Warrior, cleansing ire, burst mastery, melandru runes, -40% duration food. Seems to be the answer to every problem. While condis are a problem for sure, you don’t even need a functioning brain for this since all your condi defense happens passively, unless you’re running berserker stance too on top of all that.
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Transferred from SoS to DR. Most fun I’ve had in WvW in over a year and many great matchups. I’m not going to transfer again, but with players getting hacked left and right, and the China release consuming what little dev resources we got, I can’t say I’m inclined to keep playing or rationally believe things will get better in the future.
I always play with Mos open and pay attention to flip claims, but it seems like the majority of long term claims on any map are either troll guilds or personal size guilds running the +5 on keeps. I’ve also been known to run around a map taking and claiming camps with fake guilds and tapping keeps to make it seem like more than PvCamp is going on. But…I suppose that sort of activity would be spread evenly through all servers.
I’d say 75% numbers and coverage, 15% pug morale, 10% skill.
Numbers and coverage being the basis for your servers position on the ladder is pretty much indisputable.
Pug morale is more complex, particularly on EBG where the newest and most fickle players tend to flock to. Celebrity pugmanders can sometimes get a huge following that can hold down extra points on EBG and free up guilds to fight over BL maps, but it’s a double edge sword when those pugmanders get burned out or quit, and suddenly all those pugs disappear. This has happened at some point in time on all the servers I’ve played on.
Skill is a subjective topic, but some servers do a better job holding or getting points with smaller forces. I am certain in a few matchups with YB in the past, at some points they would have no more than 20 players total, and yet they would hold 4 T3 keeps with ease all through the weekend because it was all siege capped and scouted. On the attack side, some servers do a really good job with havoc teams that endlessly frustrate zerg balls and pug blobs, and when they do go for upgraded keeps, it’s an all out assault with multiple guilds instead of 2 hours of poking and prodding siege wars.
Bronze league has been a lot of fun with competitive matchups that players, to varying degrees of course, care about every week. Anyone in gold league enduring the ongoing stupidity, or the imbalanced matchups in silver really missed out with the free transfer opportunity.
Long term who knows what will happen with WvW. The ongoing lack of communication from anet doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that they care at all about the format that is the only reason a huge number of players continue to play.
To make it short and simple, if you don’t like the culture of WvW on your server because it’s too GvG / open field fighting oriented or the opposite with nothing but militia blobs, accept that you’ll be forking over some gold or real money to transfer to a server that is a better fit for your interest.
Dire p/d thief is probably the worst now with the new ambush trait, just because the the initial poison + confusion stack from steal is easily covered by 2-3 other condis almost instantly. That puts you at a huge disadvantage without a full purge. Plus they have refuge, and most also run a d/p set to stealth stack off of to reset or run away. All around the most pointless build to even bother fighting unless you are mobbing one down.
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I feel less threatened than ever against power thieves. The cumulative effect of the nerf to infusion ticks on stealth stacks, infiltrator’s return, and crit damage has added up to quite a lot.
The main problem with rangers in WvW, whether you’re considering zerging, small group play, or solo roaming is that there’s not a single thing they are superior at. Not much use at all in GWEN hammer trains besides a water field, or maybe downing a player or two playing a zerker long bow, but that’s not terribly useful if you aren’t really pushing full kills or stomps, and are liable to be a rally bot yourself. Condi roamers are completely outclassed by the perplexity trio (thief, mesmer, engi). Power roamers can be ok, and you will occasionally see a good ranger in a small group that really surprises players, and can do extreme damage to players trying to reposition under pressure or run away.
4 ranks supply mastery
2 ranks AC mastery
2 ranks build mastery
1 rank repair mastery
Bare minimum things I would invest in before guard stacks. 3 ranks of flame mastery, 2 ranks of treb, 2 cannon, 2 ballista, and 1 cata are also nice things early on.
Please make the post-apocalypse LA a non-mega zone. This really hurts WvW centric servers in particular that like to have a per-reset hangout around the mist portals. Mega makes a lot of sense for the other sparsely populated cities, but there needs to be one that is non-mega.
I’ve got 2, both trinkets with useless stats. I’ve never actually seen someone get a useful ascended drop.
I got the impression from the latest staff member who came and went that anet employees who participate on the forum do so on their own time, so in that sense I understand why they don’t want to bother since it’s generally an avalanche of negativity in the WvW forum. However, it also seems endemic for devs to not understand why players who are very enthusiastic about their game are so frustrated by a few things that seem like common sense fixes and and improvements.
Travelers runes cost more then that. Does that define them as unbalanced?
They probably are a bit too good, but they also solve the unfairness of some classes having high swiftness uptime in a normal build or having access to a 25% movement speed signet or trait, while other classes have almost no access to swiftness or have to carry around and constantly swap weapon sets for swiftness that they don’t want to be in combat with. By using them you also forgo using runes that are far better for offense or defense, and the crit nerf effectively knocked off 3.5% crit damage, which was the only noticeable gain from the stat bonuses.
My point was that perplexity runes are obviously in high demand right now. The entire supply of below cost to craft has been bought up, and now watchwork sprockets are moving up as players with the recipe craft more. Unless there is some market manipulation going on (entirely possible), then there are a lot of players re-rolling perplexity builds right now.
I really think anet should be doing something about this sooner rather than later so:
1. Roaming doesn’t become entirely perplexity face rollers, which will cause many to quit the game.
2. Large numbers of players don’t pay 60-70g for a set of runes only to have the rug pulled out from under them if they finally get fixed (again). Although I don’t have much sympathy for players that use them, it’s not right for anet to keep pulling these bait and switch tricks with gear.
If nothing else can be agreed on, at least we should agree that perplexity condi builds are not balanced, even by the very loose standards of WvW. Just in the past week these things have skyrocketed from like 3g each to over 10g. It’s making my favorite class (mesmers) the laughing stock of WvW, and don’t even get me started with p/d perplexity thieves…which will probably still be the ultimate troll build without perplexity thanks to the new ambush trait that fits into the build in exactly the same manor as the the perplexity build.
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The three worst condi builds in WvW are all reliant on perplexity runes, +40% duration food, and some or all use of dire gear. It wouldn’t be that hard to fix. Frankly it’s just lazy for anet to do nothing because this isn’t part of the PvE meta or zerg meta in WvW, all it does is ruin the one aspect of WvW that many players find most interesting.
I don’t buy the argument that it’s lessening build diversity either to get condis back in check. They will still be a big part of roaming and small group combat if something is done about the three things mentioned. We should not be in a situation where condis are doing like 90% or more of a player’s damage…all it boils down to is you either have enough purging or don’t (in a fair fight), and that’s all that decides outcomes. That is boring.
To me this is really starting to feel like deja vu all over again. My favorite format in GW1 was team arenas, and what happened there? Passive hexing and condi skills kept getting buffed trying to force pressure builds into the GvG meta, which didn’t work, and all that happened was TA was kitten on by tab hexers and spear chucking rangers until all the good players quit. Then they closed it down when the format was relegated to a few teams farming squads from random arenas all night.
I guarantee if nothing is done about condis , the roaming players and small combat guilds are going to start falling apart and quitting at a faster rate, until there’s no one left besides P/D thieves trolling clueless players.
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@zen you just said you won t fight 99,9% of www population
Depends on what server you play on, and what types of fights you set out looking for. One of the main reasons I transferred out of T2 / gold league for good and don’t regret it at all. If I’m solo with no chance to use the terrain, npcs, or anything else to my advantage, then I simply don’t fight an engi / mesmer / thief 1v1 that has +40% condi food and 25 stacks of corruption, because I know if they are not shockingly bad then I have little to no chance of beating them. That doesn’t happen all that often though, yet anyway.
I will fight tanky heavies that want to fight 1v1 if it’s in a spot not likely to become a gang bang any time soon.
Roaming is all about picking your battles. Unless you’re playing a necro that has zero mobility or stealth, the things you need to avoid fights you don’t want without a quick WP, then it’s kinda the rules if you don’t want to die all the time. I wish there was a better system and all class were viable roamers, but it’s clearly not coming any time soon.
I encourage everyone who is running a power build to take a careful look at their actual spike damage now and consider changes to more power if you’re using a precision sigil, food, or oil. After making some changes to my mesmer that runs all zerker gear, I don’t feel the nerf is that bad, but it’s certainly not good news all around since dire perplexity builds were already completely ridiculous.
In that sense not much changes for me…I simply won’t fight those players unless they seem completely terrible or we’re mobbing them down. Same goes for heavies that wear all PVT and have all defensive traits / skills that are more like mobile rocks. If you don’t enjoy fighting a certain build, just nope out on it unless you’re in an advantaged situation…all you can really do.
I’m finding so far with my mesmer, after changing from a perception sigil + oil (precision) to bloodlust + stones (power), overall DPS and burst damage is about the same. However, burst damage with a power mesmer compresses many small and medium hits into a short time window. It’s not all or nothing with a single attack.
On my thief backstab damage is down considerably, but that that’s potentially good and bad. Good because no one likes fighting d/p thieves that only attack with BS over and over off combo leaps, bad because many of them might reroll dire p/d builds that are even worse to fight and difficult to down.
I agree with the comment that power builds are generally more…interesting to fight at least. You are more rewarded for build, pattern, and skill use recognition for avoiding burst attacks, while needing how and when to land yours by keeping track of their defensive skill use and estimated endurance.
The person that commented that “2 shot” builds are not interesting, true, but in a way many condi builds work the same way. With the perplexity builds in particular, you are often almost instantly in a position where you’re taking more damage than you can deal, being penalized even more for dealing damage with a confusion stack, and fighting mostly mostly ranged attacks that can be difficult to predict. Even if you have a full purge utility skill, which not all classes have access to, that’s not a win button. Neither is running -36% / 40% duration food all the time.
It just feels like the meta is headed in an even more thoughtless direction because anet really doesn’t seem to care. In my opinion they really need to be aiming towards a state where every class has a minimum of 1 viable power build, preferably more of course, with variations that are either more defensive or use condition damage for a modest amount of passive pressure. This state of the game where you have hammer train heavies running around in all PTV that can’t be killed in a reasonable amount of time without a mob gang banging them is bad. Condi builds using dire gear to do 90%+ of their damage with passive condi damage, while have a ton of toughness and vitality is in solo / small group combat is bad too.
First let me admit that I rushed into initial testing without resetting my traits, so I was down quite a bit without those.
Still though, there’s noticeable power loss that’s more than 10%, and not a kitten thing is being done about condi damage and duration in the context of WvW (I started this thread in the WvW forum before it was moved).
Haven’t done any scientific testing yet, but it doesn’t seem like the nerf to critical damage is the 10% anet said it would be. More like 30-50%? I just tried out my mesmer and thief that have power builds with some unscientific testing against veteran guards and, for instance, backstabs that used to hit for 7k are now 4k, illusionary berserkers that used to be 4-4.5k are now 2-2.5k. I rarely play my thief anymore, but this is game breaking for a power mesmer…won’t be able to kill any decent player in a reasonable amount of time (i.e. before every dot on the map joins in).
I don’t know how roaming and small scale combat can continue to exist in WvW as the meta will inevitably shift to all condi spam. It was already dicey against the top condi builds, now a power build of any kind will have no chance against those builds at all.
I also think this is going to have an extremely negative effect on zerg combat where condis are not so much a factor. We’ve already seen endless numbers of wet noodle hammer trains that can barely kill a thing unless they CC lock and mob down individual and pockets of players. Their damage is also going to go down, which means it will take longer to kill players, which means longer periods of blobs being blobs that can’t kill a decisive number of players to end a battle. It will also seriously hinder highly offensive zerg busting guild builds that did go for quick wipes using large numbers of power staff eles and well necros.
Anyway, doesn’t look good at all.
What was the defining feature of GW1 GvG then? Cuz to me, when I played it, and when I watched the high level stuff, it was pretty much just killing your opponents and then killing their Guild Lord.
What Facet said about GW1 GvG concerning “RPS composition gimmicks (“build wars”), dartboard balance patching, npc-centric strategies, spam strategies, 3-2-1 “skill”, and completely inferior skirmishing combat” is to a certain extent true.
There was an RPS aspect to builds. Anet never had a coherent strategy for skill balancing besides the seemingly random wheel of fate. Total spam builds like b-spike and tab hexing were always a problem. Hyper-defensive spike builds were always a problem. Skirmishing without backline support was quite different.
The great thing about GvG is GW1 was that you could spend 20 minutes in team builder or pawned creating all 8 builds and equipment loadouts to try different things though. No jumping through hoops, no PvE scavenger hunts, no scrounging up gold, no crafting, etc. You pasted the link in chat, loaded the build and equipment, done. The game was always evolving with slight changes to the primary meta composition, entirely new builds, and what were broadly called flavor of the month gimmick builds.
To me that was the fun, and it’s the main problem with GvG in GW2. It is very, very difficult to do a 180 on your team build and find players that can play multiple classes reasonably well. This limits the play base to small number of players, which is does not promote growth, and limits build diversity and a healthy meta evolution, which is what keeps the game fun long term. In that sense I have a problem with people saying that GvG in GW2 is truly competitive while PvE equipment with the associated road blocks is being clung to.
Regardless of your opinion on GvG, it’s been good for stability in the higher tiers. When guilds come and go with no expectation of them contributing to PPT or anything else, it doesn’t cause the sort of mass bandwagons or exoduses that plagued the format early on. Those have been way more destructive than a few players occasionally on a map not playing for score.
In fact, if you really think about it, the players who contribute the least as a function of score are not the GvG players. It’s the endless hordes idiots who can only zerg and never, ever contribute anything individually besides a dot on the map that maybe carries supplies. They only show up when it’s easy, and are never there when it’s hard. At least many of the GvG players do other things more useful when they are not in a GvG.
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1v1 is all your referring to.
They aren’t going to change condition balance because of 1v1’s. Conditions are probably the only thing keeping many of the direct damage builds in check. If I didn’t have to worry about conditions in a 1v1 I would move defensive traits to damage.
You can’t nerf, adjust, or anything in 1v1’s without making the above worse. Making anything weaker in 1v1’s will always make it weaker in groups. Nothing in the game follows some wild crazy made up programming suggestion of group and individual scaling so that is off the table.
Just drop the 1v1 and duel scenarios if they where to do that what is left over will have more people calling for nerfs to other builds. The cycle will never end because people crave self sufficiency in duels and conditions don’t allow them to be able to handle power and condition builds with equal success.
The reason why you might be able to beat a 10/30/30/ thief now is because he has shadow embrace on where as if he didn’t feel the need to run it anymore then he picks up infusion of shadow for more initiative or picks up regen on stealth for more sustain.
Conditions are probably the sole reason thieves with 30 in shadow arts can’t run shadow protector and shadow rejuvenation.
Conditions aren’t a issue? 15 water on my ele 25 points moved to damage. Why even go into water beyond the 15 point mark.
Conditions not a issue? Take guardian bunker up more no need for pure of voice throw that away, no reason to go 20 virtues anymore.
Conditions not a issue? Whats a cleansing ire? Whats a dogged march? Whats melandru runes? Whats lemongrass? Let me move those points to strength or arms or take another damage modifier, missile deflection.
This is what will happen conditions are the only thing keeping the direct damage builds people find difficult to fight in 1v1’s in check. Condis probably kept lyssa rune users in check more then you realize because if there is a condition class around it would be better to save the elite after I’m loaded instead of using it offensively.
You nerf conditions because of 1v1’s then you indirectly buff every direct damage build out there. Some are only held in check now because of condition damage.
I wasn’t only referring to 1v1s, but I respect your opinion because GF has consistently been one of the best small group guilds.
Let’s peel back those ten paragraphs and consider only three things:
1. 40% duration food
2. Perplexity runes
3. Gear stats that are primary condition damage + two defensive stats
If the argument here is that condition builds need all three of these things to be playable, isn’t that a problem in and of itself? None of these things exist in sPvP, so what’s the argument here, all three are needed to counteract the increased stats power builds have?
I admit that I’m completely biased here. I find most of the condition builds completely boring to play and even more boring to face. Even worse, if you have a build with a little bit of condition pressure, when everyone is forced to run the -condi food and lots of purging, it makes your conditions completely useless. I think this drives the meta to the extremes and ruins build diversity.
I have long agreed that some power builds are also way out of balance too, but that’s a different topic with more paragraphs. The upcoming crit nerf is a cure for the headache by chopping off an arm I’m afraid.
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Those are some good points Remicity, but the main problem I see with direct damage vs. condi damage is this. Powerful direct damage attacks can easily be tweaked if a specific skill is too strong, and many direct damage attacks have warm up animations that can be read. How do you balance a build that uses dire gear with 90-95% condi DPS? Let’s consider the three most common condi builds in WvW.
1. The blackwater mesmer. Not a thing you can do when they have 2-3 staff clones out, they all attack you with condis. Dodge out of confusing images and chaos storms. Illusionary counter usually comes randomly. Chaos army uptime 30-40% of the time? What can you do, not attack? More condis. Using a weapon that cleaves? You’re going to get hit by dissipations with tons of bleed, weakness, and cripples. Best option is never to fight this build 1v1 or 1vX if the other players are clueless and end up hurting you more than helping.
2. The P/D perplexity thief. Even if you deny cloaking off yourself, they often just cloak off PvE or walls, and you’re going to catch some portion of sneak attack. Shadow strike is very tough to read with near instant activation and also creates a gap if you’re in melee. The daze + confusion from steal almost always comes from any sort of attack and can’t be denied. Even vital shot ends up being a fairly strong attack with full condition damage and duration increases. Most run D/P on their off set to reset or run away if they get in trouble.
3. Bomb engi. This one pumps the most confusion, but can be read a little since many of the setups come out of tool kit. Still though, you have no idea what bombs are being dropped, and end up being hit by static shots and parts of poison volley. The almost permanent burn if they are using enough rabid gear with incendiary powder is what hurts the most though.
It’s patently obvious that anet doesn’t give two chickens about any notion of balance in WvW. They did a good job getting rid of the really trashy PvE cons like the ash legion spy kit, golem in a box, gear, and skale venom, and nerfing life stealing pie, but they have not done anything else is over a year now.
Think about this too. You can run one of the gimmicky dire / perplexity condi builds as a roamer or in small groups with devastating effect using all exotic gear, 1 con that cost 2 silver each, and no stacks of any kind. With power builds you need all ascended equipment (except armor maybe) and all stacks to be fairly equal to other power builds, and have a chance against condi builds. Plus, you have to constantly use very expensive -condi durration food to counter cheap +condi duration foods.
It’s ridiculous. Anyone claiming this isn’t a problem doesn’t roam or small group at all, runs a perplexity condi build, or has a very crude understanding of things.
Depends on the build…
I have the most success against the basic SA thieves with my mesmer, either playing a PU (power GS, S/T variant) solo or shattering build in groups. They have the tools to avoid the initial round of backstabs, deliver a massive spike when the the thief makes one mistake or runs low on initiative or endurance, and can easily knock them them out of shadow refuge. Those are the keys to beating an SA thief with a power build.
P/D perplexity and really good sword / trickery (whatever the build is called) thieves are tough to beat with power builds though, if not impossible. I also fear SA thieves will be much harder to kill when the new -50% damage trait in stealth. If you’re trying to beat a thief (any) with a condi build, the only good one is an engi because they have the tool kit pull to grab runners and shield knockback for refuge. Other condi builds are very easy to refuge, clear condis, and run away from.
On your guardian, the key is is binding blade on refuge to pull them out, and setting up spikes that combine whirling wrath or zealot’s defense with the ending damage from shield of wrath, then getting in some more damage with your leap and teleports as they try to run away. A meditations beserker guardian has three skills to block backstabs and two prots from courage activation in a normal fight. It’s another great class to beat power thieves, but can quickly succumb to heavy condi damage.
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The more I’ve thought about, the more annoyed I with the upcoming crit nerf.
First of all, many of us who only play WvW are quite poor and wouldn’t be caught dead farming whatever the ridiculous PvE event of the month is. If you play a power build with all or mostly berserker gear, the only reason to invest time and effort into ascended weapons and trinkets is for the slightly higher attack power and crit damage. So if the changeover to ferocity is a 10% nerf to damage like anet says, all it’s really doing is taking ascended stat creep back down to exotic. Exotics become weaker than they were (comparatively) before ascended was inflicted on us.
Second, we all already know how OP some of the condi builds out there are. The blackwater mesmer and p/d thief are almost unbeatable 1v1 if the player is at all competent, and it doesn’t take much. Condi engis and necros can also be unbeatable, but are a bit more susceptible to control and have less combat movement. There is no talk of changing the +40% condi duration food, and if you read the thread inquiring players about new stat combos, a lot of them are primary condi damage. Oh boy, more bunker stats please! Dire has been such a smashing success. More new PvE only, condition inflicting runes and sigils are hopefully in the works too.
Lastly, nothing changes in PvE or WvW zerg warfare. Condis will still suck in PvE, and they will still suck in most organized zerging that has endless purging. No one is going to experiment with new builds and new ways to play as the blog post implies. If power builds fall out of favor for roaming, the only experimenting will be new ways to be a dire perplexity moron.
Even though I have a thief, mesmer, and engi, and can play them all reasonably well, I refuse to use condi builds with them. I tried it with my mesmer and it was the most boring roaming of all time, and condi vs. condi is the most boring duel imaginable. May as well just use an RNG to determine the winner and skip the fighting, it’s that stupid.
I’ve got one hundred gold that says there are plenty of people who have server pride who would never do WvW, and there are plenty of people who do WvW for no real reason other than they enjoy it.
I don’t know a single player in GW2 outside WvW players, and I only play WvW because I enjoy it.
100g is really going to help me finally, maybe do an ascended craft. Can’t wait for it! :p
The only stolen skills I keep are blinding tuft, throw feathers, or plasma. If there’s one thing to maybe complain about it’s the abundance of tuft (pretty much every creature in WvW), which allows you to easily lead in with a stealth steal, or have it ready after your initial lead to stealth steal if you use stealing traits.
Dumb as it may be, this is the thief’s only class mechanic. No whopper attack, no virtues, no tool belt skills, no useless pet, no attuments, no shattering, no death shroud. You get one extra skill. Some of then are really good, some of them are meh, some of them are completely useless.
The concept of servers as a competitive unit has never really worked as intended. Bandwagons have fueled every rise of a server, mass exoduses have caused every equally sharp decline. Few guilds on any given server are native so to speak, and many guilds transfer around frequently, be it for bandwagons, GvG, or the desire to try out a different tier. The same is true with many players that are basically server transients.
I’m not saying that the EotM concept is the answer, but don’t speak as though the server system doesn’t have many flaws as well. WvW needs a system that is:
1. Stable
2. Numerically similar
3. Still something players feel part of (i.e. not players randomly thrown together)
Ranger for sure. Every time you enter combat, all you will see is loot bags scrolling by. Ask anyone and they will tell you that rangers are the best suited class for every kind of combat in WvW by a mile, while almost being impossible to kill unless it’s like 1v20.
I don’t know what the situation is on EU servers, but in NA, there’s a queue (less than 5) on 2 maps right now (11:30 EST) in T7. Hardly seems dead.
The most viable way to experience a strategically played match in WvW would be to find a time machine and go back about 15 months. Just about every change since then has promoted a simple zerg play style … it seems to be the only thing ANet knows how to do. If you can’t find a time machine, the next best bet is to find a different game. WvW in GW2 had the potential to be the very best large scale open world strategy-based objective-oriented PvP game mode ever … but it isn’t, and it won’t be without a new game engine and a new regime running it.
The zergs the first few months after launch were even bigger (the player cap used to be higher) and dumber with nothing but ranged stand offs until some people eventually died.
I think anet could be doing a lot more to give WvW the tools needed in game to organize better with improved commander functionality and something like Battlefield style squad creation. It would take a significant investment in development resources though, and there’s no guarantee players would actually use it to make the map more of battlefield with smaller fights at more locations rather than 1 or 2 large zergs. For instance, Planetside has those kinds of features and it is often whopper zergs as well pushing a map.
I am sure there will be blobs in OS for 9 weeks straight working in shifts to prevent you from getting the reward.
Much as I don’t really enjoy playing or playing against D/P thieves, it’s kinda your own fault if you are endlessly trolled by them. If you are solo roaming you have to play around it, and in groups you should have enough CC and / or power builds that can pretty much instantly kill a glass thief. Or, you can simply take the low road and roll a dire perplexity build that can’t be killed with backstabs before the thief is forced to retreat or bleeds / burns to death.
I like transfers, but what I don’t like are multiple 300+ member guilds coming in and sucking the life out of the community like leeches, they suck the community dry until their fat on their own egos, point fingers then hop off that host and find another one. It happens every. single. time.
It’s disgusting, and I hold very little compassion and respect for guilds like that.
They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always end the same.
Lol now read what you just wrote. Condi builds are a safety net for people who are new, lacking skill, or experience. And then you go on to say that a skilled power build player can beat a condi build. so……. you are making my point for me, while trying to tell me it makes no logical sense. lolwut?
Now I will concede that playing condi builds is EASIER than playing a power build. Easier does not equal better than.
Yes, a skilled player using a power build can often beat a far less skilled player using one of the more annoying condi builds, or at least choose their battles wisely. When there’s such a disparity in skill it doesn’t make a very good argument for it being balanced though.
It’s all balanced out though by p/d thieves with Quip. You can’t help but feel you were masterfully outplayed.
/s if required
Now that they have taken your damage away?? my god you would think with all the outrageous QQ on these forums that the “crit dmg to ferocity nerf” is going to gut damage builds. YOU ARE STILL GOING TO BE DOING DAMAGE. They are not removing the power spec, and the amount of time it takes a zerker group to cruise through a dungeon, or a backstab thief to cruise through a zerker ele is going to be about 1 maybe 2 seconds longer in each case. This forum does not need any more drama queen as we are rapidly approaching critical mass in that aspect. The game has much bigger fish to fry than a 10% dmg decrease to the highest DPS builds in the game.
Look at this example, drama queen.
Condi bunker > power build in 1v1, due to how easy passive play Condi spam is, and how easy it is to tank at the same time and faceroll.
Let’s say that in Condi build vs power build, Condi build is 1.5x stronger.
After nerfing crit damage, Condi build now becomes 2x stronger than power builds, all year round.
Yeah I can make up arbitrary numbers too. LEts say roaming around wvw on my zerker warrior i run across 5 condi bunkers. I beat 3 of them and 2 beat me. So Zerker warrior is 20% better than condi bunkers. Take a 10% damage buff and I am only 10% better off vs condi bunkers. See how ridiculous your argument becomes when you enter in random subjective numbers?? I beat condi bunkers with power builds ALL THE TIME. is it hard? yeah. it is. That doesnt mean that condi is automatically “1.5 times better than power” lol l2p
That doesn’t make logical sense.
The fact is that condi builds are generally much easier to play. When I finished my mesmer 4-5 months ago, the first build I put together was the 20/20/30 blackwater build everyone loves. Within a single day of playing and acquiring muscle memory for the skills and cycles, I was out rolling most 1v1s, 1v2s, and 1v3s with absolute ease. I knew nothing about the class and never used shattering combos.
I was still losing to power builds ran by much more skilled players, but the learning curve was stupid easy, even easier than a d/p thief, which is probably the easiest, safest and most hated power build in wvw.
The basic math is not hard here. Players that run all or mostly zerker gear and trait offensively have very little defense besides dodging and their bar skills. Condi bunkers most often use gear with 2 defensive stats and trait deep into defensive traits. The theoretical equilibrium doesn’t occur except for the initial advantage power builds often have in DPS, or if the bunker has their defensive skills on cool down.
I am very much afraid that GW2 is going to fall into the same trap that GW1 did with passive pressure getting way out of hand. That was kept somewhat in check at first because GW2 mercifully does not feature hexing, and every class has access to condi removal skills. However, with the addition of torment, more condi bunker stat combos, and the continued existence of the +40% duration food, it’s been steadily creeping back into big problem territory. Nerfing power builds with no changes to condis just makes it worse.
This also says nothing about the PvP meta, or fact that the ~10% nerf to power in PvE just means speed runs will be ~10% slower, because the underlying mechanics of PvE do not favor anything besides maximum power.
(edited by zen.6091)
A good start is a mandatory comment to get rid of +/- condi duration foods, or at least scale them down to a maximum of +/- 10% like other foods.
Condis in zerg warfare are an entirely different matter aside from imob stacking. There’s so much AoE removal now from eles and guardians primarily, plus other smaller sources, that DPS from condis is frequently useless besides keeping downed players ticking. Even if you are on the periphery of battles and get hit with too much condi pressure outside of group support, you can at worst usually hide back in the zerg before bleeding out and count on an instant res.
It’s going to destroy the game mode lol..
Instead of people using trinkets and weapons that are berserker you are going to find that switch into more tanky stuff and Zerg vs Zerg is going to turn into a gigantic wet noodle fight that never ends.
And the best part is that everyone who wasted time and effort to optimally gear their characters with the old critical damage system now gets screwed with a pointless mix.
Guess we should have known that the rug would pulled out from under us at some point for playing the ascended game. Buy more gems for transmute stones, spend more time farming the totally awesome LW content…
With power builds getting nerfed there is no question that the condition duration foods have to go. It should have been done long ago.
Then – condition duration food should be gone too. zzzz
They have the same equivalent to each other.Oh wait, scratch that, to be fair, how about all consumable should be banned?
Stop making double standard comments. You already know how this old Beta is all about Power build, stop talking as if you guys are the one in weaker position. If you want to kill a running target, it’s easier to just backstab him with 10k+ damage with food and buffs than chipping him with condition (since most players now bring like 2~3 cleanse in WVW.)
You are so right.
Let’s all roll exciting condi bunkers to roam with and zerg ball even harder in larger groups.
With power builds getting nerfed there is no question that the condition duration foods have to go. It should have been done long ago.
It’s an interesting theory, but we’ll have to wait and see if this new trait has an internal cool down first.
I actually think mesmers are way under utilized it the current meta. You could easily setup a team build to be the GW2 version of r-spike that spikes individual players and those holding hands with a laughable amount of defense (including this new trait) if people just watch their positioning. Too much is generally going on these larger battles for players to read spikes coming off the GS. First step though, find 20 mesmers that want to actively refine theorycrafted builds and train.
To be fair there are tons of whacky theorycraft possibilities that are more clever than than hammer trains. PvE characters and gear causes the wvw meta to shift at a snails pace though. It’s just too hard to wipe away a whole team build and do something else entirely different.
(edited by zen.6091)
As someone who has been weighing ET, DR, or AR, I am curious what made you choose ET. All three of these servers seem to be roughly equal and have good communities, and I’m about to just put three names in a hat and draw.
Anet has long had an obsession with automating anything competitive so they are absolved of any responsibility or potential controversy. Having said that, there should at least be a mechanism in the ratings system that detects an abnormal amount of players transferring out with the ensuing precipitous decline in rating, then intervenes with a faster adjustment to appropriate matchups. The current system only rubs salt in the wound of servers that are in real trouble for weeks, even months on end.
You must suffer endless hours of PvE champ trains or WvW karma trains to level those alts. It’s what makes the game fun!
I think it may have some use, but it will probably just add the troll factor with SA d/p wvw builds that 1 spam a lot between backstabs. You would have to to think of it as sustain added on to rejev, pie lifestealing, and possibly even malice if you use those.
And yes, the possibility of full healing off ambient creatures is troubling.