Jekkt.6045

is that NA or EU? I'm on EU

We used to have pretty much every system i can think of in this game. we had automated tournaments on release (the ticket ones) which were great. we had soloQ only which was very competitive back at the time and used to give insanely stacked matches during prime time in top ranks. and well, we had teamQ which was dead. teamQ required 5 players to join and let's face it, most gw2 players are highly antisocial individuals from my personal experience, so almost nobody played it. it took like 10mins+ to find a match and most of the time you faced some random guild friends that had absolutely no clue how to play. the best version of a queue system was during the first 2 seasons of HoT. dynamic queue and once you queued as a team of 3-5 it automatically counted as a team and increased/decreased the mmr of the guild the 3+ players were representing. matches were quite good too. sure, you sometimes had the odd unbalanced match but me and my team often played against pro league teams on a daily basis. i can't speak for low mmr guilds tho, we were 1800+

make the skills rewarding enough to hit and it won't be a problem. i'm not a fan of the current chip your enemy to death while outhealing them gameplay.

oh no. imagine if you have to count dodges and skill cooldowns or bait with weapon stow like in the good days. might be too much for this remaining playerbase pepesad.

i like it a lot. props to the class design devs. clear tells, everything is nice and telegraphed. that's how everything should be.. vfx are a bit over the top as usual but i can live with that. no sign of a "trade off" because it doesn't need one if mechanics are different and not an upgrade.

maps are too small for that. gvg maps which were 8v8 were bigger with more key points to fight over. making conquest the pvp game mode instead of gvg was one of the dumbest things they have ever done.

That's a valid point. But then again, what even is the design philosophy of thief these days? Seems like they butchered everything thief was supposed to be.

Who cares how hard or how easy a build is. The only thing that matters is how strong a build is. Once you get good enough the difficulty of a build pretty much becomes irrelevant.

turns out, there's always something to be abused on thief. now the question is, is the build strong enough to be meta warping? probably not. I don't think it's at a power level that requires a nerf. having said that, power isn't the only metric to go by. is this a major feelsbad build? yes it probably is and will therefore be nerfed at one point in the future would be my guess. that's pretty much it.

d/d needs to move away from condis. it's bad and thief doesn't have the sustain for a melee condi build anwyay. Let's be honest here, thief builds simply don't work without a gimmick. take a look at all melee builds and how they either rely on blind, stealth or evade (shadow shot mobility + blind, flanking strike evade, pistol whip evade). So to make death blossom viable (rework or not, doesn't even matter), it needs some obnoxious effect on it like blind, evade, block or whatever + damage because backstab simply won't work with dagger offhand. best bet is to hope for a brawler type elite spec. or rework thief.

that's what rune of vampirism was for lel.

pvp was always terrible for new players. the tutorial was absolute garbage und conquest is neither a very interesting nor very intuitive game mode (yes, even though it's just capping nodes). having said that, pvp during vanilla was great for what it was. it was very tactical and to be successful you had to be really good. balance wasn't always great but at least it was a far cry from the garb it is today. expansions and other random decisions pretty much ruined pvp, killed off the population and all that's left are wannabe elitists and people who can't let go. sorry man, you're like 6-7 years too late.

buff reactable burst. problem solved.

i assume you mean 6s attunement cooldown? the short answer is no. the long answer is: ele's defense is a messyou're basically forced into a now nerfed focus. dagger offhand while good in theory lacks the necessary defense because sustain damage is too high. you can pretty much smoke staff and warhorn. utility skills don't help much defense wise because they've been nerfed too or just suck. ele deals no damage other than burning and even that is subpar if you don't run swordfresh air nerfed, arcane utility skills nerfed, lightning rod nerfed. even if those dealt good damage ele's defense on dps builds would still be horrendous. ele is extremely reliant on multiple stats. ele pretty much profits from all the stats at the same time.all weapons have burning and bleeding, all weapons have healing, ele needs vit because of hp pool, ele needs toughness because of armor class.basically all weaponsare hybrid damage weapons so you kinda want power prec crit% too. celestial is gone now so you either have to run full power or sage, wasting half of your skills' damage. core ele has been power crept so hard everything on it is weak.core ele's skills do one particular thing quite good. but that's the problem, one. they either heal, deal damage, or are utility. skills of other builds do everything at once.i'm not saying ele skills should do everything at once too, it's the other way around. ele needs traits to deal damage. traits don't enhance ele, they define it. try playing a dps build without air. playing burning without fire kinda works i guess.

i'll repeat what i said in a different thread. trade offs for elite specs aren't really trade offs they are just there because they suck at balance and design. an elite spec wouldn't need a trade off if it was actually an elite spec specialized in something. instead it's just core+. if an elite spec gets a completeley different mechanic that helps it, for example, being an offensive spec where core had a mechanic that made it defensive, then that's the tradeoff, only being able to be offensive. we basically just have core = i slap. elite spec = i slap harder. then they add some random arbitrary "trade off". a short example for a smart trade off would be: core ranger access to pets. druid avatar + only a sprite for a pet that can be sent to allies to heal. instead we have druid pets have 10% less stats...

what weapon set do you think best for the valk ranger? its a tough choice i find axe/dagger + gs was the build i used to run. as it's a valk build you work with intel sigil and opening strike to make your damage skills like axe 3 or gs 2 crit. stunning an enemy, getting fury or swapping pets will grant you opening strike, making your next hit crit. with rune of the daredevil dodge too. build looked something like this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POwAEdjlFw8YdsQGKOePpr1SmWYA-zZAPkGVAZKD6VI4yB you can switch to resistance runes and entangle if you feel like you need more cleanse.

i like your mindset about longer fights equals more chances to grow. pvp used to be a lot slower and more tactical than it is nowadays. my teammates and i used to practice for hours in our arena, figuring out all the little nuances of a specific matchup. now as for possible builds you could play: i'm not aware of what can beat holo in a 1v1 currently. i used to play core valk ranger a couple of seasons ago and it was holding up well enough against it. as for chrono, no idea, i haven't seen many chronos at all lately and even if there were any i had no idea what they were playing. if it's power, dodge shatter and get out of elite well. condi chrono basically the same. you could play core ranger, scrapper, condi herald, renegade (idk if it's still good) or holo. if you're more into annoying people while surviving i suggest decap druid. you can look up meta builds on godsofpvp and random builds on metabattle.

i would not mind a sword auto buff. everything else would probably only result in some stupid gimmick build again.

Yes they increased the dmg with the HoT specs but they nerfed a lot of them at then end of HoT again also the new elite specs gave the classes new identity. The point is people got used to the builds and how they work but whit PoF everything get into a over drive modus Arena.NET pushed for faster gameplay and they wanted their new elite specs better then they old (which they also accomplished by nerfing the old). They pretty much increased everything with HoT specs. shoutbow, d/d ele and cele engi were quite tanky back then. during HoT beta i played a tournament on cele herald and it was more tanky than those 3 and absolutely destroyed them with the damage it dealt... turns out cele herald wasn't even good because marauder was just as tanky and dealt even more damage lol. fast forward to HoT release where scrapper was insanely tanky on a damage amulet while dealing 7k+ damage with hammer 2 and 4k+ with hammer block... or druid with 15k damage smokescale and 20k damage spiky pink dinosaur. core guard dropped out of the meta a long time before because of dd ele and shoutbow. then you get unkillable minstrel tempest that heals for 800k per game... but you know what? who needs healing if you have chrono making the whole team invul. while elite specs seemed nice at first glance, i wish we would have never gotten them. not only did they ruin balance forever, they made it apparent how rigid vanilla design was. ele will probably never get an elite spec with a non elemental class mechanic because they'd have to redo all skills on all weapons. what they should have done instead was adding new utility skill types and weapons (like they do with elite specs, just not tied to anything). and maybe new core traitlines or additional traits in existing traitlines. Well yes but they tuned it massively down multiply times now the game is for most players too tanky so that Arena removed the cele amulet(from their mindset side). I don't know why they removing amulets it is silly its not the reason why the game became more tanky . There is no way back to the good old days not without completely destroying the game which they partially already done with PvP. I also think you underestimate how the community makes a difference in vanilla most players were more casually with HoT Arena.Net aimed for more 'pro' players at least from the PvE content side so there are also more players who look into how you can optimize builds and team composition. This makes also for faster gameplay I know elite specs also gives more possibilities which can be exploited . Somehow I wonder why they went for skills fixed on weapons and then invent new weapon + new traitlines + new mechanics which gives easier access to something imbalanced because it has more option which are less obvious. But let me make on thing straight there wasn't everything okay with ~~the balance ~~ a lot of things in GW 2 before either core engi, and core ele are so bad words can't describe it.(all game modes) . I know some people will jump on it and scream I play that and I'm good with it believe me ... NO just NO There was the problem or is the fact that support builds always gives you an advantage if they exist in a MMORPG if you ban them it is exactly what is criticised in this thread. Actually they all live with it or not because you always have the option to swap its only in GW 2 such a mimimi that they push to nerf the support builds . There was some example about LoL in the other thread well you see players there know they need to play support and there isn't a discussion about it to begin with . Yes this here is an RPG LOL is not but this makes the point even more valid that means nerfing constantly builds let people leave or not playing for you support any more . I did suggest since we can't have pre-mades in ranked that we could make request to the server give me e.g a healer and thief in my group pretty please . There are also things like rating and 2 map metas which could be solved better but Arena.NET has other priorities. i talked about this before and why the game feels too tanky. sustain damage and self sustain are too high while burst damage that you can set up is too low. the game used to have way less sustain damage and self sustain but higher burst. that's also the reason why "side noders can't kill each other anymore". i disagree. the pvp scene in the second part of vanilla was extremely big and many players were really good and eager to play. pre hot patch ruined this somewhat because that's when the bloat began. enthusiasm continued into HoT until people realized how extremely bad it was. when we talk about support builds we have to differentiate between support and healer. we did not have healers before HoT. guardian and necro, kind of the first supports we had in the game were simply that, supporting allies. those builds didn't have insane healing numbers. guard became the sole support later down the road because necro wasn't very useful. guard had the res knockback, aegis, cleanse, protection etc. later we had shoutbow and d/d ele that replaced guardian because they contributed more in a fight and had way more mobility. of course not everything was perfect. as i mentioned, especially the pre HoT trait overhaul patch ruined way too much. d/d ele that used to be a good build suddenly became absolutely broken because you could pick full fire or earth and ring of fire was bugged and could kill you in 2 seconds with 8+ burn stacks (yes that's also the stupid patch that added condition stacking). playing support in LoL is also way more interesting than playing support in gw2 tbh. in gw2 basically every support skill is aoe around you, most of the time 600 range. all you do is run away from the enemy while pressing aoe heal buttons until you win or die. in LoL supports set up kills and don't feel like aoe heal bots. finding a healer wouldn't be that much of a problem if we actually had a healthy pvp population and people wanted to play together. but we don't, and people pretty much only care about what amazing rank they reached on ladder.

conquest and terrible balance is the reason people left in the first place. if the game mode is good and a better competitive format than conquest i can see it working out. i bet some people would even come back for that. pair it with the new expansion for maximum player attraction. now if only anet could design a good game mode.

Yes they increased the dmg with the HoT specs but they nerfed a lot of them at then end of HoT again also the new elite specs gave the classes new identity. The point is people got used to the builds and how they work but whit PoF everything get into a over drive modus Arena.NET pushed for faster gameplay and they wanted their new elite specs better then they old (which they also accomplished by nerfing the old). They pretty much increased everything with HoT specs. shoutbow, d/d ele and cele engi were quite tanky back then. during HoT beta i played a tournament on cele herald and it was more tanky than those 3 and absolutely destroyed them with the damage it dealt... turns out cele herald wasn't even good because marauder was just as tanky and dealt even more damage lol. fast forward to HoT release where scrapper was insanely tanky on a damage amulet while dealing 7k+ damage with hammer 2 and 4k+ with hammer block... or druid with 15k damage smokescale and 20k damage spiky pink dinosaur. core guard dropped out of the meta a long time before because of dd ele and shoutbow. then you get unkillable minstrel tempest that heals for 800k per game... but you know what? who needs healing if you have chrono making the whole team invul. while elite specs seemed nice at first glance, i wish we would have never gotten them. not only did they ruin balance forever, they made it apparent how rigid vanilla design was. ele will probably never get an elite spec with a non elemental class mechanic because they'd have to redo all skills on all weapons. what they should have done instead was adding new utility skill types and weapons (like they do with elite specs, just not tied to anything). and maybe new core traitlines or additional traits in existing traitlines.

When it comes to their skills, it looks pretty tame too.That's when yu start reading the tooltip and find out each Exceed skill has a "basic" version, an "empowered" version when above 50% Heat with way stronger effects, and some of the Exceeds also have a flip skill which ALSO has a basic and empowered version. Because the design of these skills sucks.It's basically: do something baseline. after you do stuff you do anyway (forge, gain heat), do something better. They could have gone for crazy haywire stuff when you overheat, making skills do something different because they don't function properly anymore. something along the lines of: example skill baseline function:cleanse 3 damaging conditions example skill overheat function:apply 3 damaging conditions (to target) or in the case of hard light arenabase skill yada protection overheat function:everybody inside it takes more damage (well, or maybe just the enemy team) with the way holo skills are designed you get rewarded for stuff you would do anyway. that's not choice.

It's less about map design and more about game mode. The only map where customized builds were ever relevant was old skyhammer (and old spirit watch.. but eh..) where fear necro, hammer guard, focus mesmer and wire thief were played. You could argue about thief/mes in old times where they were almost mandatory on khylo and temple. Or sword for bunker guard on khylo. These days it really doesn't matter anymore. Djinn's is probably the worst thief map in the game but nobody cares anyway. I'm not aware of what is meta in wvw, but don't forget, wvw balance is different and they have runes/foods/sigils/stats that are not available in pvp. I've been playing stronghold for the past couple of days and i can confidently tell you stuff that's good in conquest isn't necessarily good in stronghold (and vice versa). Turns out, standing on a node 90% of the game is quite build limiting.

revenant. power heraldrenegadeventari supportcore jalis bunkercondi herald (or core if 2x herald is not allowed)

How does reworking abilities not result in nerfs/buffs for classes? If all you do is give more complexity you are still buffing many builds. reworking stuff does result in nerfs/buffs but not in the same way as if you would directly nerf or buff them. something different can be better or worse than what it used to be, that is undeniable. more complexity is a buff too, even if the skill keeps the same power level. more complexity more often than not means more ways to use something, therefore you have more choices to make which automatically makes it better than a skill that is bland and has only one use. but is that bad? we have many bloated skills currently that do too much and don't require big brain plays to get maximum value. the goal should be skills that do multiple things under different circumstances, making them strong when used correctly instead of just... making them strong.