That’s silly! Everybody should be allowed to participate in tournaments! Rookie teams and veteran teams! The obvious solution is a tier system! They have this IN LITERALLY EVERY GAME! Except Guild Warts of course! No new team wants to play in these tournaments to face WTS winning teams live in front of the massive (lol) twitch viewership! With tiers, newer teams can face other newer teams and prizes should be awarded to the top 2 teams in each tier after something like a month! There’s your incentive to PvP! There’s your incentive to compete! There’s your incentive to form teams! Alas it’s but a dream….
Wahoo! Bye frands!
Makes too much sense and that frankly sounds like a lot of work anyway.
Yeah.. I agree dps guardians could use another aegis/block. How about on weapon swap? seems fair. Shouldnt have them lose anything on bad mechanics.. right?
Needs to also cast AoE poison/burning so there’s room for more air and fire sigils
You’re insane if you think the swordsman is weak.
Maybe an extra block to help them since they’re struggling against glass classes right now?
@Blissless: Landing the interrupts isn’t the difficult part of CI, its capitalizing on them that is. A lot of people have a hard time doing significant damage with CI because its more difficult to land shatters and focus/staff phantasms are madly inaccurate unless your timing is very precise. And again, phantasms aren’t the primary damage source, so its not like you’re kiting all day.
When I’ve played this setup I still shatter as the main damage source (well, that and the 2-3k halting strike crits, lololol), relying heavily on phants just rubs me the wrong way. But I was under the impression that the latter was meant to be the way to go.
Do you really believe that? I pity you if you do… you do realize they dumbed down the combat for Pvp right?
This silly WvW canard is why you’ll never improve
The WvW raging and grudge-holding against Narcarsis (who has always played a more difficult team-oriented game) is embarrassing, and I say this as someone who has played nothing but WvW for the overwhelming majority of my time in GW2. This is coming from people who are almost allergic to playing non-crutch setups and who think that the game works as some kind of duel simulator when you aren’t mirroring or at least running meta specs. “Build wars”? The entire game (and especially your made-up version of it) is build wars, funny how you people never seem to have issues when it’s in your favour.
Your understanding of the game is frankly limited in the extreme and you are entertaining yourselves with a fantasy rulebook that’s made entirely of your own doing. It has no sanction or approval from the devs. Just grow up already.
Maybe you should learn to read before going on a nonsense rant like you just did? Grow up. Re read the entire thread then re read what you just said and you’ll see how way off the point you just were.
Just in case you are too much of a simpleton to figure it out, they mirror dueled. No build wars going on here, bud.
Anyways, addressing the “lost all the duels” yes, but really is that an accomplishment for you? Beating a valk d/d ele with P/D? I could easily switch to D/F and win, but then you could switch to D/P and just survive.
You’re playing build wars two here, nothing more, nothing less.Yes reading comprehension is so hard, honey. Then again I suppose my mind would be just as addled were I still a Wubwub hero.
The thread is titled Caed v. Kronos duels. I could care less about the last couple minutes of the video. So, learn to read again. Stay in the ballpark. No need to jettison yourself to space instead.
Quite.
On that note I actually watched some parts of the video (apologies but it does clock at almost 2 hours long). I would say Narcarsis has been far too generous in his assessment if anything. Once the other Thief stops the nonsense and more or less runs mirror his mechanics are majorly outclassed by Narcarsis’. His reactions are sluggish by comparison and he is almost always on the defense. Few plays other than those adapted from his opponent like c-bomb porting. He misses many opportunities to interrupt the HiS cast (in my opinion HiS is weaker in Thief duels).
Narcasis also makes some mistakes that I’d imagine he’s aware of, mostly due to being overeager at points (dangerous habit in glass v. glass), but his mechanics, his initiative control and his playing standard are light years ahead. No high level player who’ll watch this video will tell you otherwise. Sorry.
Quite the opposite is the case honey, mantra heals has possibly the best condition removal in the game (since the change to the triple charge trait). It demolishes PU condi handily.
@StickerHappy, there are a wide number of variations, this is the basic template : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAscWl0npMtNqxINcrRiqxYqXOZTJRqAKdJbPAA-TpQSgAA7PAWGAA
If you’re in WvW you can mix parts celestial in to your usual zerks.
No need to get defensive, I completely misunderstood what kinda build you were talking about. I love MoR+RM+MP+HM, it has very nice synergy and have used it in many builds, and always kinda miss it when not using it. (but w/o HM, MoR is pretty hard to justify)
I thought you were suggesting using RM to heal your phantasms, and keep them alive via iDef + Sigil of Illusions. Against test mobs you’re basically invulnerable 1v1, and your phantasms near unkillable, but against players it just doesn’t work.
I didn’t intend to come off as defensive :P I agree it needs HM to really shine.
The WvW raging and grudge-holding against Narcarsis (who has always played a more difficult team-oriented game) is embarrassing, and I say this as someone who has played nothing but WvW for the overwhelming majority of my time in GW2. This is coming from people who are almost allergic to playing non-crutch setups and who think that the game works as some kind of duel simulator when you aren’t mirroring or at least running meta specs. “Build wars”? The entire game (and especially your made-up version of it) is build wars, funny how you people never seem to have issues when it’s in your favour.
Your understanding of the game is frankly limited in the extreme and you are entertaining yourselves with a fantasy rulebook that’s made entirely of your own doing. It has no sanction or approval from the devs. Just grow up already.
Maybe you should learn to read before going on a nonsense rant like you just did? Grow up. Re read the entire thread then re read what you just said and you’ll see how way off the point you just were.
Just in case you are too much of a simpleton to figure it out, they mirror dueled. No build wars going on here, bud.
Anyways, addressing the “lost all the duels” yes, but really is that an accomplishment for you? Beating a valk d/d ele with P/D? I could easily switch to D/F and win, but then you could switch to D/P and just survive.
You’re playing build wars two here, nothing more, nothing less.Yes reading comprehension is so hard, honey. Then again I suppose my mind would be just as addled were I still a Wubwub hero.
You had no problem raging at fear in 2013 in game, please don’t be so coy here.
What a joke. I have no food for the troll, and besides, I was speaking to Caed, not you.
Excuse me? Are you confused with someone else? I have never been familiar with yourself nor your guild in game (let alone in 2013?) and the sole reason you stand out at all is that you dog-piled and trashed on Caed’s thread about a D/P guide which myself and many others would have rather appreciated.
Oh and by the same token, I was responding to Lettuce.2945, not yourself. You are a hopeless case at this point hon.
If you are talking strictly about ‘organized’ duels, phantasm mantra heals is probably the strongest 1 v. 1 spec in the game.
It can seem pretty ridiculous in testing on mobs, but against real players I think it would only be a matter of time before people realize how to beat this. Kill the Phants and the Mesmer is just a lame duck. Now if you don’t have the DPS or AoE to do this, you will certainly have issues, but the build is so one-dimensional it’s actually very easy to beat. You require so many utilities that you won’t have any (or much) Condie removal, so a heavy Condi build should also trash this build concept pretty hard. (The iDefender won’t help you vs. Condies, and Phants in general will get eaten up by Condies.)
Quite the opposite is the case honey, mantra heals has possibly the best condition removal in the game (since the change to the triple charge trait). It demolishes PU condi handily.
@StickerHappy, there are a wide number of variations, this is the basic template : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAscWl0npMtNqxINcrRiqxYqXOZTJRqAKdJbPAA-TpQSgAA7PAWGAA
If you’re in WvW you can mix parts celestial in to your usual zerks.
If you are talking strictly about ‘organized’ duels, phantasm mantra heals is probably the strongest 1 v. 1 spec in the game.
I think people are overrating the difficulty of playing this setup, at least the 30 Chaos one.
A lot of people actually struggle to play CI blissless, from what I’ve seen. I think theres also another level of CI, where when you interrupt someone, you punish them extremely harshly during the immbo time.
Sure muffin, but in GW2 there are no conditions tied to interrupts, you just throw them out and voila your target is immobilized and just got triple crit for total of ~6k. Tone down halting strike or just make interrupts more conditional and I would perhaps agree. Also I’m generally not a fan of phantasm heavy play. I think the decision-making is minimal.
The WvW raging and grudge-holding against Narcarsis (who has always played a more difficult team-oriented game) is embarrassing, and I say this as someone who has played nothing but WvW for the overwhelming majority of my time in GW2. This is coming from people who are almost allergic to playing non-crutch setups and who think that the game works as some kind of duel simulator when you aren’t mirroring or at least running meta specs. “Build wars”? The entire game (and especially your made-up version of it) is build wars, funny how you people never seem to have issues when it’s in your favour.
Your understanding of the game is frankly limited in the extreme and you are entertaining yourselves with a fantasy rulebook that’s made entirely of your own doing. It has no sanction or approval from the devs. Just grow up already.
Maybe you should learn to read before going on a nonsense rant like you just did? Grow up. Re read the entire thread then re read what you just said and you’ll see how way off the point you just were.
Just in case you are too much of a simpleton to figure it out, they mirror dueled. No build wars going on here, bud.
Anyways, addressing the “lost all the duels” yes, but really is that an accomplishment for you? Beating a valk d/d ele with P/D? I could easily switch to D/F and win, but then you could switch to D/P and just survive.
You’re playing build wars two here, nothing more, nothing less.
Yes reading comprehension is so hard, honey. Then again I suppose my mind would be just as addled were I still a Wubwub hero.
I think people are overrating the difficulty of playing this setup, at least the 30 Chaos one.
Not every class can spam immunes dodges or blinds for 20s. I agree that lich form is too strong right now. Compared with all the other transformation skill like tornado, rampage, tomes, etc it is op. They should reduce the direct dmg of spamming 1 and make people use more the other 4 skills. The cooldown could also be reduced it spamming 1 was not so broken.
Last I checked, every class can walk indefinitely, which is all that’s necessary to avoid Lich Form attacks.
Other options include using Line of Sight, throwing up a reflect (2-3 reflected shots will down the Necro himself), boon strip and CCing the glowing pinata… It is very much counterable. Two of the methods are even usable regardless of your build.
From the current meta how many are running reflects? Mesmer a short duration one and who else? Walk away is not a really “counter” in conquest mode. How many have boon strips? only 3 out of 8 professions.
Of course power necros overall are not op but Lich form is broken. Too much rewarding for spamming 1. Imagine if elementalists had a skill like that as elite.
Fresh air ele wrecks lich form. Earth4 reflects the lich’s projectiles, air4 destroys them in an aoe, and earth5 destroys them if they hit you. Fresh air ele may not be in the meta at the top-top level, but it’s still viable in most games where you’re going to see a power necro.
Regarding some of the other posts — the lich can autoattack even if he’s not facing you, so running behind him and/or immobilizing him will do nothing. I can go lich form, start running away from you while hitting 1, and my attacks will fly backwards through my body and hit you.
I think if you’re far enough away from the lich, you can juke the attacks by shuffling left and right. I recall the juking only working at range, although I might be wrong about this.
Also, since you brought up mesmer, the easy counter for mesmers is to just moa the lich.
Fresh ele? When was the last time you saw one? Basically almost all the ele playerbase is celestial d/d or celestial staff. He can dodge moa, the mesmer has 1 shot. The lich has 20s of spamming 1.
Fresh air isn’t rare. Maybe on EU it is, but that’s because EU is more conservative and less experimental with builds.
Are you high? Did you get EU and NA mixed up? Fresh air is incredibly common on EU, where do you people even come up with this stuff? Mars?
I’ve play on both. Fresh Air on EU is not that common and rather common on NA. Keep on with the stupid statements and questions.
I have accounts on both. You have no clue what you’re talking about. Sorry.
Not every class can spam immunes dodges or blinds for 20s. I agree that lich form is too strong right now. Compared with all the other transformation skill like tornado, rampage, tomes, etc it is op. They should reduce the direct dmg of spamming 1 and make people use more the other 4 skills. The cooldown could also be reduced it spamming 1 was not so broken.
Last I checked, every class can walk indefinitely, which is all that’s necessary to avoid Lich Form attacks.
Other options include using Line of Sight, throwing up a reflect (2-3 reflected shots will down the Necro himself), boon strip and CCing the glowing pinata… It is very much counterable. Two of the methods are even usable regardless of your build.
From the current meta how many are running reflects? Mesmer a short duration one and who else? Walk away is not a really “counter” in conquest mode. How many have boon strips? only 3 out of 8 professions.
Of course power necros overall are not op but Lich form is broken. Too much rewarding for spamming 1. Imagine if elementalists had a skill like that as elite.
Fresh air ele wrecks lich form. Earth4 reflects the lich’s projectiles, air4 destroys them in an aoe, and earth5 destroys them if they hit you. Fresh air ele may not be in the meta at the top-top level, but it’s still viable in most games where you’re going to see a power necro.
Regarding some of the other posts — the lich can autoattack even if he’s not facing you, so running behind him and/or immobilizing him will do nothing. I can go lich form, start running away from you while hitting 1, and my attacks will fly backwards through my body and hit you.
I think if you’re far enough away from the lich, you can juke the attacks by shuffling left and right. I recall the juking only working at range, although I might be wrong about this.
Also, since you brought up mesmer, the easy counter for mesmers is to just moa the lich.
Fresh ele? When was the last time you saw one? Basically almost all the ele playerbase is celestial d/d or celestial staff. He can dodge moa, the mesmer has 1 shot. The lich has 20s of spamming 1.
Fresh air isn’t rare. Maybe on EU it is, but that’s because EU is more conservative and less experimental with builds.
Are you high? Did you get EU and NA mixed up? Fresh air is incredibly common on EU, where do you people even come up with this stuff? Mars?
If they dodge steal at all the matchup goes into the mesmer’s favor, assuming they’re lucky of course.
Fixed that one slightly for you.
That being said, you are accurate in that thieves do have vulnerable windows. The key is just that a good thief minimizes those windows drastically, and so certain mesmer builds are much more effective at taking advantage of them. Shatter builds are not good at it.
Shatter is quite capable of taking advantage of said vulnerabilities. Strictly speaking 1 v. 1 isn’t the reason shatter has issues dealing with Thieves in tPvP.
The WvW raging and grudge-holding against Narcarsis (who has always played a more difficult team-oriented game) is embarrassing, and I say this as someone who has played nothing but WvW for the overwhelming majority of my time in GW2. This is coming from people who are almost allergic to playing non-crutch setups and who think that the game works as some kind of duel simulator when you aren’t mirroring or at least running meta specs. “Build wars”? The entire game (and especially your made-up version of it) is build wars, funny how you people never seem to have issues when it’s in your favour.
Your understanding of the game is frankly limited in the extreme and you are entertaining yourselves with a fantasy rulebook that’s made entirely of your own doing. It has no sanction or approval from the devs. Just grow up already.
There isn’t really any competitive scene so I don’t see what’s stopping you just playing whatever you feel like. That said, non-shatter specs have substantial team compositional or build weaknesses and the advantages that shatter brings are so strong that it’s a no brainer right now.
Not really surprised, that team has been filled with ragers even on an individual level (for instance the duel servers) so they’re probably just reinforcing one another’s worst habits. Had a particularly notorious one AFK on his bunker Guard and sound off in /map because he wasn’t happy with his solo queue team’s performance. ANet doesn’t care though.
But of course that’s GW2 in a nutshell for you. It’s a group of around 20+ or so diehards who have a blurry and open border with the dev team. They’re all the same people and pal up with one another regularly. Neither understand that much about how the game works but they’re very convinced of their echo chamber opinions. Dhuumfire was an attempt to respond to “high level” players who had zero clue on what Necromancers offered, for instance.
Blind leading the blind.
Hah, like Arenanet listens to any one group over another. I mean, a scapegoat for perceived balance problems would be nice for you, but really, PvP players incepting the Dhuumfire idea in the Developer’s dreams. That’s my daily dose of humor, lol.
Perhaps you could try brushing up on your reading comprehension, I said burning was the devs’ ill-guided response to uncreative and insular players who believed Necromancers were impossible to fit into teams. If there was no understood issue then there never would’ve been the need for a ‘solution’. But frankly your quick to kneejerk response — note that I never named Chaith.8256 in my post — says it all really.
No you didn’t name him but it’s pretty clear which players you are talking about. I don’t understand the infatuation some of the players have with assuming the only reason the abjured, dod, players etc are in some sort of brotherhood with the devs… and they that aren’t really that good. kittening play against them and then tell me they aren’t good. Or just make more excuses why you aren’t esport.
I bolded this part because you followed my response with the exact same thing that Chaith did and it’s terribly funny to me. You either don’t see or don’t care how you’re making my argument without any help on my part. I said nothing in specific and yet everyone not only knows who these people are (by name no less) but feels aggrieved enough to come rushing to defend themselves when the ink’s still drying.
In any case I see little reason to continue stating my case since so many of these people are delusional and inured to criticism. They complain about being powerless while they affect the only major balance changes the game ever sees (the latest patch could’ve been a wishlist coming from any one of them — how terribly convenient that might was the problem all along). They portray themselves as opposite the devs even though one of the only known PvP staffers pals around on TS and apparently spends most his working day schmoozing. The names change but the modus operandi stays the same. I could’ve said the same thing about the devs’ unhealthy obsession with Team Paradigm back in the day. I don’t know if ANet just wasn’t confident in their product (possible) and felt the need to seek approval but this issue has been with us from well back before the beta even.
By the way this game itself is not e-sport and with the self-serving attitudes and unwillingness to change on the part of the devs (as well as the diehards and co.) I doubt it’ll be changing any time soon. At this point in time the original GW had been through something like half a million US dollars in competitive prize pools and two world championships with proper LAN matches, and this was a game that was much more complex than its sequel with no Youtube or Twitch or modern advertising amenities to support it. Evidence of something gone terribly wrong speaks for itself.
You are delusional. You need to try and understand why the devs would balance the game from the top. Otherwise their esports goal is kittened. If you don’t want this game to ever become esports well then… that’s what YOU want.
the reason we all know who you are talking about Is because there are multiple people on these forums with some ridiculous vendetta against them. I guess some people are just peanut butter and jealousssss
And honestly I’m a little jelly as well but I have accepted I don’t have the time and probably the skill to compete on that level.
Oh goodness, please don’t project your complete lack of a spine and your grudge-chasing onto me, honey. Based on what I’ve seen so far that’s been the entirety of your responses in this thread. You certainly haven’t bothered to address any of the issues I’ve raised. Perhaps you’re out of your depth.
Zerk Mes has always been able to murder Eles. Med Guards are a little more difficult but doable. Your setup is very non-traditional so it’s hard to give you much feedback. I haven’t noticed anything different to usual though.
To clarify, what I mean by predictable is strictly the stealth use. Feathers are 3 seconds, #5 → #2 is 3 seconds per use, sometimes 4 if they’re playing the 15 SA setup. The spanner in the works is Shadow Refuge (which I will grant is truly unpredictable). There’s little you can do vs a Shadow Refuge reset other than just make distance or chain defensive cooldowns. They could bow immobilize right away, camp stealth for a good twenty seconds, you can try to predict but it’s really a total lottery of the type Hans was describing. So in this specific instance I do agree it’s just random.
I enjoy 2 v. 2s but the team has been struggling to balance the one sole game mode for two years, let alone a non-conquest map. That said I agree with VeeWee that they should just throw it in anyway. Couldn’t hurt.
By the way I also agree that the counter spells for Mesmer weapons need much faster animations. Scepter #2 and Sword #4 are so telegraphed it’s obscene. Might as well have a clone pop out a wedding cake.
It needs to have the condition on auto removed as this was a very stupid change that’ll fast lead to an arms race just kitten many other changes have done before. Actually very defensive bunker/1v1 Mesmers were possible to handle with meta setups given careful and smart play — scepter represented “downtime” where you could press the offense against the Mesmer. Now it is basically just heavy pressure all the time and you get more autopilot build wars type play to compensate as a result. Fantastic!
But of course that’s GW2 in a nutshell for you. It’s a group of around 20+ or so diehards who have a blurry and open border with the dev team. They’re all the same people and pal up with one another regularly. Neither understand that much about how the game works but they’re very convinced of their echo chamber opinions. Dhuumfire was an attempt to respond to “high level” players who had zero clue on what Necromancers offered, for instance.
Blind leading the blind.
Hah, like Arenanet listens to any one group over another. I mean, a scapegoat for perceived balance problems would be nice for you, but really, PvP players incepting the Dhuumfire idea in the Developer’s dreams. That’s my daily dose of humor, lol.
Perhaps you could try brushing up on your reading comprehension, I said burning was the devs’ ill-guided response to uncreative and insular players who believed Necromancers were impossible to fit into teams. If there was no understood issue then there never would’ve been the need for a ‘solution’. But frankly your quick to kneejerk response — note that I never named Chaith.8256 in my post — says it all really.
No you didn’t name him but it’s pretty clear which players you are talking about. I don’t understand the infatuation some of the players have with assuming the only reason the abjured, dod, players etc are in some sort of brotherhood with the devs… and they that aren’t really that good. kittening play against them and then tell me they aren’t good. Or just make more excuses why you aren’t esport.
I bolded this part because you followed my response with the exact same thing that Chaith did and it’s terribly funny to me. You either don’t see or don’t care how you’re making my argument without any help on my part. I said nothing in specific and yet everyone not only knows who these people are (by name no less) but feels aggrieved enough to come rushing to defend themselves when the ink’s still drying.
In any case I see little reason to continue stating my case since so many of these people are delusional and inured to criticism. They complain about being powerless while they affect the only major balance changes the game ever sees (the latest patch could’ve been a wishlist coming from any one of them — how terribly convenient that might was the problem all along). They portray themselves as opposite the devs even though one of the only known PvP staffers pals around on TS and apparently spends most his working day schmoozing. The names change but the modus operandi stays the same. I could’ve said the same thing about the devs’ unhealthy obsession with Team Paradigm back in the day. I don’t know if ANet just wasn’t confident in their product (possible) and felt the need to seek approval but this issue has been with us from well back before the beta even.
By the way this game itself is not e-sport and with the self-serving attitudes and unwillingness to change on the part of the devs (as well as the diehards and co.) I doubt it’ll be changing any time soon. At this point in time the original GW had been through something like half a million US dollars in competitive prize pools and two world championships with proper LAN matches, and this was a game that was much more complex than its sequel with no Youtube or Twitch or modern advertising amenities to support it. Evidence of something gone terribly wrong speaks for itself.
But of course that’s GW2 in a nutshell for you. It’s a group of around 20+ or so diehards who have a blurry and open border with the dev team. They’re all the same people and pal up with one another regularly. Neither understand that much about how the game works but they’re very convinced of their echo chamber opinions. Dhuumfire was an attempt to respond to “high level” players who had zero clue on what Necromancers offered, for instance.
Blind leading the blind.
Hah, like Arenanet listens to any one group over another. I mean, a scapegoat for perceived balance problems would be nice for you, but really, PvP players incepting the Dhuumfire idea in the Developer’s dreams. That’s my daily dose of humor, lol.
Perhaps you could try brushing up on your reading comprehension, I said burning was the devs’ ill-guided response to uncreative and insular players who believed Necromancers were impossible to fit into teams. If there was no understood issue then there never would’ve been the need for a ‘solution’. But frankly your quick to kneejerk response — note that I never named Chaith.8256 in my post — says it all really.
Instead of nerfing celestial cancer balance team prefer to nerf core game mechanic.
#le_esports_face
Right, exactly. Funny how there was no issue with Might stacking until they dumped this amulet straight into the game.
But of course that’s GW2 in a nutshell for you. It’s a group of around 20+ or so diehards who have a blurry and open border with the dev team. They’re all the same people and pal up with one another regularly. Neither understand that much about how the game works but they’re very convinced of their echo chamber opinions. Dhuumfire was an attempt to respond to “high level” players who had zero clue on what Necromancers offered, for instance.
Blind leading the blind.
Soldier on haaaaaaaaaaamboooooooooooow is for sissies. Zerk’s or burst.
I don’t fully agree with Hans that the issue with Thieves comes down to a guessing game. Actually I find Thief stealth predictable with the (admittely major) exception of Shadow Refuge. Also I think D/P Trickery (which tends to be the stealth-heaviest of the popular tourney specs) is the best that shatter Mes can hope for in terms of Thief matchups. With something like staff + s/s I have a 3:1 favorable ratio vs D/P. Of course the issue here is that sword is unreliable and terrible for mid fights and dropping greatsword hurts your team value. But that is essentially the issue with shatter full stop — it is possibly the most restrictive spec in the game.
As far as Thieves go I think it lies more in things like shortbow abuse, the stability from plasma, fire/air (in fairness I think this is overbearing on Mesmer too), heal denial and just gamey things like LoS and pathing tactics that make it very rough for meta Mesmer. The no-restrictions ports mean that even when you can take a Thief with cooldowns there’s nothing to stop you just getting backstabbed in the middle of a team fight or the like. Sword is the best defense against this type of play but then you are much less desirable for teams. So it’s a bit of a catch-22.
My opinion though is a little difficult to explain. I think the game on the whole is actually somewhat balanced — but I also think it’s balanced in an unhealthy way. For example double ranged can burn down bruiser specs very easily and offer excellent conquest potential, but it gets hard countered by Thieves (particularly S/x where you can’t just point blank shatter). However if Thieves were a non-factor I think double ranged would honestly be much too strong. I have no real issue with Engineers whether or not they crate on double ranged, for example, and they’re supposed to rule the sidepoints game (the only real hiccup is slick shoes). So the class is viable in a sense but not in a good or a sustaining way.
I feel as though the game was better balanced in the past, when there were other counters to ledgers than just Thieves abusing excessive amounts of ports and gamey LoSing (for example, our very own unnerfed Focus, which was great for warding off HGH Engineers). Right now the game can be said to be in a sort of equilibrium but the only real counter to a Thief training your Mesmer is to bring another Thief. It’s very silly and it’s what’s hurting our class and its popularity on teams.
The Ether Feast change would be phenomenally broken.
- Remove Nightmare runes from game
- Buff indicators for passive procs (Ranger CC immunity, Engineer auto potion, Warrior auto invuln etc)
- Remove Immobilize stacking (stupid mechanic)
- Place shared cooldowns on Air and Fire sigils — Mesmer damage output is borderline broken right now
- Reduce Halting Strike damage
- Disable stow cancelling or rework affected skills so that stowing doesn’t result in a substantial damage increase
- Revamp/do something about Incendiary Powder
- Remove internal cooldown on Chaos Armor
- Remove torment from Mesmer scepter autoattack (this change destroyed one of the only options for counterplay vs this type of spec)
- Initiative and life force indicators
- Reduce damage on Thief shortbow attacks or reconsider the bounce effect
- Cut down massively on the PBAoE effect of many skills in the game and clean up hitboxes properly (Elementalists and Warriors are particularly grievous offenders)
Feel free to add your own, muffins.
Hambow never dies
There’s never a reason to not go haaaaaaammboooooooooooooooooooooow.
Shoutbow sucks.
I started playing the game again recently and apparently the entire solo queue system has been removed. As someone who has little interest in a mixed queue (and I believe many others feel likewise) this is a bit of a bummer for me.
Has there been any stated reason for this? I don’t really understand ArenaNet’s obsession with gutting out game content, but perhaps there was at least a qualification in this case?
Hi Zoose, this is a very good thread, however it will fall on deaf ears (in my opinion).
Hans and Caed are both spot on w/r/t Mesmer and sword. Way back in the day staff + sword/focus (unnerfed focus) had a favorable matchup against Thieves. Nowadays you have about fifty/fifty odds against D/P. However the issues with sword are that you lose either on-point pressure (especially mid) or mobility and it has been nerfed a lot to a shadow of what it once was. The matchups also assume you mean like “I’m standing at home and I see him coming towards me”, you are still very vulnerable to collision-ignoring teleports and being burned down in 2 v. 2s, etc. And there are sets like S/P that there’s very little you can really do anything about.
I think the issues with Mesmer are less that Mesmer is too weak and more to do with Thief but it’s almost impossible to change Thief without other classes and things like ledge-camping becoming overbearing so I dunno. GW2’s knot can’t be untangled I guess. Maybe it has to do with the lack of dedicated healers.
For people who enjoy what the game’s all about I think it wouldn’t take much to put it in a great spot. The style of conquest, rotations, etc. just isn’t my thing so I suppose I’d never be happy no matter what the team did. Other game modes would be nice though.
I don’t think the OP is in danger of D/D Thieves since that weapon set sucks.
Energy has been a problem since the start of the game but changing it apropos of anything else would make some classes simply non-viable. There’s just too much damage in the game to go without.
Upvoted for the S-tier concept art.
I dunno but I love Temple and I could be set quite happy in a queue with just that map alone really.
Thief wouldn’t be viable without trickery. It has been designed for 1v1 so its normal to not have counter play. I agree about passive engi and necro though . IP , nightmare and repear all need a nerf.
Medi guard is an OK 1v1 spec but has mediocre mobility so its not a big deal. I’d say only engi and ele are OP atm just because of celestial .
Thief has been viable since launch and back then no one went past 15 in Trickery, the standard was 25/30/0/0/15 (this was still common for a long time after the class line changes). When Mug was nerfed ANet buffed a lot of other traits to compensate, naturally being ANet they went way too far with Trickery XII so we’ve been stuck with it until the next flavor of the month (Panic Strike) rolled around.
Steal in general has been revamped and buffed to the point where it suffers from serious bloat once traited, it’s not uncommon (even on DA/non-Trickery) for steal to do ten different things. Now this means that landing steal is critically important for said specs, but steal is 100% instant cast with zero warning… yes, the class mechanic can end up being countered by completely random dodges or evades. How in the world anyone thinks this is healthy or intelligent gameplay is beyond me. It is pure feast or famine based on the worst kind of randomness.
Personally I don’t think any of the classes are really balanced, they all have too many frustrating or silly aspects to them when abused properly.
In lots of cases engi and else fill the same roles but ele meta builds have access to stab, more boons, condi removal, multiple stun breaks, and better mobility.
Engi meta builds mostly have one stun break and very limited condi removal they are so easy to pin down in team fights. Honestly it requires a lot more effort staying alive as an engi vs other profs.
Yes, running around with permanent swiftness (and until recently permanent vigor), two blocks on sub-30 second cooldowns that don’t cause a root and armor, healing and passives out the wazoo is very difficult compared to us peons playing faceroll classes. 3-kit Engineer really is the “endgame class”, it’s just so micro-heavy and high risk, much wow.
Wow perma swiftness is op now?
And jes engi is the endgame class or do you disagree? Honestly?
Its by far the most challenging class in gw2 period. And no matter what you build, you will always have really huge disadvantages unlike some other classes.
Ladies and gentlemen, your typical Engineer player right here. Bask in awe.
Thief spotted
Yep, it sucks for you that those things counter you hard when you 1v1 an Engineer who’s in a defensive position.
Engineer is a great profession, but it dies in about ~5 seconds to a Thief/Necro, Mesmer/Thief, or Necro/Engi coordinated burst.
Yes because clearly there’s any class that’ll stand up to a coordinated burst from competent players? Rolleyes doesn’t do this little gem justice, goodness.
It’s funny because I remember a good friend of mine making this thread (specifically about IP) and he got shouted down by the spamgineer e-sports crowd.
Burning in general is a huge design issue, it’s always been an overwhelming make-or-break presence (just look at what giving Nec burning did to the class).
I get the feeling it was originally intended to force an end to engagements, but it’s not like GW2 has the lengthiest TTK around and it’s just one of the worst ways to go about it anyway, my opponent should be respawning because they were outclassed not because they brought a box of napalm to a game of rock paper scissors.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been called a dirty Pee Yew/stealth spammer/condi Mes (I play a fairly standard zerk shatter). It’s just like background noise to me at this point, why bother getting worked up over it.
honestly who cares what a ‘competitive’ team drafts? emulating other playstyles and strats will only take you so far. also this is GW2 we are talking about the pvp will forever be kitten and this game has no competitive scene worth mentioning like dota (which is a free game/mod being balanced by 1 person).
/flameshield on
I don’t disagree with you at all muffin (long time no see BTW), I’m just saying that realistically the odds of a Thief vs DPS Guard aren’t that high unless you’re like fighting over treb on Kyhlo or something.
In lots of cases engi and else fill the same roles but ele meta builds have access to stab, more boons, condi removal, multiple stun breaks, and better mobility.
Engi meta builds mostly have one stun break and very limited condi removal they are so easy to pin down in team fights. Honestly it requires a lot more effort staying alive as an engi vs other profs.
Yes, running around with permanent swiftness (and until recently permanent vigor), two blocks on sub-30 second cooldowns that don’t cause a root and armor, healing and passives out the wazoo is very difficult compared to us peons playing faceroll classes. 3-kit Engineer really is the “endgame class”, it’s just so micro-heavy and high risk, much wow.
The devs don’t care about hard counters and in some cases they actively promote them as a healthy game feature.
That said the odds of a Thief ever needing to engage a DPS Guard are fairly low. There is a reason they’re rarely played on competitive teams.