Your New PvP Experiences!

I've seen a lot of posts in other threads that aren't really on topic with the original thread. I want to start one that everyone can read/post to on one topic as to gain insight into your experiences.

Let us discuss your observations about:

1. Do you find it more enjoyable to participate in the various PvP matches?
2. How have the new changes affected your strategy?
3. Do you think these changes will have a positive or a negative impact on the PvP community in general?
4. In your opinion, were these changes sufficient to satisfy most of your concerns?
5. Were there concerns not addressed, that you feel should have been?
6. What would you have done differently, if you were in charge of skill development at A.Net?

THIS DISCUSSION THREAD IS FOR PVP ONLY.
DO NOT FLAME ON THIS THREAD!

I am anxious to see your feedback. Thanks!

1. It was MUCH more fun without Ranger teams spamming NR & Stuff. Was great to use enchantments once in a while

2. Greatest change in stratagy is now i don't have to work around a 10 second 'all enchantment removal' skill.

3. For some people positive, others negative. Some people liked Spirit Spamming. Unlike me, more strategy's will come to GW PvP. Which is great IMO.

4. They fixed nearly everything, i had a 55/105 monk to get a 15k armor set. After i got it (Just now actually) i don't need the 55/105 skill set anymore.
Also, NR is gone (Yay?)

5. I don't think A-net forgot anything. And i hope they continiue like this.

6. Nothing, i'm glad i'm not a skill balancer over there

Much better all around, although with Tomb's difficulty the faction reward should be even higher to lure people to try, or most people will just stick to Arena.

problem with tombs is that there is no random

u can't just do a couple of rounds of tombs because it takes ages to find a decent group

No offense, but that's really off topic. Would you care to add something to the thread that is on-topic please, or delete your post?

I find that there are alot more skilled players in the random areanas now. I've had so many fun little skirmishes since the new patch.

And now everyone isn't a W/mo or air spiker!

I'm using this weekend's PvPX event to take my first dip into PvP. (I've been mainly PvE'ing up 'til this point to try and unlock as much stuff as possible.) Sure, I'm only doing random arenas at this point, but at least I'm getting a taste of things.

Can somebody recap all of the PvP options? I know of the 4v4 random arena at Lion's, Tombs, and Guild vs. Guild. Is that it?

Team areans at Droknar's Forge.

Tried out PvP today in the random arenas (like everyone else, it seems). First I took my mesmer, and found out that mesmers have zero defence against warriors. I could kill casters without problem, but the first warrior which happened by would kill me in three seconds flat. In random there's rarely any monks to help ut either, but plenty of warriors, so that got old real fast.
Then I took my W/Mo, and racked up 6000 faction point. I don't know if that's good for one day of random arena, but I'm quite happy. Best winning streak was 7 matches in a row.

I don't think we'll start to see the full effect of these changes until the top guilds stop running gank squads and start running serious builds in GvG / Tombs again.

I think the change to NR fundamentally changes the way you look at different skills and builds. Enchantments and Hexes are playable again and we're going to start seeing the effects of that in the near future. I think in general we're going to see a net positive effect, though it might take a while for things to shake out.

The only thing that this update didn't address is Smiting. ElMo Smiters are stronger than ever with the nerfing of Nature's Renewal, so expect to see even more of them than you did before.

What would I have done differently? 2 second recharge on Draw and Boon, 60 second recharge and damage nerf on Zealot's Fire, remove the 'per enchantment' clause on Ether Renewal, and buff up a ton of skills that badly need help.

Peace,
-CxE

Yes..The El/Mo smiting build may(A high Chance) of coming out on top as one of the more succesful builds.

Though only time will tell until someone may find a better build altogther.

As for the changes..Everythings gone good so far..I too would have nerfed the El/Mo smiters a little more, as Ensign said.

1v1 burial mounds!
1v1 scarred earth!

what can be better?

Air spikers didnt really take a big hit here. Chain was only lowered by 15 points. I think air spiking got stronger with this update. Spirit Spamming Ranger groups were the biggest threat to air spikers. They have gone now.

today i unlocked a perfect sundering string and a perfect vamp string. all in 2 hours. i really enjoyed this experience because it felt as if i was having fun, not just grinding for hours for that specific upgrade

i also noticed that most of the monks in comp arenas are now Mo/W that just run around, trying to smite you. overall, i didn't really notice much damage coming out of them....

1. Sure. You know you can either defeat anyone or just be defeated by better team. No more spirit spamming and blocking.

2. A little bit yes. But I have to admit that the changes are right and some of our skills deserved to be reduced.

3. Definitely positive. See 1.

4. Yes. I am enjoyng the PvP very much now.

5. No. I am glad Anet will continue in balancing skills.

6. Balancing the amount of skills that is in Guild Wars must be very hard work. Therefore I bow to developers and I don´t want to be in their place

Tombs => SMITE SMITE SMITE SMITE THEM ALL! Thats what Anet made.

I don´t think so. Every smitting team can be defeated now when teams don´t afraid to take necros and mesmers (pre-nerfed NR made them almost useless).

I just have to chime in and say I -love- the increase in Faction points. It's my opinion that, yes, there should be a sense of accomplishment in unlocking skills, so I'm not a fan of the UAS idea that's sometimes kicked around on here. But with that said, the game is really at its best when all the skills are unlocked.
When I bought this game, I was under the impression that it was a game with minimum grind. That I would be able to create a max-level character and jump in right away and be a real competitor in PvP right from the get-go. The way things were, this is simply not true.
The pre-made builds suck pretty hard, making it utterly impossible to do any serious PvP without going through the roleplaying portion of the game at least once. Faction points were added later, but seemed like a condescending perk more than an actual fix. A flawless victory in 4v4 would earn you a whopping 20 or so Faction points. Whoop-de-frickin'-doo. Not only that, but the Priests of Balthazar were placed in areas not accessible to PvP-only characters. To unlock all the skills with a PvP only character, you had to not only deal with a trickling Faction-gain rate, but also have a Roleplaying character that had every major on town on the map all the way up to Droknar's Forge. Instead of being low-grind or zero-grind, unlocking skills was a huge grind process.
With the recent changes to PvP, you gain Faction at a faster, more effecient, more rewarding rate. You feel as if you're "progressing" as fast in PvP as you do in PvE. I really, really, hope Faction gain stays the way it is at the end of this event. Even if it doesn't, I hope it still remains significantly higher than it was in the past. The way Faction gain is now, PvP is fun, exciting, and rewarding, and the game is finally delivering what it promised.
Afterthought: also, the changes to Consume Corpse were greatly needed. Hurrah for more Energy! Hurrah for beefing up Necros! Hurrah for cannabalism!

Ever heard of a healing ball? Seed may have been nerfed a little, but lifebonds are back.

Charles, I'm with ya on the Ether Renewal change, but don't you think it would just be better to buff Shielding Hands to stop the ZF (and other rapid dmg) spikes? A good Shielding Hand change (to make it more like PSpirit perhaps) should fix most of the problems I'm experiencing as a monk.

Enchant removal would need a buff, but I think we already agree that it does.

Quoted for truth

the only losses i got today in GvG were complete gank squads went agains an ele/warrior group without healers and mopped em and a few that didnt suceed on thier rushes left after dieing


ran into a group of these using draw conditions should have brought a fragility mesmer and a bunch of conditions to kill their target
i would love those changes but maybe only a 30 sec or so change on zealots 60 seconds is a long time for a zealot smiter to be out of attacks

Yeah the uptime versus downtime needs to change for zealots in addition to the ways to abuse it. But to be honest the renewal one is a little off. A wider stroke of the brush, which would also help enchantment removal, would be to limit the total number of enchantments on a target in the 1-3 range.

Oh definitely. I can use my Mesmer with exciting and interesting builds. I've used a Water elementalist to destroy people. It's been, all-around, great fun so far. Looking forward to later today when I hear my Guild just *might* have enough people to GvG...

They've dramatically improved my options. I can use *strategy* now rather than desparately search through my skill lists for anything that isn't an enchantment or hex. It's also made me be more aware of enchantment and hex defense/removal. I almost always run Drain Enchant and Inspired Enchant now.

Postive. Very very positive. After the initial week of complaining, anyway.

My primary PvP concerns have been answered, but there are still a great number of skills that are IMHO too weak to consider using...ever...and enchantment/hex removal needs work.

I'll revisit this question in particular after the weekend is over.

Thanks for the great thread. Lets hope it sticks on topic.
cmb

Yes, since the skill balance changes have been made, my W/N, with a purposed build, has become a real asset in PvP.

Subtle, but important build changes. What's turned out to work best for me now includes Feast of Corruption and Rend Enchantments.

Positive, no doubt. There will be a vocal minority of people who can't stand it that their build got nerfed, but it had to happen, and there are tons of other very effective combinations to use.

Most of them, yes. There are still some uber-builds out there that need to be identified and tamed a bit, but the field has been leveled quite a bit.

One thing that simply eludes me is why faction can't be spent on buffing your PvE characters for PvP. I mean, you can use your hard-fought PvE characters, skills, weapons, armor, items in PvP, but you can't spend faction on that PvE character.

Hard to say. You need some low-level skills in the early part of the game, thinks you wouldn't otherwise use. I think some of the Elites in all of the classes are weak, and hardly worth using. I'm not so sure I wouldn't have allowed two elites to be used at any given time, one for your primary profession and one for your secondary. Only playtesting like a madman would flesh out whether or not that would work.