Guild Wars 2

famfamfam.9137:

As I understand it, their system already rejects numbers allocated to systems such as Google Voice. I wouldn’t be surprised if it also rejected a number of the sites linked from your post.

I assume as much, too, but I’d like someone to confirm it. Also, there are virtually dozens of services out there that provide fake numbers, is there a way to distinguish them from the “real” ones>

famfamfam.9137:

Better password generation rules can be useful, but the intention of a separate auth channel is to prevent access if the password is compromised somehow (password databases hacked from other sites/games, etc). Its difficult for attackers to hack many accounts in an automated way when they all have additional and out-of-channel authentication even if they have a huge list of email and password pairs.

I know, that is why I wrote “additionally”.

famfamfam.9137:

I prefer using Google Authenticator or another TOTP app, because I already have trust in the app I use. Still I think there are players who would have trusted a suite of Anet apps more, but it would probably mean a bunch of work for Anet devs.

It’s not about trust. They specifically mentioned that the issue with apps like Authenticator is, that an attacker that already has your account can easily add one and shut you out of the account. An ANet app could make this harder, by only allowing a limited number of accounts, thus making it hard to do this to several dozens or even hundred of accounts.
ANets issue does not seem to be the fact that it possible at all, but the way it scales easily. A proprietary app could help with that and I’m sure they considered it. It’s obviously more work, but I’d like to know, if there are other reasons to not do it.

I’m a very big fan of security and appreciate your various efforts to protect our accounts. I’m a software developer myself, so I know how important the issue is and how hard it is to walk the line between security and convenience.

That being said, I’m a bit concerned about this new security feature. Your main argument is, that is easy to add another Authenticator account, but hard to add new phone numbers because intruders only have access to a few of them. Turns out, that this is not entirely true. Thanks to services like these (https://www.raymond.cc/blog/top-10-sites-receive-sms-online-without-phone/), everyone can create phone numbers in bulk and use them them to receive SMS. Without an additional app running on a phone that verifies the SMS being received and authenticates the request in response, this system is as vulnerable as the Authenticator security feature. Even an app like this doesn’t make it much harder, since an intruder can always snoop out the requests from the phone and find the one responsible for the subsequent authorisation request and replicate it for the fake numbers.

Here are a couple of questions:
- Is there any way to reliably exclude those fake numbers from being added to an account?
- Wouldn’t additionally enforcing better password generation rules be a better way to address the problem?
- I assume you have thought about providing Android/iOS apps that can be used for 2-Factor Auth instead of using Google Authenticator, why did you decide against that?

MithranArkanere.8957:

I would not call it cheating if it wasn’t for every single ranger I’ve chased anywhere near water getting inside the water and innevitably getting revived over and over until Defeat Penalty catches up and they get instantly defeated when entering drowned.

6 out of ten at most I could think they are just trying to increase their odds. Every single one of them getting into water as soon as their health gets too low, and every single one of them always getting revived even when their pets have been kicked away and defeated? That’s way too much not to call it exploiting bugs.

I disagree. Even without the bug, a Ranger would always go for the water, wouldn’t he? Anyway, the discussion about exploiting is moot, since we can never reach a conclusion that’s based on anything but guessing. If there is a bug, it needs fixing. Probably won’t happen, though, since there a more crucial bugs out there right now and even those take a while to get fixed.

You can’t assume someone is cheating, when that happens. I try to get into the water as well, when I’m in a 1vX (when X > 1). Not because of a bug (I wasn’t even aware of), but simply because stomping is no longer an option and I raise my odds to get revived by my pet. If there is a bug, you’re right with wanting to have it fixed, I give you that. But please don’t call people cheater, most of them aren’t.

For the record, the OP is not complaining about the fact that a pet is revived when the skill is being triggered. He’s rather complaining about the fact that a pet keeps reviving, even if it is killed after the skill was used.

MithranArkanere.8957:

I chased a ranger underwater, and after taking down both his pets, and pushing them away from him, they kept reviving him as if they were alive and right next to him. And after being defeated, the speed was even faster, as if the pet was out of combat, so the two people that were with me could not keep the pet from reviving him.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lick_Wounds

This bug has been there and rangers have been exploiting it for ages to become virtually invulnerable underwater.

Is there any plans to address the issue?

It says: “Revive your pet at your location to revive you.”, so I would assume killing the pet before the Ranger goes down doesn’t do much. How exactly is this an exploit?

The most fun in zerg vs. zerg for me was glass cannon and good positioning. LB with Piercing Arrows and Rune of Fire can rock some pretty heavy AoE, even when barrage is on cooldown. Also, being a glass cannon in zerg fights makes the positioning really important and a lot more fun to play than the old “stick the lamp” game.

This is just my opinion of course, but you should try it.

Another Problem with the Sword #1 Chain is, that you leap, even if you don’t have a target. It happens to me in WvW a lot, but it is really a problem everywhere. I deactivated auto-targetting in order to work with the zone of hitting in front of my ranger rather than selecting a target. This works great the with the GS, as long as you hit something, the chain continues. BUT, doing so with the sword makes you leap on every third hit. You basically just leap away from the zone you want to deal damage into. And even worse, try doing that near a ledge. There is pretty much a 50/50 chance to leap off that ledge!

It’s not even sure where the leap will be going to, when you have no target. So just not facing the ledge sometimes doesn’t help. Even if you select a target and it dies on the second strike of the chain you will leap on the third. It brings you out of position, it makes you fall down a ledge and doesn’t even make sense in any way.

So, in my eyes the sword #1 is broken, even if you can manage to control all the side effects of rooting and timing issues it has. It’s simply a no fun weapon.

ChioChip.5970:

Yeah you missing something!

1. The applied confusions last 10s base and 18s (+30% runes + 50%food/trait)
2. You get THREE stacks of confusion every 15 sec
3. LB4 interrupts easily…. (here you got your usual 8 stacks!)
4. LB4 -> swoop -> hilt bash combo can stack to 13 confusions
5. G4 interrupts aswell. (another 5 stacks)

Here is my rotation for max confusion stacks:

LB4 -> GS3 -> GS5 -> GS2 -> GS4 back to LB4

If you are timing right and you are lucky you can stack 20 stacks by this + 3 stack on cirt. = total of 23 stacks

But 8-13 stacks are way more common

This build works because people want to kill you or defend… they constantly use skills you just have to learn when to interrupt.

Ok, so you actually get more than one stack confusion every time the runes proc? I never used them so I don’t know. I kind of reads like one stack each time.. that sounds pretty amazing. I need to try that out.

ChioChip.5970:

-6x Rune of Perplexity: With this you turn LB and GS to AWESOME condition weapons. You’ll interrupt ALOT. Stacking 8 confusions is more than usual, 13 stacks mostly and 18-23stacks are possible. (Confusion lasts 18s… sick right?)

How would you do that? The only interrupts I see are LB4, GS5 and the occasional dog knockdown. And you get one stack every 15 seconds for free without interrupts. Am I missing something? I mean even 18 seconds of confusion duration can’t keep up 8-15 stacks this way…

I was a little bit disappointed by the questions answered. Besides the fact that he didn’t really answer any question but gave some vague responses, for one thing. The other thing that he really did pick questions that have not that much value for any ranger watching.

The first question that was answered was about the uniqueness of the ranger. The Answer was that the unique thing about the ranger is the pet. Wow, big surprise there. The ranger is supposed to be more flexible using a pet. But not as much as an engineer or an elementatlist ist flexible(?!?). And we can split damage using a pet, like focusing on two different things at once. In which game is this an advantage? Given a group of enemy without any specific skill set, it is always better to focus down one before moving to the next. Granted, I don’t do too much PvE, but there can’t be that many bosses where it is really an advantage to split your focus, right? The one interesting thought I got from all that was, that you can mix your damage between condition damage and direct damage, but that’s about it.

The second question was about ArenaNet employees favorites pet. The answer was basically: “depends”.

The third question was about an evasion mechanic for the pet to mitigate damage without supervision. The answer was that they are thinking about it, but that changes like that are hard to make. To sum this up: Maybe sometime down the road, but certainly not while there is other stuff to fix. I hardly think that they change the way pets behave just for one profession, if it has such a huge impact on the mechanics.

The really tough questions weren’t even addressed. What about the pet AI? What about group support that can’t be killed with AoE?

The rest of the screen cast was about the three basic builds, direct damage, condition damage and spirits, but he did not talk for one second about anything specific. He mentioned some traits that support one build or the other. He highlighted some very obvious synergies in one or between two trait lines, but the entire thing had less substance than the chocolate bar I had for lunch.

Also, for my taste he “felt” a lot too much about certain mechanics for someone who has access to the math behind it. There have to be calculations or at least estimations for as much as anything that the professions can do.

Really guys, anyone playing ranger and owning a webcam could have done that screen cast. There are a lot of real issues here that are being discussed for months, most of them summarised here in this very thread. Please give us some real answers, not those vague responses that leave you with one less 30 minutes to live and not the wiser.

I’d say you’re running a bunker/condi build… I’ve been meaning to switch back to that at some point, but I feel that it gimps the zergability a little too much. I hope the coming patch will offer some decent hybrid alternatives (zerg and solo viability).

The problem with Orbs and related mechanics is, that it works in favor of the realm that is already winning and thus making it harder for the underdogs to catch up. This won’t change with your proposal.