DoomNexus.5324

I'm only satisfied with how Mirage works when the clones don't contribute to the fight with damage (direct and condi) anymore and are mere shatter fodder, obstacles for projectiles and utility like condi transfer to them, target breaks and so on. Anet should rather focus on making mesmer good on their own and using clones only as ammunition and such.

If this won't get adressed it's just too easy for a good mirage to just sprial out of control even tho mesmer on its own might actually be underpowered.

And I'm afraid you won't ever be able to play Chrono competitvely again, just like you can't play Druid, Berserker, Daredevil, Renegade or Tempest. The only class that has both elite specs as meta is Engineer. (DH and Reaper are kinda.. okay-ish I guess so not meta but not terribly bad either)

> @"Zex Anthon.8673" said:

> Necro has the worst sustain out of all other classes which is why it is focused first every single game.

"Necro has the most ridiculous op impact on any teamfight due to massive boon corruption and AoE cancer (aka condition) spam, which is why it is focused first every single game."

There you go I just corrected it for you, no need to thank me :)

I think the nerf was.. okay I guess.. I'd rather see a slight dmg or duration reduction on reaper shroud4 spin to win, other than that I think Reaper is actually pretty good.

Guess the balance team from Anet got their statistics from 2016 since none of the PoF issues were adressed (other than soulbeast, which i really like).

> Why is Anet balancing their game around open world PvE?

Yea it sucks and we will never know.. *cough*money*cough*

> @"mortrialus.3062" said:

> > @"Ryan.9387" said:

> > > @"mortrialus.3062" said:

> > > > @"ZeroTheCat.2684" said:

> > > > > @"mortrialus.3062" said:

> > > > > > @"ZeroTheCat.2684" said:

> > > > > > > @"mortrialus.3062" said:

> > > > > > > > @"ZeroTheCat.2684" said:

> > > > > > > > No nerfs to scourge.. kitten Anet?

> > > > > > >

> > > > > > > Outside of adding a 1s global cooldown between shade skills I actually can't imagine any nerfs necromancer specifically needs. It's exceptionally strong in the right circumstances but also very limited in it's role and what it can do with a very specific niche. That's how every build should be.

> > > > > >

> > > > > > So still FB + 2 scourge every game. This patch won’t change a thing. Except we will see more eles. And how are buffs to guardians needed?? Are they even playing this game mode. Last nail in the coffin I’m afraid.

> > > > >

> > > > > Idk. I've played 100 plat 1-2 games and while scourges and reapers on both teams aren't uncommmon Firebrands on either team feel very uncommon. People don't queue on Firebrand, even top tier PvPers, because playing Firebrand or dedicated support in general just makes you so dependent on everyone else on your team actually performing their roles. At this point Firebrand feels like an Automated Tournament only build.

> > > >

> > > > Yes, you are right. What I meant was that the meta won’t change. Also Buffing already strong classes won’t help the balance of this game..

> > >

> > > No top tier spec was specifically buffed. Firebrand+Scourge will remain strong in ranked but that's about it.

> > >

> >

> > Except weaver which is arguably top tier for sidepoint 1v1s.

>

> People are definitely sleeping on condi weaver, but I wouldn't call it obvious top tier the way Firebrand+Scourge+Herald are for MATS, and Spellbreaker+Holo+Scrapper+Soulbeast+Herald are for ranked.

Well I also think (fire) weaver was already pretty strong atm so additional buffs, especially to burn, were really unnecessary and I'm kinda afraid of them now taking over as sidenoder tbh.

> @"Paradoxoglanis.1904" said:

> Revenant: This doesnt change anything important except maybe notoriety

> Theif: TRAPS?!?!?!?!?! WHO WANTED NEW TRAPS!?!?!??!?!?!

Thief: I wanted new traps, the preps are looking really interesting tbh, especially outside of sPvP as, but also they improve 1v1 potential of thief, which I'd extremely appreciate. We'll see how they turn out, maybe they are also complete garbage just like traps.

And Rev.. Are you kidding? Rev nerfs are huge. Notoriety got stack AND duration nerfed to almost a minimum, how much more do you want the trait to get crippled? So might uptime is probably reduced by about 30-40% or something. Especially since Rev has increased power buff from might this is a massive damage reduction to everything.

Shackling Wave with Impossible Odds was the biggest single burst of Rev and even this didn't oneshot anything other than a thief maybe and now it got a 20% and 19% damage reduction respectively, on top of the lack of might damage boost. And this doesn't change anything important? What would you then say is important for Rev?

I'd predict that Rev got straight up reduced to a +1 only class. Especially since unnerfed Holo, Mirage and Core Ranger are still around and probably more DH on the rise, it will be unplayble as a bruiser (1v1 or 1vX scenarios were already unfavorable for Rev anyway tho).

> @"jezebel.7054" said:

> Was it meant only for the extremely skilled?

> I want to believe it's not because we all bought the game and have access to all the shinies, if we're willing to put in the time. Right?

As a premise I'll just answer your original question specifically first. No. I don't think everybody should have access to everything, especially in a competitive environment like sPvP there should - in my opinion - be rewards that involve skill alone.

> @"jezebel.7054" said:

> > @"DoomNexus.5324" said:

> > Kinda mind-boggling how people always want the stuff that's meant to be superb immediately handed over to them.

> This is the opposite of what I'm asking for.

No. That's exactly what you are asking for. Like @"Crab Fear.1624" already made it clear on the radiant/hellfire example, it would just lower the value of effort some other people have sunk into the game and it's not even just content which has been around since release and everybody playing since release had it already 5 years ago.

Especially since there's already the ardent glorious armor as legendary armor for PvP, I don't really see the point in your request. The mistforged hero set was only just released in November 2018 and was specifically meant as a long time goal for players who really dedicate themselves to the game mode while not being able to play as good as you'd need to for the glorious hero's armor (which you ONLY get via those vouchers from mAT btw, so if anything you should complain about that). Why do you want to negate that not even a year after its release? That would defeat the whole purpose of its introduction in the first place and of those 3 distinguished sets in general. It is meant to be long term, that's literally the only requirement difference which sets it apart from ardent glorious.

> Besides, how and why someone plays (a game we all bought), is completely subjective. Insisting on your how and why they should play is irrelevant.

GW2 has a huge problem with match manipulation and especially when there's a new gizmo or title. I don't imply that *you* do it or even the majority, but there is a really non-neglectable part of the community who apparently does and this is not "completely subjective" it's reality. Probably not to the extent it gets hyped to on the forums but a problem nonetheless. And while it is indeed just an assumption but what would you wintrade for if not for a reward? It's not like you pay gold to others to win for the sake of a gifted win. I mean, that's just logical imo.

> Why would we want to stick around for more of that after Earning our shiny?

Indeed. And thanks for confirming my point.

That's exactly why we don't need better/more or easier rewards but rather a little bit of love from Anet to improve the game experience in sPvP itself. And since sPvP doesn't get a lot of attention from the devs anyway, every little bit of effort they make should contribute to improving the game mode as their main focus in my opinion.

I mean you asked for easier access for mistforged specifically I know, but I would argue against every reward-related suggestion by pointing out that the game mode itself needs to improve, at least when talking in the context of increasing player population by giving people reward-based incentive to play. And THEN we can talk about how we could motivate people to check out the game mode. Otherwise they wouldn't stick around, just like you stated yourself with this rhetorical question.

> However, I absolutely would continue pvp if the skill levels were better matched and I was playing against other silvers.

I got placed into gold 3 this season, followed by a dip into gold2 and was then playing my way (back) to ~plat1/2 and I also have a gold1 alt account for playing with silver/low gold friends so I know how gameplay feels in a pretty wide range of ratings at the moment (aka this season - I was in silver 2 as well a couple seasons ago but I won't count it since a lot has changed since then).

I never had the impression that my opponents were any better than low gold when I was playing on my alt and very rarely that there are massively overskilled players in the enemy team at this rating in general tbh (and if so, they were probably smurfs anyway, so the match making algorithm - despite its flaws - isn't to blame here I think). Also considering the mean rating is somewhere in gold 1, high silver and low gold should have the most balanced matches (match making wise) of all, as I would also assume based on my experience in the region of rating so far.

The real problem there, as far as I can tell, is the community. Probably more than half of the matches in which we didn't have a good start (aka lost the mid fight and couldn't immediately recover) there were one or two people instantly going afk, which results in a loss of course, which also drags down everybody else. And when I'm watching my friends in silver/low gold play or when I'm in discord with them, this is literally how half their games look like. People immediately going afk because 'iT's UnWinNaBlE". While this happens in plat too sometimes it's A) much rarer and B) most of the time ppl just complain a bit but still trying their best and more often than not, we can indeed make a comeback and win. I stopped taking screenshots of "extreme" comebacks at some point like from a 200:420 deficit, because it has become quite normal. You'd never be able to pull this off in silver tho, but not because the other team is so overpowered but because of lack of effort your own team mates are putting in at this point.

In my opinion that's where the toxicity really comes from and which makes it so frustrating to play sPvP. Because it's completely out of your hand if someone else decides to do nothing and can therefore negate every effort you've made, probably during the last few matches too since the rating you've just won with your last win is now gone again. So Swiss tournaments and maybe later on-demand ATs are probably a huge step forward because it opens up PvP to full-team matches again where you don't have to rely on randoms anymore.

On top of that there's also a very notable class imbalance too and since some classes are simply way easier to play than others while also being onpar if not even better, it's just additional fuel to the toxicity-flame. Maybe the next balance patch will finally improve that a bit.

> @"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

> There is no tutorial for new players on how to play Conquest. You think newbies would look up guides and resources for rotations (if they even help)? Think again. New players are put off by this game mode due to feeling lost, bored, and completely overwhelmed by enemies.

I agree, there should be some effort from Anet to better introduce newer players to the game mode, because - even if some players say it's a braindead button smashing clown fiesta - which it admittedly sometimes is - it requires a huge amount of map and game knowledge and mechanical skill.

So even if it's only linking to some selected introduction videos from Anet partners or maybe direct a couple of vids in collaboration with anet partners which get highlighted then, this would already be a huge step forward. Would be a win/win/win situation imo.. Anet could outsource the main part, partners would get some featuring from Anet (which they unfortunately never do unless it's Guildnews with some new random PvE bs nobody's interested in) and the players would get a bit of guidance.

But again, GW2 is just a very game knowledge demanding game. You can't simply say "ok so in this situation it's best to rotate from here to here" and that's it, since it depends on what class and maybe even which build you are playing, on your team comp and the enemy team comp and you have dozens of factors you have to include in your decision making. Like.. Are there enemy players on respawn, are there outnumbered fights on the map I can join, does it make sense to rotate there or are they already almost dead without making a real difference or would I only feed them additional 5 points without accomplishing something, how mobile is the enemy comp and can they outrotate us/can we outrotate them? It goes on and on and on.

So this would require a several hours long guide series to cover everything properly. Because if not covered properly it only results in stuff like "Anet said, always/never do beast on Niflhel" or "Anet said never play more than 2 nodes" or something.. It gives players legitimacy for complaining if you differ from the standard guide-way of doing things, even if it's more appropriate or in a certain situation.

> And not to mention the battle-able NPCs in HotM. With two elite specs for each class and none of the NPCs featuring said elite specs you can only imagine how impossible it seems for newbies to fare against elite spec players due to lack of training.

> Idea: create an instance in HotM (similar to the Raid Golem instance) where you can customize NPCs, their skills, their amulets, and save the result in the future. This allows for practice against these type of builds. If it's too technical then make premade builds for each elite spec that have AI which corresponds to each build appropriately.

I honestly had to think about what NPCs you are talking about. Are people really using them to train against a certain class? I mean, just play unranked or grab a couple friends or pugs and go to one of the many empty custom servers to practice. I occasionally do 1v1's in custom arenas and it really helps. Others do that pretty regularly even.

Also I think it's near impossible to really create artificial realistic player behaviour and even if, it wouldn't really be worth it since you always have access to fighting actual players so I don't really see the necessity. And again, if Anet did introduce such bots with a somewhat reasonable legitimacy, they would set a defined way to play a certain class, which is detrimental in my opinion. Elitism with meta builds is already annoying enough.

> This game has too many instant skills for new players, and is far too reactive. So... a strange idea but bear with me. Under 1400 rating in Ranked, and under a certain MMR in Unranked, every player receives a "slow" effect that slows down attack animations and cast times by 25%. This helps newer/struggling players identify attacks.

I'm also not a fan of this, just for the fact that it would be a huge change when you come from PvE or switch game modes and have to adjust for slower effects every time you enter PvP. Also if you get above 1400 rating it will be a huge shock to most players to suddenly play on increased (or more like normal) speed and THIS would be the real hassle I guess. Especially if you ping-pong between under and over 1400 you literally don't have any consistency whatsoever.

As harsh as it might sound but it's really just l2p.

I've been crawling around in gold 2 and 3 for ages but I've been putting a lot of effort into improving not only my playstyle but also making better decisions and acquiring more game and class knowledge, especially from the other classes. Like I've been playing almost every other spec at some point for several matches to get a feel for them, their kit and their playstyle so I can counter them better or know which fights I can try to take in the first place or from which I should just disengage straight away. Now I am at a ~plat 2 level.

So.. I would definitely support improving an introduction to the game mode (since it's virtually non-existence atm) but other than that, it's really just practice and putting effort in by yourself tbh.

> @"Zenix.6198" said:

> as @"bladezero.9470" already said, if the consensus already is, that it's just a grind and holds no prestige anyway....why not?

>

> Kinda mind-boggling, that people immediately take such negative position on this topic, when the gamemode needs new blood so desperately.

Kinda mind-boggling how people always want the stuff that's meant to be superb immediately handed over to them.

I am generally against overly considerable rewards in sPvP tbh. It only lures in people who casually grab it and leave until something new and shiny is on the horizon. We don't need more achievement hunters and wanna-be-skritts in sPvP. My guess would be that most of them contribute nothing to the actual sPvP scene other than salty team mates because they can't be bothered to play properly since rating and rank doesn't mean anything if you are only after the reward.

sPvP needs more incentive to play with friends and bring them into the game mode to have some fun, not for dat juicy new shiny they can display and is worth little to nothing because everybody has it already.

sPvP is a very competitive environment so if everybody can eventually get everything, nobody who's playing seriously really wants it for prestige, even if it's a real chore to get it.

It's actually mind-boggling how everyone always comes up with new, more and better rewards as a better incentive to play sPvP instead of suggesting to improve the game mode itself. I mean.. this is the 3rd thread within like 2 weeks suggesting easier/more rewards.

Like if the past didn't already show that this only leads to massive wintrading and match manipulation, making the whole season pointless until those wanna-be-skritts have gotten their loot and are chasing the next new shiny somewhere else. To the point where sindrener for example even suggested to completely get rid of rewards for losing a match and only keep win rewards.

> @"praqtos.9035" said:

> > @"Stand The Wall.6987" said:

> > fb has to be op since everything else is op.

> There is no support spec that come close to firebrand

> > @"Crab Fear.1624" said:

> > We have a game not designed for a trinity, yet one of the deities has been present since PoF release.

> Imagine what would happen without firebrand massive support against thing like scourge, even with firebrand people still have billion conditions.. Do you think firebrand is the issue when scourge put so much pressure to entire team that firebrand barely can hold against it but eventually run out of cd's?

Kindof. To include this comment:

> @"crepuscular.9047" said:

> ??? nope, the real problem is dev's lack of courage to nerf everything HARD, super HARD

Idk why Anet does this but all they do is buff (other than occasional nerf hammers, that absolutely destroy a certain build). Especially since HoT pretty much all they did was balance for PvE - aka Raids and fractals, where you only have one forkin massive boss, that soak up damage and most of the time dishes out like crazy - so they increased basically everything to the point where you don't know anymore if the absurd damage or the absurd possibilities to mitigate damage is worse (I mean.. the condition system got reworked so they can be stacked more and tick way harder against bosses.. gives you an idea I guess - which had terrible impact on any pvp content ofc... and even thief got a block!).

Especially self-granting boons, boon sharing and boon uptime got to a ridiculous point. My guess is, that Anet had to react to this a bit because ESL was still a thing back then, so while they were working on PoF, they designed Scourge to be the counter to all of this. Since they then apparently realized that scourge usually has a shitload of boons to corrupt and absurd amounts of area denial and mostly unavoidable AoE damage, and none of the classes can sustain this in a teamfight, they introduced Firebrand to counter that (I know they both came to the live servers at the same time but we don't know the development schedule for PoF so this would still be possible).

And since Firebrand *can* carry fights to the point where you basically can't win if you don't have one on your team as well, Anet constantly increased power output (because more conditions don't counter firebrand, since its purpose is to cleanse so you gotta kill it quick with direct damage).

It's an eternal spiral of counters to one specific thing, which affects EVERYTHING in a pretty bad way.

Admittedly not necessarily 100% the way it is/was (I'm exaggerating a bit) but I think the core stays the same. Anet tries to resolve problems by introducing new ones and even if the new ones are only slightly worse than the original one, it stacks up over time and here we are now.

Also.. PvE is PvP's enemy because you can't balance for both without seriously splitting skills (like they did in GW1 - which had it's own balance issues due to the sheer amount of possible builds due to the dual class system but that's another story.)

Change my mind.

> @"Zenix.6198" said:

> PS: Its actually funny tho. Like, it would be literally unacceptable in any other MMO to get hit for 50% of your max halth with a single hit.

> Bur frankly, in gw2, 5 digit crits are perfectly fine apparently.

Honestly that's the only reason to why I'm playing GW2 PvP (and the overall combat system). All other MMOs have ridiculous long time-to-kill to the point where it doesn't make any fun. Like did you ever play or watch FF14 PvP? Lame af, it takes aaaages to kill someone, especially with a healer.. Anybody thought Firebrand had op heal? lel.

Also in nearly every other MMO you have to rely on shitty RNG miss/dodge/block mechanics, whereas in GW2 we have at least full control over all of this (that is if the servers aren't laggy and you have a quarter second delay despite having 20 ping ofc), which takes more timing skill than those passive % effects.

Also, why are there a lot of ppl taking demolisher amulet over marauder, if it doesn't do anything? Almost every Reaper, Holo, Warrior and Ranger (meta) build is with Demolisher and there are also quite a few Revs taking it too.

are you really complaining about a 6k spike in 2k19? really?

It's not even hard to crit with 10k+ damage these days with almost every power dps build. Guess 6k is actually quite a reduction then.

> @"Safandula.8723" said:

> > @"DoomNexus.5324" said:

> > I mean you can semi-afk your way through WvW and only kill 1 guy or flip one camp every 10 minutes to reset the participation timer but then again.. it's reaaally time consuming.

>

> this time ull refresh pips, but u wont get exp

uh yes you are right, I was thinking about getting the normal legendary armor

I got to rank 100 after a bit less than 1600 games in total (although 200 of them were in custom arena, which gives a lot less EP - so probably worth around 1500 in total) with a 52% overall win rate. So with 1500 games with about 10 minutes as average match time + about 5min inbetween gives you 375h of PvP time to get to rank 100.

Considering this is the very last pvp rank that actually provides anything and you only need it to get the special version of the legendary gear, I think this is actually a bit too fast.

I mean you can get the legendary gear way earlier (this can be done within 3 pvp seasons because of the pvp league tickets), it's only the special shiny form you unlock with the rank so.. yea..

> @"Safandula.8723" said:

> if u think geting 100 rank on pvp for shiny armor is hard, u can instead get it from wvw :)

yea lel.. I actually wanted to make a full legendary set from WvW because I liked the skins the most for medium armor.. half way through the grind I decided to only make 4 parts and get the other 2 from sPvP (I'm mainly playing sPvP anyway and the last 2 skins weren't that important).

I mean you can semi-afk your way through WvW and only kill 1 guy or flip one camp every 10 minutes to reset the participation timer but then again.. it's reaaally time consuming.

> @"Vague Memory.2817" said:

> Answer: GW3.

While it is *an* answer, GW3 is almost never the *correct* answer tho. Only exceptions are questions like "which game should never be released" or "what would kill the Guild Wars franchise faster than the lack of balance and updates in GW2".

> @"Delweyn.1309" said:

> > @"DoomNexus.5324" said: since I don't queue in ranked at those times anymore I can comfortably sit in plat again.

>

> No need so many lines, just this means that you agree with the op's opinion : rating depend (more or less) from others.

>

> And I add my own personnal opinion (again) : it's completly absurd to keep a competitive mode, with individual ranks, made to work for full teamQ, with a kitten system of solo/duoQ.

Yea I completely agree with this. And I didn't argue against your opinion or op, I just questioned your challenge to sindrener because I don't really understand what this would be supposed to show? That queues are worse during off-hours than during peak times, so there are less people who can be matched against so the match maker has to increase rating deviation, so you also get a lot more plebs as team mates and/or better players as opponents? Everybody could predict that without a legendary player showcasing it.

I also don't really see the point in blaming someone for playing only at times where it's a bit more unlikely to get complete [insert negative term of choice] as team mates. It only makes sense to do that.

> @"Delweyn.1309" said:

> > @"bluri.2653" said:

> > I mean i stream most of my games anyone can q snipe me so idk LUL

>

> Let's stream us, Bluri, a full soloQ of 20-30 matches in a row, a sunday of holiday at 16h and starting from gold 1.

But why? I mean, what is this supposed to show?

I can almost only play on weekends since about half a year (full time job now) and even I have managed to climb from gold2 to plat2 as thief within 2 afternoons (friday and saturday). I could even show you screenshots of 10+ win streaks and such. Unfortunately I think I'm not good enough to get higher than plat2 but that's not the point.

Again, I don't really know what this challenge should prove or disprove.

Because if you already know that sunday or holiday at 4pm is kitten then don't queue in ranked at this time. Simple as that honestly.

I mean I know those times are pretty shit and I won't deny that obviously (that's why I deranked from plat2 to gold2 in the first place last season lol..) but since I don't queue in ranked at those times anymore I can comfortably sit in plat again. And I only play solo btw, veeeeery occasionally (like once in a season at the most) do I duo-Q.

I also don't wintrade or swap classes after match start or all those other funny conspiracy actions apparently everyone's doing to manipulate the match maker or exploit duo Q or something.

I also really don't see the hate against duo Q'ers. I mean.. if you can't beat it, join it. Rather than Q_Q about how unfair it is. Nothing is preventing anyone from lfg or posting on the forums (I mean there's a dedicated thread for lf pvp players here) to find a duo-Q partner or maybe even several. During ATs you also get to know a few good people, maybe you'll get to know each other and duo Q and stuff.

I mean I'd prefer to have a separate team-Q but we won't get it unless the population can sustain two queues (which won't happen) so we got to work with what we have/can get I guess.

100% absolutely more GW2.

I definitely would never play GW3 simply because I've already put too much time and money into GW2 so I'd rather stick with GW2 or quit MMOs than playing GW3.

I am 99,999% sure there won't be any groundbreaking new feature or technology either, that would set GW3 enough apart from GW2 that it is worth it.

> @"Azure The Heartless.3261" said:

> > @"praqtos.9035" said:

> > > @"Azure The Heartless.3261" said:

> > > > @"Bazooka.3590" said:

> > > > Rampage, Dagger Storm, Dagger Storm, Rampage, Rampage, Rampage, Dagger Storm, Rampage, Dagger Storm, Dagger Storm, Rampage, Dagger Storm, Dagger Storm, Dagger Storm

> > > > Sooo kitten booooooooring.

> > > > Nerf them to the ground.

> > >

> > > Rampage, yes. Warrior has enough sustain, mightgen and hard cc to take the hit to rampage.

> > >

> > > Dagger Storm, no. It is being used as a stopgap to keep thief from being completely useless in the current meta.

> > . Its not a card game, you shouldnt kill/win people because of LUCK/rng and get 2-3 daggerstorms in a row with heal/breakstun recharge.

> > That bs not does like 12k + damage but also contest the point.

> > Busted DS+improv must stay busted because ... thief would be useless otherwise? People logic...I have no words.

> > A small example: scepter 3 on mesmer made chrono somewhat competitive(only 1 team had it on mAT and no one else and they didnt make it to finals or semis anyway) and it was gutted.

> I'm also fine with it not contesting the point. You shouldnt be able to contest a point while autoreflecting and evading anyway.

Yes you should actually because it's only an evade (not a block or invul) and daggerstorm is by far not the only autoreflecting skill in the game.

If thief was invulnerable during the time I would say ofc remove the point contest. But listen:

1) Dagger Storm can be interrupted by quite a few CCs and will stop immediately

2) Thief still gets damage from retaliation and is susceptible to condi damage

3) Thief still gets affected by wells and other AoE fields

4) Dagger Storm only deals a decent amount of damage if you stand right next to the thief, if you are only at a slight distance you will only get like 1 or 2k damage.

It's not a godmode skill a lot of people are claiming it to be, it's just there. Maybe annoying but not really an issue in my opinion.

I can't see any benefit from easy mode sPvP as long as low ranked people only call for nerfs of a particular or multiple classes just because they can't be bothered looking into WHY they perform poorly into them. If you don't know the enemy's damage and/or defensive rotation and don't know their kit, you will never be able to judge how to react properly, yet some people keep claiming something is op. I also have a smurf account but only to play with some friends in silver/gold (I'm ~plat2). And I also occasionally watch some people in silver/gold (via twitch) and it's absolutely mind boggling how some of those players act.

Like you only need to fail the very first mid engage and there will probably at least one who instantly goes afk and claims this match isn't winnable with this team. Like.. wtf?

I have even turned matches where the other team hat a 450:250 lead and I've won countless matches where we failed the first mid engage, that's possible (admittedly also lost a lot where we won the first mid engage btw).

There's just sooo much Q_Q going on and everyone is blaming something else rather than looking into their own mistakes. Sometimes it's a particular player in the team, sometimes it's the entire team, sometimes it's the enemy class.. For the latter one it's actually funny that they flame about it being op but then continue to feed into them. All the time it's something elses fault if they can't win. That's bs.

Anet just has to punish those players so that they don't pull down their team mates because it's a waste of time for everyone (maybe not the other team bc of ez points but still). I once played p/p deadeye thief when I was still in gold and I had a win streak of idk.. 7 won games in a row or something.. in the next match we were also already leading with 350:200 points or something like that. Suddenly our mesmer noticed my build and started raging and claiming we could not possibly win with me as p/p thief in the team (despite the fact that we had a pretty ez time and were already in a comfortable lead). (s)he then just stood there in the base, kept flaming me and we eventually lost the game since almost everyone else also gave up and eventually everyone was afking in the base.

> @"bladezero.9470" said:

> There should be recommended meta build templates in Easy-mode and tutorials on rotations in the lobby. Finally, to draw players in, give Easy-mode some decent pve centric rewards that nobody in the top cares about, like the ascended shards and marks that can give legendary armor.

First of all - Anet suggesting meta builds is a rather bad idea imo - it only forces people to play the game in a certain way and if someone plays something different, they will get flamed (like me in my example above) but now it's not opinion-based but legitimated by the devs. Also everyone should already be able to use the internet and just do a quick 10 minutes research on metabattle, there are builds with rating and a guide for skills, combos, playstyle, etc already.

Second, why do people always need rewards in order to play a game? I've already discussed this in another thread (if you want I can find and link it). You can already make quite a bit of money by only playing sPvP and there are also already some (sPvP exclusive) rewards other than gold too. If this isn't enough already, wouldn't you think it's the balance or the game mode itself (like.. too little variety and such) or the toxicity from other players that keeps the population low?

Anet should rather give players an incentive to play by making it more team-focused like with on-demand ATs for example (since a separate team-Q is out of the room because apparently - according to anet - the population can't sustain 2 separate queues). They should give players a reason to form sPvP guilds and bring friends into the game mode rather than forcing it to be a coin flip single player mode. And they should make the game mode itself more enjoyable.

I mean, if you only care for the rewards, would you really tryhard a match or just go afk if it isn't an ez win and would you rather try to get it all by yourself which would probably take ages or would you rather just wintrade to get it a lot faster and then abandon the game mode again. Since GW2 already has a huge problem with wintrading and idle players, I think I know what my guess would be for a not-so-neglectable part of the playerbase.

I wish they would have done this since release, just like they did in the original guild wars 1. There you even have some skills that do completely different things instead of just tweaking the numbers. And on a sidenote, for a lot of players GW1 is still the best PvP in an MMO actually. I'm even on a discord server that's purely there for one pvp mode in gw1 because it would otherwise be dead unfortunately. Anyway.

For example:

"For Great Justice!":

* PvE version: "Shout. (20 seconds.) You gain 100% more adrenaline."

* PvP Version: "Shout. (8 seconds.) You gain 1 extra strike of adrenaline whenever you hit with an attack."

Or Aegis:

* PvE version: "Enchantment Spell. Enchants all party members within earshot (5...10...11 seconds). 50% chance to block."

* PvP version: "Enchantment Spell. (1...3...3 seconds). Target party member cannot be targeted by hostile spells. Attacks against this party member fail. Cannot self-target."

While this ofc is a bit more to remember, I think if you only play one main class for PvP for instance, it is fairly easy. Even for 2 or 3 it isn't too terrible, it's not like every skill does a completely different thing, but there are just a few key skills that would need such a treatment desperately.

I mean if this could have been done in guild wars 1 where you had literally well over 1000 skills, where EVERYONE had access to almost every other skill (by choosing and swapping a secondary class and accessing their skills as well), it really can't be that hard even for a casual GW2 player to remember like 10 skills having 2 versions.

And if you are someone like me who only plays sPvP (well I occasionally raid when some friends are running or roam around in WvW but ye.. 90% of my time is spent in sPvP) it would be very appreciated.

I also find your phrasing hilarious.

> @"DonArkanio.6419" said:

> A lot of PvP changes affect PvE meta also.

A lot of us PvP players like to think it's exactly the other way around.. Like Anet balances for raids and stuff and then tries to adjust the numbers a bit so it doesn't get too horrific for PvP.

I mostly agree with what you say but as a ~plat2 thief myself (not s/d meta tho btw) who also just made an alt account and did the same as you, I can't confirm your experiences. I've won almost every match so far and could carry most of the games pretty hard, like I had some matches where the enemy team constantly fed into me by losing 1v2 after 1v2 (like.. I killed 2 players and after recovering the next 2 came, killed them and the first 2 came again and so on) while my team was sitting comfortably at the mid point with an occasional player coming by.

The reason behind my alt account btw is because I have a friend who just recently started playing GW2 (purely for sPvP btw) and I wanted to play ranked together with him without ruining my rating.

That being said however, I kinda can confirm your experience when I was in ~gold2 and 3. People just give up too quickly and always blame others for it, even tho they are the ones making terrible decisions or not playing well. Apparently a lot of players simply expect to win a fight (maybe even outnumbered) by standing on the node and burning through their entire kit with a couple dodge roles sprinkled into the "rotation". Or they make very strange decisions about where they should engage.. Regrouping, searching for team mates to make an even or outnumbered with is rarely an option for your regular

Regarding your 1) point. It is incredibly hard to measure this I guess. I mean if they can't simply stand around with an occasional step they'd just feed into a teamfight on a point and the game can't distinguish feeding into a fight, intentionally throwing, and simply playing bad, so yea.. I'd even say it's impossible for an algorithm to recognize this kind of throw, because you obviously make mistakes or decide badly even when playing serious.

Regarding 2) I don't think elite specs should be banned at all. They aren't the problem, I think the brokenness of elite specs is a mere sideeffect of PvE. Anet intentionally designed the elite specs with the newly introduced raids in mind like (almost) everyone got more boons to share and more stuff to enhance the team. Scrapper, Druid, Tempest and Chrono got way more support, Dragonhunter and Reaper got more (ranged) power damage, warrior got better condition output and .. thief.. got something? idk, they probably didn't really know what to do with thief and made him something gimmicky. And of course Rev, which is a bunker/support/damage machine depending on what you want to play but more importantly (I guess) what your team needs.

They reworked conditions so they work better when fighting raid bosses and such but ignoring the fact that it would have terrible impact on PvP. Back then Anet also refused to split skills between game modes and I think this brings us to the real issue.. They reworked and designed everything to work for fighting against large bosses instead of actual players - small or large scale -, which is completely different.

Also they don't put out smaller adjustments more frequently but rather draw the nerf hammer every now and then and change 10 things at a time, often rendering one build completely useless and bringing others (that were pretty balanced before) also in a rather 'meh'-state, while buffing other, completely irrelevant stuff to compensate, which makes some other (previously pretty balanced) builds overperforming. This has been going on for quite a while now.

I also don't think the powercreep is THIS bad, I mean I honestly like the time to kill, it's just that stuff like ranger lb#4 into #2-burst or rampage is really stupid. Like you get CC'd and unless you have a stunbreak you are 100% guaranteed dead. Your entire kit could be completely fresh but if you don't have this one stunbreak, you're done without any counterplay. AoE CC's should also be like 1/4 seconds max so they only interrupt and no class should be able to spam interrupts as frequently as mesmer can atm for example.

> @"Fat Disgrace.4275" said:

> To be honest, don't you think mesmers have been picked on enough now?

No.

I've just recently played condi mirage myself a couple times and even for me, someone without any experience with mesmer in general, it was a real nobrainer. Of course it doesn't play very well into classes with lots of condi cleanse but that's to be expected. Mesmers did indeed get tuned down quite a bit (rightfully so) but clones enable them to exaggerate every trait and skill synergy. This should've been done a long time ago actually when Mirage was absolutely broken, instead of nerfing mirage itself and some chrono/core mirage builds (if there were any viable core builds at all) along with it.

I think clones should merely be there to trick opponents, as shatter fodder and maybe for utility like transfering conditions onto them. They even lower the effectiveness of other classes just by being there, like say Rev by providing additional targets so sword2 and sword3 damage gets split, or ranged classes without pierce by being essentially a meat shield. They shouldn't deal a lot of damage on their own imo, if at all. Like I said, it just exaggerates everything that synergizes well on mesmer, which makes it really hard to balance mesmer properly, as we've seen multiple times in the past.

> @"Tayga.3192" said:

> Looks like you are asking for nerfs to scepter, axe and staff, imo if they nerf conditions of clones they need to buff mesmer a lot to compensate. Otherwise it'll just be an annoying silver farmer and nothing more (as if it wasn't that already).

Yes, they'd need buffs then but it would be way easier to actually balance them properly. Not that I'd go as far as saying Anet would indeed make a good balance but at least they probably couldn't fck things up as hard as they usually do.

It heavily depends on the exact situation at this moment. But both, saying you should never go for beasts and saying you should ideally go for all beasts immediately, is wrong.

There are a lot of factors involved which would affect the decision making. You always have to be aware of every enemy's movement and if they are on respawn. You just need to make sure that you don't lose map control because of this (like nodes getting decapped, team mates dying in outnumbered fights, etc) and the probability of getting it stolen is low.. So always check the minimap, if there's a thief near mid and your team mates are half dead there, he will probably notice the beast moving on the minimap and rotate to you as fast as he can and steal it.

One scenario I'd go for beast:

I just +1'd a 1v1 on close and won and my mates won their teamfight in mid, so most of the enemy players are either dead or disengaged to far, so there is an extremely low chance to get it stolen. Also since it's non-sensical for everyone to push far just to lose map control elsewhere after the enemy players have respawned, I do the beast with the guy I just +1'd on close. Ez and safe points without overcommiting.

And regarding the capricorn thing.. this can also be used strategically.. If for example your team can sustain the bell fight for long enough vs the full enemy team, you can cap the entire map in the meantime. This happens quite often actually. Because the enemy team often can't spare someone reclaiming the map but also can't really stop the pressure because then they wouldn't have gained anything out of this.

There are 2 major things that really frustrate me with all this PvE vs PvP (unless I specifically say 'sPvP' I'll include WvW under PvP btw) debate that has been going on for ages.

1) It all depends on your point of view. Most PvE'ers would argue that GW2 is all and only about PvE. But whenever I open my friendlist probably >80% of them are either active in sPvP or WvW. A lot of players on my friendlist are also just not online anymore because they have no PvE content they are interested in atm. This isn't the case with those on my fl who play competitive. And if I am looking for any farm maps in lfg I rarely find any recently. So from my point of view PvE is dead and only really interesting if you get ez money/ap/skins from a new event or when a new raid wing comes out.

Just like some people just don't have any interest in playing PvP, I don't have any interest in playing stuff like fractals or living story for example because, while yielding a good amount of gold and stuff, it's just not enjoyable for me.

So from my point of view PvE is dead and should be abandoned in favor of actually improve sPvP/WvW.

2) Like others have pointed out already players don't really burn through PvP unlike story or fractals or something. If you've finished all missions the story ends and if you run the same fractal over and over again it gets boring. On the other hand while PvP also is pretty much the same every time, it also feels very different every time you play because of different matchups, different builds, different player skills, different decision making and stuff. So Anet would really only need to put out one proper balance patch and maybe a new map every now or a new game mode for some existing ones or something. A new game mode every 1 or 2 years would probably already be enough.

But Anet just doesn't put any effort into PvP or at the very least we don't get to know their progress so it seems like they are just delaying everything they've announced for no reason. So ppl keep complaining and keep requesting balance and stuff, it just never happens, that's the problem.. they would only need 1 medium big investment into it and it would run another couple of years probably (if they don't fuck up everything with the next PvE balance patch..)

So for my part, I'd like to see some major attention to sPvP from Anet (and WvW although I don't really play it but it's almost the same when it comes to lack of attention) only for once to bring it back to life.

Why not just post everything relevant here instead of forcing people into your discord server first? Probably some don't even have discord at all and most probably don't want to, especially when there's no information so far. Including rules, rewards and stuff.

I'd suspect this is also what @"Trevor Boyer.6524" meant with

> @"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:

> (...) post all of the info here (...)

So I'd suggest not involving your discord server for the announcement at all. Maybe offer it as a more in-depth communication channel only but all the relevant stuff should be in the same place as the announcement itself (aka here) in my opinion.

> @"Chichimec.9364" said:

> If PvP players are not happy with their current options suggest ways to improve what already exists or offer ideas for new options. Don't try to change the whole game into PvP though.

I already answered to the topic and I fully agree with you. I just think it's worth mentioning that - in my experience from various other games with both PvP and OWPvP - most of those who request open world pvp don't play the actual PvP mode but want to gank people without them being able to react in any form or shape (not implying OP wants to do this or it is guaranteed GW2 would be the same tho, but I think it's extremely likely the latter would also be the case here).

As another sidenote, which isn't actually too relevant after my statement above, I want to point out that there is already a ton of suggestions on how sPvP-players think Anet could improve sPvP, namely via improving the balance (would need some massive reworks tho), introducing new maps (well designed, not this tiny Djinn thing), new game modes, a seperate team and solo-only Q with separate ratings and an all time favorite: on-demand ATs. Only to name a few - in my opinion - reasonable ones.

Considering most of those suggestions have been around for years now and Anet is also working on the whole swiss tournaments since an eternity without any update or basically any form of transparency, I honestly wouldn't be too afraid of something like introducing open world pvp. It will simply never happen. Anet can't even be bothered to implement a workaround for a race changer (conflicting with personal story and stuff), with which they'd probably make quite a bit of money considering a lot of players are requesting this since release.

The Blazing Light, because when the crown pavilion got introduced the first time I was the first one in my guild who was able to beat Liadri and overall I only knew 1 other person at that time who killed her by the end of the event (admittedly I didn't know a whole lot of ppl other than my guild mates and a few randoms I've been playing a bit but I've talked to a lot of ppl at the arena and stuff too so.. still).

Unfortunately with all the power creep during the last few years Liadri lost the challenge (I really noticed a big difference with actually all arena champions across the board), so the title is a bit irrelevant now, but at least I know I was one of the first who got it, back when it was still hard :3

Also I think it sounds pretty cool as well.