Guild Wars 2

Can you blame anybody for despising a class that doesn’t have a single utility that makes you think “That might be tricky to pull off?”

lol I guess you could counter it that way, but cheese vs. cheese is really the best this game can do? >.>

Ok flipping the table here.

After considering ideas like that, Condition DAMAGE isn’t the problem. It’s condition APPLICATION.

Consider Necromancer – they have easily applicable Burning, Bleeding, Poison, Torment and Fear for damage, covered by Blind, Weakness, Cripple, Chill, and Vulnerability. This with Dumbfire, Signet of Spite, and Plague.

That is a completely ridiculous arsenal that outpaces every single classes’ condition cleansing by a long shot.

Now consider Warrior conditions with Torment, Bleeding, Burning, Cripple, Blind, and Immobilize. This is with Longbow 2 Swords.

That is an example of good pressure. You have 3 reliable condis that do pressure, and control over movement so that they eat more Combustive Shot damage. You can keep pace with that cleansing and while Condi Warriors can do well it depends on how well they play it.

Necro just overloads you unless you stunlock him. That is the only way to counter them, to completely take control of their character away from them. I know Necros hate that, but what’s stopping you from running S Walk and S Armor when you see a Warrior on their team? Nothing.

The point is the damage is fine – just don’t give a class 5 applications of damage and 5 control conditions lol

Wombat.3510:

jmatb.6307:

Spirits are still good support for a Condi team.

Spirits are terrible for team support now because everyone knows once they are killed they are down for at least 30 seconds and there is zero team support. Spirits will be killed at the onset of every encounter, so why bother wasting the points/signet slots?

They could have nerfed spirits and still made them usable. The fact that they didn’t and there is already a shortage of viable builds in the game really concerns me.

That depends on how they position and the matchup.

Viable in this game has meant overpowered for the longest time that this community doesn’t even really understand what diversity is.

If the number of builds that are overpowered are decreased does that not increase the range of builds? Is it really that bad to have to consider other options based on your team’s needs and the matchup?

Excalibur.9748:

jmatb.6307:

I’m not talking about how Necro counters S/D thief. Anybody that doesnt have CC is going to have trouble vs. a Necro lol.

I’m talking about how S/D thief can get free kills on Mesmers and Eles the whole match without really trying. It’s like starting out in Dota 2 with a lvl 10 carry in that matchup lol

You need to look at your build or gameplay, because for the longest time mesmer is considered a counter to S/D thief. Maybe it’s just the nerfs beginning to pile up for your class, but S/D thief is not a counter for mesmer.

I can agree with S/D counters boon-reliant classes, as it was intended.

TROLOLOL

Volrath.1473:

Excalibur.9748:

jmatb.6307:

The only stupid OP spec left is S/D thief IMO. Necros have to have Plague up to be able to survive a Warrior fight if they bring greedy utilities. If they don’t bring greedy utilities they can’t Spite-Epi or Corrupt Boon-Epi, which cuts into their pressure.

S/D thief still eliminates Mesmer and Ele from competitive play. Necro doesn’t have that effect.

It’s not OP. Condi spam and AoE spam shuts S/D thief down hard. Besides last time I checked mesmer was still the top dueling class. Just because you don’t want to use a build that counters S/D thief does not make them OP at all.

An average warrior can melt down a s/d thief, condis will destroy a s/d thief, mesmer burst (if timed well instead if burning all cool downs on the beginning of the fight) obliterates s/d thieves but hey… nerf them again! they are use to it anyway, every single patch has nerfed all of there weapon sets since release even the laughable shortbow so yeah… kitten it! go ahead and nerf them again.

A well played D/P thief is fearsome.

Lol don’t even start with this warrior counters S/D thief crap. If you have any idea how warriors use their skills you can evade every single one of their good ones. If they skull crack you and burst you down, you don’t know how to use Sword 2.

If anything Warriors counter D/P more than S/D. If you can’t blind people in D/P you’re screwed. In S/D you just evade their telegraphed moves…

They’ve nerfed thief so much because stealth + burst damage is always going to be powerful. When you have good initiative management you extend fights in complete glass cannon builds, escape easily, and can move in quickly with Winfiltrator’s Signet, Shadow Step, and have cross map mobility with Shadow Trap…

The class is fine outside of S/D

I’m not talking about how Necro counters S/D thief. Anybody that doesnt have CC is going to have trouble vs. a Necro lol.

I’m talking about how S/D thief can get free kills on Mesmers and Eles the whole match without really trying. It’s like starting out in Dota 2 with a lvl 10 carry in that matchup lol

The exact build of four spirits and depending on Shared Anguish alone is dead, but we’ll see how it goes with how people want to support their teammates.

Spirits are still good support for a Condi team.

lol its as silly as declaring a class that has been nerfed every patch cycle and STILL be on every top team is dead

The only stupid OP spec left is S/D thief IMO. Necros have to have Plague up to be able to survive a Warrior fight if they bring greedy utilities. If they don’t bring greedy utilities they can’t Spite-Epi or Corrupt Boon-Epi, which cuts into their pressure.

S/D thief still eliminates Mesmer and Ele from competitive play. Necro doesn’t have that effect.

Necros get destroyed by Warriors though, mainly because a lot of Necros get greedy. If you have a Warrior on your team, then you have more freedom in what you can bring vs. the rest of the team because the Necro is kittenting his pants at that matchup.

Despite the problems Mesmers had against Necros, Helseth’s build is very strong against them. Necros are always spamming something, so Halting Strike gets a lot of return vs. them. Null Field eats the condis up. Diversion can do a ton of damage if timed well.

S/D thief is still the bane of Mesmers and Eles and quite a few other classes b/c they can spam 6 evades in a row easily and have the most efficient endurance in the game with Zerker damage.

Necro is closer to being balanced than that crap.

Rangers have the incredible combination of Shaman Amulet, Undead Runes, and Wilderness Survival. This foundation of 2189 armor, 1236 Condi Dmg, and the traits from WS is absolutely incredible.

You can so much with that class with that starting point. The pets do a ton of damage, even with no points into Beast Mastery. Lynx is a boss. Wolf Fear. The Lightning Drake is strong. Poison Drake.. the list goes on and on.

The Sword/Torch, Axe/Dagger combination has an evade on every set with incredible pressure. Geomancy runes make that even stronger.

Having one signet and two traps/two spirits is practical. Even if the spirits / traps are on cooldown you have huge survivability and pressure.

The class isn’t dead at all lol

Anyone with the sig Ranger Extraordinaire ought to already know that… lol

I’m still skeptical about the future of the game but at least the primary offender has been brought in line. They needed to deal with S/D thief as immediately as the others and they didn’t touch it.

Spirit Rangers are probably the bigger problem of the two though, because you can at least see the S/D thief even though you can’t really target him that well. The zoo ranger floods the screen with fail and misery which makes teamfights hard as hell to participate in.

Ya S/D thief is next on the shaving list.

They will still train Eles and Mesmers to irrelevance, but at least the petting zoo has been made more expensive to maintain XD

If anything Trap Ranger provides MORE synergy with Necro. Traps + Marks + Scepter/Dagger AoE is going to hurt like hell lol

You can run Sun, Stone, and Signet of Renewal. Done.

Spirit Ranger builds come with the passive stun break from Shared Anguish, now you have two pet condi passes and you still get to keep the good spirits.

Here’s an idea Rangers that don’t know your class. There is a delightful little skill that gives you the longest stability uptime in the game called “Rampage as One.”

Now if you are running Traps, many Warriors are silly enough to pop Berserker stance early on in the fight. You can bait them with the weapon skills you have. You get to wait out their burst, laugh at them because they’re not ready for what you’re about to do to them.

Once Zerker is down, you lay the traps, and laugh your kitten off as he eats all that bleeding, burning, poison, chill, and drops faster than a prom dress.

There, your arch nemesis is about to make a QQ thread about Rangers.

Your opinion is a knee-jerk reaction to a “nerf” that isn’t even really a big nerf. Rangers have been dominating the metagame for months, cluttering up the screen, and even the devs call it the petting zoo.

Whining about a slight shave to their effectiveness is representative of the stereotype many people have built about how spoiled and clueless Ranger players are. Don’t feed that, especially after an entire summer of the stupidest crap we’ve seen in this game yet.

Chopps you’re making yourself look clueless.

You can still stack 1236 condi dmg with Undead Runes with Shaman and 30 Wilderness Survival. As long as that exists, which is always going to, then you can play BM, Spirits, or Traps quite effectively with huge armor, high healing and very high damage.

L2Play

Ya one of my friends forgets to put spirits up and still puts burning, bleeding, and poison on people while evading attacks. I guess she plays Ranger better than someone who puts 2500 hours into that class spamming Crossfire XD

Chopps 1.5 seconds is not horrifically long. At all.

Again, Spirits are still viable in small scale situations. The Petting Zoo at mid is not a good idea though, because that cooldown will hurt like hell when the Engi Grenades, Thief Cluster Bombs, Warrior Arcing Arrows, etc. along with their teammates.

Eles and Mesmers can Updraft / Illusionary Wave your spirit res now. AWWWWW I feel so sorry for you.

If anyone needs to be mad about something it’s how they didn’t touch S/D thief at all.

Vamp you don’t know your class.

Traps are good. Beastmastery is pretty good if you know how your pets work. Spirits still function they just require an attention span and situational awareness now.

They didn’t remove spirit builds. I honestly don’t think people will stop running the build in PvP. There’s just more of a price and you can’t blind people at the end of a fight until their next attack a minute later.

A 25 second cooldown makes them work similarly to minions for Necros, which is at least tolerable because you don’t have permanent uptime. Burn and protection on hit is very, very strong support.

It’s okay Rangers your crutch is still there it’s just not as overpowered >.>

Vamp… think for a minute about the concept of counter play.

An ele can now updraft the spirit res. Guards can Banish. Warriors can Backbreaker it.

That is balanced. Most terrible players will not even see that opportunity. Good players will.

Spirits now actually have a price. That is great for the game and honestly this kind of change was needed about a month ago.

Defenseless? LMAO

Rangers have evades and energy sigils you’ll be okay. Hug your pets they’re there for you too :P

@ Cymerdown

That is what I love about Dota 2. As a player you are both looking forward to and dreading those teamfights. In close matches your heart is about to pop out of you its beating so fast. Late in a match, using Smoke of Deceit well and obliterating their team in seconds is so kittening awesome, but they can do that to you too! It freaks you out!

I agree on teamfights being faster than long, drawn out slugfests. In a way, Spirit Rangers contributed to that with the rezes. The coolest part to me about the CC – Paradigm finals was how the teams were otherworldly in their rezes. As soon as someone dropped they were right on top of their teammates getting them back up.

Individuals doing too much damage could be a problem if Ele burst isn’t touched. We all saw what Mogwow was doing in the EU invitational and if you’ve been watching PVPTV you can see what S/F is doing as well. Very hard to counter instant bursts.

Ya S/D thief makes bringing an ele or mesmer pointless right now. Toning that down makes it an option instead of a liability. The condis will help, but if they overdo it then eles and mesmers will replace engis and necros entirely tho

PvP players take this seriously. When you aren’t in VOIP its hard to adjust to important moments in the game. This is why solo queue is a joke – when you can’t talk to your teammates or listen to them call things out your rotation is going to suck.

They’ll watch it. They respond on the PVPTV stream all the time – John Peters was talking to Helseth during his shift and you see Karl McLain on all the time.

I think this will be a lot more meaty than State of the Game b/c the Devs’ hands are tied in answers. Corporations have Non-Disclosure Agreements which is why Sharp has always been saying, “I’m sorry guys I can’t go into more detail.” Upcoming content is off-limits to talk about in more cases than not, and the fact that he hints at some things shows how much he wants to.

When the people who play the game at the most competitive level talk about the game you are actually witnessing the most informed minds in the game on the combat system and how it works in competitive settings. Their opinions actually matter MORE than the developers because the devs made the game – they don’t compete against other people with it, practice, and learn about what everything does vs. others. They don’t scrimmage and experiment with 2v2 and 1v1s against very, very good players.

Their feedback is a lot more important than every one of those questions we saw at PAX combined if you want PvP to be worth a kitten . Good Quality Assurance teams will get their feedback anyway – getting them all together to talk about the game, if any of them even care anymore, is a huge step forward.

+1 to Guildwars2PvPTV channel you guys are really the only hope left for getting Anet to make PvP anything worthwhile

Because WvW is “more exciting.”

Honestly I’m done with this game until they either do a revamp of PvP balance for conquest so that it is actually competitive or bring other modes and let the balance be more self-regulating because of how different builds would matter.

Until then I want nothing to do with this game except for lolz

Its hard to imagine that they’re gonna fix the game at this point

Three words that explain why this would be a good idea that doesn’t work, based on Anet’s map history:

Skyhammer, Spirit Watch.

Hate to say it but new maps and game modes are entirely too much right now. They need to get back to basics with the fundamentals of the PvP system, not try to put dressing on a steaming pile of dog kitten.

This game is a joke. Solo Queue is making the already cagey GW2 PvP community even more bitter and antisocial. Map chat rage is all over the place, people leave the match after they lose the first midfight, this crap is pathetic.

Do they notice how many teams are breaking up and quitting this game until it’s better balanced or just not coming back at all?

Do they notice that solo queue is making the community even more antisocial?

Do they notice that creativity actually holds you back as a player, instead of copying and pasting?

Do they notice that there are still bugs all over the place in PvP and that the new maps they’ve made are the ones people don’t want in solo queue?

Do they notice that their dishonor system isn’t stopping any of the leavers? Will they consider immediate punishments for any leavers, including D/Cs?

Isn’t it obvious that balancing three game modes at once is not working and hasn’t worked from day 1? PvE and WvW share crafting and gear so why not just split them off and have a team dedicated to PvP balance?

Isn’t it obvious that an overhaul of class balance and mechanics is needed? The counterplay is awful, 90% of the traits, runes, and sigils are not viable, and the vast majority of utilities are never going to be brought to a competitive match. That’s awful.

I find the rants both important and depressing.

Important because they’re truth and depressing because the truth is this game is a joke.

After playing Dota 2 for the last 2 weeks I am pretty much done with this game until balance patches hit and I see if they are just putting band aids on the balance or actually trying to make it better by addressing fundamental issues.

Nobody pays a monthly sub on this game. The best way to get them to fix PvP is to just stop playing it until they get it right.

Ya when you have nearly 3k armor and 1300 healing power you can handle quite a bit of abuse from multiple people.

If you only have 500 healing power and 2 to 2.2k armor you’ll have to be careful about where you are and how you engage. You won’t be able to just sit in the middle of a point and /wave at people before they try to kill you. If you’re out of position you’ll die really fast, especially if they coordinated their push onto the point.

I think that this would be incredible to watch.

You could still build support with traits, runes, and sigils with either of those amulets. Those kinds of builds would be pretty important actually, since like you said all glass would be pretty dangerous and hard to control points with.

That kind of play format would be great practice for tournaments, since your instincts would have to be so much faster, your awareness, etc.

So I have been playing Dota 2 the last week or so and I have to say that this style of play, especially with a 5v5 format, has me thinking a lot about how to build more effectively for GW2, even though it’s a different game with totally different objectives.

Let me explain.

First you have the concepts of Carry and Support.

This is really interesting because it applies to Guild Wars 2 as well. Carry in DOTA is similar to a glass cannon w/ low survival in GW2 – they will destroy you or even a couple of you if left unchecked, but if you go out of your way to take them down first, their influence is not as strong.

Support are a combination of usually two things – control and ally bonuses. They are unselfish, protect their Carry(s), and do their best to position themselves and their teammates for kills. In Guild Wars 2 we have examples like Guardian, Ranger, and previously Elementalist support.

In Dota if you have a team of mostly Carry or all Carry you have little chance of success, because they can get in your face and outlast whatever damage they have early on. In Guild Wars 2, if you have an all offensive team you are either going to blow them out or lose badly, because you don’t have enough control over downed state.

Usually team compositions have 1 or 2 Carry, 2 support, and heroes that gank, where they pick off prime targets and destroy their cash flow by using the map to sneak up on them.

In Guild Wars 2, we saw SYNC bring 3 support and 2 damage roles and dominate the NA tournament. Twerp, Davinci, and Scar were support, with Caed and Zombify as damage. Team Paradigm / Curse has always been 3 support until this meta, with Symbolic, Phantaram, and Azshene as support with Teldo and Xeph as damage.

While some people think that anyone from EU is going to win in a tournament, I don’t think the composition Car Crash has or their playstyle is going to be good enough to win against 3 support, 2 damage. SYNC proved that you can outnumber them in teamfights, but when they push all three points they are very difficult to beat.

When it comes down to it, you are better off having fewer damage than support in Guild Wars 2. Two Rangers and a Guardian make a great foundation for a team, although I would rather run Guardian, Ranger, and Elementalist so they all bring something different.

The damage roles are flexible – as long as they can kill quickly and preferably have both range and melee strength they will do the job.

The point is that damage roles are better if they are protected – two damage guys that stay on their feet are going to do a lot more damage than 3 damage guys that have to respawn every now and then, or too often.

The third support can also be a bit more aggressive, like using a Rabid Amulet instead of a Shaman’s, or Valkyrie’s Amulet instead of a Cleric’s. This way they have an offensive presence without sacrificing too much of their support ability.

To be honest I’d rather play Dota 2 than GW2 with the way the game is at the moment, but I still want to play Guild Wars 2 every now and then. While everyone has to pull their weight in Guild Wars 2, there isn’t very much of a learning curve.

In Dota, if you are a noob you are going to be godawful in every possible way at all stages of the game. Their community realizes this and have built templates, guides, and resources to teach their game to people. It is challenging, but at the same time welcoming to people that they know are going to be terrible at the game early on.

I like that about it – you aren’t going to come in, summon spirits, spam your weapon skills, dodge every now and then, heal when you’re low, and be able to play at the same efficiency as someone on a competitive tournament team.

If you’re going to be good at Dota, you have to earn it.

I really hope Arenanet considers that approach to this game.

So I’ve been digging around on intothemists and tried a couple more builds. One thing I’ve found is that Guardian DPS is absolutely incredible, on par with the Warrior build actually.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAR7flYgqCHHSNEf4Eh1kittenQ/V9Ie3TfXFcIA-TsAg0CnIQShkDJDSSksIN+Y9xuAA

This is a very slight variation of iSylvir’s Roam Guardian build. I tried Guardian DPS because I was recently introduced to how incredibly vicious a zerker Guardian is 1v1.

LeBubbles gets a shoutout that dude is all kinds of deadly 1v1 with his build.

Also, 30 Trickery on Thief with the two boon traits and the interrupt makes for very, very strong 1v1 ability with D/P, which is something I noticed Caed changed in his build. The daze is so great for peeling and its 1200 range.

I’m noticing there are better options in Guardian and Thief. The Mesmer and Ele builds aren’t that great in 1v1s, so I’m thinking about changing them for another Thief and Guardian.

One of the advantages of the Guardian build is you are attacking and cleansing conditions at the same time if you utilize your light field with Greatsword. You have great control, range, gap closing, and the damage is addicting.

It’s an idea. Like I said in the document, if people aren’t willing to try it I really don’t care.

Thats why it will be so satisfying to crush them

Have a question for you guys:

What would you think of Warrior Mace/Shield Greatsword instead of the staff ele?

Here’s a link to Defektive’s guide as a starting concept

http://intothemists.com/guides/571-defektives_tpvp_gs_mace_shield_analysis

I think it would be risky, but the coordination between the Mesmer and Warrior at mid would be pretty vicious. Plus Battle Standard gets the Guard right back up and fighting.

Ya I added a section where everybody gets a friend or teammate to run the copy+paste builds in duels so they can get used to the training they’ll inevitably see.

S/D thief does train hard. I’ve found though, that even on mesmer, once you’ve faced the build enough you know when to CC and shatter quickly. If you duel on the rotation maps at mid you’ll get that familiarity with them in the most relevant way to.

Is it a strong 1v1 spec? Yes. Is it invincible? No.

If you can end up winning the duels with it, then you’ve just evolved into a better player

Update: I tweaked the Mesmer and Ele builds to be a lot more aggressive, because the Guardian will benefit from harder hitting range than support and cleanse shatters.

Cleanse shatters can be useful, but if it requires someone getting on top of the Guardian the whole time then any time there isn’t you’re at a disadvantage, so I acknowledge that. Illusionary Persona still requires gap closing, so I went with the huge AoE Diversion trait because we’re already denying boons so why not smother them with CC when they aren’t built to handle it? Faster shatters and illusion cooldowns too.

The staff Ele is using Valks/Zerker with Fresh Air so that you can hit them with Lightning Surge and a couple autos between Fire for more damage. This will increase your damage output in 1v1 too, especially if you have strong command of the CC the build has. There is a big difference in this style of play though, so if you duel a friend with a S/D thief spec as practice you can start getting used to what you will see in these types of matches.

I’m going to start listing posts in the Q&A section on the document that are relevant to the build. I am open to suggestions, and made these changes based on constructive feedback. I am pretty experienced in the game, but nobody knows everything

People choose to run these builds b/c they don’t believe they have weaknesses but if you look at them, study them, run them, and learn about the game overall you will find weaknesses.

Whether or not people are willing to try something new or risky really depends on whether they have to guts to.

Godofallu.2935:

PS: I can jump on spirit ranger and laugh at cruuk all day long while he just gets madder and madder at his inability to kill me. If you think his build can beat a great spirit ranger you have clearly never played against him with one or talked to him.

Did you see that the build uses S/D as the off weapon set? That’s a little different to deal with than Cruuk’s build, since you are dependent on boons and condis, which is what S/D specializes in dealing with as a secondary weapon set.

I’ve played against quite a few spirit rangers. People are copying and pasting them at every corner of PvP. They have weaknesses and can be completely destroyed 1v1. There are many ways to actually. This build is one of them.

I’m sure you can understand if someone comes in and starts linking “better” builds and starts telling you to learn to play the game how that might appear to be offensive.

Well you might find him to be however you like, the dude’s trousers are at his ankles with the “input” he’s providing in this thread. I don’t really find anybody with that attitude to be worth talking to.

I can understand mathematic analysis on its merits. You are right about power > precision it scales much, much better if you just compare the two. A 1v1 is about being aggressive enough to pressure them, and just resourceful enough with defense to outlast the opponent I agree.

A bunker supports their teammates in those fights, and their teammates support them. When you analyze teams like Team Curse, you see synergy all over the place. They protect each other as well as attack the enemy. They position themselves and attack as one unit.

Mathematical analysis can help you determine what is the most efficient, which is very powerful. “Mathematics is the gate and key to the sciences.” That complements looking at team compositions socially and pragmatically. You have to couple that with experience within the game though, where you see how team synergy matters just as much as the result of 1v1 duels, algorithms, and objectively looking at attributes, damage, and coefficients.

Can a 1v1 spec demolish the Staff Ele I proposed? Sure. But is that a good idea to go that far out of position for, when their Mesmer teammate can activate their portal, bring their Warrior to the fight, and suddenly they are in a lethal situation?

I respect you a bit more for bringing a totally different view on the game. Just don’t come into someone’s thread and tell them that they need to learn something, link other people’s builds, and doesn’t really explain how that team would even be a team.

Also, check out when the last time anyone in the top 10 Solo Arena actually played a solo Q match. Objective stuff, that leaderboard chest pumping is.

Depends on positioning and whether the team is aware of where the Necro is. If they are focus firing the staff ele, chances are he’s way out of position.

Staff ele is a mix of support, AoE dmg, and control used at specific advantageous times. Ele as a class provides versatility with all of their weapon choices, so there are a lot of different things they can do.

In the Q&A I mention that Staff Eles can take Zerker if they want to do more damage. The tankiness is there so when you use Water 3 and 5 it helps your Guardian

The split is not going to be very effective b/c if executed the team is communicating they move where they are going. Mesmer has portal and the whole team has swiftness so they can harrass them.

That’s the part that’s skill oriented. Gotta be on the lookout