GW2: Update Notes Thread

[Shiyo]

Too bad good players don't need to use that.

Also, Ranger is great, you probably just don't play it well (like 99.9% of Rangers in GW2). Can pretty much face tank everything with a GS and provide Healing Spring for your Hammer Warriors/Guardians to splash everywhere.

There is no situation that requires you to ever "stealth cheese" anything besides the rich orich node in lost shores, correct. Most rangers also completely ignore all support aspects of the class, even though a 30-50% uptime water field + condition removal + AOE regen is insane.

[Prothescar]

Also, Ranger is great, you probably just don't play it well (like 99.9% of Rangers in GW2). Can pretty much face tank everything with a GS and provide Healing Spring for your Hammer Warriors/Guardians to splash everywhere.

It doesn't fit the idea of a Ranger is my problem with it. Traps and Healing Spring should never leave your bar obviously, if the Ranger doesn't know that then they're probably too stupid to be typing an LFG request or accept a party invite to begin with, however having to use a greatsword/sword and completely ignore microing the pets is annoying.

[Arcana]

THF does less damage than mesmer, has 400x less survivability, and MUCH MUCH worse AOE. All the damage mesmer does is AOE, thf's is all single target, and THF can't melee 75% of the things mesmer can. THF is not a good class at all in dungeons, it's the worst possible class you can bring.

A THF is required to use shortbow on far too many things, greatly limiting it's damage to probably less than 75% of the classes in the game, the only time it does good damage is using d/d and meleeing, but since it can't m elee most things..it can't really do damage. It'a AOE is also weak, since daggers are single target only. Every mesmer attack is AOE, autoattack, shatter, blurred frenzy, etc. Mesmer also has GREAT single target ranged damage, and good ranged AOE unlike THF. A THF brings only damage, no support, on revives, no regens, no heals, nothing, and does subpar damage compared to other classes because of how their survivability is.

You're aware that i'm talking in a single target time warp situation right?, cause there's no boss fights in this game that are multi target legendary. The bronze/silver vet adds are easily dealt with by warrior/mes/ele in my set up. One of our theives is D/D & Shortbow the other is D/D & P/P and the only reason we run dual thieves is because we don't require the utilities of any other class 90% of the time. Any boon the mesmer receives is shared to ALL 5 members of the group, with extended boon duration no less.

Alot of classes end up using ranged far more often than i would like, it's just unfortunate that to be able to do AoE thieves need to be sword specced and do less burst damage or use a short bow. The real kicker is that to be able to do any of that huge burst damage you need to wear glass cannon gear, which most players suck at using. Unfortunately how the thief class has been designed almost all of its utilities are based around stealth & poisons which are great for thieves but leave them lacking in real party wide utility. The strength of thief is that with short bow it has those blast finishers for aoe heal/might/retaliation which as i mentioned with my set up, allows everyone to deal more damage.

[Shiyo]

The real kicker is that to be able to do any of that huge burst damage you need to wear glass cannon gear, which most players suck at using. U

No one should EVER be using glass cannon gear, it's horrible for every spec and every class in PVE. Nothing is a DPS race, everything is about surviving. You're a liability to your team by using full glass cannon gear.

[Celeras]

Sure was nice while it lasted.

[Churchill]

What was?

[The Blackrose]

Sure was nice while it lasted.

You sure? Because we can send you on the same exact trip, if you keep this shit up. Give you some more peace and quiet time.

[Celeras]

Sorry, I'll contribute to the discussion rather than show general disgust. Here are the things Shiyo managed to say in less than 12 hours since being back:

-Glass cannon builds are universally terrible in every situation because nothing is about damage and everything is about surviving.
However, Mesmers are the best class in the game to bring to anything because they give a double damage bubble for 10 seconds.

-Thieves bring nothing to any group and AoE stealth is never situationally useful.

Here's why it is retarded:

-Everything is fatal at level 50+. You get hit by anything with Agony, you die. Therefore, every single boss fight boils down to "kill before everyone messes up", and survivability is meaningless. Damage is supreme, and glass cannons are superior. The Mesmer Contradiction requires no explanation, and Time Warp is in fact valuable.. though not always necessary since Mesmer damage is so much lower on its own (10s of Time Warp is not enough compensation.)

-Dredge bomb runs/frost gun on the wall both have legitimate uses for AoE stealth. Marginal use for situations like the central bonfire when other methods are unavailable. Also people die, and free res's are good. Not to mention that AoE blinds are invaluable at Fire shaman boss adds, which is another area Thf shines.

please dont ban me ilu.

[Rhyis.]

Ya'll talk like PvE matters at all.

[ronin sparthos]

Ya'll talk like PvE matters at all.

Darkhaven laughs at WvW and its relevance. Q.Q

[Rhyis.]

What can I tell ya. Join communities, not servers.

[Churchill]

I'll take a break from 7-manning a 40-80 man SBI zerg at Panglos and making them waste resources and time on our small group to tell you why you're wrong.

-Everything is fatal at level 50+. You get hit by anything with Agony, you die. Therefore, every single boss fight boils down to "kill before everyone messes up", and survivability is meaningless. Damage is supreme, and glass cannons are superior. The Mesmer Contradiction requires no explanation, and Time Warp is in fact valuable.. though not always necessary since Mesmer damage is so much lower on its own (10s of Time Warp is not enough compensation.)

Who cares? You're not pushing the limits of your skill by revive orbing constantly or finding a glitch spot on maw to avoid transition agony. There's a point where it's skill and a point where you're being silly. For all other parts of the game, Glass Cannon builds are retarded. One instance of PVE where you rely on item shop crap and pure glass builds to push through doesn't make Shiyo wrong, it makes you retarded.

I'll also point out the lolness of "kill it before everyone messes up". There's an alternative to that and it seems rather obvious to me.

-Dredge bomb runs/frost gun on the wall both have legitimate uses for AoE stealth. Marginal use for situations like the central bonfire when other methods are unavailable. Also people die, and free res's are good. Not to mention that AoE blinds are invaluable at Fire shaman boss adds, which is another area Thf shines.

But not necessary, and unless you reset your fractal until you get one where invisibility is actually useful (assuming you get the correct path within), Thief sucks compared to guardians, warriors, mesmers and rangers. You can just spend a little longer and farm more money by killing dredge, big deal, shards ahoy.

Been playing for 3 weeks and even I know this shit.

[Shiyo]

Mesmer damage is so much lower on its own

This is simply wrong, you must be playing with badly specced or bad mesmers. Sword/focus does insane AOE damage to everything, and great single target, great sword is incredible single target ranged damage when you need a breather room to heal or feel like being lazy. The real benefit mesmer has is the fact it has so many invul abilities(blurred frenzy and the invul shatter) making it able to weave in/out of certain boss fights that a THF would simple be COMPLETELY unable to melee, and gives it a gigantic advantage over other melee builds by being able to go invul to avoid certain mobs attacks instead of having to dodge. Dodging is a huge DPS loss, and being able to keep DPSing through a mobs easily avoidable AOE ups your DPS a lot.

Stealth cheesing is never required, it's simple a crutch strat, equal to pug strats that skip the AC pull in boss(the only thing in AC requiring any type of paying attention at all), and skipping all trash, or other stupid crap PUG's consistently do to make things easier because they lack actual skill. If things are so hard that glass cannons builds ARE the only way to go, then it's completely imbalanced and stupid, and should not exist because glass cannon builds are a liability and terrible in literally every other single part of the game.

Agony is also a horrible mechanic, and I doubt anything above 40+ is actually balanced at all, that's one minor instance in the entire game that 0.1% of the population do that I doubt anet spent any time trying to balance. Overall, mesmer is an incredible PVE class, itimewarp is OP, and their damage is the second best in the game when played at full potential. Mesmer is probably one of the hardest, if not the hardest class to play in the game, so I can see why people think it's not that amazing.

[Celeras]

My apologies. Somewhere along the line of your "don't do this, don't do that" I assumed we were talking about min/maxing. Had I known that Agony was a horrible mechanic and that the only difficult levels of progression didn't matter, I wouldn't have bothered. Though for the life of me I can't exactly pinpoint the moment where "useful to have" became irrelevant unless it was "required to complete", and why "a simple strat to make things easier" suddenly became a bad thing.

And I can't exactly argue the DPS of a Mesmer in a game that lacks parsers. Having played both as one and with many, it's obvious to me they have low sustained damage. Feel free to make a boss rotation video showing otherwise. I'm sure we're all interested to see how it can be competitive enough with this to make Time Warp (which is a 19% damage increase for the entire party (500%*10s, 100%*200s) if the encounter lasts it's full recharge) enough to make your magic scenario plausible.

You have a mesmer, remove that mesmer and invite another warrior and watch your damage go waaay down.

[Kuishen]

Pointless argument is pointless because you can do anything in PvE and get away with it. Game isn't hard, and unless you are incredibly bad at playing it, nobody is going to give a fuck what gear you're wearing or what class you are (at least they shouldn't, as that is the entire philosophy this game was built around). They need to balance shit, but that's nothing new.

I agree Agony is a stupid mechanic. It sounded fun/great at first but poor implementation. I also would go so far as to agree that berserkers is a bad idea at the higher levels of Fractals (30+), just because how the mobs are scaled and how many there are that with Agony it becomes unmanageable.

But guess what? You can carry around multiple sets of armor (and you should), only takes a second to switch between sets before a fight.

Like Rhyis said (although maybe not for this reason), PvE doesn't matter, it is a complete joke and unless you're trying to make a build that is completely contrary to the stats on your armor (wearing cleric's gear while having no healing/support abilities or traits) then you're gonna be just fine.

[Kuya]

I think i would keep the GW2 section simply for these arguments. Ahh. Reminds me of the old arguments we used to have in FFXI.

[Churchill]

I like Agony and I hope they make 20+ resist required for all future endgame content.

[Arcana]

I think i would keep the GW2 section simply for these arguments. Ahh. Reminds me of the old arguments we used to have in FFXI.

Yeah but the problem is these mods coming in here thinking its all just bitching because they don't play the game. Free Shiyo etc!

[Kiarax]

I like Agony and I hope they make 20+ resist required for all future endgame content.

Should give players Agony attacks to use in WvW imo. Get players like Rhyis to experience the rest of the game. :D

[Rhyis.]

MY GAME IS SUPERIOR TO YOUR GAME