and more dropping out and not coming back, due to finally being fed up enough to do so.

All of the above is not healthy and arena-net needs to review their priorities if they want to keep making money. You need fanbase to make money and you need a solid game to create and keep fanbase. I personally love the GW2 engine and will stay with this game but the large majority of players do not feel the same way that I do.

The #1 biggest culprit to the above problem is how LONG it takes arena-net to patch and fix this game. With their current schedule of serious patching, it’s going to take years to achieve the same level of balance in pvp that we had seen pre 6/23/2015 and that’s unfortunate.

Take a look at some of history’s most popular games:

• Chess – match outcomes decided by wit and raw knowledge/wisdom
• Poker – match outcomes decided by bluffing, fronting and a little luck
• Baseball – match outcomes decided primarily by athletic ability
• Rock/Paper/Scissors – match outcomes decided by raw instinct
• Or in our case, any cult classic video game that is still played competitively to this day. match outcomes in video gaming usually ends up being about hand eye coordinated, reflexes, raw knowledge and rehearsal of key strokes and response to opponent’s actions and ability to think faster than the opponent

All of the above games are so different but they’re all the same.

What do these share in common?

• They all have perfect competitive balance.
• They all have solid physics that don’t change.

Due to these solid and well balanced game physics, people love these games because match outcomes are truly decided by the superior player or team. This makes a game fun to play and fun to watch. Due to the game physics being solid and never changing, this means that a player could walk away for 10 years, then come back and pick right up where they left off, without needing to relearn a new game. Both of these factors contribute to building a strong fanbase and keeping the fanbase because the game is “always present and never changes”. Whenever a game changes it’s rules or dynamic, it becomes a different game entirely which also means that it loses old fanbase and has to build new fanbase. Sometimes the older players don’t like the new game and don’t come back. It is because of a game “being solid and not changing” that allows it to accru a large fanbase.

The above is the problem with Guild Wars 2 spvp. It completely lacks every aspect mentioned that is required to build a strong game that accrues a large fan base and it is mostly because Guild Wars 2 spvp has yet to settle a solid foundation of reliable game dynamic that players can leave for a year and come back to, that is unchanged. Players will get used to some build, finally learn how to combat and rotate with it, hell they may even grow to really love playing that one spec. Then they leave for 6 months, come back and the spvp scene is completely different and they have to relearn the game as if they just walked in to the mists for the first time, again. This is no good for keeping player base interested. If arena-net seriously wants to promote their esport, they have got to sit down and grind out a well developed foundation for a stable game balance and leave it alone for awhile so that it can settle and become a game that player’s can return to.

Most interesting thread I’ve read in a long time.
I sincerely hope arena-net reads this.
There are a lot of well explained points in here.

Let me rephrase this:

• Reaper’s can run reaper specialization and mix/match it with any other specialization to create effective builds that always allow practical use of Reaper Shroud.
• Tempest, same idea. No punishment for using any specialization with it.
• Chronomancer, same idea. No punishment for using any specialization with it.
• Daredevil, same idea. Nothing will nerf your Daredevil abilities.
• Scrapper, run w/e you like with it. Nothing will deactive it’s use.
• Dragonhunter, yup lots of builds to mix with DH spec, with no punishment.
• Berserker, plenty workable with power/condi/bunky builds.
• Then you have Druid where if you don’t use Beast Mastery shouts for practical force gain, your celestial avatar class feature is virtually useless.

That is the point that I am trying to make and it needs to be fixed.

Not sure what you aren’t understanding about this but there isn’t anything you can do to help a team of players who get crunched in 2 to 4 seconds of combat, each and every time they engage. There are no magical rotations or team strategies that can cure a team full of people who are bad at combat.

The only thing a good player can do in that type of situation is peel around and catch 1v1s and 1v2s that he knows he can win and try to get something done while drawing agro in hopes of allowing the team mates an advantage 4v3 situation. If they are too poor to win 4v3s, well then it’s gg. Staying in some “team fight” that you already know is lost, isn’t going to get anything done other than expediting your return to the spawn point and it sure as hell isn’t going to decap any nodes from the opponents or score even a single game point for that matter.

Your initial response seemed as if you didn’t understand the above. This makes me wonder two things:

• (A) Do you even really play conquest?
• (B) Are you just trolling me?

~ Not trying to insult you or anything

Yup, I fired the treb a couple times during the match while rotating between far and home to try and assist the losing team fights at mid.

Maybe 15 to 20 of those points were form the treb at the most. I said “it wasn’t treb spam points”. I did not claim that “none of my points were from the treb”. Don’t put words in people’s mouths. All it does is convolute the point of a poster’s post.

Not sure what you did wrong on your power necro spec but a berserker power necro build still does more AoE spike damage than any other necromancer build, easily, hands down, no discussion behind it.

It is extremely viable in pve and wvw. The only thing that keeps it out of spvp meta is that (A) wells are easy to dodge and (B) it doesn’t benefit so much boon corrupt, condi bouncing or minion play to soak cleaves.

If you insist on running it in spvp, try this:

• blood/soul reaping/reaper – make sure to take trait that does protection on well use.
• AXE/warhorn – you’ll need the mid range capabilities. Dagger doesn’t work anymore. Air & Blood.
• Staff on swap of course. Air & Leeching.
• Consume Conditions/Both DPS Wells/Spectral Armor/Chilled To The Bone.
• Berserker/Pack

If you try to get bunkier as a power well, your gains in defense are small compared to the loss in DPS. It isn’t worth it. To make it work, it needs absolute raw DPS pressure. Run Berserker/Pack.

Needs to happen, to allow for viable DPS specs again:

• Decrease celestial force gained from raw healing.
• Increase celestial force gained from dealing damage.
• Allow use of celestial avatar whenever enough force is present to swap in to it.

Right now celestial force gains too slow if you aren’t running beast mastery shout regeneration builds. Making the above changes would allow the beast mastery shout regeneration builds to gain just as quickly as before but also allow DPS specs that don’t run shout regeneration to build a practical amount of celestial force through dealing damage alone.

Not sure if it’s my system or a bug but I often get stuck in place after using certain skills and it won’t let me move until I use a movement skill such as reaper shroud #2 or warrior sword #2 leap.

Yup, I’m getting mails each time I enter LA as well.

Nothing wrong with Ancient Seeds. The trait functions just fine.

What Druid needs a shift in how celestial avatar gain works:

• decrease amount of celestial forced gained through healing.
• increase amount of celestial forced gained through dealing damage.
• possibly allow access to celestial avatar any time that there is enough force present.

This would enable DPS specs again instead of every Druid build needing to run beast mastery shout regeneration. It’s a huge change that needs to happen.

10s of moa, core or chronomancer, doesn’t matter. After the power creep it became the head-shot skill in GW2 when used with coordinated teams. It was too much and I’m glad to see it nerfed.

10s moa was too much after power creep.

What Booms said. I have the same type of experiences in unranked.

This link and the links there-in, explain the problems with how unranked match making works: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/High-MMR-Punished-For-Solo-Que-2/first#post6130512

I’ve never been one to post about a class being OP but lately I’ve been hearing from other players that they are going to sit out of season 3 if Chronomancer isn’t fixed. This idea seems to be trending within the past week.

Why are players saying this?
Mainly I hear them claim: “Chronomancer is knocking too many builds not only out of possible meta but also out of viability in general play, even in unranked”.

People are fed up with balance/viability issues. During season 2 many players left the spvp scene and I have yet to see them come back. This exodus will only continue if some working median of balance isn’t achieved before season 3.

I won’t even toss suggestions on how to fix it because (A) I am not a Mesmer player and (B) I generally play Druid which usually beats a Chronomancer on point anyway so I can’t really identify what the problems are with the Chronomancer. This post was simply to report that these players who are ready to leave spvp in season 3 are just as serious about what they say as the players who did leave during season 2.

Asrat.2645:

Ellie.5913:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

The OP is right actually. I’ve lost a lot of casual friends from GW2 “people I know in real life even” who don’t play often enough to be able to keep up with every single game changing patch that happens. They will sit down and learn a certain spec, which takes time for casual players. They may even grow to very much enjoy playing that spec. Then a couple months down the road, a patch hits and everything changes on them.

The only players in this community who really keep up competitively are the ones who play every day, who are investing the kind of time required to keep up and adapt immediately to every change that happens. It’s true, GW2 is not a game for casual players anymore.

Even in pve when a patch hits, if you don’t have the funds to revise your gear and get appropriate setups, you’re kitten out of luck. Casuals don’t tend to have 100s of gold laying around to revise their gear on demand like that.

Honestly arena-net needs to crunch out some time and find a good balance point to let the game settle on. It would bring a lot of players back to the game if there was some stability in their time invested to learn play styles.

Yea that’s 1 thing I REALLY hate about this game is I find a build I love then BAM a patch hits like a bomb and blows all my stuff to absolute pure uselessness then I gotta start over with a different build that I don’t like anywhere near as much as my previous 1 that has become useless. Why do they do that……

They hardly changed the meta in the latest patch. And a lot of classes still play ~ the same way they were played months ago.
Ele is still a healbot, thief is still a runner, necro is still a condinuke, revenant is still a hard to define damage dealing, bunkery, somewhat fast hybrid.
And those who are not playing the game on daily basis…I dont know if I would call that casual. A casual is someone who plays maybe an hour or two each day.
Everything less equals ‘not even trying’
Oh and the last thing needed is more ‘stability’ they already patch only once every season for that very reason. They dont want to ‘disturb’ us or ‘shake up the meta’ and as a result the game works the way it does.

That response is like a politician dodging answers by veering very far away from the problems that are obvious to everyone.

The OP is right actually. I’ve lost a lot of casual friends from GW2 “people I know in real life even” who don’t play often enough to be able to keep up with every single game changing patch that happens. They will sit down and learn a certain spec, which takes time for casual players. They may even grow to very much enjoy playing that spec. Then a couple months down the road, a patch hits and everything changes on them.

The only players in this community who really keep up competitively are the ones who play every day, who are investing the kind of time required to keep up and adapt immediately to every change that happens. It’s true, GW2 is not a game for casual players anymore.

Even in pve when a patch hits, if you don’t have the funds to revise your gear and get appropriate setups, you’re kitten out of luck. Casuals don’t tend to have 100s of gold laying around to revise their gear on demand like that.

Honestly arena-net needs to crunch out some time and find a good balance point to let the game settle on. It would bring a lot of players back to the game if there was some stability in their time invested to learn play styles.

Silverkey.2078:

The problem of courtyard was that once you lost a fight, often people would just respawn one by one and get slaughtered. Regroup is even more important than in conquest.

Maybe the mode should be like different rounds, where you don’t respawn once you are dead (so most likely you team has lot), but then you all respawn together on the next round.

For GvG, I would love it, but it feels like it would be impossible to find a game. It is just too many people. GvG could be better supported in sPvP but would really work best with premades only…

This point needs to be paid attention to.

Old Power Ranger gets smashed like a fly on a wall by every HoT spec. It simply doesn’t have enough sustain or disengage vs. the HoT specs.

If you go Core Ranger spec, try this:

• Skirmishing with quick draw/Nature/Wilderness with lore
• Rabid or Wanderer’s / Balthazar
• Shortbow / Sword & Torch – Geomancy/Smoldering both sides
• Troll Unguent/LR/Flame Trap/Quick Zephyr/Entangle
• Wolf/Drakehound for CCs

That’s about all you can work with on Core Ranger. Just raw explosive on point AoE DPS. Hope there is some tempest or guard on point to help heal/boon you up.

Maybe…

But this isn’t one case example, this has been happening to me frequently again lately. I’m in a match where I can kill 9/10 players I come across very easily and hold nodes even in 1v2s “sometimes win those 1v2s” but yet my team mates are getting crunched like ambient creatures on the other two nodes so quickly that there isn’t even time to rotate to assist those team fights before it gets neutralized or capped. The team mates are on a constant stagger to the point that the entire match is pretty much a 3v5 and I have no material to work with to actually hold nodes. When this type of situation happens, all you can do is fallback & peel away, get decaps/cap and defend in that 1v1 or 1v2 that you know you can win. Upon all of that, these are matches where I usually don’t even die once but get above double the score of the 2nd place scorer and sometimes my score is actually higher than the highest score on the enemy team. This is definitely indication that the 10,3,3,2,1 vs. 5,4,4,4,3 splits are happening again.

Hey, I’m not saying I’m anywhere near the MMR of pro players/teams but 4 years in at this point, I know I’m somewhere in the middle of intermediate to pro at the very least. I am also generally an advocate that “score doesn’t matter” but in the case of the posted image, when a single player’s score is just plain transcendent compared to all of the other team mates, something is wrong with that match making.

Proof that a player can carry a match like Atlas but still lose that match due to a bad team or bad match making for that matter, regardless of how good he is.

It does happen! In the past it has happened to some of us more often than others. This is evident from a thread that I wrote and followed very closely in the past, here -> https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/High-MMR-is-punished-for-solo-que/first Later my concerns were identified as an in-game bug, here -> https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Updates-to-Matchmaking/first#post5524291

In shorter words: “Consider MMR ideally being actual skill level”
With 10 being a high MMR and 1 being a low MMR, due to how three node conquest works, a red team with skewed MMRs of 10,3,3,2,1 has a low likelihood of beating an average MMR blue team of 5, 4, 4, 4, 3. The numeric of these MMR allocations look good and balanced on paper but they don’t work for conquest play. This is mainly because a single good player can only be on one node at a time. if his team mates are all low MMR players, they’ll just keep losing on the other two nodes vs. the average MMR players and ultimately lose the match, almost every time.

This is not meant to be a negative post but rather a post to review my original concerns and comments about higher MMRs being punished during solo ques and question if it is happening again. It is also important to point out this problem within the unranked algorithm before a new algorithm is decided for season 3 ranked. I would sincerely like to avoid these kind of matches during S3.

Check out the imaged posted
This was in unranked
I was the blue warrior and those are not treb spam points
~ ty much for reading

Arena-net cannot fix the human condition so stop asking for it.

While playing any game, where rewards are at stake along with pride, people get competitive. This includes but not only issues such as:

• People getting raged while losing.
• People targeting the rage towards a weak link in the team.
• People not wanting to play with weak links because they don’t want to lose.
• People walking away during an embarrassing landslide loss.
• People seeking stronger team mates so that they can collectively win more.
• People ultimately forming elitist attitudes with stiff expectations of their team mates, which to be completely honest does equate to more winning.

Hey, I’m not condoning bad sportsmanship but ask yourselves this: Were human reactions any different in grade school when you were losing a basketball game? Are they any different at your job when your work team is falling behind? Are they any different with the people you live with when things get out of order? Will you ever in the future visit or partake in a competitive scene where there isn’t at least one guy getting kittened off about losing?

The answer to all of the above is: No

You’re always going to have bads. You’re always always going to have elitists and you’re always going to have raging. No matter what game you play or where you go in life. Get used to it and stop expecting arena-net to miraculously cure the human condition through a perfect ranked pvp system in kittening Guild Wars 2 ^^

Target game issues that can actually be fixed!
~ Tyvm for reading, enjoy your day.

The hell are you talking about. This is the burstiest it’s been in a very long time.

too early for this

Exactly, Ron.

If they don’t have that pet DPS pressure, the high DPS assaulter can 100% rotate offensive cycle and any Druid dies quite quickly to that. Not enough players simply kill the pets first.

Of course I’m talking 1v1 side node style fights here, not 4v4s.

Also, mistsim:
The problem has largely always been the high DPS on the pets. Without that pet DPS, a mender’s/cleric Druid can’t do anything. It can’t even hold side nodes because it won’t have enough offensive pressure to keep things like Revenants or Berserkers off of them.

mistsim.2748:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Pet deals damage. Use DPS to kill pet. Game over for Druid.

this is terrible advice.

druids get owned by CC and condi pressure. spam immobs, spam condis, daze, stun, etc. druids are much worse off in the current condi meta than they were in the power meta.

No it’s not. This is coming from a Druid main and Ranger main for 4 year now.

If you are currently a running a heavy DPS spec, you target the pets. If the Druid wants to keep the pet alive, it has to burn it’s heals on the pet “pet’s don’t dodge roll”. It’s easy to slam a pet in about 4 seconds with some of these new DPS specs. Then the Druid seriously cannot do anything but bail. It forces them to burn cele force/heals on the pet and make themselves susceptible to burst or just let the pets die and then they have no DPS.

It’s win/win for the high DPS assaulter.

Pet deals damage. Use DPS to kill pet. Game over for Druid.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

• Get rid of hotjoin servers – Let custom arenas handle that job.
• Leave unranked the way it is – This is an important game mode.
• Change ranked so that it always displays a leaderboard status where division tags represent actual top 1000 placement. Division tag goes up when you rise in MMR/leaderboard status and it goes down when you lower in MMR/leaderboard status. 1000 – 750 could be amber, 750 – 500 could be emerald, 500 – 250 could be sapphire, 250 – 150 could be ruby, 150 – 50 could be diamond and 50 – 0 could be legendary. This is very easily done.
• Ranked MMR never gets reset. We need consistent match making.
• When a season begins and ends, it is all about guild team leagues and ESL qualifiers, no more and no less. Seasons should be designed and catered entirely towards encouraging team play and given incentives to play as such.
• Change the reward system to accommodate this.

Ranked is great if you hover with a true performance team all of the same skill level, who grow at the same pace or if you are able to play only with others of your actual skill level.

Ranked is a problem if you have many friends/guild mates who are of mixed skill levels. During S2, no one wanted to play with each other. It was advantageous for high MMRs to avoid low MMRs and vice versa, for the sake of positive match making results and pip gains. This was detrimental to the community player base.

Unranked has been great again so far since S2 ended:

• Everyone is playing together again. Mixed MMRs can group together.
• People are playing more frequently, Players are coming back to the pvp scene.
• Players don’t judge each other “so much” in unranked.
• Everything is more viable in unranked. = having fun playing different builds
• Que times are much lower in unranked with population combined.

During ranked seasons we have an effect going on where competitive players stay and less competitive players go away to find something else to do because the avid player base that keeps the casuals interested in pvp, doesn’t have a single encouraging reason to even communicate with less competitive players during ranked seasons, let alone form a team with them. This effect is purely negative on spvp guilds.

I love ranked seasons but I also love unranked down time so that I can actually play, teach and have fun with friends & guild members who would never otherwise be able to compete in a premade legend division team.

I think that two months of season vs. a month or two of unranked is a perfect mix. It gives guild leaders & team leaders, time to organize and teach before the next season. This time is important for those who work with more casuals & intermediates.

Ah… so to narrow down what I’m saying:

• Ranked needs to be situated so that mixed MMR teams have some incentive to play together again.
• Unranked is fine as it is and is a crucial community glue that not enough players recognize.

Stop asking for things to be removed and start asking for things to be balanced.

How about this:

• Cleansing Ire works even if F1 doesn’t hit.

Bam fixed

It’s the same old issues with condi builds being able to be bunkier than power builds and somehow still deal more damage than power builds. Not to mention it’s far easier to stack condis than it is to land an effective physical attack string.

There in is the imbalance.

OP actually has a good point.

A-Net should read this.

I started S2 a couple weeks late. When I did start, I was busy with work and could only play 3-4 games a night. There was also a point mid-season where I just didn’t log in for a couple weeks due to being too tired. During the last four days of S2, I decided to try and grind legend right fast due to some well deserved time off. I had already reached t2 diamond at this point with about 100 matches played. During these four days, I was running probably 15-20 matches a night. On the final day I had reached diamond t7, just two more games to hit legend when the server stopped S2. Was pretty disappointed actually but w/e.

Point being:
I was able to do that with a total of about 200 games played this season, mixed solo and duo ques, mostly solo. Most people I talked with had said they grinded hard for 300-400 matches or more to achieve legendary. Others had horrors stories of 500+ games to do it and some others still, were able to do it in 100-150 matches. The people I had spoken with who did it quickly, were all people began play on day one, didn’t take breaks and were able to benefit riding their actual MMR wave up and out of ruby/early diamond quickly and of course people with structured teams. Those who started late or weren’t able to play often, were the ones who got stuck in the “MMR hell” for obvious reasons concerning how division being a part of match making worked during S2 “keeping good players who can only run 3-4 matches a night, in bad places”.

Things I heard that truly disturbed me about S2 match making:

• Players confirming to me that their main account struggled greatly to achieve legend but on an alt account, were able to do it in less than half the time.
• Players that I know for a fact are strong at conquest, struggled 400+ matches to achieve legend, when players that I know for a fact are weak in conquest, somehow rode win streaks to legend in less than half the time.
• Players telling me they have a 50/50 win/lose and progressed to legend fairly easily due to lose 3 then win 3 = get ahead 2 pips but other players telling me they have a 50/50 win/lose but have been stuck in the same spot for weeks because they lose 1, win 1, lose 1, win 1, so on and so forth.

Three things are certain:

• Legendary title is only 50% about skill. The other 50% is about having time on your hands to grind for it. An extremely good player may capitalize on high levels of skill to carry teams and do it more quickly than other players but bad players can still invest shameful amounts of time in place of their skill to lose 3 then win 3 their way to legendary.
• Pip grinding for division tags is a poor method to display actual player skill.
• Division tags need to be representing actual MMR, not pip progression.

Moa just needs timer from 10s down to 8s.
Would also be nice if you could jump in Moa form.