Guild Wars 2

Justin ODell.9517:

Lopez.7369:

Three matches today. Three sweeps.

Your matches have been even. You are on the high skill side of the curve and haven’t been getting any new players on any of your recent rosters. Both you and the people you’ve played with have had a stable MMR.

I don’t know what to tell you.

I’d say that the sweeps currently happening are more due to team class composition than MMR now. As well as the hardcounters that the balance team seems intent on adding to the game

You should move your post to the necromancer forums

Wintel.4873:

1) This should NOT be happening
2) Why the hell are so many people playing a class that is 100% useless in TPvP?
3) This should NOT be happening

We lost 500-150. Every time Ele joined the fight I sighed because they are just free rally bait for the people I had managed to down. One or two of them literally died INSTANTLY died instantly to an enemy Thief. I mean INSTANTLY. I didn’t even know that was possible.

Ele players, please do everyone a favor and play a class that is actually made for TPvP. You are just rally bait.
ArenaNet please make a note when someone creates an Ele along the lines of “PvE class only” or something. It would be a big help to everyone.

People are entitled to play whatever class they want to. If you don’t like it, play team queue with 4 warriors. No one is stopping you. This post makes you look like an kitten .

The skill point costs should be removed completely (forever). It’s insulting and completely unnecessary. This imbalances PvP majorly and forces people to PvE.

I already made a poll and 80% wanted it removed. All real pvpers hate this change.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

And the glory exploiters just made a fortune while the honest players get screwed over. Well I know what I’ll be doing next time.

I concur.

Guess what?

The thief (assassin) class is supposed to be the best at killing other bursty targets. That’s its job. It doesn’t have the sustain to deal with hybrids or even bunkers usually.

I agree with the OP.

Every time I think about skill unlocks in pvp it makes me really mad.

Ridiculous change and to whoever thought it was a good idea: IT ISN’T. CHANGE IT.

but I can’t! Because I don’t have skillpoints, and I don’t want to spend 40K glory on one skill!

Good work Anet, adding skill progression to PvP…moving this game ever farther away from being an eSport.

Does anyone else agree that skill unlocks in pvp are a terrible idea?

Could you link your build? I’ve been looking for a viable gs/sb set up

We need both replays and observation of high ranked team queue on a 2 minute delay. I’m really sad that Arenanet gives random people called ‘shoutcasters’ the only access to watching high ranked queues. These guys are not even active enough to have a regular viewership.

Yep, 3 out of my last 4 were 4v5s. It’s awful.

Oprah.1347:

Absolutely not, I even made a post about it a few days ago. It’s going to create power gaps between players who have the glory/gold to get any new skills which quickly become meta and also forces sPvP players to spend the small amount of gold we’re now earning on something that did not need to be added.

It’s a bad choice, and will only do more to hurt the community by moving everyone off equal footing as time progresses.

I agree 100%

Chase.8415:

Maybe if we be more vocal about it they’ll reverse the decision like the removal of ranks

That’s what I was thinking :/ It’s a ridiculous thing to add.

http://strawpoll.me/826666

Edit: By ‘skill unlocks’ I mean having to pay 25 skillpoints to unlock new skills in PvP. I think some people might have mistakenly thought I meant just the addition of new skills.

Mesmer heal will be incredibly overpowered. Necro heal incredibly underpowered.

Everything else looks quite good!

It’s because new players are given a starting MMR which correlates to about the 500 mark on the leaderboards I believe. It’s ridiculous. Their starting MMR should be 0%. Maybe 25%.

There is a difference between easy to play builds and easy to play builds which are the best in the game.

New players shouldn’t expect to instantly ‘be good’ when they start. They shouldn’t expect to win 1v1s. But luckily, they have builds like hambow warrior and spirit ranger to help them out.

Your thought process makes no sense. Popular sports and games have a clear skill curve where the high tier players are leagues better than the beginners. That skill curve in GW2 is currently very unclear.

I’d like to see more guilds fielding active PvP teams. Right now I’m pretty sure there is no purpose for guilds to go into PvP together to fight.

What if fighting together as a guild team in PvP could give buffs to the rest of the guild in pve/wvw as well as gaining influence? I think this would be a cool addition.

Anyone have suggestions to reward guilds for team queueing together?

Substance E.4852:

Probably closer to xmas.

They really never should have removed it in the first place. People will either buy it because they want it then or not at all. All it does is punish people who weren’t playing during the short window of time it was in the store.

Why anet hates money is a mystery we shall never fully solve.

I hope so! And yes… I don’t understand why it was removed. :/

Actually, I think most of the community would rather see you buff the numerous worthless utilities many classes have, rather than adding new ones and upsetting an already imbalanced game further.

http://strawpoll.me/811078

Do you want ranks removed? ^

I was most impressed last night by a necro named Archgoat Hemroid and a ranger named Deshawnte Cougarfly, both from the same guild.

You naughty, naughty boy. Go to your room.

Its basically my favorite backpiece ever and I wasn’t playing actively when it was added…

Do you think there is any chance they will release it again??

Spirit Ranger, minion necro, condi engi, burst guardian, phantasm mesmer. All decent at 1v1ing

Chase.8415:

I have a feeling the “blog” post will be more something among the lines on how developing PvP is a hard process on the hardware and developer level and we’re postponing these features announced until mid 2014

What does your signature even mean. LOL

Getting frequent blowout matches, over and over.

Feels like the matchmaking went back to high MMR vs low MMR again.

I don’t know whether this is due to leaderboard, but most of my matches are now 500-200 or close to there.

For a while after the matchmaking change and before the leaederboard change I was getting tons of great games (500-450).

Has this change been reverted? If so, I will stop solo queueing immediately.

Find people to make a team with and voice chat with them.

Currently, voice chat in solo queue (when the other team isn’t using it) would be viewed as cheating by most people.

Gracious.4279:

I will defend skyhammer to the death… some people run a build that just fits perfectly with the map, and do great. Others, run glassy builds with 0 sustain and get punished, sorry, its true ;/. But what is stopping everyone else from using the same tactics? are there monsters under your bed that come out and eat you if you use a mesmer with a focus on skyhammer? because that is some serious kitten, and you need to call the police.

Oh I dunno what about classes like ele or ranger who don’t have cheesy pulls and knockbacks they can do every 10 seconds? And why should a map force you to run a very narrow build in order to do well?

What if I don’t wanna run a tanky spec with stability as often as possible and only try to knock people off rather than winning fights fairly?

Your reasoning is probably the same as Anet’s and it’s extremely flawed.

^Watch out, they’ll try to assimilate you into some bizarre roleplaying subculture! Xd

Well, looks like Skyhammer has a higher approval rating than George Bush.

Good work Anet.

I’ve been playing a lot of ranger recently and it’s a fun class but my pet dies too easily in dungeons and even open world events sometimes.

I’m sure this has been suggested before, but why not just make pets stay alive as long as their owner is alive? It’s not as though GW2 was intended to be a serious farming game like Diablo 3. Making one of the most popular classes terrible in dungeons isn’t a great idea.

I’m also sure that someone will give me a great reason why this might not be such a good idea, so please, let me know!

Oh, and for those of you who would say ‘invulnerable pet= always tank all the DPS’, why not just make enemies prioritize the ranger over the ranger pet? (The same as a person who was fighting the ranger might do)

http://strawpoll.me/778336

ronpierce.2760:

I’d prefer them to get hp for doing something, right now Blood Fiend is a lesser heal than healing signet AND: can be killed, cced, evaded, LOSed, has a huge cast time. Like really?

Last time I checked, Healing signet does not attack your enemy. Although, I’m sure Arenanet could manage to make it do that.

Seriously, I thought they fixed this?

If I run up to a minion necro and try to tab target I cycle through half of the minions first.

This is really annoying. Especially on the broken piece of trash map skyhammer where one is in the cannon room and I have seconds before I get totally destroyed.

Pretty sure MMR wasn’t reset?

The other day I had 100 cannon hits and 440 glory on Skyhammer in 8v8. I could almost see the Esports in front of me.

Currently, we are seeing seven classes being used frequently in top tier tPvP (the only one missing is the elementalist). I’ve seen quite a few people that have mentioned that from a balancing perspective this is the highest number of classes viable at one time. And it’s true, it’s nice that so many classes are seeing frequent use in tournaments

However, many classes are ridiculously pigeonholed into taking a very specific set of traits or utilities.

Any competitive thief build goes 30 points into critical strikes and uses either s/d or d/p with a shortbow for swap. Without critical strikes, thieves damage is awful, and these two weapon sets are the only thing that allows them to survive and be effective. Both untraited venoms and traps (except shadow trap/basi) are absurdly weak, meaning thieves have to pick from about half of their utilities.

Any competitive ranger build goes 30 points into wilderness survival, because their only reliable condition removal is a grandmaster trait. They take either traps or spirits because their shouts are underpowered and their signets require a grandmaster trait to be worth it.

Any competitive necromancer build takes scepter/dagger, and staff because these are far and away the most powerful weapons the class has. Necromancer actually does have the widest usefulness of it’s utilities of any class in the game, but both death and blood magic are obviously weaker than it’s other 3 traitlines.

These are just the classes I’m most familiar with but other classes are similar too:

Any competitive warrior is running 0/10/30/0/30 because it’s simply better than other builds

These ‘alpha’ builds as I call them have been around for a really long time now. And they work, but they also make other builds useless.

Every patch I wait for changes to completely obsolete utilities such as thief traps or ranger shouts but I’m always disappointed. If I was Arenanet, I’d would consistently be giving these utilities small buffs until people decided that they were as worth taking as the other utilities. But, every patch I see them change utilities and weapons that are already seeing use.

I don’t really think anyone cares about the leaderboards? And anyway, even if they do…they don’t care enough to want their previous achievements wiped completely…

dreztina.4820:

Here’s a thought. Maybe if you disabled this godawful failure of a map, people would stop making threads about it. Just a thought.

-insert ranger rambling about how spirit not OP here-

But seriously, this skill is incredibly over the top.

Incurafy.6329:

Feel free to edit this as you see fit, Inf, I am probably wrong in a lot of places. I know I missed a few too but I cbf trying to think of them right now… quote this post to get the code for the formatting if you want it.

Community Terms and their Definitions

hide spoiler

Community Terms and their Definitions

Generic PvP:

• PvP: Refers to the structured PvP found in the Heart of the Mists. Does not include WvW or other forms of PvP.
• Heart of the Mists: The PvP lobby area where you can change your build, organise teams, and talk to other PvP players.
• Spawn: The area where you are placed at the beginning of a match.
• Meta: The current state of the game in a broad sense that explains the most popular builds as a whole. For example, a “burst meta” would refer to a meta in which the majority of competitive players run builds with high burst potential and very little defence.
• Meta build: A build that is widely considered to be one of the best builds for use by a profession in the current competitive meta.
• Match Making Ranking: Someone with a better understanding of this will need to explain it for me.
• Leaderboards: Refers to the leaderboards found on the Guild Wars 2 website under the community panel. There is a leaderboard for both SoloQ and TeamQ (see “Game Types” for definitions).

Game Modes:

• Conquest: The current form of PvP, revolvs around capturing and holding certain objective points on the map. In this case, the objectives are the three control points.

Game Types:

• Hotjoin: The casual form of PvP usually reserved for less serious play. The leaderboards are unaffected by hotjoin servers and players are not given tournament rewards for winning a match.
• SoloQ: The “Solo Areana” tournaments. Players enter the arenas on their own without a team and are matched with other players of similar skill levels based on their MMR.
• TeamQ: The “Team Arena” tournaments. Players enter the areans on their own or with a pre-made party of players (full party not required). Teams are not matched by their MMR (CORRECT ME IF THAT’S WRONG), instead they’re placed together when two full teams (5 players) have been found and are ready to begin. Players a rewarded for a win with a Match Win Reward Chest which contains various rewards (usually PvP crafting materials and equippment).

Characters:

• Build: Everything that makes up your character, including choice of runes, weapons, sigils, amulet, traits, and utilities.
• Synergy: How well the various components of your build go together. For example, the 15 point minor trait Feline Grace (return 33% endurance) in the Acrobatics line of the Thief profession has good synergy with the 10 point adept Acrobatics trait Power of Inertia (add 1 stack of might on dodge).
• Theorycrafting: The mathematical analysis of game mechanics to discover the best strategies and tactics to maximise player effectiveness. Does not always use mathematics, almost always used to create the best builds.

Capture points:

• Home/Close: The closest point to your spawn.
• Mid: Usually located somewhere in the centre of the map.
• Far/Enemy home: Refers to the closest point to the enemies spawn.

Build Roles:

• Roamer: A fast, mobile build with a (usually) high burst potential. Their job is to “roam” the map and cause uneven fights for their team to take advantage of. The burst potential is (usually) required to quickly eliminate an opponent and swing a fight into their teams favour. Example classes: Thief, Mesmer, Warrior
• Bunker: A heavily defensive build that is purely designed to “hold” a point for as long as possible until help can arrive.
• Mid bunker: See bunker. Stays on the middle point for the duration of the match, does not leave it unless absolutely necessary.
• Home bunker: See bunker. Stays on the home point during various portions of the match, but will rotate to another point as soon as possible to assist.
• Far-point assaulter: A build specifically designed to harrass the enemy’s home point and attempt to neutralise or capture it.
• Team fighter: INSERT DEFINITION HERE
• There’s more but I cbf thinking of them right now.

Events:

• Twocap: Control two of three capture points at the same time.
• Threecap: Control all three capture points at the same time.
• Creature kill: Occurs when a player or team kills one of the two “creatures” on the Forest of Nifelhelm map.
• Treb kill: Occurs when a player or team destroys one of the two trebuchet on the Battle of Khylo map.

Tactics:

• Backcap: Capture the enemy’s home point with little to no resistance.
• A LOT MORE TO ADD HERE

Nice, thank you!

Actually I generally don’t mind eles on my team if they aren’t staff eles. Would rather have ele + thief or ele + mes than double mes or double thief.

Chicago Jack.5647:

I would add to this and say, you can generally look at what type of conditions a person on your team is getting hit with, and tell what kind of enemy player is on that node with them. But why should anyone bother? EVERYONE can be seen on the minimap now!

Who cares about tactics anymore? Since you can see the enemy team on the minimap, one less thing to actively think about. Gone are the days of trying to predict enemy rotations. What a stupid, dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb change.

Hey guys! Blizzard just made an update to SC2! Everyone gets maphack now!

I disagree. In no way does this take away from the skill of the game. Also, this isn’t the thread to be venting about this so please, take this argument somewhere else.

Forz.1725:

Great tips. I want to add a few more:

Only One Person Per Point for Full Cap Speed : I guess this is a hot join habit that some people don’t shake when moving up into Solo Q. It only takes one person to get the full cap speed on a node, so don’t follow someone to a point and sit on it with them if it is uncontested, especially in the beginning of a match.

Map Awareness: This is crucial to success in Solo Q. Since there isn’t much communication going on (if at all), it is still very important to know where your teammates are at all times. With the addition of enemy markers showing up on the mini map, you can see when your home point bunker is outnumbered and in need of help, or when an opportunity to decap far point arises.

Teammate Health bars : This goes along with map awareness. Pay attention to your teammates health bars at all times. If your mid point bunker is alone and is <50% health, that is your cue to get to mid and assist him ASAP.

Don’t Run into Outnumber Fights : This is just silly but I see it all the time. Example: There are 3 enemies that just finished downing one of your teammates at home point and you just spawned, DO NOT run into that point solo. You will die, you give the enemy team 5 more points, and you earned yourself an additional 15 seconds of not helping your team do something useful while you wait to respawn again. This is where map awareness also comes into play. I’ve seen the argument: “But I am keeping those people busy while the rest of the team can go cap/decap other points.” Wrong. It doesn’t work that way. You are just giving the enemy team an opportunity to regroup on you and make a push somewhere else.

Don’t Rage Quit: Just don’t.

These are good, thanks!

This thread is intended for sPvP beginners. My tips might seem obvious, but they are mistakes I see made over and over again by beginning and intermediate players (as well as myself!).

If anyone else has basic tips they would like to see added, let me know!

Tips for fighting:

1. Stay Moving: I cannot count how many times I see inexperienced players come to a complete stop to try and execute a skill combo. If you watch high tier players, it’s easy to notice one thing: They never stop moving unless they have an overwhelming positional advantage. Stopping moving while fighting is giving your opponent license to unload any skill he wants on you.

2. Watch Your Opponent, Not Yourself!: Watching your action bar instead of watching your opponent would be like trying to win a fist fight while looking into a hand mirror. To become proficient at fighting, you need to feel comfortable enough with your action bar and your keybinds to be able to be watching your opponent while you execute your skills.

3. Learn Your Specific Build: This point ties into the above points. If you haven’t played a lot with your build, you will have to look at your action bar to know what skills you can use. That puts you at a great disadvantage. Playing a build for a long time helps you to learn to nuances of it to a greater degree and be more effective.

4. Keybinds Are Important: It’s essential to find keybinds that are comfortable and work for your playstyle. These keybinds should allow you to be moving at all times while using any skill in your kitten nal. You also need to learn them well enough so that you never need to look at your action bar.

Tips for beginning tPvP:

1. Don’t Stand On One Point: Although capping and aggressively guarding one point seems like it might be a smart thing to do, it’s almost always preferable to be moving from one point to the next helping your teammates. The goal of conquest is to create uneven fights by winning 1v1s and 2v2s and then pressing your advantage to other points while your opponents are respawning.

2. Know Your Role: Knowing your role basically means knowing what your build and you are best at. Builds like spirit ranger and condition necromancer are best at mid fighting and home point defense due to their low mobility and AoE/support abilities. Highly mobile classes such as thief, warrior, and engineer are great for decapping points and briefly aiding the middle might. You would never want to fight at mid all game on a thief, but on a bunker guardian, that would be perfectly acceptable!

3. Far Point Is Dangerous: Unless you are sure of what you are doing, running far point is almost always going to be a negative for your team, especially if you are a beginner. Far point is always going to have passing enemy respawns and you will be isolated from the rest of your team. Losing a 1v1 on a far point allows the enemy to send one extra person to attack another point and can potentially wipe your whole team.

I’ve having tons of super close games now.

Drounn, Sylvari Ranger

It’s because warrior has fair mobility.

Thief has cheating dirty mobility.

They are good ideas. I’d love a non-ranked queue just to be able to have more relaxed tournament experience on builds that are questionable