Guild Wars 2

Sorry but i was away for a few months. Is the tequatl 1 shot thing in the game yet? I fought him thrice sine i logged in and I never lost a pet yet (although I did die once because I got trapped inside the bone wall with that big fat risen).

Maul damage increase… yum yum.

I’m no pro but imho the zerker=noob assumption is so outdated (no offence to anyone)

As I progressed into the game I have slowly learned to replace my tried and tested bm gears with zerks. It honestly wasn’t an easy transition… I had to replace my gear a few pieces at a time to give myself time to adjust to less toughness and healing.

The biggest adjustment esp for someone who have experienced how tough the bm build and all its iterations are was in picking my fights. I now spend a few seconds checking a group out: who to kill first, who to knockback, etc instead of just jumping in there like I still had the bm build.

At some point, you get so good (or you find a build that is that good) that the fun only comes when you face someone who makes your palms sweat.

What build are you running? Maybe try out a different build?

I ran BM before and saw how amazing (borderline OP) it was even for a low skill player like me so I went hybrid. I’m having more fun now… more deaths but more fun.

I only go p/p when running with the zerg. What’s missing from it would be some form of AoE other than the Ricochet thing. Right now I slot it with a fire sigil just to get that extra AoE that I’m missing.

*P.S. Some cool action movie animation on it wouldn’t hurt as well.

One question to all the thieves who quit WvW or are threatening to quit the game: How many times have you actually stepped on an anti-stealth trap?

I was trolling three guys in JQ BL yesterday and killed a yak that they were trying to guard. One of them ran off and when he got back, I saw him crouch for a few seconds. Obviously, it was a stealth trap so I never came close to it. Upon killing the next yak that passed by, I decided to try stepping where he placed it just to see what the QQ is all about.

Did I die from being revealed? Nope. Between Infiltrator’s Strike+Shadow return, Shortbow 5, Shadow Step+Shadow Return, the defenders had no idea where I was headed.

My point is, although I play only about 2 hrs of WvW a day on my thief, I have never stepped on an anti-stealth trap. The time that I deliberately stepped on one, I still had all the tools in my utilities to juke the hell out of my opponents.

I hate playing my thief because its core mechanic rewards a no-skill player like me way too much. But come on guys, let’s be realistic here. There’s not even a 5% chance that you will step on a trap while playing WvW. If someone plants a trap for you then it’s your clue that you are over-staying in your roaming area and are proving too much of an irritation for them to even bother planting a trap.

This trap is bad for thieves, but I don’t share your tears. Why you would even bother buying new gear or changing your build or quitting WvW for the really small chance that you will be killable for 30 seconds is just a lot of QQ for me.

This happens to all other classes. If I were ANET, I would stop looking at the angle of class balance for now as this will take too long. Instead, they should look at dungeon mechanics and how they can remove some of the viability of running a full zerk team of warriors.

Example is fighting a Veteran Karka. If the karka pops retaliation, even my regen ranger has trouble outhealing it if I don’t stop attacking with my SB. Conditions will shine in fights like these, thus making other classes more viable than a zerker build.

This week was definitely fun. IRON is using some oldschool tactics that I haven’t seen in NA T1 shores for quite some time now.

Break up the zerg and hit three keeps at a time. Break up the zerg and hit from two sides. Hammer and Anvil. Choke points. Whew!

Raestloz.7134:

Boomslang.4352:

IMO, there’s really very little tactic left to WvW. It has all boiled down to one big mass of people trying to steamroll another big mass of people.

I’m not saying that there are no tactics involved in zerg battles, because there are. What I’m saying is that zerging is a tactic and it is the only tactic that you see nowadays in WvW. Before you used to see two or three commanders in the field, all with the same objective of getting ppt but doing it their own different way. You can choose if you want to defend with one commander or go offensive with one or join the one who just roams around. Now, the same group of people who tries to flip camps is the same group who will WP back to defend their keeps. Feels more like a chore than a fun battle to me.

Defending is never fun when nobody is banging the door

Oh, there will always be someone banging at your doors. And defending never did mean that you need to wait inside your keep all the time. That “variety” is what’s missing from WvW now. Can’t really blame players though, given how effective zerging is.

So, who won?

Hi all.

I encountered a warrior several times in WvWvW EB on top of the small cliff between uplands and SM. What she was trying to do was lure people to the edge of the cliff and do a whirlwind attack. This applies fear to some people and they fall down the cliff and die. Now she couldn’t do this to me because of one of my traits that negates cc every few seconds so I usually get her HP quite low and she is forced to run.

When she runs, I can never catch her. She runs so fast and she gets to outrun me and escape. I’m a roaming ranger with a greatsword and sword/dagger so I have three leaps in my arsenal and I have never really encountered any class who can outrun me often. I’ve only seen her use whirlwind attack and rush when trying to escape.

So my questions are:

1. The fear on hit, is that a trait or a sigil? I have a warrior but only got him to 80 and stopped so I don’t know all traits. I don’t know all sigils as well and can’t do much research because I’m at work.

2. The run speed, I’m guessing she’s using superior runes of speed (I noticed that the fury and might disappears first before the swiftness from SoR), but is the added 5% bonus really that big of an addition to the speed? Is there a trait that would stack to the run speed of swiftness+ runes of speed?

Thanks all!

Setun.4368:

I vote human. They have stronger looking attacks, and their movements while fighting just look / feel more fluid. Asuras have a certain….animation whackyness to them that I just don’t buy (except when they’re Mesmers lol.)

This wacky animation is what actually sold me on the asura ranger. I think its the small legs… makes us look like a flea on steroids when using S/D.

Deekers.2031:

anyone know if sigil of nullification would work to remove that retaliation?

another problem i have in that zone is reef drake applying confusion thus causing me to nearly kill myself if i use skills, would sigil of purification or generosity help there?

Curious about this too. The confusion stacks really high and the duration is quite long. These drakes will kill any zerg you throw at them during the escort mission.

Grats to SoR. Map completion for everyone in T1 now.

IMO, there’s really very little tactic left to WvW. It has all boiled down to one big mass of people trying to steamroll another big mass of people.

I’m not saying that there are no tactics involved in zerg battles, because there are. What I’m saying is that zerging is a tactic and it is the only tactic that you see nowadays in WvW. Before you used to see two or three commanders in the field, all with the same objective of getting ppt but doing it their own different way. You can choose if you want to defend with one commander or go offensive with one or join the one who just roams around. Now, the same group of people who tries to flip camps is the same group who will WP back to defend their keeps. Feels more like a chore than a fun battle to me.

The other team is entrenched in a well defended keep. It should be hard to take no matter how many you guys are.

IMHO, what’s killing the fun and “epicness” of WvW keep flipping is how the concept of tactical gameplay is being set aside for zerging. When this gets discussed, I can think of that Helm’s Deep seige from LOTR: Two Towers. Very very big orc zerg knew that it will be hard to take even with a few defenders so they had to find a weakness in the wall.

Anyways, back to topic:

A scaling radius debuff around the commander based on how many people are around him sounds like a workable thing. Maybe something like:

“Hunger – You got a smaller food ration due to your army size. Damage done reduced by 10%, damage taken increased by 10%” (sounds funny, but just to get my point across)

This should (in a way) encourage smaller groups and more commanders in the field. I’ve always wanted to see one commander defending and another who is taking keeps.

Of course, there are a lot of balancing issues that should be considered: definitely pull back on the AC damage. They also need to find the right balance so that a 50-man team would still have the advantage over a 20-man team (There are 50 of them!) but the 20-man team is physically stronger so they won’t be steamrolled in 3 seconds. Whew, I’m confusing myself. Poor devs.

Asura. Sword animation on the asura makes me feel faster than I really am. Hahaha.

jewishjoyride.4693:

Daemon.4295:

Boomslang.4352:

Diak Atoli.2085:

Signet of the Wild + Quickening Zephyr, anyone?

This.

For PvE, I’m not sure if there’s a ranger burst that can compare to a trait-ed SoW+QZ on a shortbow ranger with zerk stuff on. I actually run this most of the time along with the piercing arrows trait and a fire sigil.

Snip.

SoW+QZ will burst for more with either GS or Sword than with shortbow. Probably even longbow. Remember quickness only gives you 133% attack speed on shortbow (is that number right, or is it 125%? Can’t remember).

IMO, SoW+SoH+QZ+Moment of Clarity with a Greatsword is the best burst a ranger can get in PvE right now. I reckon the strongest single attack chain is SOW, GS5 for interrupt / attack of opportunity, Maul, SoH before maul lands, LB3, LB4 for another interrupt, LB5, QZ as soon as you start channeling LB5, LB2. Can anyone come up with something better?

Signet of the Hunt grants an “attack of opportunity.” Any interrupt, when taking moment of clarity grants an “attack of opprtunity.” The unfortunate thing is that one AoO will replace the other, so SoH active will not stack with the Hilt Bash interrupt.

Gotta agree with you on Shortbow and QZ not being a good combo. That set up lost it’s synergy well before the quickness nerf.

My bad, I was counting all the AoE damage from the piercing arrows and fire blast. All those flying numbers are really nice. I’m also not too good at melee (oceanic ping = 600ms) so going SB just decreases the chance of me missing the moving targets.

Alas, I’ve never experienced the pre quickness nerf shortbow. That would have been awesome.

Xavi.6591:

The OP was in the Mesmer forums today asking to have Phantasm builds nerfed. Now he is here asking for Thief bunker builds to be nerfed. What class will he QQ next?

Any class that he can’t kill. Hahahaha.

@OP
Seriously, a bunker is a bunker because it is hard to take down. Most of the time, the point of going bunker is for you to survive until your team comes. They kill you not from burst but from attrition. If you are burst and you fight the bunker’s way, you will lose 90% of the time.

One key to killing bunkers is to time your interrupts right. Most bunkers will wait until they are at around 25%hp before they use their heal so if you interrupt this, there’s a big chance that you will be able kill him. Of course, there’s the luck factor as well.

Diak Atoli.2085:

Signet of the Wild + Quickening Zephyr, anyone?

This.

For PvE, I’m not sure if there’s a ranger burst that can compare to a trait-ed SoW+QZ on a shortbow ranger with zerk stuff on. I actually run this most of the time along with the piercing arrows trait and a fire sigil.

It’s like a Ranger on drugs with AoE.

For WvWvW, I just change the zerk stuff to cleric’s+knight’s and get a good enough crit chance (around 45%). Target the guy at the back of the zerg and make sure your arrows hit as many guys as possible. Watch how a group who tries to flank will back away from a small asura ranger.

Really, threads like these make me laugh. Have you seen the forums for other classes? In every class (well, rarely for guards), there is a topic that comes up week after week after week: “How do you beat a thief?”

Even the best BM rangers (which seems to have been brought up several times here) reached a consensus: they either run and don’t bother with thieves with even the slightest amount of skill OR they stay and fight a long battle that would eventually go the thief’s way (because of the thief’s unlimited reset potentials).

Even this dreaded trap patch which most thieves argue as a nerf directly aimed at them just cements the idea that the thief class is indeed anet’s Golden Child. I mean, this is the only class nerf that I’m aware of that will make other classes spend something on. What a nerf!

So my answer to this question is the same answer that thief players put in all the threads complaining about thieves: L2P

Nope, this is a good change. It’s really really irritating when someone mapchats “is there a mesmer in the JP?” while the rest of his server is fighting tooth and nail for objectives.

If you want to go to the EB JP and want to fight for your server as well, put “go to JP” at the end of your itinerary. Problem solved.

I run a signet sharing cleric/knight GS/SB power hybrid and signet of stone has been my “Oh kitten” button for quite some time now. SoW is good when fighting hammer warriors and fear necros as well.

Ouch. I guess I need to spend more time with this story thing then.

The biggest problem I’m seeing is the last dungeon. I might be spending more time trying to look for a group than being inside the dungeon.

Want to watch this!

I’d say let the stigma remain (for WvWvW at least).

It’s priceless seeing other players always run after the ranger thinking that they’re free bags of loot, only to go running with their tails behind their backs when we start “needling away” at their hp.

Hi Guys. I’m on my 6th level 80 now but I haven’t been able to completely finish any personal story for them. I’m getting some time off and I decided that I’ll complete at least one personal story to get a better feel of the lore/back stories.

Just wondering, is it something that I can do in say 2 days at 5 hours a day? Do I need to party up at some point? I’m going to use my ranger and I’ll be waypointing to all locations by the way.

Thanks!

After that day when an engi first took out his prybar to faceroll people in confusion and that crazy night when we became “elixirholics”, forum engies were already discussing alternate builds the next day.

People here are so used to nerfs that they know how to recognize when a build is starting to get “too good” and anticipate incoming nerfs.

Same issue here, all started happening when this skill lag thing came out. Even if the pull is successful and the enemy is right in front of me, the prybar will still miss.

Perhaps the character is already out of range when the prybar skill registers?