Guild Wars 2

The Phoenix Effect [RISE] is recruiting a Warrior player for our static raid roster. Our core raid times are:

Friday 9:30 PM – 12:30 AM EST
Saturday 9:30 PM – 12:30 AM EST
Sunday 7:30 PM – 10:30 PM EST

We push for 3 full clears each week and intentionally keep our raiding roster small to build better teamwork and stronger relationships among our raiders. We expect our raiders to be interested in raiding for fun/community/challenge even after they have their full clear for the week. If you are simply looking for a guild to shard cap/full clear with on the weekends please do not apply.

Additionally, while we are primarily recruiting a Warrior player for our raiding roster, we aren’t particularly interested in applicants who are only interested in raiding. We prefer applicants to also be interested in running daily Fractals, Nightmare CM, hanging out in Teamspeak, occasionally playing Steam games with our other members during content droughts etc.

An ideal applicant will be able to make our Sunday raid AND either Friday OR Saturday with 90% attendance over an average month. (Special consideration will be given to applicants who can potentially make any of our raid days with a week’s notice).

Requirements

Listed are our minimum requirements for membership. If you do not meet all of these requirements, please do not apply.

-You must intend to make [RISE] your primary guild.
-You must be at least 18 years of age
-You must own the Heart of Thorns Expansion
-You must have Teamspeak 3 installed
-You must have at least one character in full ascended gear with 150 AR and a build optimized for endgame group content (you can use the plus 15 potion to hit 150 AR).
-You must have a personal Fractal Level of 100.
-You must have Ley-Line Gliding and all Raid Masteries unlocked.
-You must have kill experience on at least 3 out of the 4 final raid bosses (Sabetha, Matthias, Xera, Deimos).
-You must have a positive attitude and excellent teamwork skills.

Application

To learn more about our application process and our community please visit our website at http://thephoenixeffect.enjin.com/. If you have any questions please feel free to contact any of our Officers or Leaders in-game. Contact information can be found on our website.

We are still looking for players interested in raiding on Monday and/or Friday night. Even if you have minimal raid experience, please don’t be discouraged from applying. We have members in our current raid roster who have gotten 13/13 of their first boss kills with [RISE].

If you are dedicated, an all-around team player, and pleasant to be around, you can succeed here.

We are adding another raid day on Monday night from 9:00 PM EST – 11:00 PM EST and are looking for some great people to fill out our Monday night raids and join us on Friday night as well if they are available.

The Phoenix Effect [RISE] – NA PvE Guild

Website: http://thephoenixeffect.enjin.com/risehome

ABOUT US

The Phoenix Effect [RISE] was formed in late March of 2015 by players from four different guilds who all shared similar values. Our guild has grown and evolved over time, but our mission has always remained the same: to create and maintain a community where our members build friendships that transcend the game – friendships that will remain long after our time in Guild Wars 2 has ended.

We are primarily a PvE guild with a focus on Fractals of the Mists and Raids as endgame group content. While many of our members participate in other game modes, we generally do not schedule PvP or WvW content as guild activities. During endgame content we strive to develop the best possible gameplay in all of our members. Experience is less of a concern for us compared a member’s willingness to learn, improve, and do what is best for the group. We provide an environment where mistakes can happen during the learning process because we are in the company of friends.

We strive to create a welcoming environment for people from all walks of life. It is our hope that each member’s ability to succeed in [RISE] is determined exclusively by their personality, attitude, and character. To ensure that this is the case, we require that all members observe policies concerning language and member conduct so that no member ever feels unwelcome here on account of their race, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, or anything else that may cause them to be a target of discrimination elsewhere.

WHAT WE OFFER

-Daily T4 Fractal runs and Nightmare Challenge Mote
-Weekly Guild Missions on Saturday at 8:00 PM EST
-Weekly raids on Monday Nights 9:00 PM – 11:00 PM EST and Friday/Saturday from 10:00 PM – Midnight EST
-A fully upgraded Guild Hall
-An active and friendly Teamspeak community
-A close knit community that feels more like a giant friend group than a standard guild

REQUIREMENTS

Before applying, please check to make sure you meet all of the requirements listed below.

18 years of age – We are an adult community and we do not accept players under the age of 18.

Heart of Thorns – You must own the Heart of Thorns expansion. Almost all of our daily/weekly group content requires the expansion.

You are looking to make [RISE] your primary guild – We are an extremely close community and we expect that all applicants applying to the guild intend to make us their primary Guild Wars 2 community. We understand that many players have other guilds they may rep or play with on the side, but we don’t want to be the “side guild.”

Interest in Fractal and/or Raid content – Our guild runs nightly Fractals, weekly Raids, and the occasional Dungeon Tour. We are looking for players interested in playing and mastering this content with the guild to fill our nightly and weekly groups.
Applicants who are interested in Fractals should have at least one character with 150 AR (you can use the +15 potion) before applying. Likewise, applicants interested in Raids should have at least one raid-ready character before applying.

Positive Attitude and Excellent Teamwork Skills – In our endgame group content we use strategies developed for organized groups. We are willing to teach these strategies to anyone willing to put in the time to learn. While we strive for smooth and efficient runs, sometimes wipes will happen. We expect all of our members to handle wipes with grace and that the players who are underperforming take this to heart and work on improving their own play to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

Teamspeak –We are looking for members who will regularly and enthusiastically use voice chat to socialize and play content with our other members. We can and have accommodated players who cannot speak during content due to living conditions or other restraints, but if you don’t enjoy regularly hanging out on Teamspeak this is not the community for you.

APPLICATION

If you want to learn more about our community or wish to apply to the guild, please visit our website at…

http://thephoenixeffect.enjin.com/risehome

All relevant information can be found there.

If you have any questions, please contact any of our Leaders or Officers. Contact information can be found under the “About Us” section of our website.

Thank you for the swift response. Looking forward to the fix =)

Prior to this patch, when you spun your camera around with your mouse it happened in a fluid motion. Now, if you enable camera teleportation spinning your camera around results in you seeing a slideshow of Tyria in about 3 frames per second. I hope this is a bug and not intended because I don’t like the new camera movement on teleport but I don’t want to play in 3fps every time I move my camera either.

Keeping the function disabled keeps the old camera spinning frame rate and motion. Enabling it makes moving your camera jumpy and slideshow-like.

Just happened to me 7 times in a row. Can confirm this is still happening. I wasn’t the one that talked to the NPC. Whole map is crashing if anyone does it. Had a friend port in as well and they got dc’d with me each time.

Edit: Every time I dc’d I got ported to Charrgate Haven Waypoint in Diessa Plateua. Not sure if relevant or not. That was the last map I was in before waypointing to Fields of Ruin but I was nowhere near that waypoint.

PvP Perspective: Chrono has a lot of great things going for it, I’d just like to see a few things toned down before the really fun stuff gets nerfed to balanced out the things that are unnecessarily strong.

1. Gravity Well. The incteraction with Power Lock feels really good, I think it just does too much base damage on its own.

2. Shield 4 Block Skill: This is too strong right now. The old version felt bad because shield couldn’t compete with Torch as a defensive offhand weapon. The single block mechanic felt clunky and weak. The continuous block feels much better and is more useful. However, the Deja Vu mechanic gives you 6 seconds of block. This coupled with the Blurr Well and Sword 2, plus all of the other mesmer defensive mechanics reminds me of pre-nerf Sword/Dagger Thief levels of evade spam. It’s not fun to play against and isn’t very engaging for the Mesmer player either, because so much of the depth to chronomancer is lost if the optimal way to play in many cases is just to chain invulnerability skills back to back.

My suggestion would be to keep the continuous block functionality, keep the deja vu mechanic, but shorten the duration of each block to 1.5 seconds. This makes the skill feel better because it’s not one random block that might get used up on a glancing auto attack, but it’s closer to the indented design goal of the skill: being a clutch block that resets and can be used within a short time to block something else clutch.

Chaith.8256:

Here’s a strategy that’s not a cheap curb stomp sucker punch, take your enemies into the downed state without going into the downed state yourself.

This method is 100% effective at not getting “cheap curb stomped.”

If you’re in a 1v1 and someone has their 60 second cooldown left over to stomp you, you’ve probably made a large mistake, or it’s a matchup you probably should have opted out of to begin with. Every stomping method has counterplay in a teamfight situation. If the devs ever balance the game where downstate has a significant impact on the outcome out 1v1s I’ll be incredibly disappointed.

Some time ago there was a patch where Mesmers and Guardians had their “Gain 5s of Vigor on Critical Hit” trait toned down to have an internal cooldown of 10 seconds from 5 seconds. Elementalists have the same trait with the exception that they must invest a minor trait point to get it. However, their trait retains the 5 second internal cooldown.

What is the justification for Renewing Stamina not sharing the same internal cooldown as the other versions of this trait?

Access to vigor without using cooldowns is incredibly valuable almost regardless of the build a profession is using. Even if celestial builds and Elementalists were in a bad place right now, what is the reason for this outlier trait?

No matter what your class or build, the goal is to contribute more to the fight than players on the opposing team. Specialized builds have one job. In the case of the Shatter Mesmer, that job is to provide high damage and clutch interrupts. All of our survivability and kiting tactics exist so we can do those two things. Making a single mistake on a specialized build is so incredibly bad. Not necessarily because you might die, but because messing up means that a cele build is going to “out-contribute” you in the fight.

The new matchmaking changes highlighted this point for me. I’ve really been struggling to win as a Shatter Mesmer queueing solo since the update. With the randomness of the queues now, my perception of cele builds has changed a ton. They seem much more effective than they were before the update. It just makes so much more sense to me to run these builds in solo queue because these builds are GUARANTEED to make a contribution to the fight. As long as they use their abilities they can provide healing, condi cleanse, fire fields for might etc etc. Whereas if a Mesmer’s mirror blade doesn’t connect and a thief jumps on them right after…they’ve essentially contributed nothing.

Justin ODell.9517:

Nighthawk.4687:

See that is like the exact opposite from what I witnessed. Any time we had 3 or 4 we got demolished.

Counting only 3+ in your party: 11 wins, 22 losses. That more closely corresponds with your intuition on the matter. I couldn’t see any overall pattern to those games that stands out as an explanation.

Update. I was one of those 3+.

Queuing solo for most of today I would say I had only maybe 2/15 matches that were terribly unbalanced. (Solo queuers vs abjured and one game where my team won 500-30.)

The rest of the games were decided by 50-200 points and were about the quality I was used to with the old matchmaking system. Not counting my 10 losses or whatever from the team queues that Nighthawk was talking about the system seems to be working ok with room for some tweaks.

Perhaps it was just an unlucky streak. But out of my first 24 games (most with parties of 3+) I was legit at a 33% winrate. Playing solo I’m winning just slightly more or slightly less than I lose, which is what I was used to in the old system on an average day.

Nighthawk.4687:

Which makes sense Justin, when I was duo queuing we won a lot of our games played. However is there a way for you to only look at 3 or more queuing? That was when I encountered the majority of problems. Looking at games where I was in a party of 3 or more I should have a much worse win/loss ratio.

I was one of the people in the 3 queue so it might be easier to just check my history. It’s not the win/loss that I’m concerned about as much as the quality of the games. In most of the games it was either clearly mismatched from the start (I actually have less of a problem with this), or the teams were probably statistically “fair” but there was such a wide range of skill and experience within the teams in each game that the outcome just felt so random. I don’t know if it was because I was playing with guildies who had a bunch of games in the new system and I hadn’t had any games in the new season or what.

Aerveor.9617:

My concerns are with ladder rank and the ranked area. Based on what I’ve read, I see the potential to abuse this system by initially climbing the ladder on your main profession. Then, when competition gets stiff, swap to a profession and build that you don’t have many games on that traditionally does well at lower ratings.

We’ll need to wait and see. If it becomes an issue we can definitely change the rules.

Aerveor.9617:

For example, what’s the incentive, besides integrity, for a someone who never plays engineer to climb to the top 300 of the new leaders boards with their main profession…and then play turret engi, have their MMR adjusted, and boost their ladder points with the wins at this MMR?

If they don’t play a profession often then they should have a high RD, causing their rating to adapt quickly. We’ll keep an eye on it to see if its fast enough to prevent this sort of thing.

Thank you for your responses and the willingness to change the rules should people start abusing the system. Based on your responses it seems like you anticipate potential abuse of the system this way to wash out over the course of a chunk of games, which based on my experience with other games tends to be the case and I agree with you.

Over the course of a season I expect the integrity of the ladders will be fine. My last concern is during end-of-the-season crunch time, specifically near end-of-season reward thresholds (eg. top 20, top 200, top 1000 etc) where, in the last 24 hours or so, people could potentially exploit this for that last few points to move up a few ranks.

I think you’ve done a great job with these changes. The reason I’m being so critical is because I’d be crushed to see all the hard work you’ve done be forgotten because of a bitter taste in the community’s mouth due to a season’s worth of meaningful ladders being undone by 48 hours of abuse at the end of a season.

In regards to the different MMR based on profession,

I’m 100% in support of this in unranked area. I believe there will be much less of a barrier of entry to learning new professions if you’re not expected to play them at the mechanical skill of a main profession when you first start out.

My concerns are with ladder rank and the ranked area. Based on what I’ve read, I see the potential to abuse this system by initially climbing the ladder on your main profession. Then, when competition gets stiff, swap to a profession and build that you don’t have many games on that traditionally does well at lower ratings.

For example, what’s the incentive, besides integrity, for a someone who never plays engineer to climb to the top 300 of the new leaders boards with their main profession…and then play turret engi, have their MMR adjusted, and boost their ladder points with the wins at this MMR?

I’m currently looking for a PvX guild to enjoy the game with. Guild population and server aren’t really a factor as long as there ~15+ active spvp players in the roster. Essentially looking for a community that I can team queue with.

A little bit about myself.

I spend most of my time in sPvP but I do enjoy dungeon runs if I need to farm gold for a skin that I want. I enjoy theory crafting, playing with friends, and organized gameplay. I play shatter Mesmer primarily in sPvP but rotate between my mesmer, ele and guardian in pve.

Stat-type things if they matter

r40 sPvP
~7k AP

Contact me in game at Aerveor.9617