Guild Wars 2

I agree with pretty much everything Helseth said and I also want nothing more than to see the esports scene succeed. The esports events are the most important thing in the entire game for me and I would sacrifice any other aspect of the game to be able to watch them. I am also very disappointed that so many people seem to openly dislike the idea of an esports scene or (even worse in my opinion) just not care about it. If people just do not care that is more harmful than people actually having an opinion of some sort, however negative.

I totally agree that to encourage a successful esports scene, there needs to be exclusive rewards for only the best players. This will encourage people to actually try to improve because right now so many people just have no interest in improving at all which is disappointing to me. The most important thing he said on this subject is that not everyone should be able to get everything. Anet really need to stop this belief that everybody deserves everything because they just don’t. If they want to get something they should have to put work in and improve to the point where they can get it. A great example of this is legendary division. I was absolute trash in season one. Absolute trash. But I still got legendary division which I knew I didn’t deserve. It is the same with games in ranked I play now when I know I played badly, In these games I am actually happy when I lose and disappointed when I win because I know I didn’t deserve it. This is the sort of mentality players need to have if this game is going to become more competitive.

I also agree with his ideas of how casting could be improved such as focusing on one or two players in the fights but there is one thing that I didn’t agree with and I really don’t understand why so many people are asking for it: naming the individual skills and how they were used all the time. The reason I don’t want this while games are going on is because it would just take away from the hype- I don’t want to hear casters saying something like ‘X took down Y with a combo of precision strike, surge of the mists and legend swap which will allow team Z to win the fight’; I want to hear ‘wow that was a massive burst from X! It absolutely destroys Y! Team Z could be able to get control of the map if they can finish off this fight quickly!’. There is a time and place for analysis like this and they have already found it- after the game has done and they are looking back on key moments.

Overall though, I think it was a fantastic video and I hope it encourages Anet to improve the esports scene and not listen to the people saying they don’t care about it becaus many people, including me, really do.

I have to say that I really don’t understand why so many people are claiming dragon-hunter is OP. I think they are in a decent place right now, maybe they need a very small buff, maybe not. Yes, I play druid which I know counters DH but I can kill pro league guardians 1v1 fairly easily without really feeling pressured a lot of the time which proves that it is not OP, otherwise I would not win those fights or even be able to sustain them for too long.

In the world championship I highly doubt that we will not see any more than 2 guardians and we may only see 1 out of 6 teams. If it was OP they would all be running it, like they are all going to be running a rev.

Yes, guards can insta-kill you with traps, like they have done to me a couple of times this season. However, this only happens if you are not paying attention. If you see traps on the ground, dodge immediately. If you don’t, I have to say that it is your own fault. Almost anything can kill you in seconds if you are not paying attention so the problem is not exclusive to guards either. I can burst you down in 2 seconds on my ranger if you don’t do anything to react so guard should be kept how it is right now in my opinion.

I have been on a season 2 ranked pvp highlights video on YouTube that was posted here. It showed me losing a 1v1 to another ranger without dealing any significant damage which I would never let happen any more!

I have been on Rom’s stream once that I know of when he was playing warrior and he destroyed me every time we fought, lol. This was a while ago however.

I have been on Helseth’s stream quite a lot that I know of. Just yesterday I was on his stream and it showed me beating him in a 1v1 twice in the same game. He was playing mesmer as well and I was on ranger. I would have loved to see how he reacted because that was the first time I know of that I was playing my best on someone’s stream.

Ranger:
-Beats necro very easily
-Stalemates Ele
-Should beat Mesmer but it is a fairly close matchup
-Stalemates engi
-Stalemates other Rangers
-Destroys thief
-Beats Rev
-Beats guard without too much trouble
-Loses to warrior unless you are very good at dodging skull grinders.

This is what my experience has been facing pro league and other good players of all classes since the balance patch. I can’t speak for other classes because I only play them for achievements and when I do, I lose to everybody but that is clearly a learn to play issue, lol.

About an hour ago I was in a game of ranked arena in legacy of the foefire. We were losing when a rev announced that he was going afk because he thought our thief was a bad player. After the score had reached about 400-50 to the enemy team I jokingly said in chat that I liked it when people went afk and I think it helps the community improve (I didn’t use any insults of any kind, I just said it as a joke, trying to be funny) and I sent the guy who went afk 10 gold and said it was his reward. this is what I do with everyone who rage whispers me or otherwise is angry with me in game. I just find it funny to give gold to people who are annoyed at me. Next game I was with the same person and he stayed afk all game, demanding that I sent him another 10 gold, which I did not do although he told everyone I gave him gold the last game.

Until someone said in team chat, the thought of this being match manipulation never even crossed my mind, I just thought I was having a bit of fun. Concerned that I had broken the rules, I said what had happened in heart of the mists and asked if what I did was match manipulation and one person said that it was. I have already said that I won’t do this again to afk people but I want a definite answer if what I did was match manipulation or not (not that I am going to do this again even if it isn’t, just to avoid confusion).

I am going to make myself very clear here, I did NOT pay the person to afk. He was already afk and the game was already lost when I sent him the gold. The only reason I sent him anything at all was as a little joke and because I think it is funny. I would not support anyone going afk under any circumstances and I have said this in previous forum posts as well.

Was what I did match manipulation or not?

P.S. I am extremely scared of being banned for accidentally breaking the rules so that is what made me feel like I had to post this because I want to make it clear to everyone that I would never intend to break any of this game’s rules.

The best way to improve as a player is to take as many 1v1s as you can against players who you know are better than you and who will beat you. Fighting players who you beat does not really teach you anything. Yes, in the end you will lose but you will find that the more you do this, the longer you survive and eventually you will be able to beat that player. When you take these 1v1s, you should watch your opponents closely and look for their important animations. For example it is very important to dodge skills like both revenant elites, chill to the bone and reaper shroud 5, warrior longbow 5, skull grinder and a few more. If you fail to dodge skills like this you will not win a 1v1 against pro league players and other highly skilled people. Managing dodges and defensive cooldowns is one of the most important parts of fighting. It takes many games to learn to dodge important skills but when you do become able to, you will feel much stronger as a player.

This is what I did and I have gone from being absolutely terrible at the start of season 1 to a good player who can 1v1 anyone and knows where to go and what to do most of the time. In the past I always tried to take 1v1s against pro Rangers (I play ranger) and when I started doing this I always died or was forced off the node but now I can hold the cap forever against any ranger and I sometimes even win the fight against top-level pro league Rangers so I suggest that you also do this, OP.

Season 4 looks great from what I have seen so far. I just reached sapphire tier 3 after playing 20 games today (solo queue) and most of them were close and fun. I am seeing a lot of pro players on my team and against me as well as many good players who I fought in legendary last season so it is great to be fighting players who made it to high legendary last season because before this season, sapphire and Ruby basically consisted of me absolutely destroying almost everyone in 1v1s and winning games very easily which is both not fun and does not make me improve as a player. I think season 1 style matchmaking is a step in the right direction.

I am not sure I like the idea of sacrificing what little prestige there was in divisions for more balanced matches. The matches last season really were not bad, I genuinely couldn’t tell a difference if I played 50 matches each with unranked, s1,s2 and s3 matchmaking.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really mind what changes because I know I am going to get to legendary no matter what the matchmaking is (targeting prestige 6+ this time!) but I do think that the focus should be on making it as difficult as possible to get to legendary division and actually stopping casual players getting all the rewards (every single season you could reach legendary by grinding up to now). There needs to be valuable rewards that only the very best players can get for them to be motivated to still play. Yes, I am one of the players that would get these rewards, but if I wasn’t I would still support the idea of rewards only for the best players. It would encourage players to actually try to get better because the way most of the game is now (everyone can get everything) is not really the way I want it.

With that said however, I am very excited to play season 4 later today and see how the changes affect me and to get my last 4 profession achievements. I do think the focus for the future should be adding exclusive rewards and titles for only the best players (maybe a title and armour set for reaching prestige 5, title and weapon set for prestige 10 and another title and backpack skin for finishing a season at number 1 on the legendary leaderboard).

Jourdelune.7456:

Thank you guyz, really appreciated.

@suffish or others:

Did you see major differences in the season 3 meta build versus what people were running?

Since tempest seems not there anymore, what class did defensive supportive rotations more than the other?

On the teams that did run an ele, it was still the class giving the most support and rotating into fights their team was losing to heal their team back up.

For those not running an ele, Druid was used as the main heal support class but engi was the one that was always going for revives and getting their team back up when downed. This was especially important when with a necro. From what I have seen, engi+necro will be rotating together and taking 2v2s a lot.

The qualifiers for EU ran these compositions:

Rank 55:
Engi-necro-rev-ranger-mesmer

Vermillion:
Engi-necro-rev-ranger-mesmer

TCG:
Ele-ranger-mesmer-warr-rev

The qualifiers from NA ran these compositions:

Astral Authority:
Engi-necro-rev-ranger-guard

Never Lucky:
Engi-ranger-Rev-guard-thief

Team PZ:
Engi-necro-rev-mesmer-ranger

These are just from memory so I may have one or two classes wrong, but I highly doubt it. I think the most notable things are ranger being present in every team, warr dropping out of the meta on all but one team and 2/3 EU teams taking a Mesmer whereas 2/3 NA teams are taking a guard. Of course this all could change for the world championship itself.

I agree, the qualifiers were great to watch with a ton of exciting games. Double elimination makes tournaments much more interesting in my opinion so I am slightly disappointed they will not be doing double elimination for the world championship itself (I know it says that it will be double bracket on the website but that is wrong). However with 6 teams rather than 4 it will be much less of a problem.

I can’t wait to see how the meta develops because before watching NA I thought the engi/necro duo would be necessary because vM and r55 played it so well but seeing never lucky do so well without playing that I see that it probably won’t be. Great to see guard being played by top teams as well (finally).

The world championship will be a great event that, just like in the season 2 finals, I think every single team has a good chance of winning.

TCG played ok with ele and it gave decent support but it ended up being focused down too easily and that was probably what lost them the series against rank 55. Regardless of what you think about the game against vM, there was one game on foefire when vM beat them 5v5 (they should have destroyed TCG too on that map but they almost pulled off a miraculous throwaway of the game, lol). For TCG to lose a game (maybe 2, we do not know what would have happened if drazeh didn’t DC) against vermillion who I do not think are as good as rank 55 and to lose an entire series against r55 while playing ele even though they beat them convincingly at the pro league finals shows that it probably isn’t viable right now and I don’t expect anyone to run it in the world championship.

Probably warrior if you face opponents who can’t dodge skull grinder. Druid or Mesmer if you face opponents who can.

I think that unbound magic will be a currency for all of season 3 or at least the first half of it. The reason I think this is that it would give players an opportunity to earn rewards in a variety of different maps and would not force people into playing just one zone for rewards.

As for blood rubies, they will probably not be used for future episodes. This is because if they are used, then it would fit the pattern of using unbound magic in other zones (which I am almost sure they will do) but I think that rubies will not be used in other zones because that would lead to many people getting every reward on day 1 then just not playing the new map very much because they have no reason to do so.

Overall, I predict that all maps in the first half (or all) of season 3 will use the same currency (unbound magic) but they will all use their own blood Ruby equivalent to buy things like ascended jewellery or (hopefully) armour and weapon skins.

I think it should be put into ranked next season, as should skyhammer and spirit watch. I seriously don’t see how people could think they are not appropriate for ranked at this point because there is nothing about the maps that is any worse than on forest for example. The improvements made to the maps have really helped them be more competitive.

I do get tired of the same 4 maps (usually the same 2) over and over so it would be great to have some new maps to play when leagues are active and I bet many more people would enjoy leagues with 3 more maps to play.

Additionally, I would love to see these maps in esports events! If it is not possible to do so for the upcoming world championship, as someone who likes nothing about the game more than the esports events, I would really encourage Anet to introduce the other maps to next year’s competitive events.

Personally I do not believe that we will ever defeat or even see a dragon other than in an expansion so no, I am 99.9% sure that we will not see primordus in living world season 3 (or 4 if it comes before the next expansion).

The story from this point will probably be equally split between the white mantle/ mursaat and primordus which I think is a great thing to not just be focusing on one thing for the first time I can remember.

I think that Caudecus is by far the most likely candidate for the final boss of season 3 because there is no way it will be primordus and I can’t see Lazarus dying this season either.

I agree that right now Druid is extremely strong and does need a nerf. Yes it is the only class I play in pvp other than for achievements but I can see that it really is a bit too strong at the moment. When playing, I literally cannot die 1v1 unless I play badly. I mean against anyone, ESL players included and I am quite far off their skill level. I can also hold a 2v1 for a long time without losing control of the cap against engineer, rev, guard and ele or any combination of those classes. Condition classes are harder to deal with 2v1 however, especially necro.

The only class that I think has a chance of beating a good druid 1v1 is warrior. Mesmer can force me to give up the cap but I will usually win the dual in the end, everything else is an easy kill or in the case of engineers, a stalemate with the possibility of the engi losing eventually. Of course there is nothing wrong with it being so good 1v1, but when it is combined with its awesome mobility, huge single-target burst when running longbow (like I have always done) and great support, it does become too much.

I would suggest a nerf to signet of stone, maybe by making the duration as long as endure pain for warriors and nerfing the condi removal when going into celestial avatar along with reducing the healing of CA abilities. This would go a long way towards balancing druid I think because I just feel way too strong at the moment and I am surprised that druid did not get nerfed in the last balance patch.

From a while back but I still think it was a great unranked moment- on forest my team who had a great composition actually lost against a team of 5 thieves (they were all solo queue so what are the chances of that? Lol). We did okay but people died to the thieves too much and we lost about 500-450. I found that loss particularly funny because people get angry when they have 2 thieves but clearly having 5 is not a bad idea!

Top tier:
-Druid (my class, I feel ridiculously strong right now with great ability to survive 2v1s)
-Warrior (great condi burst, good survivability)
-Mesmer (really strong in 1v1 fights and got buffed a bit with the patch)

Mid tier:
-Rev (doesn’t feel very much of a threat this season but a good one can be very effective)
-Necro (still a decent class but easily focused down)
-Engi (Still okay but sustain is a lot less than before)
-Thief (Good class in the right hands but extremely hard to play well)

Bottom tier:
-Guard (still a really bad class, very little sustain and just not enough damage to make up for it)
-Ele (Also very bad, zero damage and significantly less support than before)

Jourdelune.7456:

I could create a Chaith toon and win just with the name

Now THAT is both a hilarious and very clever idea! you could even take it a step further and get 4 friends to pretend to be a full Astral/TCG premade depending on region! Probably not allowed but still.
Seriously though, does going into the ‘report player’ window to see the account name not work anymore either? I haven’t checked it yet and it is what I always did when I saw a pro/high level player in my games to make sure they were the real one.

On the topic of the thread, I think that Anet- and myself for that matter- would prefer it if you never went afk at all but many players probably would not mind if you went afk if it was already a 4v5 against you or you were something like 450-25 down with zero chance of a comeback although I think it is best to never do things like this.

The only time where I think it is ok to afk is when your opponent has a disconnect and you afk to make the match 4v4 and fair for both teams. A lot of people would get angry at you for doing this but afking in this situation should never get you punished.

I really liked the ending scene, however with that said I care much more for what is actually happening rather than how well it is told. The Primordus reveal was awesome and I am so excited to be going after another dragon and can’t wait for the final battle (I just hope that primordus is absolutely HUGE and actually looks like a proper dragon, I seriously don’t care about mechanics or anything so long as it is not like the mordremoth fight). Leaving the episode with that reveal created a great cliffhanger and has really made me excited for episode 2 (shame I am going to have to wait so long for it with the new living world system however).
I didn’t play gw1 so the mursaat really don’t matter to me but I thought the conversation between him and caudecus was good and I look forward to seeing what they do with the rivalry between those 2 characters in future.

kdaddy.5431:

I agree with you on the excitement matter from the castors.

But dont you think for people not knowing all the skills of each class it can become a issue? When you watch sports center and they break down the NBA finals or Super Bowl they can literally pick 3-4 moments and break down what happened.

I received criticism for saying that I (as well as the castors ) that toker had no effect on the games. If we had game break downs from these castors that showed actual crucial moments it would bring layers of understanding to the game to those just curious about the game. Supercutie tried to do that but he picked moments that really didnt matter for the most part but i respect that he had a actual notebook out and brought up actual plays during the match.

I agree with you about the excitement but when you can get intelligent people who know the game like the troy aikmens who now is a broadcastor, phill simms, doug collins, jeff van gundys. These people making comments about the game have huge impacts on things such as rule changes.

For Guild Wars to be a successful Esports game you need both. If we had castors who said things and didnt make it pg like huerix and simply say necro and thief are not good enough to have a impact on these games it would at least put the pressure on Anet to balance PvP.

I am not saying that there should be no analysis whatsoever because it is important for people to understand exactly what is being done. However I do not think that this should happen while the game is actually going on. Adding the analysis of skills to commentary would just take away from the excitement and hype.

When this analysis should take place is after the game has ended, which is why I think that the season 2 finals were perfect because replays of important moments were brought up and the analysts talked about exactly what was going on. This is much better for me because it is interesting to see what the analysts have to say about specific moments and gives me an opportunity to watch the best moments again without it taking away from the excitement and unpredictability of the games.

What I am saying is that talking about specific skills and technical moments should happen, but it should never happen when a game is in progress.

ESL casting is great right now and there is nothing that I think could be improved upon. Yes, they could mention the timing of skills and such, but they are the things that I quite literally do not care about. What I want from casting is an overview of the match and who is winning/losing the fights and when caps/decaps are happening. But most of all what I want are casters who genuinely enjoy what they are doing and get hyped and start shouting at exciting moments (if you want to know what I mean by that watch the end of game 2 of vermillion vs. Abjured at the season 1 pro league finals). That is what really makes watching the esports events exciting for me.

If the casters were just listing all the skills that are used and how they are timed, the pro league would be boring for me. If I wanted to see exactly how a fight was won/lost I would go back and re-watch that moment in the game, like I often do (people often complain about it being too hard to see what is going on, but I have no problem seeing exactly what each individual player is doing in a huge teamfight if I am watching them). The thing that gets me hyped for esports events like the upcoming world championship (seriously, I am already counting down the days until I get to watch it) is the exciting moments in the games and the casters’ commentary on those moments, not endless listing of skills and dodges/blocks and technical moments in teamfights with no real excitement behind them.

I don’t support this idea. I would much rather play a 4v5 than have to sit in a queue for any longer than I have to. Yes, I understand that 4v5 matches are not fair for the 4 side but when I queue for a match, I want to play pvp and not wait in a queue for a better game. The queue times are annoying as it is and to have to completely leave a game and queue again if a player is not connected at the start would be really bad in my opinion. You don’t lose a pip even if you lose and if you do manage to win it feels absolutely awesome.

To be honest I think the reason most 4v5s are guaranteed losses is because players simply do not believe they can win from the point they look at each team and see it is a 4v5 so they do not play their best. In my opinion, a 4v5 is far for a 100% loss. I go into every 4v5 expecting to win, as I do in every 5v5 and I think that is the best attitude to have. Just last season I have won a game that was 4v5 from the start and lost 2 more with scores over 400, both of which we could have won. Also, the feeling you get from winning a 4v5 is great and you know you played very good if you win. If people start believing they can win a 4v5, they will win them a lot more.

For these reasons, I think it would be a bad idea to not allow a 4v5 game to take place and the system should stay the same as it is (let the 4v5 go ahead but do not take anything away from the team of 4 if they lose).

Pvt Frosty.6973:

The way I handled getting better and understanding every class was when I lost to someone, I would try and repeat that fight over and over until I had it down, I would look for them during the rest of the pvp match and ask them to duel me more afterwards if the match wasn’t enough time.

This is fantastic advice and I couldn’t recommend it more to you, OP. This is what I have done and now I can enter any 1v1 against any player and know that I have every chance of winning or at least holding the fight long enough for my team to come to help. I used to really struggle against engineers so instead of avoiding them because I knew I wouldn’t win, I actively looked for 1v1s against engineers who I knew were good and would beat me until I reached the skill level where I could win those fights. Now I don’t lose to engineers unless I seriously mess up. Recently I have been doing the same with warriors (specifically looking for the skull grinder animation and learning to dodge it). I used to die in seconds to warriors at the start of season 3 and now I win about half of these 1v1s even though I still have a lot to learn to fight warriors better.

What I would suggest to you, OP, is to focus on your 1v1s before anything else and then once you can win most of those fights, learn how to team fight better and to respond quickly to being focused. You do not need to actively try to improve your rotations because as you improve your general knowledge of pvp and which fights to take/not to take, the rotations will come naturally. The more 1v1s you take, the more you will learn animations and know when to dodge which is the most important aspect of 1v1 fighting.

I really do not support this idea. It Is great how it is and feels really rewarding to steal a boss kill right at the end with a perfectly timed burst (best with thief or revenant) and to, for example, land an awesome surge of the mists to steal a boss only for an enemy engi to stomp it with his function gyro would make moments like that, especially in pro league, much less exciting. One example I can think of off the top of my head is in the season 2 finals, rank 55 vs. Astral on forest, right at the end of the game when phantaram got a kill on svanir literally 1 second before zan reached the boss to try to steal the kill, winning the game for astral. Would this have been as exciting if zan could have just safe stomped the boss with function gyro? Absolutely not. The bosses should be left as they are.

Also, the 150 points are not given out ‘randomly’ at all. Well, maybe they are if both players have used all their cooldowns with the boss at high health, but then if they had done that it really is their own fault if they lose the boss kill. What you have to do to make sure you take a boss kill is cast a low cast time burst skill with the boss on about 5% health (SotM, backstab, rapid fire + quickness, warrior GS primal burst, many others). The way boss kills work now is much more skill based than it would be if they were given a downstate and that is the way it should stay in my opinion.

I don’t mind unranked to be honest, I can’t tell much of a difference between it and ranked other than people running all sorts of strange builds. I have noticed a large increase in the amount of afkers in unranked, today I had 3 matches in a row when someone in my team went afk when we were less than 50 points behind (they were 3 different people). Afk players do not bother me though and I like using unranked as a chance to improve my play on both my main and other classes between seasons without anything I do harming me ar anyone else.

I am very excited for season 4. I still have to get my 10 wins achievements on 4 classes so I am not looking forward to that (but as an AP hunter it is something I have to do) but in general I have loved pvp since leagues were introduced and have improved my play a huge amount (I can hold a 1v1 a lot of pro league players now). As for matchmaking, I genuinely do not see why people are upset about it. There is no matchmaking system that will give you close matches extremely often and that 100% prevents loss streaks regardless of skill level which I guess is what people would want. Matchmaking is great in my opinion, especially when I get grouped against players better than myself because those are the games that I can improve the most in and learn more from that any other games even when I lose.

My target for next season will be to reach prestige 6 or higher through solo queue alone because in season 1 I reached prestige 1, prestige 3 in season 2 and prestige 5 in season 3 with only solo queue so it would be great to keep improving in every season. I will be playing ranger again and I can’t wait to see how the balance patch affects the meta next season.

There is nothing that you can do to stop people calling you a troll and stuff like that. It is just the way the pvp community is. If things are not going the way some people want, they will just try to look for someone to blame which will sometimes be you. Don’t let these comments stop you enjoying pvp, because whatever you do you will always meet people who insult others. If you just ignore whatever people are insulting you for and just try to improve as a player in your own way, that is the best thing you could do if you are trying to pvp seriously.

What I would love to see is unused builds becoming viable again. I am not even asking for build diversity, I just want classes to be able to run something different to what they have been running for the last 2 seasons. If that means nerfing all the current builds into oblivion so be it, I just want to see all classes running different builds. Balance is great at the moment in terms of how strong each class is but it becomes boring to play the same builds for months.

With all that said, I do not think that will happen (Though I would love to be surprised with awesome changes like that) so here is what I expect:

-Warrior to be nerfed quite significantly, maybe less conditions on mace and a nerf on healing.
-Guardian to remain less competitive than other classes due to lower-level players struggling against it.
-Reasonable nerf to support ele and a buff on ele scepter (hopefully enough to make it viable).
-Druid to remain pretty much the same as it is.
-Scrapper sustain and damage nerfed, possibly making it one of the weaker classes.
-Revenant to be slightly nerfed but remain a mandatory class at pro league level.
-Thief to remain pretty much how it is now.
-Necro to be buffed, probably given more access to stability or just a general sustain increase, damage to remain the same.
-Mesmer to stay how it is.

Not sure how realistic this would be but based on a lot of the complaints I have seen in game and on the forum, this is what I expect.

It is really good to finally see some story content again and a new map with new events and things like that for the first time in almost a year. Pvp has been the only thing I have enjoyed in game for months and it will be awesome to actually play pve for fun again rather than just to grind achievements and rewards.

What I do not like the sound of however is that the updates may not be every 2 weeks. Even back in season 1 and 2 I had done everything by 1 week and got pretty bored of the same content fort he second week of the release. Monthly releases would affect many other people who do not play as much as me and would make many of them stop playing between releases. Updates every 2 weeks if by far the best thing for me, even if there are never any updates to any other areas of the game during living world seasons.

I think that having expansions as part of the game is what is very harmful to the amount of content being released and I would absolutely love it if there were never any other expansions (not going to happen but it is good to hope). With all this said however, I am extremely excited for living world to come back and I have no doubt that it will be a lot of fun to play and have a very interesting story which will probably be longer than heart of thorns.

- Started in sapphire
- 100% solo queue, only played conquest.
- Played only ranger except about 20 games to get my 10 wins on Rev, I am going to have to do the 4 classes I have left next season.
- 487 games played, 267 won (54.8% win rate)
- Reached legendary prestige 5

Wanderer amulet really should not be removed in my opinion. Condi warrior is strong but it is not OP at all. All you need to do is dodge the mace f1 skills when the warr is in berserk mode which has a pretty obvious animation if you are watching for it and then they are on 0 damage until berserk mode is ready again. Wanderer stats do not make warrior too strong.

Mesmer is just as strong on carrion amulet as it is on wanderer (Good but not even close overpowered). The way to play against Mesmer is the same as how you play against warrior- dodge the burst (the shatters) and you should win the fight.

Wanderer amulet itself has only 560 toughness and no vitality so it’s sustain is not fantastic, it has 1050 precision rather than power so direct damage could be much better. The only thing it does really well is condition damage, which is what it should do because it’s a condition amulet.

While wanderer is a good amulet on some classes, there is no real issue with the amulet so it should be kept in game.

There is nothing Anet can do about afk players except punishing those that are reported and even that will never eliminate the problem completely. I just accept it as part of the game to be honest and I never care if someone goes afk, even if we were going to win the game, sometimes when someone is afk, my team just talks about the game and random stuff to pass the time until the game is over which is nice.

Although, afk players should not exist, there really isn’t much that anyone can do about it- players will afk if they are angry or (I find this one funny) to ‘punish’ players who they thought played bad in previous games. Best thing to do is to not get bothered by it- afk works in your favour as much as it works against you.

Scrapper is not OP at all in my opinion. From my experience when playing Druid in the highest part of legendary, facing many very good engineers, I can conclude that they are basically a Druid with less support. If anything they need a small buff. They just don’t have enough damage to win a 1v1 against an equally skilled player unless given a long time. If I play close to my best on Druid, no scrapper, however good, can kill me in a 1v1 at all.

What scrappers basically are are a class with reasonable damage that can hold any 1v1 forever and survive well in 2v1s but they have little healing support. Basically the same thing as a Druid but when I compare those 2 classes, scrapper is the weaker of the two, they are not OP at all from what I have seen.

Although this will never be put in game, I would actually really enjoy it, just like I enjoyed gambling my gold on moa racing back in dragon bash. The real problem is that it would encourage people to throw games in exchange for some on the gold people betting on the other team won and that I am sure Anet would rather have people actually playing their pvp rather than gambling on the result of other people’s matches however fun it would be.

Main character: Stronlo Beastmaster
Do I believe in ‘MMR Hell’: No, not at all, you can always try to improve and eventually start winning.
Division: Legendary x3
What division do I belong in: I do think I belong in legendary but there is a pretty big skill gap between me and pro league players.

I really like how it is and I hope it doesn’t change. When I play mes I use it as a way to counter revs and get a free cap for myself by porting them to the other side of the map. I suppose you could get an awesome play with 2 revs who would normally destroy you. Using UA at the same time and both getting sent away by the Mesmer.

Really, the fact that UA follows through portals works in favour of the mes rather than the Rev almost all the time in my opinion, especially when this tactic is used on purpose, like I often used it when I played Mesmer. I don’t believe it is an unintended feature and removing it would help the Rev much more than it would help the Mesmer.

Congrats TCG! It was a great finals, the grand final itself was pretty good, especially the last game (if only rank 55 could have kept that Lord alive for 10 more seconds what could have happened then…). The absolute highlight of the finals for me was the r55 vs. Astral series. That was absolutely awesome, far better than their series at the season 1 finals. Astral should probably have won at least one of the first 2 games to make it a 3-2 but it was great anyway. Also, like the commentators said, we will probably see a lot of greatsword warriors in game now after drazeh ran it, Similar to how I now see a high percentage of guardians run bunker after tage ran it in the regular season of the pro league. Can’t wait for the world championship!

Slim.3024:

suffish.4150:

I do predict a double NA final…

That sounds like wishful thinking t be honest. I expect the final to be a double EU one.

I wouldn’t call it wishful thinking, to be honest I would really like to see a PZ vs. Rank 55 final so PZ can prove just how much they have improved since last season when they were absolutely destroyed by rank 55 in the semi finals.
Astral have always done well when everyone thought they were going to lose, such as in the last WTS when everyone expected them to lose to oRNG and TCG and they won the tournament. Also, they have never failed to make the grand final of a major event and I don’t see that changing for this event.

I guess we will just have to see in only a few hours time!!

It is so good to finally see a thread about the pro league finals!

Well, to answer the question, I would say the only NA team to be an underdog is astral. I expect PZ to beat TCG, probably 3-1. So my answer would be that PZ is by far the most likely to win out of the NA teams- if it was TCG against astral, everyone would expect astral to win and based on what happened in week 7, PZ are better than astral so I can’t see why they are the underdogs.

Astral has a great chance as well, however the meta probably does not favour them as thief is not really viable at the highest level. I would expect astral to swap their for Mesmer in their composition because if they do not, I can’t see them having any chance at beating rank 55. I do expect them to run the strongest composition though and I think that they will upset rank 55 3-2.

I do predict a double NA final which will be extremely close but I think that PZ will beat astral 3-2 in a series of 5 very close games and claim the first tournament victory for any NA team other than astral. If I had to predict only 1 NA team that would go through though, it would definitely be PZ.

Warrior mace f1 when in berserker mode slightly nerfed (maybe less confusion?) but sustained condi pressure buffed in exchange for this. It would make warrior less focused on burst and have more sustained pressure at the same time.

Ele healing and support nerfed, but only if they make burst ele truly viable and competitive at the highest level. There is no point making the class almost useless if power ele does not get very significant buffs but I would much rather see power ele than support ele.

Ranger (my main) should probably get a nerf on condi clears when going into celestial avatar. Maybe make it remove 5 conditions only rather than every condi you have, CA has too short a cooldown for such a powerful effect and right now with signet of renewal, ranger can get away from 2 huge condi-bombs without taking much damage at all. Signet of stone should also get a nerf in my opinion. Reduce the duration of the invuln by maybe 2-3 seconds but also reduce its cooldown a bit, maybe to 60 seconds. In addition to this, buff the unused weapons like axe and shortbow to encourage a different playstyle.

Guardian should get huge buffs, mainly to sustain but also to damage because right now they are just way too easy to burst down and kill and they can’t deal enough damage to threaten many classes at all in a 1v1. I would also change back the nerf to longbow 5 so it traps the enemy even if they do dodge the last hit. This would make guard a lot more viable I think.

I think now that the ‘wildcard tournament’ actually means the world championship qualifiers, yeah that is not what I expected it to be but that is good too. It is good to give the top level players a more chances to win than people just trying to qualify for the pro league/competitive events and lower ranked pro league teams. Having 6 teams rather than 4 is awesome too.

I really hope that the qualifiers will be streamed because I do not think that I will be able to cope with the hype of waiting from tomorrow until September for more awesome e-sports events! Seriously, I have been so excited for the pro league finals for weeks and now they are tomorrow I just can’t believe it. I just love these e-sport events so much and with the announcement of the world championship I feel so happy and I really hope Anet continues e-sport events for as long as the game exists.

I just felt like I had to say that with how excited I am, but back on topic. I am sure that Anet will add more events for teams not yet in the pro league or even more pro league seasons which will of course feature qualifiers next year. To be honest think Anet have found the perfect schedule for e-sports events for this year so I would be happy if every year is a repeat of this one when it comes to competitive play. Of course players who are actually trying to compete in these events may have a different view but I am sure that after the world championship there will be events that are for more than just the very highest ranked teams which I guess is what you would want, OP.

I agree that personal score should be more relevant and not losing pips should be decided by that rather than the whole team’s performance. However, for now it would be a better suggestion in my opinion to not lose pips for point gaps of 50 points or less. What the OP is suggesting, while a good idea if people were trying their best the whole game, would just encourage people to throw matches.

From now, I would say if you play 10-15 games each day you will reach legendary, 100%. I reached legendary in 231 games this season and I am not a very good player, although I do realise I am much better than I was in season 1 and 2. As long as you play enough you will reach legendary. Yes, you probably do need a bit of skill to get there, but if you play enough that little bit of skill that you need will come naturally.

Another 200+ games in the 20 days you have left and you will be legendary no matter what your skill level is unless you are EXTREMELY unlucky.

The problem with people leaving when they hit legendary is nothing to do with the league system or giving people incentive to play. What I believe the problem is that these people simply do not enjoy pvp so want to get legendary in as few games as possible and then leave. Yes, you could add another division or two to keep these players playing but the same problem will still exist, just that people will abandon pvp at division 7/8 then rather than 6.

What I think needs to be done is to try to improve the game mode itself rather than the league system (I personally do not believe that pvp needs improving at all and I keep playing for the whole season, but I have seen many others asking for this). If pvp is more fun for the player base then there is no need to give people more incentive to play because they would be playing for fun. The league system is great how it is in my opinion so the focus should be on adding more maps and improving existing maps. Maybe this is not possible though. Maybe most of the players in guild wars 2 just do not like playing pvp and will never enjoy the pvp play style no matter what is done. This is also a real possibility.

With all this said however, I am in legendary x1 tier 4 now, so almost at the very top of the matchmaking tree and my queues only exceed 5-6 minutes when I play early in the morning so I, personally, have not seen an issue with queue times.

I only watched the first video but I would suggest a few things:
-As the poster above me said, swap wolf for bristleback, it just has so much more burst damage.

-Never use signet of renewal in you have celestial avatar available, it is a much bigger cooldown and CA does the same thing when activated (I would not swap out signet of
renewal though, it is a very important skill that has saved me on many occasions)

-There was one time when you used signet of renewal while your pet was out of range, luckily you still survived but it is a mistake that has stopped me surviving almost every time I have done it. Swap pets if your pet is not near you to make sure that the signet affects you.

-Use your elite more frequently. It is not a skill you have to save for moments when you need to survive/disengage. You can use your elite+signet of stone to get some revives in very difficult situations. It is also a good skill for safe stomps and just general dps.

-Use your heal skill after pet swapping to double the amount of quickness you get. Of course only do this if you are not under much pressure and may need the heal in a few seconds. Maybe even just swap pets when you need to heal anyway to get more quickness than usual.

With all that said though I think you played really well and performed your role as a Druid well. Most of the time you went to the right fights and provided good support to your team mates as well as a lot of damage.

Ranger is certainly not the weakest class. I win 90% of my 1v1 on ranger and I have very high burst (I can kill things like thieves and marauder revs in seconds if I land all my burst), great healing and support and good mobility and disengage.

Maybe you are just a much better player than the Rangers you have fought because a condi guard/trap ranger should not beat an equally skilled player using the meta Druid build. Rangers are especially good against condition builds because they have 2 full condi clears, one (celestial avatar) on a 15 second cooldown.

This season about 75% of the time I play my main, ranger. I play the meta build but using longbow instead of sword/dagger. I think it is just a far better weapon with range better than any other profession, far more damage than s/d and even offers great ability to disengage with stealth (you can get loads of stealth with longbow 3 and staff 3 on the smoke field from the pet). I use it mainly as a 1v1/2v2/decap role but I can also be great support in team fights if we have low sustain or no ele to support.

I chose eternity’s guard just because it sounds the best to me. Dragon’s watch sounds more like the name of a place that the name of a group of heroes to me. The unbroken is a decent name but eternity’s guard just was the only one that sounded really good to me.

Also this may have already been known but it acknowledges Rytlock as one of this group now which means he is now a permanent member of our group! That is great because he is my favourite character.