Guild Wars 2

How about adding a defensive skill (invulnerabilty, block, evade, aoe knockback, aoe pull, etc.) together with a “training mechanic.” The idea would be to “train” your pet to activate its defensive skill and return to you (or not) when its heath reaches a certain level or when taking damage above a certain rate.

I would also like to see cool down information for the pets non-F2 attacks.

Ranger is probably the weakest class for WvW at the moment. That said, I love playing my ranger in WvW. Playing Ranger in WvW is “hard mode”. Here are my comments on your weapon choices: sword is the only weapon that does enough damage to come close to competing with other classes in terms of damage output (probably still not close enough to bother) but all the dancing about makes it too difficult for me to use in WvW. Mobility is important in WvW and your weapon choices give you none. IMHO, Signet of the Hunt does not give enough mobility on its own. Warhorn does give you a blast, swiftness, fury and might and in WvW and I find it much more useful than dagger. But in fact, perma-swiftness is not enough to keep up with the groups I run with. GS damage is less than Sword, but it gives you a leap with skill 3, a block with skill 4 and a CC with skill 5. By the way, using LB skill 4 at the wrong time will make everybody else hate you.

So when I think of what to bring to WvW is

1. How can I support my group (Warhorn blast, Healing Spring, Spotter, Frost Spirit, etc.)
2. Mobility and mobility denial (GS, Warhorn, Muddy Terrain, RaO, Entangle, Lightening Reflexes, etc.)
3. CC (GS, LB 4 at the right moment like when someone needs a nudge off a cliff.)
4. Damage (jk, everybody I know laughs at the Ranger’s ability to do damage).
5. Equipping pets that will stay alive and do something marginally useful with F2. (jk, even bears insta-melt in most large group encounters my groups go through).

Most importantly, if you find a skilled group that will put up with a Ranger, don’t be a jerk. Because right now Warriors, Guardians, Mesmers, Elementalists, and Thieves all have rolls that cannot be replaced. Rangers can argue the point but don’t bother. Nobody is going to listen.

P.S. Skilled groups will believe you should pop your invulnerability at the right time. The only way I know how to do this on a Ranger is by giving up both a grandmaster trait and a utility slot. I don’t bother.

P.P.S. Don’t die and rally anyone.

Like I said before, Ranger in WvW is hard mode.

Had some fun with hunter’s shot in WvW last night. Haven’t quite figured out how to best use it with the group I usually run with. I would not call it OP, but it helps as an equalizer.

Arcade Fire.4895:

Someone please explain to me why the change to Hunter’s Shot is a good thing. If I’m using a LB in the first place, I can’t fathom why the stealth with a short duration would be better than the old skill. If you’re actually at a distance where it matters than you’re playing your ranger+lb wrong.

In PvE stealth is close to useless, in WvW it is the most OP thing in the game (even three seconds and especially when roaming), and in sPvP it seems balanced about right. That is my experience anyway. In WvW think of Hunters Shot followed by swap to GS, drop target and Swoop in a random direction to escape (need auto-targeting off for this). You are gone and those you were just fighting are apoplectic. Plenty of other uses for stealth have already been discussed. On demand stealth is new to Ranger, so it will be interesting to see how it is used.

In a hot join match today there was a player on my team who spent almost the entire match dead at a capture point. Then there are the players who just stay at spawn for the entire match. I know it is hot join and not a rated match, but is that considered “honorable?”

dovrak.4376:

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Heh.

100% Crit Chance from stealth or after (Remorseless trait + Precise Strike) every 9.5s. Comparable to what thieves can do in a D/P set, only with out the need to get revealed and with superior range and slightly less damage. They just might make rangers interesting yet. Hopefully one of the good rangers out there has enough tools now to make a build that isn’t so reliant on passives (spirits, pets, etc.). I know they have been trying to pull it off for a long time.

How is the best disengage mechanic in the game, stealth, an offensive mechanic? You can stealth and switch weapons, run away, etc.
It encourages both offensive and defensive playstyle. Like if bunker rangers didn’t have enough survivability, they can now nearly perma stealth.

Bunker rangers spec towards more condition damage and LB is more of a power weapon. A bunker ranger would need to give up a lot for a tiny bit of stealth. Don’t see a reason to switch to LB. Stealth is OP in WvW, useless in PvE and I find it to be about right in sPvP.

Put me in the group who likes this change. I’ve never been able to use stealth effectively in PvE, but Rangers in PvE already seemed OP to me. Boss fights now taking longer because of reduced vulnerability? Well okay, but speed runs are not my thing. Stealth capping a downed opponent… maybe I’m evil, but it always makes me smile when Shared Anguish and Hide in Plain Sight both proc during a guardian cap.

Mechanically I think the big problem is that players now have the capability of one-shotting another player with minor skills. Fear, knockback etc. now have the capability of completely reversing a fight. While I have fun playing this map, the mechanics make winning or losing much more random than in the other maps.

Gilgamesh.2561:

Easily the longest requested feature next to solo queues is dueling. People have been asking for dueling since BWE #1.

Get ready for solo arena syncers…and people unwilling to play when vs their friends or with a team composition they dislike.

Queue syncing is incredibly easy to curb. All you have to do alternate player/team.

Player 1 queues -> Team 1
Player 2 queues -> Team 2
Player 3 queues -> Team 1

Etc.

If your group of 5 friends queue at the same time, there is a strong chance your group will be split and you’ll be playing against your friends.

Another solution is to just take the first 10 players then randomize what teams they’re put on.

Even this system can be gamed by players wishing to violate the intent of a single queue system: A group of three players wishing to end up on the same team has a 12.5% chance of landing on the same side if they target a single match. If they immediately quit a game where they don’t end up on the same side, they can retry with a new match. On average, once every eight times they should hit a combo they like. I would hope that people who were so inclined could stick to something like hot join, but it is human nature to look for ways of gaining an advantage.

It’s great for trolling people, if you are into that sort of thing. Not sure if it should be taken seriously as a competitive map, though I have fun each time it shows up in the rotation. It is the only map where I find myself wanting some way to quickly change builds.

I usually play solo and for me hot join is a mixed bag. I do try to help my team win each match I enter and don’t worry too much about rank and glory. When I play against others doing the same the matches can be a lot of fun, but when facing teams with even two or three people coordinating against your team, the matches quickly become lopsided.

The big problem is that hot join is the only non-tournament option. So you end up with both solo players and casual groups playing against each other. Not good for either side as the casual group players develop sloppy play habits and the solo players don’t have a lot of fun.

No. Too many other issues to fix first.

Prysin.8542:

meh, in that sense, we could just get the option to charm fire imp’s….

And while we’re at it. Whales, Risen Bullsharks, Rock Dogs, Minotaurs, Barracudas, Dolyaks, Armadillos and charrs (c’mon, its just a big cat)

Or Juvenile Karka… seriously. Somewhat less seriously, a Juvenile Risen High Wizard so we could have a ranger pet wielding Eternity:

I’ve been doing a fair amount of the hot join sPvP lately running a BM variant and the thing I struggle with the most is breaking immobilized. Warrior immobilize followed by 100 blades and mesmer iLeap followed by blurred frenzy are things I have not figured out how to deal with. The better mesmers and warriors are all very well aware of this. Someone suggested Signet of Stone, but I don’t think I can pick up Signet of the Beastmaster w/o seriously messing up the BM build.

Since any reasonably specced team would have at least some immobilizes, a ranger should have some way of countering this w/o resorting to a grandmaster trait. Having LR break immobilize as well as stun seems like the obvious choice to me. Then again, perhaps I am overlooking something.

This is mainly an annoyance issue. The problem is that, before you discover all the cool aspects of the area, this issue comes up and creates a negative first impression. After doing Spekk’s Lab to get the achievement, it seems like the mechanics there are really quite good. And the JP was out very early. Why does Arenanet keep messing up the basics that they clearly had mastered at launch?

Slightly off topic, but related. They have toned down the supply delivery event which apparently was supposed to be a nice introduction to the zone. But nobody seems to know this so they are no longer even bothering with it. Another blown first impression. It is really a shame since there are so many very cool things about this zone. Probably not for those who hate jumping puzzles, but you don’t have to be a big jumping puzzle fan to have fun there.

Opc.4718:

Anet just gave everyone a bunch of free gold with this update, and suddenly you’re all concerned about “gold sinks”? 1g covers 70+ deaths, and unless you are really really bad, you’d get a positive return at the end of the day anyway. Shut up and play the game.

I’d normally be in WvW but it is rather boring this week.

This one issue really turned me off to the whole area. It is as if the following discussion took place:

Senior Game Designer: “Team, we have a problem: Guild Wars 2 is just not sucking enough. How can we make it suck more?”
Developer 1: “Well, we could add elements similar to things in real life that people hate.”
Senior Game Designer: “Such as?”
Developer 2: “Hmmm: people really hate taxes.”
Developer 3: “Err… we could make a huge jumping puzzle where most people are guaranteed to fall to their death, then make them pay a death tax.”
Senior Game Designer: “I’m liking the way this is going, but won’t we look like total jerks if we do this.”
Developer 1: “I know, we make the death tax a trifling amount. Just enough to be annoying, but so small that people will feel petty if they complain about it.”
Senior Game Designer: “Brilliant! As an added bonus this will really annoy those forum whiners. Make it so!”

Have to admit that my first impression was negative. Did not care for the Skyhammer map (really, now you can die from falling in sPvP? I have no idea why anyone would think this is a good idea.) So far the new PvE content feels like one big jumping puzzle. And if you die from falling there you need to pay to waypoint. It’s as if the developers are saying “Ha ha, you fell, sucks to be you now doesn’t it. Oh don’t whine it’s only a tiny amount… that you just lost hahahahaha.”

We will see if the content grows on me. But first impressions are very tough to get over.

I admit that most of the seige discussion was TL;DR for me, but what I did read reminded me of this:

ThunderPanda.1872:

styx.7294:

Some quality arrow cart action by Anvil Rock.

From your screenies, how is that a hack/exploit?
You do know if you trait AC, you do get ac radius increase?

I believe what styx was trying to explain was that one of Pluto’s moons should be named after him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styx_%28moon%29

And thus it is so. Perhaps ARM had something to do with it.

See, you can take this discussion in a direction that makes even less sense.

Tonight was apparently Gate of Madness Mad Gate Siege Placement Night:

1. The gatelista
2. A gateling gun, though it seems AR has found a use for such things.
3. The gateapult
4. To complete the set, someone provided a gatebuchet. Thankfully we did not complete it.

melodey.4652:

Dearly beloved GoM and SF,

y ur thread only 2 pages? I have never met you FC, but I’m sure you’re dandy as well.
I miss your smiling faces and your painful hammers and daggers.

~ moo

Cuz wii kneed moar OP 4um oh mega golems.

FC was pushing us in GoM BL last night. Some screenshots:

1. Lake is ours…
2. …just in time.
3. Can we come in and burgle a bit?
4. We promise that we are not Wikipedia salesmen.

Cool idea! Please invite me too. Should be on tonight to try and get this done.

Haven’t run the dungeon, but we couldn’t even get a 5 person PUG to form to try the darn thing this afternoon.

Never done the dungeon myself, but the only thing that really matters is that nobody seems to want to do the dungeon. Can’t seem to get a group together. Pretty sad for a new dungeon.

Trying to run the dungeon for the first time today. Don’t know anything about it but nobody seems to want to run it. Rather odd for the “best experience in the game.”

My experience matches Avatar’s pretty much. My guardian is stationed in Sparkfly Fen and when Tequatl goes active, I swap to him and do the event. Usually I load in right after the event starts and consider myself an active contributor to the event. I attack, rez players, buff others; I am not just tapping the dragon to get credit. I almost always get full credit for the event, but the past three days, no bonus or big chest afterwards. I am pretty organized about doing the events after dailies reset-I keep a log, so I don’t repeat the same event twice in the same daily period. I’ve had similar problems in the past with both Tequatl and Jormag, but never this many days in a row before.

I’ve bug reported this, but was curious if others were having the same difficulty and this was the most recent thread I could find on the topic.

It worked as advertised tonight. The fix was much appreciated. The event is still a little long for my tastes, but I can see it being a good length for someone participating for the first time.

Devanuze.8734:

Any footage of last night? i wanna see these big zergs

This is from GoM BL last night. SF had a lot of people on the map and kept us very busy. Zerg? Don’t know about that, they seemed to coordinate well.

A few shots from Cragtop.

1. Better cap this fast…
2. …we got this…
3. …just in time.

irishhaf.1692:

rabble rabble… Hate… hate… yea… yawns no energy to troll… or even try to troll.

Edit: PSA for those that dont play rangers… for the sake of the remaining sanity of the last few sadistic sob’s that play rangers if you see then use Entangle… and you have an AE knock back (hammer wielding guardians seem to be the primary culprits) please stop using it to knock the bad guys out of entangle…

I think you mean “masochistic” instead of “sadistic,” but otherwise yeah. Then again, perhaps binding roots are sadistic.

Darek.1836:

can someone explain to me who/what ARM is

One must consult the Guild Wars 2 Apocrypha [GW2AKJV] containing the Gospel According to Kitten which begins:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with ARM, and the Word was ARM.
The same was in the beginning with ARM.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

If I recall correctly the GW2AKJV also contains the book of armaments:

http://youtu.be/xOrgLj9lOwk

Just noticing that my sylvari’s arm recovery is a little wide. But the real reason to post this is because of Mc Slacker

• Dusk… really? Gratz indeed.

Yet again an addition to the Southsun Cove which is not fun. With large groups the events are not too bad, but the scaling (for small group sizes) is terrible and now that so few people are running around there (can you blame them) the events are very frustrating. In particular when you have too many armor stacks to remove than the group can deal with, the Karka Queen event is a problem.

Mepheles.2087:

First GoM taking our Lowlands, then NSP? If I didn’t know any better….

Yeah I know, NSP and GoM both going after the server in first place. Who’d a thunk that would ever happen.

Fun night last night NSP and DH. No commentary, just

• NSP in Redvale.

Rob.7624:

Just standing in your stonemist guys.
Someone please help?

LOL be nice please.
Come get a picture with me. Been standing here watching DH run past for about 10mins.

I logged on this afternoon and NSP had nothing in EB. Next thing I know they’ve taken an upgraded SM. Impressive.

Some screenshots from last night:

1. This fellow ran through the gate at Garrison just as we were closing it, separating him from the group outside. Hate it when that happens to me.
2. Golems seemed to be everywhere in GoM BL.

VOLKON.1290:

DevonCarver.5370:

Everyone knows that the true key to the sandwichmancer class is the bread. New weapon confirmed! Ciabatta!

How does that synergize with an off-hand salami?

Note to self: the language filter does not kittenize “off-hand salami”.

To be fair about the class development priorities, it seems to me that requests for the sandwichmancer predate the announcement of the commando class:

http://guildcast.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/episode-14/

Sadly, the podcast link seems broken… or perhaps eliminated by a team of Arenanet commandos.

Interesting… but that video was released on April 1st. Suppose they could have put one in the Super Adventure Box.

I only took one screen shot tonight. I have to remember to press that PrtScr key. From GoM BL:

• Golems at Bay.

Not sure why NSP kept fighting our group while we were in DH BL.

1. Another fun little battle. Fought off NSP then DH and now the ranger pet must die.
2. I guess NSP didn’t want us in DH BL so over to NSP BL we go. Works for me.

Snowreap.5174:

There’s no way to know the actual matchups in advance unless you know the random numbers that are going to be used. Personally I think this is a good thing.

But you can do some probability analysis to get an idea of what matchups are likely and what matchups aren’t. I had intended to do this last night, but it turned out that I needed some information I didn’t have, so I’ve been writing software to fill in the gaps. Hopefully I’ll be able to post some probability data next Thursday, assuming I finish writing and debugging code in time.

-ken

Yeah, I ran some simulations based on last week’s leader board and guessing some values to use in some of the sketchy details of their methods. I came up with only a 40% chance that we would face either of our current opponents next week. Can’t tell you much about Ehmry Bay except that I came up with only about a 5% chance that you would meet Gate of Madness next week. ATM I am trying to sort out if the EU match-up is a reasonable outcome based on my analysis.

Sounds like the devs are waiting for a final match score to determine the ratings for next week. Might be nice to base the matchmaking ratings based on the scores at, for example, midnight Thursday PST while keeping Friday relevant by including it in a final rating. Might sound a little confusing, but trust me, there are enough clever people on every server to figure out even the most insanely complicated scoring scheme. And the tiny amount the rating might change on Friday should be drowned out by the RNG roll.

Just an option for those wanting to know the match-ups in advance.

Just tried the 5 man instance with a group of PUGs. The experience was awful. And I am not blaming the other players. The mechanics of the fight, the knockbacks, the unavoidable AoE, the invulnerability periods and the tedious length of the encounter made the whole experience terrible. I don’t even want to bother trying to figure out the tricks in this encounter. The faster this instance is removed from the game, the better.

I was disappointed by the Secrets release and I thought Anet would learn and adapt. Some things with the previous content have been improved, but it appears from this instance that Anet thinks its customers are looking for the most unpleasant gaming experience possible. Is this to try and give a greater feeling of accomplishment for completing content? If so, that is just sad.

Edit: Okay, I just went and did the solo instance. I did complete it without looking at any online guides, though my experience in the five man instance did give me some insight. Didn’t take too long to figure out to use the mines to damage Canach, but I still think the CC is too much. Dodging to avoid is a bit of a problem as my reaction time isn’t the greatest (plus you need to dodge and not hit an active mine). But still about the most positive thing I can say about it is that I am not angry after finishing.

styx.7294:

Flerch.4817:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Flerch.4817:

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

styx.7294:

Flerch.4817:

styx.7294:

Flerch.4817:

Zumi.6384:

Buffy.9246:

Ok I should have said it better..But majority of gom are bad in pvp..ive seen some good ones also. Point I was trying to make was during tkitten no seige bug, Gom kept getting whiped everywhere. Now that seige is back…they r back to trebbing Anz 24/7, trebbing our keep or using golems which fail everytime cause they dont bother to take out oil.

To gom: Dont rely heavily on seige…maybe this is why you are one of the low servers.

I literally laughed out loud just now. Which is bad because I’m still at work, but whatever.

1) Seige is a huge part of WvW. In fact, one could argue the entire mode was based around seige. You’re supposed to use it heavily.

2) “maybe this is why you are one of the low servers” – Not sure if you noticed, but we’re all in the same tier here.

3) There are quite a few reasons we’re in one of the lower tiers, but the use of seige is definitely not one of them. I’m not going to get into details, but what a ridiculous statement.

4) From what I’ve seen we have just as many good pvpers out there as any of the other servers we’ve fought. Making blanket statements about the skill level of a server’s players is both incredibly subjective and impossible to prove, but you can believe whatever you like.

Sigh, I just had to give in and feed the troll. Well done on pulling me in sir.

Silly GoM, everyone knows you are supposed to auto attack keep doors down while working in groups of 5 or less.

Agreed, it the best.

I tried this once with a party member. Those kitten doors are OP. After a few minutes, I threw a treb down right in front of the gate, figuring it’d do max damage at point blank range. Sadly, the build spot was destroyed by the time we got back with more supply. Finally, we threw a flame ram in front of the wall to see if it was as OP as the gate, but by then people had shown up and killed us while we were trying to build it! PvDoor is really, really hard.

I have a screen shot of genius flame ram placement on my desktop at home, but sadly did not get shots of the auto attacking or the treb.

I didn’t think XOXO took towers but this mornin I saw the SPCA/tM/XOXO trifecta holdin Lake tower on Gates of Madness. Blew my mind and totally killed me =(

Screenshots, or it didn’t happen! I refuse to believe that XOXO would ever stoop as low as to do some actual WvW’ing.

Haha, I can at least post the flame ram placement when I get home this evening. With the new random opponents, I’m not too worried about you guys seeing our super leet strategies. You can even surprise other servers with them!

If you guys are the ones who like to leave flame rams pointed at our tower walls, then we took care of smashing them for you. Free WXP is free WXP! Gotta save up for that OP burning oil mastery!

Well, if people often take walls down with catapults, we figured we’d go the next step and do it with flame rams. It works the same way, right? …Right?!?!?

It absolutely does.

Whoa… I think I need to start saving rank points for the inevitable flame ram mastery.

Sororita.3465:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uex7Puo0X0w

Kept me up past my bedtime. My photos from Durios:

1. Nice breeze through Durios
2. Fighting.

Sororita.3465:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-qd7KWmxqo

a lil fun now and again to break up the negativity >.>

I don’t normally join in with those never ending fights between Overlook and SM, but this was fun.

Hey Emtiarbi, looks good but you should add an id field so your data can be used for lookups.

wish.1027:

How do I get in on this drama? It looks fun. My mule is on GOM, which side does that put me on??

I would suggest making a post about how your group wiped <insert random opponent> in a N vs. M battle. N and M should be different numbers, but to help start the drama, it should be unclear which side had N and which side had M. Don’t forget to point out the total awesomeness of your group and how easy it was to wipe the opponents.

If you want to innovate I suppose you could post about how your group won a three way battle. Don’t forget to describe the size of the forces in the most confusing way possible.

I’m seeing response times from the API of about one second, but that is highly dependent on the route between me and the API server. Querying the server every millisecond might be considered a denial of service attack, so that is probably a bad idea. How often do you think it is reasonable to refresh a web page? I would use the answer to that question as a guideline for now.