Guild Wars 2

Also since the patch fear works even less than it did before. I hit the pvp heavy today and it would be a stretch to say that my #2 fear worked half the time. Initially I figured it was stability but after close attention that was not the case. Hard to test though given most of time time I was getting stealth stomped by one of the bazillion thieves pvping now.

Im just really shocked that changing my trinket had such an effect. I went from carrion to rabid in spvp and I went from feeling like an all star and putting up 250+ a match to having scores of like 30 and just getting killed over and over.

drnkndfght.7298:

I play WvW but yea i agree. Is it more condition builds running around nowadays?

I dunno but I’m really at a loss for how just changing from carrion to rabid that I seem to just be awful now. I’m not really seeing a lot more with condition’s but in general I am dying SOO much more than I ever have before and it seems really weird. Normally I run a condi or terror build with about 24k hp and I can stay up forever. Switching to rabid with the same build I dropped to about 19k hp but have about 2k toughness which I figured would be even more tanky. Somehow it is proving to be far less so then I thought. Typically Im in the top scorer most every match but since switching today Ive been at the bottom every time.

Toughness used to at least seem to keep you up a bit longer in pvp but honestly of late I see absolutely no difference in taking hits between running rabid or just stacking more hp. If anything I seem to be dying WAY faster having switched from carrion to rabid and by conditions went up only about 8 per tick.

zainey.5021:

I’ve thought the previous balance adjustments were generally steps in the right direction. This one is certainly a bad one as they nerfed a lot of class strengths into unplayability and boosted things that didn’t need boosting as per this sword thief discussion.

I do think sword needed a buff, and thief REALLY needed a new mechanic. The issue is I don’t think the mug nerf was enough of a trade off for what they got. Theoretically there idea of reducing burst did not work cuz now they can steal boons with one set then use them to do even more damage than before with the other despite the nerf to mug which was never as bad as backstab to begin with. Backstab you cant see coming 95% of the time and it takes 1/3 to 1/2 of your hp right at the start of a fight.

I know everyone is saying this is not a s/tpv kitten ue but since yesterday I have been dying very fast in downed state in s/tpvp. Numerous times I had over half health and then bam was just dead with nobody visibly near me and with no floating dmg text or dmg in the combat log having killed me. Initially I thought it was a thief stealth stomping me (which is lame in itself) but it was happening a bit much to be that. It may be nothing to do with the 1/3 hp bug it just seems different than before. On a side note stomp needs a look as to its range vertically. Im pretty sure I got stomped in Spiritwatch yesterday from someone WAY above me on one of the stone pillars while I was on the ground far below. Saw him up there doing the stomp animation and everything.

Ok, I think I figured it out, I just don’t know how to counter it…yet.

One they all run the assassins signet I believe it is called which due to the changes acts as more of a sustained dmg buff than before when they had to pop it before there burst. Hence before if a thief popped it and you dodges the opener they where boned or had to stealth and try to run away and reset, now there open is potentially a bit less (mug nerf and less reason to pop AS active), but long term they have more sustained dmg by saving the signet. The counter-dodge more I guess. Maybe weakness, fumble, or spending more time in DS than before. Basically take note that thiefs are hitting a bit harder during the fight and a bit less on the opener.

Two, and this I have no idea how to counter, thiefs are the new ele and guardian rolled into one with great damage too. By this I mean everyone and there mom played ele and/or guardian before. Now in spvp thiefs are stealing boons off them like crazy and are running around with fury, protection, and might ect like its going out of style upping there damage even more. Initially I though let them have boon stealing, I’m a necro and anet thinks DS it so great “sarcasm” we don’t need boons, so they wont steal from me. What I am seeing now is thief owns the poor kitten ele, or guardian, then I’m jumping in taking on a thief with a bunch of boons at the start of the fight. Problem is other than boon stripping them there’s not much that can be done on our part to counter this Boon strip/ convert and hope you can get them off before they kill you is the only active option. But its not optimal because most of our skills to do so are on a longer cooldown. That or just hope that others stop running so boon heavy to give thiefs yummy buffs to nom nom on.

Arrogantly… For saying it does not seem like they (anet) accomplished the exact thing they said they were trying to accomplish. That arrogant to ask a question or question anything in any way? Exactly why most of this this community is kitten.

I don’t know thief well but after losing a bit I watched a fair amount of them in spectator mode. Mostly what I saw as 1-2 hours of backstab, hs, hs, hs, win. Of course they ppl they were owning were not dodging very well either. I guess I expected more of a trade off for the fact they were given another semi “meh” heal and what to me seems like a really effective boon steal. I always thought the 10k backstab was more of an issue than mug or hs anyway.

Prior to today I did well against them. Now they seem like they still hit for as much as before if not more and don’t die as fast as before either. Have techniques for them changed any since the patch? I thought watching SOTG there burst was supposed to be getting nerfed as a trade for more survivability.

Its still pushing 2. I watched about 2 hours of thief in spectator today and the new boon steal is at least a new mechanic but still almost everything I saw was backstab, 2, 2, 2. Maybe I was watching noobs but they seemed to be doing well.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Spec mode is working as of this post. Live build fixed it.

Thanks for the quick fix.

Although I really hate a lot of the decisions as to the direction of this game I think in large part the player base is doing as well as expected. Still for folks to post these threads I am sure to them, through there experiences in the game world, the game is dying. If your on a smaller server and all your friends leave because they are sick of waiting for balance or features that should have been in by now I bet it sure seems like the game is fizzling out. Still you gotta remember that a game like this, love it or hate it, is a totally different beast than we as mmo players have dealt with before. Its buy to play, extremely casual in many cases, and a very slight horizontal gear progression. All this allows new or returning players to immediately not be left in the dust like WoW, and lets you play a limited amount or leave and return at will without feeling like its pointless to come back because you missed too much. In this aspect Anet did do a good job, even if thats not leading to the game most of us expected this to be. This is coming from a staunch critic of this game on many fronts, but I would be remiss to not give them credit where it is due.

Softspoken.2410:

I’m betting that when they were referring to ‘all pets’ they meant ‘all of the ranger pets’, considering there’s like 40 of them and every family (Around 10 of them, I think) has its own stat distribution. They tend to refer to minions as ‘minions’, rather than pets.

They only mentioned wurm and golem, so I’m betting on just those two minions seeing any sort of change. At this point I’m guessing they want the bone minion to be relatively vulnerable, given its ranged nature.

I think you are correct. I do at least hope we get some residual gain from the ai fixes at least.

In SOTG it was mentioned during the ranger section that “All” pet were going to get some scaling off vitality and toughness. I think the direct quote was “pet stat improvements have happened for all . Stats for all pets in the game have come up to make them more survivable in dungeons”. But later on in the Necro section only flesh golem and wurm were mentioned as having increased hp only. So… does that mean that our pets aren’t included in this? If so why was the choice made to buff the hp of the wurm which in my experience rarely dies anyway and is usually sacrificed for the teleport effect after a time anyway.

Apollo.7583:

Bhawb.7408:

I recall the devs saying they were looking at giving us more boon hate, just don’t ask me to quote it because I have no idea where it is. We already have the most boon hate in the game, but hell I’d be happy for more.

Didnt they say that our Corrupt boon will be unblock-able in next patch too? This is the best part imo if so. I’ll take more boon removal or corrupts if they want tho

Even though it is unblockable I am holding judgement to see it it is actually going to work that much better. Right now CB is awesome when it works, which is at best half the time. Logically not being blocked it should be at least marginally better but atm even when it is not blocked or dodged I find it often does not fire correctly. A few weeks ago I was doing some limited testing and on a friend just standing right in front of me with boons on and doing nothing. CB would randomly have no effect. From what I personally saw I think its a LOS issue with uneven terrain but that is far from definitive.

The only issue I have with that is only 3 of those classes even bother to enter PVP anymore. Everyone else has quit or re-rolled by now.
+1 and keep it flowing

Trash talk has been around about in pvp since there has been pvp. That said, I think its particularly bad on this game partly due to massive imbalance between classes pvp wise coupled with the fact that other than 1 shotting people and talking kitten about it there is no incentive for top players. Honestly to me if I’m in a good fight be it 1v1 or whatever and I lose if you talk some smack its cool. I had a good time, lost by a bit, and the person that beats me gets a little shot in. What bothers me is when I die to some 3v1 when 2 of them are playing some op fotm class or build that is a devs golden child and will never be nerfed and I get told to “L2P”. Unfortunately in this game the latter is usually the case and that is why lately gw2 has been on the screen less and less.

I guess now the extra tabs only show up if your level 80. I logged off my 78 warrior and got on my main and its there. Logged back into the warrior and it wasn’t. Must be a bug.

I have no clue but I just checked all 4 vendors again and the tabs where it was previously are not there for me at all. It was there before the mini-patch, I downloaded the new build, and now its gone for me at least.

Ha and now they removed it. Getting gear while having fun is not intended.

Prior to the patch there were new items in WvW for gold+badges. I was just on post patch and the vendors no longer have any of the items and have reverted back to there pre-patch items only. Forget to mention something in the patch notes?

Wow Ok… First of all I was trying to be helpful based on the previous ways laurels have worked. No need to be mad at me because they cant code, support, correctly patch, or have basic understanding of there own “game”.

You cant get both anyway. Its one or the other last I knew.

Now that the DS UI is “fixed” they should add a fifth skill that allows you to consume a stack of bleeds for a set amount of burst based on the number of existing bleed stacks. This would give the class some burst which I feel is the one thing we are really lacking as well as make DS a more desirable ability for condition build users. I would also solve a lot of the issues with bleeds capping out in groups with more than one condition applier resulting in the flat lining of dps at a certain point.

Xsorus.2507:

No, they said they’re looking at shatter to see if its overpowered, which they won’t determine till after they buff Greatsword/Scepter…Then and only then will they nerf Shatter

So essentially give one of the two or three most powerful and played classes another OP ability then MAYBE nerf there other OP ability a month or five down the road. Meanwhile everyone playing rolls mesmer and loses there kitten when the nerf does come about leading to them re-buffing it the following patch.

Its because the glitch/faceroll builds are about the only ones that are even viable for half the classes. I just started to do pvp on my alts (mainly my engineer) and I don’t want to do the grenade glitch build but guess what its the only thing that is even slightly viable to counter all the backstab thieves and shatter mesmers. And they are probably in the same boat of having to play those builds due to all the 100 nades engineers ect.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

You just met bad guilds.

Eh I don’t think it makes them “bad”. Why should they do so much for people not fully contributing to reap the benefits. That kinda where the whole system is a bit counter intuitive. Both side are right and wrong really.

Well that thing has just turned into a wall of rant and insults really. And while I’m certainly not on here to be the defender of anet I can see how they thought this could work if we let it. I am also not trying to say that all big guilds are like this although I have seen it (the 100% rep thing) in map chat more in the last few days than since the game was released. kudos to sokar on offering a compromise of sorts that would benefit both sides.

Gestankfaust.4216:

Yet you still HAD to make a new thread about it

Uh huh. It was that or throw it into the other 37 pages that nobody is going to read all of.

And in three words, one number, and a funny looking sign I have shown why multiple guilds and the new guild missions are an issue. Initially I blamed the developers for the high cost to even participate. And to an extent it is there fault. Bad Anet you tricked me again. Still they did add this multiple guild system we all said was pointless…Well now it would have a point if the playerbase would allow. Which we won’t because as mmo players we tend to be rather elitist about such matters. But then again can you blame guilds for not wanting folks who only want to rep when it’s time to collect there loot? At this point the whole thing seems so broken and there’s enough blame for us all in this matter. I’m sure somehow it can be fixed but how I can only speculate.

I really want to say that I got some early on and uses them not knowing the difference buy I really cannot be sure. If I did it was not many (4-7). I guess maybe they removed getting them that way. Probably something that you would expect to see in patch notes huh.

You are correct. Which is why I did edit my post moments after making it to reflect the option to buy the stones with converted gold. Still, what I am referring to is the forced use of the store to get an item that is otherwise not available in the game for the most part. The best example of this is actually black lions chest keys. Anyone who played the head start saw in the first few days the keys were rare but actually did drop at a decent rate and that there was even a chance to get them from opening a chest. This lasted for about 3 days till the drop rate was adjusted and the keys removed from chests to make more money selling keys. The key to a cash shop that does not feel like a cheap money grab is balance which at this point is lacking. If the player does not feel like they can get something another way while playing the game in a reasonable manner then the shop starts to become an intrusive element in the play experience.

Yes, but nobody likes feeling left out. For a feature as important to the game as guild missions nobody in a guild of any size should have had to feel like this content was as gated as it does feel. If they wanted people to be willing to work for guild missions they should have had at least one that was easy to unlock. Give them a taste so they have something to drive them to work for while still having something fun to do with your guild and feeling like you are making some progress. The way it is now barring a big change many will simply not even bother with guild missions. And worst of all it will divide the community even more.

See that what I really hate about cash shops. To me a game that does cash shop right offers the option to get something that takes time/effort to get in game if you are willing to spend the money. Since gw2 isn’t really a min/max type of game and armor or weapons are more about looks than stats this is the perfect environment for this type of shop. Instead the way the BLTP is set up comes off as a scam or cash grab and it actually drives me away from using it at all. There are lots of little shady things that make me feel this way for example; you have 6 armor slots yet fine stones are sold in packs of 5, so you have to buy 2. Or in most games how currency is sold. Usually the bigger the amount you buy the cheaper it is. On GW2 its no cheaper to buy 4000 gems than it is to buy 800 x5. I guess there is the option to trade gold (as many will always say) but lets be honest anet is doing everything in there power to make this an undesirable option. Just put cool fun stuff in the store and we will buy it, they don’t need to sink to this level.

Lane.3410:

I used to get the fine stones from BL chests, but I haven’t in many months. Meanwhile, I have almost a full stack of 250 of the regular ones sitting in the bank.

I think they should make it so you can toss a stack of them (regular transmutation stones) in the forge and get some fine stones. Either that or make it so you can use the regular ones as long as the skin you are applying is not exotic. In my case I have a few sets on each of my characters and I am trying to apply a non 80 skin onto an 80 item for many of them. I can understand that they do this to make money but you should be able to get them other ways if you are willing to make the effort.

Ty, I could have sworn I’ve seen people post on here they got them from dailies and map competition guess I was mistaken.

Just to clarify by commendation I mean the item which is a consumable that can be used to give your guild influence. Sorry I’m not really sure the the currency guilds review for completing missions is called and I didn’t mean we should get that currency as outside helpers.

I’ve noticed now you can buy commendations (1k influence) for laurels as well as for gold and through the guild reward system. This makes me think anet intended to give small guilds other ways of getting influence to open missions. My question is has anyone tried helping a bigger guild on a mission to see if maybe the reward you get is some sort of commendation to help your guild build the influence to unlock them yourself? I personally run the game with a small group of friends and have not had the chance to check it out myself. If this isn’t the case maybe it is something for anet to look into implementing as it would make people more willing to help out while padding the currently ridiculous cost of researching missions for small guilds.

I wonder if it’s only in lvl 80 zone completions.

Are these pretty much only able to be obtained by buying gems? I have 3 80’s one with map completion and two with like 40-50%, I do dailys every day (at least for the past couple months) and I have never gotten one of these at least that I can recall.

I’ve noticed now you can buy commendations (1k influence) for laurels as well as for gold and through the guild reward system. This makes me think anet intended to give small guilds other ways of getting influence to open missions. My question is has anyone tried helping a bigger guild on a mission to see if maybe the reward you get is some sort of commendation to help your guild build the influence to unlock them yourself? I personally run the game with a small group of friends and have not had the chance to check it out myself. If this isn’t the case maybe it is something for anet to look into implementing as it would make people more willing to help out while padding the currently ridiculous cost of researching missions for small guilds.

If the March patch revitalizes WvW a bit, adds some more of the necessary features to tpvp, and they continue to revamp the current dungeons I would consider the trifecta of patches to have delivered an expansions worth of content. Now before you label me fanboy let me say I still think the game is completely imbalanced and half of the content they did add is grindy and gated. Still they didn’t exactly lie about what was coming, they just conveniently left out the details.

Defektive.7283:

Because after RTL you can lock down an ele pretty easily with immobolizers and knockbacks. Every tPvP game I’ve played that an enemy ele has ran it has lost the Orb.

Also, other classes have strong distance abilities.

I’ve been running Hammer/Sword-Warhorn, and if I have the orb I can actually Sword#2(Leap) over the bridges, go almost as far as RTL and it only has a 10sec cd not a 25.

Not to mention last night we used a Guardian (davinci) to run the orb and that felt more solid than an ele.

The only classes I feel that are at a disadvantage are Engineers and Necros since they lack gap closing mechanics.

Spirit Watch’s new mechanics will most definitely change the ‘meta’. The next step from ArenaNet are Ladder brackets visible to the public, new maps with new mechanics and have them be selected randomly per tournament.

So essentially the two weakest classes in pvp get the shaft yet again.

Still the same OP classes dominating everything, just on a new map that makes it easier to win faster for half of them.

I really only add folks to ignore if they are really out of control cursing or being very derogatory. Other than that I mainly leave them on for the entertainment value. Lately the biggest ones I have seen are scantily clad female human thieves. Bad Girls!!!

I’m not a huge PvP person. I have about 700 matches on my necromancer main. I’m not great but I do pretty well and am usually right around the top in points. But lately I have been noticing a huge increase in people being blatant jerks in matches. The part I find funny is that 98% of the time the biggest loudmouths are people playing a faceroll class/build that somehow need to spout of brilliant comments like “pwned”, “yawn”, and “L2P” any time they manage to mash one or two buttons to get there free kill. Mind you usually off point and accomplishing about nothing as far as helping there team or contributing to the outcome of the match. So in the spirit of these super leet pvp gods gracing us with there presence I ask to hear your tales of the best trash talkers. What class, build, race, or team have you seen as the biggest interwebs tough guy/gal? Maybe even your specific stories as to the funniest motor mouth you have come across is the mists.

Imbalance will always create animosity. That being said in game most people are really nice and overall I think the community is the best part of this game. The only place I’ve ever really seen anyone being a jerk is in pvp and they are usually the ones running faceroll classes/builds so they are obviously 12 year old trolls in the first place.

The simple truth is that until class balance take priority the community is going to keep getting worse. Right now pve is about gold. The faster you can get it to get skins or mats for legendaries the better. So groups and individuals will skew more towards the classes with the most op faceroll builds to maximize kills and profit. Same thing with pvp. Right now pvp is for three or four classes to farm any of the other broken classes stupid enough to enter the mists. Till its fixed 1/3 to 1/2 of the potential pvp population will either not play pvp or eventually leave because they are sick of waiting to be competitive. Add all the maps and features they want but it will only make people come back and see that things are as broken as they were on day one and they will leave again.

Great post. I have spent the last few days focusing on countering rangers specifically on my necro and you nailed it.