Guild Wars 2

“It was a broken mechanic and I’m glad it’s fixed. I’ve lost so many matches over Thieves being able to Steal without a target, so this is a welcome change”, nobody from the PvP community commented in a recent interview.

I’ve been noticing a lot of people asking for VoIP support built into the game client, but on a much more basic and universally accessible level I’d love to have a team notification menu akin to those found in the Dota 2 Chat Wheel or CS(:GO)’s quick-voice commands to “level the playing field” in terms of possible team combinations.

The hotkey-accessible presets could be used to announce incoming enemies, open positions on the map, warn teammates of the current enemy count and more without having to stop movement to type out a message. Some players have these hotkeyed to chat macros, which I believe isn’t quite in the spirit of the ToS, but they do seem effective when the information is at least out there (getting your teammates to act on it is something different entirely).

Would you find a feature like this useful for non-premades that don’t have access to VoIP? If so, which messages would you consider “essential” to have?

The FoV setting also resets when the client restarts. It retains the slider position (which isn’t the default FoV), but you have to manually readjust it to return to your previously set value.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Just double click it and add it to your available finishers, if you’re just going to delete it anyway, what does it matter?

You can’t use it if you have the permanent one unlocked.

Khisanth.2948:

Maybe try it without the “Limited-Use”?

Nope, doesn’t work either! I’ve tried all possible combinations I can think of.

Trying to delete my Limited-Use Vigil Megalaser Finisher (since I already have the permanent version unlocked) results in a greyed-out confirmation box, even though the item name is typed out correctly in the “are you sure” process:

http://i.imgur.com/EchoT2s.jpg

Thanks for looking into it!

Initial Strike only affects your first weapon-skill slot, e.g. autoattacks and all the chains they entail.

Already posted here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Sunglasses/first#post3901294

The Medium and Heavy versions use human scaling. Light works fine for comparison.

That’s the Medium / Heavy version of them. The Light one scales fine on Charr, but the other two apparently use the Human scaling.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/keepass/

https://lastpass.com/

Use a variation of your fancy password as a master pass, along with a key file. Back up both regularly. Now you can change your GW2 password as often as you want without having to remember it.

Since matches no longer award Glory until the Feature Patch, would it be possible to make the basic Rank vendor chest (Copper Rabbit / Dolyak / Wolf etc) available for Gold? This way, those who have attained a specific Rank have a way of completing their Rank-specific skin collection before the Wardrobe release (if they’re interested in doing so).

This wouldn’t include the Mystery Coffer or the Cultural Dungeon Armor chests, ensuring that the very high-tier skins are only easily available to those who actually hold the relevant Rank. Due to the Rank progression rate, this also wouldn’t cause a sudden influx of PvE farmers as most of the “prestigious” rewards are available at R40 / 50 and upwards, which is impossible to attain between today and the Feature Patch release.

Feedback / alternate ideas welcome!

I think the major issue with the skin integration stems from the two game modes never having been designed to interact with each other at launch. All those PvP skins were assigned rarity tiers seemingly at random (outside of the Cultural ones), so there’s a bunch of really neat ones that are easily obtained / crafted and a lot of “oh god why” outfits only available as fillers for higher tiers. The design team probably never thought these would be available across all game modes, so it’s understandable that there’s hesitation to allow quick last-minute farming of the most popular ones.

However, the current PvP incentives are terrible. Every day that passes with little to no rewards for what constitutes the main reason to play Guild Wars 2 for some people (they’re out there!) will cause more players to migrate away from PvP. The feature patch might change that sufficiently, but if it doesn’t I’m afraid we’ll end up with even less of a playerbase to create matches and rankings from.

Pin Down alone was never the major problem, neither was the HS specifically; they’re all just compounding parts that form together into a bigger issue. From what we know so far (which won’t be definite until release), the Hambow build will still be in the same spot that it is in right now. It’s a build that does too many things too well for a game mode focused around small-area capture points.

It has on-demand as well as auto-procced Stability, on-demand Condition Immunity, on-demand Damage Immunity, high HP, high Toughness, high passive HPS, an AoE stun that supplies the most effective instant CC possible in a teamfight, the largest and longest lasting AoE Fire Field in the game, passive Condition Cleansing, active Condition Cleansing via Lyssa and a decent amount of damage output.

There won’t be a reason to switch from the Hambow meta because it’s not situation- or composition-specific. There’s no scenario in our current sPvP mode where a Hambow Warrior is limited or could be traded for another Profession that fills the role to exactly the same capacity.

Until there’s new sPvP game modes that require dramatically different approaches in terms of composition and strategy, “stand on point, support teammates, deny enemies, don’t die and AoE a lot” will be the core mechanics that builds seek to fill, and Hambow does just that.

Deified.7520:

Do you have any idea how long it took some players to reach rank 50?

A weekend of Skyhammer exploiting, in some cases!

Four 4v5s out of ten matches so far in the past two days. Has there been any word on a possible fix for this with the upcoming changes? Why do these matches count for / against the participant’s ranking in the first place? If more than 75% of the match duration is four players against five, why doesn’t it discard the match from counting entirely?

boxerfanboy.7843:

This way a guardian can constantly apply protection for more survivability.

If you trait for Symbol Duration this is already the case.

You can also use it in Purging Flames’ Fire field to add some extra damage!

Defender’s Flame is a guaranteed 1s of Burning on a Block with no internal CD (at least none listed in-game or on the wiki). The 6-piece Guardian Rune bonus grants 1 second of Burning on a successful Block (also with no listed ICD).

Do the two work together for a combined 2s of Burning?

To kill a Healing Signet Warrior you need either Poison or more than one person supplying DPS. This is what makes Hambow Warriors so attractive in sPvP; you get a profession with a one-button AoE point-spanning fire field, constant high passive health regeneration, AoE stun ability, temporary condition immunity on demand, temporary direct damage immunity on demand, active CC immunity on demand, passive CC immunity triggered by initial application, Stability on demand and respectable damage output. Then you throw in a short-CD Condition Cleansing and Boon Application via Lyssa Runes and end up with the mess we have now.

I’m personally excited for the new sPvP game modes, as it’ll give other professions a chance to shine outside of the “stand on a point and outlast pressure” game we’ve had for the past year and a half. A lot of the Warrior abilities won’t change fundamentally in design since ArenaNet seems set on their implementation in their current form, so instead of a profession-based power creep we’ll have a greater variety of scenarios allowing strengths and weaknesses to match against each other.

Same on TC, the color areas didn’t spawn and neither Blue nor Green Knights gave any rewards despite having participated in the battle from start to finish in 2 separate attempts. This is incredibly frustrating.

Don’t worry, you can just do it again in an hour, hope you have the same number of people, fight another 40-50 minutes and actually get a chance to see the ending cinematic.

Or maybe it’ll just DC everyone except a single server again, who knows! Yay RNG! So much fun!

Phantasmal Duelist, Mage and Warlock all have relatively long casting animations even before any projectiles ever become apparent. The animation started right before you entered Stealth, and you get hit by the actual projectiles 1-2 seconds later.

felivear.1536:

Anet has a reputation for quickly and thoroughly dealing with PvP exploiters.

Like reprimanding Skyhammer Glory exploiters by giving them access to easily obtain hundreds upon hundreds of Gold.

The skill has been wonky since release, but recently I haven’t been able to get a decent pull out of Scorpion Wire to save my life. Four times out of five the projectile is “obstructed” by perfectly even terrain, and when it does manage to hit a target it merely acts as a knockdown instead of a pull, moving them by maybe an inch at most with no Stability or other abilities blocking it.

Can we get this skill re-examined in a future patch to make it more reliable?

I too just fished an email like this out of my Gmail Spam folder, along with an attached Guild_Roster.xlsx file that can be opened in Google Docs. Can we get a word on whether these are legit or not? The return email is listed as edgeofthemists@arena.net, but the fact that they’re asking for account names (which is something explicitly stated as an identifier for phishing / scam emails) seems odd.

Healing Signet needs its passive healing scaled down and the active improved significantly, which would make it work well with CD reduction via Traits. The complaints don’t come from its synergy with Adrenal Health and Shout / Banner heals, which is decent build efficiency.

Instead, the frustration stems from the fact that Healing Signet requires literally zero maintenance or attentiveness, with other Warrior healing abilities being sub-par in comparison. In its current state you would be better off unbinding the key shortcut entirely, making it the only Heal skill in the game that has no situational active use yet still outperforms other alternatives in overall HPS.

TL;DR: Make the button worth pushing.

Hello!

I was wondering if this was merely a randomly composed texture, or if the writing in the Thaumanova “White Light” room was actually translatable:

http://i.imgur.com/2aLykDz.jpg

It seems to be Asuran script:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Asuran_script

… though I might be wrong!
If so, any clue what it says?

Would it be possible to have the Toxic Nimross and Hypnoss models added to the Infinite Toxic Krait tonic, as a 30% chance on use in addition to the current one (Daimoss)? It would make the Tonic a bit more interesting instead of restricting the users to only one type of the new enemies (and arguably the least neat model out of the three).

What’s funny is that the pure “combat medic” build was actually viable in WvW when the game first released and non-Thief players didn’t understand the Shadow Refuge mechanics. It was tons of fun to play, and you’d actually be very useful in smaller groups.

Of course nowadays we have more lethal arrow carts, min-maxed damage builds and everyone will AoE and Earthshaker the living bees out of a SR landing repeated 5-9k hits on you regardless of Toughness, so trying to reliably revive someone as a Thief is essentially suicide. But it was fun while it lasted!

Even with the Sleight of Hand Daze and the 1s Immobilize on IS, it’s no longer possible to land more than a single swing with S/P in a PvP environment since your opponent will just walk away from you. The only way to land all your hits is using Devourer Venom and hoping your target doesn’t instantly cleanse it.

It’s still decent for PvE and clearing camps in WvW, but beyond that they need to figure out how they want the weapon set to be utilized by the playerbase or it’ll end up seeing less use than a Focus by Elementalists with one fourth of the utility.

Here’s a fun little build / experiment I’ve been using for WvW and sPvP.

It revolves around a single weapon set only (gasp!), namely S/D, and offers a manner of “relentless duelist” playstyle. You use a Sword in the first set Main-Hand, Dagger in the second set Off-Hand, then switch whenever possible in combat. This limiting / halving of your available weapon skills seems silly at first, but it revolves around three core ideas:

1. Initiative Regeneration on Weapon Swap (via Quick Pockets)
2. Easy timing of guaranteed Criticals via Sigil of Intelligence in combination with retaining chain combos (see below)
3. High enemy control via Steal Daze / Poison / Boon Removal / Self-Healing / Initiative Regeneration

The really interesting aspect of this setup is that weapon skills remain in their current chain state if switched to the same set; for example, your Flanking Strike or Larcenous Strike will stay available in their respective state on a weapon switch, which makes it very straightforward to time and land those “hard hitters” with a guaranteed Critical Strike thanks to the Sigil while also restoring Initiative for continued evasive moves. The same applies to C&D and the third autochain combo, Crippling Strike, which make up the S/D’s most powerful attacks.

While it’s kind of gimmicky (it dies to Condition floods rather easily even with Shadow Return spam and doesn’t have the on-demand Stealth or Burst of D/P), it feels like an approach that is very much in control of small engagements despite the solitary weapon set. The layout works with D/D and D/P as well (S/P being too stationary for this to really end up effective), however S/D makes the best “rationed” use of your Initiative Pool offering both evasive abilities and offensive counters that go from otherwise unavailable (due to spent Initiative) to guaranteed on a simple weapon switch.

I know I’m not reinventing any wheels with this (perhaps making square wheels instead), but have you ever experimented with single weapon sets? If so, how did it go for you, and did you feel the tradeoff was too huge?

Adoption agencies around Tyria struggle to manage order in sudden crisis as countless fair-weather Warriors find themselves promptly abandoned

Bump for exposure

You have my sword!

Joining one of the existing groups (check this forum for NA and EU ones) lets you give the encounter 1-2 attempts per night at 15 minutes each; while this does go against the “play at any time” philosophy, you’re still a far shot away from several hour long raid events to have a try at the rewards.

I agree it’s not for everyone, though; hopefully the next Living Story update will include content of a different type that others can enjoy too!

There’s already a similar NA group up and running here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/tequatl/Let-s-Organize-to-Slay-Tequatl-NA/page/2#post2870872

… with 146 current members and an attempt planned for tonight. Depending on the number of people you end up getting it might be a good idea to join forces with that one!

((cont.))

Currently we have a playerbase split into roughly two groups: Those who have chosen to group up and those who haven’t, with a few in between that happened to be on the right map at the right time to witness Tequatl actually getting killed (the contribution factor of those varying from player to player). The organized group continues to improve and solidify while the “silly option” crowd gets progressively more discouraged with each 90% attempt that they submit themselves to. Is this an oddly designed encounter to function that way? The arguments go in either direction, but currently it comes down to these three points:

• If you want to legitimately attempt Tequatl, you need to find a group using the forums / server sites / in-game announcements. This can be difficult as you generally have no idea how successful any of them are, but it’s infinitely more productive than the other options.

• If you’re not a part of such group, you are wasting time. Not only yours but that of others too, since you’re milling together with them in a random Overflow creating the apocryphal impression of there being any chance of making any reasonable amount of progress. You won’t. There’s too many factors playing against you no matter how hard you try, and waiting for an above group to randomly show up leaves you with gambling at no viable return, which is, once again, silly.

• Given time, the community will filter into either being part of groups staging planned “Boss” events or lose interest in attempting the content altogether. You don’t want to be in the second category if you’re legitimately interested in seeing this boss dead. The fights are designed to force cooperation and group play across a vast number of people, and the means by which to organize those are left to the players, so you have to be proactive about it.

Simplifying the content would be removing the “organize and overcome this challenge” aspect of the game entirely, and while it may not be possible for everyone’s schedule or play time to be part of such a group, it’s content that is most likely designed to function this way and won’t bar you from the rest of the game. Having said this, it comes down to Tequatl and the other world bosses being optional.

If you have the time and interest to join a Tequatl Kill Group, by all means do so, because it’s the way this encounter was intended to work. Die a lot, get better with people you’ve by now grown to fight with, make some friends and one day get enough luck and numbers aligned to finally kill the stupid thing. Don’t let the “server first” posts discourage you into thinking all these groups are already filled and closed, as this type of content has just started and we’ll continue to see them cropping up and unifying as ArenaNet continues to add more fights of this type.

TL;DR Find a group. Don’t wait for the group to find you.

Good luck you brave souls.

You are a regular player and want to give this whole Tequatl a legitimate attempt. You’ve read up on the strategy, packed your Potions of Undead Slaying, put your PVT pants on and have a voice chat program open to join in on efforts of coordination, should any be available.

Here is your option:

• Join an organized Guild / group dedicated to killing Tequatl at a set time and date, where everyone meets up in an Overflow or lower population server. It’s a cohesive group that is interested in seeing progress and improving on mistakes. The larger and more communicative the group, the better your odds of improving.

As you may have noticed it’s also the only option present here, because the others are silly:

• Idle in an Overflow at random times hoping to get into the main map, then hope that an earnest coordinated effort is currently taking place there. If not, continue idling on the main map until a coordinated effort occurs. This usually requires a time investment of anywhere between 2 to 8 hours to bypass Overflow queues on larger servers with no guaranteed return. This is a waste of your time.

• Legitimately attempt the encounter with the people present in your assigned Overflow server upon entering the map. For your viewing pleasure I’ve actually done this (half out of ignorance and half morbid curiosity) and compiled some data on how this plays out, and I am sure many of you will find this to look somewhat familiar:

Attempt [ 1 ] – Overflow – Commanders present: 2 – Bone Wall counts: 3 – TQ HP: ~95%

Attempt [ 2 ] – Overflow – Commanders present: 3 – Bone Wall counts: 1 – TQ HP: ~80%

Attempt [ 3 ] – Overflow – Commanders present: 2 – Bone Wall counts: 2 – TQ HP: ~85%

Attempt [ 4 ] – Overflow – Commanders present: 4 – Bone Wall counts: 4 – TQ HP: ~95%

Attempt [ 5 ] – Overflow – Commanders present: 3 – Bone Wall counts: 2 – TQ HP: ~70% ((this Overflow had the [AARM] Guild attend and attempt to organize things))

Attempt [ 6 ] – Overflow – Commanders present: 1 – Bone Wall counts: 3 – TQ HP: ~90%

Attempt [ 7 ] – Overflow – Commanders present: 4 – Bone Wall counts: 1 – TQ HP: ~90%

The only instance of this yielding a legitimate try is [ 5 ], in which by random chance a Guild chose the current Overflow to stage their attempt. The failures were a combination of AFK players, turrets being used incorrectly, focused damage being too low and people not knowing the fight.

This is also a waste of your time.

((cont.))

I’ll gladly join the effort!

Well, I have no idea how else to put this, but when left idle for a long time, the red decorative parts on this weapon grow in size. I’ve included two screenshots to illustrate what I mean. Best I can guess is that it has something to do with the way cloth is animated in the game, and that it maybe “stretches” the model minimally over time.

I’m unsure if this is just client-side or if it can be seen by others.

What it’s supposed to look like:
http://i.imgur.com/b1RbmhE.png

After some idling:
http://i.imgur.com/QNmVPQV.png

Drawing the weapon, swapping or attacking doesn’t fix it, but changing zones or fully un-/reequipping does. Not that it’s a major bug (it’s really more amusing than anything else), but I thought it might warrant looking into!

I’d personally go with Thrill of the Crime over Fleet Shadow for the Fury and Swiftness. The 5 points in Trickery help with the Initiative recovery as well.

I’m posting this here since I can only assume this is an oversight and not an “as intended” implementation; it also doesn’t appear to be the same clipping issues others are running into.

The Magitech helmet on Charr (pictured on the bottom part) simply floats on the character’s face, with the top head strap going across the forehead and then ending … well, nowhere, really; the headpiece doesn’t connect to anything on the opposing side either.

In contrast, the Leather Mask features a similar design that actually conforms to the Charr head shape, and has been in the game since release. This makes me wonder if there’s part of the Magitech model missing, since it’s a little hard to believe this was put into a model viewer and passed as finished.

If this is actually intended and not a visual error, it marks a depressingly steep decline in the quality of armor design since Release. I want to keep supporting a fantastic game with gem purchases down the road, but if this is what we get in return it does leave me reconsidering.

Cross-posted to the Bug Report forum, feel free to add your findings there. I focused (heh) on this as a Mesmer issue for now since it’s definitely reproducible and of increased severity there, but if you would like to add details to your Guardian findings I’m sure it would prove helpful as well.

Interesting! Seems like we have a decent bug report on our hands. I just tested it in the Mists on a Dummy with the same results; distance doesn’t matter as long as LoS isn’t broken and a target is selected. I’ll ferry this on over to the Bug Report forum then so it can be addressed. Thanks again for all your feedback and testing!

I did get pulled once before starting the capture, and was curious as to how they managed to outrange me. The main purpose of recording it was to see if there was any special ability combo used that might make this possible, since they seem to be activating a skill immediately before the actual Temporal Curtain (though nothing shows up in their buff bar that would be helpful in that regard).

I’m very wary of resorting to the ‘report’ option on things I’m not 100% sure about, so I wanted to run it by the general Mesmer populace first and see what they have to say. It would be ignorant of me to assume I’m completely aware of every game mechanic out there, and would rather attribute something like this to my own lack of information rather than any fishy activity. Thanks for your input so far!

Hello! Just encountered a Mesmer in WvW that seemed to be able to cast Temporal Curtain at a range further than the standard 900 / 1200 units. I was wondering if this is due to a trait or active ability that I’m unaware of, as I was unable to reproduce it.

Here’s a video of it:
http://youtu.be/qgheKnrk03Q (you may have to turn it to 1080 to make it watchable)

Thanks in advance for helping me out!

Same issue here, only seems to affect the HoM Heavy Warplate. I tried transmuting it onto different armors with different dyes, but the red (Salmon) parts remain persistently there and can’t be changed :<

The below shot is with Pitch dye in all 4 chest armor slots.

The staff’s main WvW tradeoff is that it’s fairly useless is open spaces, but absolutely amazing in favored terrain (walls, cliffs) or when supported by teammate CC. In a 1v1, it suffers the same issues as the S/D combo; the whole “don’t stand in the red circle” causes your Dragon’s Tooth, Lava Front, Eruption and Shatterstone to consistently do absolutely nothing as long as the enemy is paying any degree of attention to what they’re doing. D/D’s PBAoE skills don’t suffer the same issue (outside of Churning Earth, which has some degree of LF mobility) at the cost of more melee-oriented risks, but unless you get lucky on your Shockwave & Static Field, none of your heavy-hitting skills will actually hit. Meanwhile you’re getting pelted to death as your opponent is laughing and wondering why they haven’t taken any damage yet (okay, maybe you managed to set them on fire, but that alone has never won an encounter).

This is offset by being able to overwhelm large numbers of unaware players with ridiculously high area stopping power, massive bleeds and field control. Staff is -meant- for group and zerg play and will probably never be a viable roaming option without support from other players, but you can’t really force it into a role that it’s inherently not designed to fill without having the other weapon sets overshadow it in both utility and effectiveness. The staff absolutely needs to have both its 1200 range and either good CC or good field placement involved to reach its full potential, which you simply can’t consistently enforce in a 1v1.

TL;DR: D/D for Roaming, Staff for groups. Both do what they’re supposed to do given the right environment. You can try to fit the round peg in the square hole but it’s not going to be a pretty process.

The way to reliably beat the final P3 encounter is to spam Daze / Stun skills at him until Defiant wears off, then interrupt his cave-in ability right as it starts. After that, you immediately have to remove the 3 Defiant stacks again to prepare for the interrupt. While the fight takes forever this way, you won’t be reliant on a bugged NPC potentially not using his shield bubble.

This will only be an issue for few users, but the guildwars2.com website has no upper limit on the character length of the account password, allowing users with KeePass or other similar management systems to generate valid passwords exceeding 200 characters, which work just fine for anything related to the website account management itself.

However, when using a password of such a length, the actual Client no longer recognizes the password as valid. There seems to be a length limitation in the Client itself as to how many characters it will accept, thus resulting in a truncated (invalid) password submission. Could we either get a statement on the maximum character count allowed for the game Client, or have the limitation lifted entirely?

From personal experience, 60 characters seem to work for both the Client and the website, though I haven’t tested it further than that. Thanks in advance!

Professor Sensei.2941:

Thanks, you have no idea how many times we’ve been called exploiters.

You can’t fault people for having legitimate concerns during a period in the game’s time when C&Ding off keep / tower walls is something that has become rampant. I would rather play on a server that questions and clarifies occurrences like that rather than ignore them merely because it benefits us, while at the same time still getting out the pitchforks at even the slightest possibility of opposing servers using similar exploits.

In addition, announcing repeated two-person tower captures in Team chat and going “Thief trade secret lol” as a response on how it’s done doesn’t really look too good. C&Ding off Siege, NPCS and the gates is fine and considered a perfectly legitimate and well-known tactic; you both could have saved yourself a lot of trouble and annoyance being upfront about what you were doing. It wouldn’t have taken away from the accomplishment and disarmed the exploit suspicions for good.