Guild Wars 2

If you’re a guardian and got beat by a warrior, you were outplayed, period. Warriors are literally our easiest kills, IMO.

I agree. The most OP thing in this game to me at the moment are the pop-up screens and the fact that, considering it’s my 700th match, I still have to view instructions, that still randomly pop-up in between some deaths.

Schwahrheit.4203:

No clue why people base viability in terms of “Frenzy + Bulls Charge + HB” when there’s Skull Crack > HB or Flurry > HB. Hell sometimes you can even do Shield Bash > HB. You’d pull it off if you’re fighting bads but its still a combo better than Bulls Charge.

Like why don’t you people base viability on a Warrior who at least has both Endure Pain and Balance Stance on the same bar while not sacrificing damage out-put and carry-ability.

The real issue at least to me is when talking about class balance is Mesmers and Engineers. Their gadgets deal damage while they sustain and break off stuns “a.k.a I kittened up button” 3 times in a row. Like why can’t the damage output be mainly from the Engineer or Mesmer itself? Oh yeah, to satisfy low skill cap players. That’s the answer.

So now you’re adding Engineers into the low skill cap area? If you play a warrior you should have no problem taking down an Engineer, unless you run double melee weapons.

From what I’ve seen, Warriors really are one of the more balanced professions, they could even possibly use a buff to their banners overall.

The reason I say this is because they do exactly what they are there to do… massive damage in short bursts, followed by heavy survivability. Their downed move is great as well, giving them that “not even finished when you think I’m dead” burst that can be used to great measure.

I’ve found how people fight against warriors to be the true litmus test of if you’re learned to dodge yet. I get it at least a little with thief… you don’t always see it coming. But with a warrior, you should see it coming, or else you’re in the midst of a big skirmish, in which case, the competent warrior is scanning to see who he can finish off quickly, and you just happened to be the guy.

I’ve had my way with warriors as a guardian, and now I struggle more as an engineer, but they still feel very well balanced to me. I can’t tell you the number of times I see unlearned warriors do their bull rush + frenzy + HB in pug tPvP and I just watch them standing there swinging at dead air, thinking it will still work against good players. Sometimes it will still catch you off-guard, but if it’s happening enough that you think they are OP, I think you really haven’t learned the dodge mechanic well. Just my opinion.

I don’t think there is anything directly benefecial to a bunker style Engi, since the main viable one for say, Guardian bunker, w/ Leeching, which applied to weapon swap.

For me, I think the stun duration sigil has a little use for a shield guardian who uses supply drop elite. I usually go with the Elixer elite so I personally am currently running a sigil on shield and pistol, one for poison duration/burn duration, one for bleed duration, to at least help the conditions I’m already stacking with pistol and turrets, but I agree, in general I would like to see one defensive sigil not dependant on crit or weapon swap.

Dabu.1258:

the only class can be a “bunker” is the guardian, you can be a holder with great survivality and damage to kill your enemy at longer time.

Here is the build perfect for Holder (by Teldo):
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VVRw;0B-cPVv0c-VQFx0;9;4T9-J92475;305-5;0KJ;1J0-PcW5PcW52VN

Bunker is a term referring to a class that “holds” a single point well. Therefore, any class can potentially be a “bunker”. It’s a role of the player, not a term describing the profession.

I played over 400 matches as a guardian, and am now playing Engineer. They are absolutely a fantastic “bunker”, arguably better than an Engineer because of the sheer number of knockbacks and blast finishers they have.

I agree, but you’re not talking to a patient group. Most of the more mature players are willing to keep playing and adjust as the game gets better and more balanced, less mature players threaten to quit and call the game unplayable, which is clearly an over-reaction.

I’ve recently switched from playing Guardian to Engineer, and it’s easy to see why players would complain, I’m right back to square one in learning new moves and tactics, but by no means do I suddenly think Guardian was way more powerful… on the contrary, certain classes I couldn’t kill as Guardian suddenly become much easier to kill as an Engineer.

I think the major problem is the points system, which encourages offensive, roaming play in 8v8 to farm glory, which in turn encourages people to make very offensive, roaming specs… and what spec is best at that? The ones people complain about the most on the boards.

In any sense I agree, but I’ve seen a culture of whining and entitlement take over the newer generation of gamers, and I’m afraid it’s here to stay. Luckily, Anet isn’t run by 13 year olds and I’m sure they shrug off most of the OP spam and focus on statistics.

Downed state abilities are a little unbalanced… but downed state in general is there to promote team play, not 1v1 win/lose situations. It’s about point control, not number of kills. Something my tournament team found out the hard way when we lost to a Korean team that was made up entirely of stability/knockback mongers.

Maybe if they ever implement deathmatch arena they will have to look into it or removing it, but at this point, that’s not what PvP is in GW2.

As one who plays with player names off most of the time, I would just like there to be an option to see team colors or see player colors on your own screen. That way everyone can play how they want and not force others to see their god awful vomit and baby spinach colored costumes.

This actually should make glass cannons happier. You can kill people when you go down, which will be constantly. They kill you, you kill them. Nothing changes from glass cannon mentality except now when you down someone, you have to be careful.

MASSIVE nerf to Ret Guardians. Somehow I still feel like people will complain.

And Thieves in tPvP were barely in need of a nerf anyway IMO, so the minor nerf suits me if it just thins out the HS glory farmers.

I’m not much on talking about OP but the Mesmer nerfs seemed just about right to me so far on paper. Will have to play more to see how it affects things.

Edit: Upon actually dusting off my Ret spec and testing out Retaliation uptime, in a way they actually buffed the spec with the insta-channel speed. Very little downtime still. Not that I ever thought this spec was that great, but I have to be honest.

The only build that consistently beats any kiting, condition based profession for a guardian is a good spirit weapon build. Retaliation, despite all the complaining about it on the forums, really isn’t enough against a good player.

The hammer and sword tends to offset their clones just a bit and keep the real mesmer locked down just enough to get in there and do some damage.

But truthfully, it all depends on the mesmer spec… sort of how a few thieves builds will beat Guardians (non-heartseeker builds that incorporate lots of shortbow/pistolwhip/ambush trap/caltrops) but in general Guardians will always beat Thieves, in general Mesmers will always beat Guardians unless you are in that rare instance of specs countering, and you carry a fair bit of ranged with a scepter and spirit weapons.

This has been my experience thusfar. Bunkery builds vs. Mesmer tend to be battles of attrition. You might not go down, but neither is the Mesmer.

Dodge the third swing on the hammer, focus on applying condition damage. Spirit Weapon guardians typically have the least condition mitigation of all the main builds.

Edit option is missing. Just wanted to add for accuracy the above build actually has 3 combo finishers, I forget about whirl.

Zen Einhander for sPvP/tPvP

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#cccz0M0zMmCrTmmCrTm9MxGGzVbosos8khk707khk707khk7kuW70V7owY

This is just a swashbuckling bunker build that gives you just enough bite offensively to be a bit of a roamer if necessary.

Strengths of the build:

1) Master of condition removal
2) Strong enough to still be offensive while essentially being a bunker build
3) Maximum usage of the 20% CD reduction on two-handed weapons
4) Constant heals through utility and weapon swapping
5) Can solo Svanir, Chieftan, or Lord
6) Two strong combo finishers, one blast and one leap
7) Fun to play if you love melee!

Weaknesses of the build:

1) Very weak to ranged out in the open
2) Low group utility
3) Only 1 stunbreak
4) Offers only 1 combo field

You can replace “Sanctuary” and “Master of Consecrations” but I just find that more often than not, the few seconds I need for my next healing CD to come around if often bought with proper use of Sanctuary, which can fit in any build. For a more offensive option, perhaps go with “Judge’s Intervention” which will also help compensate for this build’s complete lack of ranged and limited gap-closers.

1) Standardized Bank access in Heart of the Mists since we occasionally get items such as bags or consumables that can’t be deposited in our PvP locker.

2) Team colors remain in tPvP but allow for our dyes to be seen in casual sPvP matches.

The average bunker spec doesn’t run with a full 30 in the trait line that grants them power, which is what Retaliation scales by. So if you are fighting a Retaliation specced Guardian the most damage I’ve been able to effective rune for is around 2k if you don’t dip heavy into the Zeal trait line.

At a rate of 1 damage per 13.4 power, that’s around 150 dmg per hit. For most people with a decent spec, that pretty negligible considering that the bunker spec Guardian can’t do that much damage to you, either.

In the picture posted, I’m averaging that the player’s power rating had to be around 2881, and has to dip at least 10 points into 10 points into the virtue line to get the trait for heavy uptime on retaliation… sorry, but something is going to be missing there. That Guardian will either have a low HP base (conditions and he’ll drop) or low mitigation on conditions (conditions and kite).

I see how any boon with 100% uptime is a problem and needs to be tweaked, but I do not see where the damage is out of line considering what has to be sacrificed by the Guardian to get 200+ damage return per hit on Retaliation in the example given. And maybe that’s the problem, the picture example is horrible for proving any points against Retaliation as a trait, if anything, it advocates exactly what the boon is supposed to do.

And I can’t speak for you all, but those of you running paper specs, especially thief paper specs, will always be losing to a Ret Guardian, and I’m assuming a majority of people making anti-Retaliation posts are running that. Maybe you should post your spec along with the picture to give a better overall image of what’s going on? It seems like only 1/10th of the story when you see a Death Breakdown used as the sole evidence of anything.

I enjoy the PvP more than any game I’ve ever played. I’ve never been able to pick a class and customize it to my liking and the build actually work in a PvP setting. You don’t see many Guardians playing scepter/torch with a Rockdog rocking by their side, but I’ve done it and while it doesn’t float at top tier, it’s doable in 8v8 and I’ve won a couple of tournaments with it. Lots of possibilities and I think most are “just” being discovered by the people who aren’t wasting time waiting for nerfs that probably aren’t really that needed.

This would be a great cash shop option for a perma-save. You don’t get more ‘fluff’ than saving your best replays but I would definately pay for that feature, especially if you could see the fight from other players’ perspectives as well.

I stopped reading at the word “thief”.

I don’t play a thief, I tried them out for maybe an hour just to see their mechanics. If that’s the reason you are sick of PvP, good riddance, there are a lot more important issues to work out and tweak than the fact you are clueless how to avoid Heartseeker.

And keep this in mind… the bunker guardian is on point because he almost HAS to be… a full-tank spec’d bunker can’t really kill the monsters or Lord by themself where other classes can (not in any reasonable amount of time) and they can’t really take another point on their own unless you are just really bad and getting knocked off the point, and unless a guardian is working a staff into his out of combat weapon set, they are not very mobile.

Engineers and Mesmers as point defenders do just as good if not better a job at bunkering, but their ability to bunker while providing offense as well means they are better suited to move about as roamers or to take the middle point.

So I guess what I’m saying is, it’s hard to call a class OP that basically “has” to spec tanky to be viable in your average tPvP match when there are other classes that have more options on how to spec. Don’t get me wrong, you can be just as successful with your “spirit burn” spec in tPvP but if you’re joining your average pug they are going to expect the guardian to bunker. I bring up again that is might be a little easier to bunker as a guardian because of their defensive CDs but easier =/= OP.

So in that sense, you can look at it from the other side as well. Bunker guardians are everywhere because we are kind of expected to be. Neutralizing a point takes only a few seconds, so if you bring a few knockbacks before the guardian pops any stability moves, you just rendered the guardian useless. Don’t try to kill him, just knock him or fear him off the point.

I usually defend the first closest node in tPvP matches, so I would say more often than not I’m the guy on the team that gets the big 1v1 matches as they send their best guy over to try and take down the guardian, and there’s a couple of things I saw recently that I wanted to know if they were hacks, some class mechanic I am unaware of, or just an semi-exploit of an in game mechanic.

1) An engineer that I would take down, and he would be in downed state for maybe 2 seconds before he popped up with half of his life, like an auto-rez. I remember someone saying something about an elixer glitch with this I think, or is this something engineers can trait for? Essentially I had to down him twice before he would stay down.

2) A thief that was almost perma-stealthed. He would blink in for a second, and the moment I hit him, he was stealthed again for a minute or more straight. I kept checking to see if he just ran behind something but it was wide open, and it seemed to be based off of when I hit him, because as he was running to the point, he was visible, the moment I made contact with him, he never showed up again until either I went down or he did due to lucky AoE spam from me. Easily he was visible maybe 5 seconds of each minute long or so fight.

Anyone had these problems? Are they hacks?

Saying you shouldn’t “have” to bring a stun lock in PvP in any MMO is like saying I shouldn’t “have” to wear weapons and armor if I don’t want to.

You pretty much know what’s going to happen to you.

pinkglow.3429:

Well ANet somehow got the greatest rep for caring about their players, if it’s because of clever marketing or just from back in GW1 I dont know. It’s a good start for the company, but some people just check if they got what they paid for or was promised in actual gaming. So far spvp has been completely neglected and ignored. Many people dont wait because someone says the company is a friendly one, if the game is close to unplayable in it’s lack of balance and lack of promised features it doesnt matter if the creators are friendly and working for the salary if nothing reaches the customers. It’s the brutal truth. In the long run it’s affecting the companys rep as well since customers feeling neglected will have that opinion and that’s the opinion they will share. Countless of gaming companies have suffered from bad reputation because they promised players things that never happened or happened too late. You cant keep the game released in beta state for so long.
It’s just a blog with updates, it’s not that hard to post one sooner than later and if something change after the first one is posted, just add a new one with the new changes. People need to feel the developers care, if someone random says they do it’s just words and words means nothing if there’s no action to it.

No, it’s just a lot of people who play this game are adults and realize that reguardless of your spoiled Veruca Salt-esque “I want it NOW” mentality, you can’t always have it.
When the blog comes out, it comes out. There’s really no need to spam the forums with impatient bickering.

Guardian, Mesmer, Engineer… you could even argue Elementalist in survival mode… Guardians are just the easiest to bunker with. Are you saying easy to play = OP?

I just ask because I don’t consider the two things to be the same.

Posting a relevant link sometimes helps… I see nothing about those loss in numbers being to people “quitting PvP” which is all I’m really curious about, the rest of the game isn’t nearly as important to me. I thought that’s what this board was for.

You could just as easily say those numbers are due to people disliking the dynamic quest system… or WvW… we’re talking about sPvP here and you’re conjecturing based on your own dislike of certain game mechanics.

ITT: People making ominous references to irrelevant games in their impatient attempts for vindication on whiney complaints about a game that has just launched a month ago amidst a massive number of players still enjoying and still playing this “broken” PvP referred to by forum dwellers not representative of the entire GW2 gaming community as a whole by even a small percent.

How about just be patient? And I would really like to see some actual statistics posted for the number of players making this mass trickling exodus grom GW2 people keep talking about as if they are privvy to some special info based solely on their own dislike for the game.

PvP is great for launch, and it’s exciting to think that it will only improve from here.

Guardians:

-worst ranged skills in the game

-lowest health (conditions ignore armor)

-low tier damage unless you’re just a really bad player against them

-a series of well timed stuns bring them down as easily as everyone if they can’t pop a CD

I won’t get into the argument about what’s OP and not, what’s easy/skilled and not anymore, because I realize people will always complain about anything they struggle with. But these traits are fact, and if you use them to your advantage… dead guardian.

The difference is, you can’t just rush in and try to melee a guardian down, period. A good one will always kill you. And MOST people in pub play/pug play try to do this. It’s why Thieves are so popular and so complained about… people want to jump in quick and blast a guy down in seconds, and this is one class that can easily say “no sir”, and so it will always be branded OP, even though their defensive mechanics are the least OP thing about them.

I do, however, understand the complaints about stability, because it’s difficult to counter how easily and often they provide that, but most of the other complaints are rather silly in the context of what other classes can do in competent hands, forget how easy a class is to play, you always balance by what they can do at top level, period, not casual pub play.

I was originally very taken aback by several things… I found the game spammy, it was hard to know what to do in hectic situations, things felt unbalanced, downed state seemed like a chore.

Basically I wanted my warm security blanket of what I was used to.

Now, I’m thoroughly enjoying PvP after countless matches and being rank 20+, and I’m thankful this game offers up enough variety to make several specs viable in PvP… for the first time ever, I can actually make my character however I want and my playstyle determines my success, not having to use the “only” viable PvP build as other games get pigeon-holed into.

I think the PvP is amazing and heading in the right direction, and is the most balanced I’ve seen an MMO for launch thusfar. It’s by no means perfect, but the posts about things being “broken and unplayable” are just silly.

It’s much easier to kill a ranger as a guardian with a spirit weapon build… retaliation requires the other player to not know what they’re doing to work, or to be overly aggressive.

Squishy ranger to go down to sheer retaliation, IMO. Condition build ranger kills guardian every time, reguardless of retaliation being up 3000% of the time.

If you are running a bunker spec on most profs, you have not stacked enough power to make retaliation as viable as it sounds with the 100% uptime on some classes. If you make retaliation damage a priority, then you are bunkering/surviving off of your CDs alone, and any decent stun timing will finish you off pretty quickly.

I don’t see retaliation as an item that needs to be addressed in comparison to a few others at the moment. It truthfully seems to mostly upset people running paper specs.

That’s because 8v8 is just pick up play for fun and learning, not for serious play. Play more 5v5 and the variety increases.

That’s what I’m wondering, most of the top teams right now are using things like this to their advantage, and most people don’t because they don’t even know they can.

What hauskamies said.

Kaim has no more played any organized tPvP than I am a giraffe. The best teams in sPvP have a variety of profs, with no more than 2 of the same typically of any class.

Well, that’s what made me wonder if it’s intentional, but a fast clicker could easily swap out an entire attack set for a complete defense set to bunker. It would take some skill to manage all those icons, I personally couldn’t do it, but feels like it could be game-breaking in the wrong hands.

In the meantime, though, I just want to know the devs stance on this.

I’m speaking in terms of swapping out of combat. Like for instance, I put on my staff as a guardian and use my speed buff, then swap in my Greatsword in place of it. I still have sword and focus on my alternate combat weapon swap. I’m defending a node, so I swap in my Hammer to knock back before combat, so then I’m running Hammer/Sword/Focus. That sort of thing.

Just curious if this game function is intended, and if so, if there are any plans in the future to make weapon/item swapping a little easier than keybinding “H” to the mouse and clicking the weapon to swap.

It’s opened up an entirely new element to the game now, but now I’m just curious if anyone knows if it’s considered an “exploit” or if it’s an intentional part of game design. If it is, it would be nice to have an option in the future to let you quick scroll through weapon/armor/item sets and re-allocate them quickly in and out of combat.

A few of my traits still reset from time to time. I have to check them before the match starts. Not sure if this was corrected with the most recent patch, however.

I think the class distribution is starting to pan out more evenly in 5v5. People are learning how to play Ele’s in particular, and they are hard as hell to finish off with the right spec.

But yeah, FOTM players will always be there, but they go away as fast as they come quite often. In a few months after a few PvP tweaks I think things will be more evenly distributed.

Zyrusticae.7245:

I’m really tired of people justifying the thief’s ridiculous burst potential with “oh, they’re just a low skill-floor class”.

The “low skill-floor” characters in fighting games are also far-and-away the most often played in higher echelons of tournaments. When it takes you more effort to do just a little bit better, the trade-off is simply not worth it.

But that’s just it, I hardly EVER see thieves, or at least not more than one, in the final round of the tPvP brackets I run. Not saying they aren’t there, but every team that’s ever beat my team has had no more than 1 of any class. At high end, I just don’t see any of the complaints panning out, and I while I understand how people hate on thieves, because they do in every game they are in, they simply aren’t that good at you get to higher end play, from my experience.

I could care less really if they get nerfed because I don’t play as one, but I don’t think anything severe to their damage output is justified.

I’m sure I’m wasting my breath, most of this board has made up their mind, but still, I think if you play enough 3rd round tPvP you’ll see what I mean. Thieves best real contribution to high end play is mobility, not their damage output.

So you won each of those easily, right? A team of 5 thieves should be easy to take down.

Thief is easy to play, so if you’re skilled, you’ll do even better.

That said, I still find them to be mostly for 8v8 farming, we rarely run with one now in 5v5 since they offer so little compared to other classes, and we typically beat any team with 2 or more thieves.

Since I started using the cannon and learning how to use the ship to my advantage it’s become pretty fun again.

I agree, some of the pugs I’ve run with in tPvP have been my best teams, and you get to see some team make-ups you normally wouldn’t. I ran a meditation/vampire guardian spec with a team using an Engineer as bunker and Ele the highest damage on the team. We were smoking teams full of burst thieves.

On the flip side, I do wish some people wouldn’t try out a new class for the first time in tPvP, so I kind of wish there was a hotjoin 5v5 just so they wouldn’t cut their teeth in a match I’m trying to get a treasure box out of.

keroksi.3076:

@Milo, nice to hear you are having nice time with the pve.
But for the pvp part, all of my friends have stopped logging in to the game during the last 2 weeks and im seriously worried that a patch coming, say 2 weeks from now will not be enough to get their interest back again.
There is a clear reason for the interest to drop and keep dropping and it is explained in this thread. They deserve all the flame they get for totally ignoring the pvp community.

Not everyone feels like you. A vast majority of players are still playing PvP and enjoying it, winning tournaments and collecting gear.

Of course, we’re also the ones not complaining about everything being “OP”.

As a guardian, I ONLY go down to conditions quickly, and I can only take other people down quickly with a burn condition spec.

But if you’re running a condition build, you need to be mobile, because you will always give up a lot of survivability to get maximum condition duration and damage.

Agreed, the PvP is fantastic, especially when you get 2 competitive tPvP teams against each other, and the customization is great. There are no cookie-cutter specs, and despite what those whining on the boards will complain about 24/7, it’s actually very balanced when you realize it’s objective based and not roflstomp based.

Needs to be tweaked in several areas but is off to a great start, and more and more people are starting to learn these classes people said were too weak and are doing great.

Easy to play doesn’t mean OP, it just means it’s a lot easier to play. I’ve been seeing some crazy good Ele’s and Necros lately. Maybe they figured out something the whiney ones weren’t willing to put the time in to learn.

It’s people that keep saying “X” is destroying/ruining/killing the game that show just how narrow their view of things really is, and how entitled their attitude is.

The game isn’t dying, you’re frustrated but thousands aren’t, you’re bored but thousands are enjoying it, you’re complaining but thousands are learning to get better and counter other classes reguardless of if they think it’s “OP” or not.

-You- do not affect this game singularly, if a class gets nerfed it is based on data, not Anet suddenly saying “oh noes this kid is going to quit our game! hurry, nerf whatever he wants!”.

Thank GOD an actual PvP topic to discuss rather than whining.

2 things I’ve found about conditions, and condition damage:

1) Ranged users have better luck with keeping conditions up.

2) It seems that you have to invest a lot of points into condition damage AND duration to get the desired effects.

What this means to me is, it seems difficult to make a survivable class that needs said surviviability to keep and apply conditions without sacrificing the potency of the conditions.

So for me, mobility seems to be the key for any serious condition user. Building a medium to light survival build with insane duration and keeping yourself out of range/dodging effectively/using defensive CDs at just the right place.

Also, there are several classes that are speccing into heavy cleanse builds lately, and that doesn’t help either, but remember, at best a person can cleanse 3 times, maybe 4, generally speaking, so don’t try to frontload all your conditions at once, put a few small ones up, force a CD, then load the opponent up with your big conditions when you know they’ve wasted their counters. Since they ignore armor you can drop any class like this.

Eurosdown.6072:

I can’t wait until they nerf Moa and every Mesmer switches to Time Warp. Then the real crying will begin.

Nah, because the people crying aren’t playing serious PvP anyway where Time Warp matters.