Frequency.6407

I suspect wintraders usually target a player on their team (honestly trying to do their best) and start throwing accusations of wintrading and other insults to demoralize them and distract attention from themselves.

Last season it was pretty normal for me to go down from plat1/2 to G3/2 during off peak and then back to plat again at prime time. That's how queue works. Actually I was enjoying the experience because you tend to get bored of typical meta play in plat. Gold can provide some spicy entertainment. Despite its shortcomings I think GW2 is the best MMO when it comes to PVP. Nobody wants credit card warriors roflstomping undergeared players in PVP except credit card warriors.

The discussion is about new players learning the game. Any veterans already know about all the tools and websites to refer to. Any new player leveling for the first time would have no idea about the impact of different skills not until they finally decide to google what a dps meter is.

That's a third-party program

Without an ingame dps/healing/boon meter how can people measure their performance?

Is weaver meta now?

Thief not problem, ele is. Nerf ele.

My class can kill all thieves so no problem but nerf ele please

Sometimes I go afk when it's a sure loss and team has given up. Other times I try to look for 1v2/1v3 engagements in a lost game to improve my game. But it does depend on context.

I think the question really is what makes cata so strong? I don't think it's the burst because other classes have better bursts (untamed/herald) In my opinion it's the defensive mechanics and the ability to reset skills every 60 seconds. Maybe the solution is to increase the CD of elite to say 120 s. Harbinger had the duration of elixir boons reduced to 1.5 s. Maybe cata needs a similar nerf to the boons it generates. Cata is quite squishy when you can hit it, but the window when it's vulnerable is quite small and often your best chance is when the cata is on the offensive.

At the start of the season I started with necro like I always do. Struggled a lot, got deleted by spb/cata/vind/untamed. There were very few classes I could confidently go against. Spb was especially unbeatable to the point I just avoided them altogether. Though why not just play a meme build and switched to sword weaver. Why not even more meme, so switched to scepter/focus. Same result, got deleted everywhere. Never won a duel against cata/spb. And then I decided I need to do something about hammer/stun etc. So I switched arcane out and earth in. Specced into barrier/stability/stone heart. Lost all the mobility but all of a sudden I found myself standing toe-to-toe with spb/cata/untamed/holo and actually tanking their bursts. At least I could no longer die in 3 seconds. As the season progressed I learned to counter spb and cata. Dueled boyce once on a node and forced him out (he probably wasn't expecting such an unusual build). Was really pleased with the build at that point because it can nicely counter meta power bursts (spb/cata/holo/untamed/) but at the same time have serious issues with condi damage (harbingers/mesmers) which are not very prevalent. Now at the end of the season I am quite comfortable going against spb (at least I can hold a node long enough to waste their time if they're good). As for scepter cata, I'm now literally farming them on weaver now. It's amazing how easy things become once you come up with a counter. All you have to do is to counter their burst with earth and then go into fire to pressure them. Once their burst fails to crit most of them don't know what to do afterwards. Ironically, the one build I don't feel comfortable against is dagger/dagger cata which isn't supposed to be as good as scepter. At the start of the season I was pretty scared of dragon's tooth and couldn't dodge it. But now, with enough practice I can easily counter and time my dodge and at the same time when to use my stun break and stability when cata is starting to burst. Mesmers and renegades(vind/herald) are two specs I don't feel at all comfortable going against but I can stall them for some time and I think that's good enough. My personal feeling about cata is that it's probably not the damage they dish out because untamed/herald/holo have better bursts. It's just that they have a very long defensive cycle where they can invul/block and not get hit at all. I haven't played other classes but someone did mention stacking -freeze duration to completely shutdown cata bursts.