Guild Wars 2

I’d like the option to talk with our enemies. I’d also like for that option to be disabled by default, and changed in the menu.

There are many a time that I wanted to say, “Good fight!” or “Hey, what build are you using?” to an enemy that I just won/lost/drew against.

Kardiamond.6952:

@Mike Smith

You didn’t have to play a lvl 80 thief to counter them. DD Elem can prolly just breeze thru them. My friend laught each time a thief try to burst him down. DD Elem are the best counter to thief, which also make them the new FotM.

@Stiv

Those poor Ranger And that why once they debug Necro Minions, they will still be kittened. Since half the population of WvW are thief, you have to build for them.

I probably didn’t have to. It was fun, though, and gave me great insight into the class. Now I have both a Thief and an Elementalist at 80, giving me additional options.

I love to fight against Thieves on my Elementatlist. However, I used to hate them. I didn’t understand some of the mechanics, their predictable engagement patterns, or how the stealth skills chained together.

So a rolled a thief. I leveled him to 80. I learned how each of the skills work, their strengths and weaknesses. I played a ton of WvW and saw who I could/could not engage. What are the tactics when engaging 1v1? What are the tactics when engaging 1v2+? How does a D/D play differently from a P/D or a S/D?

With the learning experiment complete, I’m back on my Ele. Thieves are a tasty for my D/D. I have to handle each different weapon set a little differently, but it boils down to superior CC, superior sustain, and the ability to easily hit invisible targets. As so many of my abilities are PBAoE or cone, I don’t care if the Thief stealthed, he’s still taking most of my damage.

So yes, I love fighting against Thieves. I love stomping them into the ground, especially if when they get downed while stealthed. It adds a little bit of an extra smile that they lost while supposedly safe.

Another fun night of small-group gameplay on all three borderlands!

Highlight of the night was trying to take back Hero’s Lodge on the TC borderland from a group of hyper-determined Yak’s defending it. In the past I had scoffed at the notion of “Yak’s defending really well.” I’d seen no evidence of any better (or worse) defense that FA puts up. Last night I witnessed this first hand.

For those drawing a small blank on which camp is Hero’s Lodge, it is the south supply camp on the TC BL map. The Yak’s Bend spawn point is just to the east, and they have a safe route through their west entrance that drops them out almost on top of the windmill. Close enough for them to reinforce as necessary.

I saw in /team that a group of Yak’s had taken Hero’s and were defending it with siege. “No problem,” I thought. “I’ve got two other people with me, we should be able to take the 6 reported Yaks. Blow them off the siege, and then burst ’em down one at a time.” It didn’t work out that way.

The defenders were all part of the same guild: srCm. I apologize profusely if I butchered the ticker, but that’s as close as I can recall without looking at the screenshots back on my home computer. They had setup two arrow carts and two ballistae in nice commanding locations with great line of sight. As soon as a random TCer popped his head out from behind the stacks of hay, the ballistae instagibbed him. Arrow carts caused another 1-2 randoms to scatter.

My small group of three (counting myself) did the best we could against the dug in location. Ride the Lightning to the siege, blow the first guy off. Earthquake to knock the second one off. Damage, damage, “holy crap run away.” I was not expecting the coordinated defense effort. Your guys were kitted out and spec’d well. Every time I attempted to put appreciable damage on your siege workers, I’d get blown back by the Engineer or chain CC’d by the warrior. I even died once down by the water as your rabid defenders saw the opportunity to take the fight to the attackers.

We regrouped and put the call out in /team that “Hey, 4 of us aren’t going to be able to take this camp from Yak’s. There are 6+ of them and they are dug in. Send 3-4 more please.” I wanted a good even fight. Eight of us against six Yak’s with siege sounded like it could be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we summoned the TC Zerg Monster. On my way back to the camp for another go up popped the gold credit for contribution. We swung away to get some cheap quick badges from the jump puzzle.

Finished with the jump puzzle, the call went out again in /team that “The Yak’s guys are back and assaulting HL again!” My group was at six, but 4 of them were in the northern part of the map. I was at the ruins with one other, and rushed to try and hold it until others could arrive. I showed up just as the capture circle appeared. I’d been hoping for guard/claimer support in dealing with the 6+ Benders. No dice.

To be clear: I’m no daphoenix. My Ele started as an alt, and only recently hit 80. He’s geared out in Rares, not Exotics. They aren’t the right rares (I have Knight’s right now), but I’m holding off changing until I can get the P/V/T exotics. As a result, I’m not in the position to take on 6-9 enemies all at the same time. I can, however, kite them.

I taunted them a few times with the intent of them chasing me, and boy did they (after the camp was capped). Starting at HL they chased me up to the ruins, back down from the ruins, back up to the ruins again, through the river, back through the ruins, and on towards the closest tower to the NE. I’d /laugh or /dance from time to time, desperately hoping they’d keep up the chase. The tall Norn warrior blew his bull’s rush, frenzy, 100B combo four separate times during the pursuit, dealinkittenage each time due to timed mistforms. Frustration must have been mounting, but I did not want them to disengage. All because my team was saying in /party “Four minutes out…three minutes out…two minutes out….one minute out…ten seconds out…”

Grouped us six strong, we dismantled the very strung out 6-8 pursuers. Killed four, stomped four. Two I believe ALT-F4’d as we were positive they were in combat but disappeared, never to be seen again. To be fair, though, they might somehow have avoided all damage over a protracted period of time and recalled to their WP instead.

Regardless, it was a great 20-25 minutes of fun that srCm (again, sorry if the ticker is incorrect) provided. Great defense! Work a bit on your pursuit tactics, though. You guys got horribly split as some were faster than others, which allowed an even number of allies to cut you to pieces.

etrigan.4213:

Mike Smith.7268:

Rather than recall home, we decide to take the camp for good measure. Again, I’m counting on a lack of GODS situational awareness. As they streamed out of the camp a minute prior, they clearly hadn’t seen us leave. None of us were thieves, so we could not have traveled that far stealthed. We have at max two stealth skills between the party, both on the mesmer, for a grand total of 7 seconds of stealth (or thereabouts). A smart commander/squad leader/etc… would have checked the interior one more time after running out of the choke point and not seeing us. They didn’t. We flipped the camp, capped it, and then hid out on the arch above the choke as GODS streamed in one more time.

We decided not to press our luck any further, and recalled back home to sell from our completely full bags.

We saw you. We had another goal, which we accomplished and then we came back to flip the camp. Camps are only 5points and with/without the claimer buff and be tackled by one or two people fairly quickly. As you know we run in groups of 10+, sometimes two or three groups on one or different maps.

If we cap and leave a camp immediately its because we wanted/needed supply for something else, and we’re moving on.

I don’t think this is a tactic that is a big secret, plenty of guilds do this. Sometimes the end objective is more important….

You accomplished something in the 2.5 minutes it took you to come back? Nothing substantial. The closest tower remained ours. We weren’t assaulting Bay. The flag outside the camp was already yours. I did not see any green dots on the minimap while at the rear or front of the camp.

Maybe some of your people needed the Eagle Griffons and Drakes for their dailies?

I’ve had an awesome time playing on the YB and FA BL’s the last few nights with my small squad of TCers.

As a former FC in EVE Online directing 1000v1000 battles routinely, I’m enjoying the small scale combat that the BL’s bring as a change of pace. I purposefully haven’t purchased the Commander tag, as the Commanders on our server are doing a pretty bang up job of rallying the masses and making (mostly) intelligent decisions on where/when to hit the next target. That’s 100g that I can spend elsewhere.

A few nights ago my small group of two thieves and an Ele engaged Yak’s at the south supply camp on the YB BL map. We had taken the camp previously, but YB took it back while we were off roaming in the ruins. There were eight Benders at the camp when we arrived, so my group hid while I feigned shock and kited the enemy out where we could engage them.

Best fight I’ve had in a long time. Our other thief died almost right away, and our Ele and I strung it out over 10 minutes. We’d kill some of the Benders, only to have the others insta-revive them through sheer numbers. Reinforcements didn’t help the situation either. What was originally a 3v8 rapidly turned into a 2v10. I was blowing every…single…utility on cooldown just to keep us alive for much of the fight. To the Guardian that we kept perma-downed…sorry, that was probably a frustrating experience.

10 minutes after the fight began, we’d “won” by stomping 3, and the other 7 retreating. Or so I thought. I give the order to chase the enemy retreating toward the ruins when the YB zerg arrives. 2v7 became 2v22+. Stealth utilities still on cooldown from the previous fight, I dropped pretty quickly while our Ele escaped.

Similar experience last night on the FA BL. I was on my Ele this time, alongside a warhorn Warrior and GS Mesmer. We were at the western supply camp just south of Bay when GODS showed up en masse. First it was one of them. Awesome, instagibbed. Then 2. Down, down, stomp stomp. Then 6. “Erm, guys…let’s reconsider this…” Finally the GODS numbers capped at 8, and 2 unaffiliated FA’s brought that number to 10. Long odds.

We quickly dropped a portal in the middle of the camp and ran like crazy deeper in. The idea was string the enemy out, portal back and escape back out through the entrance or up the hill and over the arch. It worked, mostly.

Only 7 of the enemy had followed us deeper into the camp. The other 3 stuck around right on the portal entrance. Thankfully one of them was uplevelled, so we focused him down 100-0 before he had a chance to react. The other 2 decided it was best to join their allies and headed in the direction we’d taken not 30 seconds prior. We stomped one, but the other rejoined the now-together 8 defenders streaming after us like a pack of enraged bulls.

I’m still not wanting to fight 3v8, as FA controlled Bay at that point. They could easily be reinforced at any point of a protracted fight, turning a 3v8 into a 3v10, 3v15, 3v20, etc… So the order was given to Mass Invis, break LoS, and run back deeper into the camp again. I was hopeful that GODS would be so single-minded in thinking we’d try to escape OUT of the camp that they wouldn’t look further in. We cloak up, they run past, and I give it a slow 60-count as we’re skulking behind the buildings. No enemies remain in the camp.

Rather than recall home, we decide to take the camp for good measure. Again, I’m counting on a lack of GODS situational awareness. As they streamed out of the camp a minute prior, they clearly hadn’t seen us leave. None of us were thieves, so we could not have traveled that far stealthed. We have at max two stealth skills between the party, both on the mesmer, for a grand total of 7 seconds of stealth (or thereabouts). A smart commander/squad leader/etc… would have checked the interior one more time after running out of the choke point and not seeing us. They didn’t. We flipped the camp, capped it, and then hid out on the arch above the choke as GODS streamed in one more time.

We decided not to press our luck any further, and recalled back home to sell from our completely full bags.

Regarding emotes. I believe there is a time and place for them, and will use them accordingly. If I am engaged in a 1v1, and that suddenly becomes a 1v2, 3, 4, or 5 and I still manage to win the battle, I’ll /laugh. You deserve it. You put me in a tight spot, should have won, but didn’t. Heck, I might /laugh AND /dance on your corpse afterwards. If the enemy engages me in a 1v1, despite having allies of their own nearby who purposefully don’t engage, I’ll /bow, and then let their allies revive them after being downed. If I was engaged in a horribly long draw out fight, regardless of the numbers involved, I’ll likely /sit afterwards in a show of being winded.

Hey everyone.

About a month ago I posted a thread here in the Guild section of the forums that my wife and I were looking for a new place to call home. The original thread can be found here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/guilds/guilds/Husband-and-Wife-looking-for-a-guild/first#post703677. We received a ton of replies, most of which were copy/pasted from dozens of other threads. Vaeta and Nyxx, however, took an appropriate amount of time in PM’s to explain who/what Malum Factum is, and the benefits of membership.

We’re getting back to this a full month later because I wanted to give our existing guild one more chance. It’s been dying for the last 3-4 years, and there was some concentrated effort by active members to kickstart things again. We were, unfortunately, veto’d by old inactives who don’t believe in recruiting, plans, or infusions of new blood.

My wife and I are ready to move on. We’re looking for a place to call home not just for GW2, but for the forseeable future. Ideally, our 5 month daughter will one day play with the group we’re joining. What we bring to the table:

Me – a dedicated team player who loves WvW and PvP, but enjoys a good story in the process as well (PvE). For 7 years I was a dedicated, well-known Fleet Commander in EVE, routinely running fleets all the way up to the 1000 vs. 1000 size. I do not have a Commander icon, as I hate to grind and 100g is a rather tall mountain to climb on your own. I’m more than happy playing as an “average grunt”, playing on my Elementalist, Thief, Warrior, Mesmer, or Guardian.

Wife – the quintessential casual player. She loves the game, but plays infrequently at best. Any stay-at-home mother can probable attest that “sleep > game”. She will, however, do her best to build and maintain relationships with others in the guild. She’s not much of a PvPer traditionally, preferring to “SMASH things” with her Warrior in peace.

So Vaeta, Pims, Nyxx, etc… A few final questions. My wife and I will most often play between 9PM and 11:30PM Central. What do your actives look like during that time period? On the WvW nights, how many people are participating? Will I finally have more teammates than the 3-4 other regulars I play with now? What do you think about us? Would we fit in with MF? Are our next steps to head over to the website, read the required GW2 pieces, and submit an application?

Very much not looking forward to GODS being on our server. From experience fighting them in EB and their BL, they’re a disorganized mess of a mass-recruit guild whose whole strategy can be summed up in one word: Zerg. I am unfortunately picturing Derv standing in Lowlands all day with /map and /team spam of how great his guild is, and “shouldn’t all of the tiny misbegotten guilds of TC rally together under his divine banner.”

We already have things together Commander/strategy wise to the point where we don’t need the tag turned on most evenings, and our groups still know what to do. I’d hate for a loud mouth new voice to come in, without learning our server culture, and immediately start trying to do things “their way”. We’ve dominated our last 3 or so pairings because we know what to do and we do it.

All that said…Great times last night on FABL. My small group of 8 had a ton of fun taking supply camps, and having them taken back from us. You’ve got our Warriors re-thinking their specs for more survivability and CC given that they’re always the first to fall to your groups of 12-15.

Fun fight at the western supply point last night. Our group had dwindled to 4 as the night wore on, and we see that the supply point is being contested. A short run later, we see 8 FA players trying to cap. Guards are down, as is the Claimer. Circle is currently lit up.

The order is given to drop in, despite being outnumbered 2:1. Friendly reinforcements were about two minutes away, and I felt that we could at least stall the cap that long. A target is called and dropped immediately…but so are two of our guys, both warriors.

We’re now looking at a 2v7. Eesh. Long odds. Both friendlies remaining are thieves, and the FA hostiles have a solid mix of classes represented. Oh how I loathe necros on my thief. Neither friendly is running the backstab burst build, we’re running a hybrid Pistol/Dagger + Sword/Dagger for lots of condition damage, a fair amount of crit, and tremendous mobility. However, we don’t kill people fast.

A full minute into the fight we’re looking at a 1v5. We’ve killed/stomped two, but good CC and focus fire by FA means that our other thief is down for the count. I’m doing everything I can to just stay alive at this point. I’m not built for perma-stealth, but I do have a lot of stealth utilities (Blinding Powder and Shadow Refuge). So I’d unstealth by unloading on my pistol, and then break LoS/stealth as often as I could. Friendly reinforcements were only a minute away, right?

Wrong. The friendly force of 6 had been redirected. I learned this after the fact. I manage to down another enemy, but the other FA players are reviving their stomped allies. sigh

The fight wore on for another two minutes. I could get an enemy down, but FA would then focus all of their CC and AoE on the downed body, prohibiting me from stomping. They’d get their ally up, and the fight would swing wildly back their favor.

They finally got a good CC combo on me just after I dropped Shadow Refuge. Their hammer warrior wised up and used Hammer 4 inside the circle. Currently, if you don’t stay in Refuge for the full duration, or at least X amount of seconds, you drop stealth immediately upon leaving the circle. So there I am on the ground, Steal, Blinding Powder, and weapon swap on cooldown, and I die without getting back up.

Still a great fight. FA started off very disorganized and splitting their fire/CC. They then gradually tightened up as the fight progressed until there was really nothing that I could do to finish anyone off or do appreciable damage. They took the camp, and moved on to bigger and better things.

My feedback on the thief profession:

Although I find the majority of complaints about thieves to be funny, some do have merit.

I’ve played most of the classes (minus Necro, Ranger, and Engi) up to 50+. I have a Mesmer, Guardian, and Warrior sitting at 80, while my Thief and Ele are in the 70’s. I played the large variety of classes for so many levels simply to better appreciate how to win with/against them in WvW on the off-chance I run into one solo.

I have very little trouble with Thieves on any of my characters most of the time. Why? Because I don’t build straight glass cannon. The way I see it (again, having played a thief into the 70’s), thieves are enforcers of Darwinism. If you go glass cannon, you deserve to die to a class designed from the ground up to kill glass cannons. Thus if you are unwilling to evolve your mindset and continue to fall prey to a class designed to kill you, you deserve to die. Repeatedly. Over and over, somehow naively expecting a different outcome until the truth gets beaten into your now-bloody skull.

It’s not just thieves can do this, but they do it best. A warrior can burst you down easily using a combination of frenzy and hundred blades or rifle #3. A mesmer can do it through sword #3, dodge roll clone, phantasm, sword #2, shatter. A ranger can do it with the bow rapid fire. Etc… The only difference about the thief is that you don’t necessarily see it coming. But the counter to the thief is exactly the same as the counter to the above: don’t build glass cannon.

Now, I do take issue with thieves being able to hold up the capture of an objective indefinitely. No, I’m not talking about the flag points. Those are small areas that are easy to AoE the heck out of. I’m talking about supply camps. Those are large enough, and often have enough obstructions, for a thief to hide out in indefinitely. I know, I’ve done it. I’ve held a camp for 10 minutes against 20+ people that stacked up and AoE’d, but weren’t able to do so in a complete manner as I had a LOT of room to work with. Even though I managed this, I found it stupid. I should not have been able to hold up a cap for that amount of time, by myself, spamming nothing more than two buttons with the occasional third.

That’s my take on thieves. I kill them solo all the time. Darwin award winners die to them all the time. Something needs to be done about the stealth capture hold-up mechanics.

(A point of clarification: My thief is not my main. My warrior is. And before you “100b newb” me, I don’t use the greatsword. I don’t use the rifle. I prefer the CC that Sword/Shield + Hammer yields. I will immobilize, knockback, knockdown, and stun you to death.)

Although I find the majority of complaints about thieves to be funny, some do have merit.

I’ve played most of the classes (minus Necro, Ranger, and Engi) up to 50+. I have a Mesmer, Guardian, and Warrior sitting at 80, while my Thief and Ele are in the 70’s. I played the large variety of classes for so many levels simply to better appreciate how to win with/against them in WvW on the off-chance I run into one solo.

I have very little trouble with Thieves on any of my characters most of the time. Why? Because I don’t build straight glass cannon. The way I see it (again, having played a thief into the 70’s), thieves are enforcers of Darwinism. If you go glass cannon, you deserve to die to a class designed from the ground up to kill glass cannons. Thus if you are unwilling to evolve your mindset and continue to fall prey to a class designed to kill you, you deserve to die. Repeatedly. Over and over, somehow naively expecting a different outcome until the truth gets beaten into your now-bloody skull.

It’s not just thieves can do this, but they do it best. A warrior can burst you down easily using a combination of frenzy and hundred blades or rifle #3. A mesmer can do it through sword #3, dodge roll clone, phantasm, sword #2, shatter. A ranger can do it with the bow rapid fire. Etc… The only difference about the thief is that you don’t necessarily see it coming. But the counter to the thief is exactly the same as the counter to the above: don’t build glass cannon.

Now, I do take issue with thieves being able to hold up the capture of an objective indefinitely. No, I’m not talking about the flag points. Those are small areas that are easy to AoE the heck out of. I’m talking about supply camps. Those are large enough, and often have enough obstructions, for a thief to hide out in indefinitely. I know, I’ve done it. I’ve held a camp for 10 minutes against 20+ people that stacked up and AoE’d, but weren’t able to do so in a complete manner as I had a LOT of room to work with. Even though I managed this, I found it stupid. I should not have been able to hold up a cap for that amount of time, by myself, spamming nothing more than two buttons with the occasional third.

That’s my take on thieves. I kill them solo all the time. Darwin award winners die to them all the time. Something needs to be done about the stealth capture hold-up mechanics.

(A point of clarification: My thief is not my main. My warrior is. And before you “100b newb” me, I don’t use the greatsword. I don’t use the rifle. I prefer the CC that Sword/Shield + Hammer yields. I will immobilize, knockback, knockdown, and stun you to death.)

I’m disillusioned with the addition of Ascended gear. I no longer have the time necessary to devote to pursuing a gear grind like I might once have. In fact, that was one of the selling points of Guild Wars for my wife and I. Exotics are (relatively) easy to get, and were the very best equipment that money could buy or you could craft. Legendaries? Nope, not any better stat wise, but a cool visual thing to maybe, possibly, potentially work towards one day. But it wasn’t necessary, because they’re just exotics with fancy skins. My character was not any less powerful equipped with “only” exotics, and I liked that.

In comes Ascended gear. Yes, it is only one extra tier of equipment to climb. An extra tier that is just minutely better than Exotic gear. But you know what? I now have to get it if I want to be 100% effective like I was before. I have to grind a kittening dungeon, which I dislike mind you, just to be at the same level I was at (100%) pre-patch. But it truly isn’t the end of the world.

However, it sets a very poor precedent. ANet has now added a new set of items that are better than the previous that take (presumably) a hell of a long time to grind through to attain. What is to stop them from doing it again? Nothing. They promised not to do it in the first place, they promised no gear treadmill, but they’ve already kicked off the first step to making that happen. Six months from now, what if we’re at Ascended, Heavenly, Angelic, and Godlike item tiers? kitten that kitten.

I do not have the time to make that sort of commitment to getting my characters back up to the same effectiveness (100%) they were at pre-Ascended. My wife and I have enjoyed the game thus far. We definitely got more than our $60 (each) worth of fun and excitement. We’ve even contributed a rather tidy amount of gem purchases as well.

Not anymore. That’s the beauty of the free-to-play model to me. I have absolutely nothing holding me back from moving on to another game. ANet is making decisions that I don’t feel are in the game’s best interest, and directly contradict previous statements of theirs, so we’re moving on. Planetside 2 comes out next week, and that will graciously satisfy my WvWvW desires.

I’m really disappointed by this patch. I know that nerfs happen. I’ve played MMO’s a long time, and nerfs happen every patch. It’s part of the reason I roll so many alts, and work them up a little bit at a time: to remain mostly nerf proof. Devs nerf one of the alts? That’s fine, I still have 3-4 others.

Not this time. Elementalist, nerfed. Mesmer, nerfed. Thief, nerfed. Guardian, nerfed. Healing, extremely nerfed.

We had a quickittentle meeting last night with the 50+ people in our guild that play. We’re collectively dropping the game for now, at least until the next (highly disappointing) patch to see if ANet can a) allocate more than 2 people to balance testing and b) get some balance changes right for a change. In the meantime we’ll play Planetside 2 for our WvWvW desires.

Thank you ANet for the fun, but these kind of patches…particularly in a free-to-play game where I have no incentive to stick around outside of things being fun and rewarding…are moving your game in a direction that we simply don’t enjoy.

Holy nerfs batman.

Any further replies to this? Although we have received some good responses both here and in PM’s, we’re wanting to explore our options a few days more. After all, we’re not just looking for a group of people to play Guild Wars with. We want whichever group we join to be our internet home for the next 5-25 years.

Thanks!

Hey everyone. I’m a long-time gamer who has played MMO’s all the way back to UO. I’ve focused mostly on PvP games during that time. UO (1 year), EVE (8 years), Planetside (2 years), Darkfall (1 year), WAR (6 months), etc… In those games I usually played the part of siege/battlefield/fleet commander and led fights from 5v5 all the way up to 1000v1000 all the time.

GW2 is its own animal, though, and I have completely different expectations here. My wife decided to try the game out as well in the wake of the City of Heroes shutdown, and has come to enjoy it quite a bit. She is more PvE focused than PvP, but enjoys the occasional wild cackle of “I SQUISHED HIM” when getting a stomp with her Warrior.

I’ve been part of a gaming community for 6+ years now, but it is going out with a whimper both in GW2 and overall. As a result, I’m looking for a new group that my wife and I can both join up with. This of particular importance to me:

• Mature group. My wife and I have a four month old daughter who we want to eventually introduce into gaming as well. I don’t want to worry about the language or topics of conversation for me or my wife. Groups filled with the average 18 year old (average, I know there are a LOT of quality exceptions) need not apply.
• Active US evenings. One of the main reasons we are looking for a new group to play with is our current group only has 3-4 people logging in nightly when we have the time to play. As we enjoy playing/working with other people quite a bit, we desire activity when we have the ability to play. We don’t need hundreds of actives, but 15+ unique actives online most nights would be preferable.
• Coordinated PvP presence. This one is more for me, but it’s of middle-tier importance for my wife as well. I play for PvP. Whether commanding dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people or running along as a grunt, scout, etc… I prefer to play against people, not the AI. I like WvW moreso than sPvP or tPvP, but I’ll be honest in saying I haven’t done a lot of the latter two for want of a good team.
• Helpful in PvE. This one is more for my wife, but I do PvE as well (I enjoy a good story, and the personal story arcs are at least mildly entertaining). My wife will often want to tackle something that is beyond her character’s limits without realizing it. If she is playing during the day while theKid is napping, having a helpful presence from the guild is a plus.

We’re currently based on Tarnished Coast, but have no problems transferring to another server if we need to. If we do transfer, I’d like for the server to be competitive in WvW (see above), but competitive can mean so many different things. Read: I’m open to more than just Stormbluff, Blackgate, Jade Quarry, and I’m completely fine with remaining on Tarnished Coast.

Thanks for your interest.

I used Dagger/Dagger for my first three or four days on my Ele. I unlocked the skills for those weapons very quickly, and didn’t worry about it.

Around level 20 I decided to unlock the rest of my weapon skills. i.e. Staff, Scepter, and Focus. At level 20 it takes 1-2 kills per skill unlocked. I unlocked everything in less than 5 minutes.

I don’t see why this is an issue.

If ANet has posted in this thread, unfortunately I’ve missed it. The devs might have already covered/clarified what I am about to say, but I did not see it in my cursory view of the thread.

I hate gear progression. HATE. I very much liked the idea of Exotic Armors being relatively easy to attain, and that anything beyond them was going to be visual upgrades only (see Legendary items). I did not play WoW, because I hate raiding for gear. I did not play EQ/EQ2/whatever other gear grind game here because I hate raiding for gear.

If ANet continues to add levels/tiers of items above Ascended, my wife and I are out. That’s not a threat, it’s just the acknowledgement that ANet is heading in a game design direction that neither of us like or prefer. And the good news? The lack of a subscription makes it very easy to drop the game without thinking I’ve wasted money along the way.

Aedil.1296:

I’m angry.
I don’t know what have u done with the elementalist but i cannot go on this way.
I’m going to delete this lvl 80 ele and make a guardian, ranger or a war to be at the same level as the other classes.

It’s not possible i have lvl 80 exotic armor traited all defensive with water and earth using mistform arcane shield and every kind of protection i can use and stilli die after 3 hits in WvW or PvP.

I played 6 years the original guildwars and i loved my ele every single day, GW2 really pissed me off.

thanks

EDIT: lvl 42 thief with ugly gear is actually more resistant than ele 80 full exotic, guardian lvl 62 with warden armor (tier 2) is about 3 times more resistant -.-" i just have no words

EDIT2: Calle with lvl 62 guardian i can actually manage 2/3 ppl in WvW with ele barely 1 and yes my main is always been ele and i started with it since beta, it’s not a matter or L2P trust me is a matter that after beta ele sucks.

I’m sure the above is a troll. I’m positive he is…but I guess I’ll rise to the bait anyway.

LOL. Seriously, lol.

With that out of the way, I truly do not understand your inability to survive in WvW. I’ve played a Guardian to 80, a Mesmer to 80, a Thief to 60, and now my Elementalist to 80. Is the Elementalist somewhat squishy? Yes. Does he “die in 3 hits” as stated in the OP? Of course not. The only exception to this rule is when a Warrior pops Haste, knockdown, and his thousand blades combo and I’m AFK.

I run with the Power, Toughness, Vitality gear from AC, and have around 28% base crit chance when Fury is not up. I have perma-swiftness, mostly-up Protection, and 10-15 stacks of might at all times. The extra HP, toughness, and protection really goes a long way to making me survivable. I couple that with 10 Air, 30 Water, 30 Arcane, and never have any problems jumping into the middle of the zerg and mixing it up.

Case in point, every fight last night I’d throw myself into the middle of the enemy zerg like a heat-seeking missile with Ride the Lightning into fire combo into earth combo, and then get the hell out of dodge for a few seconds as necessary. Do I get targeted? Heck yes. Does my health drop precipitously? Absolutely. The dozens of hits my character is taking have the potential to drop me like a rock, but they don’t. In our groups, I am almost always the last man standing. Cleansing Flame. Mistform. Stunbreak teleport. Ride the Lightning. Etc… I have so many survivability and escape tools it is laughable when the enemy tries to kill me.

And when not running in a zerg or a group of 5-10 friends? Yeah, my Elementalist is the class I choose to go 1v3, 1v4, 1v5, 1v6, etc… with the full confidence that I can and will win. Again, this is a direct contraction to the OP saying, essentially, “I do not understand GW2’s version of the Elementalist, I am bad at the class, and thus the class sucks.” I’d recommend you taking a long hard look at this thread and learn a few things about how to play the class better: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-elementalist-11-6-12. I went from “meh” on the class to “wow, I can do things with the Ele that I never knew possible” after reading through daphoenix’s guide and watching his videos.

Having success with an Ele isn’t hard…it’s just complicated. Do I want ANet to streamline our playstyle some? Sure. Do I want them to buff our damage a bit? Absolutely. Do I want them to fundamentally change the class around into something that people like the OP would complain less about? Hell no.

TheFug.5278:

It kind of stinks that all TC is doing is forming a 60 man zerg and going from battleground to battleground. It forces us all to zerg up and take undefended keeps after they leave, only to wait for their mobile zerg to come back and roll over everything again. The “free karma” trains are not as fun as actually fighting it out. That kind of mindless fighting won’t fly in the higher tiers when you need to defend multiple aspects at the same time.

TheFug,

I’m not sure where this impression comes from. TC doesn’t seem to zerg any more or less than other servers do, having now fought on/against several. Case in point, for the past week our guild has stuck exclusively to 5-10 man roaming squads, ignoring zergs the vast majority of the time.

Last night was a great example. We log on after the new build, and immediately queue into EB. We have a group of five, and proceed to ninja around the map constantly. We focused primarily on the Speldan/Mendon/Pang/Ogre/Umber area…your side of the map. As more guild members logged on, we peaked at 10 people, enough to start attempting the towers themselves instead of just the supply camps, sentries, and hapless CD people that we stalked across that northern part of the map.

The most exciting moment came as a CD zerg of 20+ caught us as we were flipping ogres. Our group of Mesmer, Mesmer, Thief, Thief, Warrior, Warrior, Guardian, Elementalist immediately turned to run, only to find another 10+ CD on the OTHER side of the ogres. We hid in the Chieftain house and stacked our stealths as long as we possibly could, hoping that the zerg could pass us by. It’s quite amazing how long Mass Invisibility x2, Shadow Refuge x2, Veil x2 can keep the entire group stealthed. The 20+ passed us by, the other 10 ran into the Chieftain’s Hut, and boy were they surprised to find us there. Yay loot!

Two hours, 24 Badges of Honor (each, roughly), and 3+ gold later, we called it a night. We were part of the friendly zerg for less than 5 minutes total, and that was just because our roaming took us by a tower assault just as they broke into Mendon. Are there zergs on the server? Surely. I haven’t seen a server that doesn’t zerg it up during their primetime. But there were 4-7 other groups just like ours that were running around with 5-10 (I know, we ran into them) looking for good fights and fun.

Not sure if this has been covered yet as I’m posting from my iPad and haven’t been able to scan everything above…

Last night was fun. We got 100% capture in EB and decided to let CD have the Overlook back in the northern part of the map. We had 40+ people there to defend, but when boredom sets in you want to try some off-the-wall tactics. So we hid, on the upper level, all stacked on Zud, and hit /sleep.

CD takes an age to down the gates, but finally breaks through. Zud is giving us the orders of, “Okay everyone…get arrow carts ready. As soon as they drop the Lord, we’re going to deploy them en masse on the wall.”

Keep Lord goes down, and then strangeness happens. Multiple arrow carts, when deployed, sank through the wall. Maybe you cannot deploy siege on an enemy-controlled wall? shrugs We got wiped in relatively short order as the superior firepower we’d been counting on was not available to us. Many laughs later we revived at the spawn, and eventually took the Keep back the old fashioned way.

Good fights overall. TC seems to hold superiority during US primetime evenings and late into the night, and then CD will storm back and take back everything as our prime PvPers log offf.