Guild Wars 2

In reference to the first screenshot: I can tell you the shoulder “wrap” is from Tier 3 Cultural Light armor for Sylvari. The chestpiece might also be T3 Light but I’m not sure. The “pants” I don’t recognise though… might just be one of those NPC-only outfits.

In the second screenshot however it looks to me like she’s wearing the Tier 2 Cultural Light armor (still with the T3 shoulders).

Well I think for those of us who’ve been with the game since beta or launch, the new trait system feels like a chore. I recently made a few new characters and traits are something I don’t really look forward to hunting down. Most I will outright buy if I can, though I’m out of knowledge scrolls so there’s that. lol. It might take longer and I’ll have to avoid doing any “real” gameplay (like dungeons) until I have the proper traits but unless it’s something easily accessible, I probably wont be running all over Tyria looking for the specific activity for unlocking the traits. Grandmaster traits I can understand having some unlock requirements if they really have to keep this, but for the very most basic traits I don’t think it should be necessary. :/

Once I’ve made so many characters I wouldn’t want to have to trait hunt on each and every one of them. I rather preferred when buying trait books was an afterthought, and you’re left to truly play around with builds after that, rather than looking at what trait looks the best from a list and doing that activity to unlock that one without knowing exactly how it’ll all work out together with the rest of the build you’re using.

I personally found the fight to be okay. I think I died once the very first time from dodging off the edge. The achievements were what I took some time to get right, not from dying but from simply mis-timing dodges. once you get those out of the way, the challenge mode is cake because you don’t need to worry so much about missing one dodge. I probably wouldn’t have bothered with the achievements (as I find them more tedious/annoying than challenging or fun to do) but was trying to get my 10k ap rewards… so yeah. :/

It wasn’t hard just… annoying I think. I can understand why someone not used to such fights would have a hard time with it, though. I grew up on single player games (mostly puzzle platformers or action/adventure) so I’m sort of used to these kinds of things in games. In an MMO it’s a little new I suppose, and it’s true that there are all kinds of people who play MMOs. Not just hardcore gamers, many are into it for different reasons. So I guess it wouldn’t be unreasonable if the fights were less challenging in story-related missions.

Even though I really appreciate any challenges added to the game since I personally like that sort of thing, I don’t think it should be required content to continue things like story. IE, Queen’s Gauntlet was great for people wanting some individual challenge (like myself) and yet it was not required by any means.

Well I think challenging content would mean not stacking in one spot spamming skills for one thing. The dungeons which are hard require you not to do this in some fashion. I think Fractals are a good way they tried to get away from that. But I have been running CoE everyday to get some good armor for some of my alts and let me tell you, it gets very boring.

The endless gear grind of other games isn’t really something I’d want to see come to this game. Reason I mentioned Queens Gauntlet before is because that to me is challenging. It required you alone to learn and manuever and strategize, knowing your class’s strengths and skill sets. I missed out on this year’s Queen’s Jubilee for the most part but, from what I remember of it when it first came around it was quite fun and challenging. Maybe something that requires more than just standing in one place spamming.

Teq is decently good at this I guess, but I sort of get bored with massive zerg fights regardless of what strategy is involved. If it’s done on a smaller scale akin to dungeons with a party of 5 then maybe. I’ve done some Raid type stuff in other games I’ve played and honestly didn’t care for it much. I’ve never played WoW and have no desire to so maybe I’m missing out but, anything that feels like a chore just to get cool things isn’t really worth it in my opinion. Games should be challenging for those who want it, yes, but never to a point where it feels like work. Then it just isn’t fun anymore once you know the exact ins and outs of the mechanics of the fight. Because that’s when people devise stacking and smacking and perfecting it so much it can be done in less and less time. That’s not playing a game it’s just… mind numbing work.

Well, I do love challenge in games, yes. I thought some of the recent LS achievements were good, and the Queen’s Gauntlet will always be one of the highlights of my time playing GW2. I fought Liadri a lot of times and then some. It felt like a great achievement just beating these, it wasn’t even about the reward for me.

However, some dungeons just turned me off. Sometimes because of the attitudes people would have about them (IE, I don’t run Arah simply because I don’t like elitist attitudes I generally encounter with pug groups). Pinging gear and kitten like that is unnecessary at best. A year or so ago I was running TA like a madwoman and I never had a problem taking new players to the dungeon with me and teaching them how to do it, including those lower than level 80. I may have even taken the time to better learn Arah if some players would have been more willing to teach it or have patience but most don’t. I did eventually learn it vaguely from some guildmates but have had no desire to really go back since. Got my Gift of Zhaitan out of the way and never looked back. And if I’d known Track Rewards would be coming eventually I would’ve just pvp’d my way to it, as I find that a far more fun and engaging way to get those same rewards to be honest.

My problem doesn’t really lie with content but more the attitudes that follow when harder content is present. People tend to show up with elitist attitudes that frankly turns me off to the game. This was much the case in my last few MMOs as well and I’m glad I left them behind. I don’t think GW2’s more casual approach is necessarily bad if it means a more pleasant experience.

As for rewards for harder content, I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. I don’t think it should mean more powerful gear, but something cosmetic or title related would be fine. I remember the uproar when Fractals was first introduced, many people weren’t happy that it was the only way to get Ascended rings at the time. Eventually ANet added the lorels route which may have taken longer but made it possible for everyone to get them without running a dungeon they may not have particularly cared for. Plus I think you can get some ascended stuff with other means like Guild Commendations and that sort of thing.

But anyway… I guess I will just say in short that, harder content would be welcome for those who want it and I’m all for that. But I still feel that those rewards should also be possible for those who maybe don’t mind taking longer getting them. Much like Legendaries I suppose. I’m working on my first (after avoiding it for a couple years). Has taken me a long time so far but I’m getting there, even if much slowly than those who play the TP or farm non-stop. I do the things I like to do and I get the things I need in time. I even like doing the Cursed Shore farm simply because it keeps me moving and there is still some active play involved for the most part (at least for things like Grenth temple etc).

Well I haven’t done much wvw recently, and as someone who only just made a warrior not long ago and just got it to 80, I am not all that familiar with the way it was pre-patch. however, before the patch I never really felt I had any problems fighting warriors while roaming. PvP is a little different because you tend to stay in one place. But fighting them was usually a battle of whom was the more skilled and I never really felt there was anything wrong with them before. And really this could be said for any class. I usually main Mesmer, Necro or Ele (I like my magic/light classes) and have beaten and been beaten by plenty of classes before. Warrior is just a different class to get to know their tricks I guess. Much like thieves, which I used to have the most trouble with until I played one to better understand them.

TL;DR I guess it is more of a getting to know the way they work issue (aka l2p even though I hate that term lol). I don’t know Ranger by playing one very much but I do know they have plenty of CC abilities and a decent amount of gap closers. Back before there were any decent 25% speed runes my mesmer could hardly catch up to anything that didn’t want to be caught in wvw :P. So I don’t really feel you know how annoying that actually can be.

I’d also like a skip button for replays at the very least. :/ Or at least genuine checkpoints where you could retry from without having to replay the entire instance over again. The World Summit one has been a pain in the kitten to have to sit through over and over again just because of a failed attempt. Can try your patience after a while. :/

Well I got hit with this today when I decided to pick back up on the LS storyline. I remembered seeing a bunch of people gathered around the area when I’d go do node farming on the map but didn’t really ask why. Just figured it was good loot. Generally I like to farm too, but mostly I do it on Cursed Shore, and in my experience most people like to actually complete events there lol. So I didn’t think much of it when I went for the Coiled Watch event.

Thankfully I wasn’t cursed out but people were acting very childish that they were going to lose their one round of farming this event just because a few of us there needed to complete it for the LS. I was made fun of for this, but I generally just shrug it off. Really though, I’ve never seen the community be quite so toxic before this. I honestly didn’t realize I was disrupting their farm to begin with until they started yelling not to kill things. :shrug:

So it’s not as if I intentionally go out of my way to irritate people, I just needed to get this section done (and thankfully I did with the help of the other people there for story as well). Then I’m done and out of their hair…

I just can’t believe people are so self centered sometimes, but with the internet comes anonymity, and people are generally more ballsy when they don’t have to look you in the eye.

I don’t think they need to kill the event or the champs, just give this section of the LS its own instance like most of the story has been before. That way people can farm or do their story in peace without stepping on eachothers’ toes. Otherwise all this creates is a very toxic environment, and obivously people are going to be a little miffed if they’re being called out for trying to play the game as intended.

I only just got back into Guild Wars 2 recently myself, and coming back to this wasn’t exactly great. There’s a reason I loved this game more than other MMOs and it was the community, and this unfortunately has brought out a lot of ugliness in people.

Glad it isn’t just my imagination then. Usually the only way I can break out of it is by using another movement skill that launches your character automatically (like Ele Fire skill 3 in D/D or something similar). I don’t have time to type /sit or dance if I’m being hammered by 3 guys or something.

I only started pvp’ing 4 or so months ago (maybe longer I’m not sure) so I didn’t really notice this bug happening so much until then. Previous to this I was mainly a solo roamer on wvw and don’t recall the bug happening much then when I ran into other players. I had no idea it’d been around since launch though…. that’s very disappointing.

I am happy to see I’m not the only one! First time I saw her in-game I was in love with her outfit style. I’ve been wishing since forever for them to release it as an armor skin or something. Or at least something similar.

I didn’t know her outfit originally had a mini skirt lol! I am glad they didn’t keep it that way… would’ve been hard for me to take her seriously if she looked hooker-ish. :S If it’d been a long dress/skirt then it would’ve probably looked really nice though. Maybe something above-the-knee length in the front and long in the back. :shrug:

Solandri.9640:

LadyHorus.8214:

Way I see it is (and this may come across as me stereotyping and I apologize) that men don’t tend to care so much about looks as females do. We spend so much time trying to look good wether that’s with makeup, hair, nails, clothing, hell handbags even and so on lol. It’s just because there is a bigger “market” for it with females than there is with males. Not all guys are the same nor are girls of course, I just think generally speaking that is the way it is.

You’re being too self-critical. Why do women preen themselves? It’s because men like prettier women. As I explained before, healthier and younger women had a higher chance of successfully bearing offspring, so were genetically selected for (men who preferred to mate with these women had their genes passed on). Most of the makeup women put on and clothing they wear are just ways to accentuate a young and healthy appearance.

Uhm, I never said otherwise. Of course I know women care about their looks so as to impress a man, and believe it or not women do care about a man’s hygiene as well. It’s just they do not go to the lengths that women generally do, and I think part of the reason women do is because it also makes them feel good about themselves. You can get into the psychology of it all you want but I’m fairly certain this is a well known thing. Being a woman myself I know that when I’m going out with my boyfriend I want to look nice for him (even if he doesn’t really mind if I’m dolled up or not). I do it for him but also for me. I do it when I go to work just to look presentable lol. etc etc.

As for the other things you have addressed, I just assume most female characters in games are really guys in real life, because that’s usually the case in my experience. Ask any number of them and the main reason they play a female is because they like looking at them more than they would a male character. That’s the answer I’ve usually gotten 99% of the time when it’s come up. Role players may just be an exception to this since they don’t solely care about the appearance of the character but also their story and where they come from, and why they’re doing what they do.

Whenever I’ve made a male character I usually get surprised responses from guys wondering why a girl would want to play a guy character hah. My reasons may not be entirely just because I wanted an attractive guy character (actually it’s a bit lower on the list) but just because I like something different now and then. When I make males however, I find it hard to really get into I guess. I view all my characters as an extension of myself in some way (or are based on my own personal characters in my own stories outside of games) and it’s easier for me to step into the shoes of a woman than a man. So I don’t tend to keep the male characters I make but that never stops me from playing games with male characters in the lead (player) role. It isn’t hard to understand a story from a male character’s perspective especially if the story is told well, and of course the gameplay has to be good or what’s the point in a game? Despite this I have heard a few times that it’s hard for some guys to play games with leading female roles because they can’t relate to the character as well as they would a guy (wether that’s because they want to project themselves into the character or what have you). And God forbid that leading female has a romantic interest in a guy at some point.

You can probably speculate on all of that as well but I think it varies for each person. I just think in a game like an RPG where you can choose who and what you are it can be different than playing a game with set characters and story. I sort of went off-topic but I hope what I’m saying makes a little sense.

Yujin.1785:

@OP

Because the guys look like guys (for the most part), while the women look like runaway super models. The biggest culprit are the female norns.

Ehh not all norn faces look prissy though. only a few… and they pale in comparison to what we get with the human females. That is the biggest disappointment far as I’m concerned. And the bodies that don’t look like barbies, they seem to think small breasts = tummy or being thicker which couldn’t be further from the truth. They did well with the bodies for sylvari in this area mostly (though they are way too thin but at least it looks “consistent”) but humans… I dunno hah. I could never make a character to look like me, because the bodies are so strange. Not to mention the faces look like children for the most part.

The males might look like boy band members but I think the females got it worse.

Grimwolf.7163:

It’s like that in pretty much every game, ever. The devs always put 100x more effort into female characters and clothes for whatever reason.
Even in real life, women’s clothing tends to be far more elaborate and well made.

Go to a local department store, and look for something like… a hoodie.
In the female section, you’ll find a bunch of form-fitted ones with elaborate designs covering them, faux-fur lining, and whatever other random crap like large cosmetic stitching across the sleeves.
Go to the male section and 99% of them will be plain, baggy hooded sweatshirts. If you’re lucky they might have a logo on the back.

I’m not a cross-dresser, but the whole thing kittens me off so much, I’ve actually been tempted before to look in the female clothing sections for clothes that don’t necessarily LOOK female.

Way I see it is (and this may come across as me stereotyping and I apologize) that men don’t tend to care so much about looks as females do. We spend so much time trying to look good wether that’s with makeup, hair, nails, clothing, hell handbags even and so on lol. It’s just because there is a bigger “market” for it with females than there is with males. Not all guys are the same nor are girls of course, I just think generally speaking that is the way it is.

Even though games are far from being marketed toward females, they still put a lot more into females perhaps because they know the (hetero) male gamer likes looking at them and dressing them up lol. With male characters you get “cool” looking armor or looks, where for females it’s geared more toward what looks sexy to males.

I for one probably would have liked the male norn had they not been designed to look like giant dwarves (contradiction I guess) but they made them bulky and huge to appeal to the types who want to have a huge powerful look. Like the Hulk or something I guess. Human males do look a bit more feminine but I don’t see that as a bad thing. I wish there were more variety in the shapes and looks of the faces for them, or I might have made one myself. Not all men are shaped like body builders and frankly that’s not attractive to me at all… so the male body shapes were a nice change in terms of what’s “the norm” in games. Same way I feel about the female norn and why I love them so much. Yes they’re very blessed in terms of their breasts xD but, their body shapes overall are much heftier and more interesting in my opinion. I wish they had more than 6 or so body shapes to choose from.

But I went on a tangent. All in all I guess what I’m getting at is that it just depends entirely on the audience they’re trying to cater for. Even though female gamers are becoming more and more common now games are still primarily aimed at hetero male gamers, thus design choices are more made for that stereotype I suppose.

I’m more the opposite lol… I feel like the human females all have doll-like faces, and it’s very hard to make them look older than a 12 year old (well, aside from their barbie-like body proportions in most bodytypes). It’s just creepy. I managed to make my female ele and thief look in their 20s (like me) but some of those female faces look way too young, even from an artistic standpoint. And I love the more asian-style art direction… I just think they needed to mature the faces just a tad to match the bodies or something.

But as a female myself, that is what I look at when I’m making a character hah. I don’t care for the barbie proportions of the human models which is why I’ve only got 2 human characters. The rest are norn (3), sylvari (2) or my one female charr.

I don’t so much mind the revealing armor, since to me it is nothing compared to TERA or some other extreme MMO. Light armors are the only ones who really suffer from that anyway. For medium you have to try hard to find the right pieces if you want skimpy stuff, and heavy is pretty limited too. Overall I would say that Anet was pretty tasteful in most of the armor designs honestly. It is a breath of fresh air. And even the ones which are revealing in some way, have a very nice artistic aesthetic to them. I even love the T3 heavy for norn females just because the design of the armor is interesting, even if it is revealing.

My elementalist. With the name “Rosangela”, I wanted to give her somewhat an “angelic” look so I went with this. Until they come out with a really pretty long skirt the Arah one will do for now. It’s not the most original armor combo but I like it just the same.

I made my ele as an alternative to my mesmer and I must say that I enjoy it a whole lot more recently (but I wont get into why; guess you can say mesmer isn’t what it used to be for me).

As for dual daggers, I just like the playstyle more I guess. It’s closeranged, fast paced and fun to play. Lots of combo field combos, good support when it’s needed and pretty good survivability. I never got to play ele first hand back when they could handle zergs by themselves but, even now I would say they are pretty kitten good.

I have however run into some really good staff eles who were surprisingly hard to kill (for me at least, when I was running a power necro build once) so I wouldn’t say they are unviable in small group fights. I would imagine you’d just have to time crowd control skills and aoe very well. I have not been brave enough to run staff or the other weapon sets yet myself (though I have tried them all in wvw before) but I would say they are just as good. It just depends on your playstyle I guess. I’ve always liked building for survivability above all, and I like close range combat so D/D just makes sense for me. I was pretty ecstatic when I realized that elementalists could have a brawler type playstyle way back during beta.

So I would say just play what you want to play. If you enjoy it then you’ll master it and maybe even surprise people with it.

When I chose Raven for my first Norn, I had been under the impression that’d determine the transform you get for your beast form hah. I didn’t mind spending all the skill points on the transform skills personally. Though I do wish they had better uses. I use snow leopard only in certain circumstances where I need to get somewhere quickly. Plus the stealth helps a bit for certain things but… really I think the combat with these forms needs better uses. I always imagined the norn beast forms would be magnificent and powerful just as they were presented in GW1. I wanted to love using Raven form heh… but it’s very hard to when most of the skills keep you rooted to the ground or are really situational. I get that they didn’t want them to be over powered but maybe more usefulness would have been nice.

Honestly this voice is probably my second favourite out of the different female player character races. My first being sylvari but that could be just because it fits my character perfectly lol. My first norn was a necromancer and I love her voice. It fits her for me. Plus as others have said it is nice to hear a female voice that doesn’t sound so stereotypical. Especially for a viking nordic race like the norn. It was nice to also hear something familiar too- since there are also several characters in Skyrim voiced by the same actress. Granted, some of the shouts for warriors does sound a little unenthusiastic by comparison. In some parts of her dialogue it doesn’t sound like she has enough emotion but that could be intended by whomever directed it. I know that she is more than capable of more enthusiastic acting so I wouldn’t say it was her “fault”.

I must join the bandwagon of disappointment in the way townclothes is now handled. I used to LOVE my Bloody Prince’s outfit with my devil horns but now I can’t use both. sigh. Not to mention I hate the headpiece for the BP outfit… just ruins the whole thing for me. :/ not to mention the fiasco where you can’t color your default town clothes or single pieces like the separate shirts. My aviator pants turned into the entire outfit which I am very disappointed with… I’ll never use these things again because I can no longer mix and match them the way that I want. I really fail to see how this was pushed through the way it was without any (or little) consideration for how it’d be received by the playerbase. I love how the wardrobe handles for armor though, it is a very nice convenience but you guys really dropped the ball with town clothes. only thing I like about it is that I can wear it in combat now but… otherwise it’s quite bad in my opinion.

Thanks for the replies all. Think I understand it a bit better now. I love my mesmer as a roamer, it is my favourite place to be on WvW. But with the bigger fights I like to contribute a bit more than just doing veil/portal/null field. While they’re great utilities and sometimes devastating when used well I’m not getting much for my individual contribution.

I honestly find playing ele a lot more satisfying in big fights, and I love that I can dish out damage but also offer support with water fields. I just wanted to see if there was something more substantial for mesmer to do in these situations and I suppose you have all answered that question.

Guess I’ll stick to mostly roaming with my mes and use ele for zerging heheh.

Hello guys.

I have recently returned to the game/WvW, and I’m wondering if running a glamour build is still viable in largescale fights? I still have a set geared toward conditions (Rabid) and I started messing with traits that would give the blinds/confusion when hit with/passing through glamour fields (like null field/feedback etc). From what I remember hearing it was nerfed some time ago and it’s not quite as common now but I’m not sure I understand exactly why. I never ran it pre-patch so I guess I’m just wondering if there’s really that big a difference.

Did it used to give more stacks of confusion? I seem to do pretty decent damage using Rabid gear with Perplexity runes (Staff/Scepter+Focus) plus condition foods (sometimes 1000+ tick on confusion with the interrupts and glamour traits). Otherwise I can hardly tag anything in largescale fights what with very few ground targeting skills.

Here’s the build I currently use (just sort of threw it together on what looked like it’d work best with what I have): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQNArdWlknpYtlqxVNUrRSYqQwPVg5oecdrXdSKKNqB-z0CBYLgINDRjCAjWAiqAgGBhIAMHqIasl1FRjVhETHjIqmUAwssC-w

Normally I’m accustomed to running solo or with a small group in WvW so I use builds geared toward that, but I’m trying to get more into doing bigger fights (since this whole gold league season thing is rather new to me; was gone during the first).

TL;DR: I’d just like to know what you all think about doing glamour builds and if it’s really still worth doing.

Well as someone who’s had her fill of “grindy” games I’m kinda glad that GW2 is more “casual” (although I really wouldn’t call it that personally). The Living Story was interesting from what I played of it although it is a little disappointing you can’t go back and replay certain zones (like the Tower of Nightmares, which I really enjoyed to an extent). With the end of the first Living Story and the reveal that Scarlet awoke a sleeping dragon (can’t remember which it is now) I would suspect we’ll have something in the future to follow up on that. I always sort of thought, just like with Zhaitan, that for each dragon they’d have a new “expansion” for them (and hopefully more of Tyria’s map to explore). I hope that is the route they take when they pick back up where the Living Story left off. But it’s all just personal speculation on my part, I can’t presume to know what their plans are.

As for other games coming out… well, when hasn’t that been the case? With any game? I remember people raving about AION when it was about to be released, and a week or so later those people came back to the game we were playing at the time lol. I promise the same thing will happen with ESO (tried the beta a few weeks… was not impressed in the slightest which is disappointing as I really do like the Elder Scrolls games). Can’t say I know what will happen with Everquest or other upcoming games.

All I know is the same thing tends to happen. People get bored playing the current game, go to a new game for a while, get bored there and/or misses previous game… goes back… cycle just repeats lol. I myself take breaks from Guild Wars 2 just because I do get bored with it too after doing the same thing everyday but I always go back to it eventually. I don’t think I’d be able to stand the usual MMORPG combat in other games anymore tbh.

A lot of it is samey, yes, but I will always like Jeremy Soule’s music. My personal experience when I ordered the GW2 soundtrack from DirectSong was not that bad at all actually… I’d say it arrived quite fast considering. I got it within a week if I remember right. No damaged discs or anything. Though I do remember hearing about the horror stories and worrying I’d be just another one. Glad that didn’t happen. :/

I think a lot of what makes his work so nice to listen to isn’t just his composition but the fact he does have a great sound sample there to work with. Not many games seem to. I don’t know a lot about music but I do know that I like Jeremy’s sort of style. I grew up listening to a lot of Beethoven and Mozart etc so that tends to be what I really like to hear I guess. Classical and orchestral always sounds best to me for games. Far as the newer tracks go for the living story, I noticed they were different and maybe not as good in quality of sound, but the tracks weren’t bad. I could listen to them and not be bothered by it. Maybe a lot of it had to do with the fact they didn’t have an immediate melody all the time… it was easy to drown it out. Which may be good or bad.

You make me want to go shatter build again. I kind of really miss it… but I hate the current condition metas all over the place. I’m curious how you deal with heavy condition fights. :o Especially with no condition removal trait (for torch) or utilities. Out stealth/maneuver it I suppose? Anyway, great vid. Very inspiring.

Well it’s been about a year since I last posted my Mesmer so here is a little update. I still have an armor set with more or less my original look though, since I feel it is decently unique. Being sylvari I always wanted the TA armor though, so it’s by far my favourite.

Working on making some of the “mists” weapons starting with the GS so that the weapons match better. Still undecided what Legendary I want, though I was originally working on Bifrost.

Well, all I can suggest is make a thief and learn how to play it… because once I did I realized it can be quite challenging. I’m not the best thief but I know enough to understand them so I can know their limitations and strengths. :shrug: Granted I did this probably a year or so ago and that is when I started building my mesmer for more survivability at the time (I was going condi/toughness build long before it became the thing to do lol).

I think oscuro’s reply is the best one here though. Really all you need to do is learn the way their skills work in order to know how to counter it. And that could be said for pretty much any class you might be having trouble with.

Thank you thank you! I did find that rubble and thought I could get there but kept sliding off around that mast. I thought maybe I was meant to get on top of the whole building but you were right. Just a bit of jumping round did the trick. Thanks so much!

Sorry if this has been asked or if I’m asking in the wrong place, but I’m simply stumped. Been trying for an hour to figure out a way up top of this thing to get the vista to no avail. It is the one just south of the Trader’s Forum wp. All sides of this fallen tower seem unclimbable as far as I can tell. Even with my Engi’s rifle skill and rocket boots I can’t really seem to get anywhere lol. I’m just wondering if it’s even possible? Or should I wait until after the LA living story events have passed (and the city is presumably rebuilt)?

Thanks for any answers, I would really appreciate some help with this one.

The only thing I really wish they would fix is the AI on iWarden. It used to be one of my main weapon sets depending on what playstyle I wanted to do any given day but, ever since they bugged it out it’s been very hard to want to use it anymore. I thought it was fine the way it was myself. Even if the target runs away (which they will no matter what anyway) you can still attempt to pull them to it with Temporal Curtain or just cast iWarden when they’re unable to move (knocked down or what have you). There wasn’t really any reason I could see to change the AI to what it is now.

As for confusion nerfing, they’d been doing that since beta from what I remember hearing. It used to be quite over powered (shatters as well for that matter). I’m okay with it as it is but, that’s me. Runes of Perplexity however did make it ridiculous when used by other classes with tons of interrupt, as you said Advent.

But even with all the nerfs and changes I still stick with Mesmer. I can still be effective in wvw roaming which is where it matters the most to me. I was even experimenting with the so-called PU build even before it became a thing lol. Just because I needed a way to outlast opponents with higher burst and whathave you. It’s a fun class to learn and to master. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t still need some tweaks here and there, and I’m sure the devs pay attention to that stuff (at least I hope so).

Yeah, have to join in and also say that since I played Mesmer from day one I never really noticed how easy other classes have it. I did play Necro during beta but otherwise Mesmer has been my main. I’ve played other classes, but I always go back to Mesmer. Anything else just feels too easy. ^^;

I have been encountering similar issues myself though usually I just get disconnected after a few seconds. I’ll be running along fine but once I try using skills or anything it lags out and disconnects me. Usually only happens to me during a certain time of day, so I’m not sure if it is GW2’s servers or if it is on my end. :/ Usually when I try to get onto the website for GW2 I have the same slow connection time but other sites are accessed quickly. So I’m thinking it may be GW’s end, though I’m not certain. Wish I had an answer for you but I’m just as lost as you are.

I don’t mind if PvE gets the headline, it usually does. But, I was mainly a pve’er before I started really getting into wvw, so I guess it doesn’t really make any difference to me. I wish WvW had more good updates etc but I do understand that majority of the playerbase is not in WvW. If anything WvW made pvp more palatable for me personally, I just think it’s a matter of making it look interesting to other pve’ers who have not tried it yet. I have no idea how to go about doing that other than word of mouth to friends or guildies.

Personally I’ve come to enjoy the pvp a lot more than the “pvdoor” as it’s called, and I’m a little worried about what this update will mean for people like me who like to do a lot of roaming (in small groups or solo). But I guess only time will tell.

@Vena.8436: Something tells me it wouldn’t be hard for a large population server to round up a few groups of people to go keep some of those capture points. The loss of those people probably wont even matter to the main zerg in the long run because the stat boost will be plenty to make up for some of that loss. Thus the stronger server will be stronger. Like they need any help anyway. :p

I know wvw wasn’t meant to be completely fair, and I don’t mind fighting a larger server, it’s just when we’re being so ridiculously outnumbered already it is just salt in the wound if these servers also have the 150 stat boost on top of it. We’ve seen this already… it was the case with the orbs too. And I suspect the only reason Anet took out orbs was because of people fly hacking at the time. Not because they endorsed equal footing in combat aside from obviously, some groups having superior numbers to another. That isn’t something they can directly control.

But I pretty much gave up on this issue already after coming back to this new “randomized” matchup system. I think that’s more of an insult than anything else.

The dreaded Karma Train was the exact reason I left my first server. Funny, ever since WXP, everyone seems to want to do that more than actually trying to do something productive or fun. :| I remember the epic battles for a keep or garrison wether we were the attackers or defenders. I miss when people actually cared. Now, people look for p v door more than they do pvp. In fact… some of our zergs seem to avoid all conflict altogether. Not my definition of what wvw should be.

Straegen.2938:

Ostra.3927:

LadyHorus.8214:

I really don’t know where their current bright idea of a system came from or why.

Because the ones that stacked onto the tier 1 servers are tired of only fighting other stacked servers so they moaned and complained.

We have 24 servers… yet they listened to the ones from only 4-5 servers and ignored the rest of us saying “plz dont do this!”

I think Anet wants to create a better experience. I also think they fundamentally believe they know better than their forum players. On some level as a dev myself, I can identify with their perspective. As a player/user, I have zero interest in hanging around fighting servers with 2 or more times the population that my server has. Call me fair weather but I will leave an overly dominant or dominated server because what I want are fun fights during my play time that are challenging, not lopsided either way, offer some skirmishing and I don’t want to wait in queues.

Well, that’s the thing though. I mean… I started out on Borlis Pass server in the very beginning and once I ventured into WvW territory and saw all it was, was just a big karma train (at the time) I decided to try visiting other servers, which is when Mag caught my eye and I stayed here ever since. When I joined, everyone was important, everyone contributed. Our commanders worked together very well, even though at the time we were getting crushed by SoS. We put up a great fight, and it was impressive to me at the time. And ever since then I really enjoyed this server and its fights in wvw. Had a lot of great contributors to the community, for instance there was a mesmer specific guild for a long time that taught good hiding places in keeps and portal placements in certain situations… stuff that I’ll always remember. List goes on.

But that compared to what the community feels like now, is like night and day. I don’t know if the new matchup system is entirely the cause of it, all I know is that it feels like Mag is but a shadow of what it was once. I don’t know how it’s affected other servers but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was something a bit like this. And I’ll never leave Mag, it’s become my home. Granted, I wont go out and fight 80 guys in a small 20 man team all the time because it gets tiresome, but there’s no way I’m going to transfer servers again even if I had the money just so I could hope I’d have better fights elsewhere. I think that’s a lot of the reason the top tiers became what they are; fair weathers who wanted to always win (or at least most of the time) transferred to their servers, and thus the fights got boring for them. I would suspect crushing a small server all the time would be equally as boring though, but that’s just me. I like beating the odds when it’s reasonable but the current state of things doesn’t look very… fair to me. But that’s just the perspective of someone who was gone for 3 or 4 months and came back to a very different atmosphere.

Jamais vu.5284:

Um guys, I don’t want to rain on your anti-nightcapping parade (I agree, it’s a horrible problem that needs addressing, stop seeing no evil WvW devs. Fully upgraded T3 keeps shouldn’t be razed back to wood with 5 attackers), but are you telling me in that third of the day that is primetime (roughly 5PM-1AM) that you can’t dominate those blobbing servers, if it’s only as you say due to numbers and not skill? Because during that time, unless you’re like Vabbi, every server should have full or near full maps. You have equal numbers. If you do dominate them, raze their keeps, hold SM, flip all their camps and all that jazz, the difference in points should nowhere near as pronounced as it is currently, right?
And if your zerg is still smaller in primetime (with only one commander per map) despite full maps, then well … maybe it’s because you are worse at organizing your forces, i.e. less skilled as a server? Yeah maybe you’re really so much better in duels and maybe 5 guys of your mid-ranked server can really easily trash twice your numbers from a top 4 server, but sheer combat ability is only half the battle in war.

Just to give you an idea… normally we don’t even fill a que on any particular map except only in special circumstances. IE, reset night, and sometimes other times but it is kind of rare for us. And that is during primetime hours for our server. Once it gets into prime time for our opposing servers like TC for instance, they outnumber our forces 10 to 1 give or take. And often times it isn’t only one server trying to disrupt our stuff, it is both of them lol. Kind of hard for us to be in so many places at once and still fight off much greater forces.

I admit, it feels like our server’s older commanders, the ones I remember at least, have either gotten tired of it and left wvw or simply wont lead anymore because many of them seem to think “what’s the point when we get steamrolled by top tier servers every week?”

And honestly I don’t blame them. Mag used to be very good (we still are, morale is just… low to say the least) and I was proud of this server. We have a few shining stars so to speak that are still amazing at what they do far as commanding goes, I just wish not so many of them decided to step down. Our “night shift” commander whom was one of my favourites doesn’t seem to be anywhere lately and it kinda makes me sad really. :/

In the end though, I think many people are just tired of being up against servers we shouldn’t even be up against. I don’t know exactly how the current system determines who we’re supposed to fight but… considering we keep going up against tier 1, 2, 3 and 4, and we’re supposedly tier 7 or 8? Seems kind of lopsided to me. I’d be saying the same thing if we were up against tier 12 or 13 or something every week. There’s a reason they put in place the tiers which means you were expected to go up against servers equal or in your bracket. I really don’t know where their current bright idea of a system came from or why.

Lorelei.3918:

DevonCarver.5370:

skeet.1390:

So do 4 leagues in NA. This eliminates the enormous population difference from server 1 to server 12 and 13 to 24.

If you really think the server that is ranked 12th at the start of this stands any chance against the top servers you are delusional.

I never said they did. However, I’d argue that they do in fact stand a chance against the 6th ranked server and the 5th ranked server. We are not trying to only ever match you up against your closest comparable server. That was what was happening with the system before and it was bad. If you are saying you don’t ever even want the chance to try and show your skill against a higher ranked server, then I don’t know what to say.

We will continue to look into ways to change scoring to try and even out some of the population based imbalances, but that is not an easy task and it won’t happen during the season.

Devon, c’mon man…it’s not about skill. Skill is not a major factor in wvw outcomes. It never was and never will be. It’s population, population, population. And do you know what happens when you match a rank 12 server against a rank 1 server? Rank 12 goes home. That’s what happens. And if you think that’s ‘pathetic’ or something, then maybe you need to rethink what it is you are making. It’s a game and people want to have fun in a game. Being outnumbered 5 to 1 all the time is Not Fun.

In fact, it doesn’t even need to be a 1-12 difference. CD spent just 3 weeks fighting t2-3 servers and by the end of it we had pretty much given up. It’s much worse for others I hear.

Sorry, this isn’t angels in the outfield. Miracles aren’t going to happen. The outcome of matching servers with more then 1 tier of disparity is pretty much already decided.

I’m ready to go back to the old system now. I’ll take the same ‘boring’ old 3 servers every week to the way things have been: not being able to even play for weeks at a time.

This, so much. I left GW2 for some months (long before the randomized matchups) and I have to say, coming back to this mess wasn’t fun. My server (Mag) against JQ? Really stupid.

And from what I gather about this leagues system, it is only going to get worse from here.

I really have begun to miss fighting against Ebay, CD, Yaks and others… Yes the fights were always the same few servers, but it was fun and enjoyable that way. Friendly rivalries between all our servers, but we always had a good time.

I don’t call running into 40 man+ zergs of two other servers (sometimes at the same time) with our fewer numbers fun lol. If we have good commanders who’re good at open field fights it can be really fantastic, but at the end of the day, numbers is really what decides the war’s outcome. And as everyone else has so aptly pointed out, it is very much about coverage and numbers.

And I’d daresay that zerging would hinder someone from really learning how to fight properly where there’s less riding on your performance than there would be in smaller fights or skirmishes. The reason I didn’t transfer to a top tier server was because I enjoyed the middle tier. we had good fights, some zerging, some skirmishes but it’s nearly unheard of now that we’re being matched up with much bigger servers. And it’ll only get worse with this leagues system. I don’t like roflstomping smaller forces just as much as I don’t like getting roflstomped by bigger forces… I don’t see how that’s so hard to understand, and makes me wonder how much our dev really plays WvW. And if he’s ever seen it from a top tier, middle tier or lower tier perspective in all ways.

As long as they don’t make some very hard to obtain, very “OP” gear somewhere down the line… that is what ruined the last game I played because then you get all the credit card warriors buying all the best gear and facerolling everyone else in pvp lol. It got old, and did nothing for the game’s progression (and was really only a money grab move by the company running that game).

I just hope Ascended gear can be obtained by everyone, doing whatever they would like to do (rather than tied specifically to a dungeon like fractals for instance). I love that they made the ascended accessories available to everyone with a variety of ways to buy them even though it did not start out that way. And I’m relieved to hear we’ll be able to craft precursors somewhere down the line.

I think the Norn females are fine the way they are. I actually would have liked some different bodytype options too but, for the purpose of my character the one I chose worked out. Mine is a Necro, so I figured she wouldn’t be quite so bulky since she’s not swinging around a massive sword or anything. But for people who make a warrioress, I can definitely understand why they’d want a bulkier, or more muscular bodytype.

As for the faces… ehh, I think they are the best out of the humanoid races. I couldn’t stand the human female options for both body and face because well… it was just a bit too much. There was no real in-between. Your girl either looked unattractive or like a Barbiedoll/Anime reject. Which is why I ultimately rolled a Sylvari for my main (Mesmer) since they had slim/petite options (and generally I like my main to somewhat resemble myself in some way).

I think if any of them need more work it’s the human females. With very little differences in the bodytypes it doesn’t leave much for options. How would you make a stocky warrior or guardian human female? You just can’t, really. At least the Norn ladies have a good variety of bodytypes in that sense, though it would be nice to have more choices for all of them. I wanted to make a male Norn but, there just isn’t an option that I like for them. Bulky hulk-like characters isn’t attractive to me, as a female. Maybe some women like that but I’m not one of them. The male humans are okay but they have much the same problem the human females do- look very young and almost “jail-bait” lol. At least their bodytypes are attractive, for the most part. Though I’d still prefer a slim body kinda like the Sylvari males (but a little more to them than that).

tl;dr Just give us more options in faces and bodytypes and we’d call it good. Heck, I’d even like more hair options too. Definitely… I want more Norn hair that has some nice fringe around the face, to frame it nicely. Same for Sylvari too, more “long hair” options for them would be great…

This game is by far one of the most conservatively designed far as armor goes. I understand why you’re upset about females always looking trashy, but this game really doesn’t cater to that much at all. T3 cultural for Heavy on Norn is far from the worst look that I’ve seen. T3 light for humans is much more showy than it by far.

And if you don’t like the armor you can always opt to use something else. I was planning on using the Vigil set on my Heavy armor Norn lady because while it does show some skin it isn’t too much and it still looks like it’d be good protection. If you want a more cultural look maybe the armor from Honor of the Waves would look good too?

Idk, honestly you’re complaining about something that’s really near non-existant on this game. Try playing something like TERA like I did for a while and then you’ll see just how conservative this game is. xD I think the guys and girls at ANet have much better design aesthetic in a lot of ways (although they could really use some work in others).

I’ve been playing Mesmer since day one of launch and it’s still hard for me to pry away from playing it even though I wouldn’t mind branching out a bit. Mesmer is very useful in WvW for many of the reasons others have suggested. I guess the only thing I’ll agree on is I wish we had better swiftness utilities like the other classes. I don’t want to have to be in combat in order to gain a faster run speed (where normally, if you’re in a fight it isn’t terribly needed in my experience, unless to run away lol). There are other offhand weapons I greatly prefer using over a focus for various reasons (pistol and torch in my case). Signet of Inspiration, which provides random boons at 10 second intervals, is okay, and I believe the swiftness it randomly applies is something like 10 seconds, but I just can’t see the reason to use it in a slot that I’d rather have blink or decoy on etc. At least then it is a guarantee it’ll do what I want it to do lol… the signet does not always give switfness every time.

Other than that, I think Mesmer is pretty perfect. Sure they nerfed some things but… the way I was playing hasn’t been affected too much far as I can tell. I can still do most of what I always have in large or smaller fights.

And if you want near constant swiftness, many mesmers have found ways around that by using certain runes, like runes of the centaur or of the air, which give a switftness on heal. Paired with the Mirror healing skill you can cast it pretty often. I tend to use these occasionally when in WvW while running a more shatter oriented build.

I use invis stomp usually in cases where I need to avoid other players (if I’m alone in a fight against multiple people)… however if I’m 1v1ing someone I’ll be decent enough not to do that. :shrug: What bothers me about it is when I get ganked by a few people and they seem to think there’s a need to invis before stomping lol… it’s like… “why?” I clearly lost, and mesmer downed skills are pretty terrible anyway. There was only one case where I would have won against someone and it was because we were both downed. Their friend ran by and stomped me at the last moment and game was over. But… honestly, downed state doesn’t make much difference if it were there or not. Usually by the time you are downed it is too late, unless you get that lucky rally off a mob or another player.

So really what I’m getting at is… yes the invis/invincible stomping feels pretty insulting but at that point there’s really nothing you can do unless you get lucky. It’s just part of the way the game works, unfortunately.

I started playing my Mesmer using Rabid armor with a more toughness/condition oriented build quite a long time ago as a means to avoid dying quite so quickly. xD I can play a typical glassy shatter build but it doesn’t really appeal to me so much anymore. This was mainly because as others said, it is useful against zerker major burst damage types of builds or classes, such as thief.

But I must admit I came back to the game recently and the torment condition is really quite new to me. it sucks! I don’t normally run with a cleansing kind of spell, but I’ve started to because necros especially seem to hurt a lot more than they used to.

It would be nice to have more ways to counter conditions other than specing specifically for it or using runes you wouldn’t otherwise use (or food for that matter). That seems a bit off to me. But hey, I hate having to change my spec every time I want to do something specific (like rolling in a zerg) just so I can deal enough damage to get any credit that’s worth a kitten … so I guess this isn’t any different.

After months of not having this issue I’ve started getting this sound bug at least two or three times during my play sessions. Each and every time it has crashed my game…

I first had the issue a month or so after the release of the game, and I turned my sound quality down a notch in the settings which fixed it just fine. Only now even with the same settings the bug is occurring more and more often… Even in dungeon battles where I never had the issue before. Usually only in wvw…

I hope you can come up with a fix for it soon. I’ve missed a few Claw events in Frostgorge Sound because of my game crashing in the end of the battle, and I lose my contribution to the fight and get nothing from spending the time doing it. All because of a sound bug. :/ Worse than that though, is probably crashing during wvw fights.

Please fix this as soon as you can!

Race: Sylvari
Class: Mesmer
Armor: Twilight Arbor Light Armor
Gender: Female

I noticed when I equip the top piece of this armor, there is a small seam/gap between where her waist and hips connect. It is only really visible from the back and not the front. Still enough to where I notice it and it starts to bug me after a while.

Any fix to this issue would be appreciated.

Is there any update on a fix being done for this yet? I seem to have the same problem as many people here.

Usually my lag kicks in during night time (from around 5pm to sometimes as late in the morning as 8 or 9am MST). I play mostly wvw now so I thought that maybe it was the wvw dedicated servers but even in pve I find myself killed by normal mobs simply because I am lagging so much. I did everything I could with my ISP, even had a cable replaced that ran through the building thinking that was the problem but clearly it isn’t.

And like I said, sometimes I have no lag at all except during certain times of the day or if there is a lot going on at once (sort of like what spine.8742 describes). It makes being any use in wvw impossible unless I’m in a huge zerg where I’m “safe”. But even small fights I get killed because the lag kicks in once I start using skills. My latency has been around 240ms solid during my laggiest times, sometimes as high as 400. It is getting to the point where it’s too aggravating to play. Especially in something like wvw where immediate reaction time is a must, and even more so if playing a build that is squishier where reflexes is what keeps you alive. :/ A good connection is a must.

I don’t have any problems with any other games so far as I can tell, only GW2.

My results on speedtest.net, from my location in Colorado to Dallas, TX.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2324851778.png

Eirik.9145:

If Mesmers can port through walls, then why can’t the Necromancer?
Heck, the Necromancer port won’t even go across cracks in the ground or up in elevation a couple feet, let alone through anything, and it’s just for the Necromancer. And a 4000 range which people say isn’t that good. Try 1200 for a Necromancer.

And frankly, the Mesmer portals ruin what little there is to strategy in WvW the way it is. Why have siege weapons at all when they can be aoe’d from the ground or avoided entirely? Take down all the walls and just put flags everywhere and people can zerg control of them back and forth. Seems to be what it is mostly now anyway.

We still have to be sitting on the other side of that wall to put a portal there and then get one on the other side in order to portal people in. It isn’t so easy as people think if the enemy is aware enough to look out for mesmers hiding in their captured keeps. We can’t magically blink up walls or through them…

And yes, portal does indeed have a distance limit which isn’t so far as it seems. Often times for me it’s a guessing game basing it solely off eyeballing the distance I’ve gone from portal to portal to know if it’ll link or not. It’s quite touchy really… I kinda wish there was a distance meter of some kind, like a trail from where I set the first to where I want to set the second that’d tell me if I’m too far or not… but that’s something different entirely.

One thing I do agree with is perhaps tinting the portals a colour based on server colour. So that you know if a beginning or end portal is friendly or not. Other than standing over it to see if it’ll let you use it.

It still renders the portal exit on your screen does it not? Maybe I’m missing something here but how exactly does it abuse the culling system when you know exactly where they’re popping up? (honest question, not trying to be a smartass I promise) Certainly a thief (or many) stealthing permanently is more irritating than a big bright circle on the ground where it’s pretty obvious where they are.

Granted our portal bombs aren’t always so grand, I feel we need some more guardians when we run ours but that’s something different.

And like I said, use siege on the kitten thing if you can. Build some arrowcarts or ballista while you’re getting catas up. Even one would suffice I would think. Provided the bombing side doesn’t kill it before it’s useful I guess.

I just think the culling is what really needs to be fixed. I used to hate thieves until I took the time to learn their weaknesses and how exactly they work. I have not played one that much, but I’ve learned enough from the people who do to know how to counter them the best I can. I don’t think their stealthing ability needs to be nerfed, I don’t think their damage needs to be nerfed, I think the culling needs to be fixed. Countering a glass canon thief is a kitten and a half certainly, especially if you yourself are glass canon, but it isn’t impossible.

The same could probably be said for mesmers and the portals. Your side is not limited to not using portals to your advantage either of course. A lot of people here have tried to explain ways to counter it, all of which are viable. Portal bombs are not indestructible.

I just have accepted it as part of the game mechanics and it adds another side to strategy.

Seems a lot of folks need to learn how the skills a mesmer has works. Xavi put it quite well actually…

A few solutions to preventing the portal bomb are to kill the mesmer before they get close enough to you. We most commonly portal bomb when being sieged from afar by catas or something like that. But it still takes a lone mesmer to run out there and set the end portal… kill them before they get there and have a chance to set it. Problem solved…

Sweeping for mesmers after capturing something isn’t that difficult either. It takes a few minutes of your time and knowing where to look. I’m still learning all the good hiding spots to be honest, since normally when I hide I am discovered anyway lol. Long before I can duck somewhere.

It’s just about being aware of what’s going on and reacting accordingly.

As far as the culling issue, I don’t see how it’s too big a problem… You can still see when a portal activates because it glows, and is very very obvious. You could attempt to break up the people porting to you by using pushbacks, fear and that sort of thing. On top of aoe of course. You can also aim siege at it, as siege does not have a max 5 people cap on the AOE it creates.

I think where the culling issue is more a problem is with things like stealth. Also how it wont render characters until after you’ve gotten so close to a certain zone on a map (like say there is a zerg across some of the bridges in certain areas, you wont see all the people until you’re right smack in the middle of them).

But the culling is entirely something else…

If they did put a cap on the number of uses for portals, we’d just be stringing multiple portals along with multiple mesmers. It’d take a bit more coordination but you could still end up with a mass of people porting to you.

I don’t mind this mechanic, it’s saved me a couple times. And vice versa, has saved the person I’m fighting… but I just accept it as part of how the game works. I just view WvW kind of like a separate pvp server, where there are still mobs to fight but you have to constantly be on guard for enemy players. The added environment and mobs just makes it feel more alive I guess, I don’t really mind it all that much.

Even when people have downed and rallied from mobs they don’t often get away in my experience. I don’t really have much of a problem with it. Just have to learn to adapt is all.