Guild Wars 2

I’ve noticed lately that when a lot of random players find themselves in an event together fighting, as soon as a Warrior drops a banner someone will inevitably pluck it up immediately and proceed to run around with it and sometimes eventually, they will run clean out of range with it.

If you’re going to stick tight then so be it but do realize you are shelving the abilities inherent to the weapons you came to fight with (the banners too come with their own set of abilities that change your action bars). This probably isn’t a good thing DPS wise and you likely didn’t plan for it but whatever.

Above all though, DO NOT snatch that pole up and proceed directly out of range of the group. Some warrior just dropped that to buff the group and yeah… you just completely ruined that.

Food for thought. I know we’re all still learning, I know I am at least. Just thought I’d throw this tip out for anyone yet unaware of the Banners and their mechanics. I just recently learned about and observed this myself so thought I’d share.

That is all.

Thanks for sharing, I actually plucked up a banner as soon as I saw one, but when I saw that the abilities were crap, I put it back :)

An easy fix would be the make it so only the warrior who cast it can pick it up. That way after a fight the warrior can still pick it up and bring it over to the next one.

Or make it so only you or your party members may pick up your banners.

there was already a thread about this and it’s been established that most of the time picking up banners was due to spam looting, hopefully they rework it though

I love my banners as a warrior, attack, defense, or elite, but yeh it does get annoying when you drop a banner to fight something and someone comes along and takes it away. People will eventually realise what they are hopefully and leave them alone. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that everyone can pick it up but it’s definately annoying when you get people abusing it.

I thoroughly enjoy the idea of many people picking up banners in order to use them, however there are a few real issues with banners currently:

#As OP has stated, people grab them and run off, possibly without even noticing
#They get in the way of looting
#The cooldowns are independent per person, so the skills can be unfairly stacked
#Swapping weapons more readily drops the banner than skill 5 used to place it

Some fixes that would help banners IMO are as follows:
#Banners can only be taken a maximum of ‘x’ distance from the warrior who cast them
#Banners’ Environmental Weapon skills have a global cooldown to prevent exploitation of EW skills (i.e. stacking the hell out of swiftness)
#Skill 5 to place the banner should have a very short duration cast
…
and finally:
A separate key bind for the Loot All feature should be added so that people can loot without interacting to ANYTHING in the surrounding area. This includes banners, environmental objects, NPCs, etc. Personally I’m tired of having an NPC stand over the body I’m trying to loot such that I have to click on it because s/he won’t stop talking to me! lol

Ahaha

Everytime I’m in an event or near a warrior they always drop that kitten right in the middle of me trying to loot a mob I just killed. Then I end up getting stuck askitten honor guard with this flag thing. Most of the time I’m hitting my combos before I realized I pick it up and end up pressing 3 so I charge the hell away to the middle of nowhere. Lol

Edit: Hmm the filter turns profanity into The word kitten

When I have 6 mobs around me im trying to loot I always pick up the stupid banner. They should just make it so it cant be picked up at all.

Oh, so that’s why so many people are talking about felines on the forum! I was terribly confused and thought I’d missed some new GW slang for something vague but ubiquitous.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

When I have 6 mobs around me im trying to loot I always pick up the stupid banner. They should just make it so it cant be picked up at all.

I agree, this I think is the case with the majority of the people that pick up these banners. It’s hard to avoid sometimes and gets annoying when I’m just trying to pick something else up and I hit F and all I get is that dumb banner.

I agree that either only the warrior or members of his party should be able to pick up banners. I stopped using them for that reason. I put them where I want them and invariably someone else comes along, picks it up and carries it away. it’s annoying.

I’ve done it a few times while trying to loot. As many others have said it can be annoying that the loot and interact/pickup/talk button is all the same button since in close quarters you end up doing the wrong action pretty often.

Finally I understand the awful number of kittens around here. This is brilliant…

Corvax.1675:

Finally I understand the awful number of kittens around here. This is brilliant…

I agree, I absolutely love the filter on these forums. (sorry mods it’s off topic I know!)

I love kitten!

just came to play with kitten and fully agree with the OP. don’t touch my kitten, er I mean banners.

I actively seek out banners to ninja them from you all. Muahahaha.

Seriously though, I do find it sometimes people get confused between clicking a “Guild Banner” and a “Warrior Banner”. That’s my biggest beef though.

Seriously, I would spend gems to be able to separate “Loot” from “Interact”

I didn’t want to grab your %^&* banner. sigh

Every time I set my banner down near a group of people, I say to my friend “Someone’s gonna take thatkittenthing and run off with it,” and it happens as surely as night follows day. I don’t even exactly mind, but don’t pick it up in the middle of an event or something unless the fight is moving and you want to set it back down. Otherwise, you’re just reducing your usefulness in a fight and stealing my stuff.

who can really resist the shiney?

I pulled them up a couple times on accident trying to loot mobs spamming my action key.

BlueprintLFE.2358:

Ahaha
Edit: Hmm the filter turns profanity into The word kitten

Wow, I finally understand why people are constantly talking about Kittens, I thought GW2 literally had kitten summons. Or Kitten was some kind of thing, when I found out that Kitten was just a profanity filter I literally LoLed.

Haha LOLD at topic, people parading around with banners for kitten and gigs, love it.

Nottix.7864:

I pulled them up a couple times on accident trying to loot mobs spamming my action key.

This -always- happens to me. I never mean to pick up those darn banners, but for some reason they’re always placed right atop the pile of mobs I need to loot.

Syn.3459:

there was already a thread about this and it’s been established that most of the time picking up banners was due to spam looting, hopefully they rework it though

i’m guilty of that. i’ll be running around, smashing and looting. and then i’m like, "what? where’d this thing come from?

Yeah I’ve picked up a few of these. What took me the longest was trying to figure out how to put it back down… then the fight moved… so i picked it up and carried it to next part cause figured, why not heh, Still got a gold. must have done enough damge before i became banner carrier heh. Made sure i placed it 5 feet away from the bodies i needed to loot Just remember the 5th slot is to put it back down.

Sesuko.9362:

Or make it so only you or your party members may pick up your banners.

THIS. Also, the mortar needs to function like this as well.

I love my banner warrior, but it’s hard to stomach folks running off with your primary tool. I get that it’s not always a malicious act, but it’s always bothersome.

Also, since the “F” does everything it’d be nice to be able to place my banner without annoying people trying to loot.

I grabbed one once while I was looting after a big world event, I was so involved with what was going on around me (it was after combat) that I did not realize I had even grabbed it! Then some warrior comes running up to me yelling at me saying I stole it, and to give it back. LOL was prettykittenfunny

As the Skritt would say… “Gettheshiney!”

Yhea I stopped using banners cause they would get stolen all the time. Now only use them in Dungeons on ocation. Otherwise I stick with shouts.

Some get stolen by accident I understand that but most of the banners also have that nice run speed buff that people know about and thust take the banner and jet as soon as the fight is over. If you like using banners I suggest the banner 20% cool down trait in Defence so if it dose get taken at least you won’t have to take too long for it to come back.

Also another question the Elite Battle Standard says its suppose to Reviev Allies but it clearly dosn’t. Unless there is something I’m missing.

Yeah, generally I accidentally pick up the banner while spamming the ‘f’ key so I can loot. Sorry about that. I try to be careful, seriously.

IMO, nobody should be able to pick up my banner but me. Every time I place a banner it seems someone picks it up.

Personally I like the idea of just putting the hotkey on a seperate button from the ‘F’. Restricting it to only the Warrior or his group (I’m usually not grouped in these kinds of mass community dynamic event things for the PvE aspect of it) would present a problem for cases where the warrior drops more than one, as I sometimes do in these specific cases. Maybe just make it R-click only or something although they do seem a little tough to target when you actually intend to, heh.

This brings up another point though too. I think it was in Rift where you can check an option box and your character will not just auto-loot the 1 mob its nearest but all those surrounding as well. That would be somewhat helpful as well. Nobody running around spamming ‘F’ and it should cut down on anyone mistakenly grabbing a banner. That and the general convenience of looting the battlefield in one click.

As everyone gains experience with this and these situations I think awareness will solve most of this issue anyway.

Yesterday, I saw some NPCs drop banners which was a first for me. I couldn’t pick their banners up so I’d love that functionality to extend to player banners. More and more I’m witnessing people pick them up and completely leave the event or area. They do this quickly of course, because of the speed boost, leaving my warrior with a cooldown, no buff, and without the abilities I’d like to occasionally use while my banner is active (like the regen).

I really hope this gets updated like the ranger pets did. That was a welcome change and I’d love to see something change about banners.

Just to note. Upon further observation over several days and many fights I have noticed that there are some people out there who will snatch up your banner intentionally as soon as they can and take it with them just for the short time they can gain it’s benefits solely for themselves. It seems that once that thing hits the ground, group be kittened, they are gonna grab it to go do their own thing for just that brief period of time they get the buff. It’s childish, stupid and nearly pointless, but I’ve seen it enough now and actually been able to speak with a few culprits ( which is to say be on the receiving end of their “nanny nanny boo boo” style jr. high taunts, lol) to say that some players indeed do this intentionally for purely selfish reasons. So beware friends. Especially with say the 4 minute cool-down 10 point “Battle Standard”, there is this inanity to consider before dropping also.

Maybe someday as the bigger issues are resolved over time and patches this mild “exploit” (if it can be called that) will be looked at. I think a “re-call” type ability would be appropriate where we can just snatch it back to our location without interrupting the duration or cool-down would be cool as a solution.

Anyway, yeah seriously, some idiots are actually doing this, /head in hands. I weep for the future generation of gamers. We use to PK other players, a game mechanic that has been all but abolished in the name of fairness (by “fairness” I actually mean care-bearness). It may have been a pain but at least it had the possibility of leading to some good large scale battles as people called in back up and proceeded to measure e-kittens. And it did require some skill to pull off, not just a selfish & childish mean streak. What is the world of good old fashioned PvP turning into these days!!! I’m concerned ;P…

I picked up one yesterday in a dragon fight! I was pressing F as I was trying to resurrect a downed player :P Dropped it immediately tho.

Op, I concur 110%.

I appreciate the button to pick up the banner is the same as the one to loot a corpse, but seriously, 95% of people that pick it up by mistake just run off with it rather than putting it back….

Seriously, that skill takes time to recharge, and the people I dropped it to support/buff/etc are missing out while you run away on your stupid jolly with the shiny thing.

The option to recall (or even cancel it if you’re getting trolled a persistent flag thief) would be great, even better if doing so reduced your skill timer a little so that you can use it again. One person irritated me to the point where I actually found myself wishing it gave the carrier a persistant, and particularly virulent debuff.

Sigh

I did pick few times banners putted by someone else but each time it was because I was hitting F to loot between waves. Probably many players did like me. And I must I admit that when I already pick it up then I red what skills there was…but I putted it back where I found it.

Maybe it would be better if they make different color on this “splash” with hint for things like that? Right now there are three colors used: green, blue and brown/gold. Make it red and I would read it.

I love dropping banners and playing “Spot the Idiot”.
It causes me and my mate no end of laughs over mumble as we watch said hapless idiot run off in to the distance trying to figure out how to drop the darned thing.

I also had immense fun last night buying an Ettin tonic from a heart quest reward vendor who had wanted me to kill ettins. I then proceeded to run at players still doing the quest and was immensely amused at how freaked out they were by the untargettable ettin running right at them. ANet must have done this on purpose

I’ve done it twice now by accident, but on the second time I twigged what it must be (I didn’t know about banners, don’t have a warrior that high) and now I’m aware of it I won’t do it again (unless the group is moving along and the warrior’s forgotten about it, I guess?)