Guild Wars 2

I can 1v1 a thief… until the point where they are losing and begin to endlessly stealth. They then run away, return 12 seconds later with full health, and have effectively reset the fight at their convenience.

Nevermind all the mobility they have over certain professions (Heartseeker, Infiltrator’s Arrow and +Movement Speed, for example).

I hereby demand that all sylvari cultural armor itself be given a glow effect or that a sylvari’s glow be visible through the armor.

Otherwise, what’s the point? Light armor, T3 body, T2 everything else.

…and I wouldn’t mind a little trim on those excessively large posterior leaves on the T2 legs. -_-

What’s more misleading is the idea that three players would ever run from any ettin.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Don’t go insulting OSX users just because you have some ridiculous notion about how they act. -_-

I hate to do this. Generalizations, etc. But it must be done.

I have only ever met two Mac enthusiasts in my lifetime that know anything at all about how computers work at a fundamental level.

pot.6805:

Thanks for all of the bags SoR. You tried to take a paper tower and lost your T3 waypointed bay in the process to JQ. Thanks for the coordination JQ, lets do it again

Considering you’re the only JQ player who posts messages like these in match-up threads, you should consider transferring to BG where you’d fit right in.

…there are only a few noted sword-wielding characters in the history of Tyria (the world). Of them, these are the most memorable:

1) Talon Silverwing — an Angchu tengu from The Aerie. During The Tengu Wars, he was defeated by General Zhan and has since sworn to protect and serve him. He is the initial trainer for Canthan warriors (either as a primary or secondary profession) at the Shing Jea Monastery.

2) Galrath is a warrior seeking to learn arcane magic at the Wizard’s Tower in Kryta; stopping him is the objective of the Villainy of Galrath.

3) Jaizhanju — Jaizhanju was an exceptionally tall and very strong young Warrior who lived over three hundred years ago. Orphaned at birth and self-trained, Jaizhanju traveled Cantha and single-handedly defeated bands of monsters that threatened villages all over the countryside. When the emperor invited her to visit him in the Forbidden City so he could reward her, she arrived days late, having stopped to defend an orphanage from a skale invasion. Standing before the emperor’s throne, she refused his proffered reward, and instead offered her sword and her life in exchange for the insult of tardiness. The bemused emperor refused her offer, and Jaizhanju continued to defend the weak until her death five years later, by which time legends numbered her kills in the tens of thousands. The emperor himself petitioned the Oracle to give her a place in the Tahnnakai Temple, and so it was.

4) Turai Ossa — my personal nomination for greatest swordsman for numerous oh-so-obvious-and-obviously-correct reasons. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Turai_Ossa

Almost all of these characters are likely still relevant in Guild Wars 2, as well. Regarding Shiro Tagachi — he was talented with one-handed blades of all sorts, but isn’t memorable as a “swordsman” in my mind… and I dread very really possibility of another encounter with him in the mists…

It’s a fairly safe bet that Linux users the world over wouldn’t mind a client that isn’t officially supported. Give me 60 FPS and I’m good to go. ;p

Focus, I’d like to introduce you to my friend, Black Lion Salvage Kit.

DeadlySynz.3471:

This is where the problems with thieves arrives. Take any other class and turn them into glass cannons, they deal huge damage (some obviously bigger than others), but receive big damage in return. Thieves.. not so much.. they’ll just hit you for 10-20k before you can even react.. if they don’t down you, they’ll just stealth out, reset fight and repeat as needed.

IDDQD.

evilapprentice.6379:

The thief is punished – s/he spent a bunch of time and CD’s contributing nothing. Winning != Stomping. If I make a bad call, run in, fight for 20 seconds, and end up running away, you’ve won. People need to understand that.

This argument in a world vs. world context makes no sense whatsoever.

Basically what you’re saying is that if a thief wins, I have broken armor and must return to spawn and run back to my objective.

If I win, the thief survives and runs 2000+ range away to get out of sight and continues about his business.

“Balanced!”

Sergoros.4398:

Not sure if trolling or just naive…

Are those my only two choices? We have these things called “jokes” where I come from. Pay extra-close attention to the last bit. If you read all of the forums, you’ll understand.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/9/93/World_completion_reward_screen.jpg/180px-World_completion_reward_screen.jpg

This is the counter.

I think I just wasted 3 minutes scrolling through countless posts about how many bags this or that person was able to get by being a part of a giant zerg either offensively or defensively.

Does anyone in this thread have any measure of individual skill that they can be proud of instead? Makes for more interesting reading material while I slack off on my CompTIA Linux+ certification homework.

Kalar Meadia.8439:

I think they overcompensated on it a bit, given its stationary nature.

Sums up my thoughts. It did need to be ‘fixed’, but it was ‘fixed it too much.’

3~ seconds of no-whirl downtime would be perfect if they insist on keeping the Warden stationary/unable to run toward its target.

Regardless of the OP’s intentions, ALL of mesmer’s traits and the stats granted by its trait lines need to be reworked. Torch trait in power? Scepter trait in healing? Phantasm traits in shatters? None of it makes sense. Every other profession’s traits are logical. Mesmer needs to be reworked. From the ground up.

Mizu.9387:

Does this need a solution? If we clash with a mob that stacked retal, we immediatly hold off our big AoE’s until the 4-5 seconds have passed or our necros removed it. I think the problem lies in people buttonmashing too much, not paying attention to buffs or how they take damage.

I wholeheartedly welcome and support your suggestion to revert the confusion nerf.

edit: Then again, ANet only reverts thief nerfs.

It does seem like being penalized for spending $10 on a gem store item, doesn’t it? You can’t even interrupt the animation.

I love that I can participate in WvWvW and remain unaware of all the forum drama and guild/server rivalries that take place. I don’t understand people who try to make this personal. Server pride, sure… I want SoR to be #1 (and it will be)… and I still get PO’d when I get zerged on or when someone interferes with a 1v1 (or 1v2) that I’m doing well in and then gloats… but all of that takes away from playing strategically.

Don’t forget that. There should always be a plan in place and that plan should never be “show that other guild/server who’s boss.”

Now go take over JQ’s borderlands while I’m in class, please. :p

…add 25 stacks of confusion to that list as an in-game representation of how stupid your character feels for “standing in the fire.”

The only reason any glow is present at all on sylvari cultural tier 2 armor (for males, at least) is because some of what is already there is exposed. I’ve posted before (sort of) about this. All sylvari cultural armor should allow for all of the glow that’s already there to be visible through the armor, or the armor should have its own glow that matches the color/intensity selected by the player.

As someone who really likes the look of all things T2 cultural with T3 cultural body I’d be good with either of these options as I’m currently only able to see the glow on my shoulders/arms.

You know, I thought there’d be a lot more enthusiasm for an idea like this considering the effort necessary to obtain a legendary (and so few other outstanding, distinctive options for a mesmer)… bump

I realize this doesn’t address the vast scope of this topic, and I may post again later, but… I still want an elite phantasm skill.

• A high-attack rate, heavy-CC hammer phantasm…
• A lower-attack rate, high-damage dagger phantasm…
• A skill that summons two or three phantasms on use of your next phantasm skill.

I’ll even allow ArenaNet to take away Moa Morph AND Time Warp for these.
coughs

Considering I’m setting up a specially-compiled WINE “prefix” for Guild Wars 2, I have to throw my hat into the ring on this one as well.

I’ve never understood why game developers abandoned OpenGL for DirectX.

Cross-platform = more customers = bigger profits.

The only reason I use Windows is because of the gated community of DirectX games… and /I wouldn’t have it at all/ if it weren’t for “DreamSpark” offering Windows 7 for free through colleges and universities.

FranzM.1298:

Lately I’ve been trying out confusion builds for mesmer and i came to the realization that confusion doesn’t do as much damage as it should.

Once upon a time, in the land of common sense… fast-attacking, bursty professions (or playstyles) had hard counters called retaliation and confusion. Sadly, many thieves and warriors (and even a few rangers) invaded the land of common sense and cried loudly for the ability to win more easily against such counters, arguing that they should be allowed to deal 10-20,000 damage without impunity or risk… and they won.

Confusion and retaliation have both been severely nerfed.

Hopefully, Guild Wars 2 will not need its “n00b tube” professions/play styles forever and things will return to balance… all styles should have a counter-style.

Ya know what would’ve made Scarlet more interesting to {nearly} every player?

If we had gotten to know her through all of those stories in the OP.

If she had been in the grove since betas, learning.

If she had then moved on to Rata Sum, telling all of us all about her amazing discoveries.

..et cetera, et cetera…

Speaking of things like that… whatever happened to the female sylvari NPC that was put into the game to represent the girl that traveled the country on foot with her dog in order to experience a real world adventure?

Winning: YES! WE ARE THE BEST! NO-ONE WILL EVER BEAT US!
Losing: I never really cared anyway.

— every bandwagon sports fan/player/competitive gamer ever

soulsuke.7913:

I’d really love to hear a dev saying something about this… It’s been 14 pages already!

I don’t want to hear a dev say anything until what they say is “the official supported (or unsupported) Guild Wars 2 Linux is ready! Click here to download a .deb or .rpm.”

I personally almost never run with ‘blobs’ and BG/JQ’s blobs of 10+ are always around the next corner to make me pay for that. -_-

Think of your opponent dodging as psychologically ignoring the shout.

Think of the effect of blind on your shouts as your opponent seeing you shout in some random direction and laughing it off. “Who is he shouting at?”

#anetapologist

randomfightfan.4091:

lol, someone obv has never played a thief before

I do play a thief — it was my second alt — and posts as lengthy as yours are SCREAMING fear of a nerf. It’s coming no matter how many ways thieves try to explain their way out of it… and my Mug does hit for 3-4k. You must not be taking into account all the might-stacking thief can do with stealth/venoms/boon stealing. If I don’t have at least 10 stacks of might, I’m not doing it right.

GMs in Final Fantasy XI would often act as regular players, not displaying their status as GMs, and blend into ‘linkshells’ (think ‘guilds’) and listen for talks of hacks or sharing third party software that’s against their TOS.

Final Fantasy XI’s GMs would also do as was suggested a few posts up and monitor various large scale events and instances — while invisible to regular players — for unusual server activity and inconsistencies.

There was also a particular ‘puzzle’ that could only be completed by the use of speed hacks/position hacks. Anyone who completed that puzzle was instantly banned. People caught on quick, though.

Square-Enix’s GMs weren’t perfect, but they did more to solve this problem. Take notes, ArenaNet.

When a certain number of dead bodies are lying around within a 2000 unit radius of Tequatl, Tequatl sends out a large wave that does a little damage and knockback to living players, but washes all of the corpses back to the little asura lab.

Lore-friendly and easily-implemented solution. :P

Spawn camping solo players trying to reach a karma train on reset night before reset? Only Blackgate™. Stay classy.

Why do people always say ‘again’ when referring to Thief nerfs? Grats, thieves, on your buffs in that last update.

lordkrall.7241:

Not really. Killing someone in order to rescue the world would be a good thing in most peoples eyes, yet it means “taking away” something which, in with your logic, would be evil? Good and evil lies in the eye of the beholder.

You’re adding more complexity than necessary. The situation you described is simply doing something which is inherently evil to prevent future possible evil. Another important point to address is that a person cannot be evil. They can only do evil.

…and I’m working on my fourth year of college, which included honors philosophy in my second year. An education doesn’t alter logic.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

By this claim, every single living being on this planet is “evil.” Carnivores are evil because they kill to eat meat, which they must to survive. Herbivores are evil because they kill plants and eat them, stealing the fruits and seeds to eat them as well, and again they do because they must if they want to survive. Omnivores are the same. Congratulations! You just said “life as we know it is entirely and ultimately evil!” And that includes you!

Nail on the head. I take it you have a problem with acknowledging that you are capable of both good and evil? The best we can do is maintain a proper balance. Just don’t expect ArenaNet’s dev team to handle that. :P

I’m pretty sure someone at ArenaNet stated, in an interview at one point, that they didn’t want thieves to have stealth available at all times, and that’s exactly what they gave them. I noticed in early beta videos at conventions that you choose to play a thief in SPvP, Mr. Peters. ahems

After years in Guild Wars 1, I never dreamed that ArenaNet would so callously destroy my favorite profession, and their most iconic creation.

I can only hope that the recently-introduced problems that make mesmer a very undesirable profession to play will be recognized for their severity and rectified as quickly as the better programmers (and smarter gamers) at ArenaNet are able.

It is truly staggering that it was ever considered reasonable to cause the creation of phantasms to “fail” due to blocking, evasion, blindness, etc. as well as those same problems affecting the phantasms themselves. One or the other, please. Not both… bear in mind that only the latter makes sense considering the nature of phantasms.

Now, on top of that, there is time to destroy the phantasm before it can even act.

Who’s idea was this, exactly, and what is his or her favorite profession? It’s a safe bet it isn’t mesmer.

Other professions, played and spec’d properly, can put me down with only 4 attacks through 2,100 toughness from 20,000 health — all the while remaining stealthed.

None of their abilities are anything short of instantaneous and very few of them have any kind of telegraph animation. This is what is called “balance” in Guild Wars 2 at present.

Does ArenaNet agree?

This post doesn’t even acknowledge the myriad of other bugs this class still has.

marnick.4305:

The boon of windows is simplicity. It works out of the box. That’s simply not true for linux.

Right on all points in your post… except for the notion that Linux does not work ‘out of the box.’ Perhaps you haven’t given it a chance in a few years.

Once Linux installed on most people’s computers (I do this a lot for friends and family), it works brilliantly without any configuration. Various Linux distribution releases since 2008 (or so) have actually been easier to install than any version of Windows ever was — and I date back to Windows 3.11, when I was 12 or so. :P

A later post suggested that Linux is considered difficult by novice users because they have to install it themselves… and I concur. That’s often the only scary part of recommending Linux to someone (and again, you have to do the same thing with installing Windows — and it’s actually less clear about where to install Windows without destroying data).

I always have to help them understand partitioning and help them to avoid destroying all of their data (photos, videos, documents, etc.) Other than that, it’s flawless.

…and before anyone asks (via PM) again about which Linux distro is best for new users… any of them. The user experience is dependent on the desktop environment. Some prefer GNOME 2, some GNOME 3, some Unity, some KDE, etc.

I usually go with Kubuntu. The K Desktop Environment, configured to look and function a bit like Windows 7 or XP, along with Ubuntu’s software repositories is usually slam dunk.

I love playing with the UI off.

This game is beautiful and that aspect of Guild Wars 2 is much easier to appreciate without much of the usually-necessary information given via the UI out of the way… however:

There’s no way to know when you need to heal with the UI off.

All I ask is that the reddened border remain with the UI turned off.

Another suggestion I’ve thought about submitting is a third setting when toggling the UI. A ‘minimal UI’ in-between completely on and completely off… a transparent chat window and a simplified party UI made smaller/less opaque and aligned along the bottom of the screen perhaps…

…but that first idea is all I’m really after.

I just want to know when to hit the healing skill with the UI off.

xithorN.2380:

“interrupt next skill your opponent uses and deal X damage”

You just described some of my favorite GW1 mesmer skills.

• Wandering Eye
  For 4 seconds, the next time target foe attacks, that attack is interrupted and all nearby foes take 30…94…110 damage.

• Mistrust
  For 6 seconds, the next spell that target foe casts on one of your allies fails and deals 10…82…100 damage to that foe and all nearby foes.

• Wastrel’s Demise
  For 5 seconds, target foe is hexed with Wastrel’s Demise. Each second while hexed, target foe and all foes adjacent to that foe take 1…8…10 damage and an additional 1…8…10 damage for each second this spell is in effect. This hex ends prematurely if target foe uses a skill.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what mesmer will have available in 2014-15…

Three things to learn from this thread:

1) A mesmer’s best defense is a good offense.
2) A mesmer’s second-best defense is prevention-before-cure.
3) A mesmer must be capable of predicting what their enemy will do.

In fewer words, this means that mesmer doesn’t have as much active defense as other professions and we have to learn to deal with that. ArenaNet feels this is fair (apparently) because we have a higher amount of passive defense. Once you learn how to predict, you no longer have to react.

While this is kittened, it does mean that playing mesmer will make you better at every other profession.

Illusionary Thief
Cast time: Instant. Cooldown: 6 seconds.

• Applies stealth to itself between all attacks.
• Uses only cloak and dagger.
• Hits for 6,000 – 12,000 damage.

Balanced because phantasms do not have very much health, after all.