Anonynja.3172

Fair enough. I unironically think core revenant is pretty good and not particularly behind other core specs aside from hmm, guardian and engineer. Those can really benefit from using 3 core traitlines competitively with e-specs. Maybe core thief in pvp but I feel bad for thief overall, they're kinda OP in super narrow ways and undertuned in the grand scheme of things. I don't know about ANet intending core rev to be weak, but I'm sure you're right at least in the sense that launching a new class alongside its first espec influenced its design. Sure, stunbreak on Ventari would be great, no disagreement there. But I am also wary of power creep, especially in PvP (let us have fun in PvE, it's whatever) so my inclination might be to tone CC output down rather than make sure every defensive bar has a stunbreak. I have more problem with Spellbreaker + Chrono + Harbinger low-effort stunlock combos and prefer disarmament over arms race xD The stunlock issue is really with repeated stun applications, not individual stuns. One stunbreak gets you out of Jade Wind or a single hammer war knockdown. But when you immediately lay on another stun, like Harbinger's shroud5 pulse, that's problematic.

Hahaha true. I won't be selling my bathwater on Twitch anytime soon either. Just if you're curious, the post title is an old meme referring to a line from a youtube video "The Rap Battle [Parody]": "I'm about to destroy this man's whole career". ❤️ yeah. Combat is so fun. It has held me for much longer than other games with rich combat like open world singleplayer RPGs. As great as Spiderman, Horizon, and all the Souls-likes are... I put those on the shelf eventually and keep coming back to this one. Totally agree. I love theorycrafting. It's what sucked me into gw1 in the first place. And I deeply enjoy playing off-meta builds in high-pressure settings. I get a kick out of pleasantly surprising people in CMs with a heal core warrior or kicking butt in pvp on core revenant. Abusing the unblockable hits from Ancient Echoes combined with Jade Winds is *mwah*. There's so much to explore casually for fun. I just finished GWAMM and my legendary gear goals, so I am in GW "retirement" and it can be relaxing and fun. That's part of why the match manipulation experience was so disheartening in contrast. We just want to enjoy the game and that has to include respecting each other.

I just wish the tablet's effects occurred around the player, too, just like Scourge's shades and Mesmer shatters. Alternatively, we could have a larger radius around the tablet and a longer cooldown on Move Tablet. And of course for the current disappearing-underground bug to be fixed. EDIT: They fixed it 😄 Yay!

Hard disagree! Core rev suffers the same general inferiority to especs as every other spec, but the core legends work awesome together. I don't even bring Alliance stance when I play Vindicator. Check out ShaoAZ's videos for great core rev examples. Shao plays with non-meta builds intentionally, so they have extreme examples. But you really cannot go wrong with Shiro + Jalis, even on condi builds (you use Phase Traversal and Ancient Echoes to make your combos unblockable; Impossible Odds becomes a source of mobility rather than damage). I've used every combination of legends in serious pve and pvp.

Thank you lol. Playing support can be so frustrating when teammates leave nodes the moment they cap. People ignore the fact that simply holding 1pt/s is much better than getting 5pts for a kill you chase around for 2mins. Can't count how often I've just been abandoned on a capped node. Sometimes you just need to slow down when you already have advantage, let the roamer keep rotating and harassing. A mistake I often make on roamer is trying to play other roles when my teammates aren't. Especially if we're missing a duelist or our duelist isn't doing their job. It's hard to just let the enemy duelist have the node when your teammates won't defend with you, but you can easily end up feeding if you play pretend duelist. Vindi and Herald often get top heals if there's no dedicated support, and some of it comes from team heals, but keep in mind you may just be on a spec that uses healing for self sustain (as opposed to blocks, invulns, stealth, etc). Like if you play Vindicator support you can hit 600k healing while you'd get maybe 250k on a Guardian support because you're looking at proactive vs. reactive support. Damage reduction and avoidance versus healing damage already done. You heal less if you reliably pump out Protection, for example.

Have you tried playing vindicator? As a rev main usually on herald, I find other vindicators pretty easy to deal with unless they're duelist and I'm glass, then I just kite. It's a shallow spec with plenty of holes. You know they're going to have two blocks, frequent dodges, frequent small heals, so you have to kite them, bait their blocks, then burst them down. If you let the fight drag out they will out-sustain you. Just like with Spellbreaker, remember they're strongest up close and lose effectiveness if you keep distance. I agree vindicator's survivability is too easy for low investment, but tbh that complaint's true of most specs right now. Thief can just stealth whenever they wanna retreat, daredevil can perma stealth. Spellbreaker has a one-button-for-everything solution with Full Counter. Mesmer can dodge, distort, mirage cloak, teleport, hide in clones, and stealth. Catalyst and weaver are junk in the hands of newbies but become OP in skilled hands because their toolkit is so bloated. Engineer, ele, guardian all have long invulns. Same response as to any "X class is OP" posts, A) you may have a valid point but B) try playing it first and you'll learn how fragile it can be.

I agree. My approach was to finish the profession win reqs without paying any attention to rank. This happened after they were done, so I was back on my main, done with Ascension, and just climbing back up. Didn't realize our population was THAT low compared to other games, yikes. I think this is correct. The only way I could sustainably play this game's pvp is to ignore key features (ie. leaderboard, titles, wins/losses) and accept many problems. That's why I said at the end, maybe I'll come back from burnout, but gw2 pvp is mostly endured, not enjoyed. If you can play it that purely, just enjoying fights regardless of everything around you, you've definitely gotten into a good headspace.

One match turned a switch in my head and broke my growing love for sPvP. For context, I've been working on The Ascension after a few years off PvP. I had been a solidly silver player, very mediocre. Constantly swapping classes, charging headlong into mid, learning little from my mistakes. But in the past few years I've improved my mental health, found my main profession, gotten into raiding and strike CMs, and beaten some of the hardest content in the game. I reentered PvP with a much better headspace and stronger class familiarity. I quickly climbed to g1, kept studying high rank players and trying to reflect on my matches, and eventually reached g3. For a brief period, I enjoyed a 50/50 win rate with much less toxicity than you see in lower ranks. People were generally trying their best, and losing fair matches didn't really feel bad. You learn and try again. Then The Ascension collection's final step kicked in and I needed ten wins on two other classes. I am not as skilled on my alts, so naturally I slid toward g1. Frustrating loss streaks, but that's the nature of account-bound rank. Got the wins on the other two classes for the collection and swapped back to my main. Started climbing, but am approaching burnout. Being back in lower rank matches is giving awful matchmaking again. We win by landslides, we lose by landslides, people AFK, people rage. Rare are the fair matches decided by skill. It's a slog with the promise of fairness at g3 the only motivator. So I'm slowly climbing, when one match just breaks me. The teammate's account name is Afksales.####. Their character name is random jumbled letters. They aren't hiding it. We start winning the match by a wide lead. About halfway in, this teammate goes afk at base. Our team is understandably upset. Afksales.#### laughs and taunts chat. And I realize this means somebody on the other team has purchased this match. A switch goes off in my head and I just close the game. Take the deserter hit and save my teammates from losing rank. That's it for me. I cannot find joy in a game mode with so many different major issues. Buying matches was the last straw. I think we all play sPvP for similar reasons. Every once in a while, you have a beautiful match. Win or lose, it feels good. You know you all tried your best. You respect the enemy team whether they beat you or lost. The outcome is earned, whichever way it went. But those matches are far too rare. Balance issues, matchmaking, low player population, griefing, win trading, afk selling... there are too many things holding this game mode back from goodness, let alone greatness. So best of luck to you all. Maybe this is just burnout, but I can't un-realize this: Guild Wars 2 sPvP is more endured than enjoyed. You turn off chat, you check out during the landslide matches, you take deep breaths when teammates grief. All for the bright spots when ten people are trying their best. I hope ANet finds ways to improve it.

Yeah this bug isn't hard to reproduce either. Just hop on Ventari and try using the tablet. It's borked right now.

1) you're not crazy, matchmaking is actually awful 2) you cannot carry your team as a healer. you have to be a sweaty tryhard 100% focused with your best soundtrack blasting on a high damage high mobility class if you want to even come close to carrying. The way this game works, one person can absolutely throw a match. The number of griefers I see in this game is absolutely infuriating. AFK at base, flaming team chat. It makes me hate sPvP because so few games are actually determined by skill. Probably 25% are completely unwinnable and 25% are unlosable due to griefers. But one person cannot realistically carry a match unless they are orders of magnitude better than everyone else on the field. So good luck crawling out of low rank. At low rank you get griefers throwing temper tantrums and at high rank you get win trading and other forms of match manipulation. Sweet spot for fair, decent matches might be around g3.

The complaints in this post surprised me. I've been playing rev since HoT as well, figured out it was my main a few years later. I am g3 in PvP, so if you're speaking from platinum perspective there may be differences I don't see. Herald is in such a good place across game modes right now I hope they don't touch it. Glint is such a based legend with tons of options for counterplay in a range of scenarios. You have stunbreak that blinds, get a damage boost when you consume Facet of Strength before swapping to Shiro and bursting, massive CC from Facet of Chaos, one of the strongest heals in the game with Facet of Light, and you pulse boons to allies all the while. BTW, Herald eats Willbenders. They're so squishy and their burst is predictable. It's just a coin toss sometimes with melee vs. melee if you don't kite well. Shiro is AMAZING in pvp. I chase people down to clinch kills so aggressively with phase traversal. I use Jade Winds ALL THE TIME. It is a long duration AoE stun! Many clutch moments with it. My only issue with Shiro is high energy cost skills, so I swap legend off cooldown to always have some energy budget and keep up an aggressive pace in combat. Staff is great utility. Block->blind, two small heal bursts, massive knockback, decent damage pressure from autoattack. Remember it's a support weapon too, so just like Glint, you get the most out of it when you're +1ing teammates. Area heals and condi cleanse ❤️ Sw/sw is super strong. You have chill+burst, evade+burst, cone AoE immob, and a chase skill. Perfect kit. I like condi as well, and have tons of fun with axe4 and axe5. Mace is pretty good, I just wish the leap were slightly longer range. Vindicator on the other hand is serviceable but terribly designed. You can burst with it as DPS/duelist and get crazy high healing output as support, but it's always inferior to another option. The spec has no internal synergy. I have a rework in mind that would turn both Urn and Spear into upkeep skills that charge with healing/damage output for burst barrier and burst damage, change Alliance Tactics into an upkeep skill that adds effects on dodges depending on your invoked legend, and condense the utilities onto one skill bar so we can stop switching between Saint Viktor and Archemorus without getting our energy reset. Urn would replace heal slot, Nomad's Advance would become a sequence skill that turns into Battle Dance, and the other two utilities would be consolidated into single skills with certain effects shifted to the on-dodge bonus from Alliance Tactics. Spear stays in elite slot.

Counterplay, man. Every class needs counterplay. Spellbreaker is dominating the meta. CC is its counter. People are bringing more CC because they're responding intelligently to the meta. That should encourage diversifying away from Spellbreaker. It's a dialogue between you and the meta. Don't go running to ANet to change the rules so you can win more lol.

If a player DCs from a ranked match for any reason, their team will almost certainly lose, but the game won't penalize their rank. If that player reconnects, however, the team will still almost certainly lose, and they will lose rank. If you disconnect, please let the match finish so you don't cost your teammates rank. It doesn't feel good to get slapped with Dishonor when you didn't intend to disconnect. You weren't really being dishonorable, your internet just crapped out on you. But it is definitely healthier for the game to discourage people playing on unstable connections. That's common across all competitive online games. I've lived in many places with terrible internet and usually wouldn't play competitive game modes - I'd stick to PvE and singleplayer stuff. If I chose to play, I accepted that the experience would simply be inferior, because internet is required. I agree it doesn't matter as much for unranked, but believe the benefit of the same system applying to both is simply fairness and consistency.

I don't agree with everything you said, but you generally raised a bunch of good points. I am curious what you guys mean by "degenerate" in this context. I'll just add a couple thoughts. Shatters are telegraphed. The clones are starting moving toward the same point at the same time in a straight line. Their back-arching animation is also unique, but I feel like it happens after the damage procs. Adding cast time to shatters would be a massive nerf to mesmers across all game modes and require many buffs to offset. It would also break the flow of gameplay and make the class much less fun. They are designed to be combined with other skills. I want to say you probably don't play mesmer much if you're suggesting this. Mantras, on the other hand, are at least worth discussion - we have had the same complaint in PvE with Firebrand's no-effort Quickness button on mantras. Vindicator's dodge is in an awkward spot since adding the second dodge. Changing direction in mid-air is necessary when you think about the single, long-cast-time dodge it used to have. It's in a gray area right now though because they shortened the dodge animation when they added the second one back in. A lot of us think Vindicator is just not fully designed, and as a rev main I have a lot of thoughts on that for another post.

Population is probably higher if anything since Steam release. I don't think queue times have changed dramatically in either direction. PvP chat is as toxic as ever. Heart of the Mists remains the most bleak place to hang out in the game. Recommend queuing from literally anywhere else. Griefing teammates is unfortunately still a reality and ANet hasn't done much to mitigate it. Balance is probably in one of the best spots it's been in. Every class has viable builds in at least two different roles. Power meta. Condi is still viable, there's just quite a bit of condi cleanse access so you have to bait cleanses and use more frequent, lower duration condis. Mobility creep has blurred the lines with roles. Everybody can kinda overlap with roamer as needed. Lots of classes have built in 25% movement speed or can trait for it. Mechanist got a 20s CD teleport, Willbender's virtues are movement skills, Vindicator has some leaps... NOT having mobility is the exception these days. No more bunkers. Toughness amulets are removed. Whew! Healing amulets were reduced too. Support builds are using Avatar amulet which only gives 500 healing. Fights should be less of a slog than during previous metas. That said, plenty of duelist options can sustain for quite a while, it's just more active defense like Spellbreaker's Full Counter, rather than passively soaking up damage just because of your gear. Support roles are dominated by Tempest and core Guardian. Druid, Vindicator, and Specter are niche picks. Lots of DPS/duelist/roamer builds offer some support to allies, though. If you're a 'selfish' DPS, you better be securing kills 😛

Completely agree, and I will keep beating the drum on this with you. I have been saying this exact suggestion for months now and hope more people push ANet to use Energy Meld and the middle traits to give Vindicator the internal synergy it deserves. With the double dodge returned, these endurance refunds from Energy Meld and your middle trait are flat, uninteractive, and do nothing to connect the two Alliance stances to each other. Effects on legend swap from the middle traits and complementary effects from Energy Meld are exactly what we need. Yes to everything you wrote.

Vallun made a condi quick herald immediately after the quickness update. It functions if you just want variety, but I don't think there is any case where a power quick herald wouldn't be superior. Power quick herald offers greater damage, and the facet of nature lifesteal buff from shiro is more useful to your squad in instanced pve than the condi pull one from mallyx. Condi quick berserker is a good option if you're looking for that combo. It is true that condi is desired on some encounters so it's nice to have the flexibility. Condi herald is pretty decent in wvw and pvp though. Of course, it doesn't bring quickness in those modes.

Overall pretty positive changes. New approach to FB tomes seems smart. I am concerned about class homogenization with changes like Deadeye's range and kneel, and pulling back on Elementalist's unique weapon/attunement interaction by making Scepter solely DPS. And I'm concerned with the band-aid approach, just tweaking numbers and not addressing underlying issues. For example, Specters are jumping in and out of their shroud just to give allies barrier. That's not ideal. But ANet does not attempt to address the cause, instead slapping a cooldown on exiting shroud 😕 As a revenant main PvE player: Please give Vindicator internal synergy. The class is completely pigeonholed as selfish power DPS in PvE, while risking being overpowered in PvP/WvW. I think Vindicator needs its middle traits and Energy Meld to be completely changed. Make its healing and damage abilities interact and complement each other. Like how Specter gives barrier when it applies venom, or how Virtuoso heals on blade stocking and damages on blade use. Cuz right now, Saint Viktor and Archemorous feel completely divorced from each other. Herald didn't really need damage buffs, but thank you 😄 The cooldown reduction on those consume skills will give Quickness Heralds more flexibility using their stunbreak, heal, and CC more deliberately rather than always off cooldown. That's great!! I am really enjoying seeing Herald finally shine. Renegade also feels amazing right now, very versatile without being too strong, I have no complaints about it. Such a well-designed spec.

So they're still just doing number tweaking for Vindicator. I've given up any hope that they'll finish designing the spec 😞 Vindicator still feels as half-baked as it was in the Beta espec previews. Feels bad, man. I'm amazed the middle traits and Energy Meld aren't being reworked. They're such dead weight on the spec right now. Still no internal synergy between Saint Viktor and Archemorous. No interaction between them in the traits or the skills.

Condi rev doesn't really need more damage, but a buff to Pain Absorption's utility would be helpful. And Abyssal Chill in the traitline is a very weak option. Even with the pogo-stick Vindicator on Oct 4th- spamming Chilled with Vassals of the Empire - I could only get like 17k DPS using that trait to spam torment. I rarely see it picked over the other two options in any builds. You don't proc Chilled that often, and 1 stack of 6s torment doesn't even compare to existing sigils.

Right, so Saint Viktor offers an "oh shi-" button where you can tank your DPS and do your healers' job for several seconds. I'm saying that's a really low bar to set and you should want more. The two stances in Alliance don't speak to each other, there's no internal synergy. In contrast, look at Specter, which grants rot wallow venom whenever you give barrier, clearly encouraging hybrid builds. Energy Meld and the middle traits that just give endurance are worthless. Anet can retool those to create real synergy between Archemorous and Saint Viktor. Some how, if they want this healing + power damage spec to really flow, they need to make healing buff your damage and vice versa.

Anet has not designed the Vindicator. They are throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. Following the changes to this class from the first EoD beta weekend has been disappointment after disappointment. They clearly have no idea what Vindicator is supposed to be. Let's hope the November balance patch features a well-thought-out rework of Vindicator. But the first beta weekend was a year ago and they haven't figured the class out. I am not holding my breath. It's one of 27 especs + 9 core 'classes' they have to balance, with very low play rates in PvE... It can gather dust for years before getting proper design attention.

Yeah, if my squad's healers are dead, for several seconds of a fight, the other half of my build can be briefly relevant. That's such a low bar. Herald provides heals & protection while dealing damage and optionally giving quickness. Jalis provides stability and on-demand damage reduction. Saint Viktor sits in the corner lol. The healing needs to be integrated! There's some potential with the fact that you can activate the Urn and switch to Archemorous with it still active. Not useful currently, tho, and the self-damage opening yourself up to being one-shotted is very poorly rewarded.

We've been complaining about the lack of unique GS animations since the first beta. They made big changes from the first beta to the second, which gave us hope they'd continue to polish. When they didn't make any improvements to Vindicator after the second beta, we feared the worst. And it looks like this half-baked class is just what we get.

Seconded. Please refine how Herald gives quickness, and please don't take years to figure out what Vindicator is supposed to be. We don't need Alacrity on a core traitline... that's a really superficial way to fix the half-designed Vindicator.