Guild Wars 2

Is Skyhammer farming actually an offense?

Theoretically, it should be. Players are abusing the system to attain 900 rank points per match (earn 300 points, leave, rejoin, repeat. There is a limit of 300 rank gain – anything above 300 is just glory points).

The sad thing, however, is that rank and glory and all of the rewards in PvP are so meaningless right now that it doesn’t even matter when players are abusing the system. That’s the state of the game. This is a great example of why 8v8 and 10v10 hot join is so meaningless; Skyhammer farming is just the concept of hot join taken to the extreme – earning points and not caring about learning or improving in skill.

I’ve said this over and over again, but why is the casual mode in this game an 8v8 or 10v10? No other competitive game is like this. League of Legends’ casual mode is a 5v5, ranked mode is a 5v5, and team ranked mode is…guess what…a 5v5. Every e-sport game has their casual mode matching with their ranked mode in terms of team sizes in order to facilitate growth, learning, and competition, so why is ArenaNet going in reverse?

^ Good ideas. ArenaNet, please read them.

Allie Murdock.8152:

I see a couple problems with following players while shoutcasting; First, it puts the focus mostly on 1 entity in the fight, when there could easily be things happening around/behind that player that the casters might miss due to not being able to see them. Second, it is more difficult to control what’s happening with the camera. There isn’t much we can do about this as we can’t tell players to sit still so the camera doesn’t jerk around.

This can be resolved by simply having great shoutcasters. It takes a lot of skill to know what’s going on during a teamfight without relying on a bird’s-eye-view perspective – similar to the contestants in the tournament themselves. The players in the tournament must know what’s going in a team fight and yet they don’t have the option of a bird’s-eye-view. Having a skilled shoutcaster who can put himself in the contestants’ perspective and still shout cast accurately is ideal.

In fact, I think using the bird’s-eye-view is a lazy shortcut that also negatively impacts the spectator experience.

Mesmers are still wonderful, competitively, when they’re not being chased by two necros.

Leave them as they are.

If you’ve ever cooked, you’d know that the most efficient way to prepare an elaborate meal for the family is to start working on multiple things at once and let them simmer. Triage between the sauce, the meat, the noodles and vegetables until everything’s ready, then put it all together and enjoy the fantastic meal.

If you only worked on one thing at a time, like the sauce, great, you now have amazing sauce YUMMY…but no noodles or meat and veggies to go along with it. You could sip on that sauce all day but it probably won’t be very filling.

Why do metas even exist? The reason why metas, as a phenomenon, exists, is because they tend to be the most efficient way of winning. It just works. The current meta happens to have just the right amount of strategy and class synergy that tips the odds of winning in one’s favor. That is why metas exist.

This is also why we do not forcefully change the meta ourselves. There is no reason to change the meta, unless you’d like to have your win chance lowered. The only time the meta really shifts is when balance changes take place.

The solution is simple. When the warrior has berserker stance up, simply put protection on yourself, kite him with spectral walk until the duration is over, and then proceed to gently roll your face on the keyboard to kill him with condition spam.

Just walk away. It’s that simple. Nothing is forcing you to stand there and take damage while berserker stance is up. Break the stun, and walk away until the stance is gone.

How about let’s keep sustain the way it is, because it is balanced, and fix the things that are actually imbalanced. 4 second stuns every 7 seconds is unintended, for starters.

In arenas, I see necros using signet of spite, putting down a spectral wall, and then stand in place, rolling their face over their scepter #1 key on warriors with berserker stance on.

If face palms scaled with how idiotic a situation is, my face palm would go through my skull and make a giant dent in the wall behind me.

People are sad that they can’t ram their faces into warriors and have them topple over effortlessly. Unskilled players are not the only ones guilty of this; even the players in the PAX Prime tournament in Seattle were doing this. Sync’s 2 spirit rangers were literally, literally, bashing their heads into Car Crash’s warrior’s AoE. The rangers didn’t die immediately, but the evades do not apply to the spirits and the spirits died fast due to negligence. The rangers were expecting to just prance around and have everything around them die to conditions – totally ignoring key abilities being used, like the warrior’s berserker stance. Is this a case of balance or a case of being outplayed?

Jonathan Sharp was on the ball when he pointed out the fact that warriors only have a small window where they have very high defense, and coordinated kiting can counter warrior stances. Seriously. When you see a warrior pop berserker stance or endure pain, what is stopping you from simply walking away? Why continue to fight in the warrior’s proximity during these defensive cooldowns. It’s equivalent to someone walking into a necro’s spectral wall and getting feared again, and again, and again, and again and over and over and over again. Why…? Sorry sir, but sheer willpower will not break that wall. Moderate usage of brain is recommended.

Of course warriors appear to be powerful right now when the meta is so heavily revolved around condition spam. Doesn’t it seem obvious? Warriors suddenly receive an 8 second condition immunity skill and over night they go from being soft, fluffy marshmallow-pushovers to becoming “OP”? In Rock-Paper-Scissors, if paper suddenly transformed into a rock over night, you’re sure as heII going to be hearing it from scissors.

The sustain at face value is balanced. It’s mandatory in this meta, imo. When the meta is all about playing hyper defensive and fights are dragged out due to everyone stacking survivability over offense, a warrior must have strong sustain to have any map presence at all. What makes the sustain seem too strong is everything else around it: the stuns (due to sigil bugs), the stances (a case of passive gameplay > active gameplay). The sustain by itself is balanced and has no reason to be changed.

Lower CD of warrior shouts to ~10 seconds = Viable new support build.

Oblivion.8307:

Warriors are OP.
I said as soon as berserker stance was changed ‘this is one of the most kittened abilities in the game’. However, I’d like to see the base healing of signet reduced while the coefficient should be brought up. Constructive.

I think you’re confusing the 4 second stuns every 7 seconds with the supposedly “OP” topic being discussed here: warrior sustain. Is warrior sustain OP? When it is combined with the fact that warriors can output 4 second stuns every 7 seconds, yes it is too strong because of the stuns. If you just look at warrior sustain by itself, logically it makes sense (melee class with no outs or protection boon = higher inherent risk = strong sustain is mandatory) and it is balanced.

BlackBeard.2873:

Actually, if you watch the gw2pvptv stream, most streamers I have seen (Arken, OstrichEggs, Muffinz, phantaram) agree that the regen on warrior’s right now with the signet is just over-the-top. The problem with the current design is that it plays into the rock-paper-scissors class design where there are hard-counters and doesn’t lend itself to play-style counters. That is a problem for warr’s as it is for necros and old spirit rangers.

Sustain is only powerful on warriors right now because of the Sigil of Paralyzation bug (+1 full second stun duration). Because of this, warriors can chain stuns much more effectively than intended, and they take less damage than intended too, because a stunned opponent is not dealing damage. Fix the sigil, and it becomes very apparent that warrior sustain is balanced.

Serdoc.7261:

Please don’t remove Hotjoins.

They are great for PvPers who have real life distractions that might take them away from PvP at a moments notice and do not want to kitten off people in Ranked Solo when they need to go AFK for a minute.

That’s what WvW is for.

PvP should always be an environment for competition. League of Legends doesn’t have an 8 v 8 or 10 v 10 “for the casuals” mode that is totally different and separately balanced from 5 v 5. No. In LoL, even the casual, non-ranked mode is 5 v 5, and for an important reason: it allows the game developers to balance the game accurately from different demographic viewpoints.

In LoL, devs can compare and contrast the 5 v 5 scene between very high ELO players, as well as casuals, and get a more accurate picture of balance. ArenaNet DOES NOT HAVE THAT CAPABILITY. 8 v 8 is currently a waste of space that provides no useful information to ArenaNet for balancing the game! One does not keep trash piling up in a corner of the room. THROW THE TRASH OUT. League of Legends has 1 million+ active players and they’re at the forefront of e-sports right now. Learn from them.

Notice nobody in the top 100 are complaining about warriors right now. It’s because everyone knows that warriors have their counters. It’s OK for classes to have powerful tools as long as the class has solid counters, also.

Right now, warriors are the pinnacle of balance that all classes should strive to be. They (finally) have some powerful tools that give them some flare and map presence, but are not unstoppable and can be countered. This is how the game should be designed.

redslion.9675:

You know what?

We don’t need to nerf it. We need to CHANGE healing signet.

What about a skill that has to be toggled, and that heals for much more than now while toggled, but increases the damage you receive by a lot?

Example:

Signet of Gamble.

While active, heals you for 1000 per second, but increases all the damage (condi damage included) you take by 50%/100%. You can toggle/untoggle it only once every 5/10 seconds.

This might add more complextiy to our gameplay.

Why does healing signet need to be changed? Attacking a warrior with healing signet is not very different from (actually worst than) attacking an ele with protection on, or meleeing a thief in a smoke bomb field. Whereas protection and blind are forms of damage mitigation, the sustain from healing signet has zero mitigation. The warrior is taking the full brunt force of all damage sources, and the sustain is even susceptible to poison’s healing reduction. The last point is extremely important: warriors have no passive condition removal, so poison is very potent on warriors.

Chokolata.1870:

Honestly, the problem is that the warrior can get a good heal without investing into healing power .

Reduce the starting HS heal to say 300 , but up its benefit from heaping power significantly .

Why would a warrior invest in healing when warriors provide no team support in terms of healing, and have no viable bunker builds?

That is the only point of using a cleric’s amulet: 1) team support through healing, or 2) bunker. If ArenaNet purposefully wants warriors to be g’imped in these areas, then they should keep the warrior’s base heals high and heal scaling low, which is exactly what they’re doing. In this case, ArenaNet’s logic is sound.

People like to focus on all the things that warriors do have, and fail to remember all of the things that warriors DON’T have.

It’s the same with any other class. Try telling an Ele to run into a 4 man enemy team and melee them without perma-vigor, protection, regeneration, and invulnerability. That Ele would tell you to go f*** yourself because you’re crazy. This is how it is with warriors. You take away their option of sustain, and they go back to being absolutely useless in team fights. They have sustain because they need it to make up for all of the things they just don’t have! It’s that simple.

As for balance, I feel like more quality of life changes is better than huge mechanical changes or even minor mechanical “shaving”. For example, warrior banners are very cool, except for the fact that picking them up stuns the player for 2 seconds, the #5 banner skill stuns the player for 2 seconds, teammates can steal the banner and run off with it (no way of forcibly taking the banner back), etc. Instead of total mechanical revamps, I think more quality of life changes that improve the usability of builds is more efficient at balancing the game.

Balance, bug fixes, content updates – these are all routine and normal things expected from any game. I think the most important of all subjects, though, is population. Is PvP growing in population, and is effort being put into helping the population grow. Nothing can be more disheartening than the thought of playing a dead or dying game.

Whether it was a success or not, I see Pax Prime as a demonstration of effort being put into helping PvP grow. It was great to know that ArenaNet is visibly trying to spread the word and get people interested in PvP. More of this kind of effort can only be a good thing for the community.

style.6173:

@OP. seriously? Eles are one of the hardest classes to kill if played right. The problem with eles is that they were so OP for so long that a lot of people complain now that they are balanced again

This could be true. Maybe I was so used to the hyper performance that Eles had a few months ago that my standards for them are a bit unrealistic. In any other meta, they do extremely well, even now. It’s just the way that rangers and necros are dominating the scene with condition spam that is where eles are weak in.

This is not a critique but just my observation from doing arenas. I feel no map presence with eles. If an ele is on my team, I can’t rely on them to finish downed people like before, or stick on targets, or offer me support, because they are so busy trying to keep themselves alive all the time now. I always see eles struggling against the onslaught of conditions put out by necros and rangers that I feel like they aren’t doing much for me when they’re on my team.

If I see an ele on the enemy team, I know that I can pressure the ele easily now, so I always focus the ele and stick on him until he’s forced to leave the team fight. It has become a routine now. Ele in sight? Mark him. Stick on him until he’s dead – rest of the enemy team crumbles due to numbers advantage. These are just my personal observations from arenas so far.

I still do not agree that warriors hard counter spirit rangers. Yes warriors have the potential to take out the spirits, but at great cost. In group fights this can be done because everyone’s damage combined with the warrior’s AoE will take out the spirits efficiently. However, in 1v1s, the ranger will still dominate the warrior because of how long it takes to kill the spirits with just the warrior’s AoE alone.

Mrbig.8019:

Correct, i verified.

still doesn’t really change anything, altough now i understand how broken would 800 hp per sec would have been

Hrm… my build heals 900 HP per second.

The PAX Prime tournament in Seattle was entertaining to watch. That’s all that matters. Hopefully some attention was brought on GW2 as a result, and the competitive PvP community will grow.

Even Berserker’s stance is predictable. If you’re a necro and you see a warrior running up to your face confidently, it’s very likely that he’s going to pop berserker’s stance. Instead of smashing your face into your keyboard and spamming all your conditions right away, wait a second and observe the warrior as he pops berserker stance. Kite him around until it’s over. Then proceed to put your left cheek and nose on the keyboard and gently roll your face to the right and left repeatedly until everything around you is dead.

!!!!! IMPORTANT CHANGES TO BANNERS !!!!!

1. Players who summon the banner must have priority in holding the banner.
   Much like occupying siege weapons in WvW, the person who creates the banner should be able to knock off who’s currently holding the banner and take it back.
2. The #5 skill on banners should not be a 2 second self-stun. That is just asinine.
3. Picking up the banner should be very similar to swapping engineer kits; there should be no delay that self-stuns the player for 1.5 seconds when picking up banners.
4. The Powerful Banners trait should do more than 200 damage upon summoning banners. This trait = the definition of awful.

Everything else about banners is relatively fine. The #2 skills are weak on every banner. The #2 on the Battle Standard elite self-stuns the player for 2 seconds before casting stability for 3 seconds. That is not good, to put it lightly.

redslion.9675:

I didn’t play it much (and I play a different version), but I felt like its fighting potential is low, compared with Hammer/mace (yeah, Hammer has lower dps, but I can chain 10 seconds long disables with it and mace). It only worked better because I hadd better mobility out of combat, so I felt a little more useful (and with that build I have almost never been put into a 4v5 match… maybe it brings me luck).

I don’t understand this obsession with mass CC chaining on warrior builds. On top of all the things that could go wrong (blinds, random evades, blocks, teleports), every competitive player has stun breakers and most have their own source of stability. Then you add in the guardian that’s supplying the entire team with stability, aegis blocks, and virtue blinds, and suddenly these mass CC warriors aren’t contributing anything for 20+ seconds. My own warrior build has 30 seconds of personal stability. The list of probable bad outcomes goes on.

Mathematically, it is just too risky to carry around mass melee CC while giving up other things like consistent damage, reliable team support, and even ranged damage and ranged CC. Plus, say in the best case scenario, you land all of your CC on a target perfectly. Now you are at the mercy of your team being able to follow up your CC. With good voice communication, this can be achieved. In solo queue? Don’t hold your breath. Statistically speaking, it’s just not a good trade-off to create a build revolving around nothing but melee CC.

Zanryu.3417:

See, I love that. Taking damage or holding a point don’t contribute to your score, when really if you’re sitting there being a bunky mofo you should be awarded for taking the kind of damage you’re likely to take. I remember a game I had with some elitist who trashtalked everyone on my team and I called her out on it, and after the game (which we lost) I had the least amount of points because instead of going and trying to damage everything I was holding them off points and taking on more than one of them in multiple situations, resulting in far less kills than my teammates. Apparently my lack of points meant I did absolutely nothing to contribute.

It’s arguably easier to stand on a point and hold it, especially if you’re a bunker guardian and enemies don’t focus you anyway – in fact you get ignored most of the time in team fights. Isn’t it appropriate for the role that takes more active gameplay and decision making to be rewarded with more points?

Let me put it this way. Damagers on your team must worry about 1) killing opponents while 2) surviving, plus 3) supporting teammates, and 4) controlling the rest of the map. Bunkers don’t worry about killing, they don’t need to worry about surviving, they don’t have to even move anywhere on the map, they just support. That’s all they need to care about. Therefore, they get rewarded points for supporting. It just makes sense.

I’ve been experimenting with the Stronger Bowstrings trait. Absolutely amazing. I’ve updated the build guide and replaced the CD reduction trait for banners with Stronger Bowstrings.

Why Stronger Bowstrings?

• This trait has several hidden benefits that aren’t shown in the trait description. First, the trait makes Dual Shot and Fan of Fire 100% projectile finishers.
• What does this mean? It means that if you lay down a fire field and use Fan of Fire on a target in melee range, you instantly apply 10 seconds of burning on the target.
• Combined with the actual fire field and a couple dual shots, you’re outputting 15+ seconds of burning on the target almost instantly. It’s insane.

Each tick of burning with this build is about 550 damage – higher if you have minor corruption stacks and might stacks. 15 seconds of burning…yes, it’s awesome.

Any negative side-effects of this trait?

• There is a misconception that Arcing Arrow deals less damage when using the Stronger Bowstrings trait. Although it is true that the tooltip updates with 33% less damage for Arcing Arrow, the actual skill deals the same amount of damage. So, no, the damage of Arcing Arrow is the same with the trait.
• Dual Shot’s base damage is reduced by 10%, but this is negligible as the skill is 100% guaranteed to apply burning on the target in a fire field, per arrow hit.

Population and E-sports:

What’s being done about the PvP population? Any effort being put into making GW2 PvP more inviting, accessible, and appealing to newcomers? Has it ever been considered to make the Heart of the Mists free-to-play and go the route of League of Legends (population of 1 million+ active accounts)? Making PvP free, open and accessible to all gamers around the world could be a huge step in progress towards e-sport viability.

Protip #1:

Use Stronger Bowstrings trait. Lay down a fire field. Autoattack a few times. Laugh maniacally at your opponent as you put on 15 seconds of burning on them instantly.

In terms of raw damage, rifle is the strongest single-target ranged weapon in the game.

Is it a PvP viable weapon, competitively? No. The reason is because it has no way of dealing with melee pressure from opponents. Its hardest hitting ability is very telegraphed and cannot be used while enemies are aware of your presence, which means you basically have no burst skill to use while fighting.

The longbow is far superior competitively because the longbow actually deals more damage in melee range, and its burst skill can be used anytime: both of these factors reduce melee pressure. All of its attacks are AoE, too, so overall the damage is greater than rifle just because multiple opponents can get cleaved by the longbow at once.

Steelo.4597:

humans look like dolls? T.T

Compared to a norn, yes humans look like children.

Winds.3087:

zone.1073:

Facepalm. That’s the point. Also, I forgot to add quickness finishing to that list. Downed mesmers make quickness-finishing useless, too.

What point exactly? How anything you mentioned will help you finish, say, thief? Or self-ressing engineers and rangers?

The point is that the mesmer’s downed state is unique and not stupid like the original post claims. Self-ressing engis still get executed by quickness finishers. Thieves get executed with a well-timed teleport finish. Etc.

The mesmer’s downed state negates everything and is almost guaranteed to interrupt anyone’s initial execution attempt. In this sense it is similar to the Ele’s downed state, although unlike mist form, the mesmer can be revived while using his downed state skills.

jportell.2197:

zone.1073:

Yeah guaranteeing your opponent to waste 8+ seconds to successfully execute you is so stupid. Making stability, teleport, blind, and stealth finishing useless is so stupid!

Stealth finishing not useless in a mes because 2 requires a target and 8+ s on a stomp? If utake tht llong to stomp anyone just wow.

The execute animation is 3 seconds, genius. It takes 2 finishing attempts since the mesmer will interrupt your first one at the last second. Mesmer’s downed stealth is 2 seconds long, and even longer if traited. Tada, 8+ seconds.

Winds.3087:

zone.1073:

Yeah guaranteeing your opponent to waste 8+ seconds to successfully execute you is so stupid. Making stability, teleport, blind, and stealth finishing useless is so stupid!

Why would you possibly need stability, teleport and blind to finish mesmer?

Facepalm. That’s the point. Also, I forgot to add quickness finishing to that list. Downed mesmers make quickness-finishing useless, too.

Yeah guaranteeing your opponent to waste 8+ seconds to successfully execute you is so stupid. Making stability, teleport, blind, and stealth finishing useless is so stupid!

Norn, but be prepared to be focus-fired because of how big and beautiful you are.

Off-hand sword has crazy condition pressure with the introduction of the torment condition. It comes with a pretty decent 2 second block now, since the #5 parry does not cancel immediately upon blocking one hit; it continues blocking for the entire duration unless you’re in range to actually land a parry on someone.

Main-hand sword is viable for power builds, since the new #3 skill can crit for upwards 8k damage, but it has a long animation and it is difficult to land. The attack speed of the #1 combo chain has been increased significantly.

Longbow has extremely good single-target and AoE damage because it has both power and condition damage mixed together. The Burning Arrows trait decreases longbow cooldowns by 20% now, so the #2 Fan of Fire skill can be used 3 times in a row within a 10 second cooldown weapon swap. That’s 15 seconds of burning if you hit the target at melee range, which leads to my next point: the longbow is ironically stronger in melee range. Unlike the rifle, which is awful vs opponents who rely on melee-ranged pressuring, the longbow is really good for melee fights.

Tellah.8073:

it is not the condi that is the problem, its the defense that is coupled with it.

So, you believe condition builds should be as sturdy as wet toilet paper? No sir, that’s not how PvP works in GW2. Even Necros have good survivability when fully specced as glass cannon condtion bursters, and Necros have arguably the strongest ranged conditions in the game.

In order for most builds to be viable in PvP competitively, there must be a certain degree of offense mixed with survivability. By the way, shaman amulet-using condition builds are not bursty; they deal damage over quite a long period of time, giving you a lot of room for counter gameplay. If you lose to a shaman amulet warrior, that is simply a case of being outplayed.

Matchmaking needs to be tiered. Simple as that.

Rating needs to be visible, measurable, and predictable. If I’m 2200 rating, for example, I should only be matched with players of 2000+ rating – not four 2000 players and a 1600 moron, etc.

Play Grand Theft Auto Online. Kill everyone, enslave the city, and run the entire world with your 5-man team. That will be good pvp practice.

Instead of punishing the leavers in a 4v5 situation (which already happens), I say ArenaNet should reward the disadvantaged team more, to give incentive for the disadvantaged team to continue with the match.

Or, auto-balance. If a match begins as a 4v5, a 30 second countdown will begin for the 5-man team to choose who to kick, making the match a 4v4. The kicked player will not receive any changes to their rating or match history, and they will simply be returned to the Heart of the Mists.

Yes it does happen. You need to swap your signets for other utilities, then swap back before the match begins.

1. Dual-wield greatswords.
2. Dual-wield shields.
3. Staff (the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle kind)

Do want.

Julie Yann.5379:

As a condition warrior the only real troubles I have are against certain mesmer builds (some I can kill quit easily, I can’t keep enough pressure on others), necros ( the good ones), and the stun lock warrior. .

If you follow my 30 seconds of stability condition build, you shouldn’t have any issues vs stunlock warriors. In fact, my build actually hard-counters the stunlock build. They only have 10 seconds of defense vs your conditions, while you have 30 seconds of immunity vs their build. It works out in the condition warrior’s favor nicely.

Change the trait to: Gain 2 seconds of protection for every bar of adrenaline spent.

It is by far not easy mode. However, condition builds output a stable, steady stream of damage that is unavoidable (unless you step off the cap point to avoid the fire) and the damage is true damage, meaning it cuts straight through defense. This may give the impression that they are easy to play but the combos take a lot of timing and coordination, and there is plenty of room for counter-play.

Classes need to be balanced, builds need to be more diverse, and more team comps need to be viable competitively. Why is it that a guardian is 100% absolutely mandatory in team comps? Why can’t warriors and thieves bunker?

Traits need a lot of work all across the board for all classes. Bugs need to be fixed. Why does the warrior’s #5 banner skill inflict a 2 second self stun? That’s horribad. Picking up a banner causes a 1 second stun, too. What the heck.

Ultimately, e-sports should be the primary goal behind everything. In order for GW2 to become a mainstream competitive PvP game, fundamental things like balance, bug fixes, build variation, arena matchmaking, and PvP incentive need to be solid. Also, POPULATION MUST IMPROVE. There’s only ~2000 players in a worldwide “massive multiplayer” online game. Compare this to League of Legends 1 million plus players worldwide. Come on. Solution: make the Heart of the Mists free to play. The amount of money ArenaNet would make from a population increase due to free-to-play mode would be astronomical.