Guild Wars 2

Good for PvE, decent as frontline shout reaper in WvW, but bad everything else.

rchu.8945:

Sunfish.5970:

Anet, you’ve said that the queue times will get better once the majority of the population catches up, but that’s so far proven to be false, at least in my case.

How can majority of the people catch up, when the pro and experienced players are abusing the MMR to get lower que time and farm less skilled players.

It’s kinda true, since you lose tiers in Ruby and above, most people are not going to get out of Ruby simply due to that. Most people at Ruby level are getting farmed by diamonds & pro league pre-mades where they have absolutely no chance at winning. This gets old very quickly especially knowing you can’t secure a tier and work your way up slowly.

In divisions prior to Ruby, you could slowly work your way up, 5 wins at a time. It was rough at times but at least it was doable, you could make progress But majority of the players will not get past Ruby simply because you lose tiers. And asking people to win that many games is just not possible for most that don’t run premades.

I remember I was getting farmed by sunfish’s pre-made group when I was trying to finish up my last tier of Sapphire just a few days ago. Bumped into him and pro league premades no less than 6 times in 3 hours, nearly gave up trying that night. In fact I think I did give up and walk away for 5 hours, then later on went and finished last tier of Sapphire. I was fighting pro league premades that were full of diamonds & rubies as a sapphire. I would guess anybody who don’t have the stomach to grind out likely have quit the game after experiencing such.

Anyways I was over it because I couldn’t lose a tier, so even though I was stuck on the last tier of sapphire, I still could work towards getting into the next division. Now at Ruby however, after many games and seeing many premades, I just don’t see myself getting out of this division at all. The ability to lose tiers will prevent a great majority from advancing, thus they’ll stop queuing and caring. When you have less people queuing and playing, this will affect everybody’s queue times.

My suggestion to help prevent this pvp league from dying is to stop the loss of tiers in Ruby division. Also the game should be smart enough to know when a premade pro league team is going up against soloQ’ers, that they’ll have no chance and should not lose pips. At the moment people are not catching up because many are giving up trying. Again sapphire was rough, but knowing I couldn’t lose a tier I still queued up and played. Ruby however, watching my pips zero out so many times, it doesn’t make you want to keep going because there’s no progress. With no carrot and no incentive for people to keep queuing up, this queue issue is going to remain bad.

I’m agreeing that the system is broken. Nobody right now like how it works, ranging from pro league players to your average joe’s, from pre-mades to soloQers. Anet, you know something’s terribly wrong when people up & down all are voicing against your league system and how it works currently. And on top of that you have got the balance issues that once again, everybody top to down agrees we’re in a terrible meta. Time to act is now Anet.

^ 2 diamonds + 2 pro league ruby players, good lord.

I didn’t mind losing tier, but if we have to be matched up against pro league players 2 divisions above us, then I’m gonna support to allow Ruby to not lose tier.

Loving the reaper in all game modes. Very powerful, good self stab & mobility, and it offers a very engaging gameplay compared to necros. Signet reapers are also a lot more fun to play than baseline signet necros thanks to reaper shroud.

I’m getting a tad worried now however as in PvP, double condi rev & bunker mesmer meta is slowly pushing reapers out of the comps. Robert Gee, please look into boosting reapers as I’m sure you can see how reapers are fading out in the high end PvP scene.

Terimac.5871:

why no stronghold matches?

What would they do with all the bunkers if they play Stronghold?!#

GG double condi rev and bunker mesmer meta.

Goodbye reaper, nice knowing you. As a reaper this makes me sad.

Best 100-0 burst for a power reaper is when going up against a burnzerker, burnguard, burn engie, etc.. You allow them to stack condi’s on you, then plague signet, death’s charge, RS 3 fear, executioner’s scythe, and soul spiral. That usually does the trick. If not, you at the very least force them to pop invuln. If they pop invuln that soon into a fight, you’ve already won anyway.

Unfortunately this requires condi transfer of your opponent’s burn and/or their confusion stacks, and that your opponent not countering one of the moves above. Plus this doesn’t work against diamond skin & chronomancers heh.

If you’re coming back just to play WvW, you will be disappointed. The new BL’s are avoided like a plague because it’s too hard to find fights consistently. And the fights you do find, many are plagued by excessive siege and gimmicks like lava, cripple, blowing winds, burn, etc.. So yes people do stack in EBG because it’s the place to find quick action.

This also creates huge queues for EBG during NA primetime, so if you play NA, it’s going to suck for you if you try to get into EB for this mega blobbing action.

However if you’re coming back because you want to try out the new elite specs and new rev class, then you’ll be happy because the new elite specs have overwritten the old baseline classes. It’s all about the new elite specs now and most people in WvW play with the new builds in one form or another.

We’re kind of screwed when Anet admits balance patch won’t come until after the PvP league ends January 25, 2016. Isn’t that lovely to know the world revolves around their esports dream.

Honestly WvW players aren’t the only ones getting shafted, PvP players are equally angry at their lack of balance. Most MMO’s with PvP gameplay don’t take 3 months in between balance tweaks. For GW2 players however, we have to stomach whatever’s broken, overpowered, underpowered, etc.. for 3 months at a time.

Oh yeah and CoR isn’t even an issue in PvP so I don’t hold high hopes Anet will adjust it at all for WvW. Condi revs rule PvP at the moment, two game modes require different balance tweaks. In WvW it’s dumb to see rev hammer 2 go through keep doors. With such low cooldown they can spam it, and at 1200 range, it’s just something that needs to be adjusted. Higher cooldown will do the trick.

Losing pips don’t bother me. Losing pips when the game tosses me into the lion’s den against a pre-made team with players 2 divisions above me bother me greatly. There are legitimate times when a team of pugs should not lose pips when fighting pro league pre-mades with players 1-2 divisions above them.

yeah was gonna say, it’ll become a crappier version of signets heh. No go.

I think my longest losing streak was 7 games, then won 5 in a row to secure a division (thank jebuz). Of course right after that went on a 4-5 losing streak again. I’m ok with unpredictability of who you get into the game with. What I’m not ok with is who the game matches you up against. At the moment I’m having to fight pre-mades who are 2 divisions above me (I’m at sapphire, got there with solo Q so it’s possible).

If I really have to take a beating so those 2 divisions above me can advance, then the game should be smart enough to not deduct pips from me. Losing pips due to impossible matches are the worst part about losing.

abc.5790:

I’d prolly do the same thing just for the sake of my dignity but some idiot from your team could have reported you for botting if you SoloQ’d. Lots of tryhard idiots out there

lol I didn’t really afk, I went out and fought, capped a couple of nodes. But there was no way to win, and I’ve faced this same team 3 times now in the past 2 hours. They’re royally screwing my advancement, I’m now flat in my tier with no pips due to this one pre-made with diamond + ruby players.

1 pip away from getting out of Sapphire into Ruby, just 1. And I enter the game to face a pre-made Team PZ with diamond and ruby division players.

I thought to myself, ok well the game is smart enough to know a team full of sapphires got no chance against this premade diamond & rubies right? I wouldn’t lose a pip, perhaps even gain a pip for taking it raw?

Nope, lost the game, had no chance at all. Lost a pip, and that was just the start of my losing streak. 3 hours later my 4 pips in tier 5 sapphire evaporated, and I’ve been winning 1 losing 3 ever since, going nowhere. I’ve faced pre-mades of 4-5 pro league players at least 4 times in 3 hours. Needless to say no matter how many times I’ve won, I’ve lost pips every single time against these impossible match ups so I’m flat in my tier at the moment not sure if I want to continue.

Oh queue popped, it’s the sunfish crew again (with Track who’s a diamond btw), gonna afk while I post this since we aren’t gonna win. Why the game is making sapphire division pugs play a pre-made diamond + rubies, I really don’t know. kitten

Revs and bunkers are deciding the games right now, DH is secondary concern.

People secure a division or tier, then they throw the games and tank their mmr. Once they start getting easier games they start playing to secure the next tier, rinse & repeat. Saw it happen with many people whom I’ve fought, know how good they are/can be. Then an hour later saw the same people mindlessly run to the far node losing 1v1 fights over and over for no reason.

I’m sorry but Anet isn’t going to catch this nor will they do anything about it. They can’t afford to ban the already small playerbase they have in PvP. The fact that ruby and above players have to wait hours long before getting a match should tell you just how small the PvP playerbase is where they can’t even put together a 5v5 match. Think about that for a sec. So for devs to say they’re gonna banhammer people who throw games deliberately? LOL I laugh in your general direction. Not to mention a lot of these players are pro league players, without them, Anet wouldn’t have esports.

Your system is getting exploited, I’m sapphire and saw my pips melt away tonight due to diamond level players exploiting the system to get match ups against folks 2 divisions below them. It hasn’t been enjoyable tonight both due to getting impossible match ups and lose pips in the process, but also when we should be winning but watch good players deliberately toss the games.

Fix the system, because people sure aren’t going to stop exploiting it. Empty threats mean nothing, and these players know Anet won’t touch them.

darres.8203:

round 4 boys

they put nos on the team this time

it’s not like i got anymore pips to lose

Yeah as sapphire I got put in vs that team 15mins ago. They’re a premade team full of diamonds and rubies…except they slot in 1 amber to game the system.

Losing vs them is one thing, it’s to be expected. I could care less about losing to them. Losing to them and losing a pip as a result, that’s just absolutely ridiculous. Fix the matching system please. And if you must toss me into a game vs those pro premade teams who are 2 divisions higher than I am, then please don’t take my pips away.

Anet why are you matching team full of sapphires with diamonds & rubies? And make us lose a pip while having absolutely no enjoyable time during that match vs a pro premade team. I should be awarded 2-3 pips for getting tossed in the lion’s den. kitten

For ZvZ power reaper, or frontline shout reaper build. Condi works best when solo roaming or small group roaming.

Sapphire tier 1. Can’t seem to get past tier 1 though lol.

Evan Lesh.3295:

This isn’t your MMR, but your ladder position. We could let matchmaking expand the ladder position cutoff, but then we’d have a lot of players complaining that they keep getting matched with people outside their division. We’d have to let this happen pretty slowly still.

How long would you be willing to wait before going significantly outside your division for matchmaking?

Please let us queue outside of HotM already. Standing around for 45mins waiting on a queue is just boring. I left that other game due to having to play the queues more than the game itself. At least in the other game I could be doing other things, farming, world pvp, etc.. Let me roam in WvW or play in guild arena while waiting in this long queue please.

But that’s beside the point, I’d prefer the matching system be setup better as well.

You really should go with Reaper in PvP, there’s really no reason to go base necro anymore if you want to be competitive. Condi if you want more ranged options, Power if you want to break diamond skin, Cele signet if you want to be competitive against some of the more popular builds in PvP today.

Anyways just go reaper, once you get used to it you won’t ever look back.

In WvW, rev hammer 2 is a big problem. In sPvP however, condi revs are a bigger problem and hammer issue is non-existent. This is why I have no confidence they’ll adjust hammer 2 for WvW because they seem to balance based on PvP.

Sad, but true. All hammer 2 needs really is a longer cd. Yes this means it would affect how revs use them in PvE, so again, they likely won’t do this simple balance adjustment for the sake of other game modes.

Anet seems happy to sit on using powerful elite spec carrots to sell HoT expansion. They’ve forced players to have to buy the expansion and switch to the new powerful elite specs in order to compete. I get the concept, but they still should balance the game. And they need to do it incrementally more often rather than once every 3 months.

It’s working for me now, found this solution in another gw2 thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Error-code-42-0-9001-4409/page/2

Open the command prompt as an administrator and enter the following commands:
netsh winsock reset
netsh int ip reset
ipconfig /flushdns
Reboot and test.

Getting the same..

Unnecessary change. Anet, understand WvW have queues. Sometimes players are forced to stay on a character to avoid sitting in queues for 30 minutes. I would hate to feel my time is wasted playing a character that can’t benefit from ranking up.

WvW needs to be more rewarding, not less. Please revert the changes, and allow stacking of the chests with the account-bound setup.

-Inability to follow the fight/player that you want to see is a big negative. There are certain classes/builds/players that I’d like to follow throughout a whole game to watch their gameplay. Impossible with the current system.

-Casters did a better job not jumping around as often compared to previous broadcasts, but camera jumping around still happens too often for you to really get a feel of the fights. Often you are left with not knowing the results or how a fight ended. Sometimes they hype up a 1v1 fight, then all of a sudden jump to another point just when the fight starts to get good.

-Build representation is an issue, but then players always min/max. I saw the same with WoW’s arena tournaments where certain classes/builds were guaranteed a spot on competitive teams. We need more build variety/viability, but it’s really hard to achieve such with 5v5 conquest gameplay.

-There are too many things going on in any given conquest game. I don’t want to fault the casters too much because they’re trying to cover it all. It’s just hard to cover everything that goes on in the conquest game, viewers miss a lot of strategy that goes into the play.

-Too much downtime, kills excitement.

-There should be a website where viewers can go to and flip through player builds and setups. Meaning once players login and ready up, the system should synchronize with a site that allows viewers to click through players and see their builds. The site should be updated as players in the game change their builds.

On a positive note, I had a lot more fun watching those close games & comeback games yesterday during both EU & NA broadcasts. Blowout games are not fun to watch. Close games are so much more enjoyable.

I’ll say upfront that I enjoyed the added difficulties & challenges in HoT. But with that said, it’s a fine line between challenging and tedious. Verdant Brink & Auric Basin are pretty well designed maps. They added challenging content without being overly tedious. The meta are also puggable. Tangled Depths & Dragon’s Stand are just tedious. I don’t really call these zones challenging, they’re just tedious to go through, tedious to do the meta, tedious to accomplish hero challenges, and they generally take a lot of your time with small rewards.

Anet kind of gambled with their playerbase. Normally a MMO can’t afford to lose their large, high paying, casual/solo playerbase. I hope Anet knows what they’re doing because they did launch an expansion that’s fairly solo/casual unfriendly. I’d say half of the expansion is pretty solo/casual unfriendly, while the other half (first half) was rather enjoyable. It’s too bad. And to think unlocking elite specs initially required almost twice as many hero points, you just know Anet went a bit too far there with their expansion design.

These days I’m still unlocking elite specs for my alts. But I find myself doing the first 2 maps and skipping the last 2. I gladly do the personal story because it’s actually fun, doable, and you can do it solo or with friends. I wish the personal story could be extended. But a lot of the other things are just tedious, not fun at all to do. I did join the long Dragon’s Stand meta many times, tried to like it but I just found them to be way too long and not worth the time. One boss event I stood there for over an hour waiting for the other groups to get “ready” because apparently everything had to be synchronized. It was the most boring time I’ve ever spent in this game and I never went back and did it again.

Oh yeah raids, I’m glad raids are ingame and some are enjoying it. But raids have already created cliques within guilds and friends. Guild Wars 2 to me was always about being inclusive, like everybody join in the fight, no matter what guild, group, build, or who you’ve bribed. But HoT expansion have made this game more towards being exclusive. By doing so you lose your large chunk of casual/solo playerbase. Big gamble, I don’t know if it’ll payoff for Anet, but MMO’s usually can’t afford to lose this segment of the playerbase.

forum bug bleh…

rchu.8945:

Serkit.7836:

I moved from SBI to JQ last night and guess what I found? Enemies on the borderlands. It wasn’t just one little 10 man group, it was multiple groups of 20+. That’s something I had not seen in T3 since the release of HoT outside of reset night. 10/10 would transfer again.

that’s funny, I’ve been on JQ for a while, and even today at 9PM EST I didnt see one enemies at BLs. I did some of my WvW dailys and decided to go PvE again because EB’s ques are 40+.

Multiple group of 20+ enemies roaming in BL Maps? Really hard to believe.

Not hard to believe, that poster mentioned last night, and I know which guilds raided on BL’s last night. I’m in one of the guilds that raided with 2 other guilds last night. Tonight however, action was mostly in EBG, as it’s an off-night for a couple of other guilds that raided the night before.

If a raid’s lacking tank you can tank just fine.

For condi at the moment people seem to prefer engies, rangers, and burnzerkers as first choices. Reapers will do fine. It just depends on how much a particular raid is min/maxing.

Cele was always a thing, before reaper it was cele signet necro that saw success on The Abjured. Cele offers more armor which helps with sustain. Also has higher crit + crit damage over Carrion. Compared to power builds like soldiers, cele allows the usage of condi where as soldiers are pure power, and zerker/valk is not viable at that level of play at all.

For those cele signet reapers in the tournament, they aren’t necessarily trying to kill people with condi damage. They’re overloading condi to force opponents to burn cooldowns, and sustain until they get help from teammates. That’s why Carrion’s higher condi damage isn’t necessarily preferred over a more sustained build with Cele. The higher crit + crit damage do help them do some damage though especially in shroud.

Rev hammer 2 really just needs a longer cooldown so it’s not spammed as often. Wells and most aoe’s you can avoid because you see the big red circles. Coalescence of Ruin is extremely hard to see due to the amount of effects on the ground already. So they sneak in and you really don’t have a chance to dodge during WvW ZvZ fights.

I think the range and damage it does is fine. It just needs a longer cooldown so it’s not spammed as often.

Blowout games are not fun to watch, and shouldn’t be that many blowout games at this point in the tournament really. We can already guess who the last 4 teams will be. This “pro league” needs to be more competitive or it’s a waste of money & time. You might as well hand the cash over to the pre-qualified teams without going through all the hoopla.

Disappointing pro league to see the same teams winning and having blowout games. Was hoping to see new teams be more competitive than this at this level.

From the guilds that try to run optimal setups, they prefer engies, revs, rangers, and wars when it comes to condi/dps. It is indeed kind of sad that this is like the dungeon meta all over again. I was really hoping that this time around with our new elite spec, that we wouldn’t have to settle for less than optimal.

Yup staff is weak no doubt, you don’t use staff for the damage. You use it for the wide variety of utilities, lifeforce regen, and max range on it. Unblockable is a nice touch when traited.

+1 to the OP, many good points and constructive criticism with ideas for fixes. I hope Anet reads it and take it to heart. WvW got royally screwed this expansion. It reminds me of Blizzard’s treatment to their PvP playerbase and how royally they screwed up Ashran during their latest expansion.

Not only that, they gambled with their PvE playerbase. Usually MMO’s don’t dare push their casual playerbase away as it’s usually their bread & butter and the segment that spends most money. I hope Anet knows what they are doing. But in my opinion someone there made a bad miscalculation.

Spending $400k and dev resources on the smallest segment of their game while neglecting the rest just does not seem like sound business decision. Wrong priorities in my opinion.

Pretty much there are locked in spots for certain classes/builds, then there’s usually 2-3 spots for fill-in. From what I’ve seen so far Reaper’s taking the fill-in spots. They aren’t locked in, sadly.

Very nice, thanks for sharing Could you link the build you were running? Thanks!

So you’re mostly forcing HoTM to appease new players. How about you still take players to HoTM if they queue up for PvP normally, like a new player would? But provide the rest of us a way to queue without entering HoTM, a separate queue button for an example?

And can’t you guys provide us a way to save build templates already? Pretty please. Thanks.

It’s mostly just if winning teams use a class/build, then it’s meta. Kinda like signet necro was “meta” even though really only Nos used it successfully with Abjured.

abc.5790:

Been spoiled with Reaper and can no longer function playing a core necromancer. Condi or power, Reaper just feels more superior.

+1, can’t go back, won’t go back.

Happens all the time on NA T1 servers. Terrible skill lag + players warping all over the place. Either fix it or disable the event please.

Thieves and warriors have better ways of kiting and disengaging, we don’t. Mobility is king, and necros/reapers are just so bad at it. Unless our mobility changes, or we get some sort of active defense, people will always focus the necro (as they should, I would).

How do you survive running that glassy? With such low armor, the higher you go in PvP, the more you’ll find yourself dead very fast. I find these zerker/glassy builds working out fine when you first start out. They’re fun no doubt, everybody loves seeing big numbers. But the higher you go, and you get matched up against players that min/max more, you’ll find it harder to survive.

Also the higher you go, the more condi’s you’ll find everywhere. Your lack of condi transfer will hurt you big time. That’s likely when you’ll put away GS and equip Staff.

Vital persistence baseline wouldn’t make necros op. Virtually all necros in pro tournaments have it, and they all still drop fast in any team fights. Focus reaper is still the meta.

I really don’t think making VP baseline would make necros op. It would widen build variety for sure. But with that said, I do agree it’s unlikely they would do that. This comes from long history of necros not able to get nice things, and what nice things we get, half of it is taken away (read: Blighter’s Boon for an example).

We can definitely use a bug fixing patch, some of the issues are really annoying.

-In EBG our keep is constantly contested, it’s not from enemy players, something is causing to be contested all the time.

-Keep/tower lords randomly placed, sometimes outside.

-Walls with graphical glitch that keep flashing.

-Walls/gates that you have to take down 2-3 times. Meaning we knocked down a reinforced gate, only to have to knock down the regular gate afterwards, and again before the gate was opened.

-The oasis event causes severe lag where characters warp around on the screen for everybody in the zone at the time of the event. Severe skill lag even though there’s not a 3-way battle, just some groups of players. During this event we had players randomly take fall damage even though we were running on flat ground, some even have died.

Really Anet, some of these issues are quite serious and they really hinder player’s enjoyment. I get that WvW isn’t as important to you as PvE/sPvP, but we really could use a bug fixing patch sooner than later. Thanks.

Not tired of reaper, it’s still more fun than base necro. But I have been disappointed by the Greatsword’s performance outside of PvE. It’s a great PvE weapon, although quite boring due to 222222 spam. It’s just getting worse and worse for me in PvP/WvW. I’m mostly using Dagger/Warhorn now in PvP & WvW, however I really wanted to like GS for the style.

The more I see and experience fighting against other elite specializations, the more I realize how inadequate Greatsword is. And the Blighter’s Boon nerf early on, that really soured my mood and I haven’t recovered from it.

If Greatsword can be made better and more practical, I think it’ll make things better for me. It just saddens me that GS is severely limited and inadequate when fighting against most new elite specs in 1 v 1. In team fights its usefulness is also limited and quite situational.

In ZvZ which I initially thought it would work ok for frontline Reapers, I’ve found out short of some downstate Gravedigger cleaves, GS is like shooting blanks. You pop GS 4 like second nature, but it doesn’t really hit anybody because nobody sticks around for it to expand. You GS 5 to pull and either it misses, or someone’s got stab and are immune to be pulled. GS 1-3 attacks all require players to be standing still or be in downstate to connect.

I like the Reaper, I’m having fun with Reaper Shroud, and I find Reaper utilities & elite to be useful. It’s just GS & Blighter’s Boon nerf early on soured my enjoyment a bit.

If you’re doing spvp, try dagger/warhorn + staff. You’ll find yourself performing a lot better and actually gain lifeforce & hit people more reliably.