Guild Wars 2

Junkpile.7439:

Well plaque only purpose is annoy enemies couple sec longer when zerg run over you because NECRO DOESN’T HAVE FRIGGING LEAP.

We do, but you need to go into Reaper Shroud for it.

This change is utterly hilarious, and the pinnacle example of where their heads are in regard to Necro. They could have at least renamed the Heal to spare the embarrassment.

Gonna’ dust off my Engineer and call it a day for Necro. It’s obvious which professions most devs actually play.

Engineer quite obviously. Josh Davis plays quite a bit of it to no surprise.

Oh. Well congrats on getting the game. It’s definitely fun to jump into. If you’re looking for advice on Thief, definitely dive into the Thief forums.

Laraley.7695:

Lordrosicky.5813:

5, Remove the cast time from corrupt boon
6, Corrupt boon now corrupts all boons again to counter no brain boon spam

Yep, a great idea. We should just give necros insanely powerful skills without any counterplay, definitely a way to go.

Said the D/D Ele.

It’s not even really an issue with the matchmaker itself, it’s an issue of overall balance. I forget which Anet employee said it, but their goal wasn’t even to have hardcounters in the first place, but here we are.

You mean you haven’t heard of the Guild Wars 2 Bible? Otherwise known as metabattle.com? Heresy.

That was sarcasm. You’ve most likely heard of it. That site, and instructions on how to skill rotate won’t magically make you better though. You’re better off learning and adapting on your own for a while, and see where your own results compare to the “accepted form” of best rotation/DPS. You’ll learn a lot more. If someone just reads you off a chain of skills and you don’t understand why it works that way, you’ve gained nothing.

Don’t worry Thief, I don’t think you’ll be getting the Necro treatment any time soon.

Incredibly sorry for your loss .. To all of you. This hits pretty close to home for me … I don’t know any of you, but I wish every one of you the best, and make it through together. I sincerely hope Anet can do something for you.

serenke.4806:

It’s really hard to see why you would defend the mechanic that you can attack from stealth and get blocked and then not get revealed. How is that not absolutely broken?

It’s the shining example of their forgiving gameplay. If you’re dumb enough to attack someone with a block up, you should be punished. But alas ..

Linnael.1069:

WhiteCrow.5310:

Linnael.1069:

Protection needs to work on conditions absolutely.

Retaliation will effect the skill that applied the condition to the same degree that it will function against a power build, so there should be no change to retal.

With the amount of condition clear in the game and access to Stability, having Protection also negate conditions would be absolute overkill. It would undermine everything they’re currently doing to buff conditions.

Some people here would really benefit from multidimensional thinking, as opposed to a single track.

You would benefit from thinking about things less poorly.

First of all stability doesn’t do jack to conditions and is infinitely more effective when used against power builds. Power builds rely on setups to land big animations, condi builds just spray autoattacks and sigil procs. I don’t even know what you were trying to say here.

Condition spikes are going to go through the roof as multi-stack burning and poison come into play. If you had been looking at things from a few more dimensions you could have recognized how the stacking change immediately strips a massive amount of power away from condition removal. We are headed straight back into the full condi meta from a few months ago if nothing changes.

Once again, you’re a prime example of the allstar reading comprehension of the average user on these forums. I mentioned Stability as an addition to the other defensive/negation mechanics in the game, of which we’re also getting another: Resistance. There is plenty of counterplay in the game, and it’s up to the player to properly use them. Throwing Protection into the condition mix is completely asinine and the result of fear mongering, which the rest of your post clearly illustrates.

Rym.1469:

Last time I typed “research” on my search tool, it found me some photos of Jennifer Lawrence, but there wasn’t nothing that Dire in it.

I honestly don’t know what fappened.

Wow long time BLU. Thanks for the info.

Jelzouki.4128:

As a necromancer main who probably has the hardest time fighting thieves with all the blinds and headshots I am confidently saying that there is indeed counterplay to thieves.

Thieves are a very squishy class and just like every profession you fight you should be able to predict what they are going to do next and that is how you capitalise on killing them. Currently d/p thief is meta and is A LOT easier to kill than s/d. When you see a thief use blinding powder to heartseeker into stealth, you should chill/cripple or CC them before the stealth goes off. If they manage to get the stealth off you need to play aggressively when they open with their backstab while anticipating the next stealth. Its actually so simple.

/grammar posted from my phone

That’s all well and good, and I’m even getting to the point where I can bait out backstabs but flip my character in time to avoid the huge damage. The counterplay is absolutely there against Thieves, during the engagement.

Have fun doing it five times over after they reset until you’re +1’ed in the fight, or eventually most of your skills are on CD and you finally die. I laugh at Thieves who complain about Guardian or Warrior sustainability.

Tough call honestly.

On the one hand it speaks to the horrible state of balance and current meta, or at the very least the frustration it brings.

On the other hand, if those people have such problems with those builds they should never queue for PvP in the first place. Suck it up or don’t play.

Linnael.1069:

Protection needs to work on conditions absolutely.

Retaliation will effect the skill that applied the condition to the same degree that it will function against a power build, so there should be no change to retal.

With the amount of condition clear in the game and access to Stability, having Protection also negate conditions would be absolute overkill. It would undermine everything they’re currently doing to buff conditions.

Some people here would really benefit from multidimensional thinking, as opposed to a single track.

Ragnarox.9601:

Resistance is only available on Revenant.

You should probably actually read the bottom of that page, and also bear in mind there are still quite a few specializations to be revealed.

Hi guys, my name is Resistance. How are you today?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Resistance

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Hey WhiteCrow – if you want a good non meta build, depending on what profession you play i may have something for you if you’re interested.

I’ve tried quite a few non-meta setups, but I’m always interested. I run mainly Warrior and Necro. One is more forgiving for non-meta than the other.

Note: This isn’t a “goodbye wah wah” post. Just giving feedback and some opinions.

I’m at a bit of a conflict. Part of me wants to login and go to the Mists, almost habitually, but then another part of me expects what is to come. It seems I’m banging my head against the PvP in this game moreso than I enjoy it. I just genuinely don’t have fun, and I don’t think I have for a while. It doesn’t matter if I win or lose a match, which I think is very telling as a whole.

I’ve come to the realization that it isn’t so much other players I’m competing against, but the various flaws and glaring imbalances many of us agree are present (I know some feel PvP is fine; to each their own). Each necessary interrupt, each stunbreak, critical dodge moment, the well-timed Elites, I don’t know .. It all seems so simple and routine. There’s no room for anything else.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not even a high ranked player. I’m only mid rank, but I have no ambition right now to climb any higher. At least not in this meta and current balance. I’ve gone through playing non-meta with variable success, and I’ve gone through the utter steamroll that are certain meta builds and neither is fun for me. I just want HoT to drop already, or at the very least the trait changes.

tl;dr: Meta is stale, winning or losing is no longer fun, non-meta and meta is no longer fun.

I think it says something that someone from the highest seeded team (Helseth) even agrees something needs to be done about stealth. Will Anet do anything? Very doubtful.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

So for GW2 to become and e-sport, in my opinion, it would have to become a completely different game.

Sadly I agree. What they did succeed in is somehow creating a game that is a complete and utter nightmare to balance. Each mechanical part works against itself in terms of balancing X and balancing Y. I really wish they expanded on how GW1 PvP worked, with skill mechanics being different from how they worked in PvE, but we’ve been saying that for years and I doubt they have the resources.

Let’s face it. GW2 is a watered down version mainly as a platform for cash shop monetization. The way they embrace the PvP community in this game is through marketing and shilling out these grandiose tournaments, instead of properly offer balance and tweaks to establish an evolving meta. They could care less about the average PvP player; if you’re a “Pro”, they love you.

I’d beg any Dev to tell me I’m wrong.

The amount of Mesmer mains in this thread is staggeringly hilarious.

bluesmnm.1549:

Learn to play instead of crying

Found the Thief. Salty as usual.

Great writeup, but each tourney sadly just reminds me of how poorly designed many things still are in PvP. I know Anet is aware of it, and they’ve admitted they don’t have many resources dedicated to PvP, but .. It’s just so sad. I want it to be better because I know it can be.

I’m not really a fan of blind lately. I’ve been using large amounts of Weakness application combined with Protection and I’m pretty hard to take down. Using both at the same time can be a waste unless you’re being focused, but if they cleanse the Weakness pop your Protection until you can reapply the Weakness.

Thieves don’t like me.

I use Air/Fire and Doom/Geo, and I also main a Power Necro. I still say Runes/Sigils need to go or be tweaked somehow. It does nothing good for PvP and the over-reliance players have on them has to be somewhat embarrassing to Anet. It renders all their development on professions weak in comparison.

I liked it because I finally started seeing some new builds. People were experimenting and it was fun as hell.

Sounds pretty standard for most people. Each time I queue with people that were solo’ing previously, they all report how bad their losses have been. It’s too bad Anet don’t have the resources needed to fix PvP. Only thing you can do is accept it for what it is, or move on from PvP.

Look at all the ad hominem in this thread. I wonder why? It only validates the OP. If you think this meta is fine you need a lobotomy.

Faereilos.5106:

There are zero ingame tutorials about combos and finishers (another reason why the NPE was a failure). You just can’t play engineer or elementalist effectively without knowing how to blast fields.

I still to this day cannot believe they left out so much information on field combos in the NPE. Just … Wow. It really makes you wonder.

I have mine set to X. Not hard to reach, and if you do it fast enough it doesn’t interrupt anything.

Malediktus.3740:

If they would at least bring back stuff like SAB, crown pavillon or wvw tournaments to fill the gap, but this is just horrible update management.

It really is, and it’s as simple as that. The fact they apparently didn’t have some kind of contingency plan during this drought is a huge oversight and depressing to be honest. Expecting your playerbase to be content with nothing to keep them busy during the HoT development is either incompetence or arrogance. It needs to be said.

Couple things with Rangers:

- Learn their favorite spots. Every map has them, and more times than not you can count on a Ranger going there. Get the drop on them. You’ll be doing your team a favor also, as they will DPS the hell out of your team while on point.
- Spectral Grasp, as others mentioned. Don’t use it right away or it will be dodged. Bait their dodges, and make sure you’re facing them when you use it.
- Retaliation. This requires timing. If there are at least two Rangers on the enemy team, it’s worth taking the Retaliation on entering Death Shroud trait. Pop it before they burst you and they’ll be wishing they never targeted you.
- Condition transfer. If they happen to land a burst on you with a ton of bleeds and other conditions, put it right back on them.
- Cripple, Chill, Immobilize. Anything that slows them down is a death sentence. If they pop out their greatsword, start kiting them.

They’re not too difficult to deal with if you have some life force and your cooldowns are available. Appropriate timing and flashing in and out of DS are important.

My favorite is the players who you brought down to 5% HP, then down you and say they rolled you and L2P.

Moron, were you even looking at your own HP bar at all during the fight?

In a word? Balance.

I find simply being positive and making positive remarks can actually be contagious at times. The usual “GL HF” before a match can set the tone, or complimenting someone on a good fight can go a long way. The sore bowel players I try to ignore.

You’re not alone brother. Like you, I played a great deal during launch (Mostly PvP), and went on hiatus for about a year and a half. You’re not wrong with the observation of PvP being rather manic (Apt description), but fortunately it’s something that can be alleviated with time. It’s so incredibly spammy, but you’ll eventually adapt to what’s going on around you, allowing you to make better tactical and clutch decisions.

As for “meta”, I’m with you on that as well. Usually it’s not a bad word in most games, but here it’s become quite stale as some have mentioned. There’s a few core classes that work, and by that very virtue many others simply do not. There’s really very little room for a “counter meta”, aside from playing the meta yourself and beating others through better skillful play. Hopefully HoT will shake all this up.

Ehecatl.9172:

Chill is fine. It’s very strong compared to cripple, true, but chill as a general rule has a really short duration, and only a few builds are able to stack long duration chill. Usually they have to build around the condition to do it.

When chill starts getting applied at 6-12 second duration per skill it’ll be too strong. Right now chill barely flickers on your bar for longer than 4 seconds at a time.

Nailed it. If the average duration of Chill were a few seconds longer in the game I might agree with OP, but as it stands now Chill is more like a soft interrupt that lasts a few seconds. It definitely isn’t gamebreaking, and at most just stalls fights.

Though, I’ve had Engineers a few times apply a Chill on me over ten seconds long. I just transfer it to someone else. Thanks!

You guys need to chill out. Yup, I went there.

Actually, I think that will be my point. Chill keeps Ele’s in check. Like someone else mentioned, it’s a counter play that can also be countered. I hate to say it but: Working as intended. I’m not sure why you’re crying. You can swap attunements and have access to tons of skills, but guess what? It can also be your downfall.

mtpelion.4562:

Your job as a condition Necro is to be a pest. You aren’t going out there to kill your opponents, but rather to force them into taking non-ideal skills on their bar or to blow their good skills so that your friends can blow them up.

Stay with the group. Stay in the back. Keep on pestering with pestilence.

I agree with that, and it’s how I try to play a condition Necro, but you quickly run into problems. Without a team you can communicate with, you will be focused quickly the moment you show up, which brings us to our next problem. You have no answers to that. No mobility, little stunbreaks, no viable stability outside of transforms. It’s a catch22. Condition Necro needs ramp time, but very little survivability.

Looks like OP was reading the other thread about stealth, finally realized channeled abilities were still hitting him, then decided to cry about it though he was none the wiser.

moi.4398:

Nerf necros , nerf lich , nerf downstate , nerf chill of death , nerf deathshroud . This class is ruining balance atm . All teams stack necros and kitten the kitten out of everyone in ESL / WTS and go on . This class is present in all top teams and overused is every aspect of the game . Nerf it . Anet pls

This guy gets it. Necro downstate is so powerful that I see teams all the time stacking them, sometimes up to 3 in PvP. It’s ridiculous. They’re so OP they don’t even need Celestial, just roll zerker and down everyone and anything. It’s totally not fair and they need to be nerfed. It’s such a HUGE problem right now.

Couple tips for playing Terrormancer, especially in solo-queue:

1. Do not ever play the frontline. You will be focused, and taken out of fights before you can do anything.
2. Your best role is as a +1 in an ongoing fight. This gives you the element of surprise, and the ability to lay down your rotation.
3. Don’t be afraid to bring out all the stops in a 1v1. Plague Form on top of a point can delay the enemy a great deal, denying them points. Them killing you quickly and capping hurts your team greatly.

I love, love, love playing Condition/Terrormancer, but as others have mentioned it has a rough time in the current meta. Your best bet is to find some people to queue with, explain to them your ideal tactics and work together. I’ve had great success this way. Some people are even willing to play a class to support you.

Been running a few weird builds lately, and I seem to have settled on: 6/0/5/0/3. Reaper’s Protection, Last Gasp are the reason for 5 and 3, as well as the minor for converting defense into Power. The build is very tanky, and allows me to go toe to toe with Warriors and Guardians. I can remove them from points, and hold points myself. The crit is somewhat low at 35%, but brings 176% Ferocity, 2k Power and 28k HP.

It’s interesting to see how people respond to it, especially after they’ve exhausted their usual rotation for dealing with Necros. By the time they realize their damage didn’t do a whole lot, they realize my damage isn’t something to shrug at either. It works out pretty well for winning games in Conquest.

Balance issues in PvP long enough to fill a Bible and you make a thread about one profession’s downstate damage? Buddy, you’re either incredibly naive or loaded with salt.

If it hasn’t happened already it’s probably never going to happen. Valve would take a cut of their profits and I don’t think they like that idea. We’d probably see a spike in population, but the only thing that matters is player retention. If numbers were to sink back down to what it was, they’d be in a bad situation with the Valve tax in that scenario.

I’ll grant you that no one likes Mesmers (Aside from those that play them), but with such a pedigree of experience I would expect that you’re aware of the fact that in order to participate in a competitive game you need to invest yourself in it. Based on your initial post, I don’t think you’ve done that. You gave PvP a shot, and you didn’t like it. Your problem is your tone that you’ve played quite a bit of it.

tronjeremy.5820:

So sad that anet has such potential with pvp but can’t seem to figure out how to monetize it so they don’t care. Has some of the best gameplay but worst implementation.

But they still keep throwing money at the “competitive scene” with these tournaments. I swear, the prospect of eSports is like a tragic dream for some developers. They’ll bash their heads repeatedly against it, to the point of not having any sense left of what actually constitutes a competitive game. It’s a, “Man I hope people buy into this” approach, take it or leave it.