Guild Wars 2

Most of them are doable alone. Some require 2 maybe 3 people at most.

I have all my 10 characters maxed and never joined any HP train.

If you want to do them as fast as possible, sure HP trains are great but they are in no way required.

Personally I wouldn’t like gear progression. However I do think that some sort of progression would be very nice.

I think having progression through masteries that actually give us unique power boosts (something gear progression gives us, something that drives people to play day after day.) would be very nice.
As long as it’s not as easy as “get experience, get mast er poins, bam ur done” but maybe with some a diffirent kind of mastery points gained by playing certain content.

The current mastery system doesn’t feel like progression. It feels like something that gates your progression & gives very situational abilities you won’t use often.

Which one is better for PvP? I’ve tried both builds, I can’t decide which one I like more and I can’t tell which one is better.

Are they situational? Or is one better than the other in certain fights & team comps? Or does it not matter much and its all about personal preference?

I need some help deciding.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

glenndevis.8327:

I wouldn’t mind condi thief if they wouldn’t be able to keep a point while dodging or if they would just have a bigger opening between dodges.

It’s nearly impossible to punish them between attacks unless you got a really good internet connection and even then it’s hard for certain classes.

Using your logic then classes shouldn’t be able to contribute to point capture while chaining/spamming blocks……….

Thats why I mentioned 2 options. I do realize that making people unable to keep a point while dodging wouldn’t be a good idea.

But there should be a longer startup time or aftercast to be able to interrupt them more easily. So they would at least have to be a bit more careful.

Mesmer is good vs inexperienced people who don’t know how or what to dodge.
Those people don’t dodge or blind your shield 4 phantasms meaning you can do good damage to them & kill them rather easily.

However i can imagine that highly experienced players will be able to counter that easily, leaving mesmer with low damage & only really being there for the moa & portal utility and +1ing.

I remember when mesmer used to be really good for 1v1’s. Nowadays its tough vs a lot of classes.

I wouldn’t mind condi thief if they wouldn’t be able to keep a point while dodging or if they would just have a bigger opening between dodges.

It’s nearly impossible to punish them between attacks unless you got a really good internet connection and even then it’s hard for certain classes.

I agree that we need more communication & hype.

When it comes to the living story, I think new maps are great and all, they’re nice & fun to explore for the first time but after doing whatever you need from hem there’s close to no reason to go back to them.
As much as I love the design of Bloodstone Fen, I haven’t really been there since completing the story, achievements & getting the rewards i wanted.

I also liked the idea of the living story taking pace in certain parts of the already existing maps. Maybe having to revisit certain parts of older maps or actually changing parts of certain maps (like Kessex Hills.) or add parts/instances to already existing maps.
It makes the maps feel more alive in a sense. We remember the history of the map and events that took place there whenever we see them.

I’d personally love mesmer to get dagger. However I’d be happy with axe too (coz it would give me a proper reason to craft Astralaria.)

I don’t care whether it would be a power or condi weapon as long as it’s a viable DPS spec.

While the theme of a bard type class really suits mesmer i feel like the last thing mesmer needs is even more boonshare/support. And I really don’t want a shortbow either.

I’d prefer just about anything that isn’t support & doesn’t use shortbow or bow.

Just give mesmer a pure DPS spec & give them a mainhand dagger. (or axe)

I think the reward is decent.
And I love GW2’s festivals but yes the one thing that really bothers me with them is how there’s no way to properly play them with friends. You have to keep trying to get in to end up together.
Make the “Join friend in” button acttually work (unless heir map is full ofc.)

I can understand people not being able to pass through certain things like walls (DH longbow #5, elite trap.
But it should NOT knock you back.
The worst part is when you use certain skills like blink or lightning flash, you STILL get knocked back, which makes no sense at all.

I don’t want those skills to become useless so everyone just dodges through, but please, they shouldn’t be that powerful & have some proper counterplay.

It’s also annoying how DH’s 3 most important offensive abilities are unblockable.

Davos.5368:

Thanks for the input. I’ll try a DPS role and see how that goes. Been playing as a druid so mostly support.

Same here whenever i’m on my druid. My games as a druid are either going really good or really bad, all depends on if ur teammates are decent or not.

As a druid you’ll make decent players great and great players godly.
But useless players will still be useless if they have no idea what they’re doing.

In games with “useless” players (don’t like using the term useless but i’m having a hard time to describe them in a better way.) i’m better off going mesmer & trying to outrotate the enemy decapping/capping side points, making people come to me.

Dawdler.8521:

glenndevis.8327:

The 1 think DH really lacks is mobility.

Why would you ever need mobility when the only thing you are supposed to stand on is the same size as your AoE?

Imagine how it would be if every point was the size of mid foefire.

Mind blown.

Exactly. Like I said, mobility is something they lack, but by no means is it something they need to be viable.

I don’t like the way traps work in general in PvP.
DH traps lack counterplay. (in PvP)

Yeah I’ve tried DH for the first time since HoT in PvP and i feel like i’m doing better on it than i’m doing on my mesmer which i’ve been maining since release.

Not only that, but I also find the playstyle extremely boring.

megilandil.7506:

Travlane.5948:

so a heavy who has access to

heavy burns and other condis
huge AOE unblockable point burst
CC (pulls) pushes
several skills to block for multiple seconds at a time
huge heals
1200 range backstab damage (true shot)
heavy armor (toughness)
teleports

def a lil much. but its ok bc DH dont really bleed people so it balances out (sarcasm)

LOL, this is the tipical DH hate post, i have no idea on DH.
all classes have similar acces to such thinks, you are talking of at least 4 difent builds, and no one have acces at all at a time, heavy burning needs a build entirely dedicated to it and sacrifices range(they dont use LB, they use sword,focus, scepter and torch), traps, cc (if they use f1 lose the burn in every 3 atacks and they only burn other damage is anecdotic in burn guard)…
and so for the others builds
but how you dont have idea on DH and you can find in one match of stacked DHs all the diferent builds you think one can do all, burn you, cc you, trap you and shoting you whith the LB

I actually had no idea myself about Guardian/Dragon Hunter before. So i started playing it a bit lately just to see what it’s all about and/or how to counter it.

But now I know how they work, what Travlane said in his post is pretty accurate. Dragon hunter does have all that in 1 single build.
Minus the burning. you actually need a more burn dedicated build for that, which makes you lack other things. Then again, burn DHs aren’t problematic or “op” at all.

The 1 think DH really lacks is mobility.
And their 1 real counter is getting bursted down while being CCed. And most of hem have at least 2stunbreaks. sometimes even 3. So yeah.

Not as much of a redesign but more of an elite spec idea.
Elite spec based entirely on clones & phantasms.

-New weapon: Dual daggers.
-Additional utility skills: more phantasms (all utility phantasms stay alive & follow you around, but they have a time limit & have a large healthpool.
-Replace F1-F4 shatters with skills that give our phantasms additional effects (like stun or give our phantasms quickness.
-New F5: summons a clone at a location of your choice with medium healthpool. 2nd press will make you swap positions with the clone (stunbreak.)
-Elite phantasm: (?)
-Clones & Phantasms stay out of combat until destroyed or replaced. (or give them a reasonable duration timer)
-Buff phantasm damage & increase their health to resemble the original mesmers health but nerf the mesmers personal health & damage to a low amount & give the mesmer a new survivability tool (F5). So the mesmer can’t just be careless & passive, but actually needs to think and pay attention to what the enemy is doing and use their offensive phantasm skills & defensive skills at the right time.

The mesmer would have to pay attention to how he uses his clones & phantasms & actually control them offensively (making the playstyle more active & not jus spam clones & be defensive.) And with such low health the mesmer would have to play very carefully and not waste their stealth/escapes/defensive skills.

Would be nice if mesmer became like a “ranged” bursty assassin who’s very squishy but who makes his phantasms do the damage & maybe cc for him. And using clones as a defensive/escape mechanic.

I know that all of these ideas would or might be overpowered, but it’s just an idea for an elite spec design.
I’d love a balanced active/passive playstyle based on trickery with clones and dealing damage with phantasms.

I personally like the idea of fighting using our clones & phantasms (both for damage & utility) more than I like generating clones & phantasms just to shatter them.

Would be nice if anet could make the playstyle a bit more active while still feeling like a sneaky trickster. I think something like this should come from a complete new elite spec though. (Integrating it in any current base specs would be a bad idea and probably very hard to balance)

Imagine an elite spec based entirely on clones or phantasms. (but with more active gameplay. Having the mesmer control the clones & phantasms better. creating a good balance of an offensive/defensive or active/passive playstyle)

mrauls.6519:

glenndevis.8327:

I think the daze nerf was a step in the right direction, but I still feel like DH is too powerful.
Personally I feel like it’s because of their unblockable attacks also being their strongest attacks… which also have strong CC in them.

DH has one unblockable attack. Not multiple. Maybe you’re thinking about how Rev can make their next 2 attacks unblockable?

-Test of Faith trap
-F1
-bow #3

And all 3 can be used in combination to deal more damage

Lucius.2140:

Theres a lot of ignorance about the MMR system. For instance when people talk about bronce hell they forget a important detail: your opponents are as bad as your teamates.

That means a guy that actually is better than bronce or a particular skill rating has advantage, because his team has him, that its more skilled, but was paired as less. That means his win rate against people rated like him (his underated) will be more than 50%, the more skilled the bigger the chance to win.

The enemy team members will have the same probabilities to do the same mistakes that your teammates do, they will 3 man cap a point or whatever as much as your teammates, the difference its you will not, hence you will get more points to your teams, making the winning chance of it better.

If you are more skilled than your division, skill rate, etc; you are there because the system underate you, your presence dont compensate for anything, you are a wildcard not properly considered in the system and will go up.

If you not, self denial doesnt help.

Pd: Not my main language.

Anet needs to be more tight with their matchmaking system. I’m silver right now and i’m sure there are games where i’m teamed up with golds and games where i’m teamed up with bronzies. (or people who are gold/silver because they got lucky with teammates and people who end up in bronze coz they are unlucky with teammates.)

Also in bronze (and probably silver too) there are a lot of people who shouldn’t even be attempting ranked yet because they don’t understand PvP properly and people who are just there because of the rewards.

Some people you can “carry” or at least guide them to do the right thing. But some people are beyond saving.

The diffirence in skill & understanding in the lower tiers is too big so they need a better system to rate people depending on their gameplay & make the matchmaking more tight.

I would LOVE a 1v1 PvP mode.
But they would need a certain amount of rules when it comes to this to prevent 2 really tanky builds fighting eachother to no end.

Maybe have a time limit on the duel and in the end the player who has healed himself the most loses?
I think that removing certain builds from 1v1 arenas would be hard.

I think the daze nerf was a step in the right direction, but I still feel like DH is too powerful.
Personally I feel like it’s because of their unblockable attacks also being their strongest attacks… which also have strong CC in them.

I’m a big fan of the dishonor system punishing people more. Not only if people leave, but also when people get reported for being afk or manipulating the match outcome.

People keep doing this (more than in any other game from what i’ve noticed) just because the dishonor system isn’t nearly as punishing as it should be.

That and I feel like reports don’t really mean much. I feel like most reports on these matters are just brushed off by Anet. I might be wrong though, would be nice to get some feedback if someone you reported actually got punished for their behavior.

Archon.6480:

Shadowstep.6049:

Tiefsee.3647:

Don’t worry, if you aren’t placed in bronce, you won’t have to deal with them – ofcourse you should win most placement games if you want to be placed outside of bronce

You would be surprised. I had people in plat throwing games like mad. We have 2 points, they run to enemy spawn and wipe. Or just let enemy cap point literary next to them.

People ragequit, people afk there as well. I had 1v5 games few times.

I suspect a great many are trolling or taking gold to loose on purpose. I think ANet needs to increase the MMR volatility a bit, and add more divisions to further divide the population.

Or simply add 30s to the matchmakers algorithm to find more closely matched people. Decrease the range of players you can be matched against.

This.
I wouldn’t mind having to wait longer if the matches would be more balanced.

While I think clone on death builds were pretty much skill less cheese builds, I also think that clone on death builds really fits the mesmers theme as a trickster kind of class.
Causing confusion for your enemies while hiding & sneaking around.
Slowly killing your opponent while being passive & letting them kill themselves trying to kill you.

If the enemy focuses your clones: clone one death condis
If the enemy focuses you: stealth & clones will do condis anyway.

Counterplay: avoid fighting them.

In PvP Clone on death builds wouldn’t even be a problem since the mesmer would rely a lot on stealth to stay alive. While stealthed they can’t keep points.
This build also kills too slow & has low teamfight damage.

Clone on death builds would only be viable while roaming in WvW and even then the enemy can just ignore you and run away.

And since people complain about the build being mindless… don’t forget that there are still dragonhunters for the real mindless people.

In the end I would love to have clone on death builds back & have a good spot in the meta in at least 1 game mode while still keeping it balanced.

Either that or give mesmer an option to play as a real trickster in one way or another.
Tricking your enemy & making them attack your clones. Maybe through a more skillful system.

I love the whole clone & phantasm mechanic (both dealing damage through other sources & being tricky) But I never really liked the mindless SPAM CLONES & SHATTER aspect of mesmer (yes i just said that.) Makes mesmer feel like just other offensive type class.

I think Anet needs to implement an additional tutorial to PvP.
One that explains rotations, priorities & stresses the importance of map awareness.

Shadowstep.6049:

Faux Play.6104:

I’m disappointed you only lost 12 rating point.

vesica tempestas.1563:

illusory suitability or.. If you are placed too low then obviously you will be better than everyone you play against and you will climb fast by tipping the balance in a fight.
If not then you may be where you should be. The first sample set of 10 games to calculate your position is fat too small a sample set, time tells. As for the the luck argument , it is statistically irrelevant and anecdotal at best.

The root problem ofc is the human element, even if you had 5 people with the same accurate score, there is no way to measure how a player plays on a given day, so you need a large sample set over time to settle down your rating. Relax enjoy the fights and don’t worry about your rank and things will be fun.

Except that my point isn’t about my placement or about luck or about matchmaking in general. It’s about the amount of games this happens in (in general, not only me.) I haven’t had this many trolls, afkers or clueless people in ranked in gw2 has i’ve had in any other game i’ve played with competitive PvP.

If 3 out of 5 games are ruined by either of the type of people i mentioned before then there’s something wrong with how the game works or how the game teaches people.
(I assume this becomes less of an issue at higher ranks. Still makes it very frustrating to get out of these lower tiers though.)

I think some solutions could be:
-Better tutorial of some of the mechanics in PvP.
-Heavier punishment for people who go afk, dc or people who flame & intentionally manipulate games. I think Anet should be a bit more harsh on some of the reports people do in PvP.

It would also be nice to be able to see the rating of your allies & enemies in a PvP match.

I do not mind losing at all against people who are just better than me. I wouldn’t mind staying silver if that’s the case. If anything it would make me want to get better and i’ll enjoy it.

But in games with trolls, afkers, ragers & clueless people it just makes it frustrating more than anything.

I got placed in low silver, managed to climb to silver 2. But still getting this an awful lot of times. To the point where i’m almost dropping back to silver 1.

Climbing is a pain if your teammates don’t have a clue about how pvp works, don’t know how to rotate or don’t have any map awareness at all.

Having some sort of tutorial explaining these mechanics would be nice.
Also too many people not really caring about winning, just coz they want the rewards.

Played 5 games so far today.
Won 1
Lost 4
And i can only call one of the losses a proper loss because of the enemy team being better.

The other 3 games were messed up by
-Afkers/DC
-Trolls or clueless people who have no idea how pvp works at all.
-Flamers who just complain and end up standing around to make us lose on purpose.

The punishment for this should be much harder.
Would be nice to get some feedback if the players we report get punished too.

Bring back 5 man team queue in a diffirent leaderboard. Yes I know the queues will talke longer for those who decide to queue as a full team but I think that it’s a bit silly that in a TEAM PvP gamemode you can’t really play with… well… your TEAM!

And yes please remove class stacking. I’ll gladly wait a minute longer for my queues if it means we’ll have balanced teams.
Would really make the imbalances in the game be less of a problem.

It has probably been discussed & been complained about in the past but has Anet ever said anything on fixing this?

Would really fix a lot of balance issues if Ane would make class stacking impossible.
At least you would only have 1 of the “flavor of the month/overpowered” class on the team instead of 3-4 because of pure luck & randomness of the matchmaking system.

I would still love 1v1 Duels in this game.

I know it’s been talked a bout a lot and nothing has been done about it. But its still a missing feature of the game.

I love the new fractal.
A lot of fun, interesting mechanics, a good challenge.

I’m excited to see more fights like this in he future.

If there’s anything I’d like for this game is more build/role diversity.
cough tank/heal/dps cough being required for more content (not only raids) would make a lot of other content (fractals & dungeons and may be some other instant or even meta events) more interesting.

Build diversity supporting that role diversity would make it even better.
We’ll see what they do in the next expansion I guess.

If anything, i’d want the Zhaitan battle to be redesigned to make it more challenging & interactive.

Eh Not sure about a “story mode”

But I do feel like multiple difficulty lvls would be nice.

- Easy mode: Easier versions of what we have right now (10 man still) for people new to raids or casual people who want to see the story of the raids. (Shouldn’t give raid rewards.)

- Normal mode: what we have right now

- Hard mode: exactly what it sounds like, higher scaled difficulty, maybe add a mechanic to it if possible. (With improved rewards.)

Diffirent difficulties for diffirent people. Ofc, the higher the difficulty, the better the rewards should be.

Awesome! Thanks guys.

I have the AR necessary to do the lvl 100 fractal but my personal lvl is only 72. Will I still get the reward needed for the legendary backpiece or does my personal lvl have to be 100 to get the reward?

I’d personally love more dungeons. I’d have loved new dungeons in the expansion. A new dungeon in a new map would be nice.

Wouldn’t even have to be a full 3 path dungeon but it would be nice to have the “final” battle of every new living story to be a 5 man dungeon instance (with its own unique rewards like old dungeons, so people actually replay the dungeon and it doesn’t become a “do once and forget about it” kind of dungeon.

I doubt we’ll get any new dungeon though.

All I hope is that the new elite spec will make mesmer a good viable aoe DPS (non support) with a new main hand weapon.

I feel like dagger would suit Mesmer better but i’ll be very happy with axe as well (just coz i’ll have a reason to craft Astralaria.)

After reading the leak…
I have 2 things I’d like to mention. (IF these leaks are true)

1) Considering Axe is usually a damage based weapon (not support or defensive) I’m quite positive that the next Mesmer elite spec will be a pure dps spec compared to Chrono being a DPS support skill.

And ever since I heard about the elite specs I hoped Mesmer would get a pure DPS spec (since base mesmer damage is kittenty as well.)
So i’m kind of happy with this.

2) Although I like the idea of axe on Mesmer I feel like (if the idea is to make a pure dps spec) dagger would be a better idea & would suit mesmer more.

Either way I’ll be very happy with either. Would give me a reason to craft Astralaria.
Love the legendary but I don’t play any class that uses axe. ;-;

The problem with Dragon Hunter is that they do everything too well.
It wouldn’t be too bad if they had 1 or 2 strong points but they’re too strong because they’re good at too many things at once.

My problems with them:
-Too much damage
-Too much CC
-Too much survivability

I’m not saying they should get nerfed in all of these aspects. I’m saying that all 3 together make them too strong.

Their damage wouldn’t be a problem at all if it wasn’t for their CC & survivability.

I feel like Dragon Hunters are supposed to do damage & have good CC (or at least i feel like they were designed around the idea of dealing damage and surviving through kiting with CC.)

However I feel like they have way too much survivability. Especially with Renewed Focus and F3.

Despite that I feel like the thing that makes them too strong is the fact that they can force people off point so easily.

Yes the traps can be avoided by simply dodging as soon as activated but that leads to the main problem of having to go off point, enabling the enemy to decap, cap AND defend just with traps.

From a design perspective I feel they need their survivability nerfed.
But from an actual balance perspective I feel like their traps are what needs nerfing.

I think having these 1 or 2 default builds are indeed good for new players and I think its a step in the good direction.

That being said I am a bit dissapointed because…
If anet can do this I don’t think its that hard to implement actual build templates as well.

I hope we’ll get it in the next patch or sometime soon.

I just hope Mesmer gets a pure dps spec in the next expansion.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

FrizzFreston.5290:

I still find it funny how Dungeons “died” with merely a nerf to their gold reward. Not much else has changed. Maybe they could update their token rewards.

They should have increased the token awards. Thing is, Anet explicitly doesn’t want people to run dungeons anymore. They just didn’t have the balls to cut them entirely, so they gutted their rewards to encourage people to buy HoT drive people towards fractals.

Sourde Noire.5286:

Dungeons are also a lot harder to create because they’re bigger. And that’s why you only get new fractals.

We didn’t even get new fractals!

Yeah. Maybe they nerfed dungeon rewards to reduce the amount of liquid gold gained but they could have fixed it by simply giving us more other rewards (tokens,…)

And even if we would get new fractals, i’d still prefer new dungeons. Still better than what we got now i guess? (nothing)

The dungeon team is gone… sure. But from what we have seen in the raid, Anet seems to be more than capable of designing instanced content.

I think maybe they nerfed dungeon rewards to make people stop doing them, because they wanted to get rid of the zerker meta and instead of fixing the game they just killed what promoted the zerker meta.
But guess what? Zerker meta still lives, raids are 99% zerk anyway and i’ve done pretty much everything in HoT in full zerk. Nothing changed.

Anyone else would have preferred it if anet would focus more on dungeons instead of fractals?

More diffirent/unique rewards in armor & weapon skins.
More content (1 dungeon: 1 story mode, 3 explorable paths)

I’d have loved to see a new dungeon, completely mordrem themed.

Story mode being the final story instance of HoT story. (kinda like what they did with Zhaitan.)

I’d have loved this a lot more than the 50 extra lvls of the same old fractals we have right now.

I’m starting to get really annoyed.

-Spending 10 minutes trying to get into one of the activities because the “world i’m attempting is full.”

-And when I finally do get to the loading screen I get a double loading screen back into Divinity’s Reach.

-Random knockdowns when jumping on presents in the puzzle or invisible snowballs knocking you off.

-The insane amounts of drinks necessary is just crazy. I know the achievement will be available after wintersday but there better be ways to get wintersday presents other than the 1 gift / day in the home instance.

- WHEN will we finally be able to do the activities with guildies or friends? Now there’s the option to “join friend in PvP” but it DOESN’T WORK! Not even once i’ve been put in the same instance with a friend even after spamming it 10x and my friend’s map isn’t even full.

insanemaniac.2456:

Bunnytown.7801:

I don’t care about any of that stuff.

I just want to be able to play toypocalypse with my friends, not be placed with random players.

you can this year and its the best change anet ever did to any minigame ever :o

right click name/party icon -> join friend in pvp

if their instance is not full, you will join. if their instance is full, youll be dumped into a random instance. it isnt perfect, it isnt even great because of how many people there are doing these things and how hard it can be to actually get in the correct instance, but its there and it IS functional.

Ehm. Ive tried that last night. A friend was in snowball mayhem. Match wasnt full and i lept getting put in a diff one…

To be fair. This puzzle is one of my fav things to do in the Wintersday events so I’m glad it’s in the collection.

I feel like a lot of people complaing about no being able to do something because of medical problems or because of some other inability to complete certain content.

If the content is too hard for you then you shouldn’t be getting the reward.

And a game can’t and shouldn’t change just for people with medical problems.

What’s the next complaint going to be? “Help I have no arms. How am I supposed to do this jumping puzzle? Please Anet change this.”

Has anyone else noticed that when you draw/wield Flameseeker there is a faint sound effect?

I don’t know if this effect was already in the game before but i’ve only just realized it now.