Guild Wars 2

Nusku.3941:

I bought it for 20 dollars off the actual price so I guess thats the upside to it, I don’t mind upgrading. But yeah thanks for all the feedback.

The explorable content there is is great while it last. It just that there is no new dungeon, no new fractal, only one raid with a crazy difficulty wall and only 1 pvp map.
For 20$ it’s a good deal.

Neko.9021:

Azure.8670:

As an ele/mes main for 3 years I had to drop both classes. Mes because the direction chrono went is amazing but for some reason I just don’t like it and I can’t explain it. Mes engi and necro have by far the best communities as well. On the flip side I love tempest but the ele community is harsh and for the most part bad. If you don’t like tempest that’s fine but calling it trash when it dominates in pvp and pve is just stupid

Ele community is bizarre. Even being the best at everything isn’t good enough for the community.

The ele is only best as waterbot bunker healer at the moment, perhaps you can consider class canon meteors being “best at something”, but that is just because the PvE AI is really lacking and enemies stay in the red circle. I will give you this, the ele is good with fields and some cc.

For condi and spike damage, at both close range and long range other classes are better.

Achrya.7892:

Pls do me a favor and send a screenshot of that 17-20k dmg, okay? Seems a bit exaggerated.

Here you go:
(see image below)

The real problem with tempest remains warhorn, even if the overload are disappointing.

Warhorn is by definition a boring weapon in this game and they didn’t make up for that with cool skills, like they did with mesmer shield. All the warhorn skills are slow and bad. Compared to the Reaper getting greatsword or the thief getting staff it’s just really disappointing.

Nusku.3941:

Just got HoT hope I didn’t make a mistake, and hoping to try out the revenant class. xD

The design of the PvE stuff is amazing, I recommend you take your time exploring because the expansion area is quite small.

zeroroom.7893:

All of that said and to the original posters question, I still feel the purchase of the expansion was worth the money. And I have enjoyed the content.

I think HoT was worth 30$ max, certainly not the 50$ they sold it for. World too small compared to the original release, too many unfinished elite spec like tempest and barely any endgame content.

Balance patch tomorrow and it’s not getting fixed nerfed and neither is Coalesce of Ruin…. Fail.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Tempest hard counters DH. You should be able to kill any power-based DH build 1v1. Regardless, if you focus them in a team fight, the die even faster. DH has high burst but honestly no sustain. The reason why condi revs are more feared now is that

- Nothing really saves you from condi aids
- They have a lot more mobility and sustain than DH

The problem is that because bunker tempest can survive a DH stack of traps because of this the elementalist class has been cornered into only 1 viable build. It kittening sucks that every other build we run we just get 1-shot as soon as we step on the trap.

Then there is the issues of perma-cc and class stacking.

Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the Balance Team:

As mentioned in our “Road Ahead for 2015” blog, our strategy for adjusting the meta-game in Guild Wars 2 after the release of Heart of Thorns focuses on releasing balance updates on a set cycle – each and every quarter.

Your strategy isn’t good.

First of all you need to fix broken skills that do 17-20k damage like Coalescence of Ruin or Gun Flame on the week we find out the issues, not 3 months later, because these press 1 button to win skills are ruining the game for everyone in the competitive modes.

Secondly, we don’t want “meta changes” where you are just stuck into playing the same build for 3 months. We want balanced skills so that we can have Build variety as it was promised with the new trait system. The players should be dictating the meta by creative thinking, Anet shouldn’t be dictating it for them and cornering them into meta-builds that they have no choice to run, as it currently is.

Leave home and go mid when someone from your team is respawning.

When respawning go home if nobody is protecting it.

Yes I find this. It took me forever to finish Emerald, and look at my winning streak since I’m Sapphire, I only lost 1 match.

Would be fun to have more Stronghold maps. It’s hard to know the potential of a game mode if you’re playing always on the same map.

I still get my head around the fact that it took them so much time to make HoT and only came out with 1 pvp map at the end. It just gives the impression that Anet is really lacking people in the content-creation department.

As a class the elementalist has a lot of potential, it was a great design initially. It has been crippled since the release by a lack of good elite skill, useless conjures, crippled signets and a serious lack of build variety with the new trait system and various nerfs.

We can make a lot out of tempest just because d/d is good. But overall as a design Tempest and Warhorn is just a terrible concept implementation. Warhorn skills are boring and the overloads could have been done in a more dynamic way that would have synergism with Arcane instead of going against it.

ESO:
PvE quests, story, graphics, first person view is outstanding, endgame content, wvw server system, crafting, engine is generally way better in ESO, specially the Mac version which isn’t an eternal beta like GW2. They’ve improved a lot since the release, it’s worth a try certainly. WvW is too big for its own good, takes too long to run to a fight.

GW2:
Guild Wars 2 has better raw gameplay with combo fields, jumping/dodging physics and competitive modes that results from that are much more fun. It also has a better interface for inventory management, the art is also more stylish. GW2 had better class balance by far but I’m not sure how large that margin is anymore since it’s been going downhill for over a year.

I go back to ESO when I get bored of GW2, but I always come back to the GW2’s community. The perfect game for me would be a mix of both games.

I’m quite sure Anet went on a 2-months long vacation.

They are gonna do something when they get back, but I doubt it will be the balance changes people expected or wanted. I just wished they would have made tempest into something more than an auramancer bunker support class.

GW2 doesn’t have the skill-class balance necessary to be an eSport. Every skill should be useful, we should have build variety, and balancing needs to happen frequently (like every few days, not every 4 months.)

Raids are difficult for 1 reason only: To hide the lack of new endgame content in HoT.

The only raid they had wasn’t even ready for the release date and it’s just basically 3 boss fights. There is no exploration, no discovery, no story. It’s basically one 10-player fractal.

If people are quitting the game in the coming months it won’t be because of the raid difficulty, but because the quality and quantity of raid content doesn’t correspond to the difficulty cap. Even if you overcome the difficulty, it’s still really not as interesting as some of the older fractals.

Some people may repeat the raids 1000 times to get a skin, but the majority want to just have a fun gaming with friends experience, challenging to a certain extent and raids aren’t delivering that at all.

Just make sure when you see a guardian to have your entire party focus him.

It’s just we are used to focus them last, but in the current meta they should be focused first.

Run 1-2 valk pieces to get near 15k hp. it’s not going to get your damage lower sinceall you will lose is a bit of precision and with perma fury pretty much everything crit anyway.

Avador.8934:

Still no response from Anet?

They did respond on Reddit. They said they are going forward with it because they’ve had comments of people not seeing anything, but they also understand it limits combat visibility.

Basically it makes no sense, they want to make combat easier to understand and they make invisible auras.

I’ve noticed that too.
You just can’t use Tempest with Arcane at the moment.

Well congratulation, you fixed a crash but the game wont launch anymore or patch, the gw2 process just shuts down automatically.

kitten this kitten.

Slininstien.7546:

I was talking to a buddy DH of mine as we both main it (he’s much more experienced than me with it), and we were talking about how the minimum health levels are a bit too low and if the thief/DH had a chance to have a base health pool of 15k like the mid level health pools allow, the classes would be much more balanced. Elementalist doesn’t require it because the perma boon protection uptime and instant 15k heals, but DH and thief could really use that bump up.

This is just brainstorming as a lot of thievs are wanting increased abilities, i don’t know if that’s actually required, maybe just a bump in health pools from the minor ones?

The health pools were made at the beginning of the game and since then the abilities of every class changed dramatically, additionally the roles have too, so I would hope maybe they would look into this?

Guardians have Aegis and heavy armor, they don’t need more hp.
Eles are only tough since they had to give up on Berserker and Marauder amulet and trait full bunker just to stay alive, specifically because they are super squishy.

Morwath.9817:

It’s bugged, was confirmed by Dev Team.

They should have patched it immediately… Thanks for the info.

What’s the deal with the Vial of Salt?
It cost a lot of materials to make and it doesn’t have ascended stats.

It’s that a bug or is it intended to have exotic numbers even if it is an ascended item?

Jourdelune.7456:

It’s funny… people blame the bunker, but we play bunker to survive versus REVENANT OPness (or even reaper constant condi pressure, or both).

This right there, bunker build are the consequence of Anet’s terrible balance giving crazy bursts to not just Rev but Guard, Chrono and Reaper as well. It’s not what is imbalanced.

It’s like blaming eles for using Diamond Skin, while an ele without Diamond Skin has absolutely no chance to win against a reaper because it will get locked out of attunements and skills because of the constant application of chill. In the current condi-heavy meta eles have no choice but to use Diamond Skin, it’s not the cause of the problem, it’s the consequence.

Malchior.5732:

Xillllix.3485:

Revenant has the same range as an elementalist with hammer btw but they hit 2-3 times harder and have a heavy armor…

They have a much better Auto-Attack, #2 which definitely does need a bit of a reduction(although to be fair, you can strafe the kitten thing; shave it a bit or make it worse at range, but increase capabilities elsewhere), and a way to defend against projectiles.
The trade-off comes from being pretty bad at closer ranges and being completely awful at Control, unlike the Elementalist Staff.

You see, what I actually dislike is the blind hate. Blind hate that this thread is bound to cause (and undoubtedly IS a cause of the hate itself).
Does Revenant need changes? Of course. Not only are some things still too strong(or too weak), but they just don’t make sense design-wise! If you were to change at the very least hammer #2 and Enhanced Bulwark/Shield 5, you’d notice much bigger weaknesses in these builds.
Unfortunately, many want the class to be nuked from existence rather than tweaked(which is all it needs to fall in line).

I got hit by 17k Coalescence of Ruins in WvW multiple times, so I’m not sure I would call that blind hate… Nothing can justify a Press-1-button-to-win meta.

Staff elementalists are in a bad position right now because they have been a victim of all the d/d nerfs even through they were already underpowered from an offensive perspective in everything that isn’t a group fight.

Revenant has the same range as an elementalist with hammer btw but they hit 2-3 times harder and have a heavy armor…

Wryscher.1432:

I wonder what this button does…

Nooooo don’t press it. 17k insta kill button.

Burtnik.5218:

Someone who complains about hammer rev cannot be taken seriously. Just sayin

So basically the whole WvW community cannot be taken seriously? Because Revenants are just running the game mode with 14-18k hits on multiple targets.

Anastasis.7258:

Hi everyone, I’m Tarcis, the captain of Apex Prime.
First of all, I would like to make sure that everyone knows we are not depressed at all by losing today’s match.

In fact, we know that almost every teams in Pro League on NA are going to run this comp, which is 2 Sentinel bunker Mesmers, 2 Viper Revenants, and 1 Tempest. We prepared our kitten already and treating today’s match as a chance/practice to seek a weakness from this comp. Unfortunately, we didn’t pull out our A+ games and cannot seek any weakness in time.

The reason why I’m making this thread is because that I feel extremely disappointed when I play against this comp. It is not fun to play against, and I believe it is also not fun to watch. I do understand that everyone wants to win, but this just not healthy for this game.

You may say “Hey, The Abjured still beat double bunker mesmers comp”, but if you guys realized, Final Form’s comp is slightly different than Spookie, PZ, and Never Lucky. They have a druid instead of a tempest, and even with that, they almost pull a game from Abjured. I believe Abjured can still beat the comp like this, which us, Apex, has beaten this bunker mesmers comp in scrims too. But the fact that the skill requirement for this comp is just ridiculously low.

The comp isn’t unbeatable, but the fact that this bunkiersh comp can eliminate the mechanic skill difference between players is not cool at all. In this stage, I think everyone can just make a team and play with this comp, and will be able to compete with pro league’s teams.

EU are also running the similar comp but instead of 2nd bunker mesmer, they run marauder engi. In my opinion, both are similar but 2 bunker mesmers can be far more superior and more aids.

I know the balance patch will not hit until February, 2016, but imagine that if we or no one else can figure out a solution for this comp, what will we expect on the ESL Finals in Cologne? I don’t believe that anyone wants it and I also don’t believe that Anet wants it.

Just my personal opinion here, and sorry for the broken English.

Tarcis.

Great post,
ultimately it’s on Anet’s shoulders.

They’ve been warned when they made the new trait system that build variety would be reduced. They replied basically this “it’s too early to tell, we’ll see”.

Before and after then they made a series of bad balance decisions and elite spec design mistakes. They didn’t nerf engineers turrets and Ice Bow for example, they removed it from the game. This is just an example, there is much more: Chronomancer and Reaper got a great elite spec while the elementalist class was cornered into a bunker support bot with a lame Warhorn. I’m gonna skip Dragon Hunter and Revenant, because we all know Revenants hammer 2 and Traps are fine right? Or the amount of immobilize a druid can stack… /sarcasm

This game was at its most balanced 1 year after the release, when turrets engis were the only thing people were complaining about. Now it’s free to play and honestly I think it’s just going to get worse.

Luckily Overwatch is just around the corner.

I don’t find it possible to realistically play dmg Maurauder staff anymore against good teams. Mesmer, Engis and Guards will just melt you faster than you can cast a fireball. Yeah it’s possible but I wouldn’t call it viable.

It was the only thing I played before HoT, and it took a huge drop when the new meta came.

choovanski.5462:

Xillllix.3485:

Just been in a game where the 2 DH had more points together than the other 8 remaining players. It was the same crap all day. I don’t care about losing, but when it’s to the same kitten class all the time what’s the point? Just 2 of their traps can knock you down over 8 times. It’s a freaking joke and there is no eSport there.

I think I’m about done with this. We’re just playing the old maps with a meta more unbalanced than at launch.
Only the WvW overhaul can save it at this point.

if you fell over 8times in a dragons maw we all know who the problem is

I was testing it… 2 lock traps that last so long is just ridiculous..

Just been in a game where the 2 DH had more points together than the other 8 remaining players. It was the same crap all day. I don’t care about losing, but when it’s to the same kitten class all the time what’s the point? Just 2 of their traps can knock you down over 8 times. It’s a freaking joke and there is no eSport there.

I think I’m about done with this. We’re just playing the old maps with a meta more unbalanced than at launch.
Only the WvW overhaul can save it at this point.

I was finished with warhorn Tempest the day they destroyed Heat Sync and made warhorn do absolutely nothing better than the other weapons.

The overloads are the only interesting thing of Tempest just because of the air damage and the might/protection from fire/earth.

Let’s just say it had potential but it’s like they gave up on it after beta weekend 2.

Death Stroke.9875:

Xillllix.3485:

So Courtyard removed, Raid of the Capricorn removed, Stronghold Removed…
We currently probably have less pvp maps than on release 3 years ago.

Why was there only 1 pvp map added with HoT and why did you remove 2 good maps from unranked?

I hope you aren’t referring to Courtyard as a good map and Capricorn was removed because the didn’t like underwater combat.

I am, Courtyard was a real good map that was strictly about fighting and without stand in circle stuff or PvE stuff like Stronghold.

It should have been bigger, and there should be more team deathmatch maps like it.

It kinda work in T1. If the waypoints on the new maps weren’t always contested it would be easier to move around. It still needs more waypoint.

There is not enough people playing guild wars 2 for open world pvp.

They could have like a huge PvP open area, where you can fight Free for all against players while waiting. It could even be underwater…

Yeah thief is almost unplayable in this meta, at the start it’s handicapped against guardians but also because it can’t bunk as an ele or mesmer can.

I’m not doing raids either, I don’t have much free time and when I do I don’t want to take 2 hours looking for a group that will ultimately fail at the first boss anyway.

Let’s face it, HoT has no endgame content and is unfinished. It’s just 3 boss fight with a huge grind/difficulty wall hiding the little there is.

What the game needs is some skill/trait balancing and build variety. The new trait system along with the power creep just destroyed build variety on many class.

Example:
Once upon a time (when the game was released) as an elementalist you could even use a berserker amulet and put points in water to get 3000 extra hp. Now all of that is gone and we are confined to the only purpose of bunkering points. The variety is gone and pvp is suffering from it.

There is more 80% more ccs than at release yet you also nerfed stability. In WvW it’s a disaster for melee classes.

So many useless skills, like almost half the classes skill are not used because they are so bad (elementalist elite skills? When are we getting a good elite skill? Even the new HoT Rebound is terrible).

As for skill balance, how did you manage to make Dragon Hunter even more broken than burn guards? Wow. I guess a 17k Coalescence of Ruin or 21k Gunflame to the face also is breaking records in terms of skill not balanced, but those last 2 numbers were from WvW.

We want Team Death Match maps, 3v3 arenas and 10v10 arenas, and a few more Stronghold maps and Conquest maps. If you need to hire people to make those then you should.

I would congratulate you however on the new League system, that is good and well done, but the issue is core gameplay experience has deteriorated greatly.

Blaine Tog.8304:

The Scepter hasn’t been nerfed. ANet just included a lot of mobs with high Toughness all over HoT. If you go back and throw your skills at old targets, you’ll see the same numbers as before.

I don’t think anyone here is really talking about PvE when they are discussing skill balance.
Scepter is reliant on Fresh Air, and you can’t use bolt to the Heart with Fresh Air anymore. That’s a 20% nerf right there and in PvP or WvW it doesn’t cut it anymore.

Thinking they also destroyed the good old fresh-air staff build I like to run for the sake of “build variety”

Simonoly.4352:

Dawdler.8521:

Simonoly.4352:

I accidentally went near a Revenant. Won’t be making that mistake again!

But you are a Mesmer, how did he even see you?

The sad part is, the Revenant wasn’t even after me. That’s the last time I go flower picking in WvW!

13k is nothing, look in my screenshot I got hit for 17k… like almost 2k more than my full hp. It’s the damage modifier that is broken more than the skill.

Scepter was made for spike damage, but when they nerfed the air line and buffed the spike damage on every other class it became the worse elementalist weapon because damage was literally the only good thing it had.

I don’t think the people in charge of the elementalist at Anet know how to play the class, as we have seen when demonstrating Tempest when Karl got down to 1hp while fighting Svanir (for a ridiculous amount of time)… Something most elementalists relatively experience can beat without losing much HP and much faster.

In my opinion what they needed to do was significantly increase the speed of Dragon tooth, base damage of all Scepter skills by at least 20% and add a trait that increase the range of scepter to 1200 when wielding a Warhorn. Then Scepter could serve it’s purpose of being a dmg weapon.

Dagger should do more condition damage, it needs specially a bleeding buff on Churning earth.

Warhorn needs a complete redesign, it just kittening sucks.

Staff is mostly ok but it could have some of the cast-time reduced, it feels really laggy. Static field should go down immediately, lava font should tick immediatly and gust should be more reliable.

“we’re also releasing brand-new Finishers into the Gem Store, and will be releasing more in the future”

Magicarp.5640:

Yea, buff a profession that can basically ignore all damage and still have tons of damage output.

Why not just delete all the other professions and just keep ele?

re-name it : ele wars 2

You do realize all eles play complete bunker because that’s pretty much the only thing left that is viable at them moment. It’s Anet that decided to make us bunker healing bots, it’s not what we wanted.

Dragon Hunter have too much ccs. You get cced 4-5 times by the trap then they use their kittening bubble to cc you 2-3 more times. Then your finally out of the kitten you start fighting back and they chain block for multiple block/invulnerability. Then they start the cc kitten again.

Of course on top of that they hit 7k true shot even when you have almost 3k armor on a light class.

For every person that win someone has to lose. Basically starting at Emerald only half the people can really expect to go up, but it’s made in a manner that you may still go up if you persevere. Actually it’s one of the things Anet did quite right.

What they didn’t do right however is class balance. It’s a disaster, it’s a mess resulting of a total misunderstanding of classes skills, ccs, cd and damage modifiers. It’s almost as bad as ESO and that is saying something.

You either have to run more organized groups with better comp or really play counter meta (which as far as I know isn’t really possible at the moment which is why the balance is so bad)… Run more (I mean only) Chronomancers, Dragon Hunters and Reapers, maybe a tempest if you need the support.

I was playing with a friend that came back for pvp leagues after a few months away.

First game we fight a team of 2 chronomancers, 2 dragon hunter and a necro. We get cc locked all the time on points, there is just nothing you can do when the mesmers can spam 4 gravity wells in guardian traps. Second game we fight 2 dragon hunters again and 3 reapers, again with the amount of ccs and chill it’s just unplayable: you can’t do much, even if you fight well you end up losing to a comp that has the most interrupts, ccs and conditions.

I don’t think my friend will ever come back to this game after seeing things only got worse. He didn’t even get to see Stronghold because it was removed.

This game used to be fun all the time but now sometimes it feels like you’re fighting the unbalanced game mechanics more than your opponent.

Anet had to to reevaluate the strength of all their previous ccs and conditions when making new ones, specially after they nerfed stability.

Nope, I’ve been waiting for this for the last 2 years. I have so many friends scaterred on all tier I would love if I could WvW with or against all of them.

Minus the numbers which were way too low the change list wasn’t that bad. It’s certainly a more interesting deal than the current broken system.