Guild Wars 2

piffdaddy.8014:

… and if air attunement skills get recharged on critical hit then I will be shooting gusts of wind at everybody and static fields left and right!

Wrong! that would be so freaking OP, fresh air will just reset air attunement cd, not skills cd.

its not about rng, it should works like cleansing, so it corrupts last boon applied, its probably based on a stack, when you remove a boon/condition it works “last in, first out”.

ah didnt know you could dodge it, anyway its not OP, but will still be a funny tool to drop in WvW, i bet not many ppl in a zerg will be smart enough to dodge, put stability, or else; at least it could be a good way to split the zerg and kill those left behind / out.

yet, if those notes are true, we can get perma stability => near to death moved to master + foot in grave = 3s stability every 5s, assuming you have enough LF building to do that, otherwise you could also run well of power, so you can achieve a really long stability rotation.
Anyway doesnt really look like a big trouble cause even if you are in stability you’ll still eat the dmg, and something like this would really fit in the role of a wellspammer: staying in the center of an area denial.

sorrow.2364:

Don’t forget that Spectral Wall is 14 (or 16, can’t remember) seconds when traited.
Just imagine a 14 seconds of “You can’t pass here” wall.
2 necros can permablock an entire zerg of players entering a castle in WvWvW.
How can you guys think that those patch notes are remotely possible?

Cant you really think to a counter to a fear wall ? i mean…..really ? never heard about stability ? lol
Guardians has 3 skills working the exact same way (line of warding, circle, sanctuary),

how can you think that this isnt possble ?

Its hylarious how ppl are already whining so much about this new condition without even know how strong it will be, how many stack it will be possible to drop at once, and mainly that it will be a condition thus scaling on condition damage, so wont make busrt builds on mesmers and thief any better (specially considering which weapons/skills are going to host torment :p).
Some are reacting to this like torment will instagib you when u move a step lol, wont be the case for sure, not sure about this but i read it will deal 75% of bleeding dmg if u stand still, and 150% of bleeding dmg if u move…. which means that at best will be 160dmg per tick, on a low access condition…..
I wouldnt worry too much about it, its just going to help a little those weak condition builds to give some chance of build diversity to mesmer and thief.

I feel the same, if those notes werent real at all Anet would have said that.
It might be an intentional, not-finished list of changes, so to get some feedback to do some tweaks right before the actual patch.
In conclusion they are probably not the final version we will actually see, anyway i hope it will be close to that + something more, it would finally be a patch worth of the name.

Having more access to blind on a necro would be cool, mainly because it would have some synergy with chilling darkness trait, that atm is almost useless.

Could you post here the source link to any talk about a weakness boost ?

I gotta agree with Empathetic, Rank could stay as long as it is now, but there must be something really cool to get once you reach higher ranks, as for now rank is totally pointless.
If it was for me i would reset all ranks, and set them based on the tournament wins, like 500 rank points for each victory, and no more rank points gain from hotjoin, only glory; so that normal skins and crafting materials could be bought with glory, but cool stuff will still be rank related, so only those who win tournaments will deserve high rank good-looking gears.

same, played since headstart, over 3k matches played, hundreds of tourneys, and i’m rank 43-44, i also play pve and wvw sometimes but…. even if i did only spvp i would be maybe rank 50, at most 53……. in 8 months….. yeh maybe they overdid.

PowerBottom.5796:

cuge.5398:

what u are suggesting is a total rebuilding of the game, just forget it, it will never happen.

Why?

Just throw it out there, they don’t need to balance the game around it, but just let us try stuff out for the odd possibility that it works out phenomenally and warrants further balancing. Just let us take our PvP-chars with all the skills, traits, runes etc. into the Map and change the Buffs so they give Points or Stat-Boosts and then just let us play with it.

Maybe it works out well and ANet sees that it’s a good Game-Mode that needs no balancing that would conflict with the balancing of the Conquest-Mode or maybe it could be solved with simple adjustments to the Map.

Why not give it a try?

They don’t need to force it to work if it wasn’t meant to be, but maybe the Gods are gracious and everything falls in place, all the Planets aline etc. and it simply works! ^^’

I was responding to Milo.

Anyway that map wont be any good for competitive pvp, it just isnt designed for it and wont work. It isnt a matter of trying it out, its a matter that they dont want to put in another pvp mode, dont ask me why….

What i was dreaming in my previous post its still something different from capture the point mode, its more based on teamfights, more similar to what gw1 pvp was, and its not impossible to realize at all, yet, i’m afraid it will stay a dream :\

what u are suggesting is a total rebuilding of the game, just forget it, it will never happen.

People are incredible…. dragon ball arena is a mini game with 0 depth, if someone prefers it to spvp he doesnt deserve to type on this subforum.
PvP needs more depth, not less, last thing we need is to have it trivialized to become totally dull.

Yet…. an idea behind this minigame would be really appreciated as a pvp mode:
a team dethmatch, with different architectural levels and different locations that can be seen from the main location, so that a team can check where the other team is going; and in each of these locations there is a buff that will require a time to commune with it, then it will give some advantages to that team or disadvantages to the other team.
We can imagine many exaples of these buffs:

Prayer to Dwayna: increase healing power by 400 and boon duration by 40% for 90 seconds.
Balthasar Strength: Both teams gains 250 power for 60 seconds after that time enemy team takes a damage equal to 20% of their max HP.
Word by Lyssa: Increase condition duration by 30% and cause a random condition on the enemy team every 15 seconds for 90 seconds.
Kormir’s blessing: increase revive speed by 20% and HP by 20% for 180 seconds
Protection of Melandru: Reduce CC duration by 40% and increase armor by 300 for 90s
Grenth’s curse: enemy team get 172 dmg every 3 seconds for 60s, healing efficiency reduced by 20%

those buffs spawn should be planned to give a chance to each team once a buff is taken. For example: after 30s spawns Balthazar strength, Team A wins the teamfight and commune with it (a voice annouce it), then both Kormir and Melandru spawns so that Team B must choose if to take Kormir buffs to negate balthazar effect and take the advantage of high speed ress in a high dps teamfight or try to stop team A that might go to Melandru buff.
This way lots of teamfights will happen, granting bonus to the winning team, but at the same time providing a choise to the defeated one.

The map should be designed like a ring with circular rooms (sort of altars of the gods) for each buff, and each room connected to a central one so that a team can decide to take the faster way…. but they might incur in the other team doing the same.

….this would be so epic….. yeh yeh i know, i’ll keep dreaming :\

They wont remove downed state because they cant, the game is designed around downed state.

What upset me is that they had enough time and devs to create a new map with new mechanics just for a temporary event…. but they didnt do it for the real pvp.
I wouldnt like to say this, but i’m loosing my faith, the only reason i can see is that they just dont want to.

As stated manny times, main problems with wells is that their effect are really poor compared to their duration/cd.
WoD is cool (vs melee attackers) but its cd is definitely too long, 60cd for an aoe blind that you can easily jump out of it.
WoP, to be effective it would require more ppl to stay inside it for all its duration…… nice a whole group packed into a spot ready to get smashed by an aoe storm; its effect is definitely too slow to be nearly good, and kitten ! its on 60cd too! why the kitten 90% of support skills has to be a total crap ?
WoC is the only possible second well paired with WoS, cause they are both good for dropping some aoe on a point. (and being offensive skills they have shorter cd lol ok, got it, they didnt want a game where ppl choose skills to play togheter)

Every well should be at 40s like WoB
WoP should be converting 2 conditions/sec
WoC should be converting 2 boons/sec
WoD effect is fine, just need cd tweak
WoS fine.

Once you manage to go deeper into the game you can realize that the real problem isnt just this or that profession, but its more a whole state of the game problem.
Both mesmers and necros (i can speak for these two cause are my main professions) have a kittenload of interesting builds, the problem is that, for how the meta works now, 80% of those builds are not a good choise compared to the few most used builds.

One of the reason i see this happening is because the actual game mode for pvp force the team to split to different objectives, so you cant run a team comp based on mutual support and complementary builds (what a high lvl teamfight would require), cause if you just stay togheter and “zerg”, you will get outplayed easily.
This is why most players in your team must be as more self sufficient as possible, thus reducing drastically the amount of viable builds.
Sure there are roles to cover, but they are reduced to bunker and dps…. bunkers stay on the point to eat the damage, while dpsers float around trying to kill enemies dpsers.

I already wrote a possible solution to this, so i wont write it all again since this is “mesmer state” topic, there are so many other builds i would love to use on my mesmer, but as OP said i’m forced to put 20 points to get clone on dodge and 30 points to get iPersona…… and considering we are going to be bursty other 20 points will definitely go into power, so it ends up being 20/20/0/0/30; but for example in WvW i use a 20/20/30, and i have lot of fun with it, but it would be totally useless in tourneys, cause it has no burst at all and its not a bunker either cause it relies on stealth.

Karahol.9840:

Introduce more objectives on map to attack/defend instead of having vast, useless areas filled with animals and specific routes that give people little space to maneuver.

What i was suggesting about dolyaks would work in that sense, they could become a new important objective to fight for.

Karahol.9840:

Score will be determined based on the successful defences/attacks a server makes. No points will be added for holding for 8 hours (when everyone is sleeping) a structure

This was suggested already, many months ago, and i think i was an active part on that suggestion. Actually points gain on Successful events rather then on hold-time will greatly reduce night capping issues; even if it might get even bigger zergs.

About removing npc, mobs, and most of sieges weapons…. just wont happen, cause they are part of the game mode, its not a pure pvp like sPvP, its WvW, which is a grey zone between PvE and sPvP.

Anyway i would be totally up for a point system rework.

It was long but i managed to read all about the first post…. was a nice read.
I think most of us, writing in this subforum, gave their opinion to Anet, about what is pvp now, and what we feel to be the right direction. Now there isnt much else we can say,
we can just hope that they will consider making those important changes needed to raise competitive pvp.

Budg.3064:

These changes would only further unbalance WvW against an outmanned server.

I dont see it that way, the server with biggest numbers will always win, we cant escape that, but with aoe cap removed at least you can inflict more losses on the bigger zerg than you can do now.

Budg.3064:

Seige being so easily deployable in its current state allows small teams of people to at least attempt to defend themselves and their towers. If supply cost per seige went up to those extreme levels losing servers would almost never be able to defend themselves, further increasing the score gap between winning and losing servers.

Can u really defend a tower with few ppl manning siege weapons ? I dont think so… atm a zerg isnt getting any real harm from these. Instead, if that small group could actually kill ppl with stronger weapons they could have a chace to defend…. then ofc the zerg can counter treb that tower… but it would surely take them a much bigger effort.

Deniara Devious.3948:

And all for… just for such “fun” that somebody can kill 50 guys with a single Treb shot and get gazillion badges and loot bags for being so “skilled”.

We’d better just ‘reset’ our discussion here, cause you totally missed my point and you are just heating up on the siege dmg fact.
My point is that many things, (almost everything i’d say) in WvW should be boosted in all its aspects (both effect and cost to balance it) to make things more meaningfull, and to give some good reason to actually care and work for them or against them.
The main focus imo should be on supply management: increased effect of upgrades (maybe higher lvls of upgrades ?), and a general increase of the need of supply, so that playing around it becomes more important, and this is where the increased cost for sieges comes from.

You need sieges to take keeps → more supplies needed to drop sieges & less dolyaks but heavyly loaded → new battle focus around supplies play.

Increased damage for sieges comes to justify the increased costs.

@Deniara
Night capping is a problem that exists since launch, and i think its something that cannot be solved in any way, but tiers reduce it naturally. If a server dont have enough coverage it will go down till he stops in a tier where its coverage is similar to its one.

About the 50ppl killing blow by a treb, jeez, i’d love to see that….
Trebs shot slow flying big rocks, that you can see coming and you can move away, or even stay and dodge.
If 50 ppl are all standing packed in a spot waiting for that big rock to fall on their heads , well, they deserve to become a big pizza on the ground.

@Arganthium: the problem with dolyaks is that there is no way to defend them, for how well you defend them a suicide mission will still kill it, doesnt matter how many ppl you have around the dolyak, a single rush of 2-3 ppl could still kill a yak defended by 30; they will die ofc, but the yak will be aswell, and 250 supplies will be lost.
With a revamped importance of yaks a new system to defend them is necessary, and to say something for Salluks too, this will also bring some really nice open fields fights
around the defense/attack of the yaks.

@salluks: you are seeing a “siege wars 2” just cause anyone can place them without any problem, we dont want that too, thats why we are suggesting such an increase supply need for each weapon. At that point you wont see anymore a forest of arrow carts or a whole line of trebkittenting a wall, and with such a power on a single treb/golem will make them a real danger, so that ppl will have to group around it to defend, and others will need to push to destroy it, wich is actually an open field battle to prevent building.

About supplies and dolyaks, new strategy layer
We can keep going with our refrain, cause even yaks really feels like…. little stuff, who cares about defending a yak ?
It carries just 75 supplies, they spawn often, its boring to escort and even if you do a high dpser that jumps on it on a suicide mission can still kill it even if 5+ ppl are defending it, so why bothering ?
People usually start to care about yaks when they are on a long defense and they are running out of supply, at that point they start defending yaks.
As usual, the suggestion is to make them really more important. When you have many things of a kind and arent worth much you dont consider them important, while when you have few and those few really do help you alot…. thats when you consider it important.
Thats why our suggestion is:

Change Dolyak spawn time for each one per route every 15m, let them bring 250 supplies, and make so it will be possible to actually defend them.
This can be done in 2 ways:

• Make a circle around yaks, and let them be invulnerable while there are players inside it defending the dolyak; once all defenders are dead or are pushed outside the circle the dolyak can be killed.
• Make dolyak stats scale with the number of players (similar to what happens with pve events), and when it gets killed it drops its supplies, so that attackers can steal those or defender can save them.

With such a need of many supply upgrading towers and keeps will become something really important, cause they will function as big supply warehouse (maybe the max cpacity would need an increase), and having a fully upgraded building as base from where to start a siege would become a real tactical advantage.

This changes would lead to more action around the supply management, that will actually become a relevant role to cover, specially with sieges requiring that many supplies to be built. This way also small groups will have a really important role, cause zerg wont be able to be everywhere, they can be attacking a keep, or defending it, or providing supplies for a siege weapons, or killing/escorting a yak, but wont be able to do all of this. More relevance to organized groups, skilled players, and good commanders.

wow, nice wall of text i dropped here, pls be constructive, no trolls and have fun.

About siege weapons
At the moment they really look like…little stuff, disposable tools which you can drop 1…2…10….20, do the job and then dont care anymore. Yeh, sure they are fundamental in a siege, but you can place so many that when you build one, it doesnt really feel
that good. Siege weapons should have greater impact on a battle, they should be greater, stronger, and harder to build.
When a zerg run into a camp defended with a ballista and arrow carts right now they just rush in and destroy everything just passing over it, even when you have few ppl a siege wepon is nothing scary at all, you can just jump on it and destroy it with few attacks.
A ballista shot should be able to do some serious damage to a crwod of ppl all packed togheter, it has to pierce the pack and leave a line of dead and bleeding bodies….if they are so dumb to charge all packed in front of a ballista.
Same goes for catapults, i mean, those things are throwing big rocks that have one falling on your head should just leave tomato sauce on the ground.
Trebs… well, those are even bigger rocks, big enough to take down walls and towers, ofc its not anything a squad of infantry in an open field should worry about… o.o

The main idea is to amplify all: cost, damage, resistance, but also their importance once they are built.
This is why we would to suggest for example:

Arrow carts: 60 supply, double damage, halved fire rate.
Ballista: 180 supply, 12k – 20k dmg, single target but piercing hit, fire rate: 10s
Catapult: 240 supply, 8k – 14k dmg, on a 240 area, knockback for 300, fire rate: 12s
Treb: 700 supply, 25k – 35k dmg, on a 360 area, knowckback for 450, fire rate: 18s
Golem: 900 supply, higher damage than now and way way harder to kill (atm you can 1v1 a golem easily =.=)

Taking down these sieges shouldnt be something that easy, the time needed to destroy them should be proportional to the amount of supplies used to built them. This way building a siege is a big investment for a siege or a defence, not a little thing you drop when you have too many in your inventory. (It would be good also to be able to repair them bringing supplies)

How would things change ?
Siege weapons would require some wise placement and some serious efforts to actually build them, but the reward would be important aswell.
This could open a new layer of strategy around the siege weapons building and the job of scouting building sites for smaller groups.

But with cap removed and these dmg, some siege weapons will be able to waste a whole zerg !?
If the zerg is so dumb to straight charge in front of them, yes, and thats what has to happen. ‘Situation awareness’ many say, once you get wiped you learn that maybe you didnt do it the best way. A good commander will send his scouts to check if there are sieges defending, in that case, knowing their position, will lead the zerg on another side or in case, he can choose a different approach and counter them with ranged attacks.

There still is the problem, they would take a lot of supply to build! Drying out a whole camp wont even be enough to build a cata!
Hold on, read the following point.

After 8 months of play, on different servers, different regions, and many matchups, me and some friends felt the need of sharing our thoughts on how we see WvW going.

We can start this throwing a question that you can try to answer to yourselves:

When do you feel you (and your group) are doing something really important, determinant, for your server ?

The answer is usually “When we take a castle/keep/tower”. Fact is that what mainly leads to this achievements isnt a server strategy with coordination across the map, to best manage server resources, but is a …. zerg rush to the gate. Ok, there might be more clever rushes then others, but usually thats what happens, there isnt really much left for smaller groups roaming the maps to support the zerg (except flipping camps).
Most of times we realize that what the meta leads us to think is….
“they took a camp!” -> “oh, k, you can flip it back in some min”
“they took a tower!” -> “never mind, we got a zerg close there, we’ll get it back asap”
“they took a keep!” -> “our zerg is busy on another borderland, but no worries, they’ll jump back here to get it back asap”
“they are sieging us! they built a treb…no wait, two…. three now!” -> “mh.. k, we will portal bomb there and go kamikaze style to destroy all of them”

What i want to say with these trivial, yet usual situations is that seems like there isnt something really meaningfull we can do, there isnt much tactics we can use, or any big plan needed to take a keep, most of things are…little stuff.

We think that some easy changes could be done to improve the metagame, providing more strength to organization yet still allowing PuGs to jump in the first zerg passing by and feel important for taking part to a big siege; but behind this there should be smaller groups, coordinated by commanders to make that siege possible.

About AoE 5 targets cap
It has been discussed alot, yet we want to refrain it, its a mechaninc which is just encouraging big zergs and no brain play.
Atm Numbers just win over skilled play, cause if you sneak charge a zerg with a group of 5 ppl, you’ll just hit 5 out of 30-50, even if they are stacked, which is totally dumb, while the group will just get wiped, and those 5 downed will be ressed by the rest of the zerg.
You can group up as many as possible, pack all togheter and rush everything (blobs), if an AoE lands 5 will be hit, others wont even notice something hit them.

Are you afraid that AoE spamm will be too strong then ?
AoE in every other game has the advantage of being able to hit more ppl, but ofc they do less dmg on a single target, this is something that some Dev actually mentioned on forums, but i didnt see any change happening on this matter.
Once the damage is decrease removing aoe cap wont be such a trouble anymore, but it will be possible to a good group to control and kill more ppl in a brainless zerg, sure they wont kill all of them, but at least it wont be pointless.

1) https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/About-pvp-teamwork-and/first#post2073141

2) general class balance

3) new pvp modes involving more teamfights rather than splitting the team.

Everything Myrmidian Eudoros.4671 said, yes please, just fix that stuff that way.
Not much else to say on this topic.

I dont think they ever said they wanted a non-tactical game, action is ok, the ability to dodge and teleport, move quickly, makes the game way more dynamic, which is not necessarily bad, and we could have both tactic and quick action.

GankSinatra.2653:

There are no healers, so that kind of support is gone. […]

Getting actual support chars is going to take a lot of work. Even more so when no support will ever put out enough healing to overcome focus fire on either himself or an ally.

Actually many classes have different tools to heal and support the group, so its not gone; what i wanted to highlight is the fact that noone builds himself around those tools cause they would be totally uneffective considering the amount of dps that can be produced in a small timeframe.
I think Devs had a concept at the beginning, and they wanted every class to be able to support allies, and so they introduced those tools, then they worked on dps, and between a fix and a nerf during their internal tests they somehow lost track of the original idea and we got to the point where dps totally overcome support.

The problem with comunication is that devs got told not to say a word about issues that the company still dont have a certain plan for.
So if you ask them about balance of a specific class they cant tell us anything cause then ppl would say "but that time you said …….. ".

JonathanSharp.7094:

had some of the best mobility (their old Death Shround #2 was a ground targeted teleport!)
-Chap

Funny, some time ago i suggested dark path to be changed to ground target to help necro a little with his almost no-mobility, and now comes out that it was originaly working that way :\

:sad:sad:sad

Hi again, i’m getting more active into this topic cause some days ago i recovered some of my old “uncommon” builds i created months ago, when i still was a noobie about tpvp.
I had many ideas about full-support builds not just healing, but also boon sharing builds (mesmer) and a healing/ress/condition management build (necro) that i realized it would be freaking awesome to have such builds viable in a competitive scene.
If something like that could happen we’ll have back that role variety you are talking about. We wont see just bunkers and dpser, but also…. boonsharer, interrupt builds (based on hard CC like stun, stomp, launch and so on….), healers, ressers.
Even warriors could fill a support role, cause if you look at tactics traits atm you would think they suck, but if all this could become true warr could be some really worth tanky resser with good CC.
Atm i main a shatter mesmer in tpvp, but i would gladly give up that mind wrack burst if all damage was toned down to switch to my boonshare build.

What makes me hope and sad at same time is that really seems like devs were thinking about all this, cause there are already traits and skills that could be good for support role, but for some unknown reason then they got it all screwed by making all this tools not viable for how they built the rest of the pvp.

It wouldnt even require new coding to fix things, since everything is already there, just carefully think about how to change stuff and go into game database and adjust some numbers.
The problem is that they arent doing it cause they are afraid to screw things even more…. and i can understand that, but being more interactive with pvp community might help this. For example, setting up some test servers where some players are invited to test this kind of changes and provide a serious feedback.
Its not something unreal, they have done it already before the game was released.

Griffon.4716:

I am going to attempt to not sound like an elitist but it probably is going to sound somewhat like that.

Indeed, thats what it sounded like. Dont assume everyone who write here is a noob.
I know how to dodge in a 1v1, but i was talking about are teamfights, not duels.
When you are in a teamfight and you get focused by a coordinated team that times CC on you and then get you bursted, you can dodge one, then you’ll get caught by the second and trust me, you have no chance except for an invulnerability or a blink to save yourself, but that kind of tricks cant be always up and ready.

milo.6942:

they need to step away from trying to make each class viable at every role — this is a recipe for homogenization, not exciting pvp.

Actually i stated quite the opposite. But this wasnt the main point; the core was on how to improve the teamwork to an higher level and not just be a (focus dps → down → stomp → next target ) play.

Just drop this thing about boxing, and lets go back to the game.
Its really more interesting to read some suggestions on what would make a match much better to watch.
Its true that with the actual game modes there arent many surprising turns of the battle, even if not impossible, but its mostly unidirectional.
I’m curious to hear opionions on how to change this.

Any solutions ?

Following this line gets me to think that overall damage needs a tone down in order for support role to be effective. Not just on that class or on that other one, but a global reduction (maybe on dmg clac formual) so that we dont have one class that risk to be nerfed more than others. Toning down damage equally on everything doesnt gives advantage to someone more than to someone else, just open some space support/heals.
Bursting someone down shouldnt be something that a single member can achieve….alone; i can see its right to happen when a team coordinates CC + boonstacking + spike damage.

Problem that might arise with such a change and why its not actually a problem

You might argue that with the reduced damage and chance to burst, there will be even more bunkers with new added healers sitting on every points and it would become impossible to take them out of there. Well, as many stated, its a problem of game mode, with some little changes that have been suggested already, the capture mode could shift more toward the teamfight and step a bit away from the “sit-on-the-point-mode”.
A team full of bunky healers wont be able to kill anyone in a well balanced team, and a full dps team would feel like they are missing something compared to a balanced team that can easily sustain the fight.

p.s.
I know lot of these things have been pointed out already, but maybe if we get more and more ppl into this we might get something good.

(Beware! Wall of text following)

Many discussions are going on in these forums, and thx to those, confronting myself with other players, i have recently stopped a bit to think about what the game offers and how it could be improved to suit more for the “pro play”.
I personally hate QQs so i would like to open a constructive, QQ-free topic, where we can discuss about how to raise the pvp skillcap (thus improving effectiveness of teamwork in a teamfight) without making the game hard to learn for new players.

[Dont jump on me if you dont agree with what i’ll state later on, lets just try to point out something good, cause if Anet actually tells some truths, they do read and talk about good threads. ]

Taking out the holy trinity…

As was stated on other topics, GW2 took out the holy trinity, which was a good and brave step away from the usual formula. Some can dislike the idea or love it (i would love it), but seems like the holy trinity, and its innate teamwork factor didnt get its proper replacement.

By taking out a dedicated healer role, all professions needed some self-sustaining abilities, and the support role could spread on every profession rather than being focused on one or two of them; this could be really good, cause it could bring a great variety of setups in different teams. Any profession should be able to cover different
roles with different builds, thus increasing the variety of the encounters in a match.

Fact is that all this possible variety isnt happening, we mostly see same classes built and playing in the same way, specially at higher pvp levels. I was asking myself why ? Is it cause ppl lack of creativity ? I dont think so, at least I dont, in every game I step I always take my time for buildcrafting experiments.
In the time i spent in this game i tried every profession and a kittenload of builds, and not just the most used, i deeply explored many classes possbilities, untill (quite soon actually) tried out some full-support oriented builds.
Cause you know, if there can be full dps builds, tanky builds, why not full supportive builds ? Someone should be allowed to choose a support build for his team setup and his actions should actually be as decisive as a dps spec.

An interesting question to put is “When are you really decisive in the flow of a battle?” (not considering game mode for now, just a basic teamfight), probably the common answer would be, when i burst down my target (or stomp it).

…left us with tanks, busters and…. what about support?

Support doesnt feel to be such a decisive role, infact you dont see crowds of support builds running around, why ?
What i think should happen is: player X is getting focused -> call for help -> allies protect/heal/support him.
This just cant happen here for a simple reason, by the time you say “i’m – getting – focused”, unless you are a bunker you are probably down already. So here start the race to who burst more, focusing on the target, this leads to building bunkers that are able to survive against burst builds.

From what stated above seems like support can’t be effective for a matter of “low expected time to live”, <<dont bother healing allies, by the time you unleash your ‘powerfull’ heals they’ll be down already>>.
Yeah i know, lately i spoke like the only form of support is healing, yet its also preventing damage, cleansing conditions, applying boons; But many skills able to provide that kind of support has really a short effect compared to their cooldowns, or to say this better…. considering how quickly an ally can be downed, trading dps for support doesnt look a good choise.

I didnt play much warrior, but from what i could experience from playing with it and against it, i realized that warriors problem isnt the damage they can put out but actually landing the hit, in most cases, and sustaining themselves during the battle.

As said, warriors are usually easy to read, their moves are predictable, and they can be controlled quite easily. Maybe they could work better if they could build up really as a “Berserker” an uncontrollable brutal force….
Dogged March was a start, but i think is not enough, they could use some ways to convert CC into swiftness or vigor, that would be awesome (hint:hint: maybe as a warhorn skill to revamp it ?? ).

Then, since they mostly are in the middle of the action, and thats where they have to be (they are not thieves that hide in shadows to backstab….. they are warriors!) they could use a trait to get protection when using a burst skill…. for example, get 1s protection for each adrenaline stage consumed.
I think adding this last one and CC conversion could actually fix the class. Cause dmg can be really good already, with 9k eviscerate and 10k killshot / 100b they should have some tools for the damage part.

p.s. oh and maybe fix also hammer a bit, looks like it is really missing something.

Lordrosicky.5813:

“The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.”

jesus, if they really think that some more hp makes necro balanced with….lets say mesmers, we are doomed.

My last creation, i’ll post the video link for any buildcrafting addicted like me, who want to try this out. I’m recently experimenting builds oriented to a support role, even if atm this seems the least effective role to play i hope one day it will make sense.
Enjoy.

We can discuss about who is right till the end of the centuries, but the reality is that we can just provide suggestions and our impressions to Anet, once done we cant do much else but hope for the better.

I wonder when “the big bosses” will see competitive pvp as a source of money as much as pve, cause at that point, maybe, they might invest more on pvp development, and we’ll have a chance to see some good changes.

Muramasma.1570:

This could potentially be corrected using the system already in place. Nearly all classes do possess a quasi-support role of some sort, the problem is that they’re much to weak to sustain a team against DPS that is much too strong. In my opinion DPS should be lowered across the board, and each class’s unique support build/abilities should be made more powerful in the context of team play. Furthermore, each class should have a viable means of shutting down said support, as well as other interesting role options (again, look to GW1 for inspiration here). The trick is that each player can’t do all these things at once, but would rather assume a role in a group that may accomplish all these things. The best part is, as each class’s mechanisms for each role differ, a wide variety of team building is made possible. This was my initial hope for the removal of the trinity, and is completely doable in the system already implemented in this game – with some intense tweaks and balancing issues, of course.

Strongly agree with this, the ingredients to bring life to support role are in game already, but the effort to use them is way larger then the reward when compared to the dps that a single player can dish out.
All my friends know i’m a buildcrafting addict, i cant stop exploring every possible way for a class, and thus i also tried to focus my 2 main (necro and mesmer) toward support role.

I think these 2 classes has some really great tools to be supportive ex:

Mez – Boonshare build: i used it with my WvW guild when shattered strength was boosted to 3 might/shatter, combined with runes of lyssa and different combos i could give my party ALL boons, including 30s fury, and 25 stacks of might.
Now, shattered strength was actually too strong but the concept of the build was really really interesting, just doesnt seem to really be viable in this kind of tournaments.

Necro – Healer/resser: healing power to the bone, well of blood was ticking for 800/s, leaving DS was aoe healing for 800 i think, at most 1k, then life transfer (DS 4) was doing something similar. When ressing someone i could create a WoB for more healing aoe.

Mez – Healer: using a trait which makes mantra heal allies when cast, with some healing power can be pushed to 2700 aoe heal + perma regen given from phantasms.

but… what are 300, 800, 2700 heal when a single shatter can do 6k-10k dmg to the whole group ? or a blade spin, or a granades throw.
Another problem with this support-play is that it requires really close range (300-600), which means the whole group should stay packed and ready to get wiped with enemy aoe.
So yeh, seems like devs wanted to put some tools in, but they didnt want them to be effective for some reasons. Its not even hard to change this, just a overall reduction of dps and an increased range on those party-support skills.

Mammoth.1975:

Assyrian.4827:

just type this in Google or YouTube and enjoy:

Guild Wars GvG : rawr vs KMD

Nice vid. It reminds me though, if you look at gw1 videos from the perspective of someone who never played it, you’d have no idea what is going on there. Great coordination, but unless you play, you just wouldn’t even realise. Spikes are so fun to watch though.

Yeh, exactly, i watched it but with all those speed up/slow down, quick pov change, i really couldnt understand much, i can just guess something about the game from what ppl say here…. so far seems to me it was more focused on teamwork in the fight, with more supportive spells and stuff like that.
I would definitely appreciate if gw2 could offer some easier way to support eachother in a teamfight, i mean, there are already some great examples of this, but its really hard to achieve it cause the gameplay is really fast, thus its more focused on players being self sufficient and then teamwork comes into play as an added good.
Its quite hard to support the team here, and most of that support plays around the downed state, interrupting stompers, ressing the downed or stealthing it to prevent stomping…
It wont be bad to have some more “decisive” support skills, that would exalt a coordinated team, like being able to make a teammate invulnerable, or cleansing conditions from him (there are ways to do this, but usually its just 1).

We arent saying necro suck and thats it (that is Warr role :p), we are just saying that atm other professions can do stuff better.
You can do tourneys with 5 necros and win, but who were u fighting against ? i mean, there are all kind of opponents you can find, and winning one or two matches with a full necro comp doesnt prove much.
We are stating actual facts, not just our feeling on the class, for example the total absence of vigor in the class, no invuln, crap mobility ecc… at least some of these points should be addressed.

I would leave barbed precision as it is, but its definitely true that necro dont have enough poison, and its really weird that classes like engi or ranger has longer poison skills than we do. (same tihng for fear but hei…)

It is also true that necros can be really good in a teamfight with a condition oriented team thx to epidemic, that can spread real panic, but…. on the actual meta, doesnt often happen to have a large teamfight, usually its 2v1 or at best 3v3, maybe if we had a sort of team deathmatch arena necro would shine some more, but even in that case some little boosts are needed anyway.

Well, about dmg logs, i think they are bugged, cause sometimes….. i do the sum and it comes up i sohuld have like over 100k HP….. you might think it had to be a very long fight…. nope usually like 30s.
Mainly happening with conditions, burning, bleeding and retaliation seems to show more ticks than what they actually did.

So many true things here. I used to have a Necro main, then i shifted to mesmer, cause i was amazed by its mobility (thing that necro doesnt have at all).
I can understand the point of view of devs, to keep Necro low-mobility, no-disengaging class, but if so, some way to keep up in the fight are really needed.

What would be really great, is to make lifesteal really worth it, since its the true Necro-only mechanic (it should have be Fear, but actually many other classes have better ones lol).

I would really love what was suggested some posts above here, make lifesteal scale with the damage. Lets do a quick analysis.

Bunkers – why are they bunkers ? they have many tools to survive through high defence + high recover abilities usually paired with some stability/invulnerability to land them.

Necro has really few way to actually recover, except the standard heal, we get like 1 or 2 sources of regen (from 75%hp trait and from staff 2), lifesteal just suck in term of recovering, it heals at best 1200, dagger life syphon, which is a 3-4 sec channeled, that can be interrupted easily and ….. how many fractions of a second do any class need to do more than 1200 damage ? so that skill is definitely not doing it fine….
The only real good way for a necro to bust its survivability with lifesteal is with a full minions build, but… yeh, try to use it in a teamfight, once minions are all melted with AoE you dont even have a heal to use :p

Glass cannons: they usually have some skill that deals a big amount of dmg in a short time, they die quickly but usually have mobility to survive.
Lets say a Power Necro can produce some really good dps, cause that true, i often use a power necro in tpvp, but…. what is it actually ? Its like a Dagger thief with higher dmg on skill 1, with 4k more hp + DS, but….. without stealth….. without backstab…… without vigor …… without shadowstep, often without stunbreaker, mh….

To tell the truth i had lot of fun with this spec, but only untill the other team realize that the biggest damage they are getting comes from me, then i usually get focused and melted in matter of seconds…… 2 seconds. I have to be more sneaky than a thief to use that spec, cause once i engage there is no way to get out of there.

In conclusion i think that if necro really has to stay a class with no mobility and no way to disengage, at least it deserve some decent ways to survive in a fight, and dont tell me DS is enough, cause once focused life force gives just u the time to say “i’m going down”.
In this game evasion and disengaging >> soaking dmg for 2s.
Improved Lifesteal would provide us a way to recover, but still we miss a way to disengage, a little mobility is still needed.
My suggestion was to make Dark Path (DS #2) a ground target skill, so that it could be possible to blink away from the focused fire, and then try to recover.

In most of games (if not all) a team that communicate well have a great advantage over the other one. In all my pvp experience even from other games i always used TS to coordinate with my mates.
The difference is that in gw2 seems really mandatory, cause of its dynamic gameplay and the need of quick reaction in term of team strategy.
This might not be really new-user-friendly, but i think any competitive pvp isnt.

off topic: everyone saying that gw1 pvp was so much better, I tried to look it up on youtube but i could only find gw2 vids, anyone can provide me a link of some good gw1 pvp ?