Guild Wars 2

sophiewhite.3149:

suffish.4150:

I will have a biased opinion on this because I can’t speak from the perspective of classes other than Druid, but here’s what I think:

Mesmer is not OP at all when it comes to how it performs in teamfights and 1v1s because, like condi warrior or staff theif, Mesmer is one of the classes that tests your ability to dodge. If you have slow reactions and can’t dodge, you will get wrecked but if you know animations and what to dodge, it’s a won 1v1. How all classes should be in my opinion. Dodge the shatters of the Mesmer and especially the moa and you win. If you can’t dodge these with a very high level of consistency, then sorry to say, but you deserve to lose. That is what I always told myself when trying to improve and it applies to everyone else as well. Of course if you play something like necro with limited dodges, this will be hard but like I said, I can only speak from my own experience.

What Mesmer does that keeps it in the meta over other classes is the ability to portal. There is no counter to this when facing on organised team other that run another Mesmer. No other class can teleport and entire team across a map instantly like Mesmer. THAT is what makes it good, but again, not enough to make it OP because it does not over perform in other areas.

in regards to moa. my warrior brings his mace above his head in a slow animation easy to dodge. moa is basically a insta death and animation is a little purple ball at their hands like literally everything else they do. dodging moa isnt skill. its pure luck.

That is just not true. As someone who duels good mesmers regularly in games and in private arenas (and by good I mean pro players or people good enough to be pro league, not just people a bit better than the rest), moa is a very obvious animation that gives you plenty of time to dodge. I can say that moa is much easier to dodge than skull grinder simply because of the length of the animation. If you truly can’t see the moa animation, just look for the continuum split on the ground, wait about half a second, then dodge. Dodging a moa or anything for that matter is only luck if you are random dodging and if you are doing that, you deserve to lose the fight. There are certain things that someone can do (or fail to do) that makes it so they really shouldn’t (don’t deserve to as I say) win the 1v1 and not dodging moa is one of those and so is random dodging. Other things like this are not dodging the revenant elites, not dodging chill to the bone and tanking more than 1-2 skull grinders.

I would suggest you learn the animation of moa or at least be able to predict it by watching for continuum split, it really will help you get better. Insisting that it is down to luck it what will limit your progress as a player.

I will have a biased opinion on this because I can’t speak from the perspective of classes other than Druid, but here’s what I think:

Mesmer is not OP at all when it comes to how it performs in teamfights and 1v1s because, like condi warrior or staff theif, Mesmer is one of the classes that tests your ability to dodge. If you have slow reactions and can’t dodge, you will get wrecked but if you know animations and what to dodge, it’s a won 1v1. How all classes should be in my opinion. Dodge the shatters of the Mesmer and especially the moa and you win. If you can’t dodge these with a very high level of consistency, then sorry to say, but you deserve to lose. That is what I always told myself when trying to improve and it applies to everyone else as well. Of course if you play something like necro with limited dodges, this will be hard but like I said, I can only speak from my own experience.

What Mesmer does that keeps it in the meta over other classes is the ability to portal. There is no counter to this when facing on organised team other that run another Mesmer. No other class can teleport and entire team across a map instantly like Mesmer. THAT is what makes it good, but again, not enough to make it OP because it does not over perform in other areas.

I do support giving harsher punishments to afk/leavers. They just ruin the fun of the games for everyone else. I suggest that if you leave a game or are inactive for a certain amount of time, then you cannot play ranked for the rest of the day. After you get say 5 of these bans in a month, then you are banned for a week from ranked. It would really help with only having serious players in ranked. Keep people who like to quit in unranked.

I understand that this would also punish genuine disconnects, but they happen so rarely that I do not think Anet should even consider them for punishments (I get maybe 1 DC per month and I play 10+ games per day as long as there is no new pve content). I certainly wouldn’t mind missing out on just a single day of ranked play once a month or less for a real disconnect if it eliminates all leavers and afkers from my games.

All this said, I do not think leavers are an absolutely massive problem. I get maybe 1 every 10 games on average (yes I do have runs where I get one in 5 games in a row, but 1/10 is an accurate average) but even with the fairly small amount of these people, it can’t hurt to give harsher punishments to them.

There is not ‘too much’ aoe in this game at all. If you want to avoid area/cleave attacks then don’t stand on point, spread out, dodge. If you are dying to on point AOE/cleave then you deserved to die. There are many ways to counter AOE. In addition, AOE is useless outside of teamfights so if you find yourself dying a lot, force the other team into smaller fights where they will be less effective.

The only class that can truly spam AOE is the necro. No matter what anyone says, unless people run useless builds like staff ele, only necro spams AOE, which is one of the reasons why it is always the focus in teamfights other than the fact it has low active defences. It is also a bad class in 1v1 fights which is why it has lots of area attacks to make up for that weakness. Druids and eles can do a lot of AOE support, but that is necessary because single target support would be useless.

As for pets, I agree that they are a bit too strong right now, but all they need to be balanced is for pet stats to be affected by amulet choice. They would be absolutely fine then.

I have to say, I haven’t played much of the new map yet, but this episode is really good. The big forest is absolutely beautiful and I love the kodan/quaggan area. I still have no idea what the events on the map are so I can’t comment on that yet.

As for the story, I LOVED the first instance when you get to train Aurene in tarir. It just feel amazing to me. I really hope we get to do some more stuff like that with Aurene in the future before she is ready to fight with us. However, please, please, PLEASE stop putting open world stuff in as ‘story’ content. When I play the story I only want instances. The open world stuff just feels like a grind to get to the next instance which is usually the end of the episode unfortunately. The story itself, as with every patch, is way too short however what there actually is there is always very well done and is engaging from the start to the end of all instances, however few of these there are. There really does need be more story though, as it is pretty much the only thing I get really excited about as far as pve goes. Double the length per patch should be fine, I don’t care if we get no new map if we have story that long.

In general, I would put the patch at maybe a 7/10, which is good, but some things, like story length and how it is delivered to us really need to be improved on.

There are so many really nice places in the game that I like, but I have to say my favourite is the oasis in dry top. Especially at the farm area where you can harvest all the plants. it is one of the only places where I will actually stop for a bit and admire the scenery instead of just walking through and continue whatever I was doing.

I agree, necro goes down extremely easily. Nobody can seriously argue against that, but that does not make it a bad class. It just has to rely on support and it will be extremely effective. This does not just go for pro teams either, all good support players I see, including myself, will adjust their playstyle when there is a necro that needs support. For example, I usually go far or close at the start of games, depending where I predict the best 1v1 for me to take will be. When we have a necro and there are no Rangers/eles apart from me, I will go mid to ensure that my necro survives. It takes time to build CA at the very start of the game, but if the necro can’t survive that long I have a big water field and blast with my staff, a full condi clear and stealth with my smokes ale for the necro. Eles also have massive heals and condi clears. If the necro still manages to die, it is my fault, not their fault. That goes for any support player unless the necro is obviously making no attempt to avoid damage.

I guess what I am saying is that necro on its own without support is indeed a bad class, but necro is not intended to be played without support which is great in my opinion because it adds more depth to the game. Yes, it may be frustrating when the necro is not supported, but remember, it is your team mates mistake because necro just does not have the tools to survive on its own. It is designed to be supported.

1) Ranger
2) Mesmer
3) Rev
4) Engi
5) Guard
6) Warr
7) Necro
8) Thief
Can’t kill anything) Ele

Of course just from my experience of seeing how people generally do against different classes in ranked because I only play 1 class.

I think the new trailer looks awesome. I am particularly interested by the underwater sections because i have always enjoyed underwater scenery in this game. The kodan coming into the story looks good to me too. Can’t wait to play the new map and see where the story goes for this episode!

Condi engi is not a good build at all. It is actually very very weak. Of course, you can deal some insane condi damage, but against opponents with any condi clear, blocks or ability to dodge, you won’t be able to do much. As a condi engi, you have very little sustain and absolutely melt when focused. In ranked (most of the time with and against top tier players), we usually focus the condi engi before even the necro, because it is such an easy kill in team fights. All you have to do to beat it 1v1 is to dodge the burn from that skill that gives you burn on your next 5 attacks (forgot its name) and from pistol 4 or even just tank them then cleanse and you win because of no sustain on the engi.

I accept that condi engi can destroy inexperienced players much more than meta engi can, but that goes for any glass cannon build like fresh air ele, p/p theif or full zerker ranger, and not one of these are even close to viable.

I have to say, p/p thief is one of the very worst builds in the entire game for pvp. I mean it is really terrible because of how easy it to dodge/block/reflect all of its burst. It is such a bad build that I will actually engage a 1v2 on an enemy point if one of the enemies is a p/p thief and usually win or at least kill the thief and force the decap before he comes back.

Of course an extremely good player could do well with it as with any build which I guess is what the complaint about the build comes from, but they could play d/p instead of p/p and be 100x more effective.

I think most of the complaints about builds like this come from the fact that they are used so infrequently that most players do not even know what the skills do (myself included) so struggle against them more than they should. For example even though warr was totally awful in season 2, I almost always lost against it because I had literally no idea what it’s skills did or what I should dodge. Right now I struggle far more against something like greatsword power necro when played to max potential than I do against meta power Rev played to max potential because I seriously do not know the animations or how much damage everything does.

I group p/p theif with things like condi ranger, power mesmer or condi engi- something I rarely see and when I do see them they are free kills unless the player is very, very good. I mean like world championship level.

kdaddy.5431:

suffish.4150:

Getting 26 teams in EU alone is a huge success in my opinion! It shows that many people really are interested in playing competitively. Remember that each team has 5 players so that means that there are 130 players who are interested in competitive play which is a massive amount. This gives me a really good feeling that there will be more competition for next year’s pro events which is a good thing because it will be great to see players I regularly play against in ranked in EU in pro league and other events.

To be honest I didn’t even expect 16 teams to sign up in each region so this ToL has gone above what I expected it to and I can’t wait to watch the streams tomorrow and on Sunday. It should be amazing.

What really?

The past 2 tournaments were getting over 100+ teams and now it is 26?

Ill be honest i went and checked just now what the NA side looked like and 2 things stood out.

1- Very few ESL teams were in there.
You had Never Lucky, PZ who seem to have 2 subs maybe? and then scape goats who has 2-3 ESL players if im mistaken which isnt a great thing for the community seeing its top teams not really join in the madness.

2- OE subbing for fivegauge?
I wasnt gonna watch but i will for this, what if they dominate? What if they crash and burn with OE back? My goodness the drama that could come from that ( evil laugh inserted)

But honestly only 20 teams for NA? Ag use to get 10 full teams with 2 free agents and the ESL scene had there 10 or so teams. Not good, not good at all.

To be honest it doesn’t matter what the numbers were years ago, I am just saying it is more than I expected for now, which is a great thing.

PZ does not have 2 subs, that is their new roster because zoose and kaypud left.

OE is not subbing, chaith is no longer is abjured and zoose is the new member on abjured, I don’t know why it does not say this on the ToL website but what I say is correct.

Getting 26 teams in EU alone is a huge success in my opinion! It shows that many people really are interested in playing competitively. Remember that each team has 5 players so that means that there are 130 players who are interested in competitive play which is a massive amount. This gives me a really good feeling that there will be more competition for next year’s pro events which is a good thing because it will be great to see players I regularly play against in ranked in EU in pro league and other events.

To be honest I didn’t even expect 16 teams to sign up in each region so this ToL has gone above what I expected it to and I can’t wait to watch the streams tomorrow and on Sunday. It should be amazing.

I really like this decision. Pleas, Anet, never try to add another game mode to pvp. Conquest is what pvp in gw2 is and any future maps really should be conquest.

Skyhammer is a good map now and I am glad to see a new ranked map, although jump pads do need changing in my opinion this is a minor thing and the rest of the map is great. I am looking forward to some epic knock back plays to cause people to fall from the cannon to their death

What I am even MORE excited about though is maybe seeing skyhammer in next year’s Esports events! I can’t wait to see the best players in the game on this map to see how they would play it, plus it would allow a best of 5 to have a different map for each game which would be great for next year’s LAN events. I hope that because it is being put in ranked, it will be in competitive events because that would increase the viewers of these events even more than the events already have. The competitive scene really is growing right now and this can only help.

Hardest for me is warrior. I cannot win unless I dodge every single skull grinder (which rarely happens because I usually mess up 2 or 3) unless the warrior is bad. Even then, the regen means it take forever for me to kill even if I am not being pressured.

I do not have many problems duelling any of the other classes at all regardless of skill when I play my best just because of how strong 1v1 Druid is, but this is probably the order I would put them in.

Rev- this fight usually takes a very long time due to the amount of evades the Rev has. I CAN beat the very best revs, but only if I dodge every SotM which are hard to predict if the Rev is good. I can one shot terrible revs but good ones give me a very hard time.

Necro- this is an easy enough fight if I play it well but sometimes I get greedy and don’t give up the cap in this 1v1 which I really should do to win in the long run. Only maybe 3 necros I have played against can beat me more than maybe 1/3 of the time but I still find this 1v1 difficult if the player is very good.

Mesmer- I can beat every Mesmer in the game if I play this matchup right but it is extremely punishing if I mess up because of moa and shatters. I should never lose this if I use my dodges right but that is not always the case. I duel mesmers regularly in private arenas because I enjoy the matchup and to improve my ability in it.

Engi/Druid/Ele- Not much to say about these. I cannot die to any of them and I cannot kill any of them unless the player is truly terrible. Stalemate matchups.

Thief- Very easy matchup. I can die if I have 0 defensive cooldowns and theif interrupts perfectly but more often than not I one shot thieves with my pet burst. If the theif is very good they can make the fight last a while but they always lose.

Guardian- the easiest fight of them all. I can do literally whatever I like here and still kill the guard no matter what their skill level is. Yes, the fight takes time but the risk of me dying is zero and unless the guard runs a bunker build they will die unless they disengage.

I only think this would be good if healing healed the death shroud itself and not the health outside of it. Doing that would make it way too easy for necros to just go down to low health, use shroud and get back to 100% thanks to a Druid/ele. It would also take some skill away from support classes because they would not have to time their heals correctly. Allowing it to increase the HP of death shroud itself is a great idea though.

TheDevice.2751:

suffish.4150:

TheDevice.2751:

suffish.4150:

TheDevice.2751:

I do not believe that certain amulets are OP on certain classes and not on others…

Well. If you disregard facts then sure.

I am not disregarding facts. There is no amulet in the game right now that is OP on any class. Strong, yes, but not OP. Balance is fairly good right now and the thing that makes certain classes slightly stronger than others is certainly not amulet choice.

Additionally, removing amulets for certain classes is basically the same as removing them from the game- if Menders was removed from Druid and ele, other classes would not start using that amulet. It would just become an unused amulet (other than occasionally for engi) which is no better than removing it from the game in my opinion.

WHY IS ANYONE REMOVING AMULETS?

IM only talking about bringing some amulets back but only for certain classes. How is this so hard to explain id;lkjsdlkjg;lkjg

I admit that I did not read the post when you said you were talking about adding amulets, and I apologise for that. However, I still do not believe it is a good idea. For example if merc amulet was added but only for classes that were not too strong with it previously, it would just be an unused amulet because the classes it would be added for will already have better amulet choices. Of course it would open up more options for people to run different builds, but they would all be useless builds compared to the meta so it doesn’t really matter.

Adding amulets that have already been removed is good as long as classes are balanced to not be too strong with these amulets, but it must be for every class. I can just never get on board with the idea with certain amulets for certain classes becaus they will either make the class too strong again or just never be used.

Now i have to apologize because this actually doesn’t make sense. It really doesn’t. Anyone reading this would know this isn’t true. It just isn’kittens obviously not true. The logic isn’t there. Like what you’re actually saying is that since celestial amulet was too strong on an engineer or ele, that it was too strong on a necromancer. This is blatantly untrue.

You’re saying either some amulets are either going to be too strong or useless and I don’t know how or where you got this assessment. I really don’t know it just makes zero sense at all. You must know in your heart of hearts that this doesn’t make sense.

Even in the sense that they might not get used… Its still promoting build diversity. Its still opening up the possibilities.

Just a second ago you were complaining about build diversity now you’re an advocate for less build diversity. You are against build diversity now?

What I am saying is that amulets were removed because they were too strong on certain classes, but that does not mean that they were too strong on everything like you seem to think I said. The amulets that were removed were indeed OP on some classes, but they were still useless on the classes that did not use them because of 0 build diversity. This means that without first balancing the classes that used these amulets so they could use them again without being too strong, adding them would cause them to be OP again BUT adding them just for classes that did not sue them in the meta will not really do anything because they would never use the amulets due to there being much better alternatives. Sure, it helps with build diversity in terms of giving more choice, but it dos not help with build diversity in terms of making more build viable. This is why instead of adding amulets just for classes that would not be OP with them, Anet should just add the amulets back in the game for everyone after altering skills and traits so it would not make certain classes too strong again.

Hope this makes sense.

TheDevice.2751:

suffish.4150:

TheDevice.2751:

I do not believe that certain amulets are OP on certain classes and not on others…

Well. If you disregard facts then sure.

I am not disregarding facts. There is no amulet in the game right now that is OP on any class. Strong, yes, but not OP. Balance is fairly good right now and the thing that makes certain classes slightly stronger than others is certainly not amulet choice.

Additionally, removing amulets for certain classes is basically the same as removing them from the game- if Menders was removed from Druid and ele, other classes would not start using that amulet. It would just become an unused amulet (other than occasionally for engi) which is no better than removing it from the game in my opinion.

WHY IS ANYONE REMOVING AMULETS?

IM only talking about bringing some amulets back but only for certain classes. How is this so hard to explain id;lkjsdlkjg;lkjg

I admit that I did not read the post when you said you were talking about adding amulets, and I apologise for that. However, I still do not believe it is a good idea. For example if merc amulet was added but only for classes that were not too strong with it previously, it would just be an unused amulet because the classes it would be added for will already have better amulet choices. Of course it would open up more options for people to run different builds, but they would all be useless builds compared to the meta so it doesn’t really matter.

Adding amulets that have already been removed is good as long as classes are balanced to not be too strong with these amulets, but it must be for every class. I can just never get on board with the idea with certain amulets for certain classes becaus they will either make the class too strong again or just never be used.

TheDevice.2751:

I do not believe that certain amulets are OP on certain classes and not on others…

Well. If you disregard facts then sure.

I am not disregarding facts. There is no amulet in the game right now that is OP on any class. Strong, yes, but not OP. Balance is fairly good right now and the thing that makes certain classes slightly stronger than others is certainly not amulet choice.

Additionally, removing amulets for certain classes is basically the same as removing them from the game- if Menders was removed from Druid and ele, other classes would not start using that amulet. It would just become an unused amulet (other than occasionally for engi) which is no better than removing it from the game in my opinion.

I do not think that this is a good idea because it basically just means removing the amulet that each class uses in the meta, which in my opinion is no better than just removing amulets for all classes. Also, it will not really change anything because every class will just go to the next best amulet for them and, because most classes would have had their best amulet removed, it would not really affect balance.

I do not believe that certain amulets are OP on certain classes and not on others, it is just that different classes need different stats so they are bound to have amulets that work better on them than on other classes. This does not make the amulets that are used overpowered. I think Anet needs to stop removing amulets now, even for just some professions. Every single amulet we have now is perfectly balanced and balance should be focused on skills and traits rather than amulet choice. Adding amulets is fine but removing them from now on is just Unnecessary.

The only way you can get better is to practice in this game. Not only playing a lot of games, but also doing this while trying as hard as you can to learn. Before pvp leagues started, I had about 3.5k games played but I was total trash at pvp because I never played seriously. However now I have almost 7k games played and I am 100x better than in season 1. This is because I actually try my hardest every single game. OP, it is very difficult to improve and games an extremely long time, but as long as you put in the effort, you will get better eventually. Even I would insta die to anything if I played anything other than ranger right now so this proves it really is about how much time you invest to your class as long as you are playing seriously.

Keep playing and you will have a ‘I understand this class now’ moment after about 50 games, after which your play will improve significantly and after that it really is all about practice. It takes thousands of games to get near pro level just on one class so don’t expect to be good very soon but you definitely will get there, OP.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

I actually like most tight matches, it is realy nice to look at and I always cheer on the team with unique compositions. So that time when Orange Logo didn’t even play with comms against was it 55? Don’t remember, but they used like DH when it was on the bottom of all classes I remember.

Best way to keep this topic healthy is to ignore the trolls and the haters. A good topic OP.

It was against more guns and car crashed when they played without comm (they played twice that week). And yeah close matches I always enjoy, especially when there is a comeback, but only when my favourite team wins (for example I could never give DNL vs. R55 game 4 at worlds as a good moment because I am still annoyed about the result of that game, lol) however they are always exciting to watch live, regardless of result.

As for unique comps, I do agree with you. One moment I can think of is when GnR rank 2 wars and a thief against rank 55 back in season 1 when those 2 classes were total trash. I am unsure about if that was a joke comp or not, but I doubt it was considering they changed for game 2. They lost 500-0 but whatever, that doesn’t matter. I also did like how NL ran staff thief in worlds qualifiers and managed to beat PZ with it. Interesting compositions are always good to see, even better when they manage to do well.

Vicariuz.1605:

are there any vods for these matches?

Yes, every match from week 1 in season 1 is on both YouTube and twitch right now.

CptCuddles.8912:

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

Maybe if you actually learned how to play the game instead of crying about how everything is overpowered, you might actually realize that there is a lot more depth to the game than you’re even cognizant of.

Such depth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l56_6ilaY_k

Also, not sure I would assign you as an advocate for skill considering your latest world championship performance.

I don’t understand why people think this video shows no skill gameplay. If pvp was just spamming skills, then this would NEVER happen. This shows that there is an optimal way to use skills in that situation and both revs, because they are the best 2 in the world in my opinion, both know exactly what to do. Would some random Rev in ranked do that? No, they would use their skills in a different, less effective way. That video shows the exact opposite of gameplay with no depth and I honestly do not understand why people do not seem to think that.

Also, this was supposed to be a positive thread about the moments in competitive events that people have enjoyed and looking forward to what may happen next season, so can I ask everyone to please stay on topic because it really is sad to see all this negativity in the thread I created.

Hi everyone, with the world championship a few weeks behind us and the announcement for next year’s ESL events surely coming pretty soon, I thought it would be a great time to find out the moments in pro league/world championship that really stood out to people and made them enjoy watching the events. Personally, I find it extremely hard to choose only a few, because the has just been so many hype matches and awesome plays. But I took a while to think about all that has happened this year and have decided that the following are my own favourite moments:

NUMBER 1: vM vs. Astral season 1 finals, game 2.
Without a doubt, that game on temple in the season one finals was the most exciting gw2 esports game I have ever seen. I am sure that when the score was like 400-220 or whatever it was to astral, not a single person would have thought vermillion had any chance, myself included. However, what followed that was one of the most amazing comebacks I have ever seen, seriously the feeling I got when the camera switched from a fight on the temple node to alkore channelling tranquility was amazing and the commentating made it even better.

NUMBER 2: Rank 55 vs. Astral, season 2 finals, game 1.
This was another amazing moment and awesome comeback. Astral started the game by taking kill after kill on rank 55 and built up over 150 point lead. I really did think that Astral had improved so much and rank 55 just couldn’t even compete with them any more at that point but they managed to come back from what looked like certain defeat and made some pretty amazing plays including one awesome res from zan to rescue a losing fight not long before they went for Lord. When they did go for the Lord, I thought it was game over, but astral did an amazing job to get back and revive their Lord and even though it did go down eventually, it added to what was an extremely exciting game, I seriously had no idea who would win until the Lord was stomped.

NUMBER 3: PZ vs. Astral, season 2 week 7, game 3,
This was both a close, great to watch match and a major turning point in the competitive scene. I never thought I would see astral lose to another NA team again, but PZ did a fantastic job to beat them on temple to make it 1-1 and put in another incredible performance to take the series against them (it turned out second seed would have been better in the finals but that was irrelevant at that point). All the way through the match there was never a big point gap between the teams and PZ did a fantastic job to hold on to their lead and secure and amazing win that made the NA scene a lot more interesting, at least for me.

I would love to choose more but that would just turn this into an unbelievably long post. I can’t wait to hear what you all enjoyed and also for the announcement of next year’s pro events.

I have to say, I really don’t understand the complaining about DH at all. They are not OP at all and actually need a buff, not a nerf, to be competitive at pro level (which is what the game should be balance around in my opinion) because it is hardly ever used at the moment. I also have to say the class stacking is not a problem either. If I see 3+ guards in the enemy team I feel pretty confident that we are going to win because it really is not a good composition at all. Guard is fairly easy to play compared to thief, Rev or mes for example but when things are played to their maximum potential or close to it, guard is not brilliant (it’s good, but not fantastic) so I really would not appreciate a guard nerf next patch.

Things like Druid are in need of much more of a nerf than guard is in my honest opinion.

I wouldn’t mind a forfeit button, but it can only give up the game if all of the 5 players agree to it (which I would never do so I suppose it wouldn’t affect me). However, if one is introduced it would cause the players who have already voted to give up to rage at that one player who refuses to quit. That is the reason why I don’t believe Anet would ever add something like this, but the idea itself is not bad, the way people would act if it was introduced is bad however

Started sapphire, reached legendary x8 (number 4 on leaderboard in EU).
Games played: 557
Games won: 340
Longest win streak: About 13 games.
Longest loss streak: About 5 games.
100% of my games played on ranger.

What is forced 50% win rate?

Of course I don’t play ele but I really don’t think it needs a buff. The support build, while not as good as it used to be, still gives out great healing and survives 1v2 very well. Yes, if you just use all of your cooldowns immediately like some players do you will die very fast but if you play well, you will survive extremely well. It may be not as useful in ranked/unranked as it is in ESL because people generally just run away from your support unless they are a good, experienced player (something I also know from playing ranger, lol) but if played well and your teammates allow you to heal them at the right time, ele is very strong.

What does need a buff however are the power builds because they are just total trash right now and you put yourself at a disadvantage by playing one. I know that if you are good compared to your enemies you will still be very effective, but that fact is that against equally skilled players you will be useless. Ele does need more build diversity (along with every other class) but the current meta heal build is fine as it is in my opinion.

I have played over 6.5k games and have never seen a single bot. What I have seen however are terrible players. I mean truly awful and behaving as you described, OP (just facetanking absolutely everything, not even moving when standing on point, doing nothing but auto attacking and all kinds of things like that). I can tell you with 99.9% certainly that what you have encountered are not bots, but truly awful players. If you play more or play in ranked legendary division you will not get any of these players (yes you get players that are pretty bad but not absolutely useless) so it is just a matter of time before you won’t see any of these players if you plan to play seriously in the future.

To be honest I think res power is fines it is. Sure engi and druid have a lot of res power, but they have to use a lot of cooldowns to secure the res which leaves them vulnerable to focus after getting the res (especially Druid which will be caught with no stability or signets if they used them all for the res). The problem is that the team usually keeps focusing the target that went down when they should be focusing the player that just used a lot of cooldowns on the revive, which if enough cleave was used, they would have had to.

I would like a title for reaching legendary in all 4 seasons and maybe also a title that can actually get taken away from your account for reaching legendary in every season that has happened up to that point. In 2-3 years time that would be a pretty epic title to have. Having 4 different titles that all mean pretty much the same thing that you can only display one at a time is not a great idea compared to one exclusive title.

Something I wish I knew when I started pvp is that it is more often than not a good idea to go for the far point at some time in the game. When I started, I was always told that the split was 1-4-0 and that nobody should ever go far. I see people saying this at low level (unranked) and I believe it really does limit progress.

Another thing is that it is always better to leave a fight and survive rather than just die on point. I always used to die on point, thinking that the extra time my team owns the cap is better than me moving somewhere else when in reality the only time you should choose to die on point is if you are certain that you will die anyway and want to delay the cap for a bit longer or to stop yourself from being bled out for too long.

I can’t say that I win very many 1v2s, but I do win a few in unranked, mainly because I am against very bad players and VERY occasionally I win one in ranked, which I actually did today.

For me to win a 1v2 (I play druid), I have to be against the right combination of classes, for example with the one I won today I was against thief and necro which is probably the best combination of classes I can face 1v2 because I can just wear down the necro and interrupt his stuff while the thief is trying to kill me unsuccessfully because I dodge everything with s/d. Other good class combinations to face are theif and guard, Rev and necro, Rev and guard. This is because I can focus down the tankier of the 2 classes over time and then deny the other one the revive with my burst (bristleback f2 on the downed player is enough to buy enough time for a safe stomp). If you focus the thief first for example, he will just get the res and then you will probably be forced away from the fight. This goes for any class trying to win a 1v2- you have to make sure you can convert the first down state you get.

Overall, winning 1v2s comes down to practice and knowing which classes you can take in a 1v2. I get more practice than most in 1v2s because of the class I play and I suppose the same would go for engineers. I must say though, against equally skilled players these fights are not winnable so it is a sign of an uneven match more often than not. Feels great when you pull off a 1v2 though.

Hope this helped.

As someone who plays exclusively Druid in pvp, I do think it needs a pretty big nerf. I regularly win 1v2s in unranked provided that I am against guards/thieves/revs. I don’t mean stalemate, I mean actually win those 1v2s. I know that that isn’t a great way of showing how OP Druid is because I am a far better player than randoms in unranked, but it does show the main issue with Druid in my opinion- it has both great sustain and great damage.

The sustain of Druid is not too strong in itself, and neither is the damage. However, when both are together, it just becomes a ridiculously strong class. I think Anet needs to make their mind up about what they want Druid to be because the sustain or damage needs to be nerfed, not both because that could make the class useless if it is nerfed too much.

The suggestion I would make is to have Druid as a bunker support class because that seems to be what it is themed around so I would reduce damage on staff AA quite a bit and celestial avatar 5 slightly and also make the damage of pets scale with the amulet the Druid chooses. This would nerf bunker Druid but at the same time not hurt dps Druid too much. The alternative would be to reduce healing on CA skills but I don’t think that would fit the theme of how the class is supposed to be played. I think these changes are all that is needed to balance the class.

Congrats to denial! I think it was a great tournament and was very exciting to watch. The thing that stood out to me was whenever someone died in a fight (usually the necro) there would almost always be a portal to the home point that the 4 remaining members took to regroup. That is a very different playstyle that I really didn’t expect.

While there were no really hype games (rank 55 vs. Denial game 4 was good but if you looked at the time with about 1 minute left you would have known that it was impossible for 55 to win) a lot of them were fairly close and 3/5 matches involved teams taking games off each other which is great because it shows that they are all around a similar skill level.

Can’t wait to see what events there will be next year!

I think it is going to be an awesome tournament. I predict that TCG Will beat never lucky 3-0 but it will not be total annihilation like rank 55 vs. PZ in the season 1 finals. I predict NL will reach 400 points in 1 game but they won’t take a game off TCG.

As for PZ against vM, I suppose most people think vM will win but I don’t think so. I predict that PZ will win 3-1. Vermillion I don’t think have been playing as much as other teams recently (at least from what I have seen) and they didn’t even challenge rank 55 in any of the games they played against them in the qualifiers and PZ are a very skilled team so I believe they will pick up their first series win at LAN here.

Rank 55 vs. TCG in the semi finals will be the series of the tournament. It will be truly epic with every game going to the last moments just like rank 55 vs. Astral in the season 2 finals. Because the meta favours rank 55 over TCG right now, especially with the engi/necro duo I think zan/texbi will be stronger than drazeh/denshee (it wouldn’t make sense for the duo to be anyone else on TCG) and rank 55 will take an awesome series 3-2.

Astral against PZ in the other semi final will be pretty good but the meta again favours astral over PZ so I don’t think their performance against astral will be as good as when they beat them in pro league but they will not lose 3-0. PZ have improved too much for that. Astral win 3-1 in my opinion.

Then we have the final as astral vs. Rank 55. There is no doubt that this will be an amazing series just like it was in the season 2 finals. They are extremely even teams when you look at the compositions they will likely be running. Astral will probably not run a Mesmer so rank 55 may be able to gain an advantage with superior rotational play with portal plays and moas. Astral will probably run a guard though so this will limit the 1v1s that the Mesmer can take. This series has potential to be just as good as the one against TCG and I think rank 55 will win this 3-2, taking their second win in 3 finals events this year.

I am SO HYPED for the finals and can’t wait to see what will happen, as you can probably tell with me writing such a long post about the finals, lol.

Druid is counter to a dragonhunter. There is not a single guardian in the game that have given me problems in a 1v1 so far and I don’t think one is capable of doing so because Druid is just such a hard counter for guard. Druid just has too much sustain to be pressured by DH traps and other damage and it has enough pressure to wears down the DH over time. You will never burst the guard in 1 second but there is no doubt that you will win the fight eventually even if the guard is better than you are.

As someone who has over 2,000 games on druid, many of which against pro players:

Your role as a Druid is to mainly take 1v1 fights and 2v2s on side points. It is the strongest 1v1 class in the game and the only class that can really beat you if you play well is warrior so you should take advantage of that by taking as many 1v1s as you can on neutral points/your points. I would not recommend taking a 1v1 on an enemy point unless you are running longbow because you can’t kill very quickly or even decap before someone could come in to +1 the fight and force you away.

If smaller fights are not possible to take, then you should go into the big teamfight. Don’t stand in the middle of the fight unless you have stability because you are extremely vulnerable to cc. In addition, almost all your support (and damage if you run longbow) is ranged so there is no real reason to take unnecessary damage unless you need to revive, which I would only do with stability up (and preferably signet of stone too) It is all about responding quickly to focus and providing support and dps when in big fights.

It is important to realise that Druid is not a pure support/bunker like ele was. It also has great single target dps and huge 1v1 potential so you shouldn’t just be looking for people to support if there is a decap/1v1 you can go for.

As for how to use each skill, you must remember to only use your signets if you are 100% sure you will die if you don’t. Their job is to save you from otherwise fatal situations, not just take a bit of damage away from you. I run the daze glyph over protect me because it is great for interrupting stomps and revives and has no cast time so you can use it when you are stomping/reviving. In addition, it is good for additional condi removal when in celestial form. Use your elite not for the might it gives but rather in a defensive way to make sure you don’t get your heals interrupted when low on health. If your are in a fight you are winning you can use it to finish off kills and for safe stomps though. Swap pets as much as you can to make sure they land their burst as much as possible and to give as much quickness to yourself as you can.

Hope this helped

I wasn’t going to post today, but when I saw this thread I knew that I had to because I am just so afraid that Anet might listen to this suggestion for ending esports events right now.

The esports events are my absolute favourite thing in gw2 right now and I am more excited for them than I ever am for living world, heart of thorns or any other ingame content. Watching the events gives me so much more enjoyment than anything ingame ever could. If they stopped then I would just stop enjoying gw2 because I wouldn’t be able to get the annoyance and anger of esports events ending out of my head. Of course I would still play but I wouldn’t enjoy it. I accept that not many people have this exact view but I do know that a lot of people really do enjoy the esports events and I like having conversations with them about what is going to happen in upcoming events.

If competitive events ended then a lot of high level players would leave the game because they would just have nothing to do other than endlessly farm players much worse than them in ranked, even in legendary division and even if divisions become skill based, because they are just too much better than non-pro league players. It’s good for me I suppose because if they all left I would be one of the best players, lol, but pro players are important to have in game and in esports events. In addition, If these players leave then the competitive scene would have no chance of ever starting up again after it had been stopped, which is terrible.

Another thing is that having esports does not harm the game at all, Anet have said it is from the marketing budget and the money can’t go towards new content. Because of this, having esports does not mean anything bad for people who don’t enjoy it and people like me who absolutely love it can watch it without having to worry than Anet is going to listen to people complaining about it and end these events which I like so much. Even if having pro league meant that we got less or even half the content we would without it, I would still be supporting it this strongly.

Please don’t stop the esports events!

Something really needs to be done about queue times. In legendary x2 it is almost impossible for me to get a game at all even at prime time. With queue times averaging about 40 minutes, most of my ‘play time’ consists of me standing around in a queue doing nothing. There is nothing I want to do in pve right now either because I have got almost every achievement and done every bit of content multiple times. Right now I can’t get more than 4 games per day even when queue times are better than average for me even though I play at least 4 hours every day and I like to play 15-20 per day in lower divisions.

Something about matchmaking needs to be changed in legendary division- maybe just match anyone in legendary against anyone else in legendary without even considering pips or MMR because right now even the lowest quality matches ever are better than no matches at all.

Fivedawgs.4267:

Well, we have a leaderboard in legendary. I am assuming those folks are the best players. And also there is no title this season ( I might be wrong though). And the pup system is a lot better than a leaderboard imo for know reasons.

I like the idea of the legendary leaderboard but it is still just like the divisions themselves- nothing to do with skill. I am number 5 on the leaderboard (tied for 1st but 5th person down) and I am not even close to being good enough to win the world championship, which is what being the 5th best would imply. It all comes down to who can play the most- the best players are lower down in legendary division than me because I play more than them, not because I am better than them. That is the problem.

I think the pip system should stay as the way for casual players to get rewarded and feel a sense of progression in pvp but there should also be a truly skill based leaderboard that is reset at the end of every season with the top players getting exclusive rewards and titles that there is no other way to obtain.
Divisions really do not have to be skill based for competitive players to have motivation to play, but there does have to be SOME way for the very best to get things that nobody else can get and a leaderboard (not based on pips) is a great way to do that in my opinion.

I agree that MMR needs to be visible to everyone. I really am curious about where I am in relation to other players I usually get in teams with players who I know are very good and I can beat a lot of these people 1v1 too so I would want to see exactly how good I am compared to others I see in legendary. MMR being visible would encourage a lot a players to improve as well.

Last night in HotM, I was having a conversation with some other players about MMR being visible (it’s amazing what you can talk about when in a 1hour long queue, lol) and we all agreed that it should be made visible and have unique rewards for top 1, 25, 50, 100, 250 like with the guild challenger league when a season finishes because it would add prestige to being the very best. I would love to see a title and a unique skin for only the number 1 on the leaderboard, and different but less prestigious rewards for the lower down ranks. Maybe it would also encourage players to find a group of others to play with and form a team to get the rewards and possibly even help the esports scene grow!

I really don’t like the idea of this, to be honest I think more of your ingame achievements should be shown next to your name, not less. For example I would love my AP to be shown next to my name. If nobody can see what you have achieved, why even bother doing it? In my opinion, Anet needs to stop worrying about ‘toxicity’ between players and allow many of a player’s achievements in game to be seen by others. It would certainly encourage me to do more. The only reason I even started playing pvp when leagues began is because of the symbol next to my name and the AP it gave.

I do understand why you would want to hide it but it shouldn’t make you feel pressured to get to legendary. There are loads of Amber/emerald/sapphire players and every good player know that divisions have absolutely nothing to do with skill. no one is going to say anything or even think anything about you when they see you and about 30 others standing around you with the same amber division symbol next to their name other than that you haven’t played much this season. You get matched with people of your division anyway so there is no problem there either.

OP, can I ask what exactly it is that makes you feel ‘pressured’ to reach higher divisions because I can’t see a reason for it.

Great video! I am on it a few times on your team and I am shown on camera once (sorry, I am just really happy when I see myself in videos). I really liked it when you kited onto the wooden structure between keep and mine on forest, I didn’t even know that was possible and you did it very well. I will definitely be using that spot from now on when I am in the right situation. Discovering new spots for kiting is one of the best parts of pvp in my opinion, just like a while ago I found out that it was possible to jump to the top of the big tall stones next to chieftain and I used it to get away from a 2v1 one time.

I might actually try playing this power ranger build you use because it is not too different to what I play right now (staff/longbow) when it comes to how burst damage is dealt and it looks like a lot of fun.

Nice video, I really enjoyed watching it. It’s good to see skilled players being able to play non-meta builds effectively in high tier ranked. I am on the video twice, most notably on the very last clip which shows me playing like an absolute noob and getting wrecked by you, lol (why do I never seem to play well on these videos?) I am pretty sure I have seen you a lot in ranked and you play power ranger very well, as shown in the video.

Even though I only solo queue and this would only help me progress in leagues, I just can’t support this idea. I really don’t understand why people believe they are at a disadvantage if they are against a premade because most of the time they are not using anything other than what the game itself allows to organise themselves. My win rate against 4-5 man premades is pretty much the same as it is against full solo queue teams (about 55%). Yes, it may feel annoying if you get stomped by a premade 500-20, but did that happen BECAUSE they were a premade? No, it happened because they were better players than your team. In addition, adding the feature you suggest would only cause leagues to be even easier to grind up to legendary than they are now which is obviously not what Anet wanted for leagues.

Queue times certainly could be better, but from my experience they are not terrible right now. I am tier 4 in legendary division and my queue times are usually about 10 minutes, sometimes less and very rarely much more than that. I see people complaining about 5 minute queues in HotM but in my opinion a 10 minute queue really isn’t that bad. From this point though, the waiting around will only decrease as more people get to legendary and beyond.

I do not think it is an OP feature of the skill that it cancels rampage/Celestial/shroud because it can be dodged/blocked. If you see the continuum split on the ground you should be ready to dodge a moa in any second. If you don’t notice the continuum split/fail to dodge the moa then it is your own fault that you get hit by it. With engineer moa, it is not really possible to dodge unless you predict it and get lucky but engineer just doesn’t have the damage to burst you down in the 3 seconds of moa they have so if you die because of engi moa, you were probably going to lose anyway, just not quite as quickly as you do when you get moa’d.

I have lost several 1v1s because of Mesmer moa cancelling my celestial avatar that I otherwise would have won, but does that make me think the skill is OP? Not at all. What it means is that I have to start paying more attention and learn to dodge a skill with a very obvious animation.

If a nerf absolutely has to be made I would suggest that it still cancels your special forms, but puts you back into them when the moa expires so you still get the chance to get at least some benefit from them however I do not think a nerf is needed at all.

Well I don’t remember a patch at all yesterday so I think I will not be affected (I say ‘I think’ because I could be being an absolute idiot and forgetting about an update, lol). This is still pretty annoying though because I really need to get to legendary division today because I have been playing 5+ hours of just ranked pvp each day recently and I am still stuck 9 pips away and if I don’t get to play today I will be very, very upset. There are so many things I have to get done every day in pve as well and to miss out on them would just be awful, especially since I have no life and there is pretty much nothing I enjoy doing other than playing this game.

I do appreciate how Anet has told us exactly what is being done and why rather than just shutting down the servers for a bit without us knowing. I don’t play other games so I don’t know if this is the way it is always dealt with but I think it is good that they are telling us. Hopefully the servers will be up soon (or now!).