Guild Wars 2

+1’d but it won’t happen.

I’m having super fun using ultra poke of death with zerk build, what could be better than having DOUBLE the fun?

Morsus.5106:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

New Arcing Slice can deal ~86% of the damage of a full channel Hundred Blades in one hit, and also does it in an AoE around you. That’s a really hefty hit.

It also costs me my adrenaline, and my current build is focused around being at full adrenaline. I’m gonna have to rework it after this patch hits unfortunately.

Yeah, 2 gm traits getting hit, making them pretty unappealing for pvp. Not sure what to replace might with… Bonus adrenaline is pretty meh when you aren’t getting the bonus for it. Are burst mastery or precision really the way to go?

Bran.7425:

ens.9854:

It’s so wars can’t start a fight with adrenaline ever.

There is the option of http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Fury, but that would require making a choice… wait that is what building is all about.

Like the option or not, use the option or not doesn’t mean that it does not exist.

I use the signet currently, but a full bar of adren is not worth losing the utility slot for the full cooldown, plus it having a cast time. It is a weak skill that is only good because you can precast it (much like ranger traps) and get a small bonus when it’s off cd.

Most definitely being replaced by a stance, or possibly might signet, when changes hit

Well dragon spectate does pose one problem—apparently spectators are counted for the purposes of whether a server is “full” or not. Often a player who wants to “just watch” ends up preventing a 10th actual player from getting directed to the server via the play now button

Using fire + air sigils rekts thiefs, both are off cd every time u get to attack them and fire will show their position when it procs. Swapping from x/shield to a fire air greatsword on my warrior and doing a good whirlwind often takes off over 50% of a glass thief while evading

Ofc they only work on power spec

Be honest, powder is blatantly OP in pve too

Duran.3196:

Marcos.3690:

As long as thiefs are around, amulet is not a choice.

Go celestial or go downed.

(Ele)

Hrm i play FULL zerker DD (lightning flash, arcane wave, arcane projectile, arcane brilliance) and thiefs are my smallest problem (really rarely meet one i cant beat).

Problem are rather Terrormancers, Warriors (due to their insane invul-uptime + revenge if you down em) and to some extent power guardians. (in that order)
First is rarely played on good maps(i.e. not Skyhammer) , second is a problem hence its a very common encounter, third not that common as an encounter can be extremely annoying though.

Although your claims are suspect it doesn’t really matter if you can win ALL 1v1s versus thiefs; they will still down you in a split second and make you a liability in team fights.

Although you can do the same to them, you lack all their mobility and stealth and will thus rarely get the initiative

cheese.4739:

2) I expect there’ll be 5-10 seconds after gaining Adrenaline that it’ll start to drain, so that combos like this are possible.

There is 0 reason to believe this, the VOD from the update shows otherwise, and this would require additional coding for each of the skills that grants adrenaline

More likely the skills will behave like they do now once you’ve been out of combat for a minute ie. your adrenaline will fill up and immediately start draining out, meaning at most you can get off a level 2 kill shot (plus your skill will be on full cooldown instead of partial)

Even activating berserker stance might not work because your bar alternates between full and not full as it alternately fills and drains

Conncept.7638:

Fracturing the playerbase by elitism, obviously.

rank means nothing except that you’ve spent a good deal of time in pvp, so i fail to see how that is elitism—just rewarding time spent. People suggesting rewards based on leaderboards/tournies etc are the ones who are being elitist

Hmm well we just need a graphics mod to change them into dancing little chibi anime girls and it’ll be fine

Liewec.2896:

and for pvpers this will save us multiple relogs simply because we want to get the spam-spam-spam-glorious-spam chests to one of our 80s.

I used to have this problem until I realized you didn’t need to accept the chest on the character that earned it (except rank up chests for some reason)

Rank means you’ve spent a lot of time pvp’ing; which IMO is more than enough reason to get a few relatively minor perks. This gating is a way to restrict access to a smaller number of players to avoid the community backlash you spoke of already

Okay bank just for rank 80 pvp’ers

Marcos.3690:

Please. Ask them. Why is Skyhammer still in soloQ?

It makes the other maps feel less bad and stale. Overall they get fewer complaints cause they can just put a filter on for anything that says “skyhammer”

He’s just stating it in a really odd way, like it becomes the equivalent of hitting 7.6 times instead of 8 times (40% of one hit is 5% overall).

No idea why he finds this comparison relevant, especially in pvp where you rarely land all 8 to begin with.

Magische Boek.2530:

why is everyone saying thief’s only defence is stealth? did everyone forget we also have blinds, evade’s and teleports?

Elementary my dear Magische; because they are all WvWers that run 6 shadow arts builds with refuge.

Don’t know how you can say they are not forgiving… Free teleports out of LOS, lowest CD heal that is uninterruptible evades and creates gap… Half your larc strikes are invulnerable because you use them with a 20s cooldown dazing steal anyway that heals you even more (unless you spam it like a newb).

Compared to the stress of having <1 second to pull a shadow step out of my kitten when I am in trouble on d/p, I have never felt safer. Not to mention the d/p crutch of black powder is getting nerfed

If s/d isn’t easier than it’s just overpowered. Takes a fraction of the reflexes of d/p with less risk and way more versatility. Maybe its just the STR rune fire/air sigil setup though

Hambow is one thing, but for every other warrior, simply missing the skill at all without additional penalty was enough to make you lose a fight. Axe/mace are practically gimmick weapons only propped up by the sheer power of their burst skills

I have played enough to know that I don’t wait until I need to ‘disengage’ to avoid a fight.

They buffed its passive… you remember that it has a passive right? It IS a signet after all.

This is actually pretty severe the more I think about it.. Non longbow warriors rely on the ability to weapon swap and burst again to even have a snowballs chance in hell against condition pressure… This really cuts into build diversity forcing wars to go longbow cleansing ire or ignore conditions altogether and go full glass

There’s nothing even skillful about it with as many random blind/block/evade effects as are thrown around these days

It’s so wars can’t start a fight with adrenaline ever.

I believe they had to nerf damage because the new arcing slice is so much better than the old one… not that I necessarily agree without trying it for myself.

Well it’s true quick pockets might see a return, hard to give up shortbow though.

Bryzy #1 the ranger can have a teammate protect him and #2 the longbow dmg won’t be garbage up close now. We are talking about ranger as a DPS roamer… Anybody that can close on you from 1500 range, take 1-2 opening strikes and not be in serious hurt is probably somebody you can just run from til help arrives

All i can say is that two s/d thiefs fighting will be one sexy dance

The current longbow can wreck face and get 3-4k auto attacks and is borderline abusive with some clever positioning.

The new longbow is, quite frankly, scary.

Here’s a fun game-guess what weapons warrior will be using after the patch!

Here’s a hint-it ain’t mace

So warriors are even FURTHER pushed into hambow by adrenaline changes? Didn’t cleansing ire teach them anything? They should at least make the precision signet instant to compensate.

No idea where the damage reduction on 100b came from either, already required a specialized build, maybe this is to balance the new burst skill. The bonus on axe is certainly appreciated, could be fun with frenzy (well same with greatsword there since it has a finisher other than #3 now).

Thief s/d nerf was probably needed, but I’m not going to be angry if I get an extra evading homing attack… Will take some testing to determine if you can actually counter thief by evading it or not… Guardians will have a field day I’m sure.

Black powder change probably correct, a well placed bp was very punishing and now you can choose to attempt to fight through it… Also means you can interrupt stomps if you spam autoattack, which is kind of a big deal. I don’t think it will affect pve too much, attack speed is very slow there.

Wondering how they came up with 1050 for pistol range…?

Actually having sensible priority on these single cleanses would probably make condi classes far too balanced. As a general rule, don’t rely on small cleanses to do anything useful, just enjoy it as a small bonus of using the skill

OP talking about dueling builds. If you are WvW dueling without a dueling build you will lose. Thief is OP in most circumstances like roaming/spvp where you face normal builds

Maybe they will add unlimited asura transform tonics to the gem store

Ironically bunker guards can struggle with conditions since their cleanses are either long CD or small (albeit team wide). This is one reason ele pairs so well with them.

When your guard has to blow his virtue of resolve for cleanse is when the fight starts to go south.

Narkodx.1472:

The main reason for this is a thief will always have more gap closers than you have gap creators.

QFT. This is somewhat true with d/p as well, but in that case you can use clones to block shadow shot spam. This is also the biggest reason all zerk vs zerk match ups are skewed in thiefs favor… They can simply bypass whatever defense you are using over and over.

If you want to have any chance at all, you have to make SURE your CC lands at all costs… Thiefs run at most 2 stunbreak (be aware that shadowstep can be used twice) and signet is usually used offensively anyhow. Staff chaos circle thing is also very strong, and condi spam in general (weakness etc)

The bottom line is this—people play hotjoin. Saying they should go elsewhere is meaningless; most probably would never get see message because they are casual to begin with.

We are not just concerned about our own experience here—it sucks to see so many low skill players getting used for others’ benefit and driven away from the game. Calling it chaos is just absurd because sheer random assignment of teams would produce much better results.

There is no need for team selection, if people want to pvp with friends and be on the same side, they can queue up together for tpvp.

This thing really has me scratching my head. It should allow for a competitively viable DPS sustain, but the builds I come up with almost invariably perform better using berserker stats (mainly because cleanses are so unreliable that you need to overwhelm condi classes instead).

The one exception is of course warrior, who run sigils of battle along with both generosity/purity to full effect AND has cleansing ire and a full cleanse signet… Yet still can be overwhelmed in team fights.

Has anybody had success using this stat combo?

Evan Lesh.3295:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

this will make entering spectator mode to force auto balance working as it is intended

This is not intended behavior. One upset player should not be able to force other people to switch teams and stay in the match. Auto-balance is there to keep the team numbers even as people leave the game.

Deimos, despite his reputation, is right on point here Lesh. The fact is this thread has gotten derailed from its original spirit and you have picked on this “individual abuse” idea because it was easily singled out for attention. The real issue is the destruction of the hotjoin environment that IS the new player experience. Yes, cases of balance abusing do arise, but these are rarely the initial cause, and can combat the problem if the player rejoins the losing side instead.

I invite you to simply sit and watch a hotjoin server for several matches and observe player behavior. It is very common for players to either identify strong players by their previous perfermance or by scouting their ranks before joining (or being guildmates) and only joining their team, while the poor unsuspecting newbies, along with the rare altruist, begin to fill the opposing side. What results are long strings of miserable blowout matches as the losing side cycles through dozens of players that correctly decide to leave for a different server.

As many have suggested, the problem lies in the ability to choose sides freely at all. Hotjoin has far too great a range of player skills for this luxury to exist without abuse.

Edit: I would also like to add something I have noticed, which may or may not be reality—a few times I have seen 4v5 matches with a single idle spectator… Do players stop getting sent to the server in this case?

Timebomb it is pretty common for your DPS to have to leave fights and heal (or go somewhere else) so they don’t die, assuming they know what they are doing.

Energy sigils are a must in case you get focused. I typically focus on using CC effects so running mostly clerics is quite alright imo, condis are so unreliable these days anyhow. The biggest problem seems to be landing evasive arcana heals which seem to have a very tiny radius.

A side note is that it is very important to keep mashing 1 even without a target (annoying) so that your signet keeps healing you (it heals a lot with +healing). Staff auto attack with signet is lots of hp…

It will take a while for the meta to adapt to this ele… Teams may not need to run 4 full support builds (hambows, spirit rangers, bunker guard/engi/necro etc) because an ele + guard/ranger is enough to keep everybody nice and healthy. Cleansing is the only problem but team cleanses are flying around like mosquitos these days

Avead.5760:

Haha true eles hps is very close to being true healer. Its fine! some people enjoy helping others ,dont be selfish pricks

Made me smile

You’re right about it being a healer, ele can easily pump out more healing than other professions can heal themselves for…. using staff auto attack alone—it heals for 1k in a 240 aoe every shot

It puts ele in an interesting spot; they almost become the required first focus in any engagement, unlike support bunkers in the past. If your team has enough wellmarks/earthshaker/cleanses to spam on top of you, you may actually survive! (I exaggerate, energy sigils will still let you live forever)

I don’t believe it has an ICD… but don’t get your hopes up, it can be surprisingly hard to land interrupts on players.

They have to be doing an action, so it will randomly do nothing and also means you cannot string interrupts unless you wait for your last CC to wear off (at which point most players dodge immediately)

To follow up, I did some quick hotjoin tests with a maximum healing effectiveness build.

With 25 stacks of benev, aquatic B, and monk runes
soothing mist ~220hp/s on teammates
regeneration ~450hp/s on teammates

these are… pretty high numbers (like 1.7 healing signets?), this is not even mentioning the burst heals/blast finishers, or even staff autoattack

edit: soothing mist + battle presence + regen + healing signet #thedream

connvince.8061:

Does anyone recall the Ele dev that kept commenting on how epic this patch would be for us? It sounded like he almost felt guilty at how awesome the Elementalist class would become, and that there was a whole new world coming.

Pretty sure this was in reference to there being a new “role” that ele could fill. I assume this is the ‘healer’ role based on the new water trait. I’m not sure anybody has really tried it. Sounds like an escort mission.

QQing.3089:

Shame the new fire GM trait is single target Here I was wanting an OP perma blind ele :P

yeah pretty sad for GM trait

You can also use multiple stances at the same time but nobody is complaining about that.
You should probably get a qualified flavor judge in here to discuss it

Part of the problem is that the difference between rewards for winning vs losing is not visible enough… People STILL think you get rank points based off score so they try to maximize their own instead of trying to win.

Also hotjoin players are bad (or hopelessly proud) and more often let themselves get ganked when they should just run away which only makes zerging more effective

We want people coming in to farm cheap ranks because in that amount of time they may realize they enjoy pvp and stick around. Or if not, at least they devoted some hours and increased the playerbase

Anybody who claims they are leaving over this is either a troll and will end up playing still or just wants an excuse to move on from a game they don’t really like.

It’s time for the elitists to suck it up for the benefit of the game overall. They are an itty bitty minority after all

ele is the only one that it could be useful on anyway

Nothing on thief happens that fast, especially since haste got nerfed

Well I think anet is trying to get away from things that REQUIRE you to play one type of game mode absurd amounts. The new ranks will already be difficult for players to obtain if they want to spend any time in pve/wvw, and many won’t get them.

Nobody is getting the new dragon without devoting a significant amount of time to pvp… and that’s all it’s really meant to show. How easy is it to get level 80 in pve and yet many pvp players only have 0-2 level 80 characters?

I would say if somebody spends the amount of time to get dragon, then they kitten well should be rewarded for their commitment to pvp, they’ve done their part, and shouldn’t feel obliged to continue grinding endlessly if they don’t enjoy the game for what it is yet.