Rodzynald.5897

Of course there is toxicity. Even higher than in some other PvP games I've played so far. I am not proud of it but I've grown pretty toxic myself over these past few months after returning to PvP because I am apalled by how ramshackled this mode is compared to what it used to be. Pre-HoT all we had to worry about was celestial elementalist. Now we have to worry about whatever is the flavor of the season with top contenders always being strong: mesmer/thief/ranger/revenant varieties, for instance. Visual clutter, like untamed's fart aura that covers - in this case quite literally - 1/3 of my screen, can't read the animations, getting bodied with one well placed maul worth of 10k crits. Every class is overpowered, but some are overpowered-er. I can't speak for everyone, but I will give you a quick rundown on why I am salty and toxic. I've seen the game I love turn to crap because of overambitious devs who didn't plan well for E-sports, making overtuned classes to have them sell better, but some overtuned more than others to have some meta to shift. I've been playing throughout multiple seasons since season 1, my ranking used to be mid to top plat, I played both meta and non meta builds. I thought myself more than decent, but not enough to be a sixth-sense-up-my-bottom strong like top legendary players are. But I was a solid piece of work, playing some ATs from time to time and even winning them. But the matchmaking was busted. Always getting hard locked by some situations I couldn't break through, and that was okay... or would have been if not for the reason that the hard lock was met with lop-sided matches where I was forced to be utterly bodied because the enemy had to be the top of the top, but matchmaking didn't consider it fair to have top of the top in my team as well to make it, you know, fair game? In any case, matchmaking is so busted that during one season it broke for me. I say broke because there was no breakthrough in my own skill level, but the matchmaking suddenly deemed me worthy of ending up in spot 68 ranked in EU for whatever reason. If my memory serves me well, I had a streak of about 28 to 30-something won matches with only 2 or 3 losses. I really didn't know what busted the system but it made me farm bronze to silver players. There was no challange, they just fell down like weeds to my usual rotations - and that apparently was enough to be considered one of the top ranked players. After some time I had made a longer break from pvp, about a year or so. Got back a couple of months ago, picked a new class, spent some weeks reading meta and playing unranked to take off some rust, retain skill to the same level I once had on the new class and my main. I want to make a legendary armour, and PvP seemed as the quickest option for as I already have most of the currency. Man, is it bad. After playing 3 whole seasons (and mini seasons inbetween) it seems that matchmaking thinks me gold tier now. Despite my knowledge of the game (both environment and other classes), I have a really tough time to crawl out of the infamous "ELO hell". I didn't believe it when I was top plat, thinking that people need to "git gud". Well, I "got gud" and my reward for that is falling from my usual place in platinum, stuck to gold, left to cope and seethe because I don't know if I got worse, others got better or that matchmaking is F-ing me over. I even got to play some cheese builds that are supposed to carry games and even then it doesn't really matter, because if the matchmaking deems it so, the game is uncarriable even if I get to win every 1v1 on side nodes, help every teamfight out. Some of you may say "then stop playing". Easy to say, hard to do. When you really like something, you just don't drop it fortnight. If you do then you weren't really into it all that much to begin with, so this doesn't count. I don't flame in unranked because it's a fun game to goof around with other peeps. But ranked is something I believed would grant me some competitive sense. I like to compete and I don't really need every single match to be balanced - it's impossible. I just wish the VAST majority of all games I play wasn't pre-decided by matchmaking's 50/50 policy - I don't want my win/loss ratio to be forced into a 50/50. I want my players distribution in the teams to be as close to 50/50 as possible. I know it is not due to the player count. This makes me think why there are players who are in top ranking with a 52% ratio standing right on top or below players with 60%-65% win ratio? What is the trick here? I even saw one player who had the same amount of played matches as myself, the same amount of wins and losses, but he was top ranked and I was in gold - what is the math behind it? To summarise, yes, this is, at the very least, my reason for being salty. Fall from grace doesn't feel nice when you well know that your skill is waged by some algorithm to either win or lose. I am tired of pretending it is not the case. I know it, you know it. I didn't believe it when I was high and mighty, but now I see what an ordinary player who rises in skill has to deal with now that for whatever reason I ended up among them. Let's face it, the matchmaking is busted, we are either favored or disfavored by it, save for players who are so inhumanly skilled that they manage to break out of the cycle and keep their top tier spots (but even this is debatable for a multitude of reasons that we all know well enough by now.)

According to the wiki, 300 PvP league tickets are needed to make the whole set. 3 pieces takes 150 pvp league tickets. But now that I read into it, I forgot that there are mini seasons between main seasons (which are around month and a half long roughly?). You can only get 100 tickets per season but I suppose the mini seasons in-between make the legendary armour making a bit faster, so I guess that's feasible to make 3 leggy pieces in 2 months.

Maybe a little off topic but how the heck you managed to make 3 legendary armour pieces by playing roughly 2 months? With currency hardlock per season it is not possible 🤔

I mean... yeah. We could use a lot of de-powercreep. Jokes aside, the issue with thief happened the moment GW2 first got released. The core idea of short mobility and invisibility cooldowns - the ease of application and no drawbacks. Isn't GW2 the only game with no drawbacks to invisibility? You can literally stroll through a WvW zerg without being noticed, even if something hits you it doesn't break stealth nor does it affect your mobility. And not only thief is guilty of this busted mechanic.

I come to agree. I always had a feeling that something is fishy and I figure that one has to consider some special shenanigans to break the 50/50 loop (queueing during specific hours, duo with someone else, or just wintrade). But the worst thing about this tier are the, as I call them, the Git-gud-andies. Usually people in higher plat or legge that simply tell you to learn to play, being smug about it for whatever reason. For someone who is currently suffering from this faulty matchmaking, I can understand the frustration resulting in anger in some players who are unrightfully locked in a tier they don't actually belong. For a several seasons straight I've been to platinum 2-3, even as far as reaching my peak at 62 rank on EU, so I consider myself rather decent. I made a break from pvp for about a year and when I got back (I broke the rust off my bones by playing a lot on unranked beforehand) it seems that the matchmaking thinks me gold 3 now. The last season I even dropped to silver which never before happened to me, so it made me question my skills. After close evaluation of the meta and pinpointing my own shortcommings I have no other explanation than to believe that the 50/50 loop actually exists. I didn't believe it when I was high and mighty up in plat, when matchmaking caters to your winrate. In retrospect it is funny how I didn't believe in ELO hell, but nobody ever does until you end up there yourself. Gold 3 is like a race through thick mud that is also trying to push you backwards. No matter the hunders of matches at the end of the season, it will boil down to this cursed 50/50 P.S. Here's hoping that new players who show up to the game will cast some fresh air (no pun intended) into the PvP mode and the leaderboard ranking will spread out a bit more even and true. It should also help the algorithm as it has the same issues - there is a limit to how much it can carry 😥

Catalyst sounds better that's for sure and I am eager to take it for a spin on the next beta run. However, if it is meant to be a bruiser/more tanky build, it really could use more passive traits that grants Catalyst unconditional buff to survivability, such as toughness and vitality increase. Ele as is is too squishy, and if Cata's main theme is being an upfront fighter then they better get around half of necro's tankiness, or Cata's will end up being shredded to pieces before unleashing all four elements on hammer #3 Although I am biased for hammers, a longbow would have been just as nice, as the only somewhat reliable ranged weapon that Ele's have is the staff. Perhaps it could be considered to give the hammer fire and air attunement the option to hit at 1200 range? Or, at the very least, have one of these two attunements 1200 range? In this way Ele will keep their viability to some extent whenever they are forced to back away from melee (be it in PvE or PvP), to make up for no weapon swap during combat.

I am somewhat amused by seeing how nowadays PvP players point out things I used to point out years back shortly after HoT launched and ranked was introduced. This is good, becasue I thought back then that I am being unreasonable with my observations, but it seems that more and more players appear to see some gut-wrenching design issues. Sadly, we will see no such changes in GW2. It's core design and as far as we know Anet will not temper with core design - I assume this is because of spaghetti coding, lack of resources and flat out not wanting to do it in the first place. We have to deal with it, play around it or roll thieves ourselves. On a more serious side, as a MMO PvP veteran I can wholeheartedly say that the rogue/thief/assassin archetype is usually challenging to play, but has hefty drawbacks for its demanding yet rewarding mechanics. In other games stealth has what stealth in GW2 lacks - drawbacks. I've heard of no other game that enables any sort of stealth ability without taking something in return, or at the very least granting one strong trait while taking away other (for instance permanent stealth for slower movement). The thing is, GW2 stealth gives you all the pros and no cons. Not to mention the rate with which some may re-apply stealth. In this case, sadly, it is a combat design thing. We can't have skills that are combat-locked, meaning that they can be used once in combat and will start to cooldown only after combat, or that have tremendously long cooldowns to actually label them as "last resort/last stand, situational". Those who had their deal of games can agree that stealth is supposed to be a tool to be timed and used well, not spammed and abused in order to wear down an enemy whilst they lack the counterplay for it save for well timed dodges - and that is if you have luck or inhuman reactions to dodge an instant teleport and burst out of stealth along a whole plethora of CCs thrown in for good measure. Yes, there is initiative mechanic which makes you choose whether to use the resource for burst, CC or mobility and stealth - but if it did its purpose we would not have this thread, and many others before it. WvW and PvP (especially WvW) shows how irredeemably forgiving stealth is should you make a mistake. You can re-apply it with no drawbacks, reset combat as you wish or break the flow of combat to decide when and how to attack. Basically, winning a fight with a stealth user (thief is not the only one guilty of that) depends on them making a mistake, not you outplaying them which, at least in my book, is a sign of bad design. If you plan your heart out with bursts and CC chains only to have it all for nothing because someone can disengage from combat twice or thrice as often than you can actually burst or time your crucial cooldowns, then know that something is not done properly, period. Of course, the way mobility skills are implemented are also a considerable offender besides stealth, but that is an issue for a different thread in my opinon. To top it all off, powercreep did its thing. We know that when everyone is overpowered then nobody is, but it is not true in GW2's case. It's simply: some are overpowered better than others. Remember pre-HoT times of suffering ONLY cele ele builds. Remember and compare what it was like then and how it is now and you'll probably find and answer where did it all go so wrong, because stealth didn't seem to be THIS bad.

Had a dual core necro fight. No matter how much you try to outplay them. They will simply outlast you with ease. Overall the balance is superb compared to what we had before. I only hope that devs will react quicker and do more frequent tweaks to classes before, whatever is meta, raises too much dissapointment and unneeded toxicity against players.

It is considerably better. It will take time to see what is up and what will need some fine-tuning. I can already see that CC trains are going to get popular as I've had one match where I literally melted down in a second and a half, but it took about 3-4 players in a coordinated assault and still I felt like I had time to react to it if I were just paying attention. Still, rifle deadeyes are capable of nuking down players from afar and escaping fairly quickly. Now that damage and healing is lower, it would be worth to consider toning down stealth and mobility on the most mobile classes. This is the only thing that struck me, because with less heals it is easier for thieves to jump out of combat and re-think their combo before you have time to heal up. This might not be the case if thieves didn't jump out and into combat on demand every couple of seconds, playing the endless rinse'n'repeat.

Spotted ranger main. Jokes aside, these are needed more than ever with how much chase'n'kill some classes are nowadays. I would rather fix the so called "no port spots" which can be accessed with ground targeted teleports but not target teleports. Moreover, mobility as a whole should be toned down. The rinse'n'repeat gameplay is tiresome to say the least. I am sure I am not the only one who does not appreciate when the only option to kill a given class is to hope for a slip on the opponent's side (or sheer incompetence/lack of skill), instead of outplaying them. Then, as a means of balance, mobility-based classes should be given some sort of durability boost so that they don't melt once they are out of mobility skills to jump in and out of a fight.

Pre-HoT it was not that fast paced and it was quite fine. We actually had to think on when to use a certain skill instead of spamming skills all around and escaping (provided you play a mobility class) to reset cooldowns and repating the same. If only devs could untangle the spaghetti we could hope for real de-powercreeping to pre-HoT standards when player versus player combat was far more reasonable than what we have now.

This thread made me log in for the first time in a year I think. Finally people started to notice what I've been talking about in HoT-times. But it's not just the stealth that is annoying in this game. It's the mobility along with stealth. Current mechanic of stealth has no drawbacks, save for no contribution to point capture. No speed reduction, no hit detection be it a simple attack or melee. Now let's add this terrific amount of mobility skills that allow you to change your position on top of that and we get what we see (or what we don't see, actually). Of course, stealth/mobility player has to pay attention to how best execute their combos, but compared to stealth/mobility application in other games, GW2 is way too forgiving, making mediocre players decent, and good players nigh impossible to beat under any circumstance - even if you manage to outsmart them, their gimmick-loaded class allows them to counter such situation in a way that is not considered skillful, but cheap. Thieves, mesmers and even rangers can rinse'n'repeat endlessly until they wear down their opponent sooner or later. If they screw up, they have it easy to disengage in a blink of an eye even if you manage to land immobilizes or stuns on them, because they always happen to have some sort of shenanigan up their sleeve just because the cooldowns are short, so even if you manage to peel them, the passive-saving abilities or active abilities, if rotated decently, give an option to escape every 20-30 seconds at worst. And this is only due to special skills such as those that give stability. With mobility on weapons or utility skills that grant stunbreaking teleportation/movement it is way faster and easier to poke and dodge every 8-10 seconds, while thieves can do it even quicker, making this class to be more capable than it should be. But to give it some justice, the same issue regards every class but on different levels. Disengagement options should be either toned down, shortened or once-per-combat locked to raise the skillcap and shave down the rinse and repeat playstyle to which some classes have such an abnormal access to, that it is simply nauseous and a sign of half-baked design. I would rather see thieves, mesmers and rangers be introduced with less squishy-ness, being able to shrug off more damage or mitigate it in ways other than jumping around every couple of seconds like a rabit with rabies. That way they could stay longer in combat and be more strategic in how to apply their stealth or when it would be considered a good move to use that one mobility skill to take best advantage of it.

I don't think we'll get elite specs, but sooner or later I'd like to see what guard lacks the most. Mobility. Mobile half support, half power melee dps with high chasing capability. It's power creep, yes, but apparently this is what is happening with especs. They won't nerf things across the board, seems that power creeping it into oblivion is the only option now.

It does favor LOS more, however I'm seeing a lot of platforms that require leap/jumping whereas shadowsteps will likely give "No Valid Path to Target". So basically I can put guardian back on the shelf and wait for buffs, or roll something else with easy access to quickness/mobility skills other than teleports.

Well, I am of two minds about Colisseum changes. Mostly because mobility-heavy classes will have it even easier to be an even greater nuisance.