Guild Wars 2

Well I happen to play a D/D Ele and a BS thief, and my thief is def. the more OP of the 2. It’s just that (tank) D/d Ele is a good counter to GC thief. D/d Ele is countered by ranged specs like P/P, rifle warrior.

1) remove downed state
2) buff HP across the board by 30%
3) fixed.

I’d be willing to bet sPVP without downed state would be far more popular than current game type.

Despite a long history of PVP games, I don’t stPVP in this game because I loathe downed state and all of its flow-on effects. The constant disruption of combat flow and pacing brought about by downed state and needing to stand in circles to win feels totally wrong.

Besides the downed state turnoff, i’m sure a decent chunk of potential PVP players are turned off by the numerous 1-2-button instagib skills Anet seems to be so fond of.

The Primary.6371:

Downed state does not reward zerg verse zerg when aoe dps is involved. Anyone downed will die fast within the kill zone.

This is BS, you can pop 2 or 3 of stability/protection/regen and tank rez anyone in a few seconds. Downed is such a joke.

instagibs are fine for an FPS but don’t belong in an MMO. Min TTK should be at least 5secs.

Is it any wonder the PVP population is nosediving?

phfresno.1230:

I’m sorry but GW2 PvP > GW1 PvP. Combo fields and finishers completely out-classes anything GW1 did in terms of gameplay.

Combo fields and dodging were definitely good improvements but the depth and diversity of skills and builds in this game make it overall worse than GW1. Skills are way too generic and there is virtually no choice as skills/traits are so poorly balanced.

The addition of downed state and removal of the ‘energy’ resource mechanic were mindboggingly bad decisions. As the saying goes, if you dumb your game down so any idi0t can play it, only idi0ts will be left playing it.

I find Rift to have the best PVP of current MMOs. The diversity and synergy within/between classes in that game is great. Give me the responsiveness of Trion over the arrogance of Anet anyday.

nerva.7940:

4. D/d ele needs to be less good so we see staff and s/d again. Reduce tank by reducing boon (and stability) uptime.

D/d Ele is exactly where it needs to be. It’s scepter, staff and focus that needs QoL improvement to make them usable.

scepter: Something has to be done to Dragon’s Tooth to make applying its damage more reliable. Nerf the damage if needed I don’t care, just make it usable, eg: ground targeted, double the animation speed, applies cripple before falling, or applies burning in large area.

staff: FAR too pidgeonholed into support. 19/20 skills being AOE is just stupid.

focus: The worst of the 3. Won’t be used unless it has a mobility skill and/or a heal skill. Both the fire skills on it are utter crap too. Fire shield and flamewall do laughable damage (~330dmg) for 20sec and 40sec CDs.

As for improving tPVP, remove downed state. I loathe downed state so much I refuse to participate in tPVP while it exists, and I know i’m not alone.

XiL.4318:

THE TINY PVP POPULATIONS PROVE YOUR CAPS WRONG.

Balance shows up the very first moment a new player enters PvP for the very first time. The first meta starts with how difficult your chosen class is to play. And in GW2 the first thing any new to PvP player learns is that some classes are VERY VERY hard and some are HEARTSEEKERHEARTSEEKERHEARTSEEKERHEARTSEEKERHEARTSEEKERHEARTSEEKERHEARTSEEKERHEARTSEEKER

Best post in the thread. Abilities like backstab, heartseeker, mind wrack, 100 blades are OP as anything for noobs/low-skill players to the point where these players will be so turned off GW2 PVP that they will never stick around long enough to learn how to counter them.

Good balance comes from smart, timely use of many abilities, not press an IWin button and win 80% of encounters – this applies to high as well as low skill levels.

Rolyate.6753:

So, you think it’s harder for a thief to kill you straight off with no downed state, than it is for them to down you and then stomp you.

No, you’ve missed the point. The point is that if there were no downed state, that thieves (and burst skills in general) would never have been given the burst they have in the first place, because the TTK would be too short.

No it’s not the worst PVP MMO ever, certainly not. But it’s certainly not the best either. I’d rate DAOC, Rift, GW1 and WOW higher than GW2, in roughly that order.

What kills GW2 PVP is that the skill and trait system is a total disappointment. There is not nearly enough build/skill diversity. Considering this was the shining jewel in the first game it’s hard to fathom how they could have dropped the ball so badly here.

Downed state is a massive step backwards as well. Too much effort wasted on underwater, downed and environmental skills IMO.

Rolyate.6753:

Downed state is a counter to spike damage, as otherwise it would be the best play style without a doubt.

Downed state does not counter spike damage, it’s what allows spike builds to exist. There are multiple effective counters to spike damage, simply raising HP, globally reducing damage by a fixed %, nerfing specific abilities among others. If there were no downed state, it would be necessary to nerf backstab/100 blades/etc to keep them in balance.

Downed state is what permits GW’s short TTK to exist, it’s not a counter, it’s an enabler.

Kaleden.9386:

The downed state and rallying were clearly defined as features of Guild Wars 2 and add depth to the game. They should remain in the game and in WvW.

No Downed removes depth from the game because DS fundamentally limits the effectiveness of small groups to deal with zergs. In GW2, you need a zerg to counter a zerg (or siege weapons), and this fact is a fundamental flaw of the game. In DAOC, mindless zerging could be countered by a small group of well-coordinated players, and was key to the creation of the DAOC 8man group-v-group scene which thrived for almost 10 years.

In my view, WVW is already becoming stale after a few months because the current design of GW2 overly rewards mindless zerging over skilful small group play.

Downed state makes death meaningless and rewards stupid play, 2 things that you should never find in a PVP game worth a damn. GW2 already has free instant teleportation and fast map travel, downed state is completely superfluous to the core game.

It’s fine for PVE but the longer it remains in PVP, the more the game suffers.

FluffyDoe.7539:

GW2’s art won it for Anet, but the gameplay was a let-down to too many people’s expectations.

Even in the video, they only talked about how “GW2 looks like a painting in motion”, “the beautiful scenario that pushes you on to the next level”, “tree trunks with painted barks”, even “inspiring stories to go along with the scenries (as a part of the cultural art)”, but the gameplay was barely mentioned (other than where they complemented that the game can be easily picked-up for casuals).

GW2 combat gameplay has done nothing that stands out… while what they did to the art, rendering, and complementing the stories with these massively beautiful scenrios has been tremendous and deserves most of the credit for this game’s success.

I think by no means is the GW2’s gameplay “bad”. But GW2’s art just had that ‘it’ factor, and it’s also universally agreed upon by every gamers out there who’s played the game that the game’s art is something special; in contrast, the gameplay does not get the same universal nod.

Yes, this exactly (sorry Colin et al.).

Worth also mentioning that GW1 set a really high bar for gameplay (namely, the awesome depth and choice in the skill system) and GW2 hasn’t really lived up to it.

The more time that passes, I think the key failings of the combat system are:

• combat is too spammy (because of no resource system)
• too many constraints on the combo system (few self-combos, combos aren’t dramatic (read: “fun”) enough)
• severe lack of build depth/diversity, which means not enough scope for theorycrafting and experimentation. the game needs many more skills and more compelling traits and basic trait fixes/improvements/balancing.

This stuff is fine for FPS but it shouldn’t be in an MMO. Not one that professes to value skill anyway.

Ironcloud.3892:

Vertical progression =/= gear treadmill.
Adding one more tier of gear =/= gear treadmill.

Stop acting as if Anet announced that they were going to add a new tier (Of which is required to be viable in PvE and WvW), every other month.

Real problem is how you can only get these Ascended items from fractals… Luckily Anet have addressed this as an issue.

Adding a statistically superior set of gear that requires several hundred hours of repetitive gameplay in order to get is the very definition of a gear grind. Take the fanboi glasses off.

Let’s be honest here, they essentially copied the WOW talent tree system in order to cater to the WOW market, and they caved into WOW-style gear-grinding as well, albeit at a decreased level, but make no mistake, adding a grind/timesink/skinner box was a key element of the decision.

He’s right though, stPVP is not compelling. Area effect-based procs is innovative, but downed state, spammy combat, repetitive & boring maps, restrictive skill choices & very low build diversity are major detractions.

Much like downed state, underwater combat with unique underwater skills was a terrible idea, especially when you consider that they could have spent that effort creating a pool of selectable weapon skills for every weapon instead of the inflexible, narrow build choices we have now.

There’s no CD on transforming out of DS once in it, so I occasionally click myself out of DS unintentionally because it is the same key as entering DS form, which is really frustrating.

I really think that exiting DS should be the #5 skill (as with many other transformations in the game) or should map to the weapon swap keybind.

Yezhik.2071:

What??

Gw2 pvp has SO much more potential.
It’s actual skill and proper timing.

You feel much more in control, it’s more fluid, and action-oriented.

All true, but everything is so much more limited in GW2 than GW1 because of inflexible weapon skills and the WOW-style talent tree system.

Even something basic like removing the requirement to equip an elite skill in the elite slot would be a good start, but what I’d really like is for each weapon to have a pool of skills that you can choose from, not this fixed 1-2-3-4-5 stuff.

Playing GW2 I don’t feel like I have any real choice in building the way I want – everything is too constrained.

NaturalPortman.9562:

Ele does constant heavy aoe damage to everyone while being able to tank like a mother, while giving himself and the whole team boons up the kitten

Please enlighten us with this magical high DPS, high tank and high support spec… hint: it doesn’t exist. Every class can “tank like a mother” if you spec full tank on it.

You are conflating bunker D/D eles with burst D/D Eles. The only “big damage” you can get out of a typical 0/10/0/30/30 cantrip D/D is churning earth for 4K + bleeds on 5 targets with ~1800 power and that’s a stationary point-blank 3sec cast. Abilities like dagger storm crap all over it.

Ele is like every other class: good support, good DPS, high survivability – pick 2. The main reason D/D has become popular is that all the other Ele weapons have major issues (staff = terrible at single target, scepter = dragon’s tooth easily dodged, focus = no heals, no mobility).

I enjoy D/D but i’d rather be playing a ranged caster, but that isn’t currently viable if you don’t like tower- or zerg-humping (yes I only play WVW).

snizzle.6143:

Semprenaviguare.2936:

on D/D you have not only 2 aura , you have 3 aura .

4 fire + 3 earth = aura fire .

was removed on the last patch

works for me 9 times out of 10. magnetic grasp (earth 3) on the other hand, frequently freezes me in place for several seconds and i can’t use any skills, it’s pretty ridiculous.

then there is also the fact that fire aura is terribly terribly underpowered.

possante.8310:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhImmbyR4gjDAkHm4SJCFP0QRxM5A;ToAA0CnowxgjAHLOOck4MEZCB

power:1839
critic chance: 25% (is 45% because you have perma fury)
critic damage: 33%
toughness: 1485
almost 20k health

you have 3 BS, you have shocking aura every 20s, you have almost vigor up in combat, you have perma swiftness (no one can run from you) how this isnt OP?
with this build if you are good you are almost invencible and as soon you stack +250 power and change that weapon for another with sigil fire or +5%damage killing guys is easy

14.4K health
< 1500 tough

For a d/d ele this build is quite easy to kill, even with 3 cantrips due to low tough and HP. d/d is super squishy unless you build very tanky, in which case you don’t kill fast, you outlast.

Like Forty Seven Ninjas.6982:

kenshinakh.3672:

I believe elementalists have a bit more mobility/speed than a thief. At least that’s what I found when I play my elementalist or race with my friend’s elementalist.

Idk man, on my thief I’ve been able to catch up to d/d ele’s when I feel the need to chase one down. It may be they thought they were fast enough so they didn’t push it, but I haven’t really had trouble catching any class. There is definitely some ring of truth to the OP’s post.

As far as I know, D/D Ele is fastest:
- 100% swiftness uptime (20ish+ arcane)
- 1200 leap forwards every 15sec (RTL, 12sec traited with 20 air)
- 600 leap forwards ever 15sec (BS)
- 900 range teleport every 30sec (utility)

Pretty sure that beats shortbow 5/heartseeker/evade-swiftness spam with SoS and steal.

Theif has way better escape tactics though through shadowsteps and stealth, Ele only has the teleport and RTL.

I hope they do something about the 3/4 of Ele traits that either don’t work at all, partially work, or are so weak relatively speaking that they are not worth taking. It kittens me off that D/D is the only viable spec for a roaming solo Ele in WVW.

- staff needs to lose a AOE skill or 2 so it doesn’t suck in 1v1 or is stuck being support/lolAOE-from-walls.
- scepter badly needs a version of Dragon’s Tooth that delivers damage a bit more reliably
- fire/air tree needs some kind of mobility/escape/mitigation-oriented trait(s) to make speccing those lines not so very paper-thin. the tradeoff of fire/air vs earth/arcana/water is very unbalanced.
- conjures need to not lock out other attunements while they are active.
- signets cast too slowly to ever be worth choosing over cantrips.

I’ve mained a D/D Ele since BWE1, and thief is my #1 alt.

In a nuthell, I find thief is pretty well-balanced versus D/D and S/D Eles but rather OP vs staff Ele. I made the thief to better counter them on my Ele but to my surprise I found I really enjoyed playing her as well.

In regards to the topic, yes of course HS is an OP skill and every thief knows it or they aren’t being honest. Yes it’s useless vs > 50% targets but the combination of really high damage plus gap closing plus spammable makes it easily one of the strongest skills in the game.

I think the dmg multipliers should be reduced and an evade added to the leap to add a bit more of a skill element to using it. Something like 1.2x at 25-50% and 1.5x at <25% instead of current 1.5x at 25-50% and 2x at <25%.

Psikerlord.2569:

thats actually a pretty reasonable spread overall though, across the 8

Are you for real? That spread is terrible.

The most popular class is approx 3x more popular than the least.

just get rid of downstate in PVP – bam, problem solved.

As someone else suggested, you could start by normalising all the racial models or at least LODing them right down, then perhaps consider normalising armours as well.

If DAOC could manage 100v100 keep battles in 2002, then it’s not really a technical problem, it’s a design problem.

GW2 is overall the better game, but the depth & breadth of skills and builds in GW1 is way better. I find GW2’s fixed weapon skills to be quite limited and boring by comparison.

1) WVW, by far
2) non-linear gameplay
3) Art direction/style
4) comboing with area effects
5) Vistas

How about us aussies for whom the event was scheduled in the early hours after midnight? It’s not like we pay any less for the game than our NA friends, so I presume we’re entitled to the same expectations for content, right?

Actually I think the balance in GW2 is pretty poor as it’s clear they only balance for the top 25% and more-or-less disregard the bottom 75%, which I think is ultimately detrimental to the game. They did this in GW1 too, but at least there you had much more control over how you could build your character.

They could eg: decrease the damage of 100 blades by 15-25% but make it usable while moving, or decrease the upfront burst of backstab by 25% and add a bunch of stacks of bleeding with decreased CD — point being to soften the edges of some of the more obvious IWin-vs-noobs buttons while still keeping the overall power of the ability roughly the same.

A better question would be why Elementalists are more or less forced into heavy water/arcane builds to perform decently in PVP, to which the answer is approximately: terribly-balanced and buggy traits.

In 3 months, basically nothing has been fixed nor issues addressed either. Fine if they don’t want or don’t know how to balance the game properly, but there is no excuse for the legion of broken traits and abilities to still be unaddressed in quarter of a year when they continue to churn out gear grinds and gimmicky seasonal content.

Priorities. Misplaced. Badly.

xiNe.6958:

i think the reason that pvp Gameplay of DN compelling more than GW2 was simply because the weigh of “action element” of the game. It is like comparing Street-fighter and League of Legends in terms of attractiveness from the spectator’s point of view; no way to compare. Definitively more “action element” in a game will make it much more easy understandable to public, but it doesn’t matter how competitive the game are, imo.

Part of the reason why GW2 PVP feels so “slow” to me is downed state. It totally ruins the flow and pacing of combat, which IMO seriously diminishes its watchability. Then you have rallying and rezzing, which seriously diminish the excitement of actually downing someone.

That’s before we even touch on how downed state negatively impacts the actual gameplay by hugely favouring numbers over skill, making class imbalances worse, sucking up developer resources that could be getting used to fix the numerous bugs/useless traits, etc.

There’s a reason why no other PVP game has GW2 downed state-like mechanics — it’s a terrible idea. Personally I despise the way DS affects GW2 PVP so much I avoid stPVP completely, and I know I’m not the only one who does.

WVW is flourishing. There’s a pretty good small group (2v2-5v5) scene developing, at least in t1. It’s not yet DAOC but it’s a lot better than the steaming kitten that is stPVP, and even terrible design decisions like downed state/rallying and zero progression/ranks aren’t killing it.

D/d already has a 3rd aura – fire 4 + earth 3.

As for conjures, I don’t use them. Why sacrifice a utility slot just to nerf yourself from 20 skills down to 5?

1) remove downed state, or at least make channelled rez break on any damage whatsoever and remove rallying.
2) a Darkness-Falls-like PVP/PVE dungeon, with control granted to only 1 server at a time.

Why is there a downed state in PVP when so many hate it and it comes with so many well-documented downsides? (favouring numbers over skill, diluting a 10-skill game into a 4-skill game, DS class imbalances, ludicrous rallying mechanics, WVW spying, among others).

I think the extremely polarising nature of downed state to turn people off stPVP is being seriously underestimated at the hardcore-casual level.

Removing downed state in PVP zones and buffing resurrection utilities to allow for some level of “res meta” would free up resources and solve a lot of extant problems with the game at the same time. Downed state plays way too big of a factor in GW2 PVP.

wiazabi.2549:

A 2h melee weapon with aoe, since were the only class in the game without a aoe melee weapon.

Ele’s don’t have a 2h aoe melee weapon either.

the grass is always greener.

i am enjoying my thief. she’s specced for full power/precision and just destroys all PVE content I throw her at. Fragility is not an issue when you can simply stealth and teleport out of any sticky situation.

The OP is right – conjures are a waste of time for as long as they replace your 20 weapon skills with 5 mediocre ones that you can’t swap between.

D/D is the only good weapon for Ele as far as I am concerned.

Sceptre is fine vs mobs standing still, but in fluid combat situation, sceptre is just irritating. By “sceptre” I mean “dragon’s tooth”.

19 of 20 staff skills are AOE (grr…) – not the greatest in the general case.

Be aware though that D/D is the hardest to learn.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Also Jonathan Sharp gave the reason they don’t post on the forum as much.* They do read it all, and I suppose it’s nice when they come on here check every thread with a “I read this we are taking it in consideration”. Though I’m questioning the added value to that.

If they were actually going to discuss every single detail someone puts up here, then they will never fix those bugs.

• Reference

Lol designers don’t fix anything, they just make programmer’s lives hell.

They don’t post here because 1) the PR department ties their hands and 2) they barely care what you think, their design is perfect!

Yes I work in the games development industry.

Volomon.9147:

I don’t see how Nexon has such an influence in NCsoft though last I looked freaking NCsoft was like 167,000 won. Nexon bought a 14.7 percent share that doesn’t give them majority hold. It’s kind of weird because NCsoft is like worth $100+ a share. Where as Nexon is like 11 bucks a share. Shouldn’t NCsoft be buying Nexon?

Mostly it’s NCsoft, due to their stock dropping like crazy. Foreign investors are pulling out. Nexon just took a bite because their stock is dropping. Now investors want a return.

Personally I’d buy Nexon stock over NCsoft. Just buy low with Nexon and wait for Nexon to buy at least 50% of NCsoft, and you’ll be rich.

I don’t think you should be giving investment advice when you fail to understand basic stock concepts like number of issued shares and market cap.

Reaver.9256:

They have already stated that GW2 has surpassed all expectations from a selling point. Not to mention that the jan and feb updates sound great and will get even more people to play.

Yes because companies always tell the complete truth abot everything to do with their own products right?

The huge and sudden push towards grind and pay-to-win make me think that there is a huge internal row going on at Anet between the bizdevs who want to milk the playerbase for all it’s worth and the designers/programmers who just want to make a great game.

30 water is overkill if you have ether renewal on your bar… 10-15 water as a minimum, not 30

FYI Anet recently said server pop classification (full/high/medium/etc) is only due to the number of accounts registered there, no the number actively playing. So a server could be listed as “high” but still be empty.