daredevil class mechanic is = 1 energy sigil proc to really put it into perspective. and as for our grand master traits warrior gets the damage one on a minor trait.
This right here. It’s crazy how our new specialization that is supposed to be equally as cool and innovative as the others is exactly what you mentioned above. So run with energy sigil on a warrior and you are already better than a DD.
This made me curious. Does the sigil give 50% endurance? or does it give a flat amount? In other words, as a DD, do you get 1.5 extra dodges or just 1?
Right now, a lot of thieves are looking at other elite’s and saying: MAN! This looks so GOOD and creative! …. I might have to reroll mains… Where as other classes are excited for their elite specialization. I have seen a few, very very few comments about ‘hope’ that the dare devil might be what they want, but out side of that I don’t see any one excited about rerolling thief for HOT.
This is where I’m at. Though to be fair, I have 7/8 lvl 80s. And if you look at my stats, my spvp main is my mesmer, my pve main is my ranger (recently), and my wvw main used to be my guardian (not really doing wvw atm)…
But I got pretty excited to play my thief again after the DD reveal. Now seeing all of the others, including the Rev, I’m very likely not going to play the thief still.
healing power
venom share
condi build
more survability, more party support?
Apostate’s gear would be interesting, but it doesn’t exist right?
We only have apothecary gear though…
(edited by Vyce.2014)
I suspect what they meant is more in regards to the 5-man all zerker meta. It doubt it means that ALL zerkers are bad, but instead there will need to be a few players that care more about support than just pure dps.
What I’m more concerned with, is what support options does a thief have besides the one and only v.share? And of course aoe stealth, which is hardly unique anymore…
Patience may be a virtue… But that’s a guardian profession mechanic. They’re not sharing their mechanics like thieves are. So….
Let’s not forget that Mantras, once pre-casted, immediately start cooling down for future use
I believe this was fixed in the July 28th release. It’s possible that they could behave the exact same as mantras. At this time, we’re going with the theme that Distracting Daggers are something you can hold over your opponents for a period of time, and then it’s gone. We’d rather encourage using the daggers and getting those interrupts off, than simply holding the daggers for hours at a time.
Please feel free to let us know how they play during the next beta event. There’s quite a few ways to go with the ability and I’m not sure they have to behave exactly like mantras.IMO the daggers should work like this…
-No cast time to activate. ALWAYS ON, 2x charges.
-Each dagger has an independant recharge timer of 25 seconds (reduced to 20 with physical trait).Think of it like a Monk’s dash ability in Diablo3.
I don’t know why you have to make this skill function like a Venom or Mantra when you can just have it reload a dagger over time up to 3 daggers — like every 5 seconds. Just remove the required activation step, it is unnecessary. This way, you can control the number of daggers by increasing/decreasing the reload time.
Smart people think alike.
So this would be like building up dagger charges over time? Sort of like the skill getting its own independent initiative? Let’s assume each dagger charge is 8 seconds (25/3=8.333). So maybe 3 is the max and then you use all 3 in quick succession, basically it would take 24 seconds to reach 3 charges again. But if you have 3 and use 1 (leaving you with 2) you can wait 8 seconds and you’ll be back up to 3 (if I’m understanding this correctly). That would be pretty cool.
That’s not exactly what I meant, though that can work too.
What I meant was that each dagger has its own independent CD of 25(20) seconds. So if you spam all three, you have to wait 25(20) seconds before any are back… But if you use one every 8 seconds, then you get a new one every ~8 seconds.
Does my version make sense?
Honestly they’re close enough in practice that I’d like either implementation.
Let’s not forget that Mantras, once pre-casted, immediately start cooling down for future use
I believe this was fixed in the July 28th release. It’s possible that they could behave the exact same as mantras. At this time, we’re going with the theme that Distracting Daggers are something you can hold over your opponents for a period of time, and then it’s gone. We’d rather encourage using the daggers and getting those interrupts off, than simply holding the daggers for hours at a time.
Please feel free to let us know how they play during the next beta event. There’s quite a few ways to go with the ability and I’m not sure they have to behave exactly like mantras.
IMO the daggers should work like this…
-No cast time to activate. ALWAYS ON, 2x charges.
-Each dagger has an independant recharge timer of 25 seconds (reduced to 20 with physical trait).
Think of it like a Monk’s dash ability in Diablo3.
I agree these would be fun, but extremely overpowered. A perma pulsing of frost or chaos armor is just way too op. Wouldn’t matter how you changed the numbers its just too much. I think many of the elites are in a decent spot right now. Although it could be fun to tweak with some traits to make some skills give an aura effect when used.
I would suggest in every elite, the upkeep cost would be high enough that it CAN’T be permanent.
Also, I don’t see how frost is any more powerful than the current iteration of the dwarf elite damage reduction.
If that’s the case then why have them be upkeep if you can only use them for 4-5 seconds?
And with Jalis if it was only frost aura then it wouldn’t be but its aoe damage reduction, 10% toughtness and frost aura. (plus frost aura is granting area chill)
“Current Jalis Dwarf Legend Elite (activation):
AOE Damage reduction for 5sChanged to (6+ upkeep):
10% Toughness to self & allies
Pulse Frost Aura to self & allies"I just don’t see a reason why these need to be upkeep skills. Why not just a single pulse on use of elite and keep it as is. Would kind of make the whole process simpler all you would need is a trait.
Because upkeep costs are interesting and keep them unique compared to almost every other activated skill.
I agree these would be fun, but extremely overpowered. A perma pulsing of frost or chaos armor is just way too op. Wouldn’t matter how you changed the numbers its just too much. I think many of the elites are in a decent spot right now. Although it could be fun to tweak with some traits to make some skills give an aura effect when used.
I would suggest in every elite, the upkeep cost would be high enough that it CAN’T be permanent.
Also, I don’t see how frost is any more powerful than the current iteration of the dwarf elite damage reduction.
Waaay too powerful even for Elites. You’re asking for party-wide aura, team buffing, and some had PBAoE effects.
I agree that those idea sound really cool, but mechanically they are just broken. The energy adjustment for the effects you mentioned would make the skills unusable since they would need to be radically high to compensate for the effects.
Fair enough. let me edit some numbers…
You’re right that they were too high. I dropped them down a lot. I kinda forgot about the whole force multiplier concept.
Ultimately the goal is not to create some crazy overpowered elites, so much as it is to create a consistent theme across the legends of being empowered by the legend.
(edited by Vyce.2014)
I really like the whole idea of the elite being a sort of Legend empowerment. As if the Revenant is channeling the legend more strongly than they normally would. This theme is obvious for Mallyx. And really most wouldn’t need to change a whole lot to accomplish this. I feel like it would be REALLY cool if every legend elite skill had the same idea. See below for some examples of what I mean…
Current Mallyx Demon Legend Elite (upkeep):
10% All Stats
Apply AOE Torment
Changed to (6+ upkeep):
10% Condition damage to self & allies
Pulse Fire Aura to self & allies
Current Jalis Dwarf Legend Elite (activation):
AOE Damage reduction for 5s
Changed to (6+ upkeep):
10% Toughness to self & allies
Pulse Frost Aura to self & allies
Current Shiro Assassin Legend Elite: Jade Winds
Changed to: Jade winds is good and Impossible Odds fits the new elite theme well, so just swap Jade Winds and Impossible Odds on the bar. You could also then give the elite a very small radius of quickness for self and allies.
Current Glint Dragon Legend Elite: Facet of Chaos
Pulse Protection
Changed to (8+ upkeep):
4% All Stats to self & allies.
Pulse Chaos Armor to self & allies.
Keep the deactivation effect as it is. Though this might have to be weakened a bit, like removing the super speed component.
Current Ventari Centaur Legend Elite: Energy Expulsion
Change to: (6+ upkeep)
10% Healing Power to self & allies.
Drop healing fragments every few seconds.
So obviously there will need to be balancing on these. There are a lot of ways to do it though. Here are some examples…
- Adjust the energy upkeep cost to be appropriate. Some may only need to be 5-9. Some me need to cost the max of 10 per second.
- Add an energy cost to activate ON TOP OF the upkeep cost.
- Balance the numbers. Obviously some %s could be too strong. Reduce as appropriate.
- Stat bonuses don’t stack with other Revs. This is probably a good idea anyway. 5x Revs as the new dungeon meta would be a given otherwise.
- Change target caps / AOE radius. As usual it shouldn’t cover more than 5 players, but it may even need to be 2-4 players if the buff is too strong (like quickness).
- Add a Cooldown. Most people have been opposed to this as it seems to go against the unique quality of the energy mechanic. I agree and think the above two are better.
note: I originally had some really high numbers and forgot about the power of force multipliers. I reduced them quite a bit. Also, the ultimate goal here is to create a consistent theme across every legend of being empowered by the named legend, and having a strong upkeep based elite skill that you can toggle on/off.
(edited by Vyce.2014)
- Embrace the Darkness now applies a lot of torment in an area, twice as much as before. I’m looking at adjusting the cast time or upkeep cost for it to make it a bit more in line with the new functionality.
First, It’s awesome to get so much back & forth with you Roy. Just know that it is appreciated.
As for Embrace the Darkness… I have a middle-of-the-road suggestion for you. What do you think of the following?
For each second that EtD is active, add a new condition to be spread (all short duration).
- Torment
- Bleed
- Poison
- Burning
- Confusion
- Cripple
- Chill
- Slow
So the longer you have it running, the more powerful it becomes. But if you do this, you may have to increase the upkeep to 10. You may even have to reduce the target cap to 3 or something… At the very least you can remove the flat stat increase. Anyway, you get the idea.
What’s the point of offering specific suggestions as a way to improve this event when there are no plans to change it or repeat it?
For upcoming events maybe – and I hope there will be more invasion events.
Yes, Jana, correct. We’re actively reading and participating in this thread to let players know we understand they have concerns about the event, to gather as much consensus about the concerns as possible, and to use that information to plan future events.
It’s interesting to read the feedback as whole. While some things leap out as a general piece of feedback that seems very broadly felt — and it’s really good for us to know this info — others seem very individual.
Lag or disconnects, for instance, have been tracked and reviewed by the network team, and no pattern has yet been found. Someone at one location may have perfect ping, and someone else in the house next door may have lag. The team is investigating each ticket but please note that forum posts don’t help, so please submit a ticket. The specific instances I’ve read about today in network team e-mails point to the customer’s ISP. (This is data from a traceroute, which is solid, impartial data.) Now, that’s not to say that every instance is a result of ISP issues, but again, the lag and the event do not seem connected and a ticket is the only way for us to figure it out, or help you figure it out.
Back to the broader topic: We’ll continue to read the constructive posts and to use your suggestions to the benefit of future event planning.
I obviously can’t speak for everyone here… But I seriously doubt people are all that concerned about why they were getting disconnected. It’s not like there was a massive outcry about everyone getting disconnected…
I think the DC issue has entirely to do with losing progress as a result of the DC. My computer overheated at one point and it was as if the last 25 minutes we entirely wasted. Because there was ZERO reward until the end. It should have given X blooms per event completed (not tagged) plus your standard greens/blues/trash, at the very least.
It isn’t that easy to do, because the possibility to kill the pet is a needed balance to counter some skills. Rangers down state 3 skill is REALLY powerful and would get totally op, if you are not able to counter it by killing/ccing the pet. You wouldn’t be able to interrupt any f2 abilities of rangers at all.
And I really doubt they will do anything like this. Ghost weapons of guardians were invuln. at launch and they removed it to give counter play.
I agree, the pet needs improvement, but this is the wrong way to go for me. I hope we will see an upcoming elite spec, which will give your pet the ability to dodge.
That’s my point though… what F2 abilities are SO POWERFUL that removing the ability to stop it would make Rangers OP? If there are a few, then balance those. And the downed 3-skill would of course need some tweaks too…
But to your guardian spirit weapons point (along with mesmer phantasms and necro minions), that’s entirely different. When you can spam them and walk around with an army, that would of course be a problem. But we’re talking about ONE pet here with ONE extra utility skill.
Again, what other professions have their F-Skills shut down so easily?
I’m a fairly casual player that’s recently returning to GW2 in preparation for the xpac. Hopefully I’ll be able to drag a handful of my local friends as well. As of right now, there are 4-5 of us that plan to play. Most of my friends prefer PvE (raiding) content. I’m interested in that as well, but I’m particularly interested in PvP/WvW. So I’m looking for a guild that is pretty active in all areas.
In terms of my characters/experience, I have 7 lvl 80 characters (all but ele) with my Mes as my most experienced character. As of now, I plan to play a Rev on release. Most of my friends have 1-3 level 80s and are less experienced in GW2, but have been playing a variety of MMOs for over a decade.
bumping to first page
[NA][WvW][Fort Aaspenwood] returning player looking for guild.
I’ve began playing the game at headstart as a member of pretty good WvW guild (Black Talon). I leveled five characters to 80 (necro, mesmer, guard, warrior, engi). The guild decided to play WoW before season one. I continued to play a little longer before taking a break. I spent much of my time in Eve Online, Wildstar, and a little WoD/WoW during my GW2 haitus.
I’m now back to GW2, leveled a Ranger to 80 and looking to join any of the remaining WvW guilds on FA.
I also enjoy sPvP with my Mesmer.
(edited by Vyce.2014)
This is why most mesmers in my guild keep a full stack of these…
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pot_of_Hylek_Poison
It’s really pretty silly that this is required. The other option of course is to completely give up on rune choice and go with centaur runes, which I do in my power based set. It’s just too much of a sacrifice in my condition build though…
Anet said ages ago that they wanted to give us more reliable speed options. I guess they forgot.
Great point about the locker. And yeah, I actually discovered the argos weapon gallery today. I think I found one that will work, and the irony is that it is one I’ll want to buy for the stats anyway… (rabid torch from HotW).
Dulfy has not yet done torch skins, and the wiki is not only incomplete, but most of the torches in the gallery are sheathed.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gallery_of_torches
So yeah, I’m looking for the biggest / longest torch skin in the game. Or perhaps the top 5 in that regard. Any ideas?
And the piercing beams is a lame compensation and depends on mesmers using those two weapons which not all of them do…
I think that is the point though… They are still trying for build diversity. If they make GS and Scepter more appealing, more people will use them.
Staff is generally looked at as a defensive weapon. So really any build can benefit from it. It can even do decent damage under the right conditions. 3x Warlocks can hit hard in a power/crit build (in PvE boss fights).
I wouldn’t too used to it. Anet tends to fix these sort of stop-casting “benefits” as soon as they are abused.
I don’t want this. I’d rather have a DIFFERENT weapon grant swiftness. I like my three utility slots too much to feel like I need a signet there. Also, I’m sick of being forced to use the focus for swiftness, which is pretty bad too considering you can’t stack swiftness with it (the focus DOES have useful skills, don’t misunderstand me).
Early on, a combination of water and arcane traits does wonders for survivability, and the ability to help a group. At 10 points in each you have a passive heal to all party members while in water, and can trait for condition removal and a temporary regeneration boon whenever you attune to water (and 1 stack of might when switching to fire, 5 seconds of swiftness when attuning to air, and 5 seconds of protection when attuning to earth, which can all be useful, especially as they’re essentially free). At 15 points in each that expands to an AoE heal when attuning to water, and the passive heal lasting for a short period after switching to another element.
Investing in Arcana also gives a nice decrease to the cooldown of attunement switches, meaning more frequent big attacks, and gives a boost to boon duration, which is a nice little benefit to all the boons you’ll be putting out.
In short, all those popular elementalist builds that revolve around 20-30 points in both water and arcana are also decent builds for levelling, as having that extra survivability is important in open world PvE and the personal story for squishy mages; and you share more or less all of those little bonuses with everybody around you as an added benefit.
Great advice. Thanks!
still need a few more opinions on this please.
I’m in the same boat as you right now. I actually just bought my ascended rabid amulet and have since been trying to decide whether or not to kick myself. I also run a mix of rabid and carrion for my glamour setup.
The best conclusion I’ve come to so far though is that Rabid will be a better option if I ever swap between a full glamour confusion build and a standard staff condition build (w/ sharper images). This will be a really big deal if they ever implement a build swapping mechanic. Because glamour confusion is amazing in medium to large WvW groups. But a staff condition build is a LOT better for solo or small group roams.
Both my Father-in-law and Mother-in-law are playing gw2. I would consider them to be relatively casual players. Most of their time will be spent in open world PvE doing exploration and events. They may one day try out a dungeon or two, but they will probably never step into sPvP or WvW. The good news is that they’ve both been playing for 3+ months now and know the basic game mechanics.
So with all of that said, they have rerolled as Ele and Engi and are asking me for advice.
I don’t know of a good casual friendly engineer setup, and I know very little about the ele, I’m seeking your advice. Obviously I’m seeking advice on Engi stuff here, but I will also cross-post something similar in the Ele forum. Advice on either is welcome.
What sort of build, weapons and equipment stats should they be working toward? And remember that they will likely spend a lot of time leveling the characters, so level a build that only shines at level 80 won’t be very helpful.
I really appreciate the help!
Both my Father-in-law and Mother-in-law are playing gw2. I would consider them to be relatively casual players. Most of their time will be spent in open world PvE doing exploration and events. They may one day try out a dungeon or two, but they will probably never step into sPvP or WvW. The good news is that they’ve both been playing for 3+ months now and know the basic game mechanics.
So with all of that said, they have rerolled as Ele and Engi and are asking me for advice.
Because I know very little about the ele, and also don’t know of a good casual friendly engineer setup, I’m seeking your advice. Obviously I’m seeking advice on Ele stuff here, but I will also cross-post something similar in the Engi forum. Advice on either is welcome.
What sort of build, weapons and equipment stats should they be working toward? And remember that they will likely spend a lot of time leveling the characters, so level a build that only shines at level 80 won’t be very helpful.
I really appreciate the help!
Most if not all of them are wrong. And not by just a little bit either…
Here’s a quick example on the wiki (which mirrors in-game info):
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trick_Shot
Thief Shortbow#1
in-game UI: 0.25s
actual: 0.95s
I’ve done some testing on various auto-attack skill activation times by frapsing and dropping a time-code onto the video clips. Here are just a few I’ve found…
Guardian
GS#1c Wrathful strike
in-game UI: 0.5s
actual: 1.23s
Staff#1
in-game UI: 0.5s
actual: 1.0s
Scepter#1
in-game UI: 0.25s
actual: 0.8s
If the info was off by just a little bit, I would have bothered posting. But this stuff is WAY off. And I wouldn’t be surprised if most skill activation times were listed incorrectly. It would be great if you could correct this ANet, as testing every single in-game skill would be grueling. You guys have the actual numbers. Please fix this and help all of your theory-crafters out.
(edited by Vyce.2014)
unless you a condition mesmer, that felt sad
how were condition mesmers affected?
I run something similar 10/20/10/0/30.
sceptor/sword and Staff, Shatter/suicide hybrid.
I really appreciate the feedback and personal experience. I will need to try the scepter in conjunction with an OH sword. Having two short CD blocks at my disposal sounds quite good…
My two scents from my experience running a shatter/suicide build, feel free to flame my love of my sceptor, I’ve made it work thus far. Will probably have to adopt it in WvW a bit and learn my timing with pink death ray, but for suicide production it is king.
TBH I’d really love to make the scepter work. I think the Abyssal Scepter skin is amazing and would love to sport it as long as I’d actually want to use it regularly.
There exists a far better way to use this build, together with pahntasms and scepter. For example 10,25,10,20,05. Now you use for example Scepter and Pistol. Using the scepter will create the clones next to your target, OK, the amount of killed clones is pretty low like this, but still you have them (remember your elite, time warp works nice for it).
Now you can easely stay away, you inflict with you autoattack three aoe-conditions instead of creating only a clone that you dont need. Like i said, of course the amount of killed clones is low, but the amount of killeable clones with other weapons is not soo much higher and places them most often to far away from your foe. At the same time you have two duelists, spamming regeneration, inflicting bleed on crit and dealing a good amount of dmg.
That’s an excellent point Chris. That said, when you play this build you will find that the vast majority of your clone generation comes from dodging. Unfortunately, dodging while wielding a scepter isn’t very effective. If you are using a sword, any dodges will create melee clones that not only apply vuln on auto-attack, they also apply all of the suicide conditions when they die.
Honestly though, I’m still holding out hope they will do something to the scepter to make it more desirable overall.
Thanks for the feedback Kelthien.
I think I would agree that the cripple is not as necessary in PvE. But I wouldn’t go without it in sPvP and WvW.
Perhaps this is worth considering as the PvE build…
http://tinyurl.com/suicide-pve-2
I’ve found that stacking 3 wardens on a ranged only boss is pretty broken.
(edited by Vyce.2014)
For some reason it is not allowing me to update the post… I wanted to add the following…
“It’s important to note that these traits do not create conditions when phantasms are destroyed, only your clones. Of course, summoning phantasms will cause your other clones to suicide. So Phantasms are still utilized in the build.”
The concept of Suicide Clones is fairly simple. You’ll want to maximize the traits that create effects when your clones are destroyed (through damage, on target death, and when summoning a clone or phantasm while already having your max clone count). The clones and phantasms will still be useful while alive, but it is inevitable that they will be destroyed. So why not make lemonade out of those lemons? With the core build detailed below, every time a clone dies (but not shattered) they will apply the following conditions to nearby enemies:
- cripple (3s)
- 1x confusion (3s)
- 3x vulnerability (5s), 3x bleed (5s), or weakness (3s)
That is certainly not bad. But it really begins to get interesting when you apply those effects multiple times by forcing your clones to commit suicide. To accomplish that, you will be taking advantage of every illusion summoning weapon skill as often as possible as well as dodging in close proximity to your target(s). Additionally, if the setting allows for it, you can use utility skills such as Decoy, Mirror Images, and Phantasmal Defender to further amplify the condition application.
Suicide Clones comes in a few varieties depending on your playstyle preference and the area of the game you prefer. Unfortunately the build does not have many hot-swappable traits because the various weapons perform better in certain roles, and their associated traits are spread out through the trees quite a bit.
The core traits are as follows…
Domination (10 points): Crippling Domination [V]
Dueling (25 points): Deceptive Evasion [X], Confusing Combatants [grandmaster]
Chaos (10 points): Debilitating Dissipation [V]
Illusions (5 points): Illusionists Celerity [adept]
http://tinyurl.com/suicide-core
As you can see, the core build only accounts for 50 of the 70 points available. The remaining points will be used to grab weapon cooldown traits associated with your set. Here are my recommendations…
WvW (ranged)
Staff + Greatsword
http://tinyurl.com/suicide-wvw-ranged
WvW (melee ball)
Staff + Sword/Focus
http://tinyurl.com/suicide-wvw-melee
PvE (dungeons and farming)
Staff + Greatsword
http://tinyurl.com/suicide-pve
sPvP & tPvP
Staff + Sword/Sword
http://tinyurl.com/suicide-pvp
Gear:
As you may have noticed from the build links “Rabid” is always selected. This is fine for PvP, but for WvW and PvE I actually use a combination of Rabid, Carrion, and Rampager gear. The Rabid gear fills my armor and back slots (which was great because I love the HotW set). Rampager gear fills my Accesory, Ring, and Amulet slots (aka Coral). And Carrion is taken care of using my weapon slots.
Consumables:
The following should be pretty self explanatory…
Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Orrian_Truffle_and_Meat_Stew
Master Tuning Crystal
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Master_Tuning_Crystal
General Tips:
Pay attention to where you summon your clones. Depending on your active weapon set some clones will stay at range and will therefore negate the benefits of their suicide. However, some weapons will create clones in melee range though they may still used ranged attacks.
Greatsword is an excellent example. Mirror Blade (#2) will create a stationary clone in melee range of your target which are great for suicides. However, if you dodge while at max range you will summon stationary clones that won’t do you a whole lot of good besides stacking bleeds. But since they do that just as effectively in melee range, there’s not much use for a ranged greatsword clone.
Staff skills on the other hand will always summon stationary clones near you. So to maximize suicide effects while using the staff you’ll want to fight your target as close to melee range as possible. An advantage of this is that your staff other staff skills such as chaos armor, chaos storm, and winds of chaos will be that much more effective by applying both conditions and boons.
When using dual swords, your clones will all run into melee range wherever you summon them. That said, you should already be in melee range while using dual swords anyway.
Some might argue that the scepter could work well with this build because it summons clones in melee at the end of your auto-attack chain. I’ve tried it and personally feel like the chain is just too slow, and it is generally outperformed by the other weapons. However, if you just really loved the scepter, feel free to try it out and let me know what you think.
Coming Soon:
- More detail regarding utility/sigil/rune selection for the different builds.
- Video highlighting the build in WvW (both group and solo)
Feel free to ask any questions you may have, or even offer suggestions if I missed something that would benefit this playstyle further.
(edited by Vyce.2014)
But you see, the nature of hotjoin is that people are free to make a quick, random match and leave whenever they want or need. Although I agree there should be a way to enforce rules for afk, and maybe there will for the custom arenas, who knows, those rules do not make much sense in hotjoin or else it would stop being hotjoin. So, I do think that the best attempt at doing 5v5 in hotjoin, is making it 6v6 there, to take into account the few users that are always coming and going. And, of course, making it first in the listed servers.
I’m actually opposed to any mechanic that penalizes people for leaving hot-join games. I have a 2 year old kid that needs my attention at random times. I think the best solution is to offer a greater reward for playing a match from start to finish.
The 5v5 format does not work in hotjoin at all. That’s because there’s always people leaving, making it 4v4 or 3v3 a lot of time.
That’s why i like 5v5. 3v3 is better than 4v4. 4v4 is better than 5v5. 5v5 is better than nvn, 8>=n>5
Well, regardless of people leaving, even in a full 5v5 you get plenty of opportunities to 1v1, 2v2, etc. because of the map size. 8v8 on the other hand always seems to end up 5v1, 6v2, etc… that is NOT fun.
QP on the other hand is a grind stat that has no bearing on skill.
Well, there are now 3 different stats sPvPers are effectively ranked by. Glory ranks were first, and we all know that is nothing more than a grind. QP are similar, but again there is a grind associated to it. At least with QP your skill determines how much effort you have to put in to achieve it (aka more wins = fewer games you have to play). And at the same time, if you are a terrible player, you won’t be getting a lot of QP. We can only hope the invisible MMR that’s in place is working well.
Sadly if you’re like me, Glory is too much of a grind and both QP and MMR are virtually unobtainable.
I appreciate all the feedback.
To those that got a little off-topic in regards to a gear grind, both sides have valid points. But if you’re talking about WvW, your group composition and strat play into your success FAR more than your gear. Of course, a lot of the better guilds request that you at least have one lvl 80 in all exotics. But once you get a full set of exotics, I really believe you’ll be set for whatever else you want to do in this game. You will also feel twice as powerful in full PvE exotics as you do compared to the nerfed sPvP amulets. It’s actually quite fun. Plus you get to play around with different builds that would never work in sPvP such as leeching + knight’s gear (toughness/power/precision in pve).
The 5v5 format does not work in hotjoin at all. That’s because there’s always people leaving, making it 4v4 or 3v3 a lot of time. I’d say that 6v6 would work better than both 8v8 and 5v5, due to the nature of hotjoin.
That’s why I suggested greater rewards for staying until the end. Also, the current 5v5 hotjoin format only suffers because the 8v8 is the default and provides better glory gains. If that was changed, I feel like you’d see a lot more consistent 5v5 games.
Disclaimer: No you can’t have my stuff… I love the game and will keep playing every other area of the game besides sPvP. I just wanted to share my opinion of why it’s so frustrating and I can’t be bothered to play it. I hope Anet can resolve the issues causing my frustrations and I hope the sPvP community will explode as a result. That said, here’s my rant…
It’s just too freaking frustrating to keep at it. I don’t have the rank, and to be honest, the skill to find a good tournament team. So my best bet right now is to try and solo queue frees in order to meet people and form a team. Unfortunately the queue is still too long (plus 4 minute prep time), and too often the first round will start 4v5 (I swear my last 5 games have been 4v5). So for now I’ve given up on playing tourneys. That leaves me to play hotjoin. When I play hotjoin I end up raging after about 30 minutes of 8v8 as it always turns into a zergfest that favors heavy aoe or burst classes. If I try 5v5 instead, there are rarely enough players to play consistent games because 8v8 is the default and frankly it’s easier to farm rank/glory in 8v8.
With all that in mind, here are my own opinions on how they could improve sPvP and win me back.
Tournaments: The free tournaments should be in the same format as paids. It really should be designed to act as practice for paids and an avenue for solo queue. I feel like both free and paids would benefit as 4 team tournaments (2 rounds). There are many potential benefits to this. First, free tournaments would have a quicker queue compared to how they are now. Second, both free and paids could use two maps per week rather than just one per week. Third, high ranked teams would automatically avoid the issue of playing the same team back to back.
Hotjoin: I’d love it if the 8v8 format was simply removed. But I understand some people might actually enjoy it (though I can’t imagine how) so at least it should be moved to the bottom of the list and have the glory potential reduced a little bit to balance against the greater kill potential. The 5v5 format should then be made the default option and the glory reward potential should be increased in order to draw more people in. Additionally all hotjoin games should have a bonus glory reward at the end even for the losing team to discourage leaving early. This end bonus should be rewarded as a percentage of time in the map to discourage the inevitable map hopping.
Glory ranks: Now that there is a better method of ranking player skill, glory ranks should ONLY be considered as reward tiers. In other words, it should be a LOT easier to gain ranks as not everyone plays the game 8 hours a day, and even if they do, not everone wants to ONLY sPvP for the next few years to get armor and weapon skin rewards. In PvE right now it is about a hundred times easier to get all of the armor and weapon skins you’d like, even considering legendaries. I think the highest rank right now is 65 or so. That’s pretty crazy. Especially for those of us who can’t commit even a quarter of the time investment as those top ranked players. To be clear, I’m not suggesting it should be easy. Even if only 10 people were max glory rank right now I’d have hope to one day get there.
Balance: To be honest, there are plenty of frustrating balance issues. I watch streams where skilled players complain about d/d eles and trap rangers. Even no-skill hotjoin games are littered with them and can really make the game not very fun. Here’s the thing though… I actually like that Anet wants to be cautious and not nerf things too quickly. I just wish they’d find a middle ground and perhaps make a few VERY small tweaks once a month so that certain successful builds can remain strong, but not impossible to compete against.
just my 2c
(edited by Vyce.2014)
I like all of these suggestions.
I’d add for prices, loot bags are fine as is if they give us tokens in a different way. Make badges a currency much like Karma. I’m tired of missing out on badges after getting killed, or simply focusing more on objectives than my own personal gain.
Do you guys feel like the classes are relatively close in terms of balance?
If not, do you think they will only require minor tweaks to get them there? Or can we ever expect more significant changes?
I love GW2. This game is great and it was worth every penny. I plan to keep playing for the foreseeable future.
That said, I just need to give a little negative feedback on this whole livestream thing…
You guys did not say a single thing new. You didn’t answer any questions that weren’t in-line with what we already know. What’s the point? Please don’t waste your time or our time on stuff like this if you aren’t going to give us new information.
Again, I love the game and appreciate all your hard work. Keep it up.
I actually find 5v5 (when it happens after some ppl leave) much more boring and uneventful, empty even. There’s just a greater chance of 1v1 or 2v2…
This is basically one of the reasons why I’m even arguing the point. If there was no 8v8 then all of the 5v5 maps would be more active. Simple as that.
It’s there because options are nice.
And don’t even start with LoL, it doesn’t strengthen any arguments whatsoever. Especially not when compared to an MMO that is best compared to a shooter, like Team Fortress 2 for instance. Multiple team sizes, multiple servers.
And I really hope you were joking when you decided to mention LoL here. It’s about as far from Guild Wars 2 as any game could ever be.
The only similarities that could possible connect LoL to Guild Wars 2 is matchmaking. And that’s not really there either is it :/
except the devs talk about LoL all the time… also, forest of nif (npcs you can kill to gain a boon, and can be last-hit/steal intentionally). I realize that the game is different. But there are clearly influences. Regardless of all of that, the point is not comparing the entire game, but the small scale pvp. casual non-ranked games should have the same player count as tournament matches.
I know this topic comes up a lot, but IMO it hasn’t been talked about enough. If it were, 8v8 would be a thing of the past.
And no, I don’t care that 5v5 is now an option. You can really only get one or two full games in 5v5 before it starts falling apart.
On the other hand, people still play 8v8 and simply run around circles in big zergs farming glory.
Because it’s not a competitive bracket.
Why doesn’t LoL have 8v8? I mean, non-ranked play might as well be whatever since you know… it’s not competitive. While we’re at it, let’s add a few servers that are 40v40 because you know.. it’s not a competitive bracket…
Sorry, but that argument is not a good one. The maps and mode is design for 5v5.
The fact that you even mention, with your sarcastic tone, that hot join is competitive… is mind blowing.
P.S: Yes, why not add 40v40 in a non-competitive bracket? It could be a possibility. It’s not like it matters.
I never said it was competitive… but it is exactly the same game mode/type as tournaments, so why the disparity in player count? It would be much better if players got experience on smaller scale pvp rather than zerg-fests. If I wanted 8v8 (or more) I’d go WvW (which I do quite a bit).
I know this topic comes up a lot, but IMO it hasn’t been talked about enough. If it were, 8v8 would be a thing of the past.
And no, I don’t care that 5v5 is now an option. You can really only get one or two full games in 5v5 before it starts falling apart.
On the other hand, people still play 8v8 and simply run around circles in big zergs farming glory.
Because it’s not a competitive bracket.
Why doesn’t LoL have 8v8? I mean, non-ranked play might as well be whatever since you know… it’s not competitive. While we’re at it, let’s add a few servers that are 40v40 because you know.. it’s not a competitive bracket…
Sorry, but that argument is not a good one. The maps and mode is design for 5v5.
I know this topic comes up a lot, but IMO it hasn’t been talked about enough. If it were, 8v8 would be a thing of the past.
And no, I don’t care that 5v5 is now an option. You can really only get one or two full games in 5v5 before it starts falling apart.
On the other hand, people still play 8v8 and simply run around circles in big zergs farming glory.