Guild Wars 2

I think that, obviously, it shouldn’t be banned. Mostly because there are too many people who specifically derive all of their joy in life from being griefers, and hey, at least they’re griefing to the benefit of a team, instead of just their own sadism.

However, I think there could feasibly be a votekick system of some sort. Every 30 minutes or so, someone can elect to try votekicking a player, and then everyone within a specific range of that player would have to do something like a /votekickagree, and majority would have to rule. This could also be the case with people who sit idle in the spawn, which is really obnoxious during peak hours— they obviously aren’t helping the fight. While the system could obviously be abused, at very least it would discourage the ability for spies to do anything more than relay movement data.

Who wants to bet that everyone opposed to forced balance is on a server that’s already winning? Or at least, doesn’t actually know how very, very difficult it is to get back from a losing battle?

I think the logic behind the “it makes it more real, because real war has spies” mentality would be acceptable and fine, except in real war, if you find a spy, you kill them. In a real war, a spy can’t actually say, completely destroy the supplies in one of your locations by turning them all into a battering ram on top of a wall. They have to work in very small and subtle ways. Spies in PvP don’t have to, and there is absolutely no consequence to their actions, which can drastically change the team’s ability to defend a location. A single spy can basically guarantee a point falls if the defender to attacker ratio is close. Multiple spies, and it doesn’t even have to be that close anymore.

I second Grumpdogg’s idea. It’d leave the forum looking much cleaner, and much more sane.

I’m appreciating all the feedback I’m getting, everyone! Thank all of you!

It seems that it would be conducive for me to play around with the other classes so I can better understand how I work, for sure. And now, at least I have an inkling of what they’re doing (especially thieves, who from what I am learning, I just need to keep 500 miles away from at all times), and potentially try something other than a condition damage build. I may have to play around long enough to find a balance between the solid soldier crushing ability of my condition build, and having decent viability against everyone else.

To ZNICK: I think some of our differences may come from what we’re playing against. Many of the engineers I play against focus pretty heavily on turrets, which can be spiked down pretty quickly, leaving the engineers pretty much useless. Similarly, I end up fighting a lot of elementalists that seemed to really know what they were doing when it came to fighting single targets, cause I rarely every saw them in the team fights, and didn’t see most of the common AoE fire and air abilities when they were there. It is pretty neat how different we are, though. What build do you use?

Speaking of, how do you guys think a power build would work with Shortbow/Longsword? Longswords seem to work pretty well for getting damage out quickly, and the parrying might be able to help against thieves more, I’d think, right? I’d still have the shortbow bleeds against most targets, too.

@Paranoid: Thank you very much for putting it into terms I can easily understand. Things make more sense. I appreciate your help.

@IDICERI: So from what it seems like, you’re suggesting Short Bow/Longbow, and 30 in Wilderness Survival, but where do the other points go? And from what I’m seeing, especially the part where the current meta cleanses a lot, would it be a decent idea to go precision/crit damage? I’m curious if that’d debilitate my ability to beat the professions I already can, and if it’d help counter the ones I have an issue with. Regardless, thank you very much. I really appreciate your help, too.

I have not played a lot of sPvP. I’m prefacing my entire post with that, as to try to mute everyone that would grief me on those grounds. I am aware that on different servers, or with different teammates, or different ranks, it could be different. This is sort of a long rant/explanation, and I sincerely want some advice.

I play a Ranger on Ehmry Bay. I play the standard (and apparently very effective) bleed short bow build. Every time I get into sPvP, it seems who wins boils down to the team with the most of the four classes in the title. Every Warrior, Engineer, and Guardian, I can shut down without any difficulty. It might take over a minute of 1v1 depending on how well they heal, but they can’t ever come close to beating me. I’ve also noticed, since I’m often on a high vantage point and able to watch as I’m holding a point, that pretty much every 1v1 where one player is a Necro/Mesmer/Thief/Elementalist, and the other isn’t, the other loses every single time. When I’m against one of those four, I lose most of the time. The only exceptions are certain Elementalists and Mesmers, who for some reason or another, seem like they can’t do any damage to me at all, and I have no idea why. Otherwise, they just seem incredibly powerful compared to the other classes— and don’t get me wrong, I certainly think Ranger is more powerful than Guardian, Warrior, or Engineer.

Thieves seem to be able to always get close, and then put me in almost permanent stunlock so that I can neither attack nor move. It’s GG at that point, if it’s 1v1. Certain elementalists can do about 70% of my health in less than five seconds, and I basically get the rest burnt off in the few seconds after. Necros do something similar, but I haven’t lived long enough to figure out what happens, I just know it involves poison. Mesmers, I have no idea how they kill me. Or specifically, how sometimes they do, and sometimes they seem so ineffective as to be just fodder. Either way, it seems the team fights are over before they begin, if the teams aren’t profession-balanced. All four of these classes can do massive amounts very quickly, or even more massive amounts of damage over a few seconds, making quick work of just about everyone.

Why is this? Why are they so, so incredibly powerful? I don’t care about how mesmer+trebs is unfair, or how 90% of the time I can’t damage the entangling roots I’m trapped in because my character animation overshoots it. I just want to know why these particular classes are so powerful most of the time. If they’re glass cannon, how can it be they’re glass cannon and yet resilient enough to take a beating? Is there really any way to actually counteract this? I have condition and snare removal, but when it comes to thieves, that does almost no good—they just chase me and hit me with it again a few seconds later I’ve tried building condition damage/vitality, and while it made me survive longer, it made them survive with even more health 1v1, and made no difference in team fights. What is the solution?

And please, no “learn to play” comments. That’s what I’m asking. With some games, it really is just a solution of “don’t play certain classes”. I’m not assuming that’s the case in GW2, thus why I’m here.

I, as a now level 73 ranger on Ehmry Bay, have gotten six badges. I have played over 16 hours of WvW, and almost never do anything but participate in insults and large fights where I help kill many, many enemies.

I get the experience points for each kill, the game registers my participation. But I only get a loot bag about every 15-20 kills, even when I ignore the fight and meticulously comb the area to make sure it didn’t drop where I previously was (since, you know, shortbow tends to make me need to move around quite a lot to get those bleeds). I don’t usually get loot bags when I finish the enemy, either.

Of the loot bags I do get, well, six badges. I also get the experience, but my WvW kill count doesn’t go up. These have to be related, but I’m getting really frustrated. I was participating back when Ehmry Bay could actually accomplish anything, and I noticed I just wasn’t getting the kills in my log, but was getting the kills when it came to gaining experience. I have no idea what’s going on, but it makes the entire idea of WvW completely worthless to me right now.