Guild Wars 2

Both WHaO and RaO are in a good place (with or without the WHaO buff, it’s still an excellent heal that’s good vs burst damage).

Guard needs a different functionality. Protect Me in this meta of things like burn guards and burst comps is just a big red sign saying “Kill my pet and kill me 5 seconds after”. If arenanet wants to focus on Shouts now, please first look at Guard and Protect Me.

Shouts should be pet/ranger oriented, so RaO is a perfect example of that. It powers up both the pet and Ranger.

“Guard” in my opinion should just be entirely reworked: It’s totally outdated and the functionality is minimal. Just give us a new skill.

Protect Me: There are lots of options for this skill now. What I would opt for is both Ranger and pet gain Protection and Resistance. Pet could also have a short taunt added to it.

Although I’m not entirely unhappy with today’s Ranger buffs (and the Taunt fix which was totally called for), changes like what happened to Heal as One tells me that Arenanet continues to not listen to actual Ranger feedback.

The kind of buffs we needed were the kind of buffs Necromancer got: good buffs to weak weapon sets and utilities.

We’ve seen Arenanet leave specific weaponsets at meta-breaking levels of imbalance for YEARS (take a look at Hambow or D/D ele) and this imo is the #1 cause of stale meta feeling. I hate to see this happening to the Ranger, which although weak during the Cele Ele/Engineer meta, was still well balanced internally.

We don’t need some weird insane might stack + perma quickness tied around a heal skill. It’s janky and random and in all honesty not fun.

Ranger is now pretty much a Longbow based class. It’s like Warrior was, but worse, because the Longbow is entirely dominant among all the weapon sets.

Greatsword attacks remain pitifully weak (when you exclude cheese might swapping or cheesy cooldown stacking like Signet of the Hunt +Signet of the Wild).

Mainhand Axe does pretty wretched power based damage, and Bleeding damage was just nerfed by 20% in the condi damage patch. Unlike necromancer scepter or Axe, we’ve received entirely no compensation for this.

Shortbow is now officially one of the worst weapons in the game. Seriously, try killing an Elementalist or Warrior or Thief or Mesmer or anything with Shortbow as a condi Ranger. It’s also incredibly poorly designed with the entire bulk of damage residing in #2 and the autoattack.

Today we got a buff to Warhorn 5, but not Warhorn 4 which is the skill everyone has been saying needs to be changed for YEARS.

And finally (I’m not gonna even discuss OH Axe at this point), we are still stuck with a dysfunctional sword autoattack that locks us in place. Imagine if Mesmer or Thief sword autos stuck them in place… I wonder how long ago it would have been changed.

Now what I’m worried about is that with this awful Heal as One change (which should be reverted, or have its functionality drastically reduced), Ranger balance has been thrown entirely out of whack and we’ll start seeing weird nerfs because of it.

I do appreciate that the devs are trying to bring Ranger back into the PvP meta, but buffs like this go about it the wrong way.

Also, what they did to Spirits is truly a shame, because the utility was entirely balanced in PvP and WvW roaming, seeing some use, but not over represented. They took that and destroyed it entirely.

Yes, unless Arenanet realizes that Rangers’ only really strong weaponset at this point is Longbow, Druid will most likely gravitate towards power based Longbow builds with additional functionality.

Shortbow has been almost entirely left in the dust. Sword auto attack is dysfunctional. Axe Auto is worthless. Greatsword auto and maul do far less damage than a cele d/d ele.

The beam auto attack on staff might help keep it viable in some situations but otherwise it does not look extremely strong.

Abjured, TCG/R55, and oRNG are the top teams in this game. They all use thieves regularly. As well as a huge majority of mid-top tier teams.

First of all, I don’t really see a problem with people countering Chronos’s mesmer build with other stalling builds. What mantra mesmer does is stall repeatedly inside of stealth and chaos storm, etc. So, what Eurantien did was acceptable.

I didn’t see a problem with any of Storm’s calls, I also don’t see why storm and his admins should have to wait around for “pro” duelists like Chronos to run the tankiest possible thing they can find and make matches last hours. Therefore, both the time limit and the swap to a different build upon stalemate are acceptable rules.

Reminder: This was a FREE ENTRANCE tournament, no one lost anything by joining, and the rewards which were apparently community funded were quite nice, so there’s no point in making a stink about it.

In regards to what people are saying about Bear, if it’s true, then yes, he probably shouldn’t be asked to commentate or moderate anymore, but other than that, I didn’t see any problems.

Seriously…

PU Mesmer
Shadow Arts Thief
Burn Guardian
Taunt/Prot Ward Power Ranger
Autoproc/mightstack cele necro
D/D Ele (recently buffed after being top tier meta for 16 months)
Soldier’s Autoproc Engineer

Can it get much worse?

What other types of toxic specs could we bring into the meta? Maybe next we could make condition mesmer viable in top tier conquest, or perhaps P/D condi thief?

So much of this game is now playing itself, it’s gotten harder and harder to distinguish between good and bad.

This is about as far away from a Condition meta we’ve ever been lol. With the exception of burn guardian, there are no pure condition builds left. Yes, Cele Ele/Necro can output decent conditions but they are more hybrid builds.

Condition Ranger/Engineer are both dead. There is literally no point to playing them in matches stacked with transfer Necros, SA thieves, and Elementalists with extreme amounts of condi clear.

As for complaining about condi thief, lol i dont even

Volrath.1473:

yes! it has the incredible AOE potential to hit up to 3 targets, just wow!!

Maybe you were afk when they showed the Staff 5 skill which does 6k AoE on heavy golems.

looks op to me.

There’s definitely no need to nerf Eles, since that D/D fire cele spec is definitely completely balanced and good for the game.

“can engage multiple enemies at a time with sustained area-of-effect damage while retaining high lethality toward single enemies.”

Sounds balanced Karl. Kappa

just what the game needs, more unkillable builds with heavy AoE but can also destroy in 1v1s … I thought maybe we had learned from ele at this point.

Btw, I know it’s too early to say whether Daredevil is actually OP or not, it’s just funny that Karl actually basically said “this spec is crazy OP” with what I quoted above.

sweet

zinkz.7045:

Diamond Skin is a terribly designed trait, it is a fine example of the sort of thing a game should not have.

ronpierce.2760:

Velimere.7685:

Ring of Fire is fine. Elementalist is balanced.

I get the feeling you jump in every single thread to make it sound like that’s a common belief… Don’t think people don’t notice your name. Elementalist is not “balanced”. Balanced around giving people a crutch maybe…

He does, look at his posts and you’ll see all he does is spam mundane 4-5 word responses on every thread. He also plays d/d ele in game and I had the pleasure of having him rage/ talk kitten and block me before I could respond at the end of an unranked game today. Nice guy.

Burn Guardian is not OP, gimmicky maybe, but not OP.

Arenanet balances Elementalist thinking that players are only capable of managing 2 attunements. Hence why it’s been OP for a year and a half and just received substantial buffs. There’s no other way to explain it.

1. Ele
2. Thief

3-6. Necro, Engi, Guard, Mes

7-8. Ranger, Warrior

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

for example,
in blue team, we have,
john,
mary,
jane,
sue,
jess,
versus

in red team, we have
joe,
maria,
jenny,
susan,
jessica,

8 out of 10 grills? wat

Abjured is a team playing to win. I think one of the biggest things about them was they were comfortable modifying builds to suit their opponents. We saw Chaith move from a Glass build to a tanky Soldiers build and there were also appearances of D/F ele as opposed to D/D.

Comp wise, oRNG was always at a disadvantage. Warrior is weak right now, and double Guardian is not ideal. Burn guardian in particular is weak vs Elementalist, Necro, and Thief. I have no idea why the casters were going on about it being a strong point for oRNG because it could kill Chaith. It’s a 1v1 build that was weak vs 4 members of the other team in 1v1. We even saw it lose 1v1 to Zan’s soldier Engineer earlier. ROM felt like he was constantly on the run for his life and was rarely a strong positive for his team. His build seemed a bit too ham, especially vs a hybrid sustain comp like the Abjured. oRNG had a comp well suited to play vs the EU meta but it seems like they put no thought at all into modifying it versus a completely different playstyle like Abjured’s.

Temple being a map also increased Abjured’s chances by a LOT. People saying that Abjured is carried by double Ele are absolutely correct: without the absurd amount of sustain, dps and support that an ele brings, their comp starts to fall apart. Since their inception they have been based around using Ele to create a 3 point push strat where they have good chances in all 1v1s and winning 2v2 matchups by pairing an ele with a necro or engineer. Yes, we saw them try playing a team fighting comp with DPS guardian and power necro for a few months, but we also never saw this comp vs WTS tier teams.

In the end, did Abjured deserve to win? I’d say so. Yes, double elementalist is extremely strong, but they also bring a necromancer and an engineer running unique builds, both of which are considered less meta than say, shatter mesmer. Toker was clearly the best thief in the tournament. I felt like their victory was also partially due to their willingness to adapt, and the enemy’s complete unwillingness to change comps or playstyles, and that’s also part of the game.

We will be able to unlock new colors of Mini Llamas depending on our league color I can’t wait

HYPE

Nier.8741:

What is the point of buffing ranger when it’s going to be anti-fun at it’s current state? Ranger isn’t a viable class but it also doesn’t take skill to play and is just way too forgiving in design. Look at spirit ranger as an example.

What you Ranger mains should be asking for is a REWORK not a buff. Make ranger HARD TO PLAY like a dota-character type of pet system.

P.S they don’t have team fight cleave, sure. But they have access to quickness stomps and res.

Rangers have been asking for full pet control and more interesting mechanics for linear weapons like shortbow basically since launch. We also never asked for ridiculous mechanics like automatic weakness and protection on hit (like the new protective ard trait)

Ranger is a class that Arenanet has decided should not have any of the following:

-team support (spirits just got nerfed into oblivion)

-viable melee auto attacks (sword auto attack can get you killed in a team fight)

- viable cleave (try comparing traps to engineer nade/bomb/mortar kit or Warrior gs/hammer downed cleave)

-mobility (both landspeed and vertical, literally no out of combat access to swiftness except warhorn)

-actual control over their pet mechanic (pets are only controlled for 1 of their 3 attacks)

Basically, their only design focus for ranger seems to be “lol ranger should be good at 1v1s cuz its skirmish”. That just won’t cut it at high tier PvP. Otherwise the meta would have been PU mesmer and Shadow Arts P/D for the past 2 years.

This isn’t even mentioning the fact that Eles and Mesmers could easily countercomp any ‘viable’ Ranger build with their projectile counters.

It’s funny to see people get so rustled by Helseth whether it be on his stream or in the tournaments. I definitely don’t think it’s a bad thing for the scene to have rivalries or some trash talk. When it crosses the line it’s when tournament players start throwing serious insults at each other in twitch chats, which has happened before in NA, but so far everything I’ve seen relating to the WTS has been fine.

People in this game act completely irrationally. They think that burst builds touting large amounts of RNG sigil procs and crit are somehow more skillful than conditions, and it’s always been like that. If you look at WoW the tables are flipped and people consider DoT specs to take just as much or if not more skill than yolo burst specs.

For example people complained endlessly about stuff like Dhuumfire and Sun Spirit, but when everyone suddenly started running Fire/Air sigils which did far more comparable RNG damage, berserker builds were still “the most skillful”.

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that Conditions are extremely powerful if the opponent doesn’t have adequate condi clear compared to power damage. And that’s because Arenanet has given many builds spammable condi clear, so unless conditions are very strong, they would have no chance as a viable option.

TL;DR People hate conditions because there is too much condi clear available in the game, but if you don’t take it, conditions will destroy you (because conditions had to be overtuned to compensate for stuff like D/D ele, shoutbow spammable condi clear)

nearlight.3064:

@infantrydiv, that makes a lot of sense then. But just wondering, whos Frostball, the mesmer that they sometimes run? Yeah, its painfully obvious that I barely follow the EU scene haha

Frostball is essentially a 6th man for the team right now, from what I understand he’s 15 or 16 years old so too young to participate in the WTS but fills in for players when main team members are absent (ROM was on vacation for a few weeks which is why we saw Frostball play a lot)

Nova Stiker.8396:

infantrydiv.1620:

Nova Stiker.8396:

xDudisx.5914:

From hardest to easiest:

1)Engi
2)Ele
3)Necro
4)Thief
5)Ranger
6)Guardian
7)Mesmer
8)Warrior

This.
Engineers used to be one of the easier classes. As they had the best recovery in the game from Healing Turret and Gear Shield on a 16 second recharge. Made a mistake on an engineer? It’s k bro, make all the mistakes you want on last meta Engineer. Obviously this meta, that is not the case.

---

LOL at all the scrubs winning Elementalist by mashing buttons. True story, I beat a dude on my ele by swapping attunements and mashing buttons with 1000 ping too. I was in WvW against a level 12 first time Mesmer, dem ele’s are ez class.

Here is another true story, I never lost to a bad Elementalist no matter what build or class I was using. The fact is, anyone can beat a scrub, even if you are one yourself.

True story, mine was in a high MMR queue. Saying D/D elementalist is ‘hard’ is a joke since it’s literally the easiest thing in the game to be effective on currently. Defending it when double ele is probably the most common comp in the game is also a joke. There’s no doubt that Elementalist has a high skillcap, but that doesn’t matter when you can play it like garbage and still be more effective than classes you have 10x the games on.

I’ll say it again, “anyone can beat a scrub, even if you are one yourself.”

Boast about your high MMR as much as you want, if you want to lead players to believing they can win by mashing buttons on elementalist by all means go ahead, it allows good practice on my Mesmer when I can dance circles around terrible ele players.

In the mean time maybe you should practice Necromancer, as soon as I see a Necromancer purposely eat 20 stacks of my burning, I run for my life.

You don’t need to even 1v1 on ele in order to carry games, rolling into a fight and kittening boons all over your team is good enough, plus you have amazing cleave with fire rotation + air/earth cc. Yes, Mesmer and Necro can kill Eles, but my point still holds that Ele is the #1 class to go to a node and spam everything and do well. Goes for both staff and D/D tbh. As long as you are pressing buttons on ele, you are putting out loads of boons, healing, aoe dps and condi removal.

nearlight.3064:

infantrydiv.1620:

I’m expecting there is a very good chance Rom is going to play Power Ranger for at least a few games. I feel like all the comps have upsides and downsides for the three teams.

I’m predicting 1 oRNG, 2 TCG, 3 Abjured, 4 GLHF. Even though I’d say oRNG has a weaker comp than Abjured/TCG, I feel like they have the most team fight synergy and LAN experience, which should go a long way.

Just wondering, unless Rom does play ranger, how does oRNG have a weaker comp than the Abjured? I don’t follow EU too much, but doesn’t oRNG usually run double ele, D/P thief, mesmer, and support guard these days (which is what metabattle has concluded to be the 4 meta builds of this game Q_Q)? Meanwhile, I love the abjured, but necromancer/engi while ran with great and powerful builds don’t seem to have the meta status at the moment.

Disclaimer: I’m not a blind slave to the meta team comp, I’m just wondering what your reasoning is.

From what I’ve seen oRNG typically runs Ele, Thief, Guard, War/Guard (Frae), War/Ranger (ROM).

Abjured runs Ele x2, Thief, Engineer, Necro.

I’d say this puts oRNG at a disadvantage vs Abjured because double ele is better than Warrior/Ele and Necro/Ele/Engineer are all strengthened by the fact that oRNG doesn’t bring the Mes/Thief double burst combo. That means those classes can have a lot more sustain. Having Noscoc on Cele necro is also an advantage should Frae attempt to run burn guardian. The bunker guardian that Tage runs is also not as strong vs a bruiser comp like Abjured as it would be vs a mes/thief comp.

Overall comp-wise I’d put Abjured vs oRNG heavily in Abjured favor, although that doesn’t mean I think oRNG can’t win vs Abjured.

Just as an example: Who is going to be able to 1v1 Phantaram or Noscoc on the Abjured? Noscoc has winning matchups vs warrior, burn guardian, ele. Phanta is good enough to 1v1 any of them and can only be stalemated by Denshee effectively. If ROM goes Ranger instead of Rampage, they have even weaker chances and it gives Abjured the option to play Focus eles if they want.

I’d expect to see oRNG force as many large fights as possible to capitalize on their bunker guardian and overall they have the strongest team fight capability of any of the three teams imo. If Abjured successfully forces 1v1s, and 2v2 skirmishes, I’d expect Abjured to win.

Nova Stiker.8396:

xDudisx.5914:

From hardest to easiest:

1)Engi
2)Ele
3)Necro
4)Thief
5)Ranger
6)Guardian
7)Mesmer
8)Warrior

This.
Engineers used to be one of the easier classes. As they had the best recovery in the game from Healing Turret and Gear Shield on a 16 second recharge. Made a mistake on an engineer? It’s k bro, make all the mistakes you want on last meta Engineer. Obviously this meta, that is not the case.

---

LOL at all the scrubs winning Elementalist by mashing buttons. True story, I beat a dude on my ele by swapping attunements and mashing buttons with 1000 ping too. I was in WvW against a level 12 first time Mesmer, dem ele’s are ez class.

Here is another true story, I never lost to a bad Elementalist no matter what build or class I was using. The fact is, anyone can beat a scrub, even if you are one yourself.

True story, mine was in a high MMR queue. Saying D/D elementalist is ‘hard’ is a joke since it’s literally the easiest thing in the game to be effective on currently. Defending it when double ele is probably the most common comp in the game is also a joke. There’s no doubt that Elementalist has a high skillcap, but that doesn’t matter when you can play it like garbage and still be more effective than classes you have 10x the games on.

I’m expecting there is a very good chance Rom is going to play Power Ranger for at least a few games. I feel like all the comps have upsides and downsides for the three teams.

I’m predicting 1 oRNG, 2 TCG, 3 Abjured, 4 GLHF. Even though I’d say oRNG has a weaker comp than Abjured/TCG, I feel like they have the most team fight synergy and LAN experience, which should go a long way.

If you were to literally roll your face across f1-f4 and 1-9 (whatever keybinds you have) on a node, in a fight, by FAR the #1 build you’d be most effective on is d/d celestial elementalist. You get healed just for pressing any skill, most of your skills are aoe and dont require targeting. You have lots of built in condi clear and high protection uptime, etc.

Sources: Won fights with over 1k ping on a <100 game D/D fire cele (I was actually just pressing attunement recharges and random buttons afterwards)

http://strawpoll.me/5136424

Hard for me to really get behind any team cause all 3 teams I know about have people I like and enjoy watching play on them.

BlackTruth.6813:

Signet of Fury (150 second cd) – For your next attack, ignore evades. OR For your next attack, your next CC skill does not allow your opponent to break out of stun for the next 5 seconds.

LOL talk about a bad way to buff a class and horrible mechanics

No. Warrior is now in the same place as Ranger for the most part: completely outclassed in the support/bruiser role by Ele, completely outclassed in the burst role by Mesmer/Thief. I might go so far as to put Warrior below Ranger at this point

I’d say Engineer sounds like the best fit for you of those 3. It’s also probably the hardest to play of the three for a new player, but Engineers have a mix of cc, close/longe range attacks, powerful defensive/offensive CDs, as well as team support through healing.

Most hated spec? D/D Ele hands down. Shadow Art D/P is pretty annoying as well. MM necro is disgusting.

We’ve actually significantly regressed in recent months with the removal of solo queue, the frozen leaderboards, and the forced queueing from inside HotM.

livlaender.8790:

today i played a game with my engi and i got 5 rampages in a row

i was surprised, though

kitten , there’s a really low chance of that happening, anet must have stealth buffed elixir X

The fact that they took miniature llamas and tried to make them an “exclusive PvP reward” just shows how small of a kitten they give about PvP exclusive rewards.

How does getting unlucky = stealth nerf?

Belial.9350:

I agree, 4 thieves should never be on a team together because that team can’t hold any points and is almost a sure loss. Fortunately the screenshotted team went against a team that didn’t know how to play.

Personal score has never meant anything at all. I’ve had gamed where I 1v2ed for over 5 minutes straight without dying and end the game with far less points than the rest of my team who went around capping nodes and slaughtering the other 3 players, where I was carrying the game and being the most useful. On the flip side I’ve had games on my terrible Thief where I just run around decapping all game and have a giant personal score, but lose the game ankitten ot really that useful.

Personally I prefer fighting vs power rangers where I can see rapid fire coming and get ‘baited’ to dodge it. Rather than stealth mirror blade combos or backstabs that do similar or even more damage. Oh, and once the Rangers cooldowns are gone they actually die unlike certain classes

I agree with all these things.

Adding new amulets with good 4/5 stat combinations would help ween a certain class (cough ele cough) off of celestial and in the process tone it down a bit.

Air and Fire sigils are just bad design. Rune of the Pack doesn’t need a huge nerf, since many classes still run might based runes or vampirism

How dare you ask for nerfs to Ele and Mesmer

I’d like to say thank you to our amazing Arenanet devs for perfectly balancing the game. After the last balance patch it seems that literally all builds are on par with one another. Build diversity is now infinite and nothing could be improved.

If you think something needs to be nerfed or buffed, please cease your shameless QQ and partisan class lobbying. The expert PvP devs have no need of your opinion if they have balanced this game so well.

Long live this new era of balance perfection

lighter.2708:

I’m not sure how you rate warrior higher then thief, when there’s one thief per top team
and you can only find 1 warrior in like 5 top teams.

Also there’s more necro then warrior in ESL finals. also engi.

I think people are still adjusting to Rampage and learning how to counterplay it. Once eveyrone knows exactly what to do vs it, warrior will continue to decline in the meta until some balance is actually done of the more powerful classes.

Shadow Arts thief is also underrated in the OP, its basically unkillable now and still does a ton of damage, it’s just being outshone by Mes/Ele

SSS:
Elementalist
Mesmer

A:
Guardian
Necromancer
Thief
Warrior

C:
Engineer
Ranger

FFF:
Revenant

Yes, D/D ele is overpowered and everyone who isn’t a D/D ele (actually most, if not all top tier D/D eles admit it’s too strong) or a noob admits it. Still, you should be able to kill them with Rampage as a zerker warrior.

Another thing about a comprehensive scoreboard is that it would give casters some interesting information to discuss at the ends of streamed tournament games. Things like top damage and top primary kills help in showing MVPs of games and many people love knowing such stats similar to real sports matches.

Seriously, the scoreboard is straight up useless as it currently stands. Give us real stats like:

damage done/taken
conditions applied/removed
boons applied/removed
primary kills (most damage on target)
assist kills
time spent in combat
personal healing/outgoing healing
etc.

The possibilities for this are great, and it would also shed some light on certain aspects of the meta.