Guild Wars 2

Poisonedpawn.7085:

The SOLO PLAY story line is simply not designed properly. Its garbage. And thats it for me, I was COMPLETELY enjoying the game .. right up until the expansion. Solo play is just not balanced properly.

I am solo playing HoT. I am very glad that is it more challenging, because levelling through Central Tyria was trivially easy and got quite dull. I even resorted to doing it in white gear so that I could learn to play my professions better without killing things so fast.

HoT content is definitely harder, requiring more attention, and a bit more gear. Relish the challenge!

Edit: I am in yellow/orange gear, but mostly orange.

In retrospect, I can see that the sentence at the top of the table on the wiki is trying to say that, but it was not at all clear to me that if you completed the story on one race, the points were not available from the others. Nor is this clear from the achievements UI. So I think there is a problem.

The wiki I can improve. The achievements UI not.

The “Mastery Point Unlocks” page at https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mastery_point_unlocks says that playing the Asura and Norn personal stories will unlock Central Tyria mastery points. The achievements list in the hero window also says so. I have been playing the personal story of my Asura character, and created a Norn character specially, but have not been gaining any points. The achievements are completed (and say they’ll give a point) but I’m not getting any points.

For example, I’ve just completed “Things Best Left Behind” but have not gained a point.

Currently, all my XP gained in Central Tyria is being wasted because I am blocked on these points, so I am not keen to continue unlocking any of the map until I can unblock them. They seem unreasonably difficult to get unless you play living world stories or fractals.

The bug is either:
1. That I should gain the points but I’m not.
2. The achievements list should not claim that I will gain points when I won’t (so that I don’t spend time, scrolls, etc.)

The Rogue.1328:

I am very confused about how the engi works, how their profession mechanic works and what their playstyle is. I don’t understand them at all. I am thinking of making one but I’m confused about how they work and what their playstyle is. Can you basically explain the engineer profession for me please.

The engineer has access to a bit of everything and can mix things up with interesting combinations (and I don’t just mean fields and finishers). I recommend these videos about some of the combos. To me, combining and chaining diverse skills is what defines the profession.

Cufufalating.8479:

… To this day I do not know how he got to such a high rank being such a bad player.

Level = time.
Rank = time.
Gear = time.

Welcome to MMOs, unfortunately. GW2 didn’t break the mold.

pierwola.9602:

War score
WvW matches take place across four maps each containing four different types of structures. Every 15 (change it to 2h)minutes, the structures controlled by each world are totalled and added to that world’s cumulative score. …

Rewards
Every 2h player receive reward (mail) for “successful” participation in siege. Player does not receive any reward if his world lost that Structures before the score tick (2h)

See also my proposal in https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Reward-wins-not-just-activity/ which is similar. It doesn’t have to be mail — the event system already copes with delayed rewards.

Telurico.3185:

Personally, I don’t like watching birds landing on the floor.

What do you think if birds land on the ranger’s arm or shoulder when he stops running?

I’d like to read your thoughts and it would be cool to see someone posting some edited pics. I’m not good with photo editors

In WoW the flying pets flap flap flap by your ear forever. I’m very glad they don’t do that.

So, the counter-argument is that WvW is so badly designed and winning is so arbitrary that it would be “unfair” to treat it as a game at all.

I can’t blame the players for that, but it does more to sap any reason to play than any (lack of) prizes.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

the problem with that is that regardless of how motivated someone is, the vast majority of players have no impact on whether their server wins or not.

And yet high population in WvW has a significant effect on the outcome (a point you make yourself).

The situation is not helped by encouraging people to take actions that have little effect on winning, and not offering much motivation to try.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

otherwise, player A could spend an hour following a zerg from keep to keep and get end of week rewards because their server won, but player B who spent 20 hours defending towers, running supplies, etc.. they get nothing because their server just doesn’t have the coverage. neither of those situations would encourage a player to try harder for a win.

I’m sorry that I have not explained myself clearly enough.

Player B gets exactly what they get today, not “nothing”.

Player A gets what they get today plus bonus if their server wins.

The bonus will encourage both players to take actions that will increase the chances of their server winning.

Note that I believe this change should be made together with my other suggestion, that “flip” event rewards are only given out if the node is held at the tick. In order to get anything from WvW, people would have to contribute to their world’s score. This will discourage the mindless “follow the zerg” because it will be considerably less effective.

I agree that coverage is a serious (other) problem.

I’m always rather disappointed by the attitude that people should get prizes for losing. It’s a game. You have to be able to win or lose it. Otherwise it’s as much a game a knitting.

Fewer ticks at night?

http://www.wowwiki.com/Flare for Rangers

EFWinters.5421:

Mabuse.2879:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

as for rewards being conditional on the server winning: this basically locks out 2/3 of the player base, most of which have zero power to affect the outcome. It would lead to big drops in activity once the match is decided

Not the entire reward. I’m saying there should be a significant end-of-week bonus for the winning server.

Why?

To motivate people to win (and not lose).

90% of the MMO population are primarily motivated to play in order to “get” stuff, and not just for the satisfaction of winning, unfortunately.

The current system of motivation is a bunch of diffuse bonuses to various PvE random numbers. I very much doubt many people go to play WvW with the idea that they’ll boost their world’s magic find by 0.1%.

Arlette.9684:

uuuuum… yes because that way the zerg can come easily take away the camp from the casual roamer while he/she waits for the tick. Go back to your zerg boy!

The thing about the zerg is that it can only be in one place at once. Co-ordinated smaller groups with good timing would be able to flip camps just before the tick, denying the zerg of most of its rewards.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

as for rewards being conditional on the server winning: this basically locks out 2/3 of the player base, most of which have zero power to affect the outcome. It would lead to big drops in activity once the match is decided

Not the entire reward. I’m saying there should be a significant end-of-week bonus for the winning server.

Currently you get experience and karma rewards for “flipping” nodes (sentries, camps, towers, keeps, etc.) even if that has no effect on your world’s score. This encourages a large number of players to simply run around flipping stuff without taking any interest in whether they’re contributing to a win. And so we get large blobs wandering around with a majority of players who aren’t interested in fighting, just farming.

I suggest that the node flipping “event” does not complete until the tick. In other words, you get nothing unless the node stays flipped and actually affects your world’s score.

I also suggest that you get a bonus reward at the end of the week in proportion to your contribution to your world’s score if and only if your world wins. (In other words, the whole matchup is a week-long world event that tracks your contributon.)

I believe these could have a significant improving effect on gameplay. If you take a node, you’d better time it well, or be prepared to actually defend it rather than choo choo off to another node. Worlds who want to time takeovers without defending them will have to dispatch coordinated groups, but with the somewhat predictable timing it’ll be possible to defend against the tactic, even with a relatively low population.

If this has been discussed before and I missed it, please point me at the discussion, and I’ll go and read that. Thanks!

What are your goals in the game?

Impact.2780:

Careful guys. Soon our forum posting privileges will be nerfed so they can QQ in peace.

I’m posting from stealth.

Thieves shouldn’t have dodge because they have stealth. And health. They shouldn’t have health.

Manuhell.2759:

I wouldn’t say it is the same thing. The other classes get a second weapon by default (apart from elementalists, who get attunements due to their primary class mechanic).
That isn’t true for kits, as we must spend utility slots for them, being optional …

But you get a toolbelt skill in return, and nearly all of them are good.

zaragoz.6351:

Spirit rangers… everyone hates spirit rangers.

Even most rangers. Thanks for making this the meta, Anet.

Even though I’m mainly an engineer, I’ll put a word in for mesmers in WvW for their group utility. Portals, veils, mass invisibility, null fields, chaos fields, etc. are all really great support. You could be a really useful mesmer in WvW and never target at enemy player. The engineer does not have the tactical utility.

However, you can get most of this utility without gearing up your mesmer very much.

To answer the OP’s original question: because MMOs, in spite of being large, contain very little game, where I define “game” as making choices which affect the outcome. MMOs, GW2 included, give out rewards based on the hours you put in. You can be more or less efficient, but that’s it. You can’t fail. Sure, you can fail a dungeon sometimes, then try again. It’s extremely hard to fail world PvE (short term failure is just a teleport). PvP and WvW offer some sense of success. You can craft more or less efficiently, but you can’t craft well or badly. GW2 even takes away a lot of efficiency choices during levelling, because everything you do progresses your XP at almost the same rate.

You can see the world (and it’s pretty). You can learn to use your skills. After that, all you can do is “get” stuff. Hours in, get stuff out. To break that pattern, they’d need to add gameplay, not stuff.

I really respect Anet for trying, but the manifesto was all about what they wouldn’t do, without much idea of how they’d fill the gap.

Durzlla.6295:

It kinda makes sense honestly, you can only really bite one thing at a time unless you’re a big kitten lizard….

I’ll just leave this here: http://www.wow-petopia.com/look/hydraskinwhiteghost.html

Ariete.6509:

It’s like i’m arguing with the Golem, it goes around and around in circles, after one goes down, another one emerges.

Have it your way.

Then I have not understood your point, and I’m confused. I never claimed the pet can’t kill the golem. I claimed that many auto attacks and special abilities will miss a moving target. There also seems to be quite a variation between pet types. What is it that you are claiming?

Durzlla.6295:

Do you not realize how detrimental avoiding someone for 5s is? Especially since we are, you know, rangers and our sword auto will not allow you the mercy of avoiding us…

Please take a look at this thread about that.

Maeglin.7416:

Threads like this are still applicable 10 months down the line ( Numbers are obviously varied since pets were nerfed in the damage department)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Pet-DPS-Comparison/first#post1443880

That’s a really great thread, with a very interesting spreadsheet. It seems to agree with my much more limited testing. I recommend anyone curious about which pets to choose on moving targets go and look at it.

Ariete.6509:

I kind know the answear but can’t help myself to be cinical: did you had agility training on your build or did you had Signet of the hunt equipped?

I should have mentioned that I tried this with and without agility training and signet of the hunt. No difference.

The pet already move faster than the golem. That’s not the problem. The pets stop to cast their abilities, and depending on the animation length, that puts them out of range. In the case of the cat Stalk ability, it pounces to where the golem was when it started the animation. Speed of the pet does not have any effect on these things. Agility Training and Signet of the Hunt do not speed up the attack animations.

Also, as an experienced PvP WoW hunter, I’m attempting to offer a fairly neutral and systematic comparison, not just complain. This thread seems to be a good place to do that. You keep implying (through rhetorical questions) that we’re somehow all wrong and the pets work fine. You can easily go to the Heart of the Mists and try these things out for yourself.

My goals are very basically the same, so I’m all ears (or eyes) as well. However, builds which require lots of twitchy thief practice are less useful, because I don’t spent a lot of time on my thief.

Mabuse.2879:

Ariete.6509:

After all of this, are your pets not hitting their targets?

No, they aren’t. Not when the targets are players. Pets stop at maximum range. Even a crippled and chilled player who moves away at all will avoid their attack.

Just to check what I was saying, I went to the Heart of the Mists and set various pets on the moving target golem at the DPS trials waypoint. I haven’t done a complete or thorough test by any means, but I did learn something.

Tail Swipe: Never lands. Drake spins on the spot at about range 400.
Stalk: Rarely lands. Cat flails around in the air at about range 400.
Rending pounce: Sometimes lands, other times cat leaps to nowhere.
Frenzied Attack: Rarely lands.
Dazing Screech: Rarely lands.
Brutal Charge (pig): Never lands.
Brutal Charge (dog): Mostly lands.
Intimidating Howl: Always lands (it’s AoE).

In general, cats, birds, and dogs seem to land most of their auto attacks (including the dog knockdown). The special abilities were less reliable. Bird special abilities usually landed, but it often took the bird a few seconds to get around to it, even as an opener, unless you made sure the bird was right next to the golem when you made the request. In one case, the raven just seemed to wander off in the wrong direction to apply swiftness to a passer-by and forget about trying. Moas and Drakes always miss one of their auto attacks, and only rarely land their special ability. (Tail swipe is a blast finisher, though, so has other uses with traps and bonfires.)

By careful placement of a frost trap I was able to get a Drake tail swipe to land sometimes, when the golem was turning around.

Bear in mind this is on a target golem running in a fairly small course at standard player speed without evading.

When I can persuade a friend and find an empty PvP server I’ll do a few tests on players.

Had someone done this kind of testing before, but more thoroughly, and posted the results? I haven’t seen much in the way of combat log analysis in GW2, and the log seems quite incomplete anyway, so I’m not sure proper number crunching is possible.

Tricare.2946:

How do you think mesmers got their izerker fixed? They kept that post up top and made new posts every day about it. Finally it got fixed.

iWarden got a fix too. It now moves to its target.

Arganthium.5638:

2. Who the heck are these people that are saying that Lowell’s build is any good for scouting?

You can see who we are. I’m going to stop right there, because the rest of your paragraph agrees with everything else we’ve said, and you must have missed the part where we started talking about efficient camp clearance, which is basically PvE. Calm down.

I’m sure the OP would welcome and explanation of the “dedicated stealth build” and how to use it to achieve his goals.

Qaelyn.7612:

1. I’m a little nervous about 12.8k health as it just seems I might be “burstable”, especially if I get jumped by another thief.

The toughness will help a little. But yes. Thieves are like that.

Qaelyn.7612:

2. The DB method with the signet makes sense but requires me to be doing damage to heal. If I’m running from a zerg then I won’t be healing. But then I guess the regen while in stealth and so forth is there for that?

If a zerg has damaged you, it’s almost certainly going to kill you. Stay at >1500 range, or gain range fast with your shortbow. Pop Shadow Refuge at enough range that they can’t reach you fast enough to knock you out of it while you’re in there gaining health and stealth. Shadowstep can get you range instantly, also.

Qaelyn.7612:

3. I’m a bit of a coward in melee, lol. But I guess I can spam hits with the SB too, yes?

You won’t last long or get many heals from the SB. Don’t forget, DB is an evade. You’re entirely safe during most of it.

ILLSPAWN.5340:

I would love the option to get rid of my pet for more fire power.

If only Stow Pet persisted, and while the pet was stowed we got out damage back.

By the way, when standing on a castle wall and firing down, the Red Moa is handy for a fury buff, or the jungle stalker for might stacks.

Hammerguard.9834:

I don’t see why they’re all above 1 second cast time.

It’s worse than a simple one second cast time. The skill gets added to the pet’s to-do list, and only starts when it’s finished whatever animation it’s currently doing. In some cases you can get a fairly quick response as an opener, if you keep your pet out of combat until you need its skill, or recall the pet to cancel its current action. More detail in this video

By the way, the DB/Signet of Malice trick appears in the Leaping Super Immortal Death Troll Legendary Unicorn Blossom build from way back. I used it quite a bit for levelling, but after a while decided I ought to learn some actual thief skills.

Bran.7425:

*State of the game link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCUvIrH2BlU not where to skip to it to here the exact quote I can not really subject myself to that one again.

5:25. Here you go http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zCUvIrH2BlU#t=3324

Yes indeed, D/D, caltrops, Signet of Malice, and Death Blossom spam are a great way to clear groups of mobs. Players, not so much, but there’s always out-of-combat weapon switch!

Elitist.8701:

Help!!! I just recently made an engi, got it to level 5, used grenade kit, and then quit due to frustration. I feel like when I’m using kits, my primary weapons are useless. I also feel like I cant make any builds without kits. Could someone explain when/where/how I should use kits, or if there are any non-kit builds?

Yes. You can spec into Alchemy (and eventually get HGH), equip elixirs, and build conditions with a pair of pistols. Example gameplay video Nerfed recently but still playable.

But learn to use kits. If you don’t like a profession with lots of skill combos, engi is not really for you. But five levels isn’t enough to know, I’d say!

Tumult.2578:

Just curious. How many other professions have to;
rely on a single weapon to do good dps,
learn when they can dodge with it,
learn when they can evade with it,
learn when they can disengage with it,
learn how to fight with auto attack off,
learn to fight with auto targeting on,
learn how to position and reposition themselves repeatedly during fights,
assuming their reaction time is good enough.
to master the use of it before becoming consistently effective in combat?

Several of these points apply to the thief.

I’m not saying the sword isn’t clunky. It’s clunky. But I don’t want to lose those leaps.

Ariete.6509:

After all of this, are your pets not hitting their targets?

No, they aren’t. Not when the targets are players. Pets stop at maximum range. Even a crippled and chilled player who moves away at all will avoid their attack.

Rym.1469:

If you wish your pet to hit any target, it has to stop …, target the enemy, start executing the cast and full animation. If full animation is complete, the actual damage and numbers are counted. …

This is the problem in a nutshell. GW2 mobs have to stop and have a think. (And they have an ability queue.)

In GW2, you can avoid damage from nearly all mobs by simply running through them. You can run through zones full of mobs without paying any attention.

In WoW (when I played it) this behaviour would get you killed, because the game decided that you were going to get damaged no matter where you were when the animation completed. This sometimes felt very weird, as you’d see the “hit” at odd times, especially when the network lagged. When there was lag you’d sometimes apparently receive a killing blow from miles away. Of course, you weren’t miles away when that was decided, but I can totally understand why GW2 decided to keep animations and damage in sync as much as possible.

Some sort of compromise might be enough, where pets are able to cast on the move, just like players, instead of stopping at max melee range while they ponderously consider their next move.

Kilger.5490:

I only played WoW for a couple months and hunters beat up my priest guy pretty bad on pvp server, at low levels anyway. Nerf hunters I say.

Hunters always used to rule 10-19. Blizzard paid very little attention to balance below the level cap. I ran a priest with a 10-19 team and it was very strong. But, hey, teamwork.

Qaelyn.7612:

Mabuse, dire is what I’m running now and I could see that or soldier’s working. I just thought power would be more of a “direct approach” than condition damage since I don’t plan to be doing a lot of fighting.

D/P is condi. It’s all about applying the bleeds, getting back into stealth, and then applying some more. I’m not aware of any successful D/P power build. In any case, try stuff out in the Heart of the Mists (the PvP lobby) before you spend gold.

Qaelyn.7612:

What do you mean by “quick triple teleport”?

15 points in Trickery gives you 3 extra initiative, allowing you to chain three Infiltrator’s Arrows from your shortbow.

Sure, skilled thieves can disengage and get away with pretty much any build. But if you’re running a thief alt for scouting (as I do) then I reckon a Dire D/P build is pretty handy. A defensive build is a good idea. After all, it’s mostly about getting your camera into position, not winning fights.

That said, you can certainly do supply denial, and win duels. I avoid fights with players mostly, though, since there’s no point in taking a risk that I’ll get teleported back to spawn. I’m more useful alive and looking for stuff. With this kind of tanky build, though, you can safely be pretty distracting until your friends turn up.

I do recommend Preparedness for quick triple teleport though.

For what it’s worth, I used to run a tanky teleporting bard in Rift. Did I kill other players? No. Did I win battles? Absolutely.

You’re not “going to die”.

I run around scouting with Rabid/Apothecary P/D SB 0/0/10/30/30. Dolyaks go down in three rotations (about 12 seconds). You can clear camps by pulling the first few out with scorpion wire. Camp supervisors take about 40s. You can also win many duels. I don’t main thief and just use mine for getting eyes and yakslapping. It doesn’t kill fast, but it stays alive, and that keeps eyes on enemy movements and helps your world.

So, go for it.

Basic rotation against mobs is CnD, dodge (dropping caltrops on the target), sneak attack, approach. Swap dodge for Withdraw if your health gets low.

You need a shortbow. With points in trickery you can chain three Infiltrator’s Arrow and escape anything without even popping stealth. Even if caught, you’re pretty tanky and can take a few hits. A zerg can still trample you, of course.

(I bought Rabid to try out a different build and recommend Dire. Apothecary boosts the Withdraw.)

I’m sure devs are well aware of the monster they’ve created. But if they nerf it too fast people will quit. Have patience.

Wolf Legacy.3791:

I wasn’t demanding it to be 90%. I was just saying what worked in WoW. I said SPECIFICALLY that because this isn’t WoW, the AoE reduction does not need to be so high, and I’ll settle for pets dodging with their rangers

I bet AoE damage reduction is significantly easier to code. I bet one of the reasons the pets suck is that their movement is server-side (like mobs) whereas your character’s movement is client-side.

You can prepare both burning and poison arrows, as shown in the ranger combo table as well as healing and chilling arrows.

But the effects of combos (throughout the game) are really weak and need a big boost. Combos are how we are supposed to gain skill moves on top of our tiny number of skill slots, and how we are supposed to co-operate between classes since GW2 attempts to abolish the tank/healer/damage trinity.

Try Bonfire + Rapid Fire. This combo field was showcased as a key ranger skill at launch, and you can see it in this Anet video but if you try it, you’ll be lucky to get a single, insignificant burn. (And the fan-out skill shown in the video, perhaps shortbow 2, isn’t even a combo finisher!)

stale.9785:

Sword AA is stupidly broken, and would be trivial to fix. Remove the “leap” components from the AA, and the foot animations wouldn’t be all buggered up, and we’d be able to dodge.

Since the entirety of the game comes down to “dodge to avoid damage” people defending the sword AA are, bluntly, wrong.

I absolutely do not want to lose those leaps. If they somehow got untied from sword 1 chain 3, I want them elsewhere.

Current uses I have:

1. Clear target, hit sword 1 four times, giving two AoE hits and two leaps past my opponent, putting me at about 600 range. Extremely useful for disengage. Combine with sword 2 for extra distance, or 3 for re-engage.

2. When attacking WvW blobs, clear target, spam sword 1, AoE damage and leap right through enemy blob to their backline. Wreak havoc.

and of course

3. Spam sword 1 to snare fleeing opponent.

So, keep all that, while keeping sword 2 and 3. Or is that “wrong”?

But the real answer is that sword 1 isn’t “AA” if you switch off “AA”. Sword doesn’t really have an AA.

Asura has better racials for trolling.

Hayashi.3416:

… In addition full Carrion, while not only being impossible to make, also doesn’t work because crit-on-bleeding requires a higher critrate.

Also, Carrion exotics are cheap.

Not really a digression. You made me explicitly point out how WoW pets were superior (useful to the thread) but also point out how WoW hunter players whined all the time even so (relevant, because MMO design should never be controlled by user forums). I have thoughts about why this is the case, but that really would be a digression!