Zexanima.7851

Good suggestions! I don't really play enough ranger or WvW anymore to make my ideas as concise as they should be. I will say that I did mention these may not be the best ideas for skills, but just ideas. In regards to the WvW specific pets, the ones you mentioned are in WvW but not really geared towards WvW and that's what I was getting at. I also did reply to @Dawdler.8521's post addressing the buff application. Again, maybe not the best idea but an idea. I think keeping up the conversation and putting out ideas it's what important when wanting change, not necessarily coming up with the absolute best idea because Anet will do what they want in the end anyways.

I'm going to disagree. They have small bursts of movement, but they are not mobile. A necro can outrun a WvW zerg with good use of Spectral Walk, Flesh Wurm, and properly using terrain. Necro is the least mobile class in the game. Usually the reason a warrior in WvW survives a scenario like that isn't due to their mobility, it's due to their survivability and player skill. Other roamer builds will hunt you down on warrior. You do not have on demand swiftness/superspeed access, their passive movement speed buff is one of the slower ones (25%), you do not have teleports. Both Bull's Rush and WW are evades, but they are not good movement abilities because they have such short range. They will help you gap close or survive in a fight but will not help you catch someone/run away when committed to doing so. I said high impact, single hit abilities, not high damage. Depending on what you run his includes things like Bull's Charge, Shield Bash, Rush, most burst skills, pretty much any hammer/bow ability (though no one uses these really), and so on. You're not wrong, but you wont get this off more than maybe 1 hit of that chain unless you've locked them down. Locking someone down requires you to hit single hit abilities. You're right but I wasn't specifically talking about what the main issues are with warrior. I even mentioned at the end of the post that I wasn't. I was just talking about one annoying aspect. All correct points, but I wasn't really talking to the core issues of what troubles warrior.

Is it possible to do without murdering ping? Yeah, but it would be so wildly expensive it would not be worth it. It's interesting to know that a lot things people think are "impossible" with computer related problems are not really impossible. It's just the cost to solve those problems heavily out weigh the solution. That's why most games have regional servers to begin with.

Like you said, it's not about any one condition but the rate and ease as to which they can be applied. It just feels specially bad on warrior as you don't have the tools to deal with them when you need to and unlike a lot of professions you NEED to deal with them.

Probably just don't bother with thief if you're on warrior. There is a lot of warrior vs thief discussion going on here so figured I'd chime in as I play both a moderate amount. To put it clearly as possible; If you're on a typical warrior build up against a typical thief build and you're both knowledgeable of the game and close in skill, the warrior will lose 100% of the time. At the very least, you won't kill the thief. If you think this is a close fight, you haven't fought many experienced thief players. If you try to lean into a thief counter build you'll lose too much sustain and utility and still lose. On condi warrior you stand a slightly better chance but the results will most likely be the same. The three professions you typically don't want to waste your time fighting on warrior is thief, revenant, and mesmer. With their "meta" builds they will usually have every tool they need to shut a warrior down. Can you beat them? Yes, but this is usually due to a player skill gap and it will be an uphill fight. With warrior you usually want to take fights with professions you can stick to and lack on-demand interrupts. Lets say you do want to give thief a run for their money. I'm going to keep it simple, all we want to do is either kill the thief or make them bugger off. We don't care about holding odes or any of that. There are a lot of ways to play thief but here we'll just consider what is probably the most popular way to play; D/P Daredevil. When building specifically against this we have to consider a few things; What is the thief's win condition? What is our win condition? What is the best way to too meet both of these conditions? This is a quick build I've come up with (untested). Let me explain. Weapons Greatsword: A must on pretty much all warrior builds. The utility is just too good to be replaced by anything else. Also, the cripple on "Bladetrail" gives us another way to proc "Leg Specialist", more on that later. Axe/Mace: We don't need the unblockable/boon strip on breaching strike with dagger so we're going to go axe for the better autos, higher burst skill damage, and cripple (Leg Specialist proc)/execute on throw axe. Throw axe also gives us some more ranged poke and a way to clear blind from range if we are low on options. Why mace instead of shield you ask? Longer, ranged CC. This is much easier to land than shield stun and most people don't expect it. Plus crushing blow has some respectable damage. We don't really need shield, this is too easy for a thief to outplay. Utilites Throw Bolas: This is is a bad skill, never take it, bull's charge will be better in most every case. There is a pretty good reason in this case though. Most D/P Thieves are going to be running unhindered combatant. While strong, the draw back is that if you use it and clear a movement impairing condition it inflicts you with exhaustion (-100% endurance regen). We could rely on cripple but this is only will affect them for 2 seconds when cleared and most of the time they can just wait it out. Immob on the other hand will give them 4 seconds of it and it much harder to ignore than cripple. It has the added benefit of being better than cripple for letting us close the distance. Not to mention if they stealth while immobed they still cant move, so you can continue to hit where they last were and continue to punish them if they don't break it. The final reasons for this skill is that it gives us 2 charges, meaning if we get blinded for one we're not totally out of business and since it's ranged we can use it to clear blind in a pinch. Shake it off!: You'll never not take this skill. Stun break, condi clear, 2 charges. Just too useful not to have. For great justice!: So, we're running tactics. That means this will give a bit of healing, a damage boost, and since we're running rune of the soldier it gives us more condi clear for those kitten blinds. The ideal scenario to use this would be right before we land a burst skill WHILE blinded. A lot of thieves wont bother burning an evade if they know you're blinded and think the skill will miss. In this case though it'll allow you to catch them off guard as you'll boost your burst damage and clear the blind right before it hits. Mending: Even without the trait, it's just the best heal. There could be an argument for healing signet so you don't have to worry about being interrupted on heals but the healing on that is so bad now it just wont fly. Specially since we're not running might makes right. Rampage: Just the best option for ult in this scenario. You want to save this until you know they don't have blade storm and are low on initiative. Passives: I'm not going to cover everything in great detail but the main idea here is this; Thief is already pretty squishy so we can get away with trading the damage from strength for tactics. Tactics gives us more on demand healing/cleanses and stacks well with rune of the soldier. The main reason for Tactics though is Leg Specialist. We want to be throwing out immob as often as we can to deny them endurance and lock them down. Also stacking this with rune of the soldier gives us more ways to clear blinds when we need to. I opted for spellbreaker for magebane, immobs, cripple, slow, and of course full counter. Discipline is also another must have. We need the movement speed, burst cooldown reduction and most importantly brawlers recovery as this will be our main way to clear blinds. Conclusion/How-to: Immob, immob, and more immob. This will help you gap close and it will run them out of endurance. Burst when you're blinded, then clear with "For great justice!" right before it lands. Heal as SOON as they stealth, and on cooldown. A thief is going to be looking to hit and run, but also interrupt your heal. The best time to heal is right as they restealth as this will force their hand. They either have to break stealth and be revealed to stop the heal or commit to the disengage and let you heal. They can work around this with steal, but this is good since it will force them to use an important cooldown they might not have otherwise. Don't underestimate axe 2 and axe auto damage. When they open on you from stealth turn around and start smacking them. If they are stealthed, swing like a crazy man while turning so it's not an easy, risk free backstab. Axe hurts, specially on a squishy thief. Same goes when you're in GS. Don't stand around while they're in stealth but don't haphazardly burn cooldowns/dodges. This comes with practice. You can usually get a "feel" for when they will engage on you, so you can dodge or throw out a whirlwind at those moments. It wont always pay off but is good to be able to do. Always try to have at least 1 throw axe, throw bola, or blade trail up at all times. Also, try to make sure to save a throw axe as its a good finisher. Weapon swap pretty much on cooldown. They will be applying blind and weakness to you non-stop and this will be your best way to deal with those. All in all is it a good build? No. This is the best way I can think of though to "counter build" a D/P daredevil. You would probably be better off just practicing against them on the typical spell breaker build.

If you ever want to get a taste of what hell feels like play warrior without Warrior's Sprint and Brawler's Recovery. You'll be fighting demons in a bowl of syrup trying to make it those two steps to get on point while the enemy team has already decapped all your points for the next 15 games. In the off chance someone does haphazardly stumble within reach of your 2 inch range you'll think to yourself "I could win", but then you'll remember "win" starts with a W. You know what else starts with a W? Weakness, and that's what you'll have until you're retired and in a nursing home where you finally stand a chance. At least then you'll be afforded the time to think back to when you once tried to log into your warrior but even your loading times were abysmal because you had so much cripple saved up it started affecting your bandwidth. Luckily that's not a problem now though because you can afford lighting fast internet from all that money made trading in blind-coin. Some day though you'll realize it was all worth it, as you're slipping into the sweet release of death you'll think to yourself "At least I had endure pain." The (somewhat) more serious take Lets establish some of warriors built in weaknesses first. These are not inherently bad to have, just part of the profession design meant to balance how it works. Mobility is on the lower end Long animation windup up/Telegraphed animations Reliant on single hit, high impact abilities With all these combined it makes warrior overly weak to non-damaging conditions in respect to other professions, in my opinion. Combine this with resistance only affecting damaging conditions, and warrior becomes very very susceptible to them. Blind: Anyone who plays warrior knows how frustrating blind is. This single condition can force to burn a cleanse, weapons swap, or stand around twiddling your thumbs till it goes away. News flash, it wont. Warrior has options to deal with it but as easy as it is to be blinded, the impact it has on this profession does not feel proportional. You either run Brawler's Recovery and hope weapon swap cleanses it, burn a "Shake it off!" which is a big cd for an easily re-applied condition, or you swing and miss if you have the luxury of being close enough to do so. By its self I wouldn't mind blind being this strong against warrior but in combination with other control conditions it's very oppressive for how easy it is to get blinded. Rev has some blinds, guardian can have a few, engineer has a good amount, mesmer has a decent amount, ele has some here and there, and you might as well pry your eyes out against thief because you'll never see again anyways. Aside from theif in a 1v1 you can usually play around these but when you start getting in team fights it feels like a swing and a miss every other attack. Chilled: Now, yes, chill sucks to get on any profession. Same can be said for most of these but it specially sucks for warrior. 66% movement speed reduction is a huge mobility hit to an already low mobility profession. Not to mention warrior relies pretty heavily on keeping up consistent pressure with its relatively low cooldown offensive abilities. The hit to cooldown is no where near as impactful as the hit to movement speed though. Cripple: Not as bad as chilled but the difference being chilled is fairly hard to come by where as you'll be crippled just for looking at an enemy. Crippled is so common and easy to apply I don't see why they haven't given a global debuff at this point that just cripples everyone every two second and save the people the trouble of applying it. "This skill needs a little somethin' somethin' extra but I don't want to make it too strong...I KNOW, cripple!" - Anet dev probably. Same issue as chilled, lowering mobility on an already low mobility profession. Fear: ...well, actually, if you're running Brawler's Recovery (you probably are) then fear isn't too bad considering it's not covered and chained 10,000 times. This one I'll say doesn't particularly affect warriors any more than other professions, maybe less so. Immobilize: Don't run warrior's sprint, I dare you. Slow: This isn't all that common these days but when you do get slowed and you're animations are already long, you get realllllyyyyy slow. I could go do my taxes while I wait for a slowed warriors eviscerate to land. Taunt: Same as fear, honestly. Weakness: More or as common as cripple and basically turns your weapons into rubber squeaky hammers. All the salt aside, these are not what's making or breaking warrior at the moment. It's just one frustrating aspect I felt the need to half heartedly vent about into the void of the internet. Also yes, I'm ignoring that warrior has ranged weapons because, lol. Besides, if you're running ranged weapons on warrior you've already strayed from the path.

Great point, didn't even consider that. That's usually why there are whole teams and not one person coming up with solutions lol (at least where I work). There are probably still a lot more I haven't considered. There are a few thing to think about with this situation. First off, these "WvW pets" would be the only ones able to receive these buffs they and would not be geared towards solo play. In that scenario while it would seem strong at first glance you would still be better off with something like a smokescale because these pets would have low damage in single target and very long cooldown pet abilities. You would also lose a lot of ranger synergy between buff sharing with the pet. I should also point out this buff would not at all translate to soulbeast merge as that would be broken af. If you were really bent on preventing these kinds of scenarios as much as possible though you could condition the buff further to; "While in a party of 10+, if the ranger has 5 allies within 1,200 units, apply this buff for 30 seconds. (refresh duration every 20 seconds)." Of course you would need to tweak numbers/distances but it would prevent the ranger from joining a squad for the buff then wondering off and doing whatever.

That is normal to experience in online PvP games. When a pvp game has a low population like GW2 it becomes more pronounced.

As far as sPvP is concerned, as long as there MUST be a down state, I think all down states should be synonymous. Flavor be damned. You get a short range daze on a long cooldown so you can interrupt a single stomp, you get a self heal just as it works now. These two skills, exactly the same, every profession. The way I view down state is to give your team a chance to get you back in the fight. Not for you to be impacting the game in any way. You're down, you're out, there should be nothing more for you to do until you get rezzed or respawn.

I think people are confusing "warriors are not in a bad place" with "there are people who are really good with warrior". Pretty much any profession/build regardless of how well it's doing will have players that will clean your clock with it just because they put so much practice into it. That doesn't mean its doing good, just that the player is good with it. You get these players in a conquest match and they may whip you a time or two in a fight but overall their impact on the game will be rather low compared to a meta profession/build. Even dueling over a side node warriors are not really passible. If you have two teams of similar skill level all running meta professions/builds then throw a warrior in the mix, that warrior will seem next to useless. What made warriors dangerous was their sustain, control, and high moments of burst damage. Which in a box sounds OP but now days these strengths are non-existent or overshadowed by their weaknesses. Their lack of mobility and telegraphed animations are pretty huge weaknesses but that's fine as every profession should have at least 1-2 clear weaknesses. This kind of pigeon holes them into what roles they can play so they need to have respectable builds in those roles. Their sustain is still decent but middle of the pack at best. They still have their control but capitalizing on that has become much more difficult. This isn't in a vacuum either. You have to consider how other professions have changed and where that puts warrior. Many meta builds will out sustain you either through raw sustain or damage prevention. Many builds will out burst you with half the risk/effort. Most builds will out rotate you. Many builds will out do warrior in many of it's own key categories at once while directly countering it. If other professions can do what warrior does better and/or can contribute better to the win condition then that means warrior just isn't good. Lets just do some comparisons to things you're most likely to see these days; D/P Daredevil: Any form of warrior are a non-issue for this build. The only thing warrior's have in their kit that's even slightly problematic is spellbreaker's mage bane. Even then they would just need to keep up blinds until they can stealth again. Almost every tool in their kit will shut down warrior; blinds, interrupts, mobility (teleports, long range dodge, perma-swiftness), ranged pressure (shortbow) Power Herald: This has always had the advantage against warrior when played correctly. They compete with you in CC, outclass you in mobility, WAY outclass you in burst, and generally have all the tools needed to make warrior a non-issue. Even power renegade is a tough fight, though much more even than Herald. Core Necro/Power Reaper: This is probably warriors best target in the current meta. With that being said there are better professions out there now days for taking out a necro. It's a pain as you'll still have to constantly be swapping to cleanse weakness/chill/fear but it's very winnable. About the only time a necro should get you is if they catch you outnumbered and Litch you with your pants down. Holosmith: Better warrior. Warrior arguably does better against condi, but in every other category Holosmith outshines you. More damage, more utility, more mobility, better sustain (condi aside), better cleave, melee AND ranged pressure, comparable CC, more versatile shield, better immune, stealth, ect ect. Very few scenarios in which I can think of having a warrior over a holosmith on the team would be better. Fire Weaver: This matchup will seem even at first but they will almost always pull ahead of a warrior. Even if you swap weapons religiously to cleanse and hang on to your "Shake it Off!" for dear life they will still chip you down. The amount of sustained pressure coupled with immunity frames and CC will make it hard for you to line up any meaningful damage. Often this will just be draw but weaver has the higher potential to win if they interrupt your heals properly and keep the pressure on. Valk Ranger: Once again, better warrior. They are way more tanky than you, burst is better than warriors, sustained damage is better than warriors through their pet, impossible to lock down if played correctly, stealth access, many evade frames, comparable CC. They are much more susceptible to ganks than warrior but you'll probably be dead before that can happen. Valk ranger in a lot of ways (not all) plays like what you would expect from a warrior Shout Guard: I only included this because you'll see them fairly often. In a 1v1, sure, warrior will win. You won't see them in that scenario though, it'll be in team fights. Even a side noder/duelist will need to participate in team fights at some point. When you do team fight as warrior and they have a shout guard, you might as well just go sit on an empty node instead. With the stability/stun breaks, aegis, line of warding, and general healing output they will make it kitten near impossible for you to impact a team fight in any way. The best you can hope to do is clear aegis with whirlwind and get off the occasional breaching strike. I think that covers a lot of the meta classes you'll see. The big picture I'm getting at with all this is; As things are right now you can play warrior, you can even play warrior well. In most every scenario though warrior will be at a disadvantage and there will be something that can do the job warrior is doing, but better. Something will need to change to make warrior relevant again. One option is bringing back damage on CC for warrior. I don't think this is a bad solution but it's not the only solution. We'll have to wait until the dust settles after EoD release to start really making any informed suggestions. For all we know that could fix all the issues (I doubt it). Why take a support warrior when you can have a shout guard? Why take a duelist spellbreaker when you can have a fire weaver or valk ranger? Why take a dps berserker when you can have a holosmith, reaper, or rev?

I think the best solution would be to make WvW specific pets like they have mounts. That's not to say you ONLY can use those pets or they are limited to WvW, but there are certain pets that can receive a special buff in WvW and have specific skills geared for group play in that mode. All this only addresses pets in WvW, not rangers themselves which is a whole other can of worms. These pets would have large scale specific skills and a large scale buff that is applied to it when in WvW. Buff: When in party of 10+ players: The pet may not receive boons. All boon effects on the ranger are shared with the pet (excluding stability). This includes stealth and superspeed. (Stealth is only broken for the pet when the ranger breaks stealth but while the pet is stealthed and has this buff all damage dealt is reduced by 100%. Activating a pet ability will unstealth both the ranger and pet.) Movement impairing conditions are reduced by 75% Incoming CC duration is reduced by 75% Incoming damage reduced by 66% (Too add to this, these pets will have high base health and toughness.) Movement speed increased by 33% Abilities: All abilities/attacks would be AoE. Most of the skills would be around utility and support, with maybe one damage focused pet. Pet passive attacks (not skills) would be very low cooldown, low damage, instant cast, AoE abilities. Basically making the pet a walking AoE condition on the enemy zerg. Not so annoying that they MUST be focused but if left unchecked for long enough will deal a respectable amount of damage over time. This would make it so if you had ~5 ranger pets on the enemy zerg they would slowly but surely start to have a noticeable damage impact. They would lack any kind of burst damage though to prevent zergs from stacking rangers and just eating the enemy zerg with pets. Anyother way you could think of a pet's passive damage in this scenario is as a single low damage sand shade that follows the enemy zerg around pulsing every few seconds. Skill ideas: What I'm thinking for pet abilities is high cooldown, high impact skills that require good coordination and timing to get value. These would add to the list of things your commander may call out for and want to have on hand. (These would all have a nerfed PvE/sPvP version, but not going to theorize that here. These are just ideas, not saying they are the best ideas). Mustering Roar (30s cd)(Geared towards initiating a fight) : Bolster allies and weaken enemies. Allies within 900 units of the ranger, extend duration of all current boons by 33% and grant 2 seconds of quickness. Remove 1 boon from enemies with 900 units of the pet and inflict 2 sec of slow. Mist rescue (60s cd)(Geared towards swinging a losing fight): For 5 seconds, within 900 units of the ranger if an ally would be downed they are instead healed for 25% of the rangers max health, cleared of all conditions, and granted 3 seconds of super speed. Cannot affect the same ally more than once every 180 seconds. During this time your pet may not be healed and each ally affected by this will cause the pet to take 20% of its max health in damage. Effect ends if pet is downed or swapped. (While very strong when used at the right time, it has a long cooldown and capped at 5 people max before the pet will be downed. Simply, it will prevent up to 5 allies from being downed for 5 second, every 60 seconds, unless they have already been affected then 180 sec instead so this skill will have diminishing returns for each ranger who uses it in quick succession. You'll probably only want 1-2 rangers in your zerg with this pet.) Leeching Strikes(30s cd)(Geared towards sustain a fight): 5 second duration. Increase pet damage by 100% (because these pets would have fairly low base damage). Heal up to 10 allies with 900 units of the ranger for 200 health + 100% of the pets damage every second. (In ideal conditions the target amount of healing would be 3-4k per ally over those 5 seconds making it like a weaker AoE version of Troll Unguent) For the pack (45s cd)(Geared towards sustain a fight): Every second for 4 seconds. Transfer 2 condition from allies within 900 units of the ranger to the rangers pet (This is per ally at once, up to 10 allies. So up to 20 conditions a second for a maximum of 80 conditions). If the pet is downed, the effect continues but the conditions are instead transferred to the ranger. Effect ends on pet swap. (This makes this ability strong, but a double edged sword in that if the ranger doesn't keep a close eye on their pet and swap if they're down they run the risk of condi bombing themselves) Stampede (45s cd)(Geared towards initiating a fight): Your pet will prepare to charge for 1 second, becoming CC immune. It will then dash for 600 units towards its target. Any enemy hit (10 max) will have up to 2 stacks of stability removed. If they do not have stability they instead will be dazed for 1/2 second. Devouring Maw (120s cd)(Geared towards closing out fights): Your pet will begin to gnash its teeth wildly for 5 seconds, reducing healing for all enemy within 900 units by 25% and their increase damage taken by 10% (non-self-stacking for both damage increase and anti-heal). If this effect ends with downed enemies within range, they are stomped (max 2). If an enemy is not stomped, cooldown of this ability is reduced by 50%.

While I don't see nearly as many bots as some people do, I do see them. I think this statement isn't accurate and maybe a bit salty. There is a clear difference between someone even in gold1 and a bot. I could MAYBE see the argument for silver and below, but even then, you can tell they are not bots because they're usually putting in some effort but just lack mechanics/game knowledge. Granted, I'm not some god tier player as I jump between high gold and low plat but I have a lot of experience in sPvP and pretty deep game knowledge. I just cant find the dedication to put into this abysmal pvp system to get any better.

I think you miss the point of why thief is annoying in a duel, which usually means fighting over a side node. If it was as simple has capping the point against thief and being on your merry way then you'd have a point, but it's not. The annoying aspect is that if they can't kill you they're going to make you spend half the game re-capping. They'll usually be able to rotate much faster than you so if you take your node and go assist in the team fight they'll be able to decap and assist in the team fight as well. Due to their mobility this will allow them to support their team by decaping which will either A) Slow your point gain or B) Remove you from the team fight to go recap. While not only decapping constantly they'll have more team fight presence than you over the course of the game from their mobility. As thief I've sat in stealth, waited for them to get partway to mid, decapped, then managed to show up to mid virtually the same time they did (maybe 1-2 seconds behind.) They were faced with the choice of turning around and recapping, having made them waste their time and lose a few points while I then rotate to help mid and outnumber or have them commit to mid and losing points all the while making them gamble on winning the team fight fast enough they don't lose too many points. So you're either going to sit on the node all game and be useless to your team while the thief comes and checks in on you now and then between team fights to make sure you're a good little side noder or play cat and mouse with the thief while he is still able to provide more value than you from his mobility. Granted, this is not always the tactic they take and it will not always win the game but this is just an example of why a thief to me is the "most dreadful profession to duel" because they can beat you by not even fighting you directly. When you can't kill another duelist but you're winning point, you win because you have point AND you're taking them out of the team fight. If you can't kill a thief but "win" point, you don't necessarily "win" point and they can keep you out of the team fight by forcing you to recap or guard node but still keep up more team fight presence than you through their mobility. I want to reiterate, this not me saying thief is op, unbeatable, or always wins or something. I'm also not saying this happens every single game as there are a lot more factors that go into this. This is just why I find them the most annoying to be up against when my role is to side node/duel. Plus blind/daze spam is just obnoxious.

It's much too late in the games life to add something like this. If they did it would have had to been in the HoT expansion. At this point they've made it clear there will be no new weapons or professions. Had they done it though I would have liked to see something like this; A concurrent elite spec between professions. That's NOT to say it would function the same on all professions, just that it would have been thematically the "same" between classes. As in, every class is given a "martial" espec at some point but what form of martial art they use is completely different. They each get their own style.. For every class this would allow them to equip some kind of first weapon which is a two slot weapon. The exact theme/passives/skills would vary greatly between professions though. For some examples; Elementalist would have gotten a "Martial Style: Elemental Flow" which would kind of be akin to benders from Avatar compiled into one. The style would have incorporated elemental combos with a flow gage. When you execute a skill that was not the same element as your last, it builds flow. You have a 5th elemental swap you can switch to and each skill in the 5th swap expends flow and incorporates more elements on each with the 5th incorporating all them being a defacto mini ult. Skills 1->5 get progressively more expensive on flow and have stronger effects. The first skill may just be water, the second water/fire, the third water/fire/earth, ect. So say you built 1-2 on flow, you could swap and spam the 1st skill a couple times or if you saved up a bunch of flow you can swap to it and unleash the 5th skill to devastating effect. Warrior would have gotten a "Martial Style: Crushing Fist" that focuses an buffing yourself while chaining CC into slow crushing blows. The utility skills would have been around buffing you with damage reduction (protection or a flat 33% damage reduction buff on activation for a short period), CC with things like pulls to make it harder to get away, and maybe an entire secondary heal skill all be it weaker than your main heal. The weapon skills would be have a fairly low cooldown but be progressively harder to land from 1->5. Like the 1 skill would be a quick animation punching combo but the 5th skill would be a 1.5 second animation locked skill but it hits SUPER hard. Adrenaline would operate the same way in how you build it but be capped at 10 and instead of it giving you a damage skill it would be a buff skill depending on the weapon you're using. On all weapons it would lower your weapon/utility (not ultimate) skills cd by 0.5 seconds upon activation and give a secondary unique effect (not boon) based on the weapon for a period of time. It would have a 5 second cooldown shared between all weapons but have a passive that makes this cooldown unshared, allowing you to combo effects. Great sword could give you a buff like one-wolf-pack for 4 seconds that causes any hit you do to hit a second time for 15% of the damage. Axe could causes you to unleash an AoE attack around you that cripples and does damage when activating any skill for 4 seconds. Hammer could cause your next attack within 2 seconds to apply Disorient for 3 seconds (all movement keys are inverted). Bow would cause your next 3 attacks to cause your target to explode on hit, causing AoE damage and burning. Ect. ect. I would do this for all classes as its fun to theorize but I've spent entirely too much time on this. You probably get the idea. xD

I understand the impulsive desire to just blame someone who is playing poorly. The reality is they may not be a bad player though. There are a number of factors to consider; They could just be having an off game or they're warming up They could be getting focused really well by the other team They could have one or several bad matchups profession/build wise They might not be as experienced on the profession/build they're playing Don't get me wrong, you do get matched up with/against players under your skill level. That doesn't necessarily even mean they are "bad" even in that case. I know people who if I took them on right now they would lose horribly to my experience but if given enough time to learn the game would wipe the floor with me because they're generally better at pvp games than I am. . If you're consistently playing with/against them though chances are you're not any better than they are. People who blame others for their loss though seriously misunderstand how PvP video games work and generally are only worth an insta-block.

I think this is a loaded poll to be honest because this entirely depends on matchup/build. Where I might absolutely HATE fighting d/p daredevil on warrior, it becomes almost a non-issue on sic'em soulbeast. What I don't think people consider a lot is how matchup effects the difficulty of a fight. If you were to push me on the question though and say "generally across all professions and builds" I guess it would have to be D/P Daredevil and/or fire weaver. Even if I won't die to them, if they're good, they wont die either. If we're considering that they're as good or better than me then this can lead to me being unable to ignore them and I'm kind of stuck in an infinite duel. In such a case I can't even afford to abandon the duel because as soon as I do they will capitalize on this and down me, follow me to where I'm going, or decap then rotate to me. Can't rotate, can't help the team fights, I'm just stuck fighting this person for all eternity and at the mercy of my team to win the match.

This is in part due to the small PvP scene but I think you'll find this to be somewhat true for any PvP game. You'll almost always have better luck queuing in off hours to some degree although in a more populated game this will not be as pronounced. The only solution to this though is worse than the problem in that you would have much longer (maybe infinite) queue times in off hours. What you're getting in prime time is how it should be. A roughly 50/50 split on wins loses with a slight favor in wins if you're improving. High ranked or improving players would ideally see about a 60% win rate on the VERY high end during peak hours then this may go up by 5-10% on off hours. Those are generously high estimates. Realistically it maybe more like 52-56% win rate in peak hours with a ~60% during off hours. Also, high ranked players should have little difference in win rate but win how small the pvp scene is in GW2 they would inevitably be high because they are going to be matched against lower ranking players at some point. Not a ton higher, but somewhat higher. Ultimately the bigger issue is in how the PvP system functions, not peak vs off hours. There are players grossly outside the ideal win rate. There will always be outliers but there are consistently many players with 70%+ win rates from season to season. This can be due to people gaming the system (win trading), the system not having enough players which breaks match making(matching high to low ranked), or even botting so a lesser degree. Botting though, if being done consistently, should not affect things over all as far as win/loss percentages. It'll only inflate over all numbers. We can argue until the sun comes up as to why people are getting such high win rates but only Anet has the data to pin down the issues. What we can agree on is things are not working as they should be and something needs to change for the sPvP competitive scene to be actually competitive.

@Azure The Heartless.3261 Makes a good point, these need to be generic and digestible as possible. The way I see it is that tips like these serve two purposes. One is to remind seasoned players as even the most experienced players will slip up and second is to inform newer players. In that respect I would limit this to 3 points (maybe 4 max if you can make a good argument for including a 4th). Then I would limit each of the points to 2 sentences max. This needs to be something someone can read, digest, and implement within the 1 minute prep time before the match and even answer questions if anyone has any. Considering this I might further revise to; 1) Don't fight outnumbered. If our respawns are staggered or we're trickling in regroup and push out as a team. 2) We only need two nodes to win so if we can't win team fights on mid focus side nodes and split their resources. 3) Keep an eye on enemy respawns/map locations and rotate accordingly. Do not sacrifice team fight potential to help in a 1v1.

Yessss, I often see people pushing mindlessly into far not thinking about enemy respawns. First of all we only need two points to win. Secondly, if we just wiped them all mid then they are going to all be respawning so if 1-2 decide to push far for some reason you're just going to get respawned on and rolled. Usually the best things you can do if you win the initial mid fight is just to sit tight and take good positioning for the next fight or go help your home node if there is a 1v1 going IFFFF you can finish up that fight before they all get back to mid. If you go to assist in a 1v1 but it takes you longer than 15-20 seconds to clean up its probably not worth staying so rotate back to the team fight. So taking into consideration Paradoxoglanis's point I would revise to; 1) If our respawns are staggered or we're trickling in, regroup and push out as a team. 2) If we can't win team fights on mid, focus side nodes and split their resources. 3) Keep an eye on enemy respawns/map locations and rotate accordingly. 4) Don't sacrifice helping in team fights to assist in 1v1s

One of the biggest miss-steps I see people do (and I do myself some times because I'm on auto pilot) is that when we lose multiple separate fights and our respawns are staggered, people just continue to trickle in and feed the rest of the game. It's hard for people to "reset" because you're standing at spawn waiting on other respawn timers and it feels like you're doing nothing. On the flip side you can win matches a lot of times by staggering respawns. Say you down two enemies, you might stomp one and then bleed out or wait a good 10-15 seconds to stomp the other if you're given the luxury to do so. This will stagger their respawns and you'll most likely snowball the rest of the game because they'll trickle and feed. This is often how you can find yourself pushed to the point of being camped at spawn. Another issue I see is trying to force team fights in mid. Some times the other team will just be built better for larger team fights. Say they have a support shout guard and you don't. In this case I find it better to fight side nodes. This lessens the value of their team fight potential. If their support is supporting two others at home, that means the two at far are not getting supported. Then they are only getting value on 2 people max, vs the guard getting value on 3-4 people fighting mid. This is not ALWAYS the case but if you can't win mid fights this is a possible solution. So a couple points I would add are; 1) If our respawns are staggered or we're trickling in, regroup and push out as a team. 2) If we can't win team fights on mid, focus side nodes and split their resources.

The only issue I personally have with trapper rune DH is spear of justice being unlockable AND being thrown from stealth. Sure, in a 1v1 if you see them stealth you can somewhat consistently time a dodge on it. A big part of fighting DH is not getting hit by the spear. Trapper runes though almost guarantee that it lands. The only way to counter that is; 1) Predict it, which isn't an entirely reasonable thing to expect players to be able to do all the time when having to do it when the enemy is stealthed. 2) Also stealth, which not all classes can do and not to the degree trapper runes give DH. 3) Burn dodges/evades until they are out of stealth, which is not ideal because then you're down on defensives while they still have their whole kit up 4) LoS, which means you lose node and will continue to lose node because as soon as they drop stealth and start taking node, you re-engage through their traps to push them off/kill them then they will just burn blocks/defensives while you take damage and then re-trap and re-stealth to get a spear if they haven't already. Also, even if you LoS they can still get LoS on you in that time because they also have super speed and you have no idea if you're actually LoSing them or not. So, is there counter play? Yes, there is always counter play to any build but is the way you counter play it equal to the investment the DH puts into it vs what most classes have to do to counter it? Not in my opinion. Overall it's just unfun to play against. My suggestion and only change I think is need to balance while keeping trapper runes the same is to put a 5 second reveal on spear of justice as soon as the ability is pressed. This will make throwing it from stealth a little more countable but still fairly strong, as you'll have a split second window to read the animation before you get hit and it will punish them for doing it and missing, making them unable to re-stealth for a bit. It'll still be strong being thrown from stealth as when you reappear players still only have a short window to predict what you're doing, but it gives them some sort of window to counter play it consistently. Personally I would rather they redesign trapper runes. Maybe they can replace it with; When you place a trap gain 3 seconds of super speed, opponents who are damaged by your traps are immobilized for 1 1/2 seconds (15 second cooldown on immobilize). This would still be fairly strong as it would allow you some lock down into your traps and even if the traps don't get much damage off in that time it allows for follow up on it if they don't cleanse. It also gives some mobility to classes running traps. Thematically it makes more sense to me too as the idea behind traps is to zone an area and punish your opponents for entering that area.

While the problem he is talking about is separate than what this thread is about, he has a point and it loosely ties into the topic. As a fairly experienced warrior player and dueling/watching other better warriors, important skills are already inconsistent even with CC. I can't tell you how many times I've have/seen pulled, knocked down, stunned someone just to have breaching strike or dagger 2 leap over them and not hit even though I have them targeted and facing them. Rush is also really wonky in the same way. Hell, I've even had 100 blades miss a few times because I've pull them with mage bane into Rush and Rush decided to position me behind them or for some reason hit and end outside of melee rang. The point being that if warrior's damage is tied completely into 2-3 telegraphed skills now because CC does no damage, and those skills are already fairly inconsistent to hit, then the lack of damage on CC hurts the profession even more.

Basing game changes purely off of metrics will make the game feel "out of touch" with the player base. Also, data is more guidelines than law. It's heavily dependent on how it's gathered, interpreted, and presented. In short, from an analytics data guy, metrics in this situation are good to use to get a feel for how things are going but for something like balance it takes a lot of human feelback and more than just pure data analysis. Specially since you have to consider how "fun" things are. As far as pre-nerf warrior, they could have just nerfed some of the damage on their harder hitting CC skills and rampage, like the better the CC the lower the damage BUT they still pack enough of a punch that getting hit by them is not ideal, that's really all it needed. Removing damage from warrior's CC completely really messed up their class design, specially due to how easy it is now days to counter CC. True, you can still stun lock someone into a burst skill but now the class is heavily dependent (more so than before) on landing that one telegraphed attack. A good player if caught will just wait out your CC chain to stun break and avoid things like arcing slice or eviscerate. There really is no "punishment" for being hit by their CC other than costing you a stun break or possibly an invlun of some kind. There are still a 101 ways to roll your opponent without them fighting back., specially against a warrior (blind spam, block/evade spam, stealth, teleporting, ect.) While those skills don't "feel" as bad as being CC chained they have the same effect, it removes your opponents ability to fight back without burning some sort of important cooldowns. If you look at what's currently meta builds or "problem" builds you'll notice that most of them revolve around giving your opponent the least amount of agency to fight back. The trait idea isn't a terrible idea but that would pigeon hole warriors into taking it, guaranteed. Kind of like how Discipline is now. Sure, you can get away not running Discipline but whatever the build is will be less than sub optimal.

I don't understand why there isn't at least a debuff after being rezzed. Like for 15-20 seconds after being rezzed you do 33% less damage and take 15% more damage and if you're downed again during this time you're full downed. That way if you get a rez off it's in your best interest to disengage until the debuff is gone. Getting the rez would be worth it still as it saves and respawn timer and they can still rotate and apply map pressure, but they'll virtually be taken out of that specific fight and be punished heavily if immediately going back in. Personally my only issue with the rez mechanic is that they're recovering cd's while downed and if they get rezzed, they can immediately push back in after popping a heal or something. Then if they get downed again, just repeat the process.

I agree with bringing damage back on CC, specially for warrior. I mean necro has damage on CC through fear. Granted you have to trait for it and it can be cleansed but still. On warrior for instance "Head butt" still does 50% more damage if removing stability...so like up to 7 damage from 5 lol There are still skills in their kit designed around doing damage with CC kitten.