I’m with BlackBeard here - while I’d *love* to have easier access to blast finishers, rather than need to tie up both heal and a utility slot in almost every build I run, it’d be far too powerful to have the blast on Ice Spike.
It might be possible to do if the skill was given a 20s cooldown, or something - making Staff Water an attunement just to pop into to lay down a field/finisher and immediately switch out of - but even then, the burst combo potential from just weapon skills (and maybe traits) may well turn out to be too strong.
Currently, only water 5 lasts long enough to cast eruption in AFTER casting it, and you gotta be quick with it.
Oi! Persisting Flames!
Though why you’d want to switch out of your DPS attunement to sit in Earth... I’m not entirely sure.
It’s quite easy to put yourself on a stacked team in Hotjoin. Just join the understrength team to equalise numbers, and almost immediately one of the spectators will hop back onto the stacked team, making it 4v5. Now go back into Spectate and make it 3v5, wait for Autobalance to kick in, join the stacked team. Done. :P
And this works pretty well to force those dafties who camp in spectate mode to just get into the match rather than wait-and-see.
Usually there’ll be one ‘preferred’ team, that starts 2v1 or 3v2. Say people are trying to stack on red:
- join blue
- spectate, to force AB, when someone immediately joins red
- after autobalance kicks in, if there are any spectators left they’ve probably landed on red
- rinse, repeat until it’s 5v5
- maybe actually enjoy a fair match, or at least a match where everything isn’t purely decided by 5v4
Doesn’t work if there aren’t any spectate-campers, sadly – in that case, I recommend just forcing AB to get onto the higher-numbers team and just hoping that the poor sods on the other team either get a fifth or know to do the same.
I’m really looking forward to the end of hotjoins.
To fill in the missing info, the limited maps = tournament configuration maps... meaning not Skyhammer or Spirit Watch.
Why are these two maps still excluded anyway? At this point, they both seem well enough balanced to be included in on-season too.
PS This is a question for Justin, not an invitation for anti-skyhammer trolls to attack me.
They have one serious thing in common: a shared secondary objective that both teams will almost always need to pay attention to for the whole game.
None of the other maps have this; the closest is Temple, which has the poweful Stillness and Tranquility buffs spawning at predetermined intervals, allowing the main focus of the teams to usually still be on capping and holding points.
I’ll note here that yes, the Skyhammer is rather less brokenly powerful than it was previously... but it’s still a point-and-click nuke, which gives commanding views of the entire map, with only one (buggy) access point.
It doesn’t help that both of their shared secondary objectives are *far* easier to use to your advantage with certain classes - and particular builds - in your team.
What do you hope for on Skyhammer? A hammer-holder of some description, unless you plan to do that yourself. What do you want on Spirit Watch? An orbrunning Guard or Warrior (though I’ve seen a couple of Engineers with the shoes again recently).
It’s possible to build specifically for these maps far more than it is for the others, and in ranked play a lot of people (including myself) would argue that this is unfair.
Y’know how the game was designed around giving everyone a heal skill, to remove the need for dedicated healing classes? That effective support was designed to be active and short-range in almost all cases?
I’m pretty sure this is so that teams don’t have to bring certain roles with them to do well.
Introducing maps that severely impair teams who don’t bring specific, map-oriented roles? That’s reducing diversity right there - and it’s giving those who do bring them a hefty advantage.
With only five players in a party, having to dedicate even one to a specific task severely limits variety.
(edited by cheese.4739)
It’s that we believe Skyhammer is not fit to be used for ranked PvP. Not while it allows players to get kills while dealing 0 (or very little) damage with a bunkery build.
There will be a limited set of maps available during the season. All maps will only be available during off-season play.
John mentions that in his post, but doesn’t specify the maps.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-improvements-to-pvp-and-the-ladder-test-season/To fill in the missing info, the limited maps = tournament configuration maps… meaning not Skyhammer or Spirit Watch.
Thanks for the clarification, this is very good to hear.
And those of you saying ’the vote system makes sure everyone gets a chance to play on their favourite maps’: yes, and this is a good thing, for most maps.
It’s not that we just don’t find Skyhammer to be fun, though.
It’s that we believe Skyhammer is not fit to be used for ranked PvP. Not while it allows players to get kills while dealing 0 (or very little) damage with a bunkery build.
(edited by cheese.4739)
Make it not a transformation but just a big aoe spell with CC. because it pulses only once every 3s it’s easy to avoid taking too much damage from, but it becomes an excellent area denial ability then, throw it on top of a downed ally to res them without having to worry about thieves stealth dunking (dunking with stability would still be possible for counterplay however). I would use it then. Currently I don’t use it because it just gets me downed.
This... yeah, this is a thing that I might run. Mediocre damage, pulses AoE launch once every 3s, but it doesn’t make me a ridiculously easy to shutdown target or lock me out of the versatile set of skills that define this profession.
And underwater? Sharknado.
YES
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Incinerator
The wiki is your friend! ^__^
Some people actually like skyhammer, and not because they are trolls. I happen to be one of them – and since I play mesmer, not the best kb/fear classes out there, its not even something I take advantange of the way a fear spammer or hambow might, for instance.
Perhaps I’m in the minority, but I should have the right to play maps I enjoy too.
The map is really fun, and I’d love to see it in all ranked play, were it not for two things:
- falling to death
- importance of the hammer
Falling to death can not be fair in the combat system that GW2 has. It just won’t be, ever. Control abilities are not evenly spread across the professions, since control is only one aspect of combat, so making it disproportionately powerful (by removing the need to deal damage to secure a kill) immediately makes some professions more effective than others. This is not okay.
Most of the problem with the hammer being so important is that it’s in an easy-to-defend location, with maximum power given to setups that abuse the aforementioned instant kills.
The map layout is generally great, but is hugely marred by a couple of very poor design choices that have been stuck to without any sensible reason put forward.
Just tossing the topic in advance cause if you don’t remove it from the rated arena queue (post 2 dec), this patch will not be an improvement to spvp but it will totally ruin it. Cause all you need to ruin the experience of many players is 1 premade group of trolls that pick skyhammer as favorite map. They’d force a 50% chance for skyhammer to spawn by themselves. And players who now use tpvp to avoid skyhammer won’t be able to avoid that map anymore.
And don’t underestimate the number of players belong to that field.
So you’re saying that we shouldn’t let the majority be affected by the decisions of players who may also be.. the majority?
l2p
We shouldn’t let anyone be affected by maps that are inherently flawed and are not acceptable for inclusion in ranked PvP.
Even if folks can’t change to specifically designed team builds for Skyhammer and Spirit Watch, since they’ll be locked as the professions they queued as... the maps are still affected *far* more by teamcomp than is reasonable.
Well, the alternative is to craft a bunch of seperate ascended daggers and reskin them - totally good value for your coin, that!
This change will increase the amount of 4v5s in my opinion as the majority of the 4v5s were due to dcs and this change will give people no incentive to reconnect. You really didn’t understand what I was saying at all ’giving them much stronger wins than they may deserve’ they deserve the win because in other games they will get 4v5s rather than 5v4s. It balances out in the long run. I get what you are saying about boring matches, though I don’t think this change will help it.
Sure in an ideal world there would be no 4v5s, this change will just make people more frustrated at the game than they already are with momentary dcs and make them less likely to reconnect. It wont solve the problem of rage quits/trolls, we need a report function for that.
You keep saying that 4v5/5v4 is going to happen - well, yes, of course they will.
Statistically, they should happen to everyone an even amount for both being the 4 against 5, and vice versa.
This does not mean we should ever accept an excuse for a 4v5.
This does not mean that anyone should ever go unpunished for causing a 4v5.
The whole point of stopping folks from playing when they’re liable to cause 4v5 matches is to minimise the number of 4v5 matches.
One random DC? Sure, minimal timeout, can start playing again soon.
DC two games in a row? Yeah it might be a good idea to not play for a bit; starting to look like a bit of a risk.
Letting someone keep playing after repeated DCs is no way to run a ranked system - particularly one with PvP as fast-paced as GW2’s can be, with certain key objectives (communes on Temple, lord rush on Foefire) able to drastically change the balance of a match within moments.
One minute to disco, log back in, load up map... that’s a whole minute in which the other team can have won an outnumbered teamfight and backcapped a point, if not more.
With regards to the ’they’ll just not come back in if they get no rewards anyway’:
- If not there for the end of the match, players don’t get reward track progress/rank points/coin. Folks definitely like to get their loot. The only ’reward’ that may not be granted at all, should the player reconnect, is ladder rating.
- If someone does just alt+f4 out of there because their connection is being unreliable... good for them! This accomplishes the same as stacking up dishonourable timeouts does, but with only one match ruined! ^___^
(edited by cheese.4739)
Everyone has to deal with 4v5s, good players manage to climb regardless because it doesn’t affect their rating on the long term.
*nobody should have to deal with 4v5s*
It’s as simple as that.
Allowing 4v5 to exist is:
1) not okay.
2) see 1).
As has been said, by devs, in this thread: the timeout for leaving a single match is short, and the dishonour will wear off relatively quickly.
One DC? It’ll make very little difference to your play session, maybe a ten minute wait before queueing again, and the dishonour will presumably stop affecting your MMR as soon as it stops affecting your timeout-for-DC length.
From the info we have, it doesn’t sound like dishonour affects leaderboard/ladder rating at all - it just makes players with dishonour more likely to get matched against each other, so that the dedicated trolls can just afk at each other all day while the rest of us actually play the game.
So yeah players will be forgiven for a single DC - of course they happen sometimes - but there is no way you can spin it as fair to let someone turn a single match into a 4v5 without punishment.
Do you have friends? can you not understand why some people might want to play with their friends even though they might not have stable internet? It is just like queueing with bad players, you do it for fun and you accept the risk of them being bad or disconnecting.
And is it okay to give people boring, pointless matches, when the system is aiming to match everyone with a 50% win chance? Is it okay for the system to allow them to get a free win because it matched them against your 4v5 team?
Of course it’s fun to play with friends - but if one of those friends can’t stay connected, they shouldn’t be allowed in ranked PvP. It doesn’t just mess up their own rank/rating (which they might be okay with). It doesn’t just mess up their team’s rank/rating (which, as you say, some teams might be okay with). It also messes things up for everyone who fights against them, creating less entertaining matches and giving them much stronger wins than they may deserve.
You need a grace period. When playing with friends/team if someone gets a random dc that’s 15 min wait for whole party. I don’t want to have to wait or ask friends to wait for something unintentional.
Timeout starts as soon as you dc, though? So it’s likely to be down to 5-10 minute wait unless it happens riiiight at the end of the match. Folks can go to the loo or get a drink or have a smoke or… any of the other bunch of things that tend to create breaks between queues anyway.
If there’s someone in your party disconnecting regularly enough that the timeout is significant… why does it matter if you queue with them? They’ll probably just disconnect throughout the match and leave you 4v5 anyway! ^__^
I agree that disconnect/reconnect should not give dishonor. Instead it should reduce your teams % chance of winning as detailed in yesterdays blog post.
It’d still suck if you can’t get reconnected before the match ends, but there’s no way around that.
And what about the team that had to play 4v5 for the time their ally was disconnected? Are they just meant to accept that, through no fault of their own, they have a serious disadvantage?
The disadvantage could be represented by a reduced chance to win for the match scoring calculations.
For example if you scored 300 in a match where the odds are 50/50 you lose 1 point. But, if you had a disconnect and that lowered the odds to a bit under 60/40 against, you would not lose any points. This system is detailed in yesterdays blog post.
Scoring 300 in a 4v5, especially when it’s only 4v5 part of the time, is not unreasonable.
Edit to add: There is a potential for exploit here … leave a winning game and come back to deflate your chance of winning and thus get more points. To counter that, the disconnected player should not be able to gain more than 1 point, and perhaps just 0.
But with matchmaking improvements, we should pretty quickly be hoping for regular players to all be at 50% chance to win anyway.
The ‘chance to win’ stuff only exists to encourage people to play to the end of difficult games, and to reward them well for managing to win these. For example, if a non-premade runs into an organised, 5-player party, they probably deserve more recognition than the premade would do if it stomped them.
A 4v5 is not (and can not be) a fair match. No amount of tweaking of rewards/ranking calculation can fix this.
Therefore, 4v5 needs to happen as little as possible – and one way to do this is to stop high-risk players, who disconnect regularly – maliciously or not – from disrupting play.
The whole aim of ranked PvP is to win matches and improve your ranking among players; to win matches and show off that you win matches. Decreasing someone’s chances of winning, by reducing their team size, can’t be compensated for by making their loss slightly less damaging.
If you are getting regular disconnects, and so missing parts of matches, stop playing until the problem goes away. It’s not just you that gets the loss statistic for it.
Koroshi made a few vids where he tried the perplexity runes and explained why they are so incredibly broken.
But the same condition lovers always hijack these threads saying how small scale WvW is not important and there should be no balance to this part of the game. Apparently, those who claim that others try to make arguments by saying they represent a wider group of people, represent a wider group of people themselves on the basis of which they know that small scale roaming is done by so few that it should not deserve balance.
/end sarcasm
I would actually go further then this and estimate that small scale WvW is done more frequently then large scale. Especially by those who favor WvW over the other game modes.
The ‘get imbalanced or die’ attitude is pathetic.
Two fun arguments used by defenders of plex:
- small scale roaming doesn’t matter
- conditions are utterly useless in big groups
So why try to justify use of a condition-based spec? Obviously it can’t be used for zerging, and there’s no point in running it for the pointless and unimportant small-scale roaming!
If it gets nerfed or completely reworked, it shouldn’t affect those who ran it previously – they should obviously be able to just shrug their shoulders and get on with the game, safe in the knowledge that their non-zerg build has exactly the same effect on their world’s WvW performance as it used to.
People would QQ even harder about QZ + RF ranger.
Again.
RF would be so fast one dodge would be enough to totally avoid the skill
Or pop reflects and the zerker dies from their own arrows before they realise ^__^
EDIT: wheeeeeeeeeeeee
Oi. It’s not ’a single skin’. It’s a skin and *five achievement points*.
I’d say keep it, anyway - what would you be likely to spend that gold on, anyway? Skins? Gems (with which to buy skins)?
(edited by cheese.4739)
I agree that disconnect/reconnect should not give dishonor. Instead it should reduce your teams % chance of winning as detailed in yesterdays blog post.
It’d still suck if you can’t get reconnected before the match ends, but there’s no way around that.
And what about the team that had to play 4v5 for the time their ally was disconnected? Are they just meant to accept that, through no fault of their own, they have a serious disadvantage?
I can say easily if i dc and get dishonor I’ll accept that with my whole heart this is better.
Totally agree with this.
The server mess seems to have been sorted by now – I’ve not noticed any full-map lag recently, certainly the last week but probably longer. Can’t be sure, because it’s only of note as it happens, but it really does look like it’s been fixed at last.
This means that disconnects will be on the player’s end… and if you don’t have a reliable connection, you really shouldn’t be ruining other peoples’ chances by playing ranked matches.
As long as the dishonour has very little effect – and goes away fastest – for players who infrequently disconnect (because yeah unintentional disconnects can happen to anyone), I’ll be happy enough.
Anyone who is regularly ruining other players’ fun really should be locked out for extended periods. Your nets are misbehaving on a day? Don’t PvP – or at least join custom arenas or something.
I honestly don’t see what was wrong with Hotjoin, SoloQ & TeamQ.
You don’t see the issue with 4v5 matches, 3-4 of the same profession on one team at times, poor matchmaking, and a broken ladder?
They are sorting those issues out though? That’s my point.
Hotjoin: just… what. It’s a mess. It’s wrong. It’s horrible. It has to die.
It is not an acceptable way to introduce new players to PvP.
I’ll go into detail if you want, but I’d really rather not think about it any more.
Soloq? Hello, multiple 4v5 matches a day! Hello, messed up matchmaking with an exploitable leaderboard! Hello, 3+ Engineers (or whatever the current top soloq-carry-build is) in every single match!
And then there’s teamq, where you either run with a premade or get steamrolled by premades.
Combining the ranked queues will certainly help a lot with population issues, too – a bunch of comps can use single players, with 1+1+1+1+1, 2+1+1+1, 2+2+1, 3+1+1. Since the matchmaking will prioritise group sizes, there won’t be nearly so much worry of getting matched against a premeade as five randoms – and we can hope that profession-based MMR and other MMR improvements will make it less likely to end up with wildly different skill levels on a team.
So yeah, the existing queues (and hotjoin) have serious problems that can’t be fixed while they’re in their current forms – they really do need to change.
Also, on the population thing: as said, combining the queues will instantly increase the player pool. Having a fun unranked queue as the first PvP mode pushed at new players – rather than the perma-4v5 (with skilled players stacked on the 5) anti-beginner mess that hotjoin is – might get more of them to stick around. We should definitely get a boom in population for the weeks after the patch launches, too – and hopefully we’ll manage to keep them!
Since players will now queue directly from the Heart of the Mists, some core services (e.g., bank, trading post, laurel vendor) have been added there to provide more tools to manage your character between matches as well as help make the Heart of the Mists a more enjoyable social hub for PvP players.
While it’s great to finally get access to these services in HotM, I note that the Mystic Forge isn’t mentioned. Please say we’re getting it back, too!
People I’ve talked to are often scared to PvP because they can’t mix zerker stats and soldier stats. However if that stat combination was possible it would likely dominate other power stat combinations.
It’s worth noting that the Berserker’s Amulet in PvP loses a bit of its ferocity in exchange for some vitality – even the go-to glass amulet isn’t 100% glass.
Also, since queues can be a bit of issue right now, how goes the other quality of life changes. Did you guys implemented stuff like the gw2 icon flashing when there is a match found, for the people that alt tab? Ala league of legends.
Oh, this is a very important one.
While I’ve been hoping that players would have to play as the character they queued with (allowing us to get profession-based MMR) for a while – you say that we have to stay in the PvP lobby while queueing? There’s pretty much nothing to do in HotM right now, and I doubt that this is going to change anytime soon.
Since a fair number of players alt-tab while queueing already, and this is only likely to increase if we can’t faff about in PvE doing world bosses or whatever… we need some way to find out if our queue has popped without player-side workaround (like running gw2 in windowed mode and resizing other application windows to keep an eye on the game).
Check back tomorrow.
:OO Are we getting a quality of life blog today? If we get templates as well along with that, i will finally be sold on this pvp patch, even though it isn’t new modes/maps.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/go-with-the-flow/
Excellent! ^_^
so do the sigils work with eles switching attumements yet?
All on-swap sigils proc on attunement swaps for Elementalists, and kit swaps for Engineers. The April feature patch fixed a bunch of bugs, inconsistencies and exploits related to sigils.
Also, since queues can be a bit of issue right now, how goes the other quality of life changes. Did you guys implemented stuff like the gw2 icon flashing when there is a match found, for the people that alt tab? Ala league of legends.
Oh, this is a very important one.
While I’ve been hoping that players would have to play as the character they queued with (allowing us to get profession-based MMR) for a while – you say that we have to stay in the PvP lobby while queueing? There’s pretty much nothing to do in HotM right now, and I doubt that this is going to change anytime soon.
Since a fair number of players alt-tab while queueing already, and this is only likely to increase if we can’t faff about in PvE doing world bosses or whatever… we need some way to find out if our queue has popped without player-side workaround (like running gw2 in windowed mode and resizing other application windows to keep an eye on the game).
Maps. Ready checks.
I am so looking forward to no more Skyhammer 4v5s. Cheers for finally getting these improvements sorted for PvP!
Good players know how to change builds to make this map a fun map rather than players who don’t know how to change builds and hate this map because they often find themselves in the pit because a good player put them in there place.
Okay, this is the issue that you really don’t seem to understand:
Many ‘good players’ are posting in this thread, and are very capable of rerolling their build for Skyhammer.
Maps requiring different playstyles and setups are very good things to have in the game, to keep things varied and interesting and prevent a few specific strong setups from dominating the entire PvP meta.
Most of the people who continue to reply to you agree on these things.
However, we feel that Skyhammer’s individuality should not come from an instagib mechanic, and that such a mechanic does not belong in ranked PvP - it belongs in a minigame, if anything.
It’s particularly bad that the way to make use of this mechanic is unevenly spread across classes: control effects are king on this map, but the classes are balanced on their overall combination of damage, control and support and certainly don’t have equal access to each.
Compare the CC availability between Engineer and Elementalist – specced for max access to control skills, the Engi will come out on top by far – but it can’t do the same single-target burst, or AoE sustained damage, as the Ele is capable of. This is variety. This is very good to have. The classes have different sets of roles that they can bring to a team.
The requirement that people respec for this map removes a lot of that variety – if folks are expected to run Skyhammer-specific builds, with their overwhelming focus on control and the mitigation thereof, certain classes immediately become inferior.
This shouldn’t be happen on any map; while varied arenas will clearly encourage use of different builds for different situations, there should be no need to completely change class to be effective on a ranked solo queue map.
Combat is of course meant to involve strategic positioning, and good use of terrain. However, if someone gets a knockback on a foe with full health, they should not then get a kill unless they follow up with damage, from direct attacks or conditions or an ally’s assistance in providing these.
Removing the need for this allows damage dealers to score a free kill without blowing any cooldowns (or spending initiative) apart from the 1-2 used to get their enemy onto the panel. It allows some bunkery setups, like Decap Engi, to get kills on their own while dealing minimal damage – so all of their stats can go into survivability making them far more effective than such a bunker should be.
Please stop saying “just reroll lol” and actually respond to the arguments people are presenting.
It’s been clearly stated a number of times that a lot of Skyhammer haters know about the troll builds, and have run such setups on the map ourselves. We are very capable of rerolling to be more effective on the map, but this doesn’t make it fun to play on.
It’s not a l2p problem on our part.
It’s that instant kills, from builds that have any survivability at all, should have no place in competitive gw2 PvP.
Also worth noting: it still works against champion-grade foes that are Unshakable (so get stacks of Defiance).
While a stack of Defiance stops a CC skill from moving/stunning a foe, it doesn’t make them immune, it just nullifies the effect and is then removed itself.
This means that, while foes with Stability (so immunity to CC) can’t have LR procced on them… bosses with Defiance can. Huzzah for dps increase!can be hard to aim static field with blasting staff though, and you can’t use gust to push them into it (and get a double lightning rod proc to boot)
Some that work against normal enemies like blocking a path with unsteady ground won’t work on bosses either.. so you’re limited to gust, gale, earthquake, comet, the two from earth shield, and lightning leap through a lightning field (waste of charges against a boss since you’ll be going for sustained dps rather than burst), static field if you can get the edge just right,
Static Field really is a nuisance to land as a direct attack in PvE, aye – really don’t know why the Blasting Staff trait has only been fixed for targeting circles in PvP.
Static Field and Unsteady Ground still do proc Lightning Rod on bosses if they run through them, though… and you can even hit with UG on foes that aren’t moving if you aim it right.
While it doesn’t function in the same way as a Guardian’s Line of Warding (which can be placed under an enemy player to really frustrate them), if you plonk down your UG the right distance in front of an immobile foe it’ll trigger once on its own, rupting skills if they’re being cast and proccing Lightning Rod.
is this trait of any use in spvp? i tried several setups but always failed due to stability.
It’s understandably worthless against foes with high stability uptime, but most folks don’t at the moment – as I think I’ve said above I’m having a lot of fun with 6/6/0/0/2 Zerk Staff, and I’m pretty sure others mention other trait and weapon setups that are workable, too.
If you’re stuck fighting an enemy with stability, you need to either try holding out until they run out before dropping all your CC at once, or peel away and be useful elsewhere. Sadly, if you’re relying on the control/weakness for your sustain, you’ll be doing the running away from folks with high uptime – but then, you’ve gotta know which fights to take on anyway, and not pointlessly attack those who counter you while running any spec.
Or just a ’not participating’ report option, and maybe some actual, visible punishments for players who are found to be regularly not participating?
When people can openly gloat in a match that they’re not taking part in, that they do this regularly... something is very, very not okay.
So pretty much what I’d expect - cool! Ta for clarification.
How about necro’s with dual staff. There’s a mark..and look another mark over there. OMG there are marks everywhere
Doesn’t placing one mark overwrite any existing marks? Like… they last for 30s, and several mark skills have <30s cooldowns :P
Would be worst on Thieves, I think.
Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker..... it’d never stop!
does initiative reset on weapon swap?
No - there’s actually a trait that grants initiative on weapon swap, and all.
A Thief might want to run two of the same weaponset with on-swap sigils, maybe, but the vast majority of the time they’re better running Shortbow for its utility.
actually, thieves used to run dual S/D back then..it was actually meta build
Which ’back then’ is this? Not known any reasonable Thief to run anything without SB in the last year and a half or so - but I missed the earliest metas in the 6 months or so from launch.
I of course know of the first broken D/D Ele, and have heard a couple of less important things mentioned too, but don’t think anyone’s mentioned early Thief meta to me.
(edited by cheese.4739)
Would be worst on Thieves, I think.
Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker….. it’d never stop!
does initiative reset on weapon swap?
No – there’s actually a trait that grants initiative on weapon swap, and all.
A Thief might want to run two of the same weaponset with on-swap sigils, maybe, but the vast majority of the time they’re better running Shortbow for its utility.
Would be worst on Thieves, I think.
Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker, Heartseeker..... it’d never stop!
Changes I think might make our elite skills feel... useful? Less terrible?
- FGS
Let us actually use this with weapon swap. Lock us into it for 10s/out of it for 10s like other weapon swaps, sure, but don’t make all of our other weapon skills completely inaccessable while we’re using it.
Also... yeah. Fiery rush.
- Tornado
Make its active effects... active. Ground-targeted lightning bolts, targeted 900-range launch that doesn’t just waste itself most of the time. Projectile absorption (or reflection?). A way to heal - or at least cleanse movement-impairing conditions - while in the transform.
Basically, make it something we *use*, not just a fancy suicide animation.
- summons
These are sort of okay now, though only as minor dps increase in most areas of the game, or a bit of a tank for soloing upgraded camps in WvW. Actives: why are they not usable out of combat?! Surely it’d not be OP to initiate combat with a 1s stun from an air elemental?
Let’s uh. Let’s look at the last patch’s balance changes.
Elemental buff
Lesser Elemental buff
Magnetic Shield buff
Slick Shoes buff
Super Speed buff
Toss Elixir H fix
Toss Elixir C fix
Retreat buff
Bane signet buff
Maim the Disillusioned buff
Death Shroud fix/buff
Necrotic Grasp buff
Life Siphon buff
Point Blank Shot nerf
All Venoms buffed
Crushing Blow buffed
Tremor buffedOne nerf. Three fixes. Twelve buffs.
The sad part about these “buffs” is that many were not necessary, and they had to be released as part of a “feature patch”. We only saw two of those this year.
And that the ‘buffs’ to the Ele summons were actually fixes – when it was announced that we’d get to choose when they activated, Eles were pleased… then it turned out that the actives had a 3/4s cast time for the player, and the cast was then just added to the end of the current action queue. Not only did we now have to take time out of combat to cast these skills, we couldn’t even expect them to go off when they were actually needed.
The changes made, intended as buffs, actually made the summons worse in combat.
Now, as instant-casts, it’s possible to queue these actions at any time… but this might as well be done every time they’re off cooldown, because they still really aren’t reliable. Doesn’t help that they can’t be cast out of combat (no idea why?!) so not even a first hit can be timed with any accuracy.
Also worth noting: it still works against champion-grade foes that are Unshakable (so get stacks of Defiance).
While a stack of Defiance stops a CC skill from moving/stunning a foe, it doesn’t make them *immune*, it just nullifies the effect and is then removed itself.
This means that, while foes with Stability (so immunity to CC) can’t have LR procced on them... bosses with Defiance can. Huzzah for dps increase!
’Offensive support’ as in ’it doesn’t have as many blast finishers so can’t stack might nearly as well as other sets’.
You do know that it’s actually more worthwhile to play teamq games - even if you lose most of them - than it is to rank farm in a custom server?
And doing this you’ll also maybe actually, y’know, learn some PvP and not add to the pool of eejits with worthless dragon finishers.
Roll 2xMonk, 2xWater, 2xTraveler.
+15% boon duration. You’ll be unkillable.
With the halloween copypaste the ranger had updated speed.
I’m not dissing svanir/chief/lord, they’re good for testing builds in combat. But it can be fun messing around with the class npcs even though they’re all awful representations.
I really don’t see the point in the lord setup in HotM. The layout is identical at both ends of the Foefire map, so why can the training/practice one not be the same? The NPCs move around in entirely different ways in HotM, and this makes it pretty near to worthless for anyone wanting to practice a lord kill that isn’t “pull everything one by one”.
For spells that call down attacks, meteor/icebow, if you have quickness while you cast them the attacks will come faster but for the same duration resulting in more attacks. Unfortunately ele has no access to quickness normally but if you can somehow get some you can basically get free meteors. You also don’t need to keep quickness up during the attack, quickness just needs to be on when you start the cast.
I keep considering the Sigil of Rage, since if used at the start of a fight one could quite reliably get a full MS cast off during that window of quickness… but in extended fights it just feels awkward and doesn’t give any consistent benefit. Good for ganking, I guess?
I’m not 100% sure about this, but I have a feeling that when I was trying the Lightning rod build, #5 earth – Shockwave procced it too. Can someone try this please? I’m at work now so I can’t confirm…
It shouldn’t. In PvE there are what I call “mini mobs” that can be interrupted by anything. A good example of these mobs are the new menders in Silverwastes. Lightning Rod DESTROYS those little buggers. You may have poped to air and hit your aura out of habit, that may have caused it.
I was trying the build quite some time before Silverwastes occured, so that’s not the case.
However, Lightning rod doesn’t work on interrupt-only, it was buffed.
description now: “Disabling an enemy causes them to be struck by a lightning bolt.”Even though Immobilize not being listed under the “disabling” conditions, I think it worked with this trait. I may be wrong of course, it’s quite some time back…
It almost certainly wasn’t your Shockwave that did it; LR is only procced by ‘hard’ CC, that are broken by stunbreaks – so the only condition that can trigger it is fear (since that’s affected by both cleanses and stunbreaks).
Did you have a Sigil of Air equipped that might’ve procced (and all those lightning bolts do look identical…)? Switch to Air Attunement for the 3pt trait proc? Any allies that might’ve applied weakness? Did you have either Static Field or Unsteady Ground up that they could’ve run into?
As Bluefox suggested, did you have a Shock Aura? You won’t’ve had that from your weapon (Staff for Shockwave means no Shocking Aura), but could it have been granted to you by someone else or some runes?
Trident has Air Bubble, Undercurrent, Rock Anchor, and Static Cage.
Oi! You missed one! You can Tidal Wave through the combo field of the Static Cage!
I’m really very sad that we don’t have Capricorn any more; locking down single targets in CC chains, proccing LR a whole bunch of times, could be great fun!
BA+LR? I’ll look these up, then. Not watched many player videos in a while >_<
What, not introduce relatively new players to this RNG gemstore item that can give shiny loot? Yeah this is *not* going to happen.
Just... why are you not okay with the current Tomes of Knowledge? Unless you’re regularly deleting your level 80 characters, you should be earning loads of Tomes if you regularly PvP.
Your idea really does encourage people to PvP for a short period to get this significant account buff, and then never look in again. We already have Tomes, you can’t use them regularly if you don’t PvP regularly, and it wouldn’t require a rework of the entire economy.
Why? I’ve leveled five characters (five!) from 0 to 80 only with tomes of knowledge (and some scroll of Experience)!
I don’t think your proposal is necessary, it’s rather redundant, actually.
Yeah I actually forgot to use an Experience Scroll and used all 80 Tomes of Knowledge on one of my insta-80s.
The existing Tomes system is actually rather a lot better than rank-tied levels would be – for a start, your suggestion really would encourage people to farm up to r80 over a few months and then never look at PvP again, for a start.
Also um… y’know Black Lion Key farming?
- make new character
- do l10 personal story
- get black lion key, bank it, delete character
- do it again and again and again
This was one reason for the new ‘batches of 10 levels’ personal story nonsense – it’s probably the main reason the lowest-level story now starts at l10, since it takes time to get to l10 (or significant use of limited resources like Experience Scrolls or Tomes).
Letting people insta-80 would undo all of this – and actually make keyfarming a good deal faster than before, since folks could equip a full set of ascended zerk gear every time, as well as invest in l80 dps trait lines (or useful minor traits in other lines), and pop food and utility consumables.
….yeah.
You guys really think it would be broken? I’m not talking about assigning the skills per skill I’m just saying setting 1 to 4 of the attunements to one of two (max) weapon sets.
Most definitely. The weapons all do different things:
Staff is long-range, large-area spells, with a good mix of damage and support. Combo fields! Woo!
It lacks ways to deal with foes who are nearby – two of its CC skills rely on foes running into them to function, and the other is hardly an accurate projectile.
At the opposite end, we have D/D. Short-range spells, again good damage and support but not of the kind that allies can interact with – and you have to be right next to them and your foes to do things.
Okay so what if we took the high, sustained DPS from Staff Fire, the water and ice fields from Staff Water, and the mobility and control available to D/D with their Air and Earth? Earthquake and Updraft to keep people inside a Meteor Shower?
How about S/D for Fire, Air and Earth… and just taking Staff for those water fields? Can you say ‘frequent high burst heals while dishing out damage and control in close quarters’?
Well, if you join onto the winning team later, no, you don’t get the full 500 points. Of course it is more profitable to join the winning team, but it kind of sucks that the only strategy in hotjoin is to get an early headstart and then outnumber the other team until the end.
It’s not ‘the only strategy’, but it’s… very clear that an awful lot of people play by it. Watch teams at the start of a hotjoin match, and usually one of them will have an extra player. When someone joins the other team? Boom! Instantly, team #1 gets its extra player again. People can and do skill-stack and it’s ridiculous and stupid and terrible, for what’s meant to be casual, low-stakes, fun-introduction-to-PvP matches.
And aye you don’t get the full 500 if you join the winning team partway through… but in the time it takes to earn 50 rank points from time on a losing team, you’d’ve ‘earned’ have 125 from being on the winning team (assuming time scaling is linear; I don’t really know). It’s worth several minutes of waiting to get a spot on the winning team, rather than join the losing team, if you wish to maximise rewards.
And that’s not even taking into account that when the winning team is properly dominating, it can be pretty hard to score even that one kill or decap that’s needed to qualify for loot after the match. Huzzah.
(That being said, every now and then I have been in balanced hotjoin matches that were head-to-head and very much fun to play. It happens – it just happens less and less as people get better at circumventing the mechanisms that were put in place to ensure balanced teams.)
Oh aye it’s still definitely posible to get entire games that are at least somewhat evenly balanced skill-wise and in which one team doesn’t outnumber the other.
I wouldn’t say that people ‘circumventing the mechanisms’ is the problem, though; again, it’s a symptom of unbalanced matches, that people will so readily force autobalance when stuck on a 4v5 team.
In a match that gets 5 players on each team for the start… it’s not possible to switch teams. It’s only possible to force autobalance if already outnumbered. Since the autobalance system only kicks in when one team is ahead on numbers by 2+ players, it’s possible to play entire matches while outnumbered without it coming into effect.
This is terrible.