Guild Wars 2

Agreed. It’s rather annoying to not know a patch is being installed only after you can;t log onto the game. A little sticky notification both here and (hopefully) on the client would be very useful to helping me plan when I can play.

Warrior really does kill things very fast. If you are running Hearts and hearts alone, take 5 signets (warriors have one of the best healing signets in the game imo), and grab a greatsword and either a rifle or longbow. Rifle does higher single-target damage output, but the longbow is by far better if you have multiple targets as it has several AoE attacks. Greatsword is really, really powerful in PvE at the moment, but other weapon types are a lot of fun too. It’s got the highest damage close range AoE damage attack I’ve seen in the game so far by a long shot (greatsword skill #2), and even its auto-attack hits everything in a decent arc in front of you. With a warrior, you’ll be able to pull several mobs at once or deal with a vetran and his buddies no problem. I’ve been playing a warrior for a couple weeks now, and I’ve died less and killed faster on it than on any class I’ve tried.

Thanks for the reply. That makes a lot of sense.

I’m personally a fan of the heavier classes, especially warrior. They do good damage and don’t die easily. As for any class I’ve played (and I’ve tried them all), I think they all stack up fairly well against each other.

Every class has the potential for high DPS if that’s what you want. Take a look at each specific classes’ subforum to look for a good weapon set/build to maximize your damage.

But some thoughts on the classes you mentioned:

• They’ll get the Necro bugs worked out eventually, so don’t worry too much about it.

• Elementalist really shines when switching attunements to match the situation. However, If you like one more (or feel it fits your character better), feel free to use it heavily, only switching out if you are in a situation where it is absolutely necessary.

• Thief does really really good burst damage, able to bring things down quickly without their opponent touching them. However, fights with lots of opponents (or high-hp single opponents) can be a bit rough. If you find your damage is lacking, see if your weapons are a low level compared to you or just try a new combination.

So I’m absolutely loving this game, but I’m wondering if I hopped on the wrong server (Borlis Pass). I have a friend there, and it said “High” on the server traffic at the time, but I find I only rarely see other people, even in starting zones. I find I’m completing most events by myself at this point, and only rarely see people in passing. I also rarely hear anyone on /s or /m besides in areas with Dungeons (where everything is lfg or lfm). To be fair, I haven’t hit endgame yet (only level 58), so there might be a billion people in Orr, but I’m getting rather tired of not seeing anyone on.

So my question is this: Is there a place where I could check the population (in terms of total number of characters or accounts) on the various servers? That way I could see if my server is really a ghost town or if I’m just looking hard enough. If it is empty, I would love to transfer to a higher-population server.

As a reference point, at what I would consider “peak” time for the game, I might see 10 or so unique characters in a starting zone (not counting bots, which I may or not see) in 1 hour. Perhaps 15 total over 2 hours. This number goes down significantly if I go to the areas more “my” level, to maybe seeing 2-5. I just want to know if this is normal across all servers, or if it is just my server.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Arena Net for letting us know you are working on the issue. That’s all I wanted

But seriously, I found the silence more irritating then the bots themselves. The simple acknowledgement of the issue and that you are working on it really helps.

I tested out Guardian, Thief, Engineer, Mesmer, and finally Elementalist before I tried out a guardian. I had just deleted my level 8 elementalist in anger and disgust after he had died a dozen times in a story mission, since the boss there could kill him in a few seconds with a constant barrage of rifle fire and there was essentially nowhere to take cover for long enough to heal up or get my spells off cooldown. I decided I wanted to try something heavy. Guardian really did not do it for me for some reason… perhaps it was the race I chose or perhaps it was that I did not really enjoy the weapon sets he was able to use. So, I picked up warrior and have been playing him ever since.

One reason I really like warrior is that he is extremely versitile. Need to deal damage very fast? Grab a greatsword or rifle. Need to keep an area or group under AOE without getting murdered? Pick up a longbow. Need to hold a point? Grab a shield and a couple banners and you won’t be dislodged anytime soon. Want to make players in PvP scream at their computers? Grab a hammer and stunlock them for a half-dozen seconds. I would encourage anyone thinking of getting warrior to play around with their weapon sets in order to find a set they like the feel of and go with that.

I also like that the warrior is heavily armored. It is really, really, tough to get killed in PvE, especially if you (like me) enjoy doing all the explorers and are thus are a few levels over your area with decent armor. This is especially true if you have a good long-range weapon, letting you kite tougher foes while waiting for reinforcements or just doing enough damage to take them down outright and surviving any attacks that hit you despite your efforts. Some enemies will destroy you in melee alone no matter how good your armor is, but from 10 feet away can do almost nothing.

I guess in the end, I just like that the warrior is able to survive on his own very, very easily. I don’t need to panic if I run into a champion while trying to get to a vista, I just need to avoid/absorb enough of its attacks for it to forget about me and for me to get the pretty pan of the landscape. He’s also able to integrate into a group extremely easily, and never has to worry that he isn’t doing enough damage or that he is dying too often and is a burden on the group. Give it a try, and I think you’ll like it too.

I was there with ya MechanicalMind, watching that army of bots take 80% of the drops as the centaur waves charged in to the killing field. I’ve seen it several times before and since, especially in the Human zones, since they are the quickest run to each major farming zone it seems. I have seen virtually no swarms of bots in other races’ territory that are not humans come over to the starting areas to camp the most common events.

Unfortunately, I know that is is not a simple fix. It would be wonderful if it was, but its not. Squash one bot and another will just pop up. Start banning indiscriminately, you just hurt regular people inadvertently.

As for solutions, I think I have a couple, some simpler than others. The biggest and hardest thing is finding a way to get rid of the macros being used to control the bots. If ANet can do they, they will have essentially crippled almost every bot. For quicker and short-term solutions, a check to see how long a character has been in an area, how many of the same event they have completed per day, and what drops they have been farming are good ways to tell what bots have been going. Also, checking for long play sessions (I’m talking 12 or 24 hours and up here) would be good indicators of which players are human and which are not. Also, the names of players are really a dead giveaway. A check to see if several people in the same area have names identical except for, say, an “aaaaa”, “bbbbb”,etc on the end of their name are 100% guaranteed to be bots. Banning groups like this will result in maybe inadvertently banning one group of friends for every 10,000 bots you quash.

Also, go after those who buy gold (as stated above, mail with 100gp in it is a fairly obvious tell…) to get the “Johns”, those that receive large quantities of materials from multiple accounts to kill the “money launders”, and check those who post massive quantities of stuff on the TP to get the “dealers”

Please use these ideas Arena Net. I love this game, but the massive number of bots is killing my immersion.

Oooh, positivity on a game forum. I like this thread

I love the beautiful art and that the areas all feel different. I want to explore this game Unlike any other MMO I’ve ever seen, going to new areas, participating in new events, and seeing/killing new things all make me really happy.

But my favorite thing is probably the dialog. As an example, there was a mission in the Asura starting zone where you had to round up skritt for some experiment. The ones you beat up were captured by a golem who follows behind the group, and spouts the most hilarious and disturbing dialogue. “I-am-your-friend. Would-you-like-some-sweets?” and things to that effect. I laughed so hard it woke up my roomate who was napping on the couch in the other room.

Props to you, devs. A non-comedy game getting actual lols is a rare and precious thing.