Guild Wars 2

Just another 2 cents, only the true Mesmer will get Chaos Armor (a glowy purpley bubble around them). This is another easy way to spot the right one

If all the thief was doing was assaulting your base, perhaps you should have set someone purely to guarding your lord, perhaps your lord and quarry. He is hurting his teams chances as you have a 5v4 on the other three points and should win. The lord is a mechanic of this map, I think its an excellent mechanic that leads to some great crux plays. Admittedly, its a bit crap that its all this thief was trying to do, but clearly it worked, you didn’t counter it well enough

I was playing a triple kit Engineer and in working out how I could best manage my cooldowns I realised that when channelling a skill, Toolkits Gear Shield, Flamethrowers Auto, Elixir Guns Poison Cloud as examples, I could switch between kits to check the cds, I think this is an excellent feature and one that should stay. I also realised that you dont have to wait until you finish casting something to switch kits.

However, if, rather than switching kit, you drop your current kit, to go back to your normal weapon, it cancels the cast. This seemed very odd to me so I was wondering if there had been any kind of explanation for this or it was just because of the way the kits work? Even if you switch kit before you drop it it cancels the cast.

Knackers.8562:

Map cap is about 80 ~ 90 btw, and defense is easier than offense… 30 people can defend a blob of 80 from a t3 tower/keep if sieged to the teeth. And then only call for help when they do counter all the siege. But one thing you must think is, are there people willing to camp towers/keep and waiting for a defensive, if yes then are there enough people willing to do so, cause a blob of 80 hits a tower you only have less than 2 minutes to react and defend it, assuming you can even enter the tower

Defence should be “easier” than offence. I disagree with the term easier, purely because I think that if you’ve spent the time upgrading a tower, and you’re inside a bloody tower, that should mean something! Towers and keeps should be defencable places and with the power creep in siege and the lack of upgrades to the defence of towers, theyve become near worthless until you get to t3. I think its ludicrous how quickly you can take a tower/keep at the moment, but thats just me.

The Maps are based so that each Side gets there Part of the map.
If you have 150 and u would care about defending and scouting. and so would your enemy.
then the map would be in 3 parts like in the picture.
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/458x685q90/837/5b26.png
But realisticly i would suggest doing something like this:
If you would be the attacker of starting in the SouthWest corner(underneath bay)
http://imageshack.com/a/img823/5662/rrnr.png

This is the kind of thing I was thinking of. Perhaps my world has far too much of a focus on our own borderland, because we rarely take keeps on other servers, but maybe thats true of all worlds. Surely though if someone could orchestrate something similar to your second image, they would be incredibly effective. Like I say though all the old problems with WvW come back to haunt us. I did like the idea of having a large central general supportive group when I saw it though!

I didn’t mean it as a, you all know we have 150 people to use in a borderland. It was a hypothetical question intended to get a rough idea of what proportion you would want doing what. Its easier to define that if you have a total number of people to work with

Theres a lot of thought on it. Theories are its somewhere between 100 and 200, so I went somewhere down the middle. The blackgate thing sounds really good, shame it doesnt carry on during the week. Do you think thats a more effective strategy? Glad to hear

So what we’re saying here is that its more effective to run around as one group of 80 than to run around as a coordinated server effort to take a BL? Thats a really dire state of affairs if thats true, and I completely see your point. By your suggestions, the reason is because the maps are so small youre guaranteed to meet big zergs. Are bigger maps the answer? Whats really the reason that zergs are effective and what (if we should) can we do to stop that mentality?

I’m trying to think of a way that zergs aren’t gamebreaking, but at the same time a coordinated organised effort is more effective, which is quite difficult to accomplish, but thats the way I believe WvW should be. Like any game, higher skill should = higher reward

I can’t imagine how complicated the button set up gets! On thief maybe its possible as you only have steal on your f1 toolbar, but something like an elementalist or an engineer? What key bindings did you use?

So I’m thinking youve got to have 1 through 5 weapon skills, 6 through 10 your utilities, f1 through f4 for profession specific stuff. Then interact, dodge, swap weapon as a bear minimum.

That alone though is 17 buttons, and i count a max 14 on the controller including pushing the sticks in. Now I’m sure we’re going to be looking at a load of combos of L1 + triangle, l2 plus triangle stuff but surely that just gets too complicated on anything relatively complicated as a build

Automated response and the decapper Engineer in general work because it screws over the meta specs. Spirit rangers dont have enough damage without the burst to kill them, bunker guards obviously not, Necros can’t get them, hambow warriors wont if the engineer uses blinds and dodges well (and they cant then rely on pin down because of AR). Thieves are a bit more of an even fight for the decapper, but if the engis got bombs normally he’ll win in the end.

The simple counter to this spec is any kind of Burst, but none of that exists in the current meta. If you try to play with one against a bursty team, you are completely useless.

I personally don’t think that AR is a very well designed trait as I disagree with immunity to a core mechanic like conditions, personally I would be happier if it simply prevented you from being afflicted with damaging conditions, so you could still be crippled, feared (but take no damage), chilled, immobi’d, blinded, weaknessed or vulnerabilitied, some of those definitely aren’t words. I don’t agree with the Engineer being immune to both the damage that conditions provide and the control.

As it is though, it does have some interesting play to it, while it does seemingly make the Engineer immune to certain specs, it isn’t a totally skill less trait. I also would argue the general decapper has a lot more key presses per minute than the average class and is easily screwed up, as with any engineer build, so has a higher initial learning curve, and a higher skill cap, I’ve got absolutely no problem with it being a viable build in sPvP.

If you see an Engineer in the opposition team though, just bring something along that you know can deal with it. There’s a reason this spec doesn’t see any play in the ESL, and its because its too easily countered by good players. Either they can create 2v1s and finish the fight very quickly or they are confident enough in 1v1s to beat it out. If it were truly OP, there would be decap Engineers everywhere in the league.

I’d also argue that Warriors, who have the potential for 3 condi removals every 8 seconds at the moment and have condi immunity for 8 seconds/every 60 are far better counters to condition specs, in a way that takes far less skill.

At reset there generally seems to be (from most servers) a reasonably organised effort to send lots of different teams to different places to try to establish map control. This makes perfect sense, but I don’t see why, after the first few hours, it becomes blobs and roamers, with the odd defender here and there. I’m going to look mostly at server borderlands here rather than EBG because I’m more experienced with it.

You have 150 people at your disposal, in an ideal world and as someone who is against the zerg philosophy I really can’t see the difference between a 100 man zerg and a 50 man zerg in terms of its ability to take things and actually I see massive benefits in having two 50 man groups rather than one 100 man.

I was wondering how you would organise the 150 players to be the most effective in taking, holding and defending a borderland, so I thought that I would probably aim for something around this set up:

Three teams of 25, each led by an experienced commander taking different objectives around the map. Should one of these teams encounter a larger zerg, another would come to help it, taking on the zerg from a different angle. The focus of these teams would be tower and keep capture. I don’t know much about the formation of teams of this size, but ideally each one would be a guild group experienced in working together. (Total:75)

6 teams of 5, one to each camp, well balanced roaming classes with good mobility. They would be in charge of capturing and holding camps and nearby sentries, while also upgrading the camps and running supply to nearby keeps/towers, ideally all these teams would come from the same guild and be in constant communication with each other, with an overall leader (Total: 105)

Between 5-10 players who move around following enemy activity. The sole role of this group is to report back exactly what the enemy is doing to the rest of the team, allowing the three large groups to coordinate. These would be mostly made up of thieves or warriors, classes that can escape easily and would go around in 1s or 2s. (Total:115)

The final 35 would be responsible for the upkeep and upgrading of keeps and towers. Along with running Dollies, the main role would be running supply from camps to build siege.

Each of these groups would be represented by a guild who use that channel to communicate with each other and each have their own TS server. Each of the leaders of these teams and the scouts would then talk in team/map chat on the server.

From here I go on a rant about why this doesnt happen, I’ve put it in a spoiler because really I’m just repeating old stuff, but feel free to read it, but how would you organise 150 people on a borderland? Is there anyone that thinks a zerg of 125 people with a few others dotted about is the way to go? I’m genuinely interested and was also wondering if something akin to what I’ve just said happens on the very high tier servers.

Doesnt come much more cookie cutter than this:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqic3zyuF1LJxoCdGUh8KSBmt8nHyltpF-jkCB4iCh0CIk0gkIAZqFRjtGsIasKZpWdDTHTIyYuIa1CBoYOA-w
You’ll want a Carrion/Rabid gear set with a different runeset for true PvE, but this build and setup will take you through anything in WvW. For zerging swap in grenades for either toolkit or elixir gun and change the last explosions trait to Grenadier.

Check out wolfineers stuff for guide on the build =)

I would recommend that you try Lyssa runes in conjunction with Basilisk Venom as your elite skill. It provides a full condition clear every 45 seconds, and grants you all boons for 5 seconds, very useful for dealing with condition classes. Beware though, some Necros will be using an ability that can corrupt those boons.

Here is a brief guide to running Dagger Pistol you might find useful:
http://www.guildwars2hub.com/guides/professions/thief-build-guide-daggerpistolshortbow
This guide does say not to use black powder, which I generally agree with but it is incredibly useful for stomping in 1v1’s. You’ll have noticed that players interrupt you when you’re trying to stomp them, so laying down a blind field beforehand means their interrupt misses and you get your stomp!

Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaVlUmiOncy9E/5Ey2jeqC5JvHk1YZWaFoJA-ToAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFtsYWA

What did you find the most difficult thing moving from PvE to sPvP? Has it made you want to try any other classes?

Generally, you’ve made a lot of good points.

Game modes:
The devs started out with conquest, which for the record I really like. The maps are all unique, with the “secondary objective” (treb on battle for khylo, bosses on forest of niffhel, etc) providing enough flavour to make each feel distinct. I think its engaging, encourages good communication and allows lots of different roles to have a place. It isn’t all encompassing though, I’ll admit. There are new game modes coming at some point though, having been confirmed on a livestream.

The thief:
You have your thiefs role down to a T, other than that they are excellent roamers. GW2 pvp can be broken down into two very basic roles, Bunkers, who stay on the point and roamers, who move between points. There is a lot more depth to this, but thieves are the most mobile of all the roamers. They can harass the enemies home point, and be the first ones to cover back at home if they see its going to be taken. However, in team fights, as a class with limited defence, its best that they stay out and only engage when they have the opportunity to burst someone down. This all comes with team communication though! I recommend you have a look at these guides:

sPvP 101, you’ve probably got most of this already:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/New-to-PvP-Start-here

Guide to movement on maps in a team:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZczwwJFVcMI

Example of top teams playing, with their movement explained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxg7Wl1BVGY&list=PLn_ScZuoPt885JOBcMkSS84kTwLnnF4uy&index=1

Thieves are very strong in 1v1s, and would normally be backed to take on anyone other than an Engineer in a straight 1v1. Hammer warriors can be an issue though, I’d recommend you find the duelling servers under the hotjoin list, and watch some of the more experienced thieves and how they play. You can even look at their builds and gear. Sizer is particularly good if you see him!

Downed State:
The downed state mechanic, along with the ability to dodge, completely make this games pvp for me. I don’t need to sell dodge to you, but every class has a huge amount they can offer to the downstate. Imagine youre running into a point and your teammate is going down. You dont have any interrupts on you and your teammate is getting stomped, but you lay down a shadow refuge on top of the body. You are able to run into the shadow refuge and attempt to res your teammate, having prevented the stomp. However, now that youre there, your enemy knows where you are and will try to aoe you.

In hotjoin games it can get ridiculous, you can have an 8v8 with like 3 or 4 people down on each team and whoever gets a kill first wins. I’d recommend you stick to 5v5 servers in hotjoin btw, 8v8 really isnt representative. So no I don’t really think downed state works in hotjoins, but in proper sPvP its a massively interesting part of the game.

Conditions:
The general consensus, that isn’t held by all players, is that some classes can spread too many conditions for most classes to be able to condi cleanse effectively. Conditions are meant to wear down a target gradually, where power damage is typically more bursty. In a team fight though, when lots of players are supporting you, a guardian often will be cleansing you of conditions. Conditions feel very different in a proper team situation, and its really hotjoins where theyre at their most potent. However, they still can be tricky to deal with, be sure to try to catch a thief take on a necro in a 1v1 though, they typically will win!

Particle Effects:
I completely agree that the particle effects in this game can be overwhelming to new players. I still think we need clear animations but because of the dodge mechanic people find it much more important to be able to tell what their opponent is doing, so they can play better. This all does come in time though and once again I’d say its not quite as bad in a 5v5. The game has to be built around that gametype primarily for now.

The best thing I can recommend is to get a group of 5 people together, through the forums or by meeting people in soloq’s. Find a relatively upto date build for classes that you play, and make sure that your teams composition is reasonable, and give team queues a go. Hopefully if people do that, a lot of things that happen in sPvP would make a whole lot more sense, and they’d see how enjoyable it was.

faeral.7120:

tested water spirit for a day in team queues. it certainly has its moments, but it is not good for backpoint b/c you need the condi cleanse for the classes you will face in 1v1 ( condi war, decap engi, spirit ranger w/ spring, etc ). edit: the staggered timing is also brutal when you need a heal in clutch moments. eg. low on health, spirit is off CD but not summoned -> 2 separate cast times adding to 2.5s, with another 1.5s to get full effect.

in team fights, it has a more persistent impact than Spring ( Spirit starts helping the instant it is within 1,000 range of your team ) & you can stack a double active to relieve pressure by activating on the edge of the fight then running the spirit into the frey for the Vengeance heal.

however, Spring is just too good for team support because of condi wipe, blasts, leaps & projectiles ( your team can heal themselves with their own leaps, everyone’s projectiles will extend the regen in AoE by 1 tick, blasts are blasty ). Spring’s effect is also guaranteed for 10s, the main counterplay being AoE overlap but Spring is often used as counterplay to AoE itself.

the two biggest failings with Water Spirit are that the AoE active does not scale with Healing Power ( change the way Spirit actives scale with our stats please ), & the staggered cast time leaves you too exposed, especially when it provides no condi cleanse. the initial heal should be 1/2s cast, the spirit can remain at 1.5s for the AoE portion.

healing spring is still the king, baby.

Spirit is 1.5 second cast, active 1 second I believe. This confirms much of my beliefs, haven’t dared take it into team queues as I don’t think it’s viable.

However, I’ve done some research into blasts today and I wildly overestimated their potential. Its only a 240 radius centered on the blast itself, regardless of the radius of the blast or the radius of the field. I was really disappointed in that and made another forum post suggesting that the radius be increased substantially to somewhere between 480 and 600. Feel like it could massively improve team play, interestingness of combos and the skill cap without limiting new players as it would still be an advanced thing to do. I also like to see leaps become aoe, but in a tiny radius, 180 perhaps, just to give combos a little extra play.

I’ve written it all out on there and I’ll only end up babbling the same stuff again if I start, have a look if combos interest you!

I agree. I just don’t think that, in terms of the optimum PvP Spirit Ranger build, this is a viable choice

There are two spirit ranger teams around. Nowadays though I’d far prefer to see one running with Nature’s Voice and Guard + Shout Reduction for perma Regen uptime. I don’t think two spirit rangers is viable though, other than in pure bunker teams, largely due to the amount of stuns in the game and their lack of stun breakers, even though Hammer Warrior has taken a dip.

Touted as one of the kingpins that defined combat in Guild Wars 2 was combo fields, I think they’re a fantastic addition that increases the skill cap. However blast finishers had been bugging me for a while, some of them seemed to be incredibly powerful, yet I saw no teams basing builds around them, or really paying any attention to them unless they happened to be present in a build. For instance, a Ranger will be aware of his water field, and will probably call it out, Mesmers will call their Null Field out, and possibly Chaos Storm, but a Water field isn’t a neccessity, despite how powerful it seems to be! 1320 healing +0.2 healing power scaling on blast finishers looks amazing on paper.

I commented on another post that I had seen an entire team spec, very early on, based around an Engineer, Ranger, Thief, Guard, Warrior combo, two hammers, thief shortbow, ranger for the water field and Engineer for another field and tonnes more blasts, they just blasted away in their field and seemed to be quite effective. However they disappeared pretty much without trace and I never saw another build like this.

One thing thats been bugging me for a while is why we don’t see a lot more of this, why combo fields don’t seem to have any effect on choice of builds. There’s a simple reason in my opinion and its the way blast finishers work.

All combo fields have an area where they are active, normally a radius, and it would be madness to assume that targets affected by the blast finisher have to be inside that area to be affected. Luckily thats not the case.

It might be that the radius of the blast finisher comes into play though? Nope, this isn’t the case either. Could have been fun to have blast finishers have different value in range, Call of the Wild and a traited Big old Bomb have massive radii’ where others tend to be in the 180 or 240 area.

I have been testing this with a friend and it seems that all blast finishers are actually centralised on where the blast occurs in the field. They then all have a standard 240 radius over which they take effect.

I found this really disappointing. That means I can blast finish everyone up by blasting a load in my healing turret unless they’re really nearby. I can’t grant Might in AoE to my colleagues unless they stack on me. The counterplay to any stacking in this game is AoE, which means high tier players avoid being localised in an area at all times, because AoE is so strong. So combo fields with blast finishers are pretty much useless, save for comboing your own.

The blast finisher buffs are good. They are not overpowered though, not by a longshot. The problem is that they are too powerful before engaging fights. You can gain 24 stacks of might for 20 seconds, then give yourself 10 seconds of stealth, run into a fight, burst down the guardian and wipe off the stragglers before the team knows whats hit them. Thats no fun at all.

However, whats important from my point of view is that most combo fields are small, and any large ones are short in duration. In the large majority of fields, only one person can stand in the target to avoid being AoE’d anyway, so it wouldn’t be the case that suddenly tonnes of players could stack in a field and blast finisher away to get buffs.

So, why not increase the radius!? I would love to see the radius increased to somewhere between 480 and 600, the radius of most shout effects. This means that, provided you were well within the realms of the action, and easily targetable, you could receive these buffs, but if you are grenading away from a high up place for instance, you would be out of range.

I believe this would hugely increase the skill level in the game without making it difficult for newcomers to get involved as it wouldn’t be essential. Blasting in a dark field to blind a downed target so someone else gets a clutch stomp, or a smoke field to stop a stomp, I’ve never seen a thief do that! A guardian putting a light field down before an Engineer comes in to blast field it up to counter a burst team! Stacking up a bit of Might mid fight, limiting your own damage for a while but again allowing for burst. What are other peoples thoughts on blast finishers and combo fields in general?

I accept that you probably would need to balance this is a bit so that any fields with very powerful effects either have the effects reduced or the durations limited. I’d also love to see a field that removes conditions in AoE on blast finisher, but maybe I’m dreaming a bit there.

Valentin.2073:

healing spring is the best heal on a ranger, no argument. but if a team decides to bring 2 spirit rangers then a spirit ranger with a water spirit can be an option. this gives more diversity in spirit builds. a team can bring a condi/dps spirit ranger and a cleric spirit ranger (both viable).

My main disagreement is that spirit buffs dont stack, ie you dont get any bonus from having two storm spirits, stone spirits or sun spirits in terms of increased proc.

Valentin.2073:

just imagine a ranger with a water spirit and spirit of nature, how much heal can he provide for his team? healing spring is really effective for condition cleanse but water spirit is much better in group heal.

btw, any decent player would know to destroy the turrets first before stepping inside the node. water spirit has much larger health pool than healing turrets.

I would agree that a Ranger using his Elite skill and a support heal will provide a lot of Healing for his team, yes. The elite spirit provides 480 healing per second, an absolutely absurd amount of healing. That’s why decent teams will focus it down instantly, but thats besides the point. The elite spirits active also actually clears 5 conditions from all allies, a very important feature to consider if you get the chance at a second proc. Any Ranger using his elite skill to provide healing rather than resses though is wasting that utility completely. As soon as the spirit is up, like I say, any decent team will focus it, so it must be saved for clutch moments where that can’t happen.

I have already listed some other options for passive group healing that come out far stronger than the Water Spirit on other classes, namely a shared Virtue of Resolve and Soothing Mist from an elementalist. However I do agree that the passive effect is strong in this area.

Any Engineer who understands how to use the healing turret will pick up the healing turret immediately after the Cleansing Burst. This is what I have based my calculations on. There is no counterplay to the healing turret, the 0.5 second cast time is too short to realistically interrupt.

The healing turret has a health pool of 5980. Source
Will test spirit health in a second and get back to you on that one

You talk about getting bursted and the active healing you up from that, here’s some more specific examples of worst case scenarios:
A shatter mesmer bursts you. Shatters have a 240 radius, your spirit dies and you get a 1.93k heal from that, but the burst has hit you for 6k (moderate for a mind wrack) so you are low-ish. Your heal is on cooldown for 20 seconds, and you have to try to get it up against a mesmer, who will either have GS, Pistol or Dispersion Shatter to interupt you at any point during a 2.5 second cast time, and also has a period of 20 seconds where you have no healing at all to kill you.

There is no recovery in this situation, you are dead if the Mesmer is anything decent.

Youre in a team fight, and youre receiving AoE damage because youre fighting near the centre of the fight. You’ve used the active on your spirit, and when its just about to come off CD it dies, there is nothing you can do to prevent this from happening I should add, as you have no heals, short of asking your team to provide AoE healing, for your poxy spirit, which may not even get the effect of the heal anyway as it isnt a priority in the game.

You effectively in this situation have a 46.5 second cooldown since your last heal to your next one. Perhaps you weren’t the focus target at this stage, but against a good team they might notice you’re not at 100% and your spirit has gone down. You get immediately focused and people try to keep you up. The enemy guardian still has stability and as you go down under immense pressure (likely at least in part from condi spam I might add!) you manage to put up your res spirit and res yourself but you’ve wasted that team fight utility. Your heal comes off CD straight after, so you try to get it up, but youre still the target and that kitten Hambow Warrior is on your kitten . I could go on, but you see my point, if youre the target against hambow warriors youre never getting that heal back up and the active off in time to save yourself.

As I said these are worst case scenarios, but they are important scenarios which are indicative of good player on the other teams side. The fact is that the Spirit has so much counterplay that its difficult to justify taking it in a high tier game.

Kharr.5746:

You should mention that water spirit adds body blocking and another target that opponents have to cycle through. Damage blocked/delayed by the spirit adds to its “healing potential”.

What’s important here is that the passive heal is active prior to setting your burst heal on cooldown.(regen).

Body blocking yes, however I made these calculations largely based on the Ranger not being the focus of the attack and the spirit not providing body blocking, because if it is then it dies, and the HPS is (in the vast majority of cases) reduced by that fact. I doubt there is any case in which the body blocked received as a result of the water spirit dying is more beneficial than keeping the spirit up. I’d also point out that a lot of damage the spirit will take is AoE and will prioritise hitting the player first anyway. Melee damage is unlikely to be soaked up, so Ranged projectiles that don’t pierce the target are all the body blocking provided.

Since the changes to tab targetting that target all players first before spirits, and the fact that any decent team will not only call a target that can be targeted with a key press, but will also be mouse targetting, rather than tab targetting, I do not consider the extra spirit to be “another target that opponents have to cycle through”.

The passive is quite strong, I grant you, but not as strong as you might think. It works out to 59.26 HPS with no healing power. This is roughly equal to other sources of passive AoE healing. A traited virtue of resolve, not an unreasonable comparison given that the spirit must be traited, gives 84 HPS. Soothing mist gives 80 HPS when active with very short downtime assuming Water Attunement is accessed on Cooldown. Both these skills operate on a 1200 range, where Water Spirit is only 1000.

I would agree that the lack of need to stack is important, but thats not the case when you take the active portion of the heal into account. My other problem with the active portion is the cast times. Not only do you have a 1 second cast time to cast the skill, the spirit has a further one second cast time to use it! If you’re running around trying to heal your teammates and they head the wrong way, youve wasted that CD. But lets assume your communicating, so that isn’t an issue.

I agree that the passive healing from these sources are on CD. Healing Turret is on such a low CD that its not really a problem, especially given Engi dodges, but to focus on the ranger it can be difficult to know when to use a Healing Spring if you don’t need it. To me thats overcome by it being a water field. I can get as much healing from the active as if I manage 2 leaps and a blast finisher in my water field and someone else pulls off one more blast finisher, this is something I’m specifically set up to do, but all Rangers have access to the leap and should be using it.

I’d also point out that as soon as the spirit is out, you are in danger of your heal being put on a 20 second cooldown. So while you haven’t blown your heal cooldown, your heal cooldown is far more telegraphed and is at risk of being on cooldown even if you manage well.

jcbroe.4329:

jonnis.2946:

jcbroe.4329:

Nice write up. I appreciate you taking the time to calculate it all out. I wanted to add that since you mentioned in the vs Healing Turret section the value of also having condi cleanses, it would also make sense to make note of that in the vs Healing Spring section.

I did =D

jonnis.2946

These values do not account for the provided water field and condi clears, both of which massively increase the effective HPS.

Thanks a lot

My fault haha, continue

Don’t blame you, theres a TL:DR section for a reason haha.

Valentin.2073:

Water Spirit Stats With Cleric Amulet:

To start, I never said it doesn’t help keep your team alive, simply that Healing Spring is a better option.

Ok, I’m assuming youre saying the spirit doesn’t die at any point since you’ve listed 6 on proc heals. I’m going to ignore the fact that I think this is an unrealistic calculation, because to be healing your allies you have to take your spirit into the centre of the action, putting in directly in harms way. I’ll look at the HPS for allies and for yourself for the numbers you posted though, and assume the ally gets every proc of the active.

I’d like to point out at this stage that you are assuming you have 1088 healing power, where a full clerics amulet will only give you 923, you also have healing power runes to increase this to 1088.

Healing on allies is actually 7720 first of all, counting the on death proc, the total time for 1 cycle is 81.5 seconds counting cast time. This leads to a total of 161.2 HPS.

The first thing I’m going to point out is that an untraited Healing Turret with 0 healing power without even counting the regeneration or the fact its a water field or the fact that it clears conditions does 162.6 HPS. You’re providing less support healing than any Engineer who doesn’t even have to care about the support he’s providing, he hasn’t even had to trait for it. The active effects also cover a larger, more realistic radius. So even with Clerics, we’re a million miles off this being the best support heal.

I don’t know what the rest of your setup is, but I’m going to assume you’re the standard spirit ranger with Water Spirit swapped in.

Healing Spring provides a water field for 10 seconds. 1/3 uptime on a water field, regardless of the regeneration it provides, the condi clears, is an incredible asset to team support if your team is coordinated. A single blast finisher in that water field every 30 seconds gives 43 HPS. I normally carry a Warhorn in tPvP as my role is slightly different to the average spirit ranger, so I always use the blast finisher. I also always communicate the fact that the field is down, incase people need to stand in it to clear condis or have finishers. If one other person blast finishes its another 43 HPS. This assumes 0 healing power. With 1088 healing power, its 50.4.

But lets ignore that and look at the 6 condi removals you get every 30 seconds. Its no secret that Empathic Bond has been a musthave in our builds virtually since the game launched. That gives 3 condi removals every 10 seconds, but we spec 30 points into a semi defensive tree mainly because of that trait. It only removes conditions from yourself and actually puts your pets at risk. 6 condi removals every 30 seconds works out to 2 every 10, and the conditions are actually removed. I can’t put a value on how powerful this is in terms of HPS, but in terms of supporting your team this is a feature that is incredibly valuable.

In a similar best case scenario for the healing spring, the regeneration provides 99.7 HPS, 154.3 when I have 569 healing power. Add to these a 43/47 HPS blast finisher respectively. Just for fun, if I had 1088 healing power, it would be 204 HPS (+50 HPS blast), far more than the water spirit, but thats unrealistic.

I just don’t think you can justify taking the Water spirit given the unreliability of the heal, the lack of a water field and the lack of a condi clear, given that the HPS isn’t significantly larger. Its a lot of risk for no increase in reward. I could maybe see it in a 2v2 paired with an Engineer perhaps, who has the turret water field anyway, and is providing regen whenever he heals so you have good uptime. Like I said I also could maybe see it in other builds with constant regen uptime, but that would be to undervalue the water field.

Personal healing the spirit doesn’t compare, and then I start to add in the sword leap, which you can accomplish twice if you’re lucky, blast finishers, even pet blast finishers, the condi clears the water field. Just in Regen/Healing alone, a comparison at 1223 healing power sees the field come out miles on top, at 0 healing power the Spirit does seem to be slightly more efficient, but that would assume a perfect scenario on the spirit side, and no finishers on the healing spring.

To reiterate, I’m genuinely not trying to say that it can’t help your team, and I actually don’t consider it useless… Until you compare it to the Healing Spring.

In response to the talk about combo fields, firstly you missed the best field of all in my opinion, water fields. I once saw a setup that played Guardian with a hammer, Engineer, Ranger, Thief (with SB), and I think a warrior. The tactic? Blast field all day long in Water fields, massive AoE heals, avoiding putting down other fields as much as possible. The guardian was then able to be an offguard providing some DPS, while still providing condi clears, Ranger was spirit support, Engineer just had tonnes of blast finishers, condi specced, think the Thief also had bursty backstabs and the Warrior was quite controlling, Hammer + GS if I remember correctly.

Now that to me was really interesting exciting combat and something I’d love to see more of. However I think it stopped because the range on a Water Field blast finisher is actually quite small, I’ve never actually seen anyone ask what the radii on combos is, or how it is calculated. Shows how much attention people are paying to it.

Dodging, active blocks and evades on skills give huge amount of counterplay, which I really appreciate. The downstate leading to stomping and ressing is also a massive bonus that really ups the skill level. The 8 professions all feel completely unique, are clearly defined, which is a massive plus for interesting combat. There are options for lower skill builds with good reward, spirit rangers, hambow warriors but even these offer enough of a spectrum for there to be people that are far better at them, this is largely down to the movement that is required and the ability to know when to dodge. There are also specs that have a very high skill ceiling and require a lot of muscle memory. There is a lot of potential for theory crafting, and the gametype encourages different types of builds.

I think all these things are hugely beneficial to the enjoyment of combat in GW2. What you’re actually asking is if the combat is interesting though. I’ll stick with my guns on it being enjoyable, and I find the general combat system very interesting, there’s enough going on to have kept me in the game all this time anyway. However, I think some of the builds out there are very dull, I have played the Spirit Ranger, even the Condimancer and really don’t feel challenged by them, not to sound arrogant at all, its just that there is little to them compared to other specs.

I recently picked up far point assault engi, as cheesy as the spec is it takes I think a great deal more skill. Managing a weapon of skills, 4 toolbelt skills, two weapon kits that you can seamlessly switch out of. I have to actively think about the way I use some of the traits, though admittedly not all, and it’s a whole new kind of fighting.

I find tournaments relatively interesting to watch, I understand whats going on if I watch from a single players perspective for that player, and 1v1s are easy enough to work out both. However I think watching an overview of a large team fight can be dull, except for clutch ressing/stomping. It’s very difficult to really get a sense of whats going on even for experienced players. Watching the general gameplay though, i.e the movement of the players and strategies of the teams, I do find interesting.

I don’t think the game in its current form has any appeal for non GW2 fans. The combat simply has too much going on and too much to explain. A basic video could outline the way that the map works, but how interesting is watching the strategy of 5 people running from point to point if you arent invested in the game? If you’re not invested in the game, and have never played it, you will never be enthused enough to learn enough about the classes to understand the combat to a level at which you will find it interesting, if you’re not going to buy the game anyway.

I think the main way you can improve the stream viewers is buy popularising PvP with the current community. There are plenty of threads that would explain how you do that. That obviously has a limit, so I think after that you need to bring more people to the game.

In terms of popularising the game with other people, I think there is generally a snowball from the games PvP side of things becoming more popular and slowly more outsiders starting to watch. LoL won’t be played by everyone that watches it, but everyone who watches will have a good general idea of whats going on and the combat system. But that game in terms of builds and combat is far far simpler, without dumbing down GW2 completely, I think it will really struggle to become an Esport popular with a wider community. I’d hate to see them do that, so I hope it stays as a smaller competitive game.

Zenith.7301:

You also forgot to mention in your generous comparison that the turret is a standalone heal, whereas the Water Spirit requires a 20-30 point investment in nature magic, not only being inferior but having a larger opportunity cost.

An excellent point! I’d be interested in some spirit specs that dont take Natures Vengeance, if it weren’t for the fact that having it on the elite is so vital. A spec that has shouts granting perma regen with a lot of healing power to all party members looks like it could have some legs now spirits can move. Perhaps with full regen uptime and assuming condi clears are sufficient it could be viable there? I doubt it, but taking away the regen from healing spring leaves it feeling a bit more even.

jcbroe.4329:

Nice write up. I appreciate you taking the time to calculate it all out. I wanted to add that since you mentioned in the vs Healing Turret section the value of also having condi cleanses, it would also make sense to make note of that in the vs Healing Spring section.

I did =D

jonnis.2946

These values do not account for the provided water field and condi clears, both of which massively increase the effective HPS.

Thanks a lot

I actually started this post as a reply there, but decided to write my own in an attempt to encourage genuine debate on the matter, if there was any to be had. Also its bloody long, and no one would have seen it otherwise!

Also how given all the HPS here that ANet can possibly justify the 397 (still 265 when poisoned!) HPS healing signet, I really can’t fathom, especially given that Troll Unguent is only 326 and if anything poison counters that harder than Healing Sig as few classes have full poison uptime and it can be saved for those scenarios. Healing Sig is also uninterruptable, and Warriors are already the highest Health and Defence class. Another talk for another day though.

To start I’ll clear up a few points on traits. On “Natures Vengeance” procs the active heal of the player does not occur, only the AoE support heal, this was mentioned in the livestream. Rune effects (such as the suggested Runes of Dwayna) that proc on heal use will, I confidently assume, not proc when the spirit dies. The active effect also doesnt provide Vigor to allies if traited.

The spirit to me is a very unreliable heal. In a worst case scenario, the spirit dies 24~ seconds after you use the active ability, which seriously reduces the healing potential. This would be very unlucky if the spirit were to go down to AoE, but this is how clever teams and players will counterplay this skill. This seriously nerfs the potential of the heal, leaving you vulnerable.

Maths
Amount of Support
Perfect Scenario
Counting the active and passive effect of the heal, assuming all procs are instant and Nature’s Vengeance is traited, you get 805 healing every 10 seconds and a 1930 heal every 25 seconds. Given cast times, the maximum healing potential is reached if the spirit is killed instantly 74.5 seconds after starting the summon. and the heal is used instantly every time. This adds up to 168.5 healing per second (HPS) for allies. 64.8 of this comes from the passive proc, a 1000 radius, the other 100~ of which comes from the active on a traited 360 radius. The average point in sPvP is 240 radius to put this in perspective. Regeneration is 130 HPS with no healing power.

Healing Turret Comparison
Engineers Cleansing Burst is a 3 second water field and clears two condis. Without the regeneration this turret provides 162.6 HPS for allies. The regeneration makes this 204 HPS. Personally though, ignoring the regen, I would take 2 condi clears and a short water field over 6 healing per second. This is in a 480 radius, larger that the water spirit active, which accounts for most of the water spirits healing. I also didn’t count the toolkit skill.

Effects of Healing Power
I’ll be assuming for these calculations that you are using a Settlers Amulet, with an offensive Jewel (about as defensive as the Ranger spec is allowed to go Meta wise) and have no points in the final tree.

The passive effect is a base 805 healing and stacks at a factor 0.08 with healing power giving approximately 850 healing every 10 seconds. The active self heal stacks at 0.36, pushing it from 3865 to 4064. The group heal incidentally doesn’t even stack with healing power! It’s 1930 regardless of the stat. Healing power really doesn’t do much to improve the efficiency of this heal.

Healing Spring Comparison
For perfect HPS the spirit goes up, is used immediately, gets used twice more on cooldown and then dies immediately, with 6 passive procs. This is almost unachievable but this is the best case, so I’ll calculate using it for now. The spirit gives 324.1 HPS with no healing power, 335.7 as in the case above. Assuming the spirit just doesn’t die (which doesn’t actually give anymore healing as you still only get 6 procs of the spirit) it gives 296.3 HPS, 305 in the case above. In the worst case scenario, these values are reduced to 218.06 and 225.4.

Healing springs is a far more reliable heal, and can be used every 30.5 seconds. The immediate heal gives 161.3 HPS. The same healing power as above increases this to 179.9. The regeneration provides an additional 76.7 assuming 0 boon duration but that all ticks are received. This increases to 118.7 with 569 healing power. Totals here are 238 HPS and 298.6 HPS. However most of these specs have 30% boon duration from Nature magic, giving 99.7 HPS and 154.3 HPS to the regen values, so totalling 261 and 334.2 respectively. These values do not account for the provided water field and condi clears, both of which massively increase the effective HPS.

I appreciate that I am making some assumptions but overall I feel I’ve given the spirit a generous outlook in these calculations.

Final Thoughts
In conclusion, Healing Spring remains the only choice for a group heal. I genuinely don’t believe there is a single spec where I would rather use the Water Spirit be it for Soloq, Teamq or Hotjoin. I found the maths quite surprising, but this is largely due to the perfect scenario being almost unattainable and the worst case numbers really put this into perspective.

TL:DR
Can’t blame you.

• Traits and runes have deceptively poor synergy
• Counterplay is obvious, has serious negative consequences for the player
• Healing per second suprisingly high in ideal scenarios
• Healing power scaling is poor
• In support terms, Healing Turret offers a lot lot more
• Vs. other Ranger Heals, still no comparison to healing spring

Does anyone disagree? I know there are some people really enjoying this new heal, but I simply can’t fathom why, I’d love to see some convincing arguments for it founded in maths or experience.

Hey man, yeah its me =D
I just can’t see it being that difficult to implement and could make a big difference to cosmetic customisation

I literally just meant that the item pieces that are currently asymmetrical on the gloves and shoulders to be able to be used on either side, so that they would fit with other asymettrical gear. Off the top of my head, the medium whisperers Gloves and Shoulder, and Heart of Koda shoulder pieces and the Phoenix light female shoulder are the only ones that actually do this, but I’m sure there are a few more about.

As Keyno said, I can’t imagine the actual work by Anet would be that difficult, as the mesh has already been created. I never asked for them to be copied, or for you to be able to turn symmetric armor asymmetric, but why the hell not? Why not two tick boxes on the right and left of the box to toggle on and off the right and left shoulder.

This I imagine would be more difficult but for now I’d be very happy if they just added the functionality for currently asymmetrical pieces to be used on either side. I cannot think why that would irritate anyone! But my answer to all your statements is a no, to begin with as I feel more could be added.

Why would anyone want to have one boot! That’s madness!

Zeon.8239:

Someone should use their dragon token with a consumable token, orb, and a powder to make a dragon finisher and post it.

Tried 4 Bramble weapons, 3 slivers and 2 lucks, no token =( Didn’t want them anyway but seriously doubt this is possible

I’m happy that the pet health is different in WvW/PvP and PvE, thats fine. What bugs me is that when you spec fully into the Pet Attribute tree for 30 pet trait points, 300 to power, vitality, toughness and precision, you only get 1650 health, rather than the expected 3000. That seems unfair to me, and I hope that this is the only stat it affects. Sure it is though

Ive opened quite a few coffers. Probably close to 100 now. Ive got 3 Hawk Weapons which are very rare skins in sPvP (but incredibly easy to attain in PvE -.-), a bramble weapon and a frozen weapon. They dont seem to contian any armor above rank 40, I suspect this is mostly down to the fact you can buy this armor in the other tabs for gold and glory and they wouldnt want to give it away randomly. I do however agree that, even with my luck, the chance for new equipment seems low. I’m in the rank 40s btw

I play a Norn with the Heart of Koda chest piece. Id love to use it with the whisperers Glove/Shoulder but I cant, because they are both assigned to my characters right hand, where the Heart of Koda only has a sleeve on the right. I’d love to see some way we could modify these items to swap the side that they are on, which would open up a few more options for cosmetic looks.

Wouldnt mind if this was gem store bought or whatever, just an idea, what do you guys think?

Link:“http://imgur.com/5YBuP8j”

I played Ranger in the Beta weekends having played another popular MMO and came to it when I started the game. I got to the high 70s or so before I became incredibly bored with PvE. I was never grabbed by WvW as I didn’t ever feel I was contributing anything, dungeons were tank and spank and even fractals didnt do enough to change that for me, though I didn’t really give them a proper go.

So I play PvP and have since picked up Necro and Guardian through necessity when my classes have fallen out of the meta. Never really had any desire to level them though.

One of the best things by a long way about this game is the unique feel of every class. I really think you should give every single one a go, not from 0-20, but from 30+ if you want to know which one you actually enjoy.

For me I started leveling again, playing WvW (as a roamer/defender rather than zerger this time) and even doing dungeons and fractals because I started playing Engineer. Theres nothing more fun in the game for me, sure you only get one weapon, but that just means you have access to every single cooldown all the time. 5 weapon skills that are always available, 4 toolkit skills likewise, all the time. Then you pick your utilities which affect your toolkit skills, its like being able to choose each individual skill in your secondary weapon set, thats amazing!

But for me the thing that really makes the Engineer is kits, I play triple/double kits in every form of the game and enjoy my Engineer in WvW and PvP. I still find PvE a bit lackluster but its a bit more engaging for me now and Im mainly doing it to gear up for WvW!

For me there’s nothing nearly as fun in this game as the Engineer. Warrior/Ranger feel like classes from any MMO, they’re pretty standard, thief is not far off that, think Initiative instead of Energy. Guardian has virtues and a lot of support, heals, boons, go with that if you enjoyed healing/tanking in other games, there’s a bit more to it in that sense. Mesmer is a very unique class as MMOs go, I could never get my head around it, but shatters/clones are a cool mechanic. Necromancer death shroud can be fun, probably one of the less unique ones though, its like having 3 weapon sets instead of 2 really. The elementalist has a really wise range of skills, but they go on cooldown, its very hard to master as there’s a lot of micromanagement involved, I’ve never really got there. Engineer wins every single time for me now, but try out the different class mechanics, see what takes your fancy and give it a go.

Moved this from the sPvP forums, realised it was probably more appropriate here.

I’ve been playing an Engineer decapper build now, for a while, so naturally I come up against a lot of other Engineers. While I don’t most of them run bomb kit, so Big Ol’ Bomb is one of their stable knockbacks. When the bombs are untraited the Big Ol’ Bombs damage radius circle is too small. It shows a radius slightly smaller than the nodes on Foefire. However the knockback radius is actually significantly larger than this. If someone could take a look at it that would be great, but I’ve confirmed this with some testing

And now that spirit ranger is getting a healing spirit as well, based on some data mining on reddit. Water field is still excellent support, so I’ll likely still be inclined to use it, but if the numbers are good I might be forced into water spirit as well. Every new healing skill that has been added has a skill type, so you got your wish, now we’ll see how it pans out

My main point is that it pigeon holes certain heals into certain builds. I like that I can run a spirit build with a water field if I’m fighting at mid most of the time, or troll unguent if for some bizarre reason I’m never allowed to leave home. If you put these skills into utilities which have traits that make them too strong to the point that they become OP, the only way to fix that, since its unlikely ANet will change their policy of not going back on things, is to make either the traits weaker, or the heal itself weaker.

That then hurts other builds that used that heal, but chances are those weren’t viable anyway since they weren’t using the OP heal. I know thats how utility skills work, why is that a good thing! When I look at signets on the ranger for example, I see a toughness signet that gives invuln, a healing signet that gives extra damage, a mobility signet that gives one attack extra damage, and a condition removal signet. Theres a lot of variety in defence and attack there, but all the points relating to signets require 30 points in the power tree.

Why is it a good thing that, if we choose our utilities first, we are pretty much pigeon holed into where to put the trait points? To me it really hurts build diversity and putting healing skills in that do this would only add to that.

If I’m running an elixir based build on my engineer, I still want to be able to take the healing turret for support, and not feel I’m gimping myself. If I’m running shouts on my guardian, I don’t want to suddenly find that there is a new heal I have to take, because I really like the block on shelter. But Guardians are all about support so the extra condi removal from that shout would be necessary.

Like I said I like the idea in principle, I just think it makes the balancing of these skills very difficult and rather than improving build diversity it might actually reduce build diversity in the game

About face doesn’t work if you are right clicking to move the camera at all, provided you aren’t doing that it works

My guess would be that these are going to be Gold + Glory rewards in the future, rather than just Glory. Then again I’m fairly sure they haven’t always been able to drop from match reward chests and I’ve stopped opening mine recently, so that would add up

I’ll give an example. You suggested that Heal as One should be a shout. Ok fine. But wait, shouts have 20% reduced cooldown traits, taking the CD down to 16 seconds. Its a adept tier trait, so do we just assume that its going to be taken? Do we reduce scaling with healing power to compensate?

Shouts can also be traited to give regeneration and swiftness (10 seconds of each). Boon duration traits and runes can get that up to 50%, and you can get a trait that increases regen you apply by 33% in duration. So suddenly I can get 18.33 seconds of regeneration and 15 seconds of swiftness for my party off a heal skill with a 16 second cooldown.

I could also get soldier runes that mean this “shout removes a condition”.

With all this, how is the skill supposed to be balanced to also be ok with no traits. I understand that your ideas we’re merely a quick look at the skills, but it incredibly complicates balancing issues if this is put into place. Like I said, I like the idea, but feel its something for a long way down the road once we’ve achieved a better semblance of balance across the general game.

I actually think this pigeon holes you into using certain heals in certain builds. For instance, HgH engineers have to take Elixir H, Turret Engineers have to take healing turret. Obviously it doesnt apply to everything, but I quite like that heals are their own individual skills. Otherwise they will need to be balanced around the traits that affect them, which I kind of don’t like because like I say it forces you to take certain traits.

I had a long think about it and, while the idea is sound and I actually think it could work, I don’t think its a viable idea in the current trait system for that reason.

Will the Ladder system be implemented in teams or as solo players? To quote the blog “Players will be divided into divisions”. I really feel this is missing a trick and hope that the infrastructure you’re talking about laying down is to do with setting up PvP teams! I appreciate that it is difficult to give a definitive answer at this stage but would love to hear what the plan is at the moment.

Healing skills like Signet of Resolve are affected by traits that also affect utilities. On the assumption that a large number of the new heals will also do this, are there any plans to update current heals to do the same, and what is your general stance on this. As far as I’m concerned it pigeon holes certain heals into certain builds, rendering them otherwise useless. While not totally true of it Elixir H in the HgH Engineer springs to mind.

ronpierce.2760:

Why minis? We cant even have minis out in pvp

Agreed, this needs to change! Why not allow us to spectate as a mini pet that denotes our rank in custom arenas. We also should be able to have them out in HotM, and there should definitely be PvP specific ones. This is all at the least! Once we get the polymock arena (however it’s spelt) introduce one to the HotM! There are all sorts of ways Mini Pets could be there in sPvP without them actually being in the games themselves, which would of course produce to much clutter. Perhaps before the start of games though?

Amstel Steel.2058:

It would cross over to pve. I mean if your gonna grind to get dragon this way you can show off a mini pvp dragon in pve land.

A far better reason than any I came up with, what a great way to show off, along with /rank your rank in PvP!

Gold and Experience
I support this change. Frankly I’m in favour of anything that monetises PvP for ANet, simply because I have a totally unfounded belief it will receive more attention and become more popular as a result. I am unsure on the phasing out of glory all together, but provided PvP specific armors have nothing to do with acquisition by gold or glory, I don’t think I will have any major problems with it.

Rewards
I believe that, in a competitive environment, rewards should be earned for two things:

1. Participation
   Up until now this has been the rank finishers, rank gated gear and rank titles (ransacker, marauder etc).
2. Skill Level
   We have tournament chest gear, which is very easy to obtain. Champion titles which I would argue are more a participation reward than a skill level reward.

By adding PvE skins to PvP (which I support as a change to increase the player base) you trivialise the acquisition of all but rank finishers and titles, both of which have questionable value (skyhammer farming and visibility respectively). This means, from my perspective, there are no rewards for, or more importantly ways to show off skill level.

Ranks
The current rank system is an effective way for players to demonstrate participation, now that farming issues have been eradicated. Personally I would not remove it from the game. Rewards for these achievements should focus on the extras, finishers, mini pets possibly (mini tiger for tiger rank? etc) and maybe back slot items along with some titles. Add in here any other cosmetic items that are not gear itself. I would do nothing to the way ranks are acquired, other than reducing the points required due to the diminished rewards.

Gear Acquisition
For the armor sets that already exist, acquisition should:

1. Be meta achievement based
   These achievements should vary in difficulty proportionate to the difficulty of obtaining the PvE armor.
2. Encourage 5v5 and tournament play, especially in groups
   Without being unattainable in 8v8, it would help the playerbase if most of the achievements were easier to obtain in 5v5 matches and tournaments
3. Be attainable regardless of rank
4. Be fun and engaging!
   Make some of these a kittenallenging, avoid the grind! What about an achievement that required you to interupt enemy players heal, that flashed up when you did it, or even the guild lord heal on Foefire? Not only fun and more interesting than kill xx amount of players, but also promoting skill!

Its important to remember that, while the acquisition of different skins can’t be too far from what it is in PvE, it also shouldn’t be too easy. It should be encouraged that players go for lower tiers of gear first, or players will simply grind their favourite set immediately and never change it. This could be done by having requirements to unlock previous pieces of gear built in to the meta achievement.

Ladders
This for me could accomplish great things for PvP:

1. Reward for skill level
   I love the idea of seasons in PvP
2. Team Leagues
   I would love to see this implemented on a team basis. Leagues of around 100 teams, possibly fewer at the top level would do amazing things for the competitive side of the game, with promotions and demotions for a cut of the teams. Unfortunately the post specifically mentions “Players will be divided into divisions” but I’d love some clarity on this.
3. Solo Q balance
   If you only played with other people in your league, or those around it and the teams were balanced based around this, I believe Solo Q balance would be greatly improved. Class balancing (teams having bunkers, etc) and afking would still need to be addressed, but this would be a big step

The way I see teams working is as follows:

• Each team has a roster of up to 8 players
• No two teams can have more than 2 of the same players on its roster
• No player can join more than 3 teams

For me, until teams are implemented in some way into the PvP scene, it will struggle to move forward. Though I do understand that this would be a long term project, it was not listed on your agenda.

PvP Gear

Regarding exclusivity of skins. Since skins will be shared across the game PvP will be getting exclusive skins that require participation in PvP to obtain. These will be able to be carried over into all other areas of the game. I think this was a little unclear in the blog post.

This is the answer to rewards for participation and skill level. Some of this gear should be earned for participation , but should not stand out so much, different skinned current gear might be appropriate. More unique skins should be earned for skill level, i.e being high in ladders. Had this not been here I would have hated these changes, other than the ladder, but it being here is vital and should be the foundation of reward systems to come.

[reserved] /15 chars

Will finish this tomorrow

Kits
Bomb Kit
In terms of things useful for the far point assault engineer, this kit offers an AoE knockback on a relatively short cooldown, an AoE blind and an AoE immobilise. The pressure from the fire and concussion bomb is very low, and barely worth mentioning, though the concussion bomb may dissuade some players from attacking. They do have their uses against thieves.

Tool Kit
The shortest cooldown in the game coupled with a 1200 range pull, an AoE crippling field and another source of confusion on this kit. The toolbelt skill is a guaranteed physical projectile, which when used in melee range can provide combo finisher effects for the Engi.

Flamethrower
A relatively useless toolbelt skill, coupled with the napalm ball and flame wall may make this kit seem underwhelming. However, it provides an excellent short cooldown knockback and an insta cast blind which is excellent in clutch situations.

Elixir Gun
This kit really shines in this build. A stun break on the toolbelt is an excellent addition. The healing from Super Elixir is very noticeable, especially when the kit cooldown is traited, and is a light field. There is a blast finisher which helps with mobility, a swiftness/cripple to help keep the gap from melee classes and a source of weakness on the auto attack.

Given all these choices, I find that the best balance is struck using an Elixir Gun, with Elixir C and a Flamethrower. I would consider swapping Bomb Kit for the flamethrower if it werent for the insta cast blind and the fact that the Big Ol’ Bomb is too easy to spot. Given a shorter cooldown I would also consider the inclusion of the Thumper Turret, but Elixir C is too useful as the main counter to condition specs. The Elixir Gun and Flamethrower can be traited to together have 20% reduced cooldown and I believe provide an excellent balance of survivability and point denial.