Guild Wars 2

Shirlias.8104:

michelada.2947:

i have 355 hps with my guardian, it would be kinda silly to have the full spec just at the beggining of the expansion, i’m assuming it will be 400 or probably 300

Proof of heroics.
Everybody could manage to have em Since the first login.

According to the devs Proof of Heroics won’t work for unlocking PoF HPs; they will be introducing a new currency to WvW for that.

Menadena.7482:

I am assuming it will be a collection and you just proved the point.

Making it a collection would complicate allowing unlocks from WvW though.

Hevoskuuri.3891:

Since the new specs are not meant to be overtuned or in any way better than HoT ones, I think it would be unfair for them to cost more than 250 HP’s.

Unless the PoF Hero challenges reward more points that HoT ones like HoT did with vanilla. That way no one could unlock the specs right at launch, but you could earn the points fairly quickly to play the expansion with the elite.

Wow there seems to be a lot of confusion as to how this is going to work. I don’t think it’s that complicated:

- There has been no indication that Hero points won’t be used to unlock the new e-spec, so any Hero Points that you have stockpiled should be able to be used for that. This is also consistent with how HoT was handled. Remains to be seen if the price will allow unlocks on day one for players with all current HP’s unlocked

- The new PoF Skirmish chests will likely have the same drops as the current ones, except for changing Proofs of Heroics for the new currency

- The new currency will most likely allow you to buy everything that Proofs can now, along with the PoF specific items and PoF specific proofs.

This would make the issue of still being able to obtain Proofs moot, since they will be totally superseded by the new currency. As far as I can tell this is completely inline with what ANet has published so far, along with some reasonable assumptions. This way no-one loses functionality whether they upgrade or not, no-one can insta-unlock all the PoF content but they will be able to start working on unlocking it on day 1.

To me the more interesting question is what will happen with selectable stat gear with PoF. Will PoF stats be selectable on day 1? Will it matter it the gear has been purchased yet?

This thread is confusing. Links are nothing new, and where is anyone seeing queues 50-deep on every map on a linked server on any day but reset?

Several of the LW3 boss encounters have already been tuned down to make them easier to solo. At this point all of the Living World and personal story steps can be fairly easily handled solo by an appropriately specced & geared character. If you’re having issues I would suggest looking at your build, gear or tactics for weaknesses.

Turk.5460:

Because it forces interaction between current builds with the new elite specs. It’s how ANET can gather the data to try to bring things in line before launch, I’m sure there are a crapload of things that are way overtuned/undertuned that will be changed before launch thanks to this test.

Its only one weekend. This isn’t going to be the only weekend you’ll ever be able to play GW2 WvW Ever and Forever 1000 years www.wvwweekend.com 100 years

Yeah fair point. In a dedicated testing environment no-one would be playing vanilla/HoT specs. A weekend of chaos now is better than weeks of chaos at launch if balance is tested.

I’d rather seem them do that testing on a dedicated beta server (they’d easily get enough numbers testing for the weekend), or in EoTM, rather than in a live environment with untested classes that haven’t been balanced yet. This weekend is going to be a mess.

The HoT beta was the same; you could play the elite classes in live WvW, but you didn’t get to keep any progress you made with the character (dailies, loot, wxp).

Doesn’t make it a good idea, but at least there is precedent.

For leveling it doesn’t get much easier than Sword/Pistol. Pistol 5 creates a pulsing smoke field that blinds nearby mobs. With the right timing on refreshing this it allows you to permanently blind any melee range mobs. As long as you avoid ranged and un-blindable enemies you can mow down mobs risk free.

Race change may be out, but racial tonics may be a possibility though. We’ve already seen that they have the ability to do that and there is clearly a market for something like that.

Are you sure that you aren’t just moving up to a different level of participation tier? The progress bar is per-tier, so if you are not capped for participation then it would make sense to move from 90% to 20% after earning WxP (you filled in the last 10% of the current tier and earned 20% of the next tier with the sentry cap).

When you start out you are at 0%, and then work your way up to 100% for the first tier (25 track points I think?). You then start back at 0% and work your way up to 100% again to get to the next tier (60 track points). This keeps repeating for each tier until you get to 195 track points and cap out at 100%.

What you’re describing sounds exactly like this.

Jeknar.6184:

I know Mal. I too wish Arena Net would make it’s own (right) decisions. But they decided to take the poll approach because people felt they were never heard. You cannot blame them for that.

Back on the subject of the thread. I don’t think server links must go. Several servers were extremely unhealthy for WvW experience, giving new players a horrid vision of the game mode.
I know how it is the botton of the barrel and it’s not pretty. I’ve been on Eredon Terrace for 2 years and sometimes we would have roughly 20 people for a reset night. You think new players would stick around when you NEVER find other ally in a suposed “team” game mode? When the outnumbered buff is a permanent feature in your buff bar and the PPT of your server is only from that camp you captured and still on RI thus why it isn’t flipped back yet? No. New players aren’t going to stick around for this. Server links are providing a way for these close-to-death servers to have an “healthy” WvW experience.
People are crying for their communities being killed because of links. I’m not bound to server pride like some people are. If that’s the price to “save” the game mode, I’ll gladly pay it. I like the varierity of being shuffled around and fighting different enemies instead of fighting the same 2 enemies over and over again because my server cannot move a tier due coverage issues. Removing the links would just return us to the stale state of WvW where you would face the same oponents for months unless a major population shift through transfer happened.

This.

I’m on Kaineng. Shortly before the linking there were nights (prime time, mind you) where the camps I was flipping were providing over half of our PPT at the time. No matter how much fun that was, it made for a broken game mode.

Kingsdavid.3598:

Deathrubber.3861:

thiefs shortbow skill set is the most elaborated in the game. there shoulnt change a single code and i dont believe it ever will. every single one of these 5 skills are pure gold in every possible thief build.

Can you plesae elaborated on the subject cuz maybe there is something I don’t see. Cuz to me it feels really doll. People often take the shortbow for it’s amazing mobility and if it hadn’t had the 5 skill most people wouldn’t take it IMO. And I really don’t understand how Choking Gas fits in the overall consept of the shortbow.

And BTW what do you think of the daggar/daggar change?

These changes would be bad for WvW.

Increasing the speed of SB #2 would allow us to rapidly spam blast finishers at range. Given that it is already spammable at close range I would not expect to see any improvements to this skill.

SB #3 has already been nerfed before, so I don’t see it getting any improvements.

SB #4 is hugely useful in WvW, either as an opener to allow whirl finishers for stacking poison, as a standoff weapon to hold zergs at bay, keeping poison up on enemy groups to reduce healing effectiveness or to place on enemy downed to slow rezzing.

D/D #3 change would completely change the nature of the D/D condi spec. I don’t see that happening ever.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Sure. I’d much prefer there to be no gating — I don’t see any reason why ANet should decide for me what level toon I can take into a new zone. I like trying to find ways to navigate the map as a lowbie. Plus, they have other ways to prevent people grinding out new toons to farm the new maps.

My suggestions were made assuming that ANet has a specific reason for gating access behind an item — they’ve made all the new areas contingent upon something story + character specific.

To prevent BL Key farming would be my guess. It’s trivially easy to get the map completion on Bloodstone Fen; with maxed out gliding it takes less than 5 minutes and doesn’t require any combat. As it is now to farm the rewards you need to burn Tomes to get to 80, which puts a limit on how often you can do that. If you could bring a low level character to the zone you could farm multiple keys per hour.

It seems clear that the WvW game mode was heavily influenced by the RvR game mode from Dark Ages of Camelot. That game made a lot of mistakes with their expansions, but one expansion that worked really well was the addition of Darkness Falls (DF), and I think a similar idea could work here.

(For those not familiar; it was a WvW enabled dungeon with the best cash farm in the game at the time, but no objectives to capture. The trick was that you could only enter if your realm controlled the most Keeps across all of the battlegrounds. Once a realm would gain access by taking a keep that put them in the lead, players would flock to the dungeon to clear out the previous owners, who could stay until dead, but could not re-enter the zone).

This zone had two main benefits for the health of the game: it helped to draw PvE players in RvR to gain access to the DF zone for the realm(s) that are losing, and it gave the winning team an incentive to leave the primary RvR zones in preference of farming DF.

There are some potential downsides; in cases of severe imbalance some servers may never have a chance to see the zone, and there is the potential for intra-server conflict between the die-hard WvW players and the PvE players who are only there to open access to the zone. The first wouldn’t be as bad is it was on DAoC (they had permanent fixed pairings, whereas with dynamic pairings in GW2 the matches are much fairer). The second should be somewhat self-correcting over time, as insufficient WvW players to defend means that you don’t get to keep the door open and will soon face the zone being invaded as another server gets access, and PvE players will need to learn WvW tactics in order to actually open the zone.

Obviously the specific mechanics involved are flexible (instead of total number of Keeps held it could be PPT that determines access, or control of SMC, ruins, etc), but I think the idea has some merit.

Thoughts?

They should just allow you continue to collect reward track points outside of WvW maps (with the contribution decay in place still of course).

The camps make sense; solo I can flip a camp fast enough that the swords go up seconds before fully capping it. I’m sure a small group could do it fast enough to bypass the swords altogether.

Are you sure that the towers never had swords, or did it just not have swords when it was flipped? There seems to be a cooldown on the Swords that can prevent them from showing if the target is engaged for too long, or if it is engaged, disengaged and then re-engaged after the swords clear.

Teq spawns whirlpools at the end of the first phase. Every single time. They will appear in front of T1/T2. Even when the Guardian traits were bugged and the first phase only lasted 30 seconds he still spawned them.

EDIT: Removed snark.

Wait, so those of us who intentionally sought out low-tier servers to avoid zergs/queues are going to be paired with the highest population servers? I paid money to transfer servers to avoid exactly that.

EDIT: I should say that I do like the overall changes to WvW, and I see the necessity of some sort of server merge/pairing. My specific concern is that for those of us on lower tier servers there is going to be a rather large change in the game experience; once that most of us will see as a negative (not to mention the reaction of the higher tier servers suddenly finding their queued BG’s full of solo roamer types from their partner server). If we wanted to be on the highest tier servers we would have transferred there.

Obviously it is too late to change the design for the first round of the beta, but perhaps a system where the lowest tier servers are rolled up together into linked servers to provide a moderately populated lower tier environment may be worth testing?

He always spawns whirlpools right as he flies away at 75% on every map, no matter how fast he is damaged to that point. Watch the NPC dialog; they will mention avoiding the whirlpools. When that happens look for the new red circles with fingers in front of the turrets (you may or may not see the whirlpool effect) and stand in it.

(I recommend using a Hunter for getting this achievement; with Troll Ungent and self-rez from the pet you can search for the treasure a long time down there)

Doam.8305:

Thx for the pic however I can’t possibly think of an instance where this thing receives any actual hype. Thieves and Rangers and short bow isn’t even the most used weapon by either class either.

Unless ANET slaps on short bow on the majority future Elite specs if the game lasts that long or the even more radical idea of Anet expanding on the weapons and skills of the base classes.

At the end of the day it’s the last legendary that can only be used by two classes who barely use the weapon class. It probably would’ve been better if it was an aquatic because more classes would at least be able to equip it.

SB is by far the most commonly equipped weapon for Thieves. Nearly every build, power or condi, will have a SB equipped.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

It would be easy enough to move all the camp guards closer to the center, so you’d always have to fight all of them to flip a camp. But to be clear, you guys are arguing that you want to do ‘more PvE’, which seems to go against the forum’s current agenda of ‘less PvE.’

I don’t know that it’s so much about more PvE than it is about consistency. The guards are more spread out and further from the cap area at Well than they are at Farm, but I can pull the Farm Supervisor solo through the barn (even fully upgraded I only get one add) and cap without pulling any more aggro. At Well as soon as the Lord is aggroed every guard in the camp comes to help him.

All in all it is a minor issue though.

That’s normal. For some reason the DBL camp guards are really bad at their jobs. At the SE camp you cap it with only killing the Lord while the rest of the guards sit and watch.

HoT Runes/Sigils, Mistforged Hero skins (since tournaments seem to be done)

Gele.2048:

Tamasan.6457:

Whirlpools always spawn right at 75% when he goes invulnerable for the first battery defense stage. No exceptions. They’re always there, regardless of how fast the dps is.

They are easy to miss if you’re not paying attention and you need to be quick to get into one. But it is certainly possible.

do you like me to record a god kitten video to prove to you that they dont spam ? always and yes i know iv read million guides i saw videos and stuff they dont spam if u burn the boss to fast and this week entire week i got the luck fail totaly whit not taking not even 5% of the boss OR or burn it so fast that he skips the whirlpools

I run Teq daily and have for about a year now. They always spawn, every time, no matter how fast you burn him. If he gets burned fast enough to not spawn them by the time he flies off he WILL spawn them at that point. Right when he takes off grasping fingers will appear in the middle of new red fields (you may or may not actually see the whirlpool effect). Stand in one of those fields and you will get pulled under.

Jana.6831:

Romu.1352:

dunno what ppl are talking about, i feel pretty comfy with venom share, tricks and dire set build against anyone in wvw.

Funny thing: each time someone says “thief is fine” and I ask them, when they last played, how their playstyle is, if they’re running with zergs etc.. it emerges that they last played thief 2 years ago, are running with zergs in eotm etc. so I’m taking your “thief is fine” with a grain of salt =)

Condi thief is fine/op in WvW roaming. I regularly dominate other classes in 1v1 and 1v2 fights. PvP as well at the lower ranked tiers at least; most 1v1 matchups are easily won, and 1v2 is usually as well as long as one of them isn’t a DH.

Chaoserror.2368:

I posted this here since i’m looking for some Thief PVP aid.

Yesterday I took my first adventure in pvp: conquest Forest of Niflhel (unranked-soloQ: my first pvp match ever) As being a total pvp noob, it didn’t take too long before being called one. I was asked if I even knew thief mechanics: No I don’t, it’s my first time, please give me a chance to learn. And was then asked to uninstall my game.

I tried unstalling and reinstalling, that did not help: I’m still a noob in pvp. I tried searching on the forum, but most items i find are rather old (+1year?) Are these tactics still viable? Or can some1 who can point me to some more recent pvp info.

• Is our role the same on the different maps?
• Is the metabattle build a good one for starters?
• Why should i leave downed players and not finish them? (isn’t that kind of the purpose in pvp?)
• What is far capping?

No body likes to lose, I understand, but where do you go to practice if you’re not welcome in unranked matches?

- Our role is largely the same across maps (jumping into fights to give your team a +1 advantage, taking advantage of undefended points to quickly decap)
- The metabattle build is good against other metabattle builds. It may not be the best to learn with. I prefer a D/D condition build; it has much more survivability while still being able to dish out damage
- You should leave a downed player if you have a teammate who can take care of the stomp. As long as your teammate has enough health to safely stomp, once the opposing player is downed you should be moving on to the next fight since you should be able to get there faster. This is situational and depends on many factors. You should never just leave a downed enemy unless there is someone else there to stomp
- Far capping is taking the point that is closest to the other team spawn. Usually this is not a good strategy, but it can make sense in some circumstances

A Keep is a specific structure with a double set of walls and a Champion Lord that must be killed to take it. There are three per borderland and three in EB (not sure about EoTM).

Spoons don’t just drop from Keep Lords; they can also drop from Tower Lords and Camp Supervisors. Towers are single walled structures that are also guarded by a Champ, and Camps are unwalled objectives that are guarded by Veterans. If you’ve flipped a map objective to your team then you’ve killed a mob that can drop the spoon.

What is working for you and how things have changed in your play style?

I played Trick/Acro/DD D/D + SB before the patch, so not much has changed in play style other than a big boost in sustain. I did switch from Carrion to Sage Amulet due to the boost in Assassins Reward with healing power.

How are you dealing with the condi spam?

Evade evade evade. I haven’t had any issues with condis with this build.

Anyone have any success with the new Acro line?

Tons. With all of the passive healing that I have (SoM, Driven Fortitude and Assassins Reward) and extra dodges from DD, enhanced vigor, SoA and Endurance Thief, I can survive for a LONG time on point against multiple opponents while keeping up constant condition pressure with Death Blossom, Lotus Training, Caltrops and Caltrops on dodge.

ekarat.1085:

• I made it to the midpoint twice. Each time I jumped too short to reach the first present. I’m not sure why I’m not jumping far enough — I’m either letting go of W without meaning to or noticing (and I’m not sure that I am), or I’m not jumping from far enough forwards to start.

If you go before the blue presents appear (which you should), this is indeed a very long jump. You need to do a running jump at the very last moment before falling off of the peppermint.

DeadlySynz.3471:

Cirrion.8951:

Etybagig.6012:

Also, the fact that it’s probably just as fast to farm Silverwastes and buy the drinks from the trading post should be viewed as a major design flaw. You created something meant to attract people to the Wintersday activities that is actually just pushing people away from them.

Also also, the fact that you guys ignore anything controversial these days is very concerning. Every time you let something like this go you are sending the message that nothing is wrong. That you think 10,000 drinks is reasonable. That you expected this type of reaction. That you just don’t care enough to actually address these concerns. And more than anything it shows you are completely out of touch with your players.

They do think that 10,000 drinks is reasonable, and that the fact that you need to farm for it is a feature to them, not a flaw. They didn’t create this content to draw people into Wintersday; they created it to draw money & karma out of the economy. They understand that few will be able to farm all their own drinks, and that most will need to buy them through the TP where they take their 15% cut.

How exactly are they drawing money out of the economy? Either:

A) Gold is being transferred from one person to another
B) More gold is injected if someone actually buys gems and converts to gold.
C) Silverwastes is be farmed in overdrive

One is maintaining the current status quo while the other 2 are injecting additional gold into the economy. Judging by how many “SW chest farm” are popping up in the LFG function, it’s clear the route people are taking

Then for Karma, I’m sure most have figured out by now that buying gifts with Karma is a waste. You still get more gold buying gloves, forging them, then salvaging them into scraps.

Their design has really nothing to do with eliminating gold or Karma from the economy..

The gold is being taken out via the TP tax; either on the drink sales themselves or through the sale of mats farmed in SW (SW doesn’t add much gold to the game, it adds drops/mats which are traded in a taxed transaction for gold that already existed).

You may want to check out the Wintersday merchant too; they’ve added several Karma sinks there, including a few ways to convert Karma → Gold.

kuritsutian.2987:

I think the design is genius, most people won’t understand tho.
10K drinks will guarantee constant demand on them, so instead of injecting gold to the game (liquid gold on gifts) they fixed the distribution of the gold currently existing in the game (people with lots of gold buying the drinks) from those that sell and are in need of it. Add to it karma conversion to gold without generating more gold.. basically a karma sink.

Correct. It looks like ANet has decided to use Wintersday to try to rehabilitate Karma as a viable currency by draining off the excess from players. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see new uses for Karma in the future after this event is over.

Kenmei.7138:

I just got a pip. My team lost 403-500 tho so I’m curious if it’s a bug or there are some conditions that allow this kind of “pip behaviour” ?

This is normal. Before the match the system tries to predict who will win and by how much, and you actual pip loss/gain is based on how you did relative to that guess, rather than just win/loss. So you can gain pips in a loss by barely losing a match you should have gotten blown out in, and you can lose pips in a win by barely winning a match you should have dominated.

Etybagig.6012:

Also, the fact that it’s probably just as fast to farm Silverwastes and buy the drinks from the trading post should be viewed as a major design flaw. You created something meant to attract people to the Wintersday activities that is actually just pushing people away from them.

Also also, the fact that you guys ignore anything controversial these days is very concerning. Every time you let something like this go you are sending the message that nothing is wrong. That you think 10,000 drinks is reasonable. That you expected this type of reaction. That you just don’t care enough to actually address these concerns. And more than anything it shows you are completely out of touch with your players.

They do think that 10,000 drinks is reasonable, and that the fact that you need to farm for it is a feature to them, not a flaw. They didn’t create this content to draw people into Wintersday; they created it to draw money & karma out of the economy. They understand that few will be able to farm all their own drinks, and that most will need to buy them through the TP where they take their 15% cut.

Durability runes are worth considering as well. I switched to them from Krait runes and found I stayed up longer in fights. The problem with Krait runes is that you only get the +duration benefit if the conditions go uncleansed (same with +duration sigils). I’m currently experimenting with Dragonhunter and Trapper runes to see if it is worth working some traps into my build.

Killed him daily for about 6 months now. Got a few minis and exos. Last week I got two hoards on consecutive kills.

WuGzaGenius.5684:

Evan Lesh.3295:

WuGzaGenius.5684:

Lol why not just seperate the stacks of condis from each opposing team to neutral monsters?

This seems pretty straight forward, they need to be counted different.

If the monster has 2 separate stacks of bleeds, which stack does damage first? The only way I can think is the first one applied goes first. That’s doable without splitting the stack.

If its two seperate stacks they each have their own timer and duration, at which they were applied, each dealing their own amounts of damage.

The one to deal the killing blow would be the one that gets the kill, seems really simple to me.

The timer is on the mob, not the attacker. The bleeds from Red and Blue all tick at the same time. If both Red and Blue have enough damage in their portion of the tick to get the kill, how do you figure out who had the killing blow?

That makes sense; I was on my Daredevil. The reward track issue was likely just the animation as you said.

Thanks!

After winning a PvP match last night I was reviewing the stats before exiting the match. I switched from the combat stats panel back to the reward track panel when I got a second burst of reward track progress along with an Achievement for winning my first match as a Guardian. Which is odd as I was playing my Thief, the only character that I’ve ever PvP’d with.

DarcShriek.5829:

Tom Gore.4035:

Oreithyia.3064:

Are all elder dragons male?
perhaps naming the Deep Sea Dragon “Ursula” would be more fitting.
I still have the dream of a Hanse-like bond of sea- and trading cities like Lion’s Arch and you’ve got to sail from one to the other to protect trading routes and protect the cities from tentacle monsters from attacking and if you fail, all Blacklion-trading institutions (TP, vendors, you can still open chest of course) fail too.

We already know the DSD’s name starts with an “S”. That’s where “Steve” comes from. We could call her “Shirley” of course, if you prefer?

Shirley? You can’t be serious!

I am. And don’t call me Shirley.

DA/Trickery/Daredevil D/D Thief. With max defensive guard stacks (+50 endurance on guard kill) it’s constant evade frames. Add in the AoE condition damage options (Caltrops, caltrops on dodge, double needle traps, AoE condi sigils and Krait runes) and upgraded camps melt fast.

SoulSin.5682:

Lava Burning and Burning (condition) are two completely different sources of damage.
The shrine will mitigate only lava damage, not the condition.

In the stream it was explicitly mentioned that the shrine will protect against both lava damage and burning condition damage (just before the 14:00 minute point IIRC).

I’d be surprised if we don’t see a tournament soon. With their dev team focused on the x-pac there won’t likely be much new content in the near future, so I expect we’ll see some recycled content such as WvW tournaments or festivals to keep us busy in the meantime.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

…
- The only reason to use a splitter at this point is to get the stats of the current appearance back…

So if we didn’t already buy a splitter doing this isn’t an option now? Is there any way for someone without a splitter in inventory right now to recover stats from an item?