Guild Wars 2

Hello. Just wanted to announce the winners of the art contest. Please excuse my late post. I will be delivering the gold this weekend. So watch out for it.

First place is …….
Meve.7468

Second place is …….
Ephixel

Third Place is ……
SeraKirah
(Could you respond to this post so I can get your account name…)

And Third place is ……
Bradrian

Their art are in the order I announced them. I have two third place winners cause I couldn’t decide so enjoy.

Thanks for your participation.

Great art. Its amazing. Wondering if you are currently working for a company or if you are a freelance artist?

Also how is your card game going?

I’m also working on one. Minus the artistic talent. But I would love to hear how far you gone on that.

Hahnchen.5420:

Do you have a preferred image size/dpi/file type?

No preference. As long as its not too pixelated.

Background: I played guild wars 2 for about a year when it released. Mainly WvW and then just playing the market in the game. As a result I ended up with a lot of money. I kinda lost interest in the game. But still retained the Gold I had which is a huge amount. So as a way to get rid of some of it. And get something out of it I wanted to set up an art contest to see the talent of artist this game community has to offer.

Rules:

1. I will judge the images to determine the winner of the contest according to my taste.
2. Only human characters are allowed.
3. Lineart or full color are acceptable entries. (I’m more concerned with lineart and detail than with color)
4. I will only consider serious entries. No stick figures. (Also no chibis)
5. No backgrounds

Things that I will be looking for:

1. I will be looking for detail.
2. Creativity (Characters need not be based on the game.)
3. Pose: I want the characters to do something interesting. Either an action like attacking with a weapon. Or casting some sort of power, etc. What I don’t like is just a character standing up with static limbs.
4. Play to your strengths. Don’t do something you are not comfortable with.
5. The characters should be based on medieval fantasy just like the game. No modern soldiers for example.
6. Submissions need to be something created specifically for this contest. I want to see something new.

Prizes:

1. First place prize will be 200g
2. Second place prize will be 150g
3. Third place prize will be 100g
4. Everyone else that submitted a valid entry will get at least 10g
5. If you did not rank 1st, 2nd or 3rd I may still increase the prize you get if there is enough quality entries.

How to submit:

You may leave a reply on this page with the image
You may send me a PM with the image
You may send it to this email alexBehemoth@outlook.com

Deadline:
August 30

Will announce top places and deliver prizes before September 7.

Issues: If there is any problems I will announce them here.
This is the first time I do a contest so if you have any suggestions you can also either pm me or post bellow.

Questions: If you have any questions please post them bellow and I will update this page with a reply.

Clarifications: I’m not expecting any professional level. I’m actually only concerned with lineart. But I won’t stop people from doing more.

I do not take any ownership of the art that you put in the contest.

Let me know if you plan to participate so I can gauge interest

Edit: I decided that based on what commissions were going for I should increase the prizes to get more people interested. So I doubled the prizes.

One skills you should consider is phantasm defender. He inflicts retaliation whenever someone nearby gets hit. If you have retaliation on top of that it will be two hits of retaliation.

Problem with retaliation builds is that you must be hit in order for the retaliation to work. Something that you don’t want to happen because the damage you will receive will always be greater than the damage that retaliation will output. So in my opinion is best to only try and absorb hits if you have high toughness and the enemy’s attack are quick and weak.

I’m new to Ranger and I main Mesmer. One problem that I faced is that of condition removal. I’m used to be able to remove conditions instantly and I think that is very important to survival as conditions can take your life out in an instant or make you incapable of fighting. So how do you guys deal with conditions.

Something that might also work is making healing power also reduce incoming condition damage. Healing power is very weak for healing right now. So making it a stat to reduce conditions might make it more attractive and at the same time weaken condition a tad.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

There are items that you can get from npc that will allow anyone to teleport.

Problem is that they are not usable in WvW.

I actually caught a hack. I know the ranger’s skills. The only thing is maybe a pet has an ability that allows teleport. But that is not the case. I will post it later.

NinjaEd.3946:

Alex Behemoth.4952:

You are right. 1 more second for reveal makes no difference that is why you should also support adding 4 second reveal for WvW like in PvP.

Ehh people would cry and moan over it like the last time. I don’t like seeing splits between pvp/pve(wvw) even if it is sometimes necessary simply because they have different standards of what it qualifies to be efficient. But I don’t like walking into a different game mode to find my mechanics have changed, it makes mental awareness that much harder to follow (usually I KNOW when reveal is going to wear off for pve/wvw, but often I mess up and “stealth” while still revealed in pvp.) Not suggesting removing the 4 seconds from pvp, but I don’t like having back of the mind timers scrambled like that especially for a class that is so unforgiving for mess ups.

Only build that is “op” is d/p SA troll builds. Reason I use quotation marks is because it’s only op to those who dunno what to do against them but sit there like a duck and wait for them to pop out. Simple solution that wouldn’t harm thief? Max stealth duration, 15 seconds. Stealth should be tactical, not something you cower in until you’re full hp again. But I can’t entirely blame them for doing so, thief defenses are rather weak outside of SA and in overwhelming odds it’s much more difficult for a thief to survive if they are focused and have no stealth access vs having it.

WvW is not PvE. Confusion in WvW works like it does in PvP not PvE. The main reason to go to WvW is to fight other players. If you go to WvW to kill NPCs you are better off going to PvE.

Hopefully you agree with that.

I don’t have problems killing thieves most of them are bad. I don’t play thief I play mesmer. But there are somethings that seem unfair but the thief community just complains how thieves are soo underpowered.

The complains are 2. Reveal needs to be 4 seconds. I play mesmer it will also affect me. But its fair as our classes rely on stealth and the enemy needs a chance to kill us on the little time we are off of stealth. (I realize its not optimal but unless stealth is reworked that is the only solution)

Next is the stealth finisher spam. You can simply spam backstab or other skills till they hit. I have evaded many backstabs, blocked them at the exact moment by predicting where they are at and when they backstab. But the worst thing to see is the block sign followed by 10k damage. So I have to block then evade then hope they run out of stealth. What needs to happen in my opinion is backstab and other stealth attacks need a cooldown if you don’t want them to reveal on block, evade etc. You should not just spam till you hit. There should be consequences for missing. Ether make it a f2 attack with a cooldown or make it cost initiative.

Ross Biddle.2367:

After perplexity runes came in, and the initial Bloodlust was released, I came across a thief duo. All they had to do was dodge roll for caltrops/bleeds, and interrupt for confusion, then just hide in stealth (sound familiar?). Phantasms/clones would just get kitten d by bleeds. I went at them three times as they moved from north camp out east, and by the third time this was as “on top” of their game as I could get. They bothered to use a few other skills, but realy the bleed field spams + stealth were in controll.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSR3UO4rJdQ

Fortunately thieves in general are out roaming and need to take a different approach given the various situations they’re faced with, so you don’t see these sorts of duos that often.

I think the main problem is the condition mechanic is broken. Its just too much reward. Maybe it can be fixed if a useless stat lets say healing power could be used for condition damage reduction also.

NinjaEd.3946:

1 second makes little to no difference in wvw. Pvp maybe, things tend to be close quarters and often quick but wvw is open and unpredictable.

Thief isn’t op, OP. It’s a learning curve that people are either lazy or selfish to learn. When playing against other players there are multiple things to learn.

Too many conditions? Bring condi clear/negation.
Too many stuns? Bring a stun breaker.
Too many evasions? Bring lock-down abilities like immobilize, and cc.
Too much damage? They prolly die in seconds, out smart them.
Too much stealth? WELL, you could, _______ (multiple suggestions, varies by profession and build).

Problem is stealth counters aren’t obvious, they are learned by playing the game. Most people rather just get a 1200 aoe reveal for 20 seconds and call that a fair buff to their class to deal with thieves, because they don’t care to L2P. It’s a sad truth, most people aren’t interested in working on kills. I can bet that atleast 80% or more of main-thieves rarely run into troubles when playing against other thieves. Why? Because they know what to expect and how their things work.

Thief isn’t broken, and stealth isn’t broken (which btw Mesmer has). It’s the ability to ask questions and learn that is absent.

You are right. 1 more second for reveal makes no difference that is why you should also support adding 4 second reveal for WvW like in PvP.

I was watching some fights I had while roaming and in one I noticed a ranger teleporting like the thief does with shadowstep. I never knew Rangers could do that. Its not lag as in the video it showed the animation. Just want to know if its possible.

So this is the video. Judge yourselves to see if its a hack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoKMtQAseYo

Lately I have been seeing a lot of people using the teleport hack. Which is when people teleport every second constantly and are able to achieve an incredible speed using it. (Although it might be the same person using different characters)

So I finally figured out how to get a hold of their names. Add them to your block list by clicking on them and typing /block

Then you can see their names in the block list.

About this person. A lot of people have complained about him and reported him using the botting under the report menu. He is not good at all. He can’t even win with the hacks but people using such things should be perma banned. So if you see people doing so you can get their names and report them to Anet. (Just make sure you know enough about the game to know its a hack. A newbie might think mesmers and thieves hack.)

Ross Biddle.2367:

I know the type of thief you’re talking about. The trouble with the above suggestion is that those (huge) caltrop bleed fields also kitten your phantasms and clones. So who cares if he pops out of stealth for a moment, your phantasms arent going to last long to stack up. This guy isnt going to just drop easily anyway.

Best bet: Troll him with a stealth trap.

Yea its that type. He kept bleeding my phantasms when I had them out. I did not see much I could do. I can remove 4 conditions every 10 secs with my build but it wasn’t enough as in the gaps while the healing was recharging he could get me somewhere in between and drop 10k in health. Luckily healing mantra could recover that. But I do think that if you have condition removal it should severely punish condition builds not just delay them. But I guess is just wishful thinking.

Anyways if anyone finds a way to counter this build I would be glad to hear it.

So how would you deal with such thief. I faced one and I used the most OP build against thieves. A phantasm one. With condition removal.

So this thief keep on going invisible. When he was out of stealth he keep on using death blossom then went to stealth and dodged to create bleed fields, traps, and poison fields which don’t reveal him. Two Mesmers and the 4 npc guards could not do anything against him. He just keep going invisible bleeding the guards to death. And any damage done was recovered after he came from being invisible. I fought him 1v1 and the battle went no where. I luckily had enough condition clears but I can’t figure out how to deal with it.

He did know what he was doing but the build seems a bit op. Does anyone have any solution? It might be just the pure inbalance of conditions right now. You can literaly 4x to 6x the damage of conditions investing in a single trait and eating the right foods. 2000 condition damage and 100% duration = 6x condition damage. Then just put the rest into being tanky.

Dawdler.8521:

Arcane theivery isnt underpowered, its just plain unpredictable. It can be evaded by pretty much anything and it has a silly delayed cast time. This combo mean you cant effectivly use it. I prefer null field when glamour is traited. Arcane I would only use if there are no other options. It only truly shine against perplexity builds (assuming you dont miss).

IMO they should do one of two things:

- Make it insta-cast

- Make it unblockable.

It is unblockable right now. The problem is that you can still miss using it with evades and blinds. Even if it was unevadable and unmissable. I don’t think it would be worth it as it can’t deal with constant conditions on you and there is hardly ever a time when the enemy has enough boon durations on themselves to use it.

So would you guys agree with a 4 second reveal like in PvP for WvW?

I don’t think the excuse that WvW is not PvP is a valid one. As many other skills have gotten the PvP treatment in WvW like confusion. And the main concept of WvW is fighting other players not npc’s.

This is a question for fairness. What are your thoughts???

I have been using Arcane Thievery because I like the extended range trait and reduced cooldown for Manipulation skills mainly because of blink.

However unless you are fighting a specific type of class. Like warriors that usually use the signet of rage. Its not worth it because of the immense cooldown even fully traited. And for removing conditions is horrible because there are many ways it can miss. Although I have tried to avoid this problem its useless against builds that put constant condition pressure like necros or engies.

As a condition removal and boon removal the better choice would be disenchanter.

I really wanted to love this skill as its fun to steal enemie’s boons. But as of right now its not worth it even fully traited.

I’m glad that I got the responses I got and people did not just put get better or learn to play.

Like I said this issue is an issue in WvW as the amount of damage is huge and the defense you can have from stealth is also the best. Not to say that it doesn’t require skill to be good. But I think there is no punishment for missing backstab. Some people don’t see it that way.

But here is an example. Thief get shadow of refuge. 12-15 secs of invisibility. The person knows the thief is out to backstab. So he dodges and evades the backstab. He dodges again and evades it again. He blocks it and prevents the backstab. Most blocks with counters don’t hurt thieves on backstabs since its not facing them. He uses aegis preventing the backstab again. He then evades again. And after he has exhausted his damage prevention. He gets backstabbed as the thief still had 3 more seconds of invisibility. His damage drops to 1/3 if he is tanky at all. He gets hit by 5 then invisi leap and damage 2. His health is close to 1/2 and now he has to worry about backstab again.

Yes there is counters such as area attacks. But those are defensive and require the thief to knowingly step in the areas. Which any good thief will not do.

Lets see how it would work if the enemy broke stealth on block or evade. Thief goes shadow of refuge and is going to try and backstab the enemy. He sees the enemy blocking so he better wait till the blocking is finished. Thief sees aegis so be should have hit it with the bow before going stealth. Thief know that the enemy will try to evade at a certain time mark after he went invisible so he should try and backstab either before or after. Basically adding more thinking into the game. Which is always good. Now if damage of skills need to be changed to reflect the added challenge that is fine. But the mechanics should involve thinking not just same repeated patterns that work regardless.

I don’t play thief. But I have been trying it on PvP. Using the patterns I pointed out work pretty well. Of course I get owned by experience thieves. But do well against other classes.

Thanks for your replys but the issues haven’t been addressed.

1. What skill does the thief require is there if the opponent cannot block, evade etc backstabs to punish you? Especially when his evasive maneuvers are done as a guess. Its just an issue of trying till you hit. No consequences for not connecting for the thief. And connecting greatly rewards. 3-4 secs later the thief can try again till opponent dies. Little risk.

2. It would not be such an issue with heartseeker if it did not do so much damage. But the issue is doing damage while you blind preventing damage. Go Stealth while you did damage. Backstab. The opponent should be nearly dead. If not try again 3 secs later. What skill does that involve?

There is a reason everyone complains about thieves. The issue is not as big of a problem in PvP as in WvW. Capturing points in a circle is a dumb concept when the games core mechanics are about combat. 1v1 should be the true test of balance for each class.

Block on invisibility does not break stealth. The problem arises that even if you could predict the backstab and block, evade etc. It doesn’t matter as if the thief misses or fails on these attempts he can still keep on trying without any consequences.

Next is blind field plus leap. Problem is that as the thief leaps into and enemy and hits the player this does not break stealth. Hopefully I don’t need to explain why this is bad.

This is the only problems I have with the class. Hopefully I don’t get replies of how about I need to learn to play or such. Since I think that if most of the community has these complaints then it must be true.

So there is this necro that teleports all over the place constantly. The speed is more than 50% if you count the teleporting. How do you report that. There is no options for hacking.

DeWolfe.2174:

Maybe there’s DR upon opening boxes? Would explain the drop rates from that reddit link.

What do you mean by DR???

Wondering if they have returned??

azurerogue.9240:

So then do people who do heal/buff AND tag the lord get double rewards? If I’m doing twice as much actual work in my play style compared to you I deserve twice the rewards.

/sarcasm

It’s definitely not hard to heal AND tag the lord and if you don’t “feel” like doing it then I don’t see why you need to get the same rewards.

Not sure how the current system works but if its based on damage it would not be a problem. If your build is based on support then you won’t do enough damage anyways for tagging and most of your XP would be from support.

It can be hard when to tag enemies when your build is pure support. If they did not want people healing or playing support then why put builds and skills for it in the game.

Giving exp and loot to support would also allow players who aren’t high enough level or good at fighting a way to contribute to in WvW and get rewarded for it.

Jaxs.5830:

If you cannot tag what your group is killing while playing support then the issue is you and not the game. I play full support for my group, its never an issue.

Look lets not get into the whole you suck argument or get better argument. I don’t think you can argue that the game does not give any incentive to play support. When you tag an enemy you are going outside the support role. Therefore my point still stands.

For example I wanted to play a healing warrior where I would focus on getting boons and regen through banners and converting conditions to boons. But as I did this I got very little exp or loot. I eventually figured that the game does not reward healing therefore I stopped doing this.

Its not even about the money since I have lots. But since the game is all about rewards I really don’t want to do stuff if I’m not being rewarded.

Seriously they need to implement a system where if you help a person with a boon or health. And he kills an enemy then you should have a small chance of getting some of the loot he would have gotten.

amaranthined.5167:

I don’t really think a reward for giving boons and heals is necessary in WvW. If you’re running a build that focuses on support, the incentive to do your job is so the group you’re running with doesn’t wipe. A support build probably isn’t going to last long/do much damage against an enemy zerg on its own, so you help others so that they can fight the zerg and keep you from dying.

The game as a whole actually does encourage helping other players – shared exp + loot even if you’re not partying together, exp for reviving, etc. I don’t know if you just gave some bad examples for what you meant, but for the most part players do get rewarded for helping others.

The problem with your argument is that you expect people to help just for the heck of it without getting any rewards. It just doesn’t work since this game revolves around rewards such as currency, loot, exp. So the best way to get those is by tagging enemies including in WvW.

That is why you don’t see healing or support builds because this game does not reward them. And I really don’t see why it would be a bad idea to reward players for helping others.

This game does not incentivize helping other people. There needs to be a system in WvW where you can get XP and loot by giving boons to other players or healing them while they are in combat.

Can you get experience and loot for only healing and giving boons to allies while they are in battle but never damaging an enemy????

Based on the Halloween event do you guys think this item will be coming back?

HuntsForge.3260:

Hey i’m interested please have a look at my gallery on huntsforge.deviantart.com and if theres anything I can do for you feel free to give me a shout.

Also if you are interested in improving your art skills watch the vids at idrawgirls.com (ex-anet employee Xia Taptara) I have learnt a lot just from his youtube channel. I dot the free cash to pay for his vids but probably will when I do.

Thanks for having interest in this. I really appreciate it since I don’t have much money right now in real life to do the project. lol. And my drawing skills are noobish to horrible at times.

The way I have been doing my concept cards have been with images from the internet that I liked. So if I give you that image and some descriptions about the character maybe that will give you some idea of what kind of art style I’m looking for. Will leave that in the attachments.

So about the character. She should have heavy armor and a shield, no sword. In a defensive pose. Anything else is up to you.

If you can do male characters let me know and let me know how much you think is fair.

The art style that I’m looking for is animeish. I grabbed some art from the internet that I felt was sort of what I wanted.

!https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-MA53Itmh42g/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAVk/s1UcKw-arSg/photo.jpg!

If you can do something like this then I want a sketch and we can move on from there.

From my perspective in terms of the game I have been concentrating on the gameplay and want the the image of the card to match how the card plays. So I can give you a description of the character and how it plays and you can go on from there. I have about 30 characters that I feel add enough gameplay to keep in the final version(Assuming I do finish it)

First Character I need:
Woman, no armor, two swords(straight), agile, action pose facing towards viewer. For the clothing it should reflect the character something that allows her to be agile and deal damage. But not something that will protect her. Anything that I have not mentioned feel free to use your creativity. Also let me know how much you think is fair for such a project. Also don’t need background.

fey.5438:

Well If you want to improve skills simply I recommend you Sycra’s YT channel.

I’ll check that out. But I also wanted to put the money I have acquired to some use. So if any artists out there want to get some GW2 gold let me know.

I want to have some art for a card game concept I’m working on. And I have amassed much money from the trading post. I love this game but I’m trying to quit video games in general so I wont have much need for the gold.

I wanted to see who was interested in either

Doing original fantasy art based on the concepts I have for some characters. I need full body sketches mostly showing action poses. The sketches can then be used for full color art.

The other option is to teach me how to paint using Photoshop. Or helping me improve my drawing skills.

I’m not exactly sure on the artstyle as many of them are beautiful but I do like anime art a lot. However since its just a concept the art style is not very important right now.

I’m willing to pay anywhere from 5g to 300g depending on the detail that goes into the piece. Don’t be afraid to ask what you think is fair as gold is not really a factor for me anyways.

If you are interested you can PM me or leave a reply.

Seisyll.5914:

Ye its possible. You use shouts like “Guard” with traits “shout mastery” (20% faster recharge) making it have 12sec cooldown and you use Nature’s Voice – Shouts apply Regeneration (10 seconds) and Swiftness (10 seconds)

Just gain regen and swiftness from other sources like warhorn and healing spring, and you are good to go.

I see what you are saying that is fine. I really did not have a problem because he was a tank. Guardians do that all the time. But I just find it odd if you watch the video that the timer for his regen and swiftness runs out. And its still active without a cooldown.
Only reason I recorded this is because I have never seen anything like it.

Saw a ranger that could not be killed by 3 people. His health was hard to drop and he was hard to catch up to. So I payed attention to his boons. And some boon did not deactivate when their timer ran out. It showed them active but there was no timer. Those were regen and swiftness.

Here is the link for youtube please ignore the music as I was too lazy to edit it out. lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCoH9rcJQLk
Is this possible. I recorded it just to have proof if something fishy is going on.

Guys if you watch the video please wait till the 26 second mark where his regen is about to go off. The counter is at 2 secs. Then 1 then 0. Then no time but the effect is still active. That is what I want to know how its possible.

Its a drag to have to be vigilant every 30 mins. Plus it would be a huge gold sink reducing inflation.

Sorry if posted before but I’m having a lot of trouble dealing with good dagger eles.

I have tried having all speed like +10 per illusion plus focus. Also having a lot of cripple from clones and greatsword but I still can’t catch up to them. It seems like good eles can always escape at will and there is nothing you can do about that. Also conditions don’t affect them much as their heal removes all conditions.

So those are my problems what methods do you use to deal with good eles?

Which server do you consider has big battles going on most of the day???

Esplen.3940:

Wintersday is coming back so the price’ll drop.

They might but Halloween will be the deciding factor. If they repeat the items then prices will go down. If they don’t repeat those who have stocked up might take a chance and save some for the next year and make a fortune.

The best investment that I have seen is Sigil of Generosity. It has increased 125x to its average price during the event. Imagine how rich the person that bought a bunch of them is.

BTW do not buy as the price will not increase in the future. Specially if events repeat the same items. Even if they do not repeat there are probably better investments out there.

And by market manipulation I don’t mean some random person buying a large supply of replenishable items. I mean people that hold a large portion of a limited availability item.

D’oh! Thanks that worked!!!!!!

Are you sure you have room for the email?

You can only hold 10 personal emails, so try deleting some.

Yesterday I paid 600gems to get an extra bank tab but the bank size is the same and have not gotten any mail. My gems are gone though…..Any help.

Purchase sigil of generosities. Pliz…

I invested in 300g in wings and 100g in coffers. The food will rise for sure but it takes too much space to be worth it for me. I’m pessimistic about the wings in the short term but I had invested heavily in sigils of generosity back when it mattered so I can afford to gamble.

Rennoko.5731:

You should have invested in Sigil of Generosity if you wanted a seasonal item that went up insanely in price. An item that was less than 1 gold is now over 10.

Oh and they will only continue up as there is no reason for any additional to drop until winter.

Please do so I have only bought about 1000 of those.

Do you guys think that items for special events will become available again for example lets say Sigils of Generosity.

Do you think they will be available this Christmas err I mean Winter’sday event. Based on guild wars 1 events.

Same for special event skins etc….

K thanks for the advise.