Guild Wars 2

great vid, ty for insights. )

100% support for this. we would do this a few months back where we would start out duelling then set up 2v2s / 3v3s as the game filled up until we could start a full match on the next map rotation.

i am in a tough spot atm, as i’m sure many are, where we are the last of X players who previously played. something like this would let tourney players congregate & players can be tested without higher ranked players feeling like they have to put rating on the line just to play with someone new.

if server #s are agreed upon, i will be there to practice & meet with all you fine murderers.

it all depends who you are winning / losing against.

if you don’t win your matches against teams with a higher MMR than you, you will not make the same progress as a player who does, even if you farmed low rank pugs for 100 matches.

my guess would be that all 13 games this fellow played were against players with a higher MMR than himself. so his losses weren’t as big ( losing to a higher rank will result in a smaller adjustment ) & his wins were very beneficial.

Valkyriez.6578:

Yeah, I’m not a fan of passive damage. Retaliation and confusion really aren’t good in PvP IMO.

retal & confusion are not passive dmg sources. removing them would simplify the combat system ( not good ).

putting up targets is a more important form of communication than text. i am much happier with teammates who put up targets than those who tell me where they are going.

usually by looking at your team’s profession breakdown you can figure out where players are going to go off the start. all contested nodes & teammate locations can be seen at a glance once the match has begun.

certainly, team communication elevates the level of play. but i don’t think that queuing up solo with an expectation that all teammates will be excellent communicators is a realistic view.

+1 Ostrich.

my suggestion is to have a custom tooltip on abilities that are split between PvE/WvW & PvP, & show both tooltips ( similar to how you show weapon combo steps on mouseover, but with clearly marked Headers, like PvE/WvW would be in bold blue at the top & PvP would be bold red ). then you can add a checkbox in options to let a player only show PvE/WvW tooltips or PvP tooltips.

so by default all players would have clear information that abilities function differently in different game modes, & they can customize the UI to suit their style of play.

balancing across gametypes is every bit as complicated as balancing for dual class spec options.

eg. ppl have no problems bringing 4 warriors to a fractal, but there are problems bringing 1 warrior to tPvP. this is perfect evidence of a lack of balance that exists due to these gametypes being tied together. something that works in PvE, simply won’t work in PvP.

so, while players have the choice to bring any traits, weapons & utilities they want, the choices are artificially reduced by the game design requiring 1 pool of abilities to apply to 3 different game types. if Ability A is great for PvE but useless in PvP, then Ability A may as well not even exist in the game for a PvP player.

this brings us to where we are now, which is that people feel corralled into playing a very small selection of specs because many of the abilities available to us simply are not viable for our mode of play ( while they may be perfectly viable elsewhere ).

Blizzard addressed this in Warcraft by stating that as long as 1 spec for each class was viable, they didn’t care. do you, ANet, agree with this philosophy?

Ingame name: Cutsu
Main Class / Potential Classes (Incase team requires): Ranger.
Region: NA
Practice Times: 8am – 3pm
Experience: r41, 400ish tourney wins, a lot of dueling, extensive testing with every fathomable ranger build
Other (Anything else that you would like to add): I work nights, can’t play on prime time teams. Oceanic / Aussie teams meet my play times if no NA teams run during the day.

PM me here or Mail me in-game.

glad to see ranger has dropped a few tiers. i rolled this class b/c it was bad. stop buffing me please, i need excuses.

try out this spike.

30/30/5/0/5. GM Traits are SoBM & MoC. SB / GS. Use Signet of the Hunt.

GS has the two highest damaging abilities we get, in Maul & Swoop ( the bugged dmg is still good ). Counterattack also hits like a truck, but that’s not part of the spike.

start fight in shortbow, pepper with shots until you land an interrupt with SB5.

SB5 ( time as interrupt ) → weapon swap → Swoop → GS5 ( time as interrupt ) → Maul.

replace either interrupt with SoHunt activation to guarantee the bonus 50% damage, or save SoHunt for the next Maul attack in 6s.

with guaranteed Opening Strike crits, you can open with Swoop just as easily for a quick 1-2 punch ( SoHunt → Swoop → GS5 → Maul ).

the main problem with GS is that all GS traits are trapped in trees that do not benefit power specs, so this ends up being a glass shortbow spec with intermittent but great GS spike potential.

use canines for this spec since they can still hit for 4-6k with the 50% buffs without any investment in BM tree, & has all the crazy utility & toughness we love canines for already.

Berserker for full deeps, Soldier for balance.

ggs flimp ( if that was you on your engi earlier today ).

- cutsu

it’s a pug’s life atm, just find a friend or two to queue up with. then you’ll have a good challenge against teams & you won’t absolutely steamroll pugs.

fun & learning should be the objective atm, there is nothing tangible to fight for beyond that. things will amp up when the ladder is revealed, but even then we need a proper GvG queue before teams come back in force.

pets are not PvE, they are an extension of the ranger’s body. i know that my pet does what i tell it to do—i feel sorry for other rangers that seem to be stuck with this so-called AI-driven pet.

tbh i think the only pets that should maybe be addressed are canines, b/c they are absurdly effective with zero in BM tree ( high power, high toughness, knockdown, long cripple, fear / aoe root, fastest autoattack ). thieves would be able to insta-gib trapper’s pets if they didn’t get knocked down as soon as they exit stealth to gib.

Zenith.7301:

The cooldowns are linked. Just like how you can’t double daze with black and pink moa, you can’t use blinding slash twice with double ravens.

go & test it. i was double slashing post-patch today.

edit: ok, the cooldowns are definitely paired now. my bad.

considering they just buffed white raven so we can have legit double blinding slash burst, i’d presume ANet says this is working as intended.

mesmer clones were considered OP at first until ppl learned to play around them. ranger pets require the same attention.

( that being said, double raven is pretty strong. ppl will have to adjust to it like 100b if the build becomes more popular )

when they remove mesmer portal, you can take my pet leash range ( tip: they are the same range ).

thank you for your interest.

if a ranger builds super tanky, its your own fault for not paying attention to the pet.

tank ranger gives up group utility for single target dmg ( you can argue whether this is proper design or not, but this is 100% how they are currently intended to be balanced by looking at the combination of pet affinity & healing as stats in the BM tree ), & that dmg can be countered by any class or spec through good positioning.

an 8k blinding slash usually means lining up buffs for the strike as well, not all blinding slashes hit for 8k. the easiest example to watch for is might stacking on the pet during rampage. always watch the pet, but especially so during rampage & limit the ranger from hitting you at all ( line of sight ), since that is what is buffing the pet.

every class can deal very good damage in this game, the question is whether you can line up your active defenses properly to neutralize it. learn pet anims & how to path them.

one day, haha.

a week would be more realistic unless they give us a gem outlet through pvp again.

phfresno.1230:

People are complaining the Custom Arenas are gem based? From the beginning they said this would be the case. Don’t understand how people are surprised by this.

i’m only surprised b/c

a) they removed gems from PvP
b) they stated in SotG that they wanted CAs to replace Hotjoin

with gem costs as they are, i predict that there will be a few guilds that rent them for private use & scrims, but not nearly enough players will want to rent a server for the benefit of public hotjoin players to change over & learn in a better environment.

i hope to be pleasantly surprised by community generosity. i hope to be even more surprised by ANet being prepared for this eventuality.

yep archaon, my worry exactly.

they said in SotG that they weren’t putting gems back into PvP, but they really have to if CAs will cost gems.

they also said in SotG that they want CAs to take over for Hotjoin, but that will be impossible with these kinds of costs as barrier to entry.

if we had more ways to generate gold ( besides dyes ), this would be fine.

from reading here you would almost think longbow is in a good spot right now.

headshot the channel instead of going to stealth & you’ll take zero damage.

stealth is not a cure-all.

yes, our damage chases you. other classes simply deal damage.

“Nothing isn’t a double edged sword.” – Louis CK

Okhu.7948:

Losing a neck and neck (With us slightly ahead) because they manage to cap the orb on a point WE own is possibly the biggest punch in the stomach ever.

this is a good thing.

some losses should feel like a punch in the stomach. it was just good play on their part to win a close match.

ps. about thieves in SW; porting from ground level to raven couldn’t possibly be useful, could it?

poison poison poison poison poison. throw up whatever trash condi you can to make poison stick.

you are fighting through 2 unstrippable heals at all times ( grandmaster BM trait & SoWild ).

learn pet anims, avoid them. ranger is ~30% of dmg output, pet is ~70%. avoid cripple / chill as best you can, these snares guarantee pets will connect. conversely, any CC works well on pets, they take a while to path back to you after recovering.

everyone’s opinion is valid & must be weighed in context & relation to each other.

as xeph said, we really need to help the casual base right now.

we need elite players for high end balance to the same degree we need casual players for low end balance. “easy to play, hard to master” is what keeps a game healthy. if the game is only easy to play as a few professions, the casual game will steer itself in that direction.

that is exactly what we see in evidence with games of 80% thief / mesmer more consistently than any other profession. the casual balance, aka, “easy to play”, is askew.

it’s almost like…stealth has counters?

the sky is falling.

aoe & any ability with a cast time are the two main counters to stealth ( initiate cast time while thief is visible, on cast complete your target will be maintained even if stealthed ).

alfred, most of the things you are complaining about are not a problem.

it sounds like you don’t want to play a game with active defenses as a cornerstone of gameplay.

yes.

tbh i think any number of gametypes could work with GW2, but Conquest is the best b/c it splits the team population across multiple objectives, just like a MOBA does. ( 3 nodes → 3 lanes, alternate objectives → towers / jungle )

i could see them changing capture mechanics to de-incentivize hard bunking ( zero dps specs ), but Conquest itself is not to blame for that.

i would like to see Deathmatch on the condition that creative maps can actually be designed for Deathmatch. need to think back to Quake3 days ( quad dmg, invisibility, armor, launch pads, teleporters, etc ) & shy away from WoW Arena format.

a few tips that may help:

a) the pet is at its weakest immediately following a petswap. ( you have 20 seconds to score a kill—removes Empathic Bond, pet dmg, pet CC, etc ) mostly useful against trappers, 5 points in BM is not enough to make pets sturdy & only BM specs have hots running all the time.

b) always face shortbow. ( dem bleeds. trappers stack condi, don’t give them free dmg )

c) lead the pet in a circle while fighting & use defensives while crippled or chilled ( pet dmg can largely be avoided unless you are under soft CC ). watch pet anims just like you would watch a mesmer’s phantasms & act accordingly.

d) traps last 3 seconds out of 20, excluding flame trap. use this window to apply pressure.

e) unguent has 10 seconds of downtime. since ranger needs to cast unguent early to get the most out of the heal, you can do things like bait unguent, then switch to other target to let the unguent overheal & switch back on ranger as unguent goes down ( similar to necro plague ). unguent also has 1s cast time, easiest ranger heal to interrupt.

f) hornet’s sting ( 1st part of sword2 ) has 1/2s cast time, can be interrupted on startup. monarch’s leap ( 2nd part of sword2 ) has no evade component. can be interrupted, dmg’d, cc’d, etc.

g) a swap to shortbow means no sword evades for 10 seconds. shortbow3 doesn’t give the same positioning power.

h) shared anguish / hips—plan for these & bait them as soon as the fight starts to put them on cooldown. shared anguish is 90s cooldown.

it is difficult to make use of all this stuff in duels, but if your team is knowledgeable of ranger weaknesses, it is not hard to coordinate spikes at opportune moments.

the population has dropped below the point where you can have meaningful discussions about ANYTHING.

i’ll be back for customs / obs mode. still love the game, but can’t spend any more time in its current state.

great job xeph, nero, grouch & ty for the time, ANet.

in future sotg, i would like to see two things from ANet:

a) more preparation—their balance guys could have been much more organized, but it seemed like they were pretty nervous & no wonder why—this was like a corporation meeting with its angry investors.

b) more enthusiasm for your game! should be really excited about changes & the future & be giving that enthusiasm to the fans, especially in these comparatively dark times for the game presently.

it was really good when, despite not talking about WHEN observer mode was coming, Tyler gave great details about what Observer mode would be like.

i was also pleased to hear that they have plans to essentially replace hotjoin with custom servers. that will help tremendously.

i was actually pleased with their discussion of Ranger, because ANet understands the problem with Power specs is not in the weapons, it is in the lack of utilities to defend ourselves with when speccing for glass. i dig GS too, so those tweaks will be nice as well.

overall some cringy moments with some good info. thanks again.

hmm all i have is gin. see you on the other side.

hmm perhaps i am more of a glutton for punishment than most )

i agree that pug vs pug tpvp can have low skill overall, but it is still taking place in a more balanced environment than hotjoin, so people can learn better with a stronger incentive for victory.

you don’t get to fight teams & superpugs in hotjoin—that is the main reason i soloQ. i would prefer to practice fighting good players in teams 1vX than farming in hotjoin.

“If you are afraid to fail, you will always stay at one level.”

eg. in tourneys i can practice reacting to a roamer adding to a node fight or proper rotations when our node gets pushed, but in hotjoin most node fights start out with a free neut or it is necessary to zerg dodge. hotjoin is a completely different creature.

now, this is just me trying to make the best of a bad situation. the game is presently dead, hopefully ANet has some resurrection plans coming at a time other than soon.

manually click your targets instead of tabbing & make sure to set up an assist target on him both for yourself & your team.

the biggest reason for mis-clicks in manual targeting is the normalized hitboxes across all races, combined with nameplates not being selectable. the actual hitbox must be selected.

so, for small races, the hitbox is much larger than their actual model, so you can select the air around them just as well to get your target. use strafe keys while mouse2 isn’t held down to keep moving while selecting new target. position your camera to look down on targets from above so you don’t have line of sight issues when selecting.

it takes practice, but you will see results with more time. also, tab targeting will not work if you do not have line of sight on your target. both selection methods are useful, just know the strengths & weaknesses of both.

solo queue >>>>>> hotjoin

doesn’t matter if you face a premade or only have 4 players, that is what you should be hoping for if you want to grow stronger. measure your progress by personal discovery & performance improvement, not by wins or losses ( since both are currently meaningless both in hotjoin & tourney ).

new players have extreme difficulty facing these profession mechanics ( stealth, clones ), but neither is OP.

the problem is complex, b/c the profession population plays into how both hotjoin & glory work.

right now, the only progression that exists is rank grind. the most effective place to grind rank is hotjoin, because:

a) 8v8, more targets, more kills per minute
b) new players / no team cohesion
c) larger team size leads to faster point rotations ( a solo defender must give up the node to a zerg or be crushed )

glass spec will always be the fastest farming spec in any gametype that values farming. ( tourneys don’t value farming )

now, take the 2 glass specs that have the most inherent survivability against new players & poor teamwork. these inexperienced players “feed” glory to mesmers & thieves, which themselves are low skill floor specs, so new players can use these professions to see immediate results.

but the perception of these results is not accurate to actual game balance. the thing is, both mesmer & thief also have a high skill ceiling, which becomes more apparent in the tourney meta. other professions can easily deal with these glass specs in a competitive environment, or at the very least, neutralize the advantages they hold over less experienced players.

the final kicker is that experienced players understand this, & often will use either a mesmer or a thief for grinding glory even if it isn’t their primary spec, just b/c you can farm new players faster & more efficiently this way. it’s an impossible grind to actually increase in rank past a certain point, so some will use any advantage to close the gap.

they could make these 2 specs harder to play in some way without diminishing their overall effectiveness. best example was given a long time ago, by making Heartseeker function the same as Dagger 3 ( Fire ) on Ele.

need new reward system, custom servers, etc. the stat feedback from UI we get as players atm does not give us any accurate information about balance, effectiveness or where the player stands in relation to any other player. it’s just farming.

play/learn your role.

find satisfaction through learning & applying yourself. doesn’t matter if the game is hopeless, the rest of your team is useless, etc. there is always something you can do to better yourself & come away with a positive experience.

eg. if you are GY camped, you get the opportunity to figure out ways to break a GY camp. turn adversity into opportunity.

i would joke when i first started doing paid tourneys that i am paying for my education with these tickets. fighting players who are stronger than yourself is an opportunity that should be cherished & taken advantage of.

apparently learning isn’t fun—our education system has failed us.

there aren’t enough players queuing at your rating to fill a pug team with experience.

there aren’t enough players queuing at low rating to fill a pug team with low experience, let alone 2 teams.

bottom line: there aren’t enough players. the game is effectively dead until ANet makes some big moves.

i still have fun logging in to practice various things. but i’m usually in soloQ for about 15 minutes before i get a pop the past few days, with only 1 superpug to run against. it’s fun for a few matches at least.

Strange World is the only NA team i see regularly still.

greatsword is a defensive weapon ( evade on gs1 + block stance ). the cc is unreliable/long cooldown & gs doesn’t offer much soft cc ( block stance throw is usually a waste ), which means you’ll only deal consistent damage while contesting a node, or limited burst with a swoop / maul combo.

i like GS, but it is a bunker spec weapon imo, since you can tank like a boss with autoattack evades & block stance.

i would suggest spending some time with 1h sword if you are looking for a more offensive melee option for ranger. it does higher damage, provides multiple sources of soft cc, can track targets & provides 2 evades. most condi specs run sword for the evades alone, but if you’re going for power, no weapon is better than 1h sword.

ps. 5 in BM is mandatory, imo. quickness > *

game mechanics are great. population retention—not so great.

it definitely feels like a beta population…players come to test things out, but only a select few bother to invest a huge amount of time in a temporary system.

hopefully pvp “goes live” soon.

1. Build Diversity ( 2 parts )
a. Does ANet believe that there are more viable, competitive builds for each profession in the current design than are recognized by the playerbase, or do they agree with consensus that professions are pigeonholed into very specific specs?
b. Are the small tweaks yielding the results they are aiming for, both in perceived balance & actual balance?

2. Custom Servers – What is the payment model? Does the increasing opinion that Customs should replace the Hotjoin system outright affect their decision process?

3. PvE / PvP splitting – Does ANet have plans to draw a more defined line between balancing for PvE & PvP separately, or will they continue to attempt to balance both? If they aim to balance both together, do they feel this design philosophy plays a role in limited build diversity within specific gametypes ( PvE/WvW, PvP )?

please nerf forum rage. it’s so overplayed.

ppl are just upset b/c for all GW2’s faults, there is nothing better. so let’s just grade this on a curve for now, shall we?

RtL & Mistform are considered “Transformation” abilities, which is not a category of skills which will drop the orb or slow the carry. note that you can interrupt RtL if no stab is up.

if a necro uses Lich or Plague, is the orb slow removed? do all transformations allow full speed carry? ( warrior transform ftw? rofls )

any prof with a movement sig can build as a competitive carry.

you have chosen good pets for your weapon set, as canines are arguably the most effective pet without any direct intervention from you ( this is because they have a 5s cripple, a knockdown & 1/4s auto attack speed ). since you are using longbow / axe, you will rarely be in close proximity to your pet, not to mention a lack of snares on those weapons ( still can use axe chill & barrage to help them ).

as manekk said, fortifying bond can be a strong choice for you since it will let you support your pet while he is out of range for so long. it is also great if you continue to use warhorn for the reasons he mentioned.

i would ditch master’s bond & replace it with compassion training, since you are using fern hound. bond does not stay when you petswap, so its effectiveness is negated by our own profession mechanic. and compassion training will help you as well if you eventually aim to run 30 in beastmastery.

10 points in skirmishing will get you +30% dmg on pet crits, its the most bang for your buck you can get regarding pet dmg traits.

above all, explore & find new ways to make your spec stronger to suit your playstyle. hopefully these few tidbits will help you on your way.

no complaints.

i chose ranger to play a pet class. i am not disappointed. i would be hard pressed to find a pet mechanic in another game that is as good as this.

peace friends. hope you find what you’re looking for.

Xsorus.2507:

Offhand training increases Path of Scars damage….

All this patch did was buff its normal damage within 85% of Offhand Trainings current damage.

if you ran Offhand Training, you’re doing no more damage then you did before the patch.

OK, so the damage buff to Path of Scars is an unlisted component of Offhand Training?

yes, hotjoin needs to be replaced by a true mmr solo queue.

ideally, hotjoin is shut down permanently when replaced by solo queue & Custom Servers would then provide the functionality of persistent servers that can be integrated into the community—no more need at all for hotjoin servers.

eg. if instead of “Server #116”, you have “Faeral’s House of Waffles”, so players always know where to get some good eats. this is why TF2 pub servers work & GW2 pub servers are trash. no consistency for community action.

jportell.2197:

Yup… I’m not a thief (rarely touch the one I have) player or an ele player but when one of the people in my guild that used to only pvp on a thief goes off to play another class just to test it out. Then he comes back to his thief the first things he says is “Wow this is so OP, wow so is this… This is ridiculous”… He has hardly played his thief since because it’s not a challenge to play.

“he said, she said”—statements like this need to be qualified. there is no data here; we should know where he is PvPing, who he is fighting, how much time he spent with each class, etc. it sounds like hotjoin testing & i would take his opinion based on that.

*

@arheundel, telling tourney thieves that the things they experience don’t actually happen is fairly ignorant on your part. the benefit of speaking with people who have varying life experiences from yourself is so you have an opportunity to expand your understanding.

peace gl hf

*

on topic—no class specifics, just a bit of my own view of what goes into floor / ceiling.

the skill floor is how long it takes to grow comfortable with how a spec functions—how the abilities work together, which combinations to use in which order—picture it as comprehending your spec in a vacuum.

the skill ceiling is the full depth of gameplay mechanics with all professions, specs, maps, matchups, etc taken into account, & knowing not only how your spec fits into that puzzle, but applying that knowledge through perfect execution.

few, if any, players have reached the skill ceiling for their respective profession. this is simply due to the community being too small to be able to push players to their absolute limit. top players quit before reaching the ceiling due to lack of competition, which puts the next rising star in the same position.

in general i would say AoE & passive defenses are low skill floor mechanics. so a decent example of low skill floor spec would be a trap ranger with 3 aoe utilities & passive condi / cc breakers.

AoE serves an Area Denial role in this game as well, which can raise or lower the ceiling depending on the circumstance. eg. Guardian duels for midpoint, the Guardian who can deny area the most effectively ( executes a higher skill ceiling ) will win the node. On the flipside, a Necro spamming marks / Ranger spamming traps on a side node is a low skill floor option of node defense/offense.

interrupt traits are weak, but interrupts themselves are power. i have a hard time running a build without at least 1 interrupt.

fights happen so fast in this game, delaying a heal by 5s may as well be the full heal cooldown in many situations.

incoming STEALTH CUSTOM SERVERS on the 26th.

so much hyperbole, haha.

they already have changes coming to AoE, kind of a redundant thread atm. they know the disparity between ST & AoE.

their AoE changes will have to be smart since AoE & Stealth are intertwined in balance in GW2 at the casual level. Single Target abilities with cast times are the advanced counters to stealth, but nobody ever talks about these.