Broady.2358

In case anyone missed it, we recently had CMC on the Arenalabs PvP Podcast to talk about lots of different issues and topics regarding PvP. CMC also answered some of the questions you folks from the community were asking.

The podcast can be found on [spotify](

It will be uploaded on our YouTube channel soon!

I hope you enjoy this episode as it was fun to get some developer insights of the game we love!

HUGE ANNOUCEMENT!!!!

The ArenaLabs PvP Podcast is happy to announce that the Guild Wars 2 Developer CMC will be coming on the show to talk about everything and anything PvP related!

This is where you all come in. We want to give you, the community an opportunity to ask questions about hot topics within our PvP scene!

There are certain topics, CMC can and cannot talk about and there is only so much we can ask him at once so please bare this in mind. Our aim is to have a healthy discussion about the game and learn some of the cool behind the scenes things only a games developer can answer.

Feel free to drop questions below and we will do our best to ask as many as possible during the show.

If you want to check out our content you can find us on:

[YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCssymJwQaHJSzknAijICu8A)

[spotify](

[Podbean](https://arenalabsgw2.podbean.com/)

Stay competitive and see you all in the arena!

One thing I like about this sort of idea of pre-set builds is that it would be an excellent entry point for new players.

Guild Wars 2 does a terrible job of introducing new players into PvP, how to create suitable builds or even how to rotate in the game mode.

It would be fantastic if a new player had access to some of decent builds and a brief explanation on their role works all in game!

Yes, places like metabattle and godsofpvp exist but players should not have to go to a 3rd party to learn how to play the game or find a suitable build for PvP.

Honestly, these suggestions seem to give advantages to the losing team who are making mistakes and punishing the winning team for doing well.

Snowballing is the outcome of a team winning their fights and staggering the spawns in order to get map control. Quite often, uncoordinated teams will run out as soon as they re-spawn into an outnumbered fight and inevitably die, thus allowing the snowball to continue.

They tried something like this back in Guild Wars 1. They removed Team Arenas and replaced it with Codex Arenas. Every week it provided classes with a limited skill selection to make a build from and was meant to encourage build diversity. It had the opposite effect and players hated it as ArenaNet effectively took away their freedom of choosing how the player wanted to play the game and thus, the gamemode died within weeks.

> Illithex and garkos are average tier thiefs.. not even close to top

I agree, Illthex is garbage and only average at Thief.... He is only a Plat 3/Legendary player and a Thief Coach for the community.

I don't get posts likes this...

This week we were honoured to be joined by the recent September mAT winner, Ultrascuffed member and Engineer extraordinaire, Floody! He shares his insight on how a competitive team should prepare mentally before a tournament and during intense games along with some important personal tips that you may not have heard before...

Available on Spotify [here](

It will be available on YouTube in the next few days!

Want to get involved more in PvP? Join the Welcome to PvP Discord https://discord.gg/5QverXV

Enjoy!

Imagine thinking that this video which is full of memes should be taken seriously or is a true reflection of how to play Thief...

Seems I should have included a disclaimer saying this a is parody of the attitude of players who think Thief is bad. If you think Thief needs higher damage in order to succeed, you're playing it wrong.

Those judging my knowledge of the game and PMing me in game asking my rank in order to inflate your ego on the forums just shows your maturity levels.

For those enjoyed the video and understood the irony, I'm happy and intend to do some more overly edited shenanigans covering "broken builds"... *Looks at Grenade Holosmith"

Remember back in Guild Wars 1 where all Top Ranked PvP games and Tournaments were free to spectate to all players

Thief is trash, please buff.... ;)

Another week, another episode talking about PvP...

This week we were joined by the YouTube Reaper God, Hollts! He shared his views on Solo Queue ranked and how he stays so level headed and doesn't let the frustration get the better of him along with some sneaky Reaper tips and tricks. Really fun and interesting discussion to listen to!

Podcast is available on Spotify here ---->

and on PodBean here ----> https://arenalabsgw2.podbean.com/

Also on YouTube (ususally delayed) ----> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCssymJwQaHJSzknAijICu8A

My team just signed up for the 1915 (UK Time) Melandru's Cup AT 16/09/2020 and just as it started, we got booted from the queue.

Anyone else have this problem? Really frustrating that prime time AT bugs out and means we can't play.

> The definition of Thief shouldn't be Heartseeker spam. That's a meme, not a playstyle. Just because you play like somebody that just began playing GW2 doesn't mean everybody wants to.

What I meant by Heart Seeker spam is using the skill twice getting 5-6k damage each time. The problem is if we buff backstab an attack which is delivered from stealth (to which there is very little counter play or time to react) to deal even more damage that would make Thief way too strong.

Right now in the meta, Thief is one of the top picks and arguably a must pick. To say the class needs a damage buff to backstab is beyond me. I would like to see a buff to deadly Arts and Critical Strikes to create some variety as Shadow Arts is too strong defensively

As a Thief main, Backstab is perfectly fine and currently very powerful! It is an attack which is hard to counter as it is delivered from Stealth. On average it will hit for 3-4k (sometimes more) unless going up against something with high toughness.

The key is to remember the role of Thief. It is a roamer and +1, not a duellist. Dropping 4k from Stealth in combination with a team mate's burst along with CC from Basilisk Venom will bring them down to below 50% health usually allowing for you to get the most out of Heartseeker spam which is usually around 5-6k per Heartseeker.

If you think Thief's damage is low, you're playing it wrong.

Strongly disagree. Saying it would add more depth to gameplay is not true. It would literally just change the game mode and in my opinion, for the worse.

Many maps already have secondary objectives that can swing the tide of a match and create tactics around team comps and rotations.

Eternal Coliseum has party wide stat buffs, instant Res and instant kill buffs.

Revenge of the Capricorn has the bell for extra points.

Skyhammer has the cannon to neutralise all enemy nodes.

All of these require the right players to push into those objectives or even design a team comp around it.

The "so called pro players" which are the top ranking players are right. Rotations do need skill, pushing the right fights at the right places and going for the secondary objectives at the right time takes skill. The amount of times I've witnessed people running into outnumbered fights only to wipe instantly or even being a far hero sat on a node for the entire game thinking they're contributing is insane.

However I do agree that PvP needs some innovation and change but adding Mist Champions to Conquest, a game mode based around rotations and node control is not the way.

> @"Reverse.1056" said:

> Its not a bug they already nerfed the glyph to death by chaning the cd on all attunents if they change that also tempest will be totally useless in pvp

It 100% is a bug as it came about after the February patch (I think) with no mention of it being part of that update. For the last few years, it was not in the game.

For those who have been living under a rock, there is currently a bug in where Tempests are able to begin the animation for res'ing a team mate with Glyph of Renewal then immediately go into Mist Form making them invulnerable. Thus, guaranteeing the res on the team mate. This bug currently has very few counter plays such as a Power Rev or Tempest CC'ing the body away. That means, skills that are designed to interrupt "key skills" like Glyph are made completely meaningless for situations like this.

If a Tempest is to perform a game changing Glyph res to swing the fight back in their favor then there should be an element of skill in performing this task. Such as, kiting to no ports to counter a Thief's steal, prioritizing a teams positioning. Not just pressing 2 buttons in the middle of a node or teamfight.

Now, I'm not blaming players for using this, its in the limits of the game so I get it. I am blaming ArenaNet however for not fixing this (among many other problems) in a timely manner.

Every single PvP player I have spoken to about this issue agrees that it should not be in the game. Can we please get this bug fixed soon!?

The latest episode of the Arenalabs GW2 PvP Podcast is joined by Crae Ryrr who shares his tips on improving which can benefit anyone from Bronze ranked to Platinum 3 and above. Hope you all enjoy!

https://arenalabsgw2.podbean.com/

As a whole, I don't think Conquest as a game mode is bad, I actually like having an objective to fight over instead of straight Deathmatch. I think the game does a very poor job of enticing players on playing to win or even how to play the game mode correctly, especially in ranked.

PvP from the get go has been seen as a "side hustle" by ArenaNet, hence the overall lack of support for the gamemode.

We are on our 7th episode of our PvP podcast. This week we had on Blam, one of the last remaining high ranked Weaver players to share his thoughts and experiences of the class with an insight on his counter to the infamous grenade Holosmith build.

Go give it a listen!

https://arenalabsgw2.podbean.com/

I played high level PvP back in Guild Wars 1 and the old school Team Arenas and Random Arenas were able to support the type of combat for Guild Wars 1.

The combat system for Guild Wars 2 is much faster and more versatile and not build to support a Team Deathmatch type game mode purely because it would only revolve around a Team Fight which leaves out a lot of classes.

Conquest allows for all classes to compete due to multiple roles available to players.

Dont get me wrong, I'd like more gamemodes for PvP and some innovation but a Team Deathmatch wouldn't suit the game.

Necromancer Dagger has some really interesting combinations which I believe can be extremely viable. I think it is most useful on Scourge.

Lets look at Dagger 3, Dark Pact. It immobilizes your target, corrupts 1 boon and causes self bleeding. This can combo with all your shades, wells and Ghastly Breach to apply significant node pressure during a teamfight. You could also combo this pre game with Signet of Undeath as you would be able to generate life force due to the self bleeding effect. The corrupt could also help with the Scourge trait, Feed from Corruption.

Dagger 2 is an excellent secondary heal. Combine this with Dark Pact's self bleed for 20% extra heal and a further 10% if you are running Vital Persistence from the Soul Reaping trait line. Combine this with the Signet of the Locust and you have a lot of self sustain at your disposal!

Dagger auto attacks aren't great I agree, but I think that is acceptable due to the utility of the other 2 skills. That's my thoughts on Necromancer Dagger skills anyway :)

Lich can be countered in so many ways... It can be countered by removing stability and CC'ing, bursting it down with your team, blocking, popping an invun skill, projectile absorbing, reflects or even line of sight blocking.

For those who say Necros only pop Lich in open spaces where there is no line of sight blocking terrain then that's a good play on their part. If you are so concerned about it then edit your build to beat it and save that skill when you expect a Lich to be used.

If you push into a team fight against a Necro, expect it to pop Lich. If you play Tempest, drop a Swirling Winds or even pop some reflect. It's not that hard. Just manage your skills better.

I think the low quality of player skill is down to the core game design. Looking back at Guild Wars 1, enemies used real skills, that the player had access too. For example, an Elementalist enemy might have the Elite skill Savannah Heat which is an AoE damage spell which increases in damage the longer someone stands in it. Therefore, teaching the playing that they should not stand in that AoE skill. They will then go into PvP, see someone use Savannah Heat and easily recognize not to stand in it.

In Guild Wars 2, there is no such teaching for the player. In PvE you simply dodge red markers on the ground and enemies have stuff like "reflects projectiles". Hardly helpful for teaching people key skills to avoid in PvP.

Combine this with no real support for PvP or even in game help explaining rotations, roles or anything makes it hard for new players to learn without going elsewhere.

I blame the developers for the poor skill level of players.

> @"Luthan.5236" said:

> The thing is ... rating isn't important. Having a visible rating in the first place generates a toxic community with certain types of players that only play for the rating. There should be no visible rating. (Only hidden for matchmaking.) Just playing for the fun.

I disagree and so will competitive players. PvP is much more enjoyable when something is on the line, some sort of risk. Yes, the losses are much more annoying but winning is that much more satisfying. PvP is all about being a better player than your opponent. Do players do raids for fun? No, they do them for the exclusive rewards. No one gets raid rewards for participating. PvP should have something exclusive to show off to others.

Having rating does not create a toxic community, instead rating creates a competitive environment. Neglect for the game mode, terrible balance, irregular updates, lack of innovation and no communication from Arenanet created a toxic community.