Guild Wars 2

LordByron.8369:

yes i do…..
because since i like roaming, it means dying before being able to heal. (for me at least)

You don’t die while you’re healing. On a worse case scenario, you get so much DPS that it will surpass the healing even under protection and extra armor provided by Earth Magic, but in that case, you would have died anyway.

Also, I repeat it here. Critical damage is going to get an huge damage nerf.

LordByron.8369:

sorrow i m talking about WWW.
And in WWW you need burst and mobility… (except for the staff buffbot builds….that i hate with passion)
Means if you are critically hit you are probably under 50% of your HP….protection won t help.

I don’t get it.
Most people run 30 water, but still, water does not provide better mobility, neither better damage compared to earth.

Also, you forget that on the next patch, a critical hit on full berserker will hit you for about 33% less damage (not sure about the numbers, though), so it won’t be a hit or die as it is now and it will be way more similiar to how PvP is right now about berserkers.

LordByron.8369:

But that would mean being a tank…

WWW, DD and tank is not something effective since the lack of mobility+range compared to other roamers.

If you take 20 in earth, you don’t become automatically a tank.
Keep in mind that Earth magic provides better damage output compared to Water Magic.

Yes, you lose sustain, but you gain more survivability and damage.

LordByron.8369:

ether renewal is slow….
20 in water is almost mandatory :/ that because cantrip reduction, and cond cleanse are still a thing..

Expecially since you desperately need lightning flash for mobility with a 40 second RTL or any profession will outrun you.

Ether Renewal is slow, true, but it is also way more effective. It gives solid healing and condition removal on a tiny cooldown, allowing you to not invest 30 points into water.

With 20 in earth, you can get Rock Solid to make sure your Ether Renewal don’t get interrupted, while also getting safe stomping and reliable damage amplifier through Stone Splinters.

I have been playing with no points in Water for a long time and it is quite effective. Right now I don’t think I can play without Rock Solid anymore.

Still, I always slot Lightning Flash.

That looks like a pretty solid build.
After the patch, you can expect a straight 6% buff to all stats while losing critical damage.
Still, I’d rather go 30 fire instead of 30 air because of the blind on burning.

To be totally honest, though, what I will probably run after the patch is 30/0/20/0/20 and see if it will works, otherwise I’d go for 0/20/30/0/20.
Water Magic is so yesterday…

@LordByron: you really understimate the condition removal of Ether Renewal.

Zutha.5091:

Conditions are still meta and with changes will become even more so for none zerg/pve builds.

Removing 30 from water will be a death sentence with conditions becoming even more popular.

Not really.
If you bring Ether Renewal, you can afford to not go 30 water and still have awesome condition removal.

Also, don’t forget that with the sigil changes, they have announced that most on crit sigils will become on hit, that means that you can use either Sigil of Purity or Generosity to futher mitigate condition pressure reliably.

Zutha.5091:

I can not break a warrior (with healing signet) with my dps currently…. Since we’re getting a damage nerf for non-condition builds, even with healing signet changes I will still not be able to break a warrior passive heal.

Healing Signet gets an 8% nerf.
Also, you are now able to go 30 fire without losing defensive capability.
All you have to do is leave the ultra tanky 30 water 30 arcane D/D ele and try something different, more offensive.

Screenshot or it never happened.

LordByron.8369:

As i said with diamond skin….
I ll say here again..
Trash trait totally forgotten in 1 month.

Nobody will get this as grandmaster trait in the worst trait tree for elementalist.

Actually, Earth Magic is an extremely good traitline, at least in PvP (where I play the most).
I already go 20 earth in most cases instead of 20 water because of Rock Solid, I think it would be no issue to go 10 futher into earth to take Stone Heart.

LordByron.8369:

kyon there are lot of tanky ele build…
We need some form of survivability that can be applied to balanced and zerk.

And “when hit” i something shouldn t even appear in elementalist traits…..
(you get protection when you have so low HP that you won t really care about protection)

There is Blinding Ashes.

Also, Stone Heart is extremely good also on balanced and zerker builds (stat-wise). You really understimate the damage mitigation of that trait.

LordByron.8369:

Frankly i believe the fire trait is extremely fun…

Unfortunately ferocity and rune change will hurt DD ele extra hard…..
The loss of a huge % of dps paired with the long cooldowns means burst becomes weaker…

Buff duration will suffer from rune nerf, while 2H weapons will get a second sigils making the gap smaller.

The issue with the fire trait also is that force elementalist to leave the water line.
That means giving up condition cleanse and forcing ele to slot cleansing fire.
But since cantrip nerf you are already short on utilities:

-armor of earth
-mistform
-arcane shield
-lightning flash (for mobility ).

Are equally needed…..
You also lose cantrip mastery….

There is no way to change ele build diversity without addressing SKILLS rather than traits.

Maybe in pvp ….but not in WWW

Well, it is true you loss crit damage, but you also gain 6% more stats out of celestial pieces, which isn’t bad at all. Keep in mind that any burst profession is hurt from the ferocity change, while celestial gear is the only one to gain a buff to other attributes to compensate.
The burst damage is being nerfed across the board, not only on elementalists. As you lose burst because of the loss of crit damage (remember that Crit Damage is less valuable compared to raw power anyway), you gain more precision, more power, more dps from condition damage (burning still deals ok damage), more toughness and more vitality.

Also, remember that another buff is the fact that on swap sigils have individual cooldown, that means that you can take both battle and energy sigils, which is another huge buff especially on elementalists.

If you leave the water traitline, you don’t necessarily have to slot cleansing fire. You can go with Ether Renewal as healing skill, which is an amazing condition removal alone.

Also, I’m under the impression that you think that 30 arcana is mandatory. You can drop 10 arcana easily and invest it elsewhere, since you have already lost the healing power from the water traitline.

I think that D/D ele will get an huge buff in the next patch, though I don’t think that you can play D/D ele as you used to play it back where it was OP months ago.

I’ll sum it up all the buffs it will get:

1. Burning Speed now evades: assuming it is 3/4 evades, it is quite a lot of damage mitigation since that skill is usually used to get into fights and to go away from them.
2. Frozen Burst get a blast finisher: that is a 3 more perma stacks of might, if you’re good enough.
3. Blinding Ashes: that trait is extremely good for D/D elementalists, since it opens extremely good defensive capabilities on an offensive traitline, which means that you can get 300 more power without worrying that much of losing a lot of defenses. D/D is also the weapon set with more burning application skills.
4. Rune of Strength: those runes got a straight buff to damage and might duration, making them a solid choice as much as boon duration runes.

True, celestial gear has been nerfed, but you get also more stats out of it now (which is always good on elementalists) and, most importantly, the crit damage has been nerfed across the board, so you won’t feel the damage loss that much.

What I think is that we won’t see the 0/10/0/30/30 D/D cantrip elementalists making a glorious return, but we’ll see more build options coming out.

You guys are forgetting something important:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flame_Barrier

This trait has been utterly useless, but now it is quite strong.
True, it has 20% proc chance, but since you already have it while going for 30 fire, it is a much appreciated addition.

About people saying that 5s cooldown is too much, I wouldn’t say so.
You can reliably apply burning every 5 seconds, while some professions (like hambow warriors) have fairly slow hitrate and a single blind can completely mess their stunchain and save your kitten .

A blind, also, can mess with the initiators of many burst professions, like the stun of Pistol Whip or the bolas of lolyolo GS warriors.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

It won’t work with Lingering Elements. It will be FoTM for a bit until people see that it really has little effect in practice. Seeing as the attunement you have to be in, is rather poorly designed on pretty much every weapon set. Whats the point of not being able to be Crit Hit, if you yourself are no threat what so ever.

“little effect in practice”
Do you realize that Stone Heart works pretty much as another, additive, layer of Protection?
The damage reduction on a profession with 40% crit chance (without counting fury and other crit chance amplifiers most burst professions have) and 50% crit damage is about 29% on average (just weight the damage possibilities with their chances and compare the results). So in a worse case scenario (against a burst profession with no fury, no guaranted crit hits, no crit chance amplifiers) you get a damage reduction similiar to protection.

Now add that to the Protection you already get from Elemental Attunement or other sources and you’ll realize that this trait is an amazing damage mitigation tool.

It doesn’t matter that you have to stay in earth for the trait to work. No elementalist has ever sit in one attunement, why you should start doing so for a single trait? You swap to earth just to get massive damage mitigation at the cost of reduced damage output, that’s it.
It is called opportunity cost, something that most people forget these days in GW2.

It will pretty much negate any enemy focus also on berserker eles since the damage reduction is just insane. I already see thieves and warriors complaining about elementalist being unkillable.

We still love you… sometimes…

Bartas.4908:

First, I do understand that you are no giving away Legendaries. After all, 5 best PvP players surely deserve this reward for their commitment, skill and time devoted. No doubtely they deserve some cool, special and precious reward for it.

Secondly, I am a bit annoyed just because all they did was to play what they enjoyed the most (PvP) and did not have to go through really stupid grind, RNG, bugs, maps, grind, gring and grind.

I guess you (ANet) plan to host such tournaments on regular basis so every devoted PvP player wil have a chance of getting a Legendary now (would be very mean of you if you didn’t) but there is a massive difference between working ones kitten of and actually enjoying the part of the game.

I got my legendary bout a 8 months ago when it was relatively “cheap and easy”. I dumped the parts of the game I enjoyed most (WvW and PvP) just because I had to do something fun in a way but (in the end) boring as hell. You have eluded the GW2 community with the promise of “Scavenger Hunt” and “Way to craft Precursors” for months and no solid proof it is coming came along the way and this is the part which really annoys me to be honest.

To sum up, top PvP players DO deserve Legendaries. They should get such reward long time ago but you ANet should not diminish the effort and devotion of PvE/WvW players at the same time. Especially WvW players who are the backbone of each server community.

You grinded your legendary completely destroying your fun, instead of just playing the game and gaining materials day after day without even noticing.
That’s your fault, not ANet’s.

Berk.8561:

It has a 1500 range if you take another trait in the same Marksmanship line, which then means you aren’t taking Spotter, Piercing Arrows (one of the only chances rangers get for AoE against clusters of opponents), or Signet of the Beastmaster (which allow signet effects to work on the Ranger as well as their pet). Right now, I’m doing without Eagle Eye (which gives the 1500 range) because I think Piercing Arrows is more useful, so I’m not getting that “insane range” unless I want to be limited to one target per hit or give up being able to get active signet benefits for my character, and that’s without adding Read the Wind to the mix.

There are a couple of videos showing that LB range is a little bit higher than what the tooltip says, even when untraited.

Still, 1200 range is still a lot and LB damage is quite high considering the range. As far I remember, no profession can reliably hit at 1200+ range dealing decent damage (only Necromancers can with staff, which alone can’t kill a thing), so having some extra reliability from range compared to other professions looks nice to me.

You guys are making an hell out of a noise just based on speculation. Just wait and see how it will play ingame, then start the complaining.

StickerHappy.8052:

^35 secs cd , random conditions. people complain about the dumbest things.

You want it to be balanced because you can’t dodge it? Shamamered.

Cmon make Gw2 a lesser skill cap even more.

Dude, please.
Now Chaos Storm is weak?

Pyroathiest.4168:

Remember that Chaos Storm is a blindingly obvious animation, and so if you’re walking around in it and not protecting your casts from potential interrupts, you’ve made several mistakes already.

That’s not true.
The casting animation alone isn’t obvious.
Once a mesmer drops the Chaos Storm on your feet, unless you dodge out of it (ie mesmer is forcing you to use a valuable dodge), you still eat two ticks of it, one if you dodge right after you realize the animation.

That said, there are situations in which you can’t always just step out of the chaos storm, like in PvP where you have to hold a node. Chaos Storm already is extremely strong and forces you to step out of a node most of the time.

Futher buffing it via that trait means that no matter what defensive cooldown you use, you are forced to avoid the chaos storm like lava, which isn’t exactly an healthy design imho. Too much put in a single skill to be considered balanced.

I’m calling it right now:
Shroudbunkers 0/0/30/30/10

Justin ODell.9517:

Come on guys, lets be more productive here. Saying we don’t care isn’t just wrong, it shuts down and discourages dialog between developers and players.

Don’t get me wrong, you can certainly express your opinions and frustrations, but just because we are heading in a direction you personally don’t agree with doesn’t mean we don’t care or that we are ignoring you.

Now lets get this thread back on track.

As Roy mentioned in another thread, all the current traits will remain unlocked in PvP, even for new players. It is only new traits that need to be unlocked, and you will not have to PvE to obtain them.

Also, this system is designed for horizontal progression. Unlocking traits, or what have you, won’t (at least shouldn’t, barring any balance issues) make you more powerful, they simply give you a wider range of builds and allow you to better tune your character to your play style. Many, many successful games ease players into options, and, in my opinion, trait unlocking isn’t any different.

I understand some of you are worried that we’re just adding stuff and ignoring existing problems. I can assure you, as I sit within earshot of the Skills and Combat team, that they are very aware of this and have no plans to ignore existing issues.

Is there at least a way to obtain those traits without spending money in PvP?
For instance, back in GW1, you were able to unlock skills with factions, whose main purpose was that.

It would be great to allow players in the new reward system to be able to unlock those traits without paying gold, which can be spent in a lot of other ways (and trait isn’t exactly the way I want to spend golds on).

It could be, for instance, by paying tournament win tokens to a vendor?

I’ll leave here my humble opinion about the matter.
Longbow has insane range.
It would be silly to give Rangers the ability to hit as reliably from 1500 range as much as 400 range. It happens with grenades too, where the longer is the range you’re firing them from, the less reliable they are.

That trait, assuming double the flying speed of arrows is the only effect of it, is an hugely effective trait that will, for sure, be a good alternative to other marksmanship traits. I remember back in GW1 how RtW helped non-recurve bow rangers to fight their arrow reliably and that was HUGE.

You are pretty much wiping away the only disadvantage of firing arrows from long range, which is far from being underwhelming or bad.
Just wait to test it ingame.

Also, it makes sense that it is a grandmaster trait, it is a build defining trait.
When you have this trait, I see the ranger taking the fights from 1000+ units away and still dealing massive amounts of damage reliably. Still, rangers have enough tools to create gaps between you and the targets, meaning that you can easily build berserker and still be safe from the fight with LB.

My personal speculation is that LB rangers will be way more popular after the feature patch hits.

I’m completely fine with the trait taken alone.

The main issue is Chaos Storm, tough. I really don’t want to have AoE lol-stupid insane lockdown in this game, I prefer something similiar to Power Block or Psychic Distraction back in GW1, that if you failed the interrupt you have to deal with drawbacks of the skill.
Power Block costed loads of energy and had an high cooldown while Psychic Distration costed a little bit less of energy, really low cooldown but disabled any other skill on the caster.

You failed the interrupts? Now deal with the drawbacks.
With Chaos Storm is something more on the line “use the skill and wait for it to interrupt for you”.

Another thing which came in my mind today and I think it will work great as a sPvP reward.

Why don’t incorporate PvP season results into the world of Tyria as a part of the “Living Story”?
I mean, the winners of a PvP season are the most skilled players and, on a lore-perspective, the most strong and feared 5 people in the continent of Tyria but, still, no NPC and no player knows anything about them.

It would be great to walk in Lion’s Ar.. err… Vigil’s Keep and hear an NPC talking about the Thief of the winning team of the last season saying:
NPC A: “Have you heard about XXX? People say that once you realize he’s around, it is too late”
NPC B: “Oh dear, I really don’t want to be his enemy then…”

Also, it would be also great to have big statues of winners’ characters in the main city along with a short caption chosen by the players.
The winners of PAX only had a wall in a narrow angle with their names on, which is kind of… meh… considering they are the best GW2 players in the world.

For instance, let’s say that XXX won the last season and he’s an Asuran Thief. The statue shows his Asuran Thief with the exact same armor he had when he won the season with a short caption shown when interacting with the statue:

XXX, Thief for Team YYY, winner of the Season X
“You should fear what you can’t see”

It really should be something that any player look at and thing “Wow, that is super cool! Those people really must be extremely good! I want to have a statue like that too!”.
Making players be aware that there is a competitive mode in GW2 and it holds glory and fame for the winners is a great way to build an e-sport fanbase and a pool of people willing to compete for the ultimate glory, at least in my opinion.

John Corpening.9847:

Do you think this is alleviated by temporary rewards? Like a travelling trophy. What if everyone in your guild got something like a finisher that lasted until the end of the next season? Another thought is if the season reward was strongly themed, for example the “map star” that was suggested could be the very specific Season 1 star and we have a different one for Season 2. Basically, what if the big forward facing, public, reward was something that you had to earn from season to season to continue to show off that your guild is the best.

This is a good idea because people will be discouraged to buy slots in a guild you don’t know how long the “map star” will stay while, on the other hand, it will encourage the guild to keep competing to hold their status and increase their prestige among the community, making dedicated PvP players extremely desiderable in guilds.

I also think that people who actively partecipated in the season should have an exclusive reward to show off added to the “map star” given guild-wide, so that people who actually worked to bring the guild to the winner spot are more recognizable compared to a guy who just grabbed the exclusive reward joining the guild after it won the season.

Iplaytokill.1674:

You mean Ele and Mesmer because iirc Necro is doing just fine.

Necro is not doing just fine.
Picking a necro is quite a big risk and the only reason to pick it is because of the pressure at the cost of constantly baby sitting him.
Considering the condi pressure he can output, the only reason any team isn’t running it is because of Thieves.

Thieves are kicking out pretty much any light armoured profession out of the meta, not only Mesmers.
So not an issue of Mesmers into specific.

John Corpening.9847:

A few of you guys have mentioned better incorporating guilds into the ladders. I’m curious what your thoughts are on how to achieve this? Would you let any member of your guild affect guild standing? If so how would you track ladder standing for the guild? Would you create one or more guild teams? If you could create teams within your guild what sort of functionality would you want or need to manage those teams? How many members would need to be present to represent? Would you allow alternates?

Do you envision any sort of guild wide reward for fielding a winning team or should only the team be rewarded? For example, if your guild has a PvP team and they come out on top of the ladder maybe they get some special reward for being the top team but the whole guild gets something for having the number one team. What could a reward like that be?

I suggest to create a some sort of “Team” system, in which you can pick a fixed formations of 5 players from a guild and assign them as “official team” as long as allowing to pick other people as back up of the team.

Of course you can create multiple teams, who still take the name of the guild with, perhaps, a number to identify that they aren’t the first team of the guild.
Let’s say that the “ArenaNet” guild has two teams, the main team will be called simply “ArenaNet” while the second team might be called “[ArenaNet] insert fancy name here”.

Only people who are in the team, either as official members or back up, can play ranked under the Team’s name.

There should be, also, a way to discourage people to jump from a team to another or guilds paying PvPers in order to bring their guild on top of the leaderboards.

Also, I prefer to avoid guild-based rewards, because it will happen what happened in GW1: people selling slots in gold-caped guilds.

John Corpening.9847:

Ah ha, you brought me to my next question xantosnightwish, when should balance patches come in relation to the season? If we had our perfect world, how often would balance patches happen and how would that affect the duration of a season? Some people have suggested fairly lengthy seasons which is at odds with more frequent balance patches. If a balance patch comes out should there be a waiting period before the season begins? If so, how long?

In my opinion, they should come regardless of the season.
If there is something it needs to be tuned, it should be addressed as soon as possible with no further waits, because the longer something broken stays in the meta, more angry people get.

I think also that it would be great to give a patch preview one week ahead in order to give teams the chance to adjust their setup properly and start the theorycrafting in advance, so the patch doesn’t hit leaving most teams unprepared.

It is better than make little changes that can be eventually be imbalanced and then hotfix it a day later than make giant patches that completely break the game and fix it months later in “big feature patches”.

DanSH.6143:

in WvW condi builds are extremely more powerful. using koi cakes, perplexity, torment sigil… the condi output becomes extremely high.

In WvW, balance is a mess anyway and the problem is not about conditions.

Cynz.9437:

No, you just have warriors with asburd burning dmg, immobs, blinds + stuns, you have condi/terrormancers with load of condis on AA, grenade spamming engis with butt load of conditions, spirit rangers with sun spirit granting burning dmg and oh the surprise guards that add to that burning dmg….

Most team comps don’t run more than 2 condition builds (one of those is more a bunker than a condi build), on top of 2 direct damage builds.

Condi warriors have never been the meta, terrormancers are slowly disappearing from meta eaten alive by PW thieves and warriors, condition engis are a rare sight, spirit ranger is the only meta build but mainly because of the suppor rather than conditions.

So no, there aren’t loads of conditions at all, unless your idea of an healthy meta is a meta with no conditions at all and white damage is the only viable form of dps.

Are we talking about pvp? Because, if so, condition meta is over from months now.

The only viable build is Fresh Air glass ele, which dies horribly to thieves (which are pretty much everywhere right now), hambow warriors, burst guardians (autokill from retaliation) and even from autoattack shortbow rangers.

They die to everything it is meta right now, horribly too I’d say.

Bunker and balanced gets even worse, since they are as squishy as the full glass ele, without having the same damage output.

Justin ODell.9517:

@Sensotix.4106

We didn’t promise anything, we shared our high level road-map plans.

This is why we don’t like sharing dates. I know you’re waiting on things, and the wait is driving me crazy too, but saying we made promises when we clearly did not does not help get the content out sooner.

If you want greater transparency, like I do, then you must accept that dates, features, and plans are not a static promise. Things can happen to shift priorities, dates, or designs, causing things to changed, be pushed back, or accelerated.

Please stop.

/personal rant

What we know, is that you guys are working on a feature build which will completely rework the PvP reward system.

We don’t know what the reward system is about, we don’t know how it will work, we don’t even have any high-level idea of it.

Then the balance.
There are glaring issues in PvP balance that shouldn’t wait the development of an huge feature patch to be put into the game.
There are useless traits, broken traitlines, worthless skills, subpar weapon sets and even a completely unviable profession.

Those issues generate anger in the community the longer they are left unresolved.
You guys have proved that you can reliably deliver contents on a bi-weekly pace, then why you can’t deliver small balance changes on a bi-weekly base?
This will for sure break less things compared to an huge balance patch with dozens of skill changes all at once.

S/P is right now the best thief spec possible, it completely outshine any other build.

It has massive cleave, high evasion uptime, stunlocks, safe to play, teleports, blind field, interrupts.

Before, when the stun did not covered the entire PW casting time, other weapon sets were valid alternatives, but right now, not so much.

I guess all the bad thieves’ QQ about PW created a new monster.

Sampo.9678:

As answered in the sticky FAQ.
Q: Will rank points remain the same?
A: Starting on 3/18, we will be awarding increased rank points in all areas of PvP.

I don’t consider that as a compensation of the removal of glory.
Rank points are an end in themselves, after they remove glory and PvP chests, you will not be able to obtain PvP crafting materials, nor PvP skins.

The true question is:
When we’ll win tPvP matches after March 18th, we will be awarded only rank points and nothing else?
No chests, no extra silver, no items… nothing?

st desnuss.5738:

he can’t play and watch :O

Fair enough.
Didn’t pay attention to the name and fell into his trap.
Well played.

Since glory has been the only form of reward in PvP since now, what will replace glory and reward chests while waiting for the feature patch?

Increased gold rewards? New items after winning matches in SoloQ/TeamQ?

KarsaiB.9475:

I agree, Misha gets carried by his team.

Have you watched the latest ESL weekly cup?
I don’t think so.

Roe.3679:

You’re right, my guildies are always talking about the real way to pvp is by taking huge attacks to show how tough you are as a pvper. I’m not sure I understand the logic behind not getting out of the way?

Getting out of the way = let the enemy cap the node.
You can step off on the node to avoid a single Whirling Axe, but not for 6 seconds to avoid two without getting a decap and getting called by your teammates for not doing your job.

This gets even worse when you aren’t in 1vs1 situations, in which a whirling axe can force 2 or more people out of a node (which is, in most cases, significantly harder), added to the fact that you already want to step out of the node because of the additional DPS you’re getting from the other guys.

Marsares.2053:

And that’s exactly the problem. You can only be successful as a Mesmer if you’re carried by the rest of an incredibly good team. Whilst Warriors, Guardians and arguably some other classes to a lesser extend actually carry their team.

I don’t think that Misha is the one who is getting carried to be honest.
I guess you haven’t played against 55HPM if you say that.

Dozer.6057:

Future doesn’t look bright for my Mesmer getting up there

Misha (Metrix) is in position 3 in the leaderboard and plays mesmer for arguably one of the best teams around.

I’d like to take some personal conclusions after one year of paying attention to balance in Guild Wars 2.

What I’ve learned is that there is no way that you can predict any outcome of a balance patch through internal testing, no matter how long a balance build is tested.

So I have two kind of proposal:

• Make public balance test server, in which people willing to help with balance play the game with provvisory balance changes giving feedback, so developers can monitor what the meta will most likely be during the test phrase, while players can easily see the development and the balance process, effectively putting down the huge wall that was built between the playerbase and developers lately and has caused a lot of bitter in the community.
• Make small, weekly, balance tweaks, don’t wait to put them all in a single big patch hitting the meta like a truck. For instance, the SoR revert and the HS nerf could have been put in the last patch. Cut down the internal testing and just see how the meta evolves after a small change. If you’re not happy with the change, just revert it with an hotfix. Fast up the development pace and avoid those giant balance patches that will eventually cause more harm than benefits.

Those are my two cents about the balance in this game. Hopefully someone agrees with me and perhaps gets the developer’s attention.

In 1 year and 6 months, which is pretty much the time it has past from the official release of Guild Wars 2, Factions and Nightfall were released.

I don’t want to be mean, but the amount of features Factions and Nightfall brought to GW1 is nowhere close to what has changed in one year in Guild Wars 2.

Guys, chill out!
Who cares about PvP when we have to take back Lion’s Arch next week?!

Trigr.6481:

You can’t be considered the best when all the “best teams” no longer play and your there by default to warm their spot while they are absent.

Countless

This doesn’t make so much sense.
I’m pretty sure that there are way better players that have yet to start playing GW2, but it doesn’t mean that because of this, the leaderboard means nothing.

Heezdedjim.8902:

For all these 0/0/30/10/30 Hambow Warrior setups, what are the standard skills, traits, and gear?

I think there isn’t really a standard trait setup for anyone.
As far I know, the must-pick traits are Merciless Hammer, Cleansing Ire, Burst Mastery and maybe Destruction of the Empowered and Signet Mastery along with Rune of Lyssa.
Most warriors run with triple stance and Rune of Lyssa.

Trigr.6481:

Your first mistake was using the leaderboards as a marker to judge anything. Just use your imagination, it’s probably more accurate.

Countless

Actually, I think it is safe to say that the best teams are on top of TeamQ the leaderboard.
Can’t say the same about SoloQ leaderboard since it is also a matter of luck.

If you mean TeamQ, then (keep in mind than some might be wrong):

1. Rom.4536 -> Warrior, mainly Axe+X and Longbow 20/0/20/0/30
2. Dave.7268 -> Ranger, spirits, 10/0/30/30/0 as far I know with Shortbow and Sword+X
3. Metrix.5867 -> Mesmer, shatter, unknown traits, GS and Staff
4. thechamp.3092 -> Thief, S/P trickery, 10/30/0/0/30
5. Sizer.2654 -> Thief, S/P trickery lately, same as Shad. Also played S/D acrobatics and D/P trickery
6. Blackjack.5621 -> Warrior, hambow, 0/0/30/10/30
7. Maylo.5892 -> Guardian, standard bunker, unknown traits, Staff and Mace+Focus
8. KarsaiB.9475 -> Warrior, Hambow (?), 0/0/30/10/30 (?)
9. ZeParrot.9364 -> Ranger, Spirits, unknown trait setup and weapon sets
10. ExpelHax.8012 -> Multi profession player
11. Fraelin.7409 -> Guardian, standard bunker
12. Super Skunk.4572 -> Warrior, unknown build
13. Levis.6137 -> Guardian, standard bunker
14. Oidmetala.8426 -> Ranger, Spirits, unknown traits and weapon sets
15. Markleon.2396 -> Thief, S/D 10/30/0/30/0
16. Suprah.5076 -> Necromancer, Conditions (?), unknown traits and weapon sets
17. MTC.9536 -> Necromancer, conditions
18. iFake.3176 -> Warrior, either Hambow or Axe+X
19. Ixl Super Ixl.7258 -> Warrior lately, mainly engineer. Hambow as a warrior.
20. Xion.3509 -> Guardian, standad bunker
21. Empathetic Fighter.2065 -> Guardian, standard bunker
22. Sensotix.4106 -> Thief lately, unknown build
23. Lescansy.6174 -> not sure
24. Puncuk.1728 -> Warrior, Hambow (?)
25. Shikuru.5926 -> Spirit ranger if I’m not wrong

If anyone knows the missing ones, I’ll edit this post.

1vs1, 2vs2 and 3vs3 ladder system
Proposal Overview
Add ranked and unranked ladder for 1vs1, 2vs2 and 3vs3 matches since they are already quite popular in custom arenas, so why not making it formal?
This will need also to add other maps for different gamemodes, since already available maps are not suited for these kind of games
Goal of Proposal
This will help players without a fixed team or just a few players to play with to compete and having fun in PvP, while also adding variety into PvP.
Proposal Functionality
Other than standard TeamQ and SoloQ with relative leagues/ladders, it would be nice to add other forms of competitive PvP in the form of casual small skirmishes, easy to pick and fast to play, which can also be a great way to introduce players to teamplay and individual mechanics to jump then on TeamQ and SoloQ.
Associated Risks
The addition of this kind of fights may require additional balance measures.