Guild Wars 2

Okay, scratch that idea… I have played, just for comparison, the normal 4/4/0/0/6 shatter and I suddenly felt dimensions stronger. The celestrial defender may be a nice idea… but compared to a the normal shatter it is actually quite weak. I don’t think I’ll follow down the celestial path further…

I was running this build this evening again. Yes, all the nubs die quickly to it, no argument there. I had problems (besides being ganged by 3 or 4 players) actually only against Hambow warriors, who I barely tickled. Your arguments are true, on paper at least, but it seems to work at least in hotjoin. I wanted a SoloQ today, but after waiting for 10 mins I decided to let it go for the evening.

I think the build has potential. I will keep refining it, especially after my experience in soloQ.

And I was dueling a friend of mine, playing an S/D Thief. He knows what he is doing and out of 4 duels, I won 3 of them. When I manage to soloq and refine the build, I will load up a video to let u guys see that it works. I didn’t believe it could work in the beginning either (originally I wanted to create a confusion build, but I sidetracked a bit ) but it seems to actually work pretty well so far. The build has quite the uncommon dynamics and I might consider getting rid of Staff completely.

@Cynz.9437:
The thing is, that if the thief is intelligent, he can bypass via consume plasma any ability of me to push him out of SR. Of course he could dodge in the right moment, or position himself clever, but that would require actual skill. Consume plasma offers very strong boons already and if used correctly even bypasses lockdown mesmer builds, who are quite vulnerable to good thieves already.

But why is it that you assume I am losing against thieves. Because I suggested a change to a skill? A perceived imbalance doesn’t always have to coincide with losing because of this issue. I know I won’t find much positive response in this, because I had suggested that since the beginning and the reaction from thieves was always the same.

The skill simply doesn’t make sense and your rethorics don’t change that. You can disagree with me, but don’t try to insult me, it’s beneath both of us.

It did actually quite well against engineers of any kind. Also turret engineers. Using the block skills on cool down along with frequent shatters is very effective.

I didn’t have yet the chance to fight bunker guardians with this build. The usual DPS meditation guardians can be defeated easily, when done right. But one can also mess up rotations and get annihilated. This build depends on proper timings.

I have been running this build for a while now, mainly in hotjoin. It still needs further testing and adapting, but so far it is really much fun. So here it is:

Celestrial Defender

How does it work?
This build basically punishes the opponent for her actions. With celestrial amulet and proper rotation with scepter and shatters you can repeatedly stack confusion on your foe and in the same time get retaliation on you. Both do a decent amount of damage next to the phantasm damage and other conditions like torment, bleeding and poison. With 2 blocks, one every 8 the other every 12 seconds, this build offers defense and offense all the same.

Stats
I originally went for rampager amulet. But I had better results with celestrial. It spreads the stats more out offering more defensive capabilities while only losing a small portion of offensive abilities. The power is quite low, but it is enough to get even some initial damage in diamond skin elementalists so the conditions can start their work even on them. Travaler runes fit in this celestrial mentality quite well with additional boon and condition duration and, of course, has the precious speed boost.

Important Abilities and Traits
Illusionary Ripostate and Illusionary Counter are one of the main damage sources. The block together with Retaliatory Shield will grant Retaliation. A typical rotation will summon the iSowrdsman followed by the two blocks along with the summoning of 2 clones. All 3 can be shattered with Cry of Frustration. If pulled off successfully the target has eaten some direct damage and is stacked with torment, confusion, some bleed stacks and the Celestrial Defender will enjoy the retaliation buff. All in all it forces the foe to over think her approach.

Staff on the other hand offers a good sustained damage and is especially effective against targets, who see through the mechanisms of the Celestrial Defender. Chaos Storm grants a chance for Aegis and therefor another potential Retaliation. All in all Retaliation uptime is very high on this build. Then switching back to Scepter/Sword in the right moment will potentially avoid the next burst rotation and punish the attacker for the attempt.

The build has but not much burst abilities. So a fight, mostly depending on the foe’s behavior, might take some time. But if executed right the damage will find its target sooner or later.

Advantages of the Celestrial Defender

• high sustain physical and condition damage
• defense is offense
• can hold on point even without stealthing
• can punish the attacker strongly for her actions
• becomes stronger in more chaotic fights

Disadvantages of the Celestrial Defender

• weak against boon rip/corrupt/steal
• weak against condition transfer
• almost no hard crowd control
• almost no burst capability

What do you guys think of this build and do you have suggestions for improvement?

The new GM trait making burns deal 33% more damage is still nice and gives a nice dmg boost to guardian power builds.

BTW, via blast finishing spectral wall Necromancer even has access to one confusion [sarcasm]Game breaking I say [/sarcasm]

The only thing that throws me off is that other professions have sometimes easier/better access to confusion than the mesmer herself. For example traiting all traits for confusion through glamor (sometimes even with internal cool down) with 33% confusion duration buff needs 10 trait points, only that you can apply 2 stacks of confusion with glamor skill (which have a long cooldown anyway. kitten useless traits, no idea what their point is: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQBT0q2S1YsmIoGCq/2dLJFA

Cynz.9437:

Are people seriously asking for consume plasma nerf? /facepalm

You can facepalm as often as you want, but yes, that is what I was suggesting since release. It is not a game breaking skill, however, it gives the thieve an advantage that is neither in line with other steal items, doesn’t fit in the mesmer characteristics, from which the item “originates” nor is it fair in a straight up fight. Why does the thief need stability next to all the other boons from consume plasma when fighting a mesmer?

I always chose toughness over vitality. Conditions can become a problem though. And a little added vitality won’t help you that much either imho. The thing why I chose toughness is simple. When you get caught by surprise, you can survive even a backstab. On my WvW roaming mesmer I have 2.2k toughness. That is enough for me. I usually spec 2 in Inspiration for menders purity and often take one additional condition cleanse, either null field or the condi cleanse mantra. This way you get anyway some vitality, but you lose further offensive potential. My WvW shatter is 2/4/0/2/6. It lets me fight condition classes quite well, however, I have to suck it up if my target is overloaded with boons…

I was one day running the usual 4/4/0/0/6 shatter build and actually fought some condi builds. But on this day I was on top of my game and managed to outplay them easily and spike them down before they got me with enough conditions loaded. But that happened only once. Usually with such a setup, if you’re roaming alone, you will get destroyed by conditions with this setup… that is at least my experience.

I don’t see SR to be any issue. I run in PvP usually a zerker or rampager amulet and either phantasms or shatter (or an experimental hybrid of shatter/phantasm). Either way, all specs are fairly glassy. In WvW I also run a glassy build with 2.2k armor.

If I fail to push or pull the thief out of SR it would be the worst idea to just randomly dodge or use any other skill (unless you have the ultimate insight in your foe’s psyche). I move randomly around, mostly stand even in the SR area and attack with sword #1. It makes it very hard to land a good backstab on me for the thief, he might even get damaged by my attacks. After he hit me, then I may use some of my cool downs to avoid further damage and it proves often sufficient enough.

I stopped reading after the half of the first page… so depressing people. I main a Mesmer. I have tried every other profession in the game and usually play WvW roaming, a little zerging and defending towers (AC everywhere, that’s where I feel home ). I play often PvP hotjoin and do some SoloQ. And occasionally, when I wish to use a new build in WvW that needs new armor, I run some dungeons.

Over all I have to say, that other professions, mainly Ele, War, Guard and Necro outperform the mesmer in many of those areas. However, those feel after a while just boring to me and I return to my little Si Lly Asura Mesmer. Mesmer needs buffs, no question about it. But the uniqueness of the profession and its style makes me come back every time. And even after months of not playing mesmer, I always feel back at home. Because even half asleep I can perform with mesmer better than with all the other professions on my best day

NinjaEd.3946:

Find me a video of the best of the best Mesmer and thief going toe to toe, I’d be willing to bet there is a mix of win and loses from both.

And if that’s the case, the balance is fine.

PopeUrban.2578:

Turamarth.3248:

PopeUrban.2578:

Unless I’ve missed something, my thief only has access to stability from daggerstorm or from taking the new assassin’s equilibrium trait. I’d like to know how I can get more stability without investing a GM trait in to it, what’s the deal?

Since he was talking about steal I assumed he meant Consume Plasma the item you steal from mesmers which grant you all boons.

Yeah, I thought about that and I guess you replied as i was editing

Plasma is pretty fly, I’ll admit that, and it is a thing that is specific to fighting mesmers.

Yes, I wasn’t very clear about that, but I was talking about the stability you get from Consume Plasma. I find it okay, that thieves get a lot of boons, but as this random factor is something inherent in the Mesmer design, I would find it more “appropriate”, if it would grant – let’s say – 5 boons only, but chosen randomly. That would more represent a stolen mesmer like attribute, than in it’s current form. But I guess that won’t change, since I argued this case shortly after release already and the response was mostly negative.

@OP:
I personally have not many issues fighting thieves in WvW or sPvP (neither on shatter, condition nor phantasm builds).

The only thing that throws me always off is the Stability they get from steal. That has nothing to do with the mesmer profession, because we have barely access to stability. We have some, but it is clearly not a typical boon for mesmers.

And mesmers can create clones without this trait very well. However, with this trait “cloning” becomes way more effective. Making it so easy to access would totally break the game. No need to trait in Dueling any more for power specs. This are 4 trait points you could spend elsewhere and you could combine Phantasm or Lock down specs with Shatter specs, leaving the mesmer with virtually no weaknesses any more but maintaining full damage output.

Hey my fellow PvPers,

I came to play more PvP the last few weeks and I started liking it. There are certain issues, that are really annoying to me, like hotjoin system and no unranked balanced PvP. However, this is not what I want to talk about. My hopes are that ANet is designing new maps atm. And what I wanted to ask from the PvP community, with arguably more PvP experience than a low rank 30 newb, what kind of features should a new map have in your opinion?

I get that Skyhammer is generally hated. Although a few, like myself, still like the map. So an abundant amount of fall damage kill situations should be avoided according to the majority of players. Also, personally, I would like cap points bigger, so that AoE can’t cover the whole cap point. I was also thinking of a two teams PvP map similarly designed to a WvW borderland, but only smaller, with maybe up to 10 players on each side and enough objectives to make splitting up a viable strategy in such a map.

Writing in this thread I ask you to refrain from calling out on certain existing maps too much, so to avoid merging it just with a “Skyhammer is kitten” thread by a moderator

I am looking forward to your suggestions.

your examples are a bit weak imo. The steal you describe is already heavily traited, the thief has to give up other stuff in order to achieve that. Berserker’s stance only occupies a utility slot and can be traited for longer duration with an adept trait.

Corrupt boon is strong, no question there, but the conditions, you get, can be cleansed. Only the boon rip can not be countered directly. So 50% of the skill still counterable, or with a lucky dodge (happens more often than you would think) all of it. Same as lightning flash + X, depending on the X. If it’s Churning Earth for example, what I have seen some day in the past very often, then it is easily avoidable. Berserker’s stance is but available with the hit of a button. Just like that. And no one can do anything about it.

So all in all your examples are not the same as insta immunity against all conditions for 8-10 seconds.

It is no question that warriors outperform other professions in many aspects and that there are builds available to warriors, that achieve a all around very good defense against everything while still being able to hit hard. I wouldn’t necessarily call it overpowered, because they still can be outperformed even on those builds, but it is definitely an uphill battle for the other profession in most cases.

What the OP was getting at is, how do we deal with this situation. Do we nerf the warrior profession or do we buff the others. Seeing the problems of several other professions it sounds very reasonable to me, that it might be better to buff the other professions to be on equal par with the warrior.

For me personally in WvW and PvP I build my builds with non warrior professions solely to be able to defeat a good warrior. Because in my perception a build, that can do this, will perform well…

Curunen.8729:

Jeknar.6184:

I think you wrote the title wrong mate… The title should be “Increasing Condi Duration needs a cap”

This.

LOL, this is equally biased as the OP’s view point.

It was kitten hard work. I needed a break after the fight, because my hands started hurting from all the button smashing^^ (I believe we fought over 5 minutes) And I was able – and a bit proud of my self – to avoid almost all the hammer bursts. He even tried to bull charge me from almost 1,000 range. That was a big fail of his^^

But even when he locked me down once or twice, his damage was kinda weak still. I in the end, because of a bad dodge, I suicides myself down a cliff^^

Well you have to differentiate: WvW mass fights (5+ players on either side) and small scale fights (4 or less on either side). In mass fights conditions are a joke and of almost no effect. You might still be able to use some CC conditions for 1 (or if you are insanely lucky 2) seconds. Other than that conditions deal next to no damage in those fights. In small scale fights it is a different story, where conditions can be very effective, especially when you hit the unsuspecting foe (hehe, see what I did there?).

All in all conditions are okayish in small scale fights, but need a rework, if they will ever be effective in mass fights. I mean the only reason to run conditions there is to tick some targets for the loot (I know some Mesmers who do that with glamor and confusion)…

This idea is not mine but rather a combination of suggestions I have read across the forum the last few days. I wanted a thread dedicated to the topic and this particular rework. If certain rune sets have to be changed then, is second to the discussion imho. First we should make confusion be able to what it should.

How confusion works now:

• deals X amount of damage on skill use by foe per stack
• stacks in intensity
• damage PvE (lvl 80): 130 + (0.15 * Condition Damage) per stack
• damage PvP/WvW (lvl 80): 65 + (0.075 * Condition Damage) per stack

What has been suggested:

• deals X amount of damage on skill use by foe
• does not trigger on weapon skill #1
• stacks in duration
• damage (lvl 80): (0.25 * Condition Damage) + 328 damage (same as burning damage)
• can not be cleansed or modified in duration by usual condition duration modifiers, unless that modifier is specific to confusion (I do not personally agree with this suggestion)

With this changes, you could make Confusion more effective in shutting down a target, but not let it completely kill itself just by auto attacks. Confusion shouldn’t be your main damage source, but it should be able to force the target to a decision. Either ignore confusion and eat the damage or draw back from the fight for a while. It would work like GW1 Backfire (please note that GW1 backfire had way way higher damage, making it possible to kill yourself within a few casts already).

What I also would like to see is making confusion a bit more effective for Mesmers, for I still feel that they should, because of their unique role like in GW1, have the best abilities to utilize this condition. Maybe a Grandmaster Trait in Chaos making the condition better (how, is up to discussion) and you can’t use PU at the same time.

Of course you cannot avoid all conditions. Any ones suggesting that should think about the meaning of that suggestion.

Also the claim that warriors, arguably with one of the best condition removals on a very short cool down, need to run condition reduction food appears rather funny to me. What some people want is immunity to conditions, but that ain’t balancing. As warriors are used to – on common roaming setups – being rather physical damage resistant, they want the same for conditions and don’t want to sacrifice on their offensive capabilities. But you can’t have everything.

@topic:
Condition duration modification (bonus and malus) is capped at 100% of base duration. There are some traits that are an exception, but for the majority it is true. So topic resolved?

Thanks for the help deciphering that build. It’s possible he used intelligence sigils. Also, if he used the unsuspecting foe trait, he would have at least 50% crit chance, once he stunned me or my clones (but he rarely could stun me… I mean that hammer burst is ultra obvious^^).

I think I’ve got a couple ideas now, how to deal with that guy, once I meet him again. Thx again and peace out

Uh, intelligence sigils could be a good explanation, did not think of that. But I didn’t see any boon from the sigil (does intelligence sigil boon have an icon I could have seen?).

I too think he must have run smth with healing power. Most warriors I encounter have a good tankieness, but never have I seen them heal so quickly. His damage was really only a problem over time, so maybe he really didn’t have any precision. A very interesting constructed build indeed.

I fought him later on my guardian with a fairly tanky mediation build. The fight took ages (sadly I lost, but only because I wanted to defeat him. Could have easily disengaged the fight^^). Interesting was, that he actually used the active effect of the healing signet quite often and healed a significant amount of HP. I got him once or twice around 33% HP, but then I needed to heal myself or get some distance, because I was dying and this was the time, where he could heal up.

I might consider running sigil of doom to ruin some warrior’s day^^

Okay, scratch that, I ran into that dude again and he used the active heal from healing signet… very very tanky though this build… couldn’t break it even with my guardian.

I just encountered a Hammer/GS Warrior, while I was roaming on my Mesmer. He was fairly tanky and of course, any time his life got to around 50% (took ages to get there) he ran away and waited until he healed up. So normal stuff there. However, this one warrior was very interesting, because I had a feeling that his healing signet healed insanely. For instance I was dealing a hit with my Dualist for 1.6k damage and I had the feeling that one second later his health bar had healed that dmg away. No idea if that’s possible in a healing tanky build. His damage was not that high (taking into account that I was almost full glass), so he might have been running a very defensive build.

However, two things surprised me:

• he one shot my phantasm, although he didn’t do that much damage to me
• he had an instant heal for maybe 1/3rd of his health bar (might be lower, was hard to tell) and it was not his healing signet, because it stayed there. Using the heal the character raised his right hand with his weapon and it took maybe 1 second to cast. EDIT: I fought him again, and I was mistaken I think. He actually uses quite often the active heal of healing signet with a significant healing effect.

So my question is, has any1 else encountered smth like that and, especially addressing the warriors here in the forum, do you know of a build that could achieve this.

The signets he used were Healing Signet and the Elite signet. And he had bull’s charge. He used condi reduction food and sharpening stones and was a charr…

The first 2 merges alone would be an insane buff to the mesmer. Meaning: I like it

Well I remember Mesmer being not that wanted for high level PvE content in GW1 either. Because all the energy drain abilities had next to no effect on the super mobs, who had a huge energy pool to use their skills from or just used skills on cool down, because they were cheap or energy free.

Similar issues are here in GW2. Mesmers were an insanely strong PvP class in GW1, but not that much of use in PvE content. (except for fast cast mesmers with Ele as 2nd profession and Signet of Illusion as main skill to use everything with max stat^^).

But I also miss the lock down function of mesmers from GW1 in GW2 in PvP content. In GW1 you could constantly interrupt, or hex with Backfire or simply use Blackout and block enemy skills. I would love to see Mesmer functionalities like that in GW2. And then it would be okay for me, if my Mesmer isn’t that useful in dungeons, but it could fill a unique role in PvP content and, as in GW1, not necessarily defeat but prevent a foe from doing anything at all.

I agree with the mesmer glamor build nerf. It all comes down to confusion nerf. If you’d bring such a build today (with the runes used back then), it would still be weaker than a common perplexity rune build we see these days. No idea if perpelxity runes could make a glamor confusion build work again.

But I loved the idea of glamor/chaos fields along with blinds triggering confusion and summoning the duelist stacking some more confusions. Although it was one of the most obvious “tricks”, people were inexperienced and fell for it. So it was nerfed into oblivion and beyond. But I would love to see such builds being viable again…

NeXeD.3042:

I get that mesmers aren’t just summoning pets all the time and I understand your an experienced pvp mesmer but it’s difficult to argue a mesmer doesn’t use ai. You have actives you use in conjunction with the ai but it’s not like you aim the illusions and phantasm yourself.

Well, there is the difference between a good and a bad shatter mesmer. A good shatter mesmer actually kinda “aims” her illusions by summoning them in the right spot and shattering when the foe is partly or completely surrounded by them. And this maneuver requires very precise movements/summons/dodges as well as a very good awareness of your surrounding, enemy movement anticipation and understanding of the terrain (because of numerous bugs regarding illusion pathfinding).

Stooperdale.3560:

A lot of players would be severely hacked off after ‘finishing’ her personally as part of the game mechanics.

I have been finished off sooooooooooooo many times, but I always came back

I did some calculating, which I posted some weeks ago in the WvW forum. The effect of bleeds from crits (trait only) was like a 5% damage increase compared to dire gear. Rabid is way more important for Engineers, whose crits can add burning. But for necromancer it is negligible. I am considering atm to change to carion gear too.

Well, I think there is a cap. You can only decrease it by max 100%, if I am not mistaken. And, to prevent confusion, all modifiers for condition duration are calculated of the base duration. So if someone has 100% condition duration bonus and hits a target with decreased condition duration by 100%, it equals each other out and the condition will last their base duration.

Also attacking a camp with a high dps build can be an advantage, because you can rally off of the guards. I have done that often with my mesmer, however the camp wasn’t defended then by 10 players^^

Okay, first I think there are other issues Anet should focus on in GW2. However, for the sake of argument I still would like to discuss it.

Most skill that cause burning (in the form of a condition) are magical skills. If the fire would then burn “hot” enough that it would break water into oxygen and hydrogen (assuming that water in Tyria consists of those components), then it could burn on under water. And assuming the fire is magical, it might just do that. Now the non magical skills could use an additional “trick”, to achieve the power of magical fire. They probably add to their projectiles, who cause the burning, an additional element that works as a supplier for oxygen or they combine them with substances who work similarly to magnesium. If that is so, and the projectiles would cover their target also with this material (best it would also stick to the target^^), then it could create a fire hot enough to also break down water, thus, supplying the oxygen. Or the material itself provides the oxygen under water. In both cases the fire could for some seconds burn on even there.

It can now easily be explained, why simple water buckets can extinguish fire (in buidlings for example). If you set smth on fire, either magically or conventionally, the magic/ burning component will quickly “run out”. That is when usually the fire condition would stop, but in some scenarios, where wood catches on fire, it keeps burning. The wood would supply enough fuel (along with the oxygen in the air) after the magic/ burning component is gone. But having no magic/ burning component any more means the fire can now be extinguished with simple water.

I have yet not come up with an idea, why clothes don’t catch on fire… but well, that requires additional research^^ A quick idea would be that clothes are in general fire resiliently produced…

@Kalavier.1097:
Are there more options then either explain or not explain?

@Eggman.1405:
As Dustfinger.9510 said, you pointed this one criteria out. So of course people will argue about it, if they disagree. If it’s only your opinion as in “I don’t like’em” you wanted to share, than there is really nothing to discuss. If you were complaining about a bad implementation of the Kodans in GW2 than your points do indeed represent arguments that could/should be discussed.

However, all in all your opinion/argument seems inconsistent. You didn’t complain that Kodans and polar bears looked alike. Your point was that it would be silly to have a polar bear race in a game with polar bears. Looking at other mmos and the rest of GW2 races I find it a very consistent concept as illustrated by others before.

It all comes down to the physical similar appearance. You refuse to call it that, but that’s what it is. You don’t like them to look so much alike. But hey, that is a different point, isn’kitten

JusticarArkiel.1564:

TyPin.9860:

JusticarArkiel.1564:

kinda like the flame legion not being immune to burning, or sons of svanir and icebrood not being immune to chill. or even the shades/ghosts that can bleed, don’t tell me magic explains all this

Magic explains all this

knew i shouldn’t have handed a straight line like that to somebody XD

xD

flow.6043:

TyPin.9860:

Because it still could be caused in your own ultimate skill level. Meaning your skills are overpowered but not the necromancer profession

Then again, the strength of a class isn’t measured by how well a mediocre player can do with it. If someone can be overpowered then his build is strong regardless of whether the player or the build is that good.

Strong and overpowered are different issues.

flow.6043:

TyPin.9860:

…if we give any player, no matter how experienced, this build and they would significantly increase their win lose rate or even simply dominate the arenas over other professions.

For all we know there might be a build like this, but it’s impossible to pull off because you’d need 4 arms on two keyboards.
However, if someone could actually play that build to its full potential then this person would set the new benchmark for the strength of the class, and for anyone else it would then be an l2p-issue rather than “the class is weak..”.

I am not talking about hypothetical scenarios but what can actually be measured. If a theoretically overpowered build is impossible to perform accordingly in practice, then it simply isn’t overpowered…

JusticarArkiel.1564:

kinda like the flame legion not being immune to burning, or sons of svanir and icebrood not being immune to chill. or even the shades/ghosts that can bleed, don’t tell me magic explains all this

Magic explains all this

Yasha.5963:

TyPin.9860:

You completely misunderstand my point. I have said specifically that, if people like hotjoin, leave it (although I think it is a stupid system). All I wish is to have a balanced PvP mode for casuals. And a ranking system is already throwing a portion of the casuals off, who would prefer to not being ranked but still would like a balanced PvP mode. It is beyond me that such an option is denied in GW2.

And this is why I called for smth. like GW1 random arenas (what would be essentially a solo queue without ranking, I agree to that), who had no ranking system when I played it (I was for 2 years a PvE pug in GW1^^).

Side Note: Insulting a straw man of ignorance is a pretty poor move my friend.

Solo join tourney is balanced pvp mode for casuals.

Hotjoin is balanced pvp mode for super casuals- the things you want to change in hotjoin would make it terrible.

Either you are deliberately arguing a straw man argument or you are not paying attention. Where did I even suggest any change to hotjoin. I think it’s stupid and has no point what so ever, but I never suggested any changes to it, as far as I can remember.

And you also don’t seem to understand that SoloQ is working against a bunch of cashuals, who dislike to be rated in their fights.

Again, I ask why a balanced and unranked PvP mode for casuals should be denied in GW2?

EDIT: And hotjoin is terrible atm already…

@Lutete.5379:
It has nothing to do with an unsatisfiable community. And if you didn’t point at your science degree, I wouldn’t really care. But your claims of a science degree and necromancer overpoweredness are just not consistent. All data you can provide from your own play experience, no matter if the basic experiment design is appropriate to test the claim, are not enough. Because it still could be caused in your own ultimate skill level. Meaning your skills are overpowered but not the necromancer profession

You would have to gather sufficient statistical data. If necromancers would dominate the arenas and owning people left and right, then we would be closer to a proper hypothesis testing. Further proof could generated, if we give any player, no matter how experienced, this build and they would significantly increase their win lose rate or even simply dominate the arenas over other professions. There several experimental, semi experimental or simply statistical or semi statistical (like analysing the meta game play) scenarios, that could back up your claims. But what you are doing right now does help only for your personal experience, but nothing more.

Lutete.5379:

The tests were making it high on the leaderboards for solo arena, team arena, and WvW. Did you even bother reading the posts? Why are people still posting on here? I honestly thought GoogleBrandon’s rant was going to be the final post, so I didn’t give him a reply. To anyone who is looking at this topic: Please read all the posts before posting a reply. Yesterday, I already decided that the only way to convince people was to show them by rising up the ladder. This topic should have died once that was stated.

I was reading your posts very carefully. I didn’t care much about them, but the moment you claimed to have a B.S. in natural sciences, then it caught my attention. You claim your necromancer build is OP and even called for a nerf, while your tests are ill designed to test if your build really is OP. You made completely unjustified claims, but say you can only be convinced by facts or your own experiments.

You have not even presented data (even on an argumentative level) to suggest your build might be overpowered. And this is what sets me off. Rising in the ladder has nothing to do with a build being overpowered. If it has, you either have to explain that connection or present data that suggest some kind of correlation between the 2 issues.

You completely misunderstand my point. I have said specifically that, if people like hotjoin, leave it (although I think it is a stupid system). All I wish is to have a balanced PvP mode for casuals. And a ranking system is already throwing a portion of the casuals off, who would prefer to not being ranked but still would like a balanced PvP mode. It is beyond me that such an option is denied in GW2.

And this is why I called for smth. like GW1 random arenas (what would be essentially a solo queue without ranking, I agree to that), who had no ranking system when I played it (I was for 2 years a PvE pug in GW1^^).

Side Note: Insulting a straw man of ignorance is a pretty poor move my friend.

Lutete.5379:

Currently raised my solo arena ranking to the 89th percentile, starting from 84th percentile when I created this topic. Win rate is now 50.78%, and the increases have been from playing necromancer. Sorry GoogleBrandon, but I’m not going back on my word. A little background info on me is that I got my B.S. in the natural sciences, so I am not going to back down on my idea until I am shown otherwise; furthermore, just because there are necromancers with more “experience” means nothing to me. So far, playing this necromancer build is causing me to rise up the rankings, so I will stick with my assumption that necromancers are op.

You should give your B.S. back. Your claims are non scientific for your experiment doesn’t offer data to support or disprove your claim. What you have done is throwing out a theory without proper theoretical and experimental background. Atm. you are not even testing a proper hypothesis.

shadowraiden.8394:

you do realise Solo Queue is essentially random arena as GW1 Random arena had a ranking system just like solo queue’s in gw2.

solo queue is there for when people want random players in a 5v5 game, rank wise it means nothing really as 10 wins and your top all of a sudden.
team queue is for those who have a team of 2+ players looking for more organised fights.

hotjoin is for those messing around with builds or dont have the time to play a full solo queue or team queue, so it will never be balanced as its no Anet who control hotjoin servers as their the ones you get when you use server tickets.

Solo Queue has similarities with random arena from GW1, agreed. But I am interested in the ranking system of the random arena of GW1. Because as far as I remember it, it didn’t have any.

Solo Queue having ranks is already problematic for casual players. So I still don’t see the point of denying a balanced PvP mode for casual players.

The hotjoin system is something that is beyond stupid. How can you test your build, when you are suddenly outnumbered or outnumber the opposing team by 5 to 3 (How can this even happen, that regularly there is a 2 player difference in hot join matches, often at the beginning already?). A game mode for testing builds sounds good, however hotjoin does not offer this to players. Hotjoin is the game mode for opportunists, who farm PvP points to progress on their reward tracks.

@Yasha.5963:
I can’t tell if you’re trolling or not. On the small chance your post is serious I can only say that you describe probably the ideal idea behind hotjoin, but in reality the system doesn’t work at all and it ends in 90% of the cases in blow out matches, where you are outnumbered insanely and any supposed build or skill testing is close to impossible any more.

Comparing Warrior and Guardian is actually an interesting topic. I personally feel Guardian play more rewarding. Warrior is very straight forward. I think I read it in another thread, that the difference from bad to good warriors is minimal. I kinda agree with that. Low cool downs, easy to manage adrenaline system and only build reliant trade offs make warrior all around easier to play, while it is harder to master the guardian imho.

That said, I think that a well played Guardian is stronger and can offer more to a team than a well played Warrior. But that might only be my personal perception.

Lol, you are cherry picking aspects to support your argument here. Skritt for instance are essentially large rats and you don’t complain there. You just don’t like that polar bears and the Kodan look much alike. But that is not a real argument against how the Kodan race is implemented in GW2.

Well, personally I think it should be part of GW2 PvP. If it was, the balance of the game should be adapted for equal access to displacing CC such as knock backs or fear for each profession.

I still like the map. Some weeks or months ago people have predicted I would come to hate the map too, but I didn’t. Almost all the time I fell, it was my own mistake and could have been avoided.

The hot join system is an embarrassment. It is offered by the game and the auto balance feature clearly shows, that it is supposed to be at least a bit balanced. The thing is other than hot join there is no PvP game mode for casuals. When you’re a casual, you don’t want a ranked PvP system, because that is what casual means: You’re there for some fun fights but you don’t want to compete seriously.

GW1 random arena was fun – to me at least – and was way way way more balanced than hot join in GW2. Almost all games started with equal amount of players and when you left the game you were punished and couldn’t join another game for a while. For all who didn’t play GW1: Random arena was a PvP arena where you could join games individually. You would then go in a queue until the match with all 8 player – 4 on each side – would be ready to start. I never waited more than a minute or so.

If people like hot join, then leave it, but please offer a PvP game mode that fits the casual players, who represent still the majority of the player base I would guess.