Guild Wars 2

Trigr.6481:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z37V1IseCM

Thank you for taking the time to enjoy some Mesmer pvp action. The builds used in the video are provided in the video itself. My main spec is is actually a improved build of a video I made on this channel back in December of last year. I call it the Countless “Suicide Build”. I will give the build and the traits upon request.

Also again a special thank you for those that helped me with this video. Some of the shots required a special touch in order to make it what it is, which took quite a bit of work. So special thanks to Arken Elric, Backpack, Reikou, White Darkness, Chicken Little, and Anoobis.

The video software I used to edit this was Avid Studio, and the software I used to record is Fraps. If you guys have any comments or questions please ask them below. If you liked the video please like and subscribe if you would like to see more. Thanks again.

Countless

Great job! Too bad you can’t do the same with any other class because the mesmer class carried you hardcore.

Another silly comment.,

OP posts on thieves forums because he is too scared to post on other forums and be called out and ridiculed as bad players carried by their class tend to be.

Whom is better to compliment a baddie than another baddie, hmm?

I have a silly comment:

People will wipe the floor with you with your current ‘skill’ if you play another class..say a warrior. You won’t though..because you are too scared to do so.

What do people do when they know they are in the wrong and don’t have a valid counter argument? They make fun of the person pointing out their flaws.

Have fun with your delusions

You just have to abandon the map sometimes due to the excessive lag.

Any plans on upgrading the hardware ?

Don’t need leaps. We got some.

We need pulls.

Non melee classes have pulls yet we -the only real melee one- got none. Again Anet logical thinking in the works, lol.

‘GvG’ is a sad last ditch attempt to justify sticking around in this game and pretending there is some organized fun play somewhere to be found. It’s sad what the devs did to such a promising game and I don’t blame zerglings for trying to organize their zerging over voice.

1. You should do it in spvp since it is now a zerg fest or just successive duels. It’s even worse in wvw given the lack of balance with boon duration abuse and consumables.

2. GvG is not a minority interest. It’s zerging with voice. Lotsa ppl do it. Doesn’t require skill just face rolling across the keyboard without knowing whats going on in that sea of red, green and yellow.

3. It isn’t entirely zerging lacking in skill. Think of it as a herd of sheep but with the added advantage of having a shepherd.

Next on the menu, rapid building of ACs in ‘GvG’ fights !

Korsbaek.9803:

XII.9401:

DevonCarver.5370:

Johje Holan.4607:

I was actually depressed by that response. He said when/if. That means they defintely haven’t started on new maps. And they may never.

Don’t read too much into that type of wording. I’m just hedging because there are a lot of things we don’t talk about until they are close to release. We want to work on new maps and those maps are going to be awesome.

Why not introduce more ‘hardcore maps’ where downed state and AOE limits are removed/lifted + more balanced states like spvp -boon duration etc-, allowing ascendant/legendary appearances but limiting stats beyond exotic armor etc.

Don’t force anyone to go into it and make the reward from running it minimal so it exists for game play purposes. That way you please the hardcore pvpers and not alienate the casuals -who will welcome hardcore groups leaving the regular wvw zones and not one shotting them etc.

i agree on the downstat but AOE is more damageing to zergs then anything else as without aoe limit if the zerg reach a migic number its indestruckteble completly full hp every water field tens of thoudsens of damage from retaliation and they still have not attacked you just used blast finnishers in light and water fields thats all;)

but i would personly like that they gave a reason for fighting other then honor and pride. plus a change to some of the maps or new maps. also make it so strategy and tactic does a hell lot more then running in one huge ball(can be done by makeing the map bigger and only 1 wp at a corner)

I keep mentioning this over and over: No AOE limit on dmg and AOE limit on boons/heals.

Healing doesn’t scale much compared to dps, anywho. Water fields won’t help when your getting bursted hard.

Milk the customers still loyal to the game then offer free transfers later on when things get even worse.

Smart tactic. Let’s see how this greed plays out.

Kolly.9872:

Hello there,
I’ll try to be short.
After one year of playing, I still don’t get why we can’t have guild raids.
Maybe I missed the official answer on this matter in the past and I would like to have a clarification.
Why Commanders cannot set their own 30 men raids?
Don’t you think that having only 30men raids instead of a big 100 men blob that follow just one blue icon on the map will greatly reduce the zerg mentality?

Commander Tag should be visible only by people in the raid and Commanders should have their own private chat to coordinate Attacks with other Commanders.

People outside raids cannot see any commander tag, but they should also have better tools for creating their own parties of 5 people. I mean an in game and simple to use LFG tool for newcomers.

In the current state of WvW, people don’t want to make parties with unknowns because they can easily follow the commander tag and farm glory, kill and exp. Who realy needs a party?
That is wrong.
This is a mmo, we should be encouraged to create new parties and socialize.

Commanders of course should have the option to make their tag visible when they want to add pugs to join their raid, if they have free spots., for filling that spot.

I think this isn’t a very big change that requires to modify completely the WvW gameplay and it could be done in a relative short time and then tried for a month and see if it works.
My opinion is it will tone down zergs and will encourage relationship and coordination.

Share opinion

10 man is cutting it tight with zerging. 30man is just an lol attempt by guilds to pretend that what they are doing is organized pvp and not zerging.

What’s the point? 30 man, 100 man are all zergs favoring bad game play. It’s bad enough we have professions carrying bad players (thieves) and now we want to reward more and more zerging?

Any time you go beyond a 5man group -due to AOE limitations- you step into the zerg and mindless gaming.

DevonCarver.5370:

Johje Holan.4607:

I was actually depressed by that response. He said when/if. That means they defintely haven’t started on new maps. And they may never.

Don’t read too much into that type of wording. I’m just hedging because there are a lot of things we don’t talk about until they are close to release. We want to work on new maps and those maps are going to be awesome.

Why not introduce more ‘hardcore maps’ where downed state and AOE limits are removed/lifted + more balanced states like spvp -boon duration etc-, allowing ascendant/legendary appearances but limiting stats beyond exotic armor etc.

Don’t force anyone to go into it and make the reward from running it minimal so it exists for game play purposes. That way you please the hardcore pvpers and not alienate the casuals -who will welcome hardcore groups leaving the regular wvw zones and not one shotting them etc.

DevonCarver.5370:

mjharrison.3209:

WVW needs a Darkness Falls. That is all.

But why?

Puts a goal for people to strive for and will push PVErs into the fray to have access to that. WvW will be more competitive.

The problem is wvw in this game is 90% about numbers and so certain servers will have access to it most of the time -or allows access to other servers in off hours with oceanic coverage- and this will kitten off people more.

Until the zerg favoring is fixed, this is a bad idea. It will also push people to migrate to heavy population servers and abandon others.

DevonCarver.5370:

Precursors do drop from the chests, but very rarely. I’d love to say you should be able to get everything ever from just playing WvW, but not only is that not going to happen, it’s not good for the game as a whole. We will continue to do what we can to improve the rewards available from WvW and there are some developments specifically relating to skill points that are coming soon to the game as a whole, but honestly if you want to get all the things in the game, you have to play all the game. Branch out, I suspect you’ll enjoy it. And WvW will still be there when you want to play it.

So forcing WvWers to play stale/non-challenging and repetitive pve and lack luster ‘living world’ stuff is good for the game? That will only push those people away from the game.

Forget about precursors, allow us to purchase consumables at a reasonable price from wvw vendors.

Allowing us to purchase gear with badges/reasonable sums of money was a step in the right direction. Why not allow us to purchase soulbound runes/sigils and consumables as well? This will greatly improve the replay value for characters as they can try different gear/builds rather than shelfing the character and deciding to reroll another one or quit the game.

Introduce some of the skins purchasable by tickets such as the jade dragon ones to be purchasable from wvw and hell make it reasonably pricey to instill a sense of achievement.

Open up armor skins to reflect 5 or so ranks of WvW so people will recognize you instantly etc.

Aaaahahaha! A mesmer asking for a buff. Guess the most OP class in the game isn’t enough to carry some ppl.

Judging from your posts, you’re losing to every profession in the game. I dunno how that is possible playing a guard in wvw.

Or make it similar to :

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Protect_Me%22

A minor trait -in a popular trait line- makes the cool down: 48 seconds..

Ours is 4 seconds and is 5 seconds if we trait in it. 60 second cool down.

and no..pets don’t die..ranger switches the pet before it does or simply the target won’t usually focus the pet.

No downed state.
You die, you die. Life moves on, Run back like everyone else and pay attention to your surroundings next time.

No AOE limit.
-Portal bombs have to be addressed. Mesmers have things that every class in this game does not have access to. This is one of the things that needs serious addressing.
-You got wiped by a small group? Learn to place scouts, pan the camera around and not sit in one cluster over the commander. Get on voice instead of expecting a person to spend the entire day typing instructions/warnings and then expecting baddies to read them in time to stop a portal bomb. You never see any ‘war’ game having people pile on top of each other with tunnel vision and expect to win.

Fix the stealth system.
You get hit, you are revealed. No more broken stealth mechanic favoring bad stealth abusing players.

Weapon stacks should be from players and not NPCs or guards in WvW. You want a stack: earn it. Not from pve vs coyotes. You lose your stacks if you put the stack weapon in your bag.

Rethink food/ consuamble introduction into wvw. Why?
Imbalances. Also, wvw players don’t make a lot of money. The high end -and now mid end- foods are crazy expensive. You actually lose money while wvwing because of the consumables -especially if you are not on a zergling train-.

Allow high population servers to que for WvW in low population ones or ones that are doing badly. Future online faction vs faction games will impliment overflow maps to try and limit gross disproportionate numbers in pvp.
Don’t like it? Don’t do it. Some ppl enjoy a challenge and not riding a zerg and lowbie servers welcome the help.

Problem solved, game more challenging, ppl actually stick around and not ditch wvw in mass droves. Not even the casuals that Anet decided -horribly- to cater to are sticking around now.

Low servers are being abandoned and high Tier servers are becoming zergier>>less enjoyable>>ppl will abandon them eventually.

Try these changes on special overflow maps and see how ppl like them. You experimented with a terrible matching service that has led to mass desertion of wvw -regardless of what your silly numbers tell you since we play wvw more than you do- so why not try this?

Life changes. Learn to adapt and move on or get left behind.

Daecollo.9578:

It should be moved… to the defense tree.

Coz u iz using it!

Kirito.8796:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JU3WyYSWGU

- Survivability non-reliant on disengaging fights. (check)
- Preferably high AoE damage to effectively have a fighting chance against outnumbered fights. (check)
- Be able to set up kills for the D/D Thief. (check)
- Be able to survive being focused due to the Thief being invisible. (check)

Yea I love that build/vid. Need to try it out!

I didn’t focus on mobility because I got the impression you were going to abuse SR. Even then, it’s kinda iffy.

I think to fit your needs you will have to bite the bullet and go LB and S/Warhorn:

You get two immobilizes, few classes break out of it regularly in time. An ele? Just wait for the water splash then immob right away= 4 sec of free dps -unless they teleport-. Guardians are OP and a different story. What can ya do.

The Sword burst +LB5 will be more than enough for pinning down targets. You can burst mastery to ensure an immob every 7 seconds but gotta be aggressive about it. Also, both immobilize effects are the Fire and forget kind. So you can keep kiting and dodging etc. I’m not sure if you tried LB. I used to despise the idea of using it in wvw but after trying it I really think it is THE most polished weapon for a warrior.

You are giving too much credit to opponents in WvW..to be honest, if you are serious about fighting against GOOD groups -not sure if you are seeing them in CD- then one of you has to be a boon abusing guardian,at least. Otherwise you gotta compromise. Wait till you run into guardian/ele abusing boon duration and in a month or 2, the celestial eles.

You just have to figure out how hard you’ll hit because you’ll need to hit hard to overcome ele/guard or g/g if your duo is war/thief. They just face roll ftw.

Wow..someone who wants to nerf warriors who are at the bottom of the food chain as they are..

Must be a bad thief..

Note to self..check his signature..

Please stop posting. Cry thread (thief/baddies thread) that way > > >

Why would you need to protect the thief..?

The thief has stealth, you don’t.

He stealths, stupid zerlings in wvw switch to warrior who is a sure target and is one of the ‘easiest’ classes to kill as opposed to guardians/mesmers.

Stealth will drop him as the target every few seconds. If anyone needs protecting it will be the warrior. If a thief needs your help in surviving then he isn’t very good at his class/wrong build.

Knockbacks -including stomping- are a bad idea as they move the target away from your thief’s focus fire. You need them still in one spot and thus immobilize is your best bet.

Based on the needs of the OP, LB is a must:
1. The AOE pressure is too high and will force targets to move away from your group’s general vicinity.
2.You won’t have to run around to catch the main target. That way you and the thief are on the target all the time.
3.AOE pressure can be used to pressure rezzers into moving away from the rezzed target or if they succeed in rezzing, them dropping thus putting you in a better situation since: A.They just dropped and B. Their target rezzed at low health and will have to run or drop him/herself if they try and rez.
4.AOE pressure is essential against 2+ thieves as you can fire and forget around your self thus forcing them to back off and expose them to your thief buddy.
5.LB can negate blinds since it has multiple shots on an attack or two. Blinding roaming thief groups won’t affect you that much.
6.LB 5 is essential as it has a 4s immobilize which will be heaven for your thief buddy. Even if they teleport away, they are still immobilized and you can still focus them if he can’t get to them in time.
If you are more glass cannony, LB burst followed by LB3 and then 2 will hit the rezzers hard helping you pressure larger groups. That sequence will give you the maximum burst without alerting the rezzers till it’s too late.

Keep in mind you will be focused instead of the thief in 90% of the time.

2nd Weapon set:
1.Your 2nd weapon set might have to be a hammer since you will need the AOE. Mostly use hamme burst with sigil of paralyzation to set up an unsuspecting foe attack with LB 3 with sigil of impact on the LB. That way you gurantee a crit after every stun. You can ask your buddy to run a weapon with sigil of impact to take advantage of your stuns.
Call out the stuns and immobilize.

2.Sword and shield/warhorn are tempting but remember that the sword is single target -except for the burst which though it affects mutliple targets, it has a tiny radius-. Shield might help you negate that burst. Also, sword is a gap closer+the immob from the burst is invaluable for setting up the target for dps and you don’t have to channel the sword burst to land the full immob.

3.Mace/shield is poor against multiple targets but can be used to play a bit defensively and take the aggro as well as set up a target for your thief buddy. The poor mobility is a poor seller.

4.GS: Good mobility and very nice dps against multiple targets. The problem is you don’t have any way of setting multiple targets without a hammer and every time you 100b you are exposed to damage for 3.5 seconds. Not practical in 2+ fights. The 2nd thief for example would just jump on the chance to burst u when you’re 100bing.

5.Rifle: Single target but it’s good for lolz if you are high in dps. Use group SR to stealth, killshot then LB 5 then LB3 while your thief buddy drops him as well then stealth/shadowstep or stab stomp so one target out of the way. Thieves or up arrows are your best bet for this as you know they will be glass cannony or got crap gear on.
Also with rifle, you never have problems with mobility as the damage is always applied on mesmers,kiters etc. The weapon is single target and is weak in general, unfortunately.

Primary combo: I suggest you definitely go for LB and the 2nd weapon set is up to you but a hammer is your best best for AOE after LB.

The 2nd combo would be hammer+GS. hammer burst with sigil of paralyz+unsuspecting foe and then 100b burst. You can repeat this every 7-9 seconds.

Great videos.

I think some people are missing the point behind the build. Similar to pineapple’s you could potentially fight more than one person and still come out on top. I’m not sure if it is possible with the apothecary gear as opposed to tough/condi/prec gear+grove runes.

I hate killing one person and having to back out from a stomp because the 2nd is focusing me so builds like these are refreshing.

The only annoying thing with this build/gear spread is the fact that it deals low damage. The target either was able to get away or had good opportunities to do so.

I’m not sure why you are waiting for the sword burst to be channeled fully. Why not land it>>switch to a hard hitting attack -LB3/sword 3- and use it on target. If you land it, you get the full immobilize off but not the full damage of the sword burst.

Hoping to see more movies of similar or superior quality to you necro ones.

Glass cannon, him. You say you aren’t glass but I dunno how much your total armor -taken into account your armor+toughness- is.

Maybe had boons stacked from banners or otherwise, etc.

Food. Blood lust stacks. Sharpies. 5-10% damage increase from sigil of impact, sigil of dmg etc. Runes that give increased damage or crit damage.

Basically maximizing raw damage or crit damage on the expense of survivability and/or crit chance.

Used vulnerability on you just prior to the burst -I usually do so smart players don’t have time to cleanse/notice it-.

Had 15% increased damage and various other increase damage traits lined up. Maxed out in the 1st and final trait lines.

The only things in-game that counts is protection. Toughness doesn’t do much against burst. Why do you think guardians can run in and out of zerglings unscathed?

This is not new and thieves can dish out similar damage while managing to get away easier but you don’t notice it with thieves because it is spread out on consecutive hits in a short time period almost equaling or more than that from a single eviscerate.

It is doable. It is not a problem in wvw from warriors because wvw is about numbers and high dps axe warriors get stomped in wvw.

avexis.9047:

warriors in wvw are frontliners.

in zergs you should ALWAYS be in soldiers gear/runes (power toughness vitality)

also i am in tier 1 and every single warrior uses hammer sword/warhorn.

food being -40% condition duration or omnomberry compotes, normally compotes.

as a frontliner in wvw, you are going to bull rush into groups of 40 players often. because of this you will take A LOT of damage so the toughness vitality gear is extremely important as well as a defensive spec.

bleeding/condition damage will do nothing to a good group of players. any good guild runs multiple cleanses and your 1 second of cripple/immob will only hit 3 people and will be almost useless.

in tier 1 wvw, the warriors job is to run in with the gaurdian and earthshaker(hammer f1) to aoe stun the enemy, as well as using 4 for more cc and 3 combined with leg specialist for immobilize cone, sword/warhorn is for mobility with sword 2 and group mobility with warhorn 4 and using 5’s blast finisher in lightning fields. it is also used in fire fields for might stacking and water for aoe healing.

every single warrior in tier 1 uses this for zergs and roaming if they arent bad/non wvw focused.

most build are 0/0/30/30/10, 0/0/20/30/20, or 0/0/30/20/20 for max survival

for utilities, for great justice and shake it off(condi removal, stun break, and group might/fury and balanced stance. stability is a huge thing for frontliners as you will get knocked around like a rag doll without it. for elite war banner is a must simply for the fact it rallies 5 downed people and can single handedly turn a fight on your favor.

T1 Zerging is mind numbing and boring. You’re better off moving to a smaller server and running with 10 or less people and experimenting with builds.

The hammer/S+W defensive builds are the most boring bot cc/condi removal builds. Zero skill, boring rotation. Almost as boring as a guardian.

Just watch the T1 ‘GvG’ videos. Boring as hell. T1 personifies the worst of WvW.

Sadly for big zergling fights you’l need warhorn/sword as they benefit the lemmings more. Sword shield if you are running small groups as to use Shield 5 as a get out of jail card and shield 4 to interrupt a heal after leaping at them.

Don’t wait till the Sword burst finishes. Only land it and immediately switch to a damaging attack as the immobilize will persist but the F1crappy burst damage won’t land.

Guardians are a must in every wvw small group.

You had 2-3 guardians and an ele in the group. That is just abusing one of the most op classes in the game made worse by the lack of boon duration nerf in wvw which also applies to the ele.

Basically the battery classes -guard/eles- carried you and them selves. You wouldn’t survive long without those classes in the group.

It’s sad to see what small groups have been reduced to in order to survive. Battery classes with leathery foreheads for mind numbing keyboard face rolling.

Stimulating pvp, I’m sure.

lordkrall.7241:

Nikola.3841:

RVR compares to WVW as Bachs fugues to Lady Gaga

And yet I can almost guarantee that more people play WvW in GW2 than people playing RvR in DAoC at this time.

IF DAoC was so superior, why don’t people simply play it?

Only reason anet didn’t go that way in gameplay was to cater to a casual -bad pvper- crowd. Unfortunately this resulted in boring gameplay and is leading to people ditching the game -casuals 1st- , anyway.

The touted technical limitations to AOE caps etc is just a silly -but true- excuse hiding that fact, I’m sure. If they wanted to, I have the feeling they can work around the AOE cap through other means.

DevonCarver.5370:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Simple question. Why is there an aoe cap? And no, please do not come up with that “technical limitation” lie. There has been thousands games before this with massive pvp and no aoe cap, why would your engine be somehow so infernior to that of these older games?

What you seem to be missing is that technical limitations are not about the fact that a solution somewhere may have existed for some other thing. Our game is using an engine that has these technical limitations. We could, for instance, display everything as text, which would solve the problem quite nicely, however we’ve found that our graphics offer something a text-based MMO couldn’t quite deliver. The point is, it is very much a limitation of our engine. The load on the server CPU would be quite simply unsustainable if we were to increase the AoE cap as the more players hit by skills the more calculations it has to do and it actually starts increasing exponentially, rather than sequentially. We continue to seek out ways to squeeze more performance out of our game and our servers, but it is highly unlikely we would ever make a change to the AoE limits on player skills.

Break down the maps into overflows to have smaller player caps and enable friends etc to que up for a certain one if they want to be together. Maybe create smaller maps.

Less zergs.

More rewarding for organized groups.

You know very well that zerglings have -and will continue- to abandon the game, anyway. Only the dedicated player base is a sure shot.

No more stress on the CPUs.

Exclude SM for this so angry bird -siege- lovers and zerglings can happily descend into a lemming mentality.

Allow this as an option. Hell! Don’t even put points n it! Just make it for fun! No one is forced to go there and you can impliment rules like no downed state, remove aoe cap . Give it a month and see the feed back. No loss there and you can salvage some of the players on the edge of quitting.
Also use this new server/zne to test wvw stuff like say making special squads mmade out of 10 ppl that can see where each other are at etc. This will be more rewarding for close knit non zergling guilds.

Elidath.5679:

Yza.2437:

If it’s a ‘L2P’ issue..how come mesmers and thieves don’t have that problem with the other classes while the other classes struggle with it? Ever tried locking on your target with more than one stealther around?

Having access to the most broken stealth mechanic in the history of mmorpg -unlimited and immediate stealth access in combat and not being revealed when hit- is enough of a handicap.

I seriously don’t believe anyone who pretends they favor that mechanic and pretends they aren’t playing those classes. ‘As a warrior I favor the broken stealth mechanics’. See? Easy..

Well, as far as I know, mesmers and thieves don’t have any advantage in selecting targets that come out of stealth. And they, too, have to fight stealthing opponents.
Then, the selection thing makes for a big part the survivability of those classes. Sure, removing it would make killing them easier. You could also remove all of their heals and prevent them from wearing armor. Or make their screen go full black for the duration of PvP matches. Bet you could finally kill one. But as for balance, it would be horrible. Plain and simple.

Last, but not least : “unlimited and immediate stealth in combat” isn’t a thing for mesmer. Ranger has more sustained stealth with less cast time than them, and even those aren’t perma/insta stealthing. Thief are another case, but they have even less survival tool outside of stealth.

No..but they have the advantage over non stealthing targets:

Wars
Necros
Guards
Rangers aside from their single stealth short duration attack
Some engy builds that don’t rely on stealth combos

Why do you have the advantage over those classes for no apparent reason? That’s not fair..I want it fixed so your class is on equal footing with the rest of the classes.

Warriors, for example, don’t have that advantage at all.

As for mesmers accessing stealth..lets play this game..8 second cool down teleport on a weapon skill that bypasses stun and immob? Not a stun breaker yet still can be used during stuns to gap?

How about decoy? Blink? Some even bother using mass invis? Wall invis?

I’m not sure who you are trying to convince here that mesmers don’t have a ton of get of jail cards and have the advantage of stealth to lose targets on them selves.

Nice try..but I think a year into the game everyone knows how cheap the class is.

Roll a warrior and see how hard it is to do that. I’m sure you won’t though..some people just need to be carried by their class.

LoneWolfie.1852:

If the people are griefing because of wasting a full keep supply + ALL the towers supplies OR collective troll guild members suiciding golems, how do you report them? Help us here anet, sticky up on where to report griefers.

Don’t be silly. Those ppl can claim they were planing on using a golem/supplies for sieging etc and Anet doesn’t have the man power or patience to go observe them for hours.

Why are you hiding behind a wall pressing 1 repeatedly on siege instead of going out there and having fun? THAT should be reporeted.

Aberrant.6749:

Please teach me how to guard and spam 1. Simply amazing. This is exactly what’s wrong with this game right now.

Pre-emptive… Yes I’m from TC, wasn’t involved in the fight, no I don’t care who won or have anything against any server. I’ll be out 5 man roaming while people continue to zergball.

5man roaming while rolling OP/broken classes -check his signature- and call it skillz!

I don’t see how face rolling on a keyboard on a guardian or abusing broken stealth/boon duration mechanics is different from zerging in skill level.

Halo.8976:

It’s so unique and refreshing! Please, post more zerball videos, we don’t have enough of those.

lol I almost throw up when I see these zerging videos being called gvg and something other than they are.

Truly sad seeing some good guilds descend into this blobbing.

Blix.8021:

Excalibur.9748:

Ljiona.9142:

Excalibur.9748:

Heizero.9183:

Excalibur.9748:

Daecollo.9578:

Excalibur.9748:

Daecollo.9578:

Excalibur.9748:

We still have low damage.
We still have poor sustain (can be easilly kited/killed.)
We are still one of the hardest classes to play.

This is lulzy coming from the highest damage, and one of the highest sustain class. It’s also the class that is widely considered to be ez-mode and faceroll.

Gaurdians/Rangers/Engineers/Thieves all have higher sustain.

Rangers have higher sustained damage, Guardians have higher Sustained Damage, Thieves have higher burst damage.

Please go back to your own forums.

Since when do thieves have higher sustain? If they’re in stealth they can’t do anything except regen health which is still lower than healing signet PASSIVE…

Warrior is widely regarded to do the most DPS, a lot more than ranger and guardian for sure. As far as burst DPS, warrior wins with hundred blades. Nothing can touch that.

0/0/30/0/0 Shadow Arts is an amazing tree, stealth means you can still be hurt but if you know your class and others you can avoid damage easilly.

Hundred Blades is the easiest attack to avoid in the entire game to any class.

If your dieing to it, AS A THIEF.. then I suggest getting a new pair of hands. The counter to hundred blades is moving out of the way, with a class that has multiple teleports and ways to escape this is easy. I’ve never died to 100b on my thief, even with the prenerf bullsrush+quickness+100b combo, it is SO easy to see it coming.

A guardian has Whirling Wrath, which is a hard to avoid attack unlike hundred blades because you can move and combo with it to pull foes to you, you can also use it to cleanse conditions as well (things that would prevent it from hurting your target.) Whirling Wrath is better in every way because it has MOBILITY.

Stop looking at big numbers, in PVP its mobility that matters.

Not all thieves have 30 in shadow arts though. I know I don’t. And you’re still forgetting that while in stealth thieves don’t do damage. Those that stay in stealth and never come out are just trolling. When they come out to actually do some damage, they got no more sustain!

Now let’s see, skull crack can be used every 7.5 seconds and most thieves only carry 1 stunbreak, 2 at max. Eventually you’ll be stunned then killed. How to dodge when stunned?

Besides it is well know that warrior has the highest mobility nowadays especially with sword/warhorn and greatsword. Literally 3000 range on a fairly short cooldown.

Joking? my thief craps on warrior mobility. Shadow trap. done deal. Withdraw. Done deal. Infiltrator’s/Steal. done. Plus sustain is heavy in SA. refuge when you are low and you basically have a 2nd heal. plus the passive heal benefit from stealthing. not to mention the condi removal gain from stealth is pretty much a must have. if you are losing to warriors as a thief, no way around it bro, you kinda suck.

It’s pretty obvious we use completely different builds bro.

I only have 5 points in shadow arts and don’t use daggers. It’s great that you counter 1 cheese build with another cheese build, but I prefer to win fair and square.

So in other word, you don’t want to have to change skills, traits, weapons, foods, runes, or sigils based on what you are fighting or what type of fighting you are doing. A thief should automatically win any 1 on 1 fight because they are thieves. If that doesn’t happen, the other class is clearly OP and needs to be nerfed. You do realize the definition of balance is you win 50% and lose 50% of the time.

Well I started eating food yesterday JUST to counter warriors. And why should I change my spec that works well just to counter 1 class/build?

the same reason everyone else has to spec to survive a random glass thief 2 shotting them

lol guess thieves now have to be treated like everyone else in certain aspect. Learn to adapt..look up warrior and thief skills in wiki or something.

Excalibur.9748:

We still have low damage.
We still have poor sustain (can be easilly kited/killed.)
We are still one of the hardest classes to play.

This is lulzy coming from the highest damage, and one of the highest sustain class. It’s also the class that is widely considered to be ez-mode and faceroll.

Using terms such as lulzy usually point out the thief players.

For you to be playing the most broken stealth class in mmorpg history and come here complaining about the worst class in the game just means this most broken class just can’t carry you. I dunno what to say..check the title?

The thief player base just gets worse and worse.

Boring but more helpful to small roaming groups/zergs: Guardian.

More fun and challenging for roaming, small group and zergs: Warrior.

It essentially comes down to how good you are at playing a class and if you like to have fun.

Guardian is just abuse of an OP class with lack of boon duration with a terribly boring rotation that can be keyboard face rolled with ease. You have to be extra bad not to be carried by the guardian class.

Faranox.4217:

XII.9401:

Um yes..giving lower populations a fighting chance thus preventing mass guild quitting from those servers?

Skill should be rewarded. Zerging lemmings should be punished and sent back to PVE or they will have to actually get on voice, post scouts..that kinda stuff intelligent people do.

The problem is that the zerg will also have limitless AoE BUFFS, thus negating the positive effect of the entire zerg being targetable.

That is not a problem..limit the AOE boons, nerf AOE boon duration so it actually is like spvp. You can limit AOE boons to be applied to 10 ppl in mini commander squads only etc.

Mindless zerging and overwhelmingly favoring numbers over gameplay is killing wvw as you have noticed from guilds mass quitting after the recent match ups.

The recent match up terrible system only exacerbated what was there before and quickened the decline of WvW.

How many Huge leading guilds quit WvW? Not only because they were losing but because there was zero challenge if you had the numbers. What successful game do you know of that had Leading WvW guilds quit in the first 6months of the game due to lack of challenge and in the 2nd 6months due to zergings and stale gameplay?

Straegen.2938:

Even if they could remove the cap and not suffer a tremendous amount of extra lag, they would have to nerf it some other way. Most likely they would simply take the pool of damage and spread it out over all the targets. It is a bad idea if an ele could do a 100k + DPS because they dropped one AoE on a stack.

There is virtually no scenario where removing the cap is a good idea either for technical or balance reasons.

Um yes..giving lower populations a fighting chance thus preventing mass guild quitting from those servers?

Skill should be rewarded. Zerging lemmings should be punished and sent back to PVE or they will have to actually get on voice, post scouts..that kinda stuff intelligent people do.

Anyone who favors the AOE limit+ downed state is usually a casual player who doesn’t know the ins and outs of their own class let alone other classes.

Obviously the mesmer portal/mass invis have to be rethought.

lordkrall.7241:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Simple question. Why is there an aoe cap? And no, please do not come up with that “technical limitation” bull crap. There has been thousands games before this with massive pvp and no aoe cap, why would your engine be somehow so infernior to that of these older games?

Please show me all these “thousands games” with massive PvP, all I can think of is DAoC and that game was quite “weak” compared to GW2.

I would say that technical limitations is actually a rather good and logical answer, one can also assume that it might have to do with balancing and such as well.

DAOC gameplay was superior to gw2 wvw as it was more competitive and fun. Sadly the graphics department etc falls short of what people want these days.

As for this guy ^^^ check his replies. Mostly pve and lore stuff that casual/pve players go for who usually never played DAOC or found it too hard to actually use more than one button.

The AOE limit was put in place for technical limitations. I think there was a reply by a dev somewhere stating that. It most likely was put in to favor casual/bad lemming players.

Anyone who claims it is for balance is just a bad player who likely doesn’t know how to step out of the big red circles.

Imagine if a 30 man was wiped by a 10man because they were clustered together, weren’t paying attention and had zero scounts and were not on voice -the state of most bad wvw players-. That zerg would wipe but soon would learn to adapt.

Xsorus.2507:

Chris.3290:

Hule.8794:

XII.9401:

So many guilds quit and more will.

But where you want to go? I like the concept of 3-way fights.
ESO is in very very closed beta. DaoC? No sorry not again. And thats it. No other games I know and i cant find any.
Oh forgot TSW with Fusang. Even worse than GW2

I know someone who did the ESO Beta. The game itself is suffering from multiple personality syndrome because it wants to have the complexity of an Elder Scrolls game with the multiple player element of a MMO.

BTW, if you didn’t know; it’s also not being made by Bethesda but by a company that has Nolan Ryan on it’s board of directors.

Don’t get your hopes up on it.

All ESO has to do is not have a Downed System, and it’ll be 10x better then GW2

Yep..I want to be rewarded for my efforts and not punished for not running with a larger zerg.

Chris.3290:

Hule.8794:

XII.9401:

So many guilds quit and more will.

But where you want to go? I like the concept of 3-way fights.
ESO is in very very closed beta. DaoC? No sorry not again. And thats it. No other games I know and i cant find any.
Oh forgot TSW with Fusang. Even worse than GW2

I know someone who did the ESO Beta. The game itself is suffering from multiple personality syndrome because it wants to have the complexity of an Elder Scrolls game with the multiple player element of a MMO.

BTW, if you didn’t know; it’s also not being made by Bethesda but by a company that has Nolan Ryan on it’s board of directors.

Don’t get your hopes up on it.

I won’t. I’ll just see if it has the major failings of gw2 pvp:
Downed state
AOE limit
No healers making group synergy non-existant+OP classes
Broken stealth system
Favoring siege lemmings/Angry birders.

So far it seems they don’t have any of the above. Plenty of time for things to change till spring of 2014 assuming it will come out then.

Ryzu.5830:

Good fights RE.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5djnu7dbacQ

It’s a zerg fight with the lemmings on voice.

Run guardians, face roll through a memorized rotation and hope to win.

Good fights indeed..

Good editing doesn’t distract from the fight that this is zerging.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

(Please note, I wanted to make this comparison thread sooner, but I was afraid of getting either Mesmer, or any other class nerfed. Its a kitten shame that people are scared to make informative threads for fear of nerfing, Anet.)

Hey guys,

Guardians and Elementalists have been lauded as the best support classes in the game, and I was curious as to what makes them so special? This isn’t really a challenge as much as a comparison of what support these classes bring to a group and what makes them so valuable compared to other classes’ supportive abilities.

In case you don’t know, support Mesmers can bring:

- Up to 25x Might / Fury (AltruismRunes, Signet) / Perma Swiftness / Perma Regen / Perma Vigor / Aegis / Protection (a bit unreliably) / Perma Retaliation / 2.9k AoE burst heals every 3 seconds.

In addition to the usual Portals, Reflects, Rezz, blah blah… (If we kitten damage, we can do all of the above. If not, a lot of the above)

Would anyone knowledgeable on support Warriors be able to enlighten me a bit? Examples of different builds, traits, abilities? Perhaps pros and cons? I’d like to work on making a comparison of all the different classes’ support abilities.

Support warriors are inferior in every way.

The best support for a 5man:
Guardians, Hands down. Any ‘competitive’ support group runs 2.
Dagger eles come second.
The reason is the boon -and guardian class OP- abuse in PVE/WvW. Not nerfed yet.
Warrior CC>>>Mesmers. A good warrior can dish out AOE stuns every 7 seconds with scattered cc inbetween. Very disabling against ppl who don’t run stability or one stability.
Mesmer support: Superior to wars in every way except for the AOE stun but you have similar or superior survivability given the abuse of teleport hacks/stealth etc.
Never tested other support professions. Mesmers bring mass invis which is 10ppl max and is a game decider in a lot of situations. They also have the invis wall which is ok.

WvW:
-Mesmers 1st due to portals, invis wall. Game changers.

-Guardians 2nd ok heals, superior damage soakers given the heal block/ 2s of invulnerabiltiy, protection etc. Boons etc.

-Wars 3rd: Best AOE cc in the game, ok condi removal.

Healing banner warriors are ok but boon/healing guardians are superior. You can spec into a 1k heal every 3 seconds -330 every sec- but you have to be full cleric+food thus gimping your damage and your survivability a bit. You need good warriors to do this and preferably 2. The shout heals are comparitive in healing potency per overall time but they are situational and sometimes might be used inappropriately to get the other effects associated with the heals.

Support warriors have a clutch AOE rez with a 2sec channeling on a long cool down

Banners heal ppl around them regardless of where the warrior are and are dependant on the warrior’s healing. They also don’t stack with regular regen which is a big down side. The problem is a lot of the time ppl move away from where the banners are and no one bothers picking them.

-Ele staff 2nd/3rd Good large AOE heals for zergs, ok AOE cc.

I have a full cleric ele/war and a full invader war which I played extensively. I only judge the guardians and support mesmers from watching them in fights/talking to ppl who play them a lot. I don’t play mine anymore so my opinion about them is even less reliable.

Faranox.4217:

I’ve only used full Pirate runes so my experience is limited, but I imagine Hoelbrak’s -20% condition duration is handy.

Empower Allies does effect you as well as your allies. I don’t know where you land in the 5man cap though. You can test this by falling from a ledge and taking damage to activate the trait.

Endure Pain has only been useful to me when trying to get into a besieged keep. I pop Endure Pain, Berserker Stance, and Balanced Stance- get inside no problem. Other than that I don’t care for it much. The best synergy I can image with Endure Pain is the trait Desperate Power (+20% damage under %50 HP), but I haven’t messed with it too much. As for a replacement, I think Signet of Stamina stacks intensity with Warhorn’s Vigor.

I’ve always liked Healing Signet. It’s great until you get focused. Without burst healing it’s hard to come back up to muster after a bombing. Also it isn’t greatly effected by Healing Power.

Sorry to go on! I meant to just mention Empower Allies, but I couldn’t help myself.

Also a lot of people complain about Retaliation, so it’s probably good. I run it and it’s always fun to see that fist doing its thing.

With the food and maybe cleansing ire I think ppl are moving away from condi reduction runes to something that would benefit their build more.

Hope.8612:

Hi! In order to get some fresh air after my main’s build got smooshed, I decided to go ahead and finish leveling my warrior. As I’m approaching 80 I’ve been tinkering with builds and this is what I’ve arrived at: http://tinyurl.com/os5n2rr

This is to be used for ZvZ. I’m on a t1-ish server, and I’m currently running with my guild that fields 15-20 a night along with whatever pugs that decide to tag along. We typically face zergs with similar numbers or more.

Some questions I have about it:

I’ve looked at other ZvZ builds and literally every one I’ve seen has been using melandru or soldier runes. Is hoelbrak just flat out a bad idea?

Does Empower Allies apply to me as well as the people around me?

I’ve heard a lot of people say that endure pain is bad. If you feel this is true, what would you suggest to put in place of it? I was thinking of: stomp, signet of stamina, or shake it off.

And lastly, healing signet. I know it was buffed recently and more people run it now. But for a warrior with 300 healing power, would it be better than healing surge?

Thanks for any advice!

Are you looking to be a front liner or a back liner? Front liner: Soaks damage/attracts the stupid zergs attention and CCs mainly. Backliner: Dmg

The build you posted deals horrible damage. You will be a cc/condi removal bot only. It doesn’t reach the full potential of CC as you didn’t get a burst mastery. A good front liner would get off the 7 sec AOE stun almost all the time making fighting two front liners annoying as their cluster has only 1 second break every 6 seconds of stun.

-Hammer has to have sigil of paralyzation to maximize cc for your friendly zerg to work with.

-Yes..our endure pain is inferior to ranger which have it on 6 second -without speccing into anything to get it like that!- and they have it on a 48 second cool down if they take a MINOR trait to drop the cool down to 48 seconds. Sadly BM rangers are tankier than us. Endure pain is helpful when being a front liner and 2 of them might be needed.

-Healing surge when fighting a zerg is more important and it fills your adrenaline bar.

-You need a way of replenishing your adrenaline if you find that your bar is not full by the time your burst is up. Cleansing Ire is what you should go for if you find your self lacking on adrenaline. Another way is to use the precision signet with a short cool down if you have signet mastery but then you wasted a valuable utility slot.

-Sword/warhorn should have sigil of hydromancy and sigil of superior chilling so when you AOE stun with hammer, u switch to get out and you inflict a chill. It helps maximizing your cc.

-Always put stack sigils on extra exotics or rares, stack up when you leave spawn then put those stack weapons in your bags. 2 stack weapons (2 axes with sigil of blood lust) stack twice as fast so you don’t have to spend a lot of time killing coyotes etc. Lotsa ppl don’t know this.

-With that build you might want to stack precision rather than power as I think the critting attacks will be higher. The stacks give 12% precision and 5% from the oil I think?

If you are still interested just message me on this forum.

NapoleonMP.7964:

I know that rifle builds in WvW is frowned apon by some. My question is whether or not a rifle warrior build or long bow ranger would be better for long distance I call it sniping. Its what I enjoy doing hamming the back end of a enemy zerg.

Serfing the zerg? Yes or no?

peter.9024:

Yeah oozi is correct, the mace stun increase wasn’t the only reason for this new build. A couple key changes that happened:

- axe nerf making axe/shield fall out of favor for roaming
- move of berserker power / heightened focus to grand master ( this change IMHO made warriors having to rethink their build hard. This also means that there is less incentive to sit on adrenaline)
- burst cd reduction! That’s the big one! Before you could stun with mace every 12s or so. This was too long and allowed a lot of breathing room for the opponent. Now with a cd of 7-8s it puts a lot more pressure
- cleaning ire and condition meta. Being able to clean 2 condis ever 7-8 s is probably one of our best defences against condi spam
- (cleaned up animations – not sure about this point)

Cleansing ire is bad. The reason warriors are happy with it is because we were terrible in condi removal so if anyone throws us a bone we are happy.

A. You have to land the hit to get it off

B. You have to waste adrenaline and a burst to get it off

C.Thieves have this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow's_Embrace
I see no requirement to remove condis for them.

Cleansing ire is a passive condi removal every 7 to 14 or 9 to 18 seconds depending if you land your burst. If you are blinded>>gotta wait an extra 3 seconds to get it off.

Also, I find it insulting that our condis and heals are tied to other abilities. Like being forced to use shouts for heals or burst for condi removal? a lot of the other classes are not forced to do this or their condi/heals are tied to boon/heals etc and not to having to attack.

Epic.3950:

At first I loved it. big buffs that gave us sustain while keeping constant pressure, fixing of our disc line, much needed boosts for both WVW and pvp alike. Then the mace buff came along. At first I thought It would be cool. gettin those 4 second stuns off on an enemy then laughing as I 100B them through the entire thing. then I realized the warriors are back on the crash course to beta, the only difference with the beta was that bullsrush had a 40 second CD and knocked down for 2 seconds. Now its a 4 second stun (stuns are better than knockdowns too) on a 7-10 second CD. Just when I thought they were going to make other builds viable, we go right back to where we started with a simple one move setup for 100B. Im so sick of that move being the main source of DPS. I wanted warriors to be skillbased not just as easy to play as those kitten condi spamming jerks standing on a ledge facerolling their keyboard.

Honestly does anyone else think its a little annoying that after almost an entire year we are still pigeon holed into using one build to set up 100B?

stun followed by a 100b is a terrible idea in any competitive environment. You are rooted for 3.5 seconds exposed to damage from everyone else while you are there. In a game that punishes stationary targets and rewards mobility evades= you lose.

How many other classes sit still for 3.5 seconds channeling? None..

Ppl should get over the full 100b execution and having to use part of 100b and switch to something else renders 100b obsolete. Any special needs monkey would have seen it is useless and tying it with frenzy is a significant handicap for war..does that mean I have to wait 60 seconds to pull off a successful 100b when faced with 2+ opponents which is the case?

Having to use endure pain+zerker stance+balanced stance to get off one weapon attack is unacceptable. Why can Thieves spam Heart seeker which is far superior and needs zero set up while our 100b is so limited?

The 1st thing I do when I see a GS war is wait for him to pop it then unload.

Terrible idea in competitive play.

I’m guessing you want to run with a zerg:

Front liner: invader gear + hammer, mainly, 2nd up to you

backliner: glass cannon bow/rifle

Once you’re more specific, i think ppl will give you some builds.

Serfing the zerg?

The class is still broken one year into the game.

Zacchary.6183:

Sitkaz.5463:

I rolled a thief because I’m trying all classes, and because I think it’s true you have to play something to understand it. I’ve found they’re not an “I win” button by any means. I’ve also found I still can’t read other thieves’ minds and know where they are in stealth just because I use it to, so that suggestion rarely helps. I’m still learning of course.

Basically they’re an anti-social class, able to roam better than others and survive in a non-supported non-supporting way that sets them apart from the others (in wvw anyway.) Stealth and thief gameplay is impossible to balance with the rest because it’s just so different than other classes’ gameplay. This isn’t to say it’s bad or should be removed, it’s just totally different. I’m not sure they’re meant to offer group value, as the OP puts it. It seems intended that they’re loners.

This is a perfect example of the third line in my siggy.

This guy is learning how to play vs. thieves.

I agree with your third line of your sig..I also agree that if you rolled a war and went into wvw you would get rolled hard because the class won’t carry you.

Love the 2nd line in your signature. Made us laugh at the warrior community.