Guild Wars 2

I too come from a healing background, and I was a kitten good one too, not to toot my own horn too much.

But you got to remember, even though there’s no tank/healer there is still support and control. You just need to be able to do all 3, support, control, dps at any given time and be smart enough on the fly to know how you need to be playing in any given situation, and you need to be able to adapt to it on the fly. Also this puts a lot of responsibility on each individual player, to not only fulfill those roles correctly and at the correct times, but also to be in charge of their own health, not having someone else taking care of them. there is much more personal responsibility put on the player in that regard.

It can turn into a button mashing spam fest for lower skilled players who aren’t used to the mechanics yet, but that’s less so at the higher levels of pve group combat.

Honestly, I much prefer this to the standard tank and spank style of other mmos.

pacing mostly. by myself i can go heart to heart and point to point and get things done really quickly on my own, another person doesnt really speed that up much if at all and you’ve got to wait for them and such. plus it gives you some kind of urgency like you need to be there for them so cant take short breaks whenever you want.

drnuncheon.8029:

Altruistic Healing. Greatsword autoattack #3 gives might, which heals. Criticals give vigor, which heals.

(You can also get Zealous Blade with 30 points in Zeal, although the OP and most AH builds don’t go that way.)

ah, i see, thanks.

greatsword healing?

JumblyJebus.5903:

illgot.1056:

Fractals has pretty much killed the game for me. I hate repeating dungeons or dynamic events constantly… which probably means GW2 is just not for me.

Any MMO for that matter.

That’s the point though. This game was said to be different than other MMO’s that was the big thing Anet had going for it, that they were going to do things different. And now, with things like Fractals, and vertical gear progression, it seems like they really are doing a 180 on their design philosophy and turning into any other mmo.

ManCaptain.3154:

Are there people who like GS over Staff? Staff is a must in sPvP, once it gets nerfed, things will get worse considerably. Without staff it’s really hard to get enough survivability in spvp.

I swear by greatsword and never cared for staff myself.

Dried Donkey.8504:

lol @ you guys trying to make out they are hard to play, kids you have it easy peasy compare to:
—> ele
—>necro
—>engi
hell even rangers and guardians!

Then go play it, have fun.

you know, you can jump in spvp right away with a level 1-2 character. go ahead and make a mesmer and do some spvp with it, then tell us how amazing it is.

To quote someone, you just have to click the reply button at the bottom right of their post, it’s near the permalink button.

Problem is sometimes it doesn’t show up and you can only see the permalink.

Carighan.6758:

Yes I know, and that’s the argument against separating the functionality or even numbers of abilities. The point I was trying to make was simply that code to differentiate how to handle an ability based on sPvP already exists, so there’s probably API calls in place to check for modifiers in real time.

I am against PvE/PvP splits, mind you.

Why would you be against it? It’s one of the things I love most about the games design. It’s one of the many things Blizzard NEVER got right with WoW. It’s never fun to play a game where one side of the game always wags the tail of the other side. I don’t like playing a game where PvP design decisions dictate what goes on in PvE and vice versa.

Between greatsword numbers 4 and 3, and main hand swords number 2, and it’s number 1’s innate cleave, not to mention shatters, I have experienced no real issues with aoe fights.

Heck if I really want to, I can go GS 4, 3, 2 swap to sword, 2, time warp, 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 to win.

Effusion.4831:

Necro minions don’t start their CD until they die. They’re a utility option, like mantras, not a core class mechanic. They’re really quite different.

Keldrath.4735:

My confusion is, why with their system of being able to balance pve and pvp separately, they wouldn’t just make this a pvp change, but decided to make it a pve change as well.

That system from gw1 isn’t in gw2 because they don’t want players to have to learn two different sets of “rules.” Yet.

I’ve heard them say even pre launch that it is, and one example of it is the confusion mechanic.

I would hate to have to dig through the blogs and videos to find it again, but you can take me at my word that they said it or not.

My confusion is, why with their system of being able to balance pve and pvp separately, they wouldn’t just make this a pvp change, but decided to make it a pve change as well.

My opinion is they look amazing and are well worth the time and effort required to put in.

Clearly it has to be a huge timesink, it’s a legendary. Not everyone is supposed to get them. If they were easier to obtain then everyone would have them, or a large amount of people would and it would diminish their cool factor. The fact that it is exclusive and rare to see adds to its awesome.

And when I look back on the traditional legendaries I have been familiar with, such as the Everquest original Epic quests, or the original WoW legendaries pre wotlk, it seems like such a small amount of work/time in comparison.

Illushia.3721:

You can open the wiki up ingame if you type /wiki, then search up somewhere

The problem I have found with it is there’s not many in game ways to find out things as far as lore goes. A lot of the things youd want to know, like who are the dwarves? where did they go? what did they know about the dragons? etc, there should be in game ways to learn about this stuff from just playing the game.

Having to go find npcs and talk to them all to try to piece it together or just opening the wiki is kind of like if you went to watch the lord of the rings movies but instead of watching a movie you are watching someone read you the book. You should get this information from playing the game, not from outside sources or other means, such as reading.

I love the pistol, but in WvW focus is too useful to not use it. So focus I really like in WvW.

Sword is also a great option over pistol, though is also overshadowed by focus in WvW.

But for sPvP and PvE, sword and pistol are great options.

Torch is just terrible in all respects, useless offhand.

all 24 hour matches brought us were zerg attacking with no defense.

I don’t know if you were around when matches were 24 hours but the prevailing agreement during that time was that 24 hour matches showed absolutely nothing and were completely worthless.

Most of your server gave up is the problem. That and the asian holiday set you back pretty far.

You guys can still take 2nd and not drop down next week but youd have a lot of work to do in the next day to make it happen but that will be hard to do with the defeatist attitude i’ve witnessed.

I can keep swiftness up 100% on my guardian and my ele.

for guardian just pop save yourselves! and retreat! on cooldown and keep using the staff number 3 skill.

for ele just have arcane wave, a staff, air attunement, and glyph of elemental harmony for the heal skill. cast the number 4 on staff, the number 6 heal, then cast the number 5 on staff and use arcane wave to blast finikitten, and you can keep swiftness rolling 100% uptime.

for both it can help to have boon duration food buffs but it’s not necessary if you are good about using the skills on cooldown.

I wikitten was random though, only a couple days i ever saw my server not be green and that was the very start when we were climbing up the rankings. forever green now.

would be nice to have some randomness to it, gets boring only ever seeing one side of EB and stuff.

MotionBlue.9687:

@Keldrath.4735

What? HoD was never a small server, large PvP guilds from GW1 and WoW chose to roll on it back during Beta.

Actually they were on GoM in beta and chose HoD minutes before the servers first went live and kept it a secret. People didn’t realize they were even there for the first few days. it was a small server at the very start but as we dominated the population skyrocketed as people we beat started coming over to be on the winning team. that’s when the queues got to outrageous times like 5+ hours to get into any map.

two weeks imo, gives you more time to run up the score even higher for even more bonuses for your server, also it gives servers more opportunities to make comebacks.

Nick.3926:

I only know of one guild that actually intended to implement spies, I can’t say which guild it was but I can say it’s not one from the HoD server. I also can’t say if they actually did get spies planted in rival guilds, because I don’t know if they went through with the espionage scheme.

You know of one guild that was intending on using spies, but it’s not a guild on your server. Please Mister not a spy, how does one acquire such information? Spying perhaps?

A former member told me about it.

I only know of one guild that actually intended to implement spies, I can’t say which guild it was but I can say it’s not one from the HoD server. I also can’t say if they actually did get spies planted in rival guilds, because I don’t know if they went through with the espionage scheme.

I do however think the vast majority of “spies” are just loners, and it has been happening to all of us.

It doesn’t help that we’ve won every matchup we have gone against, we started as a pretty small server, but once we started crushing servers, their forces started joining ours. And that’s happened every week, we have a huge population of wvw players because of that, and there are a lot of pros and cons that go along with it. Pro’s being we got even more players round the clock as pugs to help defend and fight during all hours of the day, and some of them are very good players and many of the pugs love to listen and take orders well for a concerted effort.

The negatives were obviously some of them were bad apples, and some of them were bad players who’s only intent is to mess with people. the queue got extremely bloated because of this making it so a lot of the time it’s only pugs in a map with no leadership or direction. These periods are a weakness for us. This also provided us with a lot of fair weather players.

I do wish more people stuck around on their own servers and fought the good fight, rather than jump ship to the winning server the first time they get beat by a large margin… but what can you do?

Sadly this kind of trolling is something that happens to every server, it’s happened to us a LOT, and it’s happened to SBI and JQ, I’m sure it’s happened to everyone. as far as streams go, well there aren’t really a whole lot of people streaming wvw atm anymore simply because of the amount of stream cheating that goes on. reminds me of the stream sniping back when I used to watch Starcraft 2. But in the end I don’t think anyone supports this kind of behavior. Except maybe RUIN.

geldedgoat.5928:

Keldrath.4735:

Many buddhist sects have no belief in the existence of any gods.

Refusing to take a stance is distinctly different from responding negatively (or positively), so it’s just plain wrong to label them atheist. Really, read up on that parable I linked to.

Atheism says nothing about the supernatural.

Well, I already explained why that’s wrong, but believe what you want. ‘Atheism’ certainly isn’t the only term that’s been forced to evolve from its classical origins (which you do accurately describe).

I’ve already explained to you why your explanation is incorrect, and it’s simply because atheism deals with the god claim. not any supernatural claims. The only evolution the term actually made was that it originally only dealt with the greek gods. Now it pertains to all gods, both imagined and unimagined.

Not all buddhists are atheist but many are. not all buddhists believe in gods, though some do. Not believing in gods is the only criteria for being an atheist.

wait a second, i see them attacking players, i thought they ONLY attacked doors wtf?!

MikeFerguson.8921:

I’d like to figure out a way to do this at some point. It’s not a very high priority right now though.

I’m not sure why it’s not a higher priority then, it would help even out populations across the maps, as people could see where they are needed most and queue accordingly.

CheeseJam.1032:

Aww man I missed it, what time did we have it roughly? Maybe I can ty to log on at that time some time next week.

Well, from about 3am CDT til 12pm CDT.

I was sitting in queue from 10am til noon and when i got in they had taken everything back but we were spawn camping them all night and morning. I did manage to get map completion for 2 of my characters though.

This was either yesterday or the day before. I have an odd sleep schedule so I can’t be sure which, the days just blend together lol.

I forgot to mention, if you don’t want to do it my way, well, transfers are still free, you can hop over to SBI and nab all the blue stuff etc. should take like 2 days to get red and blues stuff then you can just transfer back if you want to do it that way.

or heck pick a server in the lower tiers thats just crushing everything and spawn camping everyone, get everything in one go.

We had em, um… what was it, yesterday? I got mine finally, blue was eluding me forever.

But yeah they really should just randomize the colors. Blue and Red have really cool sections of EB I never really get to see since I’m forever green… and in a t1 matchup, you don’t really get to just waltz around red and blue territory very often, EB is usually just holding your section and SMC. anything else changing hands is pretty rare.

Idgarad.6105:

Kyus.3812:

The nightcapping debate needs to change names to what the actual problem is.

Its not about night capping. night capping should be there as a viable tactic. it should also encourage people to play who have an alternative work/sleep pattern or live in another time zone.

What the actual problem is, is that the scoring system reflects too heavily on who has the majority of players during low population hours. This trivialises primetime combat. A medium populaton server can win at prime time against a full/high pop server. Any scoring during that time is irrelevant in comparison to the score that the server is able to maximise during the lower population hours.

Simple, contribute 1 point for every enemy player killed. Prime time now competes with offhour players.

what? by win-trading?

I think you are skipping a step.

First you need a problem before you can propose a solution.

Kazim.2043:

Exeon.4358:

However i do wonder, if Anet says that nightcapping is a game mechanic, why don’t we ever have US vs EU then?

That’s why I ask my self all the time. If game is 24/7 there should be no regions.

The reasons for regions is because there are two datacenters. One is located in the UK, and one is located in Seattle.

The reasons why some servers have designations, such as french, german, etc. is so people who don’t speak english, or english is not their first language, they can go to those servers designated for people who speak the same language they are comfortable with.

They aren’t enforced as in, if you are french you MUST play on the french server, or if you are European you MUST play on the european server. You are more likely to find people you have more in common with on those servers, but if you want to, like say you have friends in america, you can play on their server if you want, though you might have ping troubles.

This is also why the WvW matchups are separated regionally. to reduce lag.

It’s not exactly rocket science or anything, so i don’t know why people ask this question.

Click.5123:

Again, you people realize that’s not ANet’s stance on anything, right? The responses in this thread are the opinion of their German Community Manager. He’s not even an ANet developer.

As for points not mattering, then ANet should just get rid of points completely. Get rid of server rankings. Afterall, everyone should W v W just for the sake of killing each other endlessly.

I don’t fully disagree with the point that we should enjoy W v W PvP just for the fun of it. I do W v W because I think it’s fun (when server populations are relatively balanced during peak hours) and because there’s not much else to do in GW2 after you’ve played it for over 200-300 hours (except maybe grind for a legendary or roll another class to 80, which I don’t want to do).

Problem is, ANet has the points and server ranking system in place to encourage people to do well in W v W. However, it’s more discouraging than encouraging to see your server behind by more than twice the amount of the dominating server. Even worse, when all of your server’s hard work during the day is completely wiped out because your server doesn’t have a dominating NA AM presence. Worse still, when you’re being spawn camped.

I’ve been on both sides of the coin. I’ve been on the dominating side and also the dominated side. It’s not fun either way.

I know sometimes it’s hard to accept the truth but…. dang.

I think it makes it more fair, now after we spent all that time attacking and capturing it, we are vulnerable until we can get the upgrades in place, which takes a lot of supply and of course the purchasing of the upgrade, it’s an investment to hold onto it easier for a longer period in a more defensible position, but allows the opposing team time to try to reclaim their keep/tower/supply camp, both by cutting off supply to the keep to prevent the upgrades from happening, and by taking it before the upgrades finish.

It would be much harder for them to take it back if we just automagically got their upgrades and used them against them. I don’t think it would be very fair and it would take away some of the strategic elements to it, this at least gives them a window to retake it before it becomes a much tougher ordeal.

you don’t see that issue in my match up, everythings fully upgraded at all times, and when somethings taken, the people who took it upgrade the hell out of it and defend it. even towers and supply camps. well, sometimes for the supply camps.

geldedgoat.5928:

Keldrath.4735:

nontheistic is what atheist means.

You’re incorrect. One gives a negative answer to the question of the existence of the supernatural (atheist); the other rejects or ignores the question altogether (nontheist). Think about the difference between amoral and immoral (though here the etymology is reversed). The best evidence of the Buddhist position is given by the parable of the poison arrow.

That would be true if your definition of an atheist was actually a correct one. All one needs to be an atheist is to have no belief in the existence of any gods. Many buddhist sects have no belief in the existence of any gods.

Atheism says nothing about the supernatural.

I do not know where you are getting your information from, but whatever your source is it is incredibly misinformed.

if their server rankings work at all ET should stay in the top 3 for a rematch, and Jq would stay in the tier below. ET is a much stronger server than JQ is. whether they come in 3rd or not, they are much stronger opponents who know how to do more than mindless zerg.

i know they like to say “lolstormhenge” as a rationalization for their defeat last week, but i was there, and the reason they lost wasn’t because of any conspiracy theory alliance, it was because they were not a threat. none of us saw them as a threat. if JQ was attacking, it was no big deal, we’d focus on stormbluff and let a few people go mop up jq. Their siege placement is poor, if they ever use any. ive even seen them place trebs in front of a hod zerg, in attacking range… Their zergs have little to no coordination, i’ve literally broken their zergs with 2 other people, just came charging from the back while they were attacking greenbriar and literally 20+ people just head for the hills… and idk if they got better at this either, but they rarely if ever upgrade and defend what they take. it’s like they’ve got that 24hr matchup mentality running.

They have a lot of work to do in all of those areas if they want to be in the top bracket. These are all things that ET does substantially better, it’s not even close. JQ has the people for the mindless zerg rushes but it doesn’t work very well at all in the top matchup, because all of us here do it better, and do more.

This is all constructive, and they can work on these things i am pointing out. but honestly, if we are facing them again next week instead of ET, the weeks going to be kind of a joke unless they seriously massively improved somehow.

ginzo.8792:

yes that would be more suitable and less insulting

It’s a war game. That’s the whole point of wvw. heck there is even lore about it, reliving ancient battles etc.

MagnusLL.8473:

Ignicity.7938:

@MagnusLL

I understand that you don’t want to use your oversized behemoth monstrosity of a brain for international diplomacy.

But just think if you did; after all of the initial diplomacy, recruiting and arranging 24 hour competitive coverage was done, you could sit back and let your extraordinary pink matter work on the things that you think matter to it, like strategy and tactics.

Or, I can just look for a better game.
Guess which choice has more likelyhood to get better results?

Also, I don’t understand the hate. Never said this game design is “bad”, in fact I stated the contrary. It’s simply not fun to me. I do not WANT to start doing all the “UN meeting” stuff. I come from other MMOs where I’m guild and raid leader and it’s plenty enough for me; I’ve had enough drama to last 10 lifetimes, I don’t want to bother about that s..t anymore.
I thought (and I was led to believe) I could avoid that c..p in here, turns out it’s even more critical than in your usual raid-gear-threadmill MMO; now you can’t even stop at “just” having a guild, you actually need a huge alliance with thousands of players around the world logging in 24/7… It’s just not my thing anymore. I want to login, have some fun, and for once… just for once… play a game in which the winner isn’t whoever brought most friends or grinded longer or has the fastest twitch skills. Guess I’m in a tiny minority and no one will ever bother building an MMO for the likes of me… ah well, there’s always single player games I guess.

You could always play minecraft. it’s a fun game and sounds right up your alley.

hunTShoo.1247:

Ignicity.7938:

@hunTShoo – So your telling me that because my server can support 200 players 24/7 and yours cant, mine should be punished?

yes, as long there is a rating and a ranking behind.

the only “rating” and “ranking” involved is there to keep servers like henge from playing servers like kaineng.

It’s not so you can stroke your kitten, get over yourself. It’s only there so you can have some matches against servers around your servers skill level, so you aren’t spawn camped 100% of the time.

soji.1475:

HellsPriest.6745:

I personally would suggest for you to stay with us. Think about it, other servers ARE getting better. Good enough to beat us? lol no.

LoL this is a joke right? HoD got smacked around so hard for 3 days straight when the server rematched happened in the weekend. TA is crap… I see guilds like PRX, RMA , Armata, TRG… getting steam rolled by puggers smaller than what they run out in the field. You might be organized as a whole alliance etc or server… but to kid yourself that all the Asian/Oceanic or whoever is doing your nightcapping is saving your sorry kitten from falling of your high horses. So until TA can prove they can win without all them nightcappers over the weekdays yeah you guys are nothing but a big joke with just a lot of people.

Lets face the facts that your prime-time is mediocre at best. I find it kinda funny a lot of the HoD prime-time people take all the credit away from the very people that are making you guys the number one server…which is the absurd amount of asian/oceanic players you have in WvW when majority of the players are asleep. Infact the guilds that aren’t even in TA are probably the most organized out of all HoD.

Anyways you should change what you said to “Think about it, other servers ARE getting better. Do they have enough Asian/Oceanic players to beat us? lol no.”

Yes, cause holding slightly less than 1/3 of the points over 3 days on a weekend while getting constantly hammered on two fronts is the definition of “getting smacked around.”

RoterFuchs.9216:

Get your terms straight, people.

Atheism = Denial of existance of gods
Agnosticism = Not believing in gods, but gods might exist

Even though the charr have so far denied that most of the gods (if not all) in the gw2 world are gods, they probably still do not deny the existance of a god ultimatively.

The iron legion catchphrase “Rely on iron, not on false gods” is actually a great example, since it only says to not rely on false gods. In return this actually leaves the possibility that the charr think that actual gods might exist, in turn making them agnostics.

Your definitions are incorrect.

There is one claim.

God’s exist.

If you accept that claim as necessarily true, you are a theist. If you do not accept the claim is necessarily true, you are an atheist. it is a true dichotomy.

Your definition of what an agnostic is and belief that it is separate from atheism is a common misconception of the misinformed. Agnosticism is about whether you think we can know that gods exist or not. It is a knowledge claim not a belief claim.

Most atheists are in fact also agnostics. and most agnostics are actually by definition atheists, though they shun the label for whatever reason they may have, usually misconceptions.

geldedgoat.5928:

Atheism as simply a lack of belief in things named gods is a LONG outdated mode of thinking, an evolution made necessary by the discovery of Eastern and New World faiths and religions that don’t fit neatly into the theist/atheist spectrum. The more proper definition now reflects a lack of belief in all supernatural beings and phenomena, as what may simply be an angel, demon, or even magic in one religion is a god in another.

The other posters have it right: the Charr are some form of antitheist, as atheism simply doesn’t make sense in this game world.

Oh, and no Buddhist is atheistic. The closest one would come is nontheistic.

nontheistic is what atheist means.

It’s a greek word. Theist means belief in gods. A is a negation of the following. so atheist = no belief in gods.

I debated the topic with my friend and I have changed my mind about whether or not they are atheist.

I have come to the conclusion that we do not actually know enough about what they believe to conclude whether they are atheist or theist. We don’t know what their definition of a god is or whether they do or do not expressly believe they exist.

We know they acknowledge the existence of the human gods, whether they believe they actually are gods is subject to interpretation and you could really take it either way with no definitive answer.

Until I am presented with evidence as to whether or not they do believe in gods, I’m going to have to say we can’t make the judgment call. So far the only evidence I can come up with is that they believe most gods are false, they haven’t said all gods are false. and that the charr need no gods, etc. but none of the quotes or anything I could find actually say they don’t believe god’s exist. They could very well believe that there are gods, but they do not accept that they have authority over them. It is clear they are very anti-theistic.

So until we know what their concept of a god is and whether or not they believe any exist, we can’t really say either way.

I’m not convinced it won’t be a et/sbi/hod rematch.

sure JQ is stomping in their bracket, but that doesn’t automagically mean they are doing well enough to take et’s spot.

it would be nice to at least have an option to disable the smoothing. i do not like it at all, though i have gotten used to it, i would still rather it just not be there.

lollie.5816:

^this guy is just embarrassing himself and his server.

He has been for many pages now. I’m surprised he is still in this days later after how embarrassing his post history has been.

it sucks having 3 flame rams taking up 3 slots.

my inventory and bank slots are at a premium arenanet.

Thesilentflute.8761:

HoD your play was never based on skill what you have done here is metagame and exploit. As far as i see you guys don’t even count you pulled in out of region players for the intended goal of having players while no other us server would. Anet change the location of the keep lord in sm due to your exploting and other issues you have presented are being worked on now.

But its good these things needed to be adressed and your guys constant attempts to take advantage of people just trying to enjoy the game for what ever reason make it possable.

At least you guys will still have the screens from when you were able to exploit you can put them up on your TA website.

Infact you should take a screen of this.

actually the idea was any other smart server would have oceanic players and we would need to be able to compete with that.

So yeah, it’s not our fault titan came prepared and no one else decided to. exxcept some did, they just arent fielding their players for whatever reason. well they were, but then they just stopped coming out to play after we beat them.