Kuya.6495

Didn't we used to have a team vs team ranked queue and it took so long to find matches, sometimes up to hours, that anet decided to do away with it after constant whining on the forums?

Contrary to popular perception, another good spec for bots is fire weaver. You usually only see these during 2v2 and 3v3 season. Weaver is complicated but sometimes if the thing that makes a spec complicated is just how many buttons you need to press in a specific order, a bot is great at that because it will always perform the correct rotations but even faster than a person would! Just watch out for ledges.

Maybe we can have teapot ask CmC if there is any intention to rework these traits for the inevitable balance patch that will hit post EoD. CmC seems to show up a lot in his streams and I bet he could get an answer. Unless he shows up here and says something.

If it makes you feel better OP, fighting warriors on side nodes as a DH still makes my butthole clench. Really fun duels though.

Neg. The reason why there is so many necros is because we're in a burst meta and most of the bunkers and healers have been nerfed to hell. Necros however have essentially a second HP bar and can survive a spike most others would melt in. It's great both for solo queue and for team fights and necros are easy to play. It's no wonder games are stacked with green class. The only exception is scourge that was also nerfed but it synergizes really well with support guard because you can heal through a barrier but that requires coordination and most high end pvp teams don't bother running scourge anyway. Also, firebrand has even more boons but nobody uses it in spvp.

In order to play as a tank in guild wars you need to have a means to get the boss to only attack you and that only happens in very specific encounters (vale guardian, gorseval, mursaat overseer, deimos, etc). With that said, you can be a tank with just using equipment with toughness and spamming aegis and protection. So a firebrand build with healing, toughness and concentration, running full mantras (healing, quickness, condi cleanse and stab elite) with mace and shield/staff should pretty much get you exactly what you want but it would function more like a paladin than a dark knight. I believe the meta wvw build for firebrand is similar to this build.

I see most are choosing mechanist. Is it because of the flamethrower build or something else?

Like the thread title says, which EoD elite spec in the last beta did you have the worst time fighting against? For me it was vindicators and flamethrower mechanists.

They are really failing at "show, not tell" right now.

I try to get my friends interested in trying the game, but there is really nothing i can use to show them how fun it can be because all the trailers are so vague or so in-lore that only someone who is already a fan would care. For example, i play ffxiv, but i still play guild wars 2 because i prefer the pvp here, and more generally, i like the combat system better in this game, but you don't seem to make a lot of trailers showcasing how awesome and fun the game can be in combat. Why not do more trailers using combat? There are some cool moves you can do, especially in pvp, that, with the right lighting and camera angles, would look amazing. You can use this to promote the expansion too. For example, back in beta 1, despite willbender's problems, i enjoyed using judge's intervention and heaven's palm, and i think if you present that right, you could make it look interesting for someone who isn't familiar with gw2. I'm not going to dive into the spoilers aspect, because there's already a thread covering it, but i think in general, GW2 is a solid game, but the promotion and hype building for it is almost non-existent. The hype building isn't just for game veterans, it's also for attracting new customers. I get that after HoT, Anet might be cautious of over promising, but maybe it just means you need a different approach to hype building. Instead of building hype with promises, try to build hype with well composed trailers, particularly combat trailers if you're so against using story details. And by combat trailers, i don't just mean close ups of skill animations. I mean a peak at what high level gameplay can look up from interesting angles. Anyway, please promote the game better. The game deserves more players and more players would raise not only your profits but it would also make the game better for everyone (shorter queues, funner WvW, more people to play with in PVE). edit: as an example, the best trailers Anet did were for the living world seasons 3 and 4 episodes. Those are great! Great camera angles, and great music. Please do something similar with the game's combat and mechanics. Good music, well timed skills, and people chaining their skills in interesting ways (ex: phrase transversal to unrelenting assault to surge of the mists, judge's intervention to whirling wrath, symbol of blades to test of faith to spear of justice to shield of absorption to hunter's verdict, and holo leap to holographic shockwave, etc).

Why weren't they just made symbols so they would have benefited from every trait that interacts with symbols? Symbols would have been better than short thin lines. Plus at the conceptual level how does it make sense to give the mobility guardian elite spec small stationary damage fields for which both the virtue effects and trait lines are reliant upon for activation? I'm still scratching my head about this one.

Tbh, if it had 1200 range, it wouldn't matter that it's slow and telegraphed because you could cast away from line of sight but it doesn't even have good range either.

For what game mode? And what do you mean by "tank"?

Sir, this is the pvp forum. We talk pvp balance here.

I disagree with the general sentiment that WB doesn't hit hard. Compared to beta 1, the damage from f1 and sword 4 is substantial. The problem is that's pretty much the only thing you can do on WB to spike targets. You could use the two dps utilities to up your dps but that means giving up meditations which is unviable since your dashes and shadowsteps aren't good for disengaging (your dashes are short and the only shadowstep that doesn't need a target, f3, is only 600 range). The other problem is that your damage utilities and sword 4 require set up, the target needs to be locked down to actually hit it, but the only two lockdowns you have are sword 5 and the elite. Sword 5 immobilize is incredibly short and doesn't last the duration of sword 4, flash combo and whirling light. Your elite is the best set up you have but the cast time is too long for anything but silver players and the range on the shadowstep is too short to use line of sight to compensate for the wind up. So you can't take dps utilities (that could use more damage btw) because your kit doesn't have sustain and your ability to lock down a target to actually dps it relies on other teammates doing the lockdown for you since you lack the ability to do it yourself. This is a problem neither thf or rev have.

Thanks OP. I was wondering what this build was that would not die and would just spam flamethrower while letting the mech help with pressure. This build and that vindicator build are pure kitten.

So let's start with general impressions. I liked the quality of life fixes to mobility as far as removing aftecasts go. The f1 skill now provides a lot of mobility and you can cancel the end animation with a weapon swap. It's now the main mobility skill in the whole spec. The teleport on the elite is also appreciated and the sword 5 now works smoothly when used for mobility. Thank you! In PVE specifically it seems that it's easy to upkeep 5 man alacrity if you use diviners which is nice. Now for the critiques: in general, i still have a hard time enjoying this elite spec. The impression I got was that this elite is meant to give the joy of movement akin to what thf and rev enjoys to guardians and I still feel it hasn't met that goal. Sure if I use up all my f3, f1, sword 5, and the elite all in a row, there is some mobility which... amounts to just using one 1200 range teleport. You seem to be scared of giving similar mobility to this spec for fear that it will displace thf in pvp and i feel this caution is making the spec suffer because you just can't do an elite spec as "thf or rev but worse". Now for specifics. In PVE: 1. You can give alacrity thanks to Phoenix protocol and battle presence but maintaining this and also doing respectable dps is such a massive chore it makes you not want to bother at all with the alacrity. Rev can provide alacrity with just the tap of a button and then just focus on the dps. Firebrand needs only but to tap the elite and the mantras to upkeep 100% quickness with practically no boon duration and full vipers. For this spec you NEED at least diviner trinkets and you NEED to hit the enemy and you NEED to NOT use other virtues otherwise you cancel out the alacrity effect. This is a problem because I think the idea is for willbenders to have fun using their virtues actively. And indeed, willbender is most fun when you use your virtues back to back. This is also why you gave us the restorative virtues trait. But if you use f3 to proc aegis to proc unscathed contender, you ruin the alacrity for the entire squad. If you weave in f1 for some dps, once again you ruin your alacrity uptime. If you have enough Boon duration you can use f2 until it fades and then quickly use f3 to proc aegis and then dip into f1 but then you have few precious seconds to use f2 again (good idea with the two charges btw) otherwise you spoil alacrity uptime. All of this is just taking into consideration the virtues. You ALSO need to think about weapon skills and utilities in between all of this. Honestly after a while I just wanted to be playing firebrand again. Suggestions: there's a number of things you can do here. You can make it so activating virtues no longer cancels the other virtues effects. This makes it so you no longer feel punished for using virtues but also makes it so you can provide alacrity in endgame content without feeling like you have to camp f2 the whole fight. This also has the effect of helping proc willbender flames more often which, so far, is hard to do in competitive environments because the flames cover such a small area that you usually don't even think or care about the flames. Alternatively, you could make Phoenix protocol give alacrity on any virtue instead of just resolve to solve this issue. You would have to modify battle presence to specifically allow alacrity on any virtue though and I don't know how complicated that might be. 2. The utilities. It still feels like you're better off taking signet, feel my wrath, spirit sword and MAYBE a physical skill. In PVE, in terms of dps builds it seems if you want a guardian to actually take anything other than the usual suspects you really need to make the physical utilities do more damage. They look great and are fun to use but the damage they do doesn't justify taking them and it seems like damage is supposed to be their main purpose. PVP: General impression: I had such a hard time making this work in pvp. Thanks to the damage increase on sword 4, you have more bite when you actually land it and thanks to the quality improvements on mobility it feels more fluid to play but it still plays like rev but bad. By that I mean you have a harder time catching up to enemies than a rev does and you have less sustain than a power rev does. Let's take it step by step. 1. Physical skills: once again, they look nice but there's just no reason to take these over say meditations. And why would you? Meditations when traited do damage, healing and condi cleanse. Physical skills? They do damage and not very much of it. I'm not asking you to make Physical skills meditations 2.0 but if I want to consider not using meditations the Physical skills need to do a lot more damage to be worth taking. Especially flash combo and whirling light. I ended up only using the rolling light for the stun break and cc. I tried to use the elite heaven's palm and after a while I just gave up and went back to using renewed focus. The elite just doesn't land because it's highly telegraphed. Back in beta 1 I used to use it with judge's intervention and I had success using it but I had to blow a utility to make it work but it worked because the 1200 range from judge's intervention allowed me to use it out of the enemy's line of sight. This time you gave it a port which is nice but at 600 range you still literally have to use it right on the enemies face. Now I feel bad about using it with judge's intervention since the skill already has a port. The damage on the elite, like the other physical skills isn't very good, you could at least raise the range on the port now to make it more impactful. Oh and the heal physical skill? I don't understand why it's so bad. It feels like bad shelter. Sometimes it doesn't seem to activate and the feedback you get so you can tell you're still blocking or not isn't there. I imagine your enemy also can't tell if you've used it. Suggestion: please consider raising damage on physical skills all across the board, especially whirling light and flash combo. Please raise the range on heaven's palm to say about 900. I don't think we need more damage on sword off hand if you raise damage on at least some physical skills to be able to put down a good damage spike similar to what power rev can do. Additionally consider adding cc on flash combo and whirling light. Perhaps immobilize on flash combo and cripple on whirling light. The idea is that you can use these skills to set up sword 4 as well in addition to doing some respectable damage on their own. Imagine how fun it would be to use flash combo>repose>sword 5>sword 4. Also, I'm not sure what to do with the heal skill. You're trying to make it a reactive heal that rewards you for using it right before an enemy attacks but it doesn't seem to work like that right now. Maybe instead of an actual block, just make it so you take 0 damage from all sources and if you are attacked the heal activates (but make sure the "invulnerability" lasts until they heal actually finishes). In fact, get rid of the two charges if you want. I'll settle for single use if it actually worked and you raise the healing on it. The idea is that shelter blocks but can be prevented with unblockable attacks but heals regardless and reversal of fortune only heals if you are attacked but makes you immune to damage during its duration regardless of whether the enemy uses unblockables or not. 2. The mobility. It feels like you don't want to give this spec comparable mobility to thf and rev because you're afraid of how overpowered a thf with basically the innate defensive kit of guardian would be. Unfortunately what happens is that willbenders end up having to take meditations for sustain because they can't use their mobility defensively. You could raise mobility and worry willbenders will still use meditations but honestly that's an issue with meditations and not willbender. You just need to make Physical skills combo better with what willbender can do. Willbender needs damage and cc so the physical skills should complement that. The lack of real mobility on willbender just makes it not very fun to play. If you want willbender that works, just play power rev. It has more damage, more mobility and more sustain. The f1 range is fine now. Thank you for that. I can tolerate the range on f3 since it's purpose is more about crashing courage than anything else (but I would still appreciate you bumping it up to 900 so you can use it to disengage better). But the range on f2? Why? If the issue is worrying that giving too much range to f2 will make it hard for willbenders in pve to keep up alacrity since they need to hit the target, just make f2 stop at the target and keep running when no target is selected. Please put this back at 450 range like before. It honestly feels terrible to use in pvp right now. Again judge's intervention has 1200 range on a port. Why does willbender need short range on its ports and dashes when it's The Mobility Elite spec for guardian? Core guardian has longer range on its ports. Right now what little mobility you have is directed at catching your target (but you still lack enough means of keeping them from running away) but your mobility as it stands isn't good for disengaging. I've tried. It doesn't work. So since you can't disengage successfully on willbender you HAVE to take meditations or you are a goner. With mobility that can be used to disengage perhaps we can finally see a day when guardian isn't shoe horned into meditations (we've been at this since core). Suggestion: please put flowing resolve back on 450 range. Raise range on heaven's palm and please raise range on either the dash from sword 5 or raise the range on the port at the end of sword 5. Even better! Do both! Right now it's a dash of 500 with a port of 100. Can we get a 600 dash with a 300 range port at the end? Edit: also, can you change one of the utilities to be a ground target shadowstep? A good 1200 range shadowstep, even just one, would be enough to add massive sustain to willbender. Don't know what utility you can change to add this. If you can't modify any of them to add a 1200 port perhaps just give it to f3. 3. Sustain. This is related to everything else. To sustain you need meditations and you need meditations because you can't use your mobility to sustain (you surprisingly lack access to targeted ports with enough range to allow escape). Additionally the trait conceited curate runs into the same problem all willbender traits have in pvp: the willbender flames are easy to avoid because they are small, don't last very long, are removed when you use another virtue. This trait would make sense if it relied on symbols which you have plenty of access to on guardians, cover enough space and last long enough to help. I honestly wish you would get rid of willbender flames completely because I honestly don't see the point. Symbols are superior in every way and willbender flames are just bad symbols. And despite all this lack of sustain, you still don't do enough damage to match what a thf or a rev can do. And you might say "well we gave you flames so you can activate the virtue effects easier". We don't need the flames for that. All guardian weapons have symbols. And symbols actually synergize with other guardian traits and give boons. Willbender flames are unnecessary. Suggestions: if you increase range on f2, f3, sword 5 and maybe even raise the range on heaven's palm and make it targetable, you could conceivably use these skills to get away from the enemy focusing you down in pvp. Please consider reworking the willbender flames mechanic or just remove it and do something else with the minor traits. I would honestly prefer a trait that heals you as you do damage, heals you on shadowstep or heals you on physical utility skill activation. If you do the latter, it's just a matter of searing impact making physical skills inflict burning (now you got a reason to use them for burn builds beyond just whirling light) and power for power makes physical skills do more damage (this answers my previous suggestion of making physical skills do more damage). Anyway, thank you for making the changes you've made thus far. The elite feels better this time even though it still falls short of expectations. Hopefully some of this feedback will be useful to you.

I appreciate the changes to make the spec less clunky and to add aoe alacrity for some sort of group support (other profession mains are already salty about guard getting yet another valuable boon to share), but the impression i got about this spec was that it was mostly designed around pvp and i feel the mobility aspect of this hasn't been addressed yet. The range on the ports and dashes still feel too short in my opinion, but we'll see next week.

The thing that always astounds me about ele mains the most is how they whine the most yet understand their class the least. "Ele is bad at pvp! It goes down in one hit" "I don't care that the end game meta is stacking at melee! I want to roleplay as ranged dps!" Truly, one of my least favorite genders.

The main reason to buy the expansion if you like pvp is the elites, which is a good enough reason. And I think bladesworn, spectre and vindicator are currently good in pvp, at least as they currently were in the last betas. I really wouldn't be too worried. Just buy the expansion whenever you feel there are enough elite specs to get you interested. Maybe none interest you now, but that doesn't mean that won't change in the future. You're not obligated to buy the expansion as soon as it gets out. How many iterations of dragonhunter and firebrand did we see in pvp? At launch DH could only be a full trap meme build and then we got a symbol build and medi dh team fighter later on after balance adjustments, two builds which are still used today. And firebrand... well it goes to show you sometimes elites are viable in pvp and then they get nerfed out viability too. 🤷‍♀️ Anyway I'm buying the expansion cause I really liked bladesworn, mechanist, spectre and harbinger. I'm really hoping they make willbender viable though.

So what i liked: 1. I think you hit the theme out of the park with this one. The name, animations and effects fit the theme you were going for. 2. Single target healing isn't revolutionary for most other mmorpgs but for in gw2 it is different and unique so I like that. 3. You managed to make scepter on thf fun to use and that surprised me. I also liked the mechanic of sacrificing shroud for support. What problems I could see: 1. Scepter: The shadowstep on scepter 3 for the beam seems a bit clunky? Sometimes you want to support a teammate but you don't want to port to them. Why not just change the skill so the first button is the channel and the switch over skill cancels the tether/beam and actually does the port? It gives you more control over when you should port or not. 2. Alacrity: it's able to give 5 people alacrity well enough but with mirage and renegade giving 10 man alacrity, spectre seems like a poor replacement for that specific role. Spectre is better off than mechanist as at least it has an easier time doing damage, giving barrier, healing and even giving quickness to 3 people. Still though if what you want is alacrity for 10 people, then spectre isn't it. I also don't like that even with lots of concentration, it feels like you need to take at least 3 wells to keep a semblance of stability on upkeep of alacrity. 3. Siphon felt not very interesting to use on enemies. In pve, siphon on allies was great though. It lets you insta rez an ally at range but on enemies it feels like it's not as interesting. Suggestions: 1. Change scepter 3 so endless night fires first without the shadowstep and make the flip over skill measured shot instead. Seems underwhelming since what you really want is endless night but that's the point. 2. As for the alacrity target cap. I dunno, raise it to 10 people instead? Unless you plan to reduce alacrity to 5 target cap on mirage and renegade too. Also, could you spread the alacrity around a bit on the spec? Perhaps put some in shadowshroud or in one of the scepter skills? It might help with actually letting you save some wells for when you really need them rather than spamming them all for alacrity. 3. Maybe make the trait that makes siphon give more shadowshroud from enemies have additional effects? Maybe alacrity around allies near you? Something to make it something a little more interesting. That's it! Thank you so much for creating this spec! It was really fun to play and the theorycrafting around using it has been really entertaining. I really hope you use specter and mechanist as good examples for how you can make the other elites more interesting .

What i liked: 1. Out if all the elite specs, I felt this one was the most realized as far as a theme and functionality was concerned. 2. I appreciate that you gave engi access to alacrity. 3. It was really easy to upkeep perma alacrity. You don't even need concentration if you go mace and use the middle trait lines. Maybe you need to bring the barrier signet. What I had issues with: 1. Mace: In pve, I tried to test ways to do decent dps using the mace since it had a lot of condi. Unfortunately I felt that using skill 2 and 3 was a dps loss and you did more dps just auto attacking. Using mace Unfortunately also conflicts with pistol 2 which means if you wana go condi, you're still better off using pistol over mace. Now the problem i see is that you probably don't want mace to do too much. It does barrier, condi and cc, so I presume you toned the condi down to offset. Unfortunately it just feels like mace suffers from this? If you want to go condi, you can just use pistols and if you want to give alacrity you could always relegate it to your mecha and still go pistol. I honestly feel like you should just get rid of the condi on the mace and just add more barrier application, cc or even better, condi removal. In pvp I had issues with condi bombs if you don't take kits for light fields. 2. Signets: I actually really liked the signets, they look good and they even work if your mecha is gone. You also fortunately added a trait that enhances signets, so thank you. Now the problem isn't really mechanist's fault. The problem is kits are just so good that it makes it hard to justify going signets for anything other than barrier and elite signet. It's hard to compete with what is essentially a firebrand tome with no charges and no cds on re-entering. 3. Condi removal in pvp: i enjoyed playing sidenoder or bunker in pvp. Even if the mecha goes down a lot. My problem was that the mechanist essentially had no condi clear on its own. I'm not 100% sure the trait that lets your mecha condi cleanse also applies to you. I think it didn't. Why not? Also why not give signets a condi removals? Or mace? The teleportation signet seemed like the least useful in pvp since the cast time is long and the range isn't very far. If you gave it 2-3 removal of condis it might be worth considering. 4. I like how the mecha looks and the animations are great. But in pvp it either stomps newbies because it's auto attack does a lot of damage, particularly the ranged one, or it gets absolutely destroyed and it's basically on respawn all match. It's a conundrum because you don't want a pet build that is so good it plays itself but you don't want the engi to feel like half a class because the mecha is always down. One option is to make it so the engi is self sufficient enough that it doesn't need the mecha except for clutch plays but you run the risk of making it so in pve not using the mecha at all is optimal. Perhaps you should do something similar with the other two grandmaster traits like you did with J-drive: an effect that occurs when the mecha is gone. You just gotta make it so the off cooldown effect is something that would only be useful in pvp and not pve. 5. Alacrity: so this isn't really a problem with mechanist itself. It's more so that it does 5 target alacrity but renegade and mirage can do 10 man alacrity. I dont see why you would take mechanist to sub in for the role of mirage and renegade as alacrity suppliers unless you plan to raise mechanist alacrity application to 10 man or plan to nerf mirage/renegade down to 5. Suggestions: 1. Add more sustain on mace in the form of condi removals and maybe more active defenses that also benefit allies similar to what guardian mace 3 does. Feel free to remove the condi on mace to balance out the enhanced defensive elements. 2. Give the teleportation signet condi cleanse. Can't really suggest much else since kits are just too good and somehow making signets match that to compensate for the loss of tool kits is impossible short of making signets overpowered. I guess you could make it so the signet passive also modified the mech's f abilities in a way reminiscent of the tool belt kit? 3. Do something similar to the other two grandmaster traits like you did for j-drive that adds some complexity to not having the mecha around. Also while you're at it, make the orbital strikes leave a damaging field that is an electric combo field. For middle grand Master maybe maybe make it so engi auto cleanses conditions on a set interval when the mecha is gone and/or make it drop water fields on top of your current location on set intervals)? For top grand master maybe make it so when the mecha dies, instead of flying away, it explodes like a bomb launching nearby enemies and makes it so the engi strips boons around himself on a set interval. Maybe make it so a fire/poison field triggers on interval at the engi' location when the mecha is gone to keep the theme bottom/electric, middle/water and upper/fire or poisonin but I think the Boon strip/launch is more important as it keeps what I'm aiming for in making it so the mecha dying can be useful on pvp but not in pve. Also, lower the damage on the golem in pvp to compensate for these changes. 4. Raise alacrity target cap to 10? I dunno you haven't said if you intend to reduce mirage and renegade target cap to 5 or not. Thank you for this spec btw! This, spectre and bladesworn have been the funnest to date!

Set your status to offline and turn off chat when playing pvp matches if the comments bother you. It's not like you were missing much by ignoring team/map/whisper chat in pvp. It will make pvp more enjoyable for you. And if you want to play better, there are guides and pvp streamers online you can look at, rather than taking advice from an angry rando.

There are so many factors that can make a match one sided in unranked or low skill rating ranked, that it's almost not worth considering. A better use of your time would be to focus on getting better at the game, and finding the professions and specs you most excel at than worrying about balance that isn't even really relevant until you're at gold 3 skill rating and above. You will get closer matches are you rise in skill rating, which is not determined by your pvp rank (dolyak, dragon, etc). When you began the conversation by saying your rank is dolyak, it pretty much told everyone everything they needed to know about how little experience you have with the game mode.

Like felix mentioned, the condi spike is more scattered unlike the high burn stacks a guard can dish out. The problem is the weaver bot moves through it's rotation so quickly, it's hard to react to it. The only saving grace is once you know what rotation it's using, you know it will always do the same thing. Additionally they never attempt stomps or rezes. So never bother trying to rez a teammate yourself otherwise you will get caught in the downcleave. Just freecast at the weaver bot from a distance and hope it has taken enough damage once it is done killing your teammate that you can solo it. You can also confirm it's a bot by doing this: get their the enemy teammate who isn't a bot to let you down them. Then you and your teammate run to the other side of the map. The bot will chase you two and completely ignore the non bot teammate on the other side of the map they could safely rez. It's hilarious