Guild Wars 2

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

They said no last beta weekend. Do you really need to ask or are you just being intentionally dense?

Or better yet, just point people to the rules that says no beta characters. That way you’ll answer the question without coming across as a tool.

The issue is that ele is supposed to be jack of all trades, but great at none. What has happened though is the opposite.

1. Best condi damage in the game (through burns)
2. Best sustain in the game
3. Best condi clear in the game
4. Best 1v1 potential in the game

Ele needs to have one of two things:
1. Average at all of those items and be adaptable to any situation
2. Let users spec into 1 or 2 of the points and then be really poor at other areas.

Unholy sanctuary?

SkiTz.4590:

style.6173:

Varonth.5830:

The reason why GW2 isn’t enjoyable to watch is because you cannot follow what is going on, especially if you aren’t the player. snip.

Pretty much disagree with everything you wrote. The issue currently is that the sustain is too high. Who wants to watch a dd ele fight against a dd ele? That is about as boring as possible.

You can disagree, but he is not wrong.

Unless you are an avid pvp player in gw2, watching a tourney on stream is going to leave you saying “oh , cool sparkles and flashes, I have no idea whats going on, everythings moving fast, fights are all over the place. Time to go watch something else on twitch that I can actually understand”

There is reason why the WTS finals barely reached 10k viewers….Outside of Gw2 PvPers, no one is watching.
Not the MMORPG/Gaming community in general, not even the majority of the community in GW2 cares or watches.
Its because its not an entertaining watch, hard to follow for the avg outsider, unbalanced, same mode for 3 years, and it doesn’t appeal to anyone outside our own GW2 PvP community.

Reread what I said and tell me how I am wrong? You quoted something from him that wasn’t even the main part of what I said.

Go ahead and tell me that you think this is a DPS meta. It is not. It is all about sustain.

Never give up, but also you only need to count the number of eles on each team before it starts. Whoever has the most eles wins.

You both are on wrong ends of the spectrum. Play the next stress test and hopefully they will have some of this stuff in it. Then you will know if ANET is brilliant or clueless.

Also, I will admit that the new map worries me. The last beta test ran for 24 hours. After the ANET promotion for the 3 three hours, pretty much everyone left. If they were having fun, I’d imagine people would have continued to play.

I have a suspicion that they turned it off. I see 3 of a class frequently. Originally, it wasn’t supposed to even double on classes.

Matchmaking in general is completely broken right now. I think if someone looked it at, they’d realize it isn’t working well at all.

zxstanyxz.8769:

class != build, 2 eles could be playing completely different builds and roles so why restrict one of them to a much longer queue time because theres only 3 eles queuing at the time?

plus given that ele is god tier right now, a ton of people want to play it right now.

mistsim.2748:

cele ele got buffed with the jun 23rd patch, that’s what I’m talking about. if cele ele stayed the same, without the burn stack damage increase, it would have been just fine in this meta.

That is only partially correct. Eles got a ton of buffs in the patch. In the past, ANET had balanced separately between PvP and PvE. That meant that several ele skills were nerfed in PvP but left as-is in PvE. During the most recent balance patch, ANET decided that was too much work for them.

End result was a reversal of several OP skills. That plus the things you mentioned are the reason ele is god tier right now.

Mesmer or thief are not the right answers.

Thief is a horrible class for SOLO. It really only shines in a well coordinated team or if you get lucky enough to face really bads.

Mesmer is similar. They are the second best 1v1 class, but unless you are a dd ele, you really shouldn’t be doing many 1v1 anyway.

Play a bunker (dd ele is included in that). It is much easier to carry a solo team as a bunker.

a dd ele will win a fight against a bunker guardian. The only exception is if the dd ele is really bad.

The issue with MOST condi specs is that they are skill-less. Basically it is true something that is AOE and let the game decision win. AOE in general needs a large nerf. Make melee condi damage stronger.

Swiftly.2385:

I am running a pretty standard D/P build and I really struggle against necro’s

Any general tips against them?

Thief is one of the worst classes 1v1 right now. If you are trying to do 1v1, you are not doing your job elsewhere on the map.

Ravezaar.4951:

so in Expansion players get:

Legendary Backpiece from sPvP and PvE (Fractals)
Legendary Weapons from PvE (Story,Masteries aso)
Legendary Armor from PvE (Raids)

WvW playes get what ? nothing but Badges that you cant use on anything worthwhile at all…. no Legendarys in sight, havent heard much about new rewards except maybe a new Skin. Seriously a new skin ? so we get from 1000-s of Hours what EVERYONE can get from TP ?

Anet stop ignoring the 3rd Game-mode and give us something real in reward, give us the chance to get Legendary something in WvW…. maybe Legendary Trinkets should come from WvW mode ?

The new map is essentially PvE where you can kill people so I’d imagine you’ll be able to earn the PvE rewards there as well. ANET hasn’t announced the final plans.

Lordrosicky.5813:

morrolan.9608:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Anyone quoting helseth loses all credibility almost instantly.

You need to get past his persona, his ideas are usually pretty good.

Nah his ideas are terrible. And persona? What is he an actor? You can’t be a bully to everyone on the internet and call it a persona. That is just his personality. Its like saying that I am only a bully on Saturday’s, apart from that I am a really nice guy honestly. And why would helseth, who is one of the most infamous premade runners want solo queue. lol.

As for solo queue. No it shouldn’t come back. It would split the community too much. Pretty obvious really.

You message makes literally zero sense. Let me make it easier for you.

Today:
—Unranked
—Ranked

With solo queue
—Solo queue
—Team queue

Two queues. If you want to play solo, you have a choice. If you want to team with someone, you join team queue. It doesn’t split the community. The community is already split. It just prevents PUGs from facing premades.

Don’t be too optimistic. You don’t know how ANET balances. They will do one of two things:

1. Nerf something that impacts a majority of classes and hope that it hurts ele as well.
2. Make a ton of changes at once, and just break something new that is broken.

I’m hoping they learn their lesson this time and fix burn stacking which is the issue.

Chasind.3128:

Constant conditions will take an ele down. condi ranger/necro > ele

Yeah right. That is only true if they ele is at best average and the ranger or necro are extremely good.

meow one twenty.4376:

style.6173:

Wolfey.3407:

ozzy.8059:

when you enter a match and look at the other team only to see 2+ eles vs your 0-1 ele, every match i have like this requires extreme effort and communication vs no communication to win a close game or just flat out lose.

Your title… this is why game suck as often as they do…

Yes, there is an issue with eles… Yes, there is an issue with class stacked teams… But don’t take it out on your teams by refusing to do anything. You just end up being the problem, and in my opinion a larger problem then eles them selves. At least if you fight, you give your team a chance to win.

The issue is more the refusal of ANET to do their job and actually balance broken items in game. Until they start balancing, this type of thread and in game activity will happen more frequently.

Then those people should just stop playing. And dont blame a person being a poor sport on Anet.

Doesn’t change the fact that ANET is largely at fault here. The balance team is a disgrace. It has taken them over 2 months to fix items that were clearly broken. Embarrassing.

Don’t worry about anyone who is toxic in game. Good players rarely say anything. Bad players typically think they know it all.

I am not in favor of reducing the baseline recharge. Instead, ANET should add a 20% banner recharge into the “Inspiring Battle Standard” trait. That way people could take the trait if they choose. The end result would be a recharge of 192 seconds AND would heal allies while it was active.

Forestgreen.7981:

MithranArkanere.8957:

The only thing that annoys me of the current PvP is the pace.

Too fast. Too much spamming. Too many instant activation skills used in succession.

No time for turning things around, attrition battles or your allies to come back unless they have things like portals. We are having 1-3vs1-3 fights going as fast as only 1v5 fights should go.

At the very least some instant activation skills should have an aftercast to let people get their bearings. This is not a game played in a lan party. There’s going to be lag hits. 1-3 seconds fights should simply not happen. The pace should be at least 5-7s.

This is a terrible idea. We’ve had the sustain meta awhile ago and it was horrible. Everyone just playing bunker running in circles. 1-3 second fights only happens if you’re going full glass cannon fighting with another full glass and you made a huge mistake.

It is a sustain meta now. The only difference is that burning is broken so you don’t realize it as much. Watch what happens whenever burning is finally nerfed.

WTF is wrong with matchmaking lately? It has been absolutely horrible. Yeah, I know it has been broken since the new system was put in place, but it has been even worse lately. It doesn’t matter which account I play on. It is plain broken.

I seriously hope there will be a HoT announcement soon discussing how matchmaking will be improved. Right now it is embarrassing.

Varonth.5830:

The reason why GW2 isn’t enjoyable to watch is because you cannot follow what is going on, especially if you aren’t the player. This has multiple reasons, some can be fixed others cannot. The camera and information shows in spectator mode is one of those parts that can be fixed.

The biggest problem is the gamedesign itself, which probably cannot be fixed.

The inclusion of crit bonus damage should have never happened. It’s a problem in PvE and it is one in PvP. Ferocity is a terrible stat, which add way too much damage.

But it doesn’t end there. Since that damage is so high they added the incredible sustain of other classes. Things just get jumpy here. Healbars just jump all other the place. Like in that video that was linked when the thief looses 80% of his health in like 1s, and a second later he is back to full health. It takes minutes to analyse what skills caused those jumps. It is almost impossible to visually track that much stuff if you are not directly involved in it (and it is also hard if you are involved).

That whole design philosophy is also the reason downed state is needed. If two glasscannons collide the fight is over in about 1~2 seconds. So teamfights looks like this… the DDs go in, and the one DD that gets focused better runs away as fast as possible.

Now if you watch the GW1 sample, you can see that kills aren’t just everyone collapsing on a single target. Everyone in the team has a different role. You need players to damage the target, but you also need someone to distract/disturb the monks and other support, aswell as healing through the damage your DDs take. Maybe even interrupt the DD from CCing you DDs. At the same time everyone on the enemy team has some way to help the focused target.

And while there is also jumpy healthbars, you can a follow the incoming damage abilities because they are shown at the side and it are far less. And the only two high value heals are either the extremly visible Word of Healing or Infusion of Life, which while not having a massive visual effect causes the infusion monk to loose half his health. Nothing short of the old Vow of Strength + Unsuspecting Strike assassin could cause that much damage to an infusion monk. So you immediatly know what caused that health spike.

Damage across the board is too high and with that comes too high damage. An engineer who can deal 7k damage from a simple pistol shot because of the conditions he applies does not make for a nice viewable experience. People want group fights that last a while in which they can follow what is going on.

And sadly that will not happen with the current design.

Pretty much disagree with everything you wrote. The issue currently is that the sustain is too high. Who wants to watch a dd ele fight against a dd ele? That is about as boring as possible.

You’d actually need balance to have a 2v2 or 3v3. Right now certain specs are way too broken.

Zenith.7301:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

so how do you kill ele ?

they kill you 1v1
they chase you down and kill you
they survive 2v1

at least pre nerfed warriors can still be easily put down.

Those warrior tears.

You can always try the class your precious warrior stomps on with stances, a necro. Necro>ele.

Necro is NOT better than ele. A perfectly played necro can beat an averagely played ele. That is not balance.

Wolfey.3407:

ozzy.8059:

when you enter a match and look at the other team only to see 2+ eles vs your 0-1 ele, every match i have like this requires extreme effort and communication vs no communication to win a close game or just flat out lose.

Your title… this is why game suck as often as they do…

Yes, there is an issue with eles… Yes, there is an issue with class stacked teams… But don’t take it out on your teams by refusing to do anything. You just end up being the problem, and in my opinion a larger problem then eles them selves. At least if you fight, you give your team a chance to win.

The issue is more the refusal of ANET to do their job and actually balance broken items in game. Until they start balancing, this type of thread and in game activity will happen more frequently.

Sagat.3285:

style.6173:

ragnarokda.1805:

I don’t really see how you getting 100-0’d by conditions over 5-10 seconds is any different than getting killed by straight burst? I mean… there are quite a few proactive and reactive skills in the game to help mitigate condition burst but very FEW reactive ways to not die to a huge burst spike.

You miss the main point. In a normal burst, people need to spec with zerker or marauder. That gives them minimal sustain. In condi, they can spec way more defensively and still do insane damage.

Implementation of burn stacking was the single worst decision that ANET has made. That and hiring a balance team that doesn’t balance.

This argument keeps popping it’s false there is ramp up time,cleansing,CC,blind and everything that GW2 combat has. Burn and sometimes confusion are the only good conditions. You didn’t build to counter to conditions did you?? You speced to play your way.

Please read again. You also missed the point. The point is getting spiked by direct damage vs condi damage. Your point is invalid because someone can also avoid direct damage by aegis or dodging. This is just a straight comparison of direct vs condi.

Trying to argue that it isn’t easier to spec defensively with a condi build is also just silly.

So this is what happened behind the scenes.

A team of 4 eles won a ESL tournament.

Balance team: Oh man. This is not good. We might actually have to release a balance update. I don’t want to balance!
Forum: hahahahah balance team. You have no clue what is happening in game.
Balance team: I don’t want to do my job! What can we prevent that?
Forum: buff ele, buff ele. hahaha balance team.
Balance team: I have it! We will ask ESL to outlaw 4 eles. This way it isn’t as obvious that our balance is broken.
ESL: Ok. We will implement the new rule. As a bonus we will also not allow rune of vampirism for eles. You won’t need to fix that either
Balance team: High fives all around guys! Crisis averted. Back to watching videos on youtube.

ANET used to separate the skills between PvE and PvP. It worked out really well. During the latest balance overhaul, the balance team decided that it was too much work for them and was taking time away from foosball and ping pong.

ragnarokda.1805:

I don’t really see how you getting 100-0’d by conditions over 5-10 seconds is any different than getting killed by straight burst? I mean… there are quite a few proactive and reactive skills in the game to help mitigate condition burst but very FEW reactive ways to not die to a huge burst spike.

You miss the main point. In a normal burst, people need to spec with zerker or marauder. That gives them minimal sustain. In condi, they can spec way more defensively and still do insane damage.

Implementation of burn stacking was the single worst decision that ANET has made. That and hiring a balance team that doesn’t balance.

Matchmaking is horrible as it has been since the new system came out. That said, I’m not sure if the problem these days is more matchmaking or more that there are so many broken specs.

I’m hoping the balance team starts doing their job soon. We really need to see some life out of them.

Hugs.1856:

Separating queues is a heavy design decision that impacts

- players pool
– queue time
– team composition: can you teamQ with 4, 3 or 2?
– players networking / exposition to teams: by mixing solo and teamQ good solo’ers can be spotted more easily.

In terms of matchmaking, the issue is the algorithm, not the splitting of queues, ie: mixing solo’ers and teams shouldn’t impact your chances of win.

In terms of ladder and leagues though, that’s another topic.

Not sure how things will work out, but I think we’ll get two ladders at least, one for solo and one for teams.

But, 1/ will the top leagues be populated by players playing as teams only and therefore confining the solo’ers to “sub leagues”?

And 2/ do players playing as teams also progress on the solo ladder (because if so, then the top spots in both solo and team ladders are most likely to be the same!)

Fun fact: Matchmaking was better when there was team queue vs solo queue, at least for me.

brannigan.9831:

haha A-net has basically admitted they don’t know what they are doing balance wise. Ele should have been hammered long ago and then you bring them up slowly but fairly quickly. Thats how you get fotm people off an op class. Shaving has never and will never work. They need to do balancing much more often. This tinkering with classes moderately a few times a year is bs.

Also why this game will never become a true eSport. The balance team really needs to get to work and fix clearly broken items.

I am not in favor of R20 for one key item. It just hides the fact that ANET has a broken matchmaking system. The PvP rank actually should have nothing to do with matchmaking.

Instead, it should be about ACTUAL game results. When a new player joins, they should be matched with others who either are new, or who have the lowest MMR ratings.

Also shows why solo queue needs to be added since that system will work really well there.

Sommazzatore.8367:

This is a L2P issue. Nothing one shots. Just learn to build and dodge. Not trying to be rude, but its true.

Absolutely. ANET can make anything as OP as they want as long as you learn to build and dodge. lolol. Thanks for the laugh.

kdaddy.5431:

Im sorry but alot of players held a 60+ win % in team que in the last ladder and a few of them were constantly playing premades. Solo que wont fix your problems in pvp

You post makes no sense. On what planet is it not fair for solo queue people to face other solo queue people. The rest of your post is irrelevant.

Without a solo queue, the whole concept of a league is a failure. ANET hasn’t released the details yet, so hopefully they do the right thing.

I do not agree with the class stacking rule. There shouldn’t be a rule in place to solve a simple problem…. the ANET balance team needs to start doing their job. Class stacking is a good thing since it highlights problems within the game.

You need to understand the balance team’s philosophy. Balancing is hard. It also takes away from other activities like foosball or ping pong. So, here is the best approach.

1. Make one class really OP
2. Continue to buff that really OP class
3. If everyone starts to play that OP class, then the game is balanced by default
4. If someone doesn’t play the OP class, then that is there fault and they deserve to lose

ANET has said that locking this type of gear within one game mode is a bad idea. They learned that lesson with fractals and ascended gear when it first came out.

That said, legendary gear should require components from all 3 game modes (PvE, PvP, and WvW). If it is just about grinding, it will be boring and not within the GW2 manifesto.

What? Did you not watch the ESL yesterday? In the earlier rounds, the winning team could go 5 eles and win. In the finals, they could only go 4 eles. Ele clearly has room for improvement!

Liam McColgan.7689:

Aeolus.3615:

Liam McColgan.7689:

ANET need to see this video (they should be anyway if they take any interest in their own game’s tourneys) and stop being so stubborn.

It was sad to watch and listen to.

Like i said before in some other thread, easy game means more players, also theres no point of spending resources balancing game where an expansion will be added with alot of changes.

I expect a big update 6months after Hot to try to balance the game.

I agree there is not much/anything that will be done in time. HOT is too close, and who knows if there will be a meta change due to specs, but i am not confident ele will be toned down in any way. People i know everywhere have just rerolled ele because the trade off is so great when it comes to time learning the class converting to success.

I’m just not convinced they will be toned down by passive buffs to other classes (new specialisations ). It will take an active nerf from anet to tone them down so people dont roll them to insta win, or by stacking them in a team.

tldr; the balance team is lazy

manysongsgw.2931:

So acrobatics traits got reworked into the new elite spec and it was imbalanced before.. does that mean the new spec has counterplay? Probably not. I would like to be first to welcome back the Dodge-spam 33333333333 thieves back with a more OP spec.

tldr: I have no idea if the spec will OP but I want to start the complaining now while pretending I am asking a valid question.

coglin.1867:

Main problem I see with this discussion, is that you continuously see poster after poster, claim to tell everyone what is going on with a server they have never been on. It is like primary school here. Everyone claims to “have heard” or “knows someone” but isn’t on a server, yet presumes to post what goes on their and how things work.

A lot of people have more than 1 account these days. Don’t forget that.

Large damage is easy for AOE type classes when:

1. You are playing DPS
2. There is a huge mid fight
3. That mid fight lasts a really like time and is between 2 mostly bunker teams.

matze.7926:

Dear Devs and Players,

Recently i have been playing my Elementalist in the Top Tier PvP. I am playing the celestial dagger/dagger build with Fire Water and Arcane. I am really into Elementalist and i love playing it since the Beta. I really like the lastest patch and the new burning d/d Ele.

A great thing for example is that i can counterplay the “steal ability” of thieves with my burning and blind procs. So i actually know how to counterplay thieves and i know how to play. When a thief wants to engage me i just put down my ring of fire and when he steals on me he gets 3 stacks of burning and his steal misses since he gets blinded instantly.

The problem im facing tho is, that even tho when the thief misses his steal, i cant sustain the fight! The dps outcome of a dagger pistol thief is just way too high. Plus he can avoid any damage by just stealthing up and blinding all the time. Plus a thief is way faster then me and i barely have any escape mechanisms. I even have to equip rune of vampirism to become invulnerable for a short period of time in order to try to sustain myself!

Why cant Elementalist have a escape mechanism like stealth? The earth nr.5 dagger offhand skill, also known as churning earth, is really underpowered. It never hits in combat since my enemys always dodge it! So why doesnt that get changed into a smoke field so i can actually combo off it and stealth me and my allys? Wouldnt that be just fair?

Thank you for your attention! I hope arenanet will realise this, nerf thieves and buff the real underdogs of this game: Elementalists.

No stealth! That would prevent eles from living forever on a point. A much better solution is that anytime eles clear a condition, they should receive resistance for 10 seconds. That is only fair. No ICD of course

Unfortunately, ANET does not balance so all these needed ele buffs won’t happen for awhile.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

Are you kidding?

You forgot to ask for stealth on DD ele

That’s just crazy! How can a DD ele hold a point forever in stealth! Stop trying to nerf! A better solution is this:

Blinding ashes: On application of any condi, create a 10 second blind field that pulses every second. ICD 5 seconds.

Oh and clearing conditions should also give resistance for 10 seconds.

Until these changes are made, I don’t think a 5 ele team can win every match. That makes me sad.

lololol. This makes the balance team look like a complete joke. I bet whoever handles ele is nervous right now. I can just imagine them thinking about how they will need to take a break from playing ping pong or foosball and actually do some work.

Atherakhia.4086:

The reaper was at a distinct disadvantage from the very beginning… it’s based off the Necromancer.

It’s too early to complain about Daredevil though IMO. I’m honestly more concerned with pistol daredevils than staff ones

Necromancer is really strong. Complaining about necro at this point is 6 months in the past.