Guild Wars 2

Roe.3679:

WA is stupid OP against baddies who can’t kite. I do find it funny that warriors are complaining about it though, since its one of a few things that may actually require more than facerolling to deal with.

There are situations in which you can’t kite.
For instance, in actual PvP.

What type of structure would you find interesting for leagues and ladders?
At least 5 tiers of leagues to help differentiate players according to skill level, one for team and one for solo.
Leagues should also be profession bound, since if you are in an higher ELO, players may feel discouraged to learn another professions because that might risk their ELO.
So, for instance, if you are playing mainly Elementalist and are on an hypothetical Gold tier, then you can jump on your Ranger and play ranked freely without loosing ranking on your Elementalist. The overall account position is determined by the character/profession with the highest ELO.
This is extremely important because professions in GW2 are extremely different and I don’t think it is a good idea to discourage PvP players to experiment with other professions.
I’d also like to see automated tournaments with gem rewards restricted to a specific league, in order to keep the competition fresh. I’d also like to make those tournaments watchable ingame in order to give players willing to learn some material to pick from (perhaps a tab on the PvP panel with “Live Games” similiar to DotA?)

How long should a season last?
2 months max or even less.

What would motivate you to play in one?
Exclusive rewards and sane competition.
That means that the position in the league system should be extremely visible to other players (like the star for map completation) so it is something you are proud of going around with and showing. With sane competitions I mean a system similiar to DotA to prevent early quitting. For instance, if a player quits the game and don’t enter back in a fixed amount of time, then the team with one player less does not lose rankings, while the player who left does.

What types of rewards would you like to see?
Exclusive titles, exclusive finishers, exclusive armor/weapon skins and exclusive items (like Zaishen Keys back in GW1) which can be also monetized.
This will motivate PvE players to jump in PvP to grab those rewards, otherwise mainly PvE players will never be encouraged to jump in PvP to get the same rewards there are in PvE, but much harder to obtain.
A PvE player should feel that by playing ranked PvP and getting better he’s not losing gold/rewards compared to daily farming.

How would a player earn these rewards?
By playing in the leagues and winning (not partecipate, otherwise we’ll see so many AFKers just for rewards). The rewards gets better the higher you are in the league system, so people are encouraged to get better instead of park into the lower ELO and grabbing all the rewards.

How would you encourage players of all skill levels to participate?
Rewards, rewards, rewards.
PvE players show their maximum accomplishment by going around with their super cool legendary. PvP players should show their maximum accomplishment (ie competing in max tier or winning an automated tournament/season) by going around with comparable super-cool stuffs. Also, hardcore PvP players should have an extremely high gold income comparable to the most hardcore PvE players, in order to put them on par in terms of rewards and to make PvP and PvE equally profitable.
It is important, also that players of any skill level are rewarded (so this does not discourage people and eventually quit PvP) but also that reward gets better the better you get, so people are also encouraged to practice. For instance, gold reward and “zaishen key”-like rewards should be available to everyone by winning games, but exclusive super-cool skins, titles and finishers should get better the better you or your team gets.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Again, the stolen skill is not better, mostly because 80% of the thieves in WvW are glass cannon. That means WA is at the full power it would have (or maybe less) than a full glass cannon warrior’s WA. Unless you have a comparison of a full GC warrior’s WA and then a full GC thief’s WA, all you’re proving is that you got killed by a glass cannon thief.

This is incorrect.
Whirling Axe in PvE/WvW suffers from 33% reduced damages (ie deals 50% more damage in PvP compared to PvE), while stolen WA was unchanged.
That does not mean that I think that stolen skills shouldn’t be stronger than the original.

kylwilson.9137:

The thing you’re just not seeing, is that Whirling Axe isn’t being used way you describe “in the hands of good players”, because ‘good players’ know that it’s soooooooooooo easily counter-able and it’d put them in an even worse spot to use Whirling Axe in such a way.

When rather than spin around like they’re on the set of Flashdance for a few seconds, they could have finished you off and had a point half captured (sPVP mindframe here), or just waited until you pulled out Longbow or something, you know?

There are better things “good players” will do in that situation, because the situation you’re describing with Whirling Axe isn’t great enough or valid enough to abuse.

Good lord you’re comparing Spirit Rangers to Whirling Axe. I just don’t know what to say now. All of this fuss is just silly.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, but pretty much any thief in the top half of the leaderboard lays down Black Powder before going into WA and there isn’t so much to do in that situation.

In that way, they force you offpoint if you don’t have your cooldowns up or take kittenloads of damage. In the worse case scenario, they just have 3s free pass against any form of damage (both melee because of black powder and ranged because of reflections). On a 21s cooldown.

Zuik.7158:

You seem to have misunderstood somewhere within your hatred for the guardian class. These notes were comparably good balance changes, not changes that will magically make the game balanced.

P.S. It’s hard to take you seriously.

It’s not that I hate the guardian class, it is probably that you have no clue of the actual state of the game.

Guardian is already a must have in any competitive team, outshining any other support build in the game by far and you consider a futher buff to their support capability “closest step towards balancing”?

Giving also spirit weapon damage immunity bringing another unkillable AI build into play is a good balance choice?

I mean, who is really hard to take seriously is you.

Writetyper.1985:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Masquerade_armor

“This armor has a unique appearance that isn’t available in PvE”

I would be interested to know where these karma merchants are, as would a lot of other poeple.

Sorry, mixed up that armor set with Tactical armor.

Writetyper.1985:

You are wrong. It’s not possible to build the tribal set in PvE. Trust me, I play all modes.

It is sold by karma merchants is Orr or in high-level zones.
Not sure which one, but I’m pretty sure they are sold there.

kylwilson.9137:

Quite literally everyone else in this thread is looking at things objectively and everyone else in this thread and presenting solutions to this problem that only you are facing.

What might help is if you jump on a thief and try to take advantage of whirling axe in the way that you suggest and then come back and post the results. I can guarantee that you will find that it’s simply not as easy as you state it to be.

I really loathe having to resort to the L2P argument but it stands awfully true, you just need more practice. The sooner you realise this, the better you’ll be as a warrior.

I have played thief and I know how it plays.
Black Powder+WA is extremely cheap against warriors.

What you guys are failing to understand is that if someone complains in the forum about a skill or a combo, doesn’t necessarily means that he has trouble dealing with it or that he should learn to play.

The L2P argument has been the justification to pretty much anything OP GW2 has seen.
Hambow warrior? L2P dude, just dodge earthshaker!
CnD+Backstab instagib thief? L2P man, he’s glass just dodge the backstab and kill the thief!
S/D flanking strike evade spam thief? L2P, thief is glassy!
Condi burst fearmancer? L2P and use stunbreakers!
Spirit ranger? L2P and kill the spirits!

Any of those builds had a some sort of counterplay before getting nerfed and of course they were easy to counter against bads, but as much as the level of competition rise, when something OP is in the hands of good players, the situation gets worse and worse.

When everything is OP, there are two kind of people in the forums. The ones who point it out and the ones who completely ignore the imbalance and calling L2P to other people, while still abusing the flawed combo/build/mechanic.

godz raiden.2631:

I play Engineer, Mesmer, guardian, and warrior as well, I simply main thief. I’m not angry either, but you sure seem to be. Too many people start disagreeing with you and you start calling them children. Classy. It’s all good, I no longer have any interest in trying to help you believe that there are ways around getting face rolled by a not so awesome stolen skill from a thief. Have fun losing to thieves because you refuse to better yourself.

Oh well, you’re not angry but still you used quite a sarcastic and hateful tone against me in the last post.
I was calling you kid because you started your argument with “L2P” (an assumption about your interlocutor), which is a behavior typical of a not grown man.

If you felt insulted because I’ve called you kid, probably you shouldn’t have said L2P to me, nor calling me bad.

Those sets are available in PvE as far I know.
They are crafted if I’m not wrong.

CMstorm.8679:

i’ve only found a picture of something that looks convincing enough to be a dragon finisher, but it could be fake… https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/125424/dragonfinisher2.jpg
looks convincing tbh…but meh

It is fake.
Someone in the forum posted the original picture of the dragon.

godz raiden.2631:

Then make a new thread about how Black Powder needs changes instead of posting here. If it’s not this stolen ability that’s “OP” then you shouldn’t be talking about it, you should be talking exclusively about how Black Powder is too strong as a combo field (in your opinion).

Ignoring your sad rant, what I’ve pointed out to be broken is just the combo of Black Powder+WA, not both skills taken alone.

Stop getting mad each time you see someone talking bad about your beloved profession and start to play more than one profession and not being emotionally tied to a single one like a kid.

Zuik.7158:

Those patch notes were the closest step towards balancing that I’ve seen. -.-

Too good to be true.

WHAT?! Spirit weapon immune to damage “closest step towards balancing”? Futher buffs to already crazy OP bunker guardians?

lawl

Esper.3721:

Use Berserker Stance or just walk away from the thief until it’s over. You shouldn’t be fighting in his blackpowder anyway, WA or not.

If a thief is smart enough to wait for your Berserker Stance to wear off, you can be smart enough to just walk away until WA/blackpowder is over, don’t you think?

In both cases, your suggestions are bad choices.

In most team comps, thieves is not meant to defend a node while warrior is.
That means that if you leave the node, you’re failing your job.
On the other hand, thieves usually push for far point or perhaps join already started fights and never, ever, defend a node, unless if there is no other one available to do so and then rotate when someone is available to defend it.

That means that while thieves can freely disengage the fight and wait berserker stance to wear off, you can’t afford to leave the node and let the thief get a decap.

Not to say that while berserker stance is on a 60s cooldown, Black Powder takes just 6s to regenerate the initiative used, while trickery thieves can use WA every 21s, or even less if they have it already stolen.

Black Powder alone isn’t an issue since someone can just range the thief with LB, but when the projectile reflect and AoE damage kicks in, there isn’t much to do. Either you leave the node and let thief cap it or you die.

Esper.3721:

That skill is not an issue, if enemies know how to play.

Again, when you’ll stop making wild assumptions about other people, then I’ll take you seriously.

Coloxeus.3480:

if a thief used this stolen skill (whirling axe) that means hes vulnerable to any attacks while channeling this s kill so hows that too OP?

It is because it can be used in combo with Black Powder, which completely invalidates the vulnerability to close range attacks.
That skill is not an issue on x/D sets.

RyuDragnier.9476:

So it’ll reflect an AoE put in front of him outside of hte reflection range?

Unless you have T2+ Combustive Shot ready and the thief is standing still with whirling axe, both the skills are reflected.

The reflecting range isn’t that small.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

WOW, are you serious? It does NOT reflect Arcing arrow, or Combustive Shot when aimed at their feet. The projectiles it can reflect on longbow are Pindown, the auto attack, and Smoldering Arrow.

If you want to be really technical about it, don’t even have a longbow out when whirling axe is being used, and switch to hammer, (or mace/shied) and interrupt. in an earlier post you said there is no counter and you don’t even know how to use your cooldowns properly.

It reflects both projectile, just jump on HotM and check it out before calling bullkitten to what someone else says. The only case it doesn’t reflect those projectiles is if you manage to get the arcing arrow to land in the right spot not to be reflected (which means that the thief is standing still with WA) or you have a T2+ combustive shot.

Also, I’ve already pointed out why switching to Mace/Shield or hammer is an horrible idea, but apparently you really have no clue about it, still it doesn’t prevent you to be utterly arrogant and presumptuous.

godz raiden.2631:

No it won’t, sorrow must just be aiming directly at thieves using whirling axe with his aoes. Another L2P issue, nothing wrong with the skills.

I love forum randoms calling L2P to strangers.

Galsia.4102:

I honestly doubt 100% up-time on Berserker Stance would even be enough to carry you.

More childish personal attacks, please. This is exactly what this forum needs.

I actually believe ANet.
Last time leaked patchnotes turned out they were real, no ANet employed made an official statement about them.

It is a good thing, to be honest. Those patchnotes were an huge mess in terms of balance.
I mean, why would ANet buff bunker guardian which is already the most prevalent build in any team comp? Why would ANet nerf Bull’s Charge? Why would ANet nerf Shadow Strike?

There are a lot of things in those patchnotes that made me wish they were fake.

Still hoping for new weapon sets for existing professions.

RyuDragnier.9476:

This entire talk of Whirling Axe being OP is just facepalm inducing. If the thief is doing this, he isn’t defending. Throw down AoEs on his spot with Longbow.

Projectile reflect says hi!
(yes, it also reflect combustive shot and arcing arrow)

Galsia.4102:

Lay some tarp behind your computer chair and set aside some cleaning supplies; I’m going to blow your mind.

Berserker Stance

That would be nice if berserker stance had a 100% uptime and thief wasn’t able to disengage easily when berserker stance is on.

I mean, you don’t need a master degree in rocket science to get to such a conclusion.

Let get this straight.
PvE content requires balance as much as PvP content.
ANet has improved the quality of its PvE contents by trials, in fact I dare you to say that The Lost Shores is as good as the current “Escape from Lion’s Arch”. Not even close.

The problem is that you can’t develop a winning formula or get better at making a specific type of contents if you don’t make them.

PvP needs a faster development pace and less closed testing. Even if you test a content for 3 months straight it can end up being hated by the community or being considered bad (I’m looking at Skyhammer and the June balance patch).

Arganthium.5638:

Actually, the damage potential of thieves is fairly low (just look at their damage coefficients). However, somewhat ironically (to the untrained viewer, that is), thieves actually have massive defensive potential. Thieves have two reliable defensive mechanisms, evasion and stealth, though they also have the lowest base health and medium armor in exchange.

Now, I generally assume that defensive mechanisms are multiplied on top of defensive amplification via stats. For instance, if I take 50% less damage by having evasion, and I take 50% less damage by having Healing Power/Toughness/Vitality, then the amount of damage dealt to me is .5 × .5 or 25% of its original amount. Logically, this makes sense, and so we can say that defensive mechanisms are, in fact, tied to stats- in fact, they’re tied to defensive stats very heavily.

However, our lower skill coefficients have to be made up for somehow, and that “somehow” typically involves using Zerker amulet. In the past, I’ve stated that the maximum amount of total damage comes from amplifying both your defense and your offense equally so that, when multiplied together, they reach the maximum possible amount. However, when you take into account the defensive mechanisms involved, you find that offensive stats actually need to be greater than defensive stats. That is, until you take into account other offensive mechanisms and the like, such as condis, range, control, etc, but thief doesn’t have many of those (or they don’t matter that much) anyways.

So really, thieves don’t run Zerker amulet because their damage potential is too high, but rather, because their defensive potential is extremely high (as well as their initial defense), and to reach that maximum point of defensive amplification x offensive amplification, thieves will typically have to take more offensive stats than defensive stats because the offensive stats scale faster overall than the defensive ones do when stealth and evasion are taken into account. Furthermore, there are diminishing returns on evasion- i.e. why bother to evade as often when you’re taking very little damage in the first place? and so on.

Also, the part about thieves being more survivable than warriors with zerker on is complete bull. That might be true only if you’re talking about focusing on surviving as opposed to killing or capturing an objective when you’re in combat, which is a completely pointless focus.

The damage potential of thieves is not low.
The post you were referring to does not consider the damage multipliers coming from traits, nor the innate higher critical hit chance because of traits.
A thief with 30 in Critical Strike will have Executioner (20% more damage while <50% health), First Strikes (10% more damage while initiative is over 6) plus other traits which boost the critical chance depending on the build. 30 points in critical strike means that you have the potential of dealing 30% more damage for free and you have much more chances to trigger the extra bonus of critical damage because of the fact that Critical Strikes come with precision too.
The other profession has a single traitline that boosts damage that much.

Go on, pick a soldier amulet with your average thief build and play some PvP.
You’ll realize almost istantly that you are still performing the same defensive manouvers and that your survivability hasn’t significantly changed compared to berserker, while your damage dropped quite a bit because of the lack of critical damage and precision.

Yes, thieves are way more survivable compared to warriors with zerker amulet. When Endure Pain ends, warriors just melts. Thieves can reliably evade all the damage because of vigor+feline grace+shortbow+S/x or apply blindness. Top thieves don’t even die once during a whole match.

That Wintersday gift glory vendor NPC was a vent of fresh air and acted like a sort of placebo to PvP players while the new reward system is under development.

That NPC was the only way I had (as a mainly PvP player) to make some gold to afford to buy the armor skins or perhaps some equipment to do WvW.

Please, bring a similiar NPC back.
Perhaps an NPC that sells non-account bound dyes for 300 glory/ea?

Just something to let us poor PvPers make some gold while the new reward system is being worked on and to give us the illusion we are getting rewarded for playing PvP.

Eviscera.9703:

Interesting opinion. So you mean people hadn’t discovered the strong builds that exist today, back then. Instead they saw the solution to nerf the elementalist to the ground.

Back in that meta, elementalists were OP. No doubt.
Point is that Necromancers were non-existent, as much as Warriors, who didn’t yet recived buff to survivability. And if I’m not wrong, neither beastmaster, trapper or spirit rangers were a thing. Neither S/D thief existed.

Pretty much anything that melted elementalists did not exist yet. Now they exist, so do the nerfs to elementalist.

I think it would still get melted by hambow warriors.
Back in the ele meta, there wasn’t any CC heavy build.

Though, in the current meta, they could be a valid alternative to the omni-present thief.

The OP has a point.
The problem is that this topic has been swarmed by the thief subforum as a whole.

For whoever does not understand the point, the skill can be used on a 20s cooldown (or even less if you already have it) in a blind field, which means that anything (litterally anything) you throw at the thief during the channel as a warrior is wasted or even counter-productive.

Considering that all the CCs of warriors are on slow weapon sets, you have to land 2 hits in order to manage to hit the thief and interrupt the channel, assuming that the first hit will always miss because of the blind applied by the Black Powder projectile.
Other than that, the thief can just follow you while you’re blinded and deal massive free damage without you having a single chance to counter, because your attack are too slow to manage to hit him before the channel ends or you get a reasonable amount of damage to make the risk worth taking.

The real issue is that it is pretty much a free damage and nearly invulnerability for the whole casting time of the skill.

Arganthium.5638:

Yeah, and meanwhile, Warriors can be even more survivable while dealing about 300% more damage with Zerker’s amulet. There’s a reason why thieves simply can’t run Soldier’s amulet- it’s because it turns us into stupidly underpowered warrior copies.

This is just blantatly false.
Thieves run berserker amulet for the same reason because guardians run cleric amulet. The damage potential of thief is so high that running a safer amulet choice is a complete waste, also considering that thieves are much more survivable compared to any other professions with berserker (yes, even warriors).
You can run soldier amulet and the damage is still pretty high, but the point is that the defensive mechanics are still the same (evades, blindness, stealth) which aren’t tied to stats to the point that not bringing berserker means losing potential.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Well, let’s say ele is (besides fresh air and DS) one of the better balanced classes.

Really?
Ele is the better balanced class when pretty much any elementalist spend 30 points into arcana picking the same 3 traits?
When Fire Magic is completely unviable as traitline compared to Air Magic?
When Earth Grandmaster traits completely suck?
When there is no reliable way to remove conditions out of Ether Renewal or Cleansing Water?
When half of the weapon skills (focus in fire, Shatterstone, scepter autoattacks) and utility skills (glyphs and half of the signets) are flat out useless?
When there is no way in the hell to survive without having at least 300 extra vitality and toughness, forcing non-lolcrazy-glass elementalists to pick the same amulet choices?

Seriously, elementalist is a mess, much more than other professions. The only difference is that it is underpowered, so it looks somewhat balanced.

It’s funny how PvE players get enraged when ANet gives some content/achievements exclusive to PvP but when PvE players gets exclusive rewards nobody cares.

jayvux.4128:

Shoot! What you did was so much more efficient than me buying chests (1k glory) hoping for dyes which is like 20% chance. Totally forgot you can craft dyes with pvp mats. And then I looked up your method of profiting with gifts via pvp vendors during Wintersday, and darn it again…I should have used my glory points for that! I used like the most lamest method of all to profit for gold LOL.

So I spent about half an hour looking up the values of the gifts back then in terms of gold and glory points to determine how much I could have made…

Pvp vendors were selling 10 gifts for 200 glory points.
I had 400k glory points during Wintersday
400k glory points divided by 200 glory points= 2000 sets of 10 gifts
So 2000 sets times 10 gifts (because each set is 10 gifts)= 20k gifts!
1 Gift= 2 s (estimate) which means 10 gifts = 20 silver aka 50 gifts= 1 gold
Now 20k gifts divided by 50 gifts (50 gifts = 1 gold) equals 400gold!

I could have made about 350 more gold!
Darn you young Jayvux :,(…
I can hardly sleep on this lmao.

Soz for the wall of text, just needed to vent my “sorrow” a leedo LOL

Assuming you’ve spent 400k glory on 1k glory chest, you should have a lot of spare crafting materials you can craft dyes with.
If you haven’t done it yet, you are supposed to have about 150 more dyes to make with those mats and a few more glory (for consumable tokens and arcane converters).

And yes, the wintersday gift vendor was a true bless for main PvP players but sadly they removed it right after the wintersday event along with all my hopes of making golds out of PvP.

The problem isn’t that elementalist has a such high skillcap, good players and blah blah blah.

The problem is that a single thief makes an elementalist more like a carpet than a player.
The problem is that a single non-dodged warrior stun or eviscerate means death.
The problem is that if you manage to take a single burning proc without cleansing it, you’re dead (which means that you shouldn’t be hit at all against engi with Incendiary Powder or Necromancers with Dhuumfire).

They are pretty much as squishy as thieves (if not more), with the only difference that they are much less survivable because of the lack of evasion capability and stealth.

jayvux.4128:

Dishing it all out on chests for skins and dyes before they (glory points/boosters) expire on March 18th!

@Results: No Abyss or Celestial dye QQ. kitten the loot gods!

OMFG dat golds

plis, give 10 gold to charity to us poor dedicated PvPers.
The max amount of gold I’ve ever had in my entire GW2 career was 280 and it was during the last Wintersday event selling gifts. Shame on me I’ve spent my gloring making dyes so I didn’t have that much glory when they added the gift NPC.

Now I’m down again to about 80 golds.

Seriously man, how can you think that those new elites are real?

Have you seen the mesmer new elite?
It was something like “you become a giant phantasmal version of yourself to crush your enemies with phantasmal hands”.
How can someone think that this can be remotely close to be true?

No.
Rank 80 is unreasonable for any human being in 2 years.
Rank 79 is 750k rank points.
Rank 70-78 is 450k each.
In comparison, if you reached Bear rank, you need approximately 8.5x rank points of whose you’ve already earned.
If you are Phoenix, you need 2.5x rank points to reach Dragon.

Cynz.9437:

i think the issue will be with cultural armor but i support this idea

Why? What I asked is to just resize the model to be bigger/smaller when in PvP. Cultural armor will be resized along with the model as it automatically adapt to any character of any height/size.

The only issue I see is that most people are not used to see big-as-human asuras.

Let’s be honest. Asuras and their size has given unfair advantages to many PvP players (just see how many of them are in competitive PvP) since launch as much as gigantic norn mesmers have been an issue when fought against in the hammer or are a source of clutter in fights.

What I’d really like to have, as much as a good part of the PvP community I think, is to have an option to normalize any character model to a specific box size in PvP to approximately the size of an human male of mid-size.

So big norns will be resized to be more small as much as Asuras will be made bigger in order to make the animations clearer.

So no more asuras creeping between spirits/minions/clones unnoticed and no more big norns filling the whole screen.

Testudo.4620:

It was used by melee classes like thief to spike people quickly. they’d knock you down and cast it

Never heard about a Blackout Assassin to be honest and I don’t think that it ever worked.
Why would an assassin shut himself down?

As far I know, the only use of that skill was on some extreme shutdown mesmers in random arena against monks and it wasn’t even that good.

Testudo.4620:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Blackout

Close range and shutdown in both sides.
Also, ~5s duration on a way slower game like GW1 was.

unleashed.8679:

But that is what anet tries to achieve (balance the whole game with sPvP), well at least is seams to be that way. And there is the big problem of stat differences (available combinations and limits) the fact that you can’t use food in sPvP/use it in the rest of the game, …

No one said, that the game should be balanced due to PvE, but the current way it is done, leads to a huge imbalance in 2/3 of the game.
No one said, that this will balance every skill, there is still the difference in the kind of enemy behavior.
But it would make it easier for the devs to balance the game, because they don’t have to balance their skills for every game mode, right now they need to build some skills three times because of the different kind of enemies and the stat differences.

I can understand, that this is scary for some PvP’ers, because it will introduce the (in my opinion) unbalanced food into your half balanced world. And it will mess it up in the beginning. But on the long-term view it will lead to a (more) balanced game.

Man, you have absolutely no clue.

I’ll give you an example to make that clear: ranger longbow.
Hunter Shot was changed to give Stealth to ranger. That was an HUGE buff in PvP to rangers because they now have some survivability added to that weapon set, while PvE players complained because they lost the instant 10 stacks of vulnerability.

What about Unsteady Ground change? Extremely good in PvP, while PvE players complained that it was worthless against champs or bosses with defiant.

So no. I’d say fix the WvW/PvE imbalances, but don’t bring that mess over sPvP.

Tim.6450:

It’s nearly impossible to use pvp balance as start point since, that would mean we have to nerf/remove gear and remove the craft chef from the game, make artificier almost meaningless, remove several runes from the game,… .

That’s the point, so is porting WvW/PvE balance over sPvP will make it an huge imbalanced mess.

whyme.3281:

This mess you are talking about is the same mess, we have right now in PvE/WvW. Have you even read my first paragraph? I never said, that balance would be fine, if food and stats would be introduced in PvP…. I said, it would allow balancing of the game as one.

Yeah, but they should take the sPvP balance as start point, not WvW/PvE.
And, by the way, not every WvW/PvE player share your opinion, actually pretty much none does.

whyme.3281:

Why? Food and stats in PvP would a) add more depth and b) make it possible to balance all 3 gamemodes at once, without splitting of skills (which in the end requires more manpower than introducing food and stats)

Right now, the main focus of balancing is sPvP. The rest of the game is getting unbalanced due to the stat imbalance (food, ascended). Yes, it would maybe mess up sPvP balance at the beginning (as imbalanced as WvW is right now), but in the end balancing would be made easier.

I dont understand, why you think Food is only for PvE? because its even more imbalanced than WvW? (slow attacking, not moving enemies)

Because food buffs, along WvW/PvE gear system, creates for a massive power creep.

Just think about that: right now, the maximum amount of Crit Damage achievable with berserker gear in PvP is about 60% with about 2000 power max with no survivability whatsoever and still people are getting one-shotter by thieves and fresh air elementalists. Now, imagine if PvE gear is ported over PvP along with food buffs, doubling the max amount crit damage achievable and increasing by far the max power of those builds…

Same applies to condition duration food buffs. Fear chains right now are just insane. Imagine food buffs on top of the current fear duration on condition necros. No, just no.

To port the PvE/WvW stat system over PvP without messing the somewhat fragile balance, they need to do an huge rework that will cause massive anger from the PvE/WvW crowd.

And people already complain about WvW/PvE being influenced by PvP balance because of just a couple of skills modified in both PvP and PvE.
Do you remember what the elementalist staff and ranger longbow changes?

Food in PvP? Please no. It should be forbidden on WvW too imho. Those things are made for PvE.
Stat combinations of PvE/WvW ported over PvP? God, NO.

Unless they don’t completely rework stat combos, which will cause an insane uproar from the PvE/WvW community, there is no way to port stat combos of PvE in PvP without completely messing the already pretty bad balance of the game.

1. Elementalist: there is lot to be said
2. Ranger: needs some major tweaks and some weapon sets completely redesigned
3. Thief: still forced to play full berserker in any part of the game

Key issues in my opinion:

The Arcana traitline is a bloody mess: there are pretty much only 3 traits there that any WvW/PvP elementalist pick. Those traits are Renewing Stamina, Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana. Either those traits are blantatly overpowered, or the other traits are underpowered. I don’t know which solution is the best to this, but I’d say that this issue should be fixed asap.

Earth Magic lacks a worthwile grandmaster: diamond skin is bad, both in a design and effectiveness standpoint. Just scrap that skill and give Elementalists some real damage-mitigation grandmaster and some grandmaster capable to make Condition Elementalists somewhat viable.

Fire Magic is lacking: why would someone go with fire magic while Air Magic provides better damage and better utility? The main issue in my opinion are 5 and 15 minor traits, which are completely worthless. Other than that, there are some interesting traits there, but most of them are meh. Perhaps, give Fire Magic some blindness capability in order to make it halfway between pure burst and a defensive traitline?

Glyphs are bad: nuff said

Condition Removal outside of Water is mediocre: let’s face that. If you don’t run Ether Renewal + Rock Solid or 30 water, the condition removal is just bad to the point that a single Incendiary Powder proc can bring away almost half of your HP bar. This issue is because of the lowest HP pool in the game which isn’t compensated by the insane evasion uptime of Thieves, nor the incredible condition removal, sustain and blocking of Guardians. Perhaps only pure glass cannons elementalists don’t bring that much of condition removal, I think because they die in a second anyway.

babazhook.6805:

You will be able to take both sigil of battle and of energy. So why not both?

When I will be able to take both sigils, then we’ll talk. But right now, no sigil is better than battle.

JonSnow.5610:

I saw a decap engi push far all game on khylo against an MM necro, never got the decap and always got killed by a thief roaming between mid and home.

You don’t need double stability warriors if you blatantly outplay the engi.

And if the opposite team can flip the map to avoid the decap engi, you have a 4v5 while the engi sits on a point.

That engi must be insanely bad to not get a decap against a stability-free necromancer. Anyway, anecdotes never proved anything.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

sorrow.2364:

Elementalists definitely needs a further nerf to survivability.
It’s not like that Renewing Stamina is the only trait keeping Eles alive.

Sorry but why exactly? seeing as how we are already forced to go defensive on traits, gear, jewels and everything else to counter the fact that we have the lowest health and armor and our defensive utilities are on a longer cool down and WORSE than comparable ones of other classes…

We actully need MORE survivability, or at least sustain. This way it would mean ele players wouldn’t be forced to go defensive to counter a weakness that was only there before they nerfed out damage, nerfed our healing and nerfed our mobility.

Before i would have said our survivability was fine, after all of them nerfs i would say no. To say the class with insane cool downs on skills, lowest health and lowest armor needs MORE nerfs is just rather silly.

Look at what other classes have – stealth, blocks, invul, insane mobility, immunities and such. What does ele get? insane cool down on weapon skills and insane cool downs on utilities

Lets take Mist form for example:

Mist form – break stun, 3 second duration, 66% movement speed, 75second cool down
Elixir S – Break stun, evade attacks, 60sec cool down, TB grants 5second stealth(60sec)
Endure Pain – break stun, 4 second duration, 60second cool down allows skills to still be used

So an extra 15second cool down, isnt as good as the other 2 minus the rather useless movement speed increase. So the class that needs defense the MOST has a longer cool down and shorter duation skill in which they cant do anything compared to the class that has the highest health, highest armor, highest passive regen, insane mobility….

sorrow.2364:

Elementalists definitely needs a further nerf to survivability.
It’s not like that Renewing Stamina is the only trait keeping Eles alive.
/sarcasm

Romek.4201:

no you can´t just go another node when they ignore you
in soloQ this “decapclown” build is most time not working and cripple your team

when enemy team just let you sit on farpoint and go for mid and your close than your team fight outnumbered all day until YOU decide to join the fight somewhere.
But still in Teamfight you are useless and your team would still be outnumbered even when you help them^^.

and when you go for your close than fine they go mid far and you are useless again

You can easily go to another node when they ignore you. The AoE CC, AoE heals and bombs aren’t useless in teamfights, don’t be silly. They provide quite good party wide healing and defensive capabilities (remember that a CCed enemy can’t attack).

Said that, your logic seems broken to me.
According to you, if whatever node you go the defender just walks away and let you cap, then you’re useless to your team..? How can this make sense?

JonSnow.5610:

Decap engi in soloQ does not work when you push far right off the bat and continue to do it right from spawn. Unless you help out where needed, you’re killing your own team.

People pushing far ALL game long does not work if the other team catches on to what you do.

Honestly I don’t even know why this needs to be discussed, it’s a selfish build which just brought skyhammer trolling into regular pvp.

Oh, really?
By pushing far the whole match, you’re locking down at least one person on their close point in order to keep it contested, even two if they want their node back.

If they just leave you there ignoring you, you can just go to another node and decap it.

Either you got free points or you are forcing the enemy team fight outnumbered on other nodes or you’re getting a decap or even a full cap out of a defended node. In all cases, you win.

The only way to counter an engi decapper is to send a double stability warrior to defend the node, but it’s like countering an OP build with an even more OP build, which is kinda stupid.

The Primary.6371:

I don’t use it anymore, sigil of energy works way better.

And giving up on Sigil of Battle? No, thanks.

Also, as most here have already said, I’m all up of making Renewing Stamina a minor trait and take the nerf. Being forced to pick that minor trait for survivability reasons is just bad.
I really want to pick Windborne Dagger, Final Shielding, Arcane Master or Blasting Staff, but if I don’t pick Renewing Stamina, I will just die.

Elementalists definitely needs a further nerf to survivability.
It’s not like that Renewing Stamina is the only trait keeping Eles alive.

Lupanic.6502:

Watching the tournaments from the last weak. Both teams with decap engi lost. Maybe you should watch the games to know how to counter them.

Or, perhaps, you should realize that probably teams with decap engi lost because the other team was better.

I see behind your reasioning the assumption that Decap Engi can carry a whole team alone.