Guild Wars 2

The problem with stacking 25 bleeds on someone is getting off the ridiculously long cast time of epidemic before they die! :p

Sorry but Rangers have an aoe interrupt for skill 2. And while warriors and engineers also have a single-target interrupt for skill 2 they have much more powerful slot 3 skills. Fetid Ground is great for downed state vs downed state fighhts but won’t save you against stompers, whereas warrior’s and engineer’s slot 3 skills will.

Anyway, I’ll shut up now cause this is a bug discussion and I’m derailing the thread

Hmm… seems a lot more lackluster than I thought. Thanks.

Anyone able to answer the following questions for me please?
1. 30% chance when YOU hit, or when you ARE hit?
2. Amount of HP healed?
3. Radius of heal?
4. Does the heal scale with Compassion?
PS. 5. Does it also heal you, or just allies?

Signet of undeath is a frustrating one: when it works it’s a gamechanger, but then there’ll be entire matches where you won’t get the chance to use it once! Arguably if he’s bunkering he’ll be on his own a lot so he won’t get a chance to use it. OTOH if he’s bunkering it’s not like he needs a speed boost either…

Regarding the 20% minion cooldown I would seriously urge that you try it out too, in a protracted fight (which you’ll be getting a lot of since you’re quite durable) it makes the difference between dying and being able to resummon that bone fiend and immobilising that thief that was about to kill you. You already have pretty high retaliation uptime so it probably won’t make much of a difference.

There’s a lot of engineers and eles throwing aoe around these days, are your minions surviving long enough?

I didn’t even realise this bug existed tbh! For me the issue is interrupting stompers (against whom it doesn’t matter how much health you have left): we have the weakest downed state interrupts of any class in the game.

Acronym-induced brain meltdown!

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Sorem.9157:

Am i the only necro that actually thinks my class is overpowered ? (At least at tPvP)

In theory, the support skills (shortest cooldown instant rez, amazing tanking with plague form, epidemic, corrupt boon,) that a necro has can be extremely powerful when paired up with a practiced, communicating team of other players of equal competence.

In theory. I have yet to find such a thing myself.

It’s the game mode, it’s not conducive to group fights. You’ll rarely get a 4v4 and never a 5v5, and if you invest in the (really amazing) team support skills as your utilities you’ll have a lot less mobility, which is more valuable in conquest.

Yeah but what the O kitten aying is precisely that the basic trait that’s supposed to enable staying in DS longer (so that you can really use traits like Unyielding Blast etc to their maximum potential) is too weak.

And staff works as a main weapon in tournaments?? I love it in wvw because of the piercing and aoe marks, but I just can’t see it working as a main in small fights!

I know staff 1 scales well with power but scepter’s damage is pretty pathetic, so if you were to go Carrion in tpvp what weapon would you actually be using?

Yep, only 10% total for Nightmare

As title, give us an option in settings to switch them off, it would make big fights a lot easier in terms of being able to see what’s going on.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Great write-up. Just so you guys know, we’re trying to bring down the cantrip Ele, while also being careful to let other Ele builds work. We don’t want to just take all Ele’s out of play, but we do need to bring a few things down (traits/skills) in efficacy.

Please be careful how you do this, you don’t want to pull a Divine Boon on this where you make the build completely unviable for competitive gameplay. I think it’s more important to make alternative elementalist builds more competitive than to nerf this to the ground. For example, I don’t think i’ve seen anyone using Staff or conjured weapons in tournaments, well, ever to be honest!

I think Symbolic’s analysis can be boiled down to this: very frequent condition cleansing and high boon uptime. My personal opinion is that the main cause of these is Evasive Arcana, and the fact that it can be procced so frequently. A small reduction in Vigor uptime would easily solve this.

YES PLEASE! That would be a fantastic idea! I honestly don’t think GW2’s animations are distinctive enough to be able to tell what your enemy is doing just by looking at them, and in a lot of team fights it’s impossible to even see them for all the particle effects anyway!

ens.9854:

This would be a good balance for tiny asura whose animations you cant see. But I am unclear what “cast bars” are, can you link an example?

These things: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNLneTubxls#t=0m18s
Not the guy in the video customised his interface and made his A LOT bigger than it was by default.

Shard.4791:

Guild Wars spoiled me. I didn’t truly learn many animations because they had cast bars. I didn’t look peoples cast bars either to know what foes were or are going to be doing.

If I recall correctly this style is a design decision so only if it doesn’t work or is in other ways a bad thing they should “fix” this problem by adding bars or something.

Yeah, it was deliberate, but I don’t think it worked. Casting animations (with a rare few exceptions) aren’t distinctive enough, and the ridiculous amount of flashes and explosions onscreen make it impossible to discern tiny little asura characters raising their miniscule fist to the sky to squeeze out a heal anyway.

I disagree about GW1 though, I think the animations were very distinctive and it was easy to learn to tell them apart. I generally only looked at activation bars if I was trying to interrupt a skill (usually on my mesmer). Otherwise I’d be looking at the decal effects appearing over the caster’s head. Those usually looked similar to the skill’s icon so they were pretty easy to learn, and were generally bold, distinctive designs anyway. Look at the thing appearing over the head of this elementalist lady for instance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L1UvGgpRtM

In the case of defensive skilsl that targetted allies, the decal effect would usually appear over THE TARGET’S head instead of the caster’s, which was also eminently sensible, it let you know exactly what protection your target was under, whether you should try to remove it before bursting them down, or whether it was probably more sensible to just switch targets.
It’s really hard to find GW1 videos on youtube now with all the GW2 vids, but this 55 monk illustrates it very well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50b0zlq3-5o#t=0m57s
Note he’s casting that on himself, but you can see how distinctive they are even with 8 trolls surrounding him. Especially that Protective Spirit effect (his skill 5) – it’s big enough that you can see it even in an 8v8 fight and know not to bother blowing your cooldowns on someone who just got that.

It really was very easy to learn if you had played enough different classes, much easier than GW2’s animations, and it enabled some very deep gameplay.

Although frankly most interrupt skills in GW2 have a cast time or (in the case of mesmer shatters, no cast time but an activation delay until the illusions hit), so there are very few enemy skills you could usefully and reliably interrupt. (Necro is particularly hard hit: warhorn daze is 0.5" cast time, staff fear is 0.75", and the only instant-cast fear is in death shroud so usually requires 2 keystrokes to get to.) Most big heals are in the 0.75"-1" cast time range which already makes them very difficult if you have even the slightest lag, so you’re mostly restricted to stomps, which do have a distinctive animation, to be fair.

I have to say, I kinda love how all those traits synergise together, and rather than see this build nerfed to the ground I would rather see other classes (and other elementalist trait lines) get similar kinds of synergy in their traits. Most classes just have boring old “reduce X-type skills cooldown by 20%” for half their major traits, which is just lazy design!

I’ve always said that the cantrip elementalist can be fixed by reducing the vigour every one of those traits gives them by 20%. It doesn’t sound like a lot but it adds up, and it’ll significantly reduce the amount at which they can spam evasive arcana.

Bhawb.7408:

Nightmare runes were fixed I believe. And you can get 2 ticks on Terror quite easily, most PvP Terror builds sit on 70% fear duration and they tick twice often enough.

Aww kitten I wasn’t aware of that!
Next time I log in I’lll check quickly with a golem and bip in the mists just to be sure

Yeah I tried somethign similar as well once, it only works in 8v8 but it’s a lot of fun in those big fights on points
Only difference is I had 20 points in Death and took Ritual of Protection too, and 10 points in curses for the blind on chill trait. Yes, my damage was next to nothing!

daydream.2938:

Na/ Eu players don’t play each other in spvp. unless you reroll to that other region.

Are you serious? I had no idea! :o Hugely dissappointed by this, all this time I thought this was a global battlefield like GW1 was!

I was under the impression that spvp/tpvp was global, and you could be teamed up against any other party from any server, whether EU or NA, just like it was back in GW1. Today, however, I noticed that the leaderboards are separate for each datacentre, and that made me question whether we’re all actually playing the same game after all!

Is pvp truly global? And, if yes, why are the leaderboards segregated?

Yes, please make it possible to search for anyone by account or character name and see their position. Or at the very least see your own rank! Not that I care, but I want to know.

In Guild Wars 1 you could search for any guild by name or tag and see their rank and rating. They even had a simple API that let people write scripts that pulled that information from their database from any website or application, so I could find out any guild’s rank by typing a command into an IRC client!

That sounds like fun! Sadly I’m on EU so not sure I can join. Can you use the guesting feature cross-continent? Or can you only guest on servers in the same datacentre?

Alternatively, I know that chat is global and you can chat and mail people on any server in the world, so maybe you can invite them to group up as well? If we’re in the same group then the group leader can talk to the tournament NPC and sign us up and we’ll all get the invite even if we’re not on the same map.

Wait a sec… I thought the Nightmare runes I gave myself were supposed to provide +20% condition duration rather than +10% like the tooltip says! Have they changed it?

I’ve definitely seen Terror tick twice, can’t confirm whether it ALWAYS does. Not really an issue though, there’s always Necromancer runes instead if I absolutely want 2" fears.

Once again, the scepter thing is a mistake, my other weapon set was staff! OP now updated to reflect the current build, I switched off-hand dagger back in so I got rid of weakening shroud and plague signet, and managed to get my lovely greater marks back!
http://goo.gl/41f7k

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

1200 is too much on the scepter.

If you are having trouble kiting, then work on timing snares and dodges better. They could fix scepter 3 to give the bonus damage that it is supposed to, but otherwise it is a fine weapon.

So is it bugged? I noticed the damage was low but I always thought that was cause of my low power and its low base damage.

Also, is the life force it’s supposed to provide a flat 2% or 2% per condition?

And on an unrelated note, I confess I spent the first 2 months of playing with my necro thinking this skill was pbaoe simply because FoC in GW1 was aoe… :p

There really is no point to burn at all in this game. It’s just equivalent to 5 stacks of bleed (roughly). It’s not like it has a secondary effect like poison. If there weren’t a 25-stack limit to bleeding then we could just call them both “degen” and there wouldn’t be a difference.

Hmm… I did have staff in there, build calculator must’ve screwed up there cause it replaced it with scepter. But yeah, I love staff and Greater Marks is absolultely priceless, but really I couldn’t drop Master of Terror, the whole point was to have a hybrid build that leverages the condition duration you get from Spite, and 2" fears are a big part of that. I’m gonna try dropping 10 points from curses (weakening shroud isn’t a must if I replace focus with off-hand dagger), although I’m gonna miss the fury from DS.

D I V A.6018:

But I agree, it is a real shame that those awesome gw1 mechanics are gone now. The biggest shame is that there are no curses any more.
DIVA

Yeah, Curses were my favourite gw1 skills too. The closest you can come to similar type of gameplay in gw2 is confusion mesmer.

Partly motivated by that 2" Fear build Nemesis made for WvW I’ve been wanting to try a hybrid build in spvp for a while. I thought all that condition duration you get from investing 30 points in Spite was going to waste, and a little bit of condition damage along with a Sigil of Earth would help add a bit of damage

Power isn’t all that high but the high crit rate and crit damage (with Fury on DS you’ll have 80% crit rate some of the time) partly makes up for it. Plus, those 2" fears are HILARIOUS! The DOTs you can apply are surprisingly high despite condition damage being under 1000, and it means that you’re still doing damage while stunned, immobilised or feared. Plus the long weakness and cripples means that you’re a lot more durable than most glass cannon necros, and you can turn and run away while still doing damage to your target. You’re not gonna stack 10 bleeds plus poison with this, but I’ve had 5 on a target at once which, combined with near-constant retaliation on you, can kill someone chasing you while you’re running away.

http://goo.gl/41f7k

If you’re wondering why Plague Signet, yes, I know it’s terrible, but I feel like this needs 2 stun breakers because it’s so fragile. Plus the smaller radius on Putrid Mark means your condition transfer is less reliable. You can use dagger instead of focus and drop it for something else, like Well of Corruption.

I’ve been eyeing Target the Weak lustfully, but I can’t figure out what to drop for it. I tried subtracting 5 from Sour Reaping but then your Fears are only 1.5", and losing Axe Training for it doesn’t sound like a good idea, I’d need to have 8 conditions on a target to make up the damage I’d lose which isn’t happening, quite apart from the 20% recharge.

Can’t say I’ve been phenomenally successful with this but I’ve only been using it since last night (changing little things around every couple matches) and won some 1v1s against people higher-ranked than me, so I reckon I’m gonna stick with it for a few more days, see if I ’m onto something. Any suggestions are welcome!

Yeah I don’t know what it is with those two skills, maybe it’s the projectile speed or something because I swear there were times I cast them and was CERTAIN that there was neither blind on me nor aegis on my target, they didn’t dodge, and it still didn’t connect!
Epidemic, however, is a lot worse off than Corrupt Boon, because it’s not just the fact that it might simply not connect that you have to worry about, but that you might be interrupted or the target becoming unavailable during its long cast time. (I can’t believe that coming from GW1 I now consider 1" cast time “long”! :P )Additionally, Epidemic targets effectively get 2 chances to dodge: they can dodge out of the aoe, but if the initial target dodges then NONE of t he secondary targets gets hit! That’s pretty bad for a utility skill, imagine if Mesmer’s Feedback bubbles failed if the guy at the centre of the aimed area got out of the way or stealthed!

Occasionally failing skills is acceptable on a quick-casting spammable autoattack skill, because what matters is your average DPS, not whether one individual attack connects, but on a utility skill, well, you use those to turn the tide of battle, to get out of scrapes or to ensure a kill. That’s why I suggested an increased recharge, because I would much rather have a utility that I KNOW will work when I need it to than one that I can pop twice every fight for a chance at increased aoe dps!

Bhawb.7408:

Frankly, there is no reason to increase the CD just to warrant decreased cast time (come on guys, you don’t bargain away CD right away, you have to hardball this).

You’re assuming that we have some kind of bargaining power!

Agree with 0.25" cast time, but not because the nerf is “unfair”, rather because 1" cast time does not allow you to transfer some of the deadliest conditions like Fear or Immobilize due to their (usually) extremely short durations. Back when it had no LOS requirements and unlimited range we could hardly complain about the cast time, but with all the nerfs it’s gotten recently I would much rather make sure it does maximum damage and has a better chance of landing when you cast it, so I’d gladly trade off increased recharge for a 0.25" cast time!

50% is still a pretty good buff but it makes non-elite sources of quickness very risky propositions (ie. Frenzy, Quickening Zephyr). I’m not sure simply upping the duration of those will make them worth carrying, I mean who wants to spend EVEN LONGER taking double damage?

I dunno, it’s a very powerful class but pretty hard to master, not great for a beginner. Thief has high mobility and is slightly easier, but I really think you should try a different build on your ranger first tbh! Yes they’re underpowered in pvp, but I still see a lot of them around – and if you want to learn the ropes in a completely new game type it’s best if you’re not also struggling with an unfamiliar class.

You seriously moaning that you didn’t get your 10 laurels this month because of finishing your monthly early? What about the next 120 laurels you’ll earn from doing your monthly over the next year? Or would you rather grind those laurels in pve?
Learn not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Bas.7406:

It’s the confusion skill on passing through trait that turns Glamour skills into walls. Kylia is the one who figured it out.

I see, that actually makes perfect sense from the wording. So it can affect an unlimited amount of targets as long as not more than 5 pass through its boundary at once. Mind you, something like Null Field will still only affect 5 foes and 5 allies max within its area for the skill’s primary effect (ie removing boons and conditions). Anyway, this has nothing to do with Epidemic so I’ll shut up

[quote=1727387;Bas.7406:

This is probably the best definition of how the talent works. Though I have heard that there are Mesmer Glamour bubbles that can slam everyone through a specific trait that turns them from bubbles (limited to five) to walls (pass through skills) which means they can now affect an entire zerg.[/quote]

Oh haven’t heard of that, I’ll bust out my mesmer and investigate! Got to find a minimum of 5 allies to pass through them though :P

Haley.2390:

Does Spectral Wall apply vulnerability more than 5 times? I know it applies Protection only 5 times and then stops giving it to any new person who passes through it.

I understand that the way these ground-effect skills work is that they can’t affect more than 5 targets AT THE SAME TIME. So if 6 friendlies walk through it together only 5 will get it. I’m pretty sure hostile and friendly target caps are separate, though I’ve been unable to test this. So yeah, in theory if you drop this in front of your zerg you could give Protection to most of them.

I’ve heard of some skills having internal overall target caps, but I don’t know if it’s true. I have a suspicion that the reason for this rumour is the mesmers’ Temporal Curtain (focus 4), which doesn’t extend your swiftness duration if you already have swiftness on you when passing through it. My guess is people passed through, saw their swiftness didn’t stack, and thought it had reached a target cap.

Epidemic is still an extremely powerful skill, but has been rendered so situation that I’m not sure it merits a place on my skill bar. In the right circumstances it can completely turn a fight around. In its ideal use scenario it can turn a 2v4 fight in your favour. Imagine for instance that you and another heavy condition user such as a mesmer or engineer are both focussing the same target and you pop Epidemic when the target has 15 bleeds, 10 confusion, poison and an immobilise on them. At this point everyone who is hit by the epidemic is dead unless they have a massive condition clear available. That’s pretty good for a 12" recharge skill!

Of course in a large group fight it’s gonna be far less powerful, but that goes the same for every aoe since the 5-target skill. Skills that target an area, by contrast (eg. guardian bubbles, swirling winds, feedback, temporal curtain, spectral wall) are much more powerful because they can affect far more than 5 targets in total. So dropping Epidemic for Wells isn’t gonna make a massive difference for you if you’re fighting in large zergs, as they will also only affect 5 targets.

The problem with Epidemic, as I see it, isn’t the target limit, or the LOS requirement, or that it can be blocked: it’s it’s cast time! I would much rather it had a 0.25" cast time and its recharge were upped to 30" than the way it is now, for the following reasons:

1. with a short cast time you can also spread fear – now you can only do it if you’ve gone for maximum fear duration and even then you’ll only get part of it.
2. in large group situations, people who are getting focussed with lots of conditions are going down too fast for a 1" cast time skill to hit them. Doubly annoying since conditions are automatically cleared when you are downed – cannot even count the number of times I popped epidemic and it spread nothing because the guy keeled over into downed state a fraction of a second before it landed
3. due to the short durations of most of most scepter conditions (but really of all the most powerful conditions in the game), spreading them with a 1" cast time is impossible if you’re the only condition source – if you want to spread an immobilise or burn you’re relying on someone else applying it while you’re casting.
4. Long cast time makes it too easy to be interrupted while using it.

In short, I see utility skills as the skills you’re supposed to pop when you need to turn a fight around. I love how spammable Epidemic is, but I think it would fulfil its role better if its recharge was nerfed and its cast time was reduced to 0.25" (or even instant), and it became unblockable again.

EDIT: Cross-posted with Rennoko, but basically this sums up my view as well:

Filing it away with corruption boon in the category or…. sometimes works… sometimes doesn’t… not worth the utility slot. (for WvW). I would have rather they hit the cooldown, than the functionality of the skill…. it was too hard a swipe in my opinion.

Empiren.6401:

dreztina.4820:

This wasn’t just for pvp players. There’s a good chance at least a handful of pve/wvw players will do pvp to get the daily done. Not all, but maybe a few from each server which will be a decent chunk combined in spvp.

PvP dailies……..not for pvp players.

I fail to see the logic here.

I think he meant it’s so much faster than the pve dailies that even pve players will do it. Seriously, in hotjoin it takes 10’.

Yeah I was also a bit bummed out that I finished it before the patch, but hey, good news for next month right?

Good change, but now that there’s only 1 kind of tournament why not reintroduce some map rotation in it? Otherwise serious players who don’t play hotjoin will only be playing 1 map for a whole week, and that’s just boring!!

For those complaining about premades steamrolling you: the hotjoin format was deliberately created with t he solo queuer in mind, so why not practice more in that?

Relax, it’s a role-playing game after all. If you want a completely level playing field then Rocket Arena 3 would be more your speed The fact is certain builds will always have a natural advantage over others, but it’s a small enough gap that it can be bridged by superior player skill.

I don’t share your fear of thieves though, I don’t really have trouble dealing with them when I’m playing a conditionmancer. Unless all my cooldowns are recharging and I have no life force, then I’m a free kill, but that would be the case against any class. Bunker elementalists are the class I can’t beat personally, they just clear those conditions off so quickly!

But otoh classes like Guardians who can normally stand up against 2 opponents will absolutely melt after one Corrupt Boon from you.

I would love to know how you would go about renting servers, if that’s been decided yet. Will it be gems, like I expect? Or will you also be able to pay for them using gold/glory/guild influence/quaggan scalps? And will you rent them by the match, or for recurring periods? Are you thinking of something like what Quake Live tried to do, where you’ll also have custom maps available just for custom arenas?

As for spectator mode, I’m hugely looking forward to it. The introductionof observer mode was what made GW1 really take off as well iirc, so big hopes for it. I posted a few ideas on how you could monetise observer mode here which I’d apppreciate if you took a look at:

1. Have a “promoted matches” list, where people would be able to pay to make their matches publicly viewable to everyone for, say, a week, even if they wouldn’t normally be able to see them. You could use that as:
a. a recruitment tool (you were an amazing machine of death in that particular match and you want to leverage it to get top guilds to recruit you, or to get top players to join your guild – they’re much more likely to see it in GW2 than on youtube with all those cat videos distracting them after all!)
b. bragging rights for your buddies (hey look, we beat Team Legacy or whatever)
c. publicity material, if, say, you’re an independent promoter sponsoring a cash prize tournament (it’s not very good for publicity if nobody sees the games after all).
2. Be able to pay a small amount of gems to make your own matches available for viewing for longer. This could have several levels, for instance you could pay a recurring monthly fee to make all your matches available for as long as you’re paying, or maybe you could pay a one-off fee to make a specific game available to you for re-viewing indefinitely. The audience for this would be fairly small of course as people normally FRAPS the matches they really want to keep, but I assume observer mode would allow you to switch between multiple perspectives so would be more useful as a training tool than a recording.
3. There’s also the possibility of sticking ads in there, though I’m not too crazy about the idea. Still, don’t think I’d mind a corporate logo in the corner of the screen, and it’s only fair if they were sponsoring a tournament.

Having read in another thread that both custom arenas and spectator mode are both coming it sounds to me that ANet are making headway in this themselves. They said custom arenas would be something you’d have to rent, though they haven’t made clear if that would be with gems, gold, glory, guild influence or anything else, and whether you’d rent them by the match, by the day, or if you’d have to take out a subscription-style monthly contract for one. But that would be an excellent way to monetise pvp, and it’s something that they would make money off even if the Mists were made f2p.

As for spectator mode, I assume that will be free, or at least I would hope so. I’m guessing you’ll be able to see the games of top-ranked teams automatically, possibly the last 1-3 games you were in (in GW1 you could see the last game your guild was in, but I assume since GW2 pvp isn’t guild-centered it’ll be on an individual basis). But there’s certainly ways I could think of to monetise this as well:
1. Have a “promoted matches” list, where people would be able to pay to make their matches publicly viewable to everyone for, say, a week, even if they wouldn’t normally be able to see them. You could use that as:
a. a recruitment tool (you were an amazing machine of death in that particular match and you want to leverage it to get top guilds to recruit you, or to get top players to join your guild – they’re much more likely to see it in GW2 than on youtube with all those cat videos distracting them after all!)
b. bragging rights for your buddies (hey look, we beat Team Legacy or whatever)
c. publicity material, if, say, you’re an independent promoter sponsoring a cash prize tournament (it’s not very good for publicity if nobody sees the games after all).

2. Be able to pay a small amount of gems to make your own matches available for viewing for longer. This could have several levels, for instance you could pay a recurring monthly fee to make all your matches available for as long as you’re paying, or maybe you could pay a one-off fee to make a specific game available to you for re-viewing indefinitely. The audience for this would be fairly small of course as people normally FRAPS the matches they really want to keep, but I assume observer mode would allow you to switch between multiple perspectives so would be more useful as a training tool than a recording.

3. There’s also the possibility of sticking ads in there, though I’m not too crazy about the idea. Still, don’t think I’d mind a corporate logo in the corner of the screen, and it’s only fair if they were sponsoring a tournament.

ensoriki.5789:

Im talking GW2 context in that in that grouping profs by armor has made distinguishing them on armor alone a poor way of figuring the prof.

Yeah I know, was just clarifying what the guy you had replied to meant, in case you had misunderstood him I do prefer being able to tell what the other guy is just by his character model though rather than having to look at their status bar though, and GW1 was a lot better at that. Play the game not the interface and so forth. There might’ve been some red bar whackamole if you were playing a monk but GW1 was otherwise pretty good at that.

mbh.8301:

And how exactly would you transition gvg into gw2? All I can see is diminishing the game mode.
(snip)

The concerns you mention are pretty valid, the 2 games are vastly different and you can’t just plug gvg into gw2 and expect it to work without adjustments. In fact you missed out the most fundamental change, which is the resurrection mechanics. Reviving from death takes a lot longer in GW2, so if someone is DP’ed out (ie. at -60% DP, so he can’t respawn automatically anymore), it would be very difficult to get them up. Some classes have skills that instantly revive people, but they only work on downed, not dead allies (as far as I’m aware). Also, getting the 2’ morale boost at the flag stand was absolutely crucial for recharging your Resurrection Signets, which were the fastest and most reliable way to get your buddies back into the fight without having to wait for a respawn, and which were 1-use only, only recharging from morale boosts. If the only point of the morale boost is the 10% HP boost, I have a feeling that teams would ignore the flagstand completely and just rush each other’s lords, at which point it’s not GvG anymore, it’s PvE.

However, these things can be solved by making adjustments to the gametype, and possibly by changing the way some skills work in pvp. For instance, you could make skills like Illusion of Life and Signet of Undeath work on dead as well as downed allies. Or you could change morale boosts to make them recharge all your skills instantly rather than give you an HP boost.

As for your other concerns, ie the lack of skill variety and scope for specialisation, yeah those are valid problems too. I too think that the game is sorely lacking in variety of viable builds, especially support builds. There’s a few people running specialised boon-generating guardians and mesmers in wvw, but not that many, and none in spvp. However, I think it would be a simple matter to boost those types of builds simply by buffing the right skills and traits. ANet didn’t set out to abolish healers, they set out to abolish the holy trinity, ie. fixed roles. So while there are no DEDICATED healers in the game, it’s possible to be someone who does a bit less damage but pumps out a lot of pbaoe team healing. So yes, with only minor rebalances it will be possible for us to have specialised roles again.

You are right though, everyone will remain a lot more of a generalist than they were in GW1. So you might have a member of your team with loads of speed boosts running flags, but if for whatever reason they’re occupied (perhaps with a dirt nap), it will be perfectly possible to send someone else to do it (they’ll probably also have at least 1 speed boost from their weapon skills!). Is this such a bad thing? This isn’t new, it’s been happening ever since GW1! When I first started playing GvG everyone was running these very carefully put-together specialised 8v8 spike builds, which had the ability to put out a kittenload of damage and drop a target in under a second, but as soon as you were a couple of people down, the spike didn’t work anymore!

At around that time Observer Mode came in, and we got to see how the REAL pros did it. Specifically, we got to see [Evil] and [WM] with their warrior-heavy builds running Healing Signet (gasp!). They had seriously diminished spiking capacity, but of course a much higher constant damage output, so they were never spiking down a target from full health. Plus, they could send off one of those warriors (who were semi-independent with their Healing Signets and speed boosts) off to do whatever, run a flag, gank the enemy base, anything they wanted they could do, because they were generalists.

My favourite e-sports match that I watched EVER actually epitomised these 2 conflicting approaches: LUM vs WM game 2 (Burning Isle). LUM basically put together a build specifically to take advantage of WM’s weaknesses: a bonder monk that basically made them invincible and WM could do nothing about because they had no enchantment removal, skills like Panic (which back then did damage when you used signets, so that punished those Healing Sig warriors) and Crippling Anguish to make sure those lethal warriors couldn’t reach them, and the net effect was that when fighting 8v8 at the flag stand LUM was rolling them. So what does WM do? They go elsewhere! They send a dude round the back to kill LUM’s NPCs, and there’s little LUM can do about it becuase they’re a well-tuned 8v8 fighting machine, and the machine broke down if one of the cogs went away to do their own thing. WM’s warriors, on the other hand, with their speed boosts and healing sigs, could go off without hurting the rest of their team as much, and in the end, that won them the match. So my point is most of the issues you’re pointing out were already issues even back in GW1.

Some very cool suggestions here, hope one of the devs takes a look at this!

felivear.1536:

All you have to do as a Dev for Anet is incorporate positive mentions, or “POS-MENS” of GE products into your program. For example you could create a game mode where one of your character purchases, and is satisfied with one of GE’s direct current drilling motors for off-shore or land-based projects.

Product integration; setting a new standard in upward revenue-stream dynamics.

Sir, you win the thread for your impeccable 30 Rock referencing! I think all other comments are superfluous, and if ANet know what’s good for them you’ll get a phone call from Mike O’Brian offering you a job as the head of their microwaves division tomorrow! :p

ensoriki.5789:

I recognize professions by animation, weapons, and when I select them.
By armor? Lol wot.
If you have 3 casters next to you, it’s not the armor telling you who is who unless you’ve already previously seen their animations/weapons and recognize them by their individual look. At a face value the armor doesn’t say much at all.

Go get a Mesmer, Ele, Necro all in same armor, same dyes, wielding staff.
Armor isn’t telling you jack squat.

In GW1 they were all recognisable by their armour though, that’s what he’s saying, because each profession had specific armour skins (even if they were wearing the same class of armour). Also they were EXTREMELY recognisable by their animations, much more so than now. Watch some gw1 vids on youtube, you’ll see what I mean, each profession’s casting animation was iconic.

Bhawb.7408:

For thieves, drop your AoE when they are in stealth, so: Axe 3, Scepter 3, Staff 2+3, Warhorn 5, Dagger 5.

Sceptre 3 isn’t aoe unfortunately. I used to think it was too because the GW1 skill is, but, sadly, no… Guess you meant 2?

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Spectators Toggle

Now THAT sounds interesting!