Guild Wars 2

First of all, this is again qq about qq, which is kinda redonculous in itself.

Though I second the notion of cutting down on qq – there are many broken traits and abilities and the majority of complainees refers to those specifically, as opposed to a generally perceived underpoweredness.

And imo it is legit to be annoyed by broken class mechanics, unless you start to go fullkitten about it.

When anet fixes the engi bugs, it will be absolutely top tier, no doubt, while at the moment we are merely decent. Thing is, you have to put much more effort into succeeding with engineer, than you have to with some other professions.

Thief actually is much easier to play as a roamer and guardian is much easier to play as a defender. They are not necessarily stronger (though they probably are).

Have you tried it yourself? It’s this phenomenon together with the bugs, that drives people to ask for changes.

See, you have to discriminate between the core of the argument and the way it is presented, just like you have a point, but fail to voice it in a reasonable way (which would probably have meant to remain silent anyway).

I vrtually never use it for mobility, but it’s great burst!

R22, never seen one.

Checked some of the related boards – always know your enemy – and…there is at least two (one of them being broken atm) available. People also claim, that were would be no automated detection and anet would have to rely on ‘eye-witnesses’ so to speak (I hope this is actually not the case^^).

But I don’t think it’ll have any impact on the game. Most people only use them when solo pveing somewhere to cut some time or mess around with the game for fun (as opposed to applying it in a tourney). And anet will have done their homework and roll out ban waves when the time is right (even bioware managed the speedhacking).

As to op’s sightings – it might very well be lack of awareness/ignorance of game mechanics as well. But as he points out, it might be hard to tell, since you can adjust speed in small increments.

Anyways – if you see something fishy, try to fraps it, if possible, note the time/location and ask around, if there is a legit explanation. If you cannot find one – report.

Why on earth would they lie? You fail to deliver a reason (or apply common sense).

If we had ranked already, the kittening would go through the roof. It’s perfectly legit to watch the meta for a while first and handle the most glaring issues.

On the other hand, they shouldn’t repeat swtor’s mistake and think that players will be satisfied with the levelling experience and concentrate only on that for months. If it takes more than another few weeks, many PvPers will already go back to WoW/LoL/DotA/Whathaveyou, simply because they have competition (and numbers to chase) there.

It would make matches incredibly long, everyone would go bunker and sumo wrestle at the nodes and the matches would get decided by higher score after 15 minutes.

No, thank you.

What made you think anyone would want negative acceleration? I am actually curious.
:D

Mayam.8976:

I stand corrected. Honestly just couldn’t remember which flick came out first.

I only know this because of the ‘fast vs slow’ discussion on the dayz boards and Rocket’s obsession with 28.^^

Actually, I was really surprised that the runner type is an invention of as late as the 2000s and, if you ask me, they should get rid of that type altogether again – it makes zombies more…conventional, I guess, diminishing their special appeal (or adding another layer, depending how you view it ofc).

The opening scene of Dawn of the Dead (remake) is pure gold anyway – the protagonist getting horribly ripped out of the normal, the weird camera angles (car trunk mount, birdseye) and the distant explosions, signalling the mayhem around. Though the bonus material is even better – there are a dozen of unused mock tv scenes showcasing the anchorman slowly losing his grips and a series where soldiers of fortune show the tv audience how to handle zeds.

And the ‘empty london’ scene of 28 really struck me, too. This is how they did it:

The first scene of an empty London was filmed early on a weekday morning. The director Danny Boyle organized for good-looking women to stop the traffic from entering the empty streets as he rightly reckoned the drivers would be more co-operative with good looking girls.

:D

This thread is about zombies, right?

Wouldn’t it have to be 1200 range, according to the wiki’s description on how it works with AoE toolbelt abilities? It also says, it would bounce three times, not two.

I myself couldn’t say from memory/experience tbh, whether the range is 900 or 1200 and whether it bounces 2 or 3 times.

MuteLunatic.9087:

If you have a trait that you use in your pve/wvw build and then go into the mists with that same trait it will reset. So if your pve build is very different from your mists build or if your character is not high enough to have traits unlocked you won’t notice this.

Ah, this explains why I haven’t noticed before and why it was speedy kits. It getting changed in the last patch was just incidental, it was actually because I chose it as my very first trait today (slow levelling, almost exclusively in the mists)…xD

Sorry, I must have misread, Bruno

edit:
And to the ranger dude above:
I feel like your impression of 1v2+ situations, is the same on any other class/build, that doesn’t dedicate itself to bunkering.

It actually is my main gripe with this game’s PvP – it is extremely hard to win a 1v2 in this game and there has to be a vast skill gap between the parties to make it possible. Ofc you can outlast 2 or 3 opponents when you spec for it, but you cannot defeat them (unless you drastically outclass them).

This is deeply webbed into the game’s design and probably has to be this way to make the 5v5 balanced and interesting, the way it is meant to be played.

It’s just that my favorite PvP game is a quite unknown gem called Bloodline Champions (if anyone should care: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntEDGUYBW-k). Think of it as WoW arena (classbased 3v3 deathmatch arena with tank/melee/range/heal archetypes) meets fps game (wasd movement, mouse aiming in 2D) meets moba (similar ui, topdown perspective, no ‘world’ outside of the arena, only lobby, 6 base spells; 11 overall per class).

It really is one of a kind (tera features some similar mechanics, but doesn’t even come close) and one particular thing I really liked about the game was – you could 1v3 the other team if you were better.

Because in blc you could actually dodge and you had to actually hit your spells. It scaled 100% with player skill and I know of no mmo PvP that has been able emulate this.

There are some semi-skillshots like the slow travelling projectile spells or the AoEs) in this game and you have the odd dodges at your disposal, but in the end it mostly comes down to a build/rotation wars unfortunately and the twitch aspect suffers a lot from it. And if there was a build rotation that could actually and consistently win its 1v2s, we had a severe balance problem, I guess.

Not saying there would be no skill in this game, far from it! It’s just that I find the duel/1vx (twitch) aspect in this game as bland as in any other mmo and got reminded of this by the ranger’s post above. But I still have quake and blc for that, so I’ll be ok.

Got carried away a bit, but I think it’s still related (as it’s the only real gripe I have with the game and to point out, that the ranger’s complaint is not really profession related imo).

The lightning bolt bounces up to three times.

Unusually for trait like this, it has no cooldown. This makes it better with toolbelt skills that take less time to recharge, with more points in the Tools trait, and with traits that lower the recharge time on skills in your toolbelt.

At the end of each toolbelt skill, you will release the bolt directly towards where the skill was targeted. If you use a targeted tool belt skill, the lightning bolt will hit the target.
If you use an area of effect skill – including an elixir or skill that doesn’t normally deal damage – it will fly towards the center of the AoE and hit anything in a straight-line path.
If you use a skill that doesn’t target, like Incendiary Ammo, the bolt will only go a few steps in the direction you’re facing before hitting the ground, but will hit if there’s an enemy in its path.

(taken from the wiki)

It’s not random no, and regarding the range – I don’t know really, but judging from the above description and personal experience it is tied to the toolbelt skill (if not of longer range even).

Let’s take throw wrench as an example – when you use it with a static discharge build, you not only throw the wrench, but a lightning bolt with it (it’s not a pbaoe if that’s what you were thinking), making it two travelling projectiles.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

Wasn’t the survey more about the class in relation to the game? That sort of matters…

[…]

So don’t confuse liking the classes with enjoying the game.

That’s why I phrased it ‘overall player satisfaction’. You know, one (the major?) third of the results (over 2 being ‘satisfaction in relation to profession’ and ‘satisfaction in relation to level’).

Pistol shines in condition builds. As others already pointed out, those builds need their traits to really work, so they are not too strong in the lower levels. On the other hand, in the lower levels anything goes, so it’s up to your personal preference, really.

Rifle and grenades complement each other better, as they both scale with power nicely and give you tools for single target/AoE respectively.

As to your server’s success in WvW – it’s a numbers game, nothing more. If a server continually (especially at night times) has more dedicated players queueing for WvW than its opponents, it wins. There is literally no skill involved. Don’t fret, it’ll get sorted out by the server matchmaking, pitching the server populations with similar activity against each other. It doesn’t change anything for you personally, whether you’re on server X or Y.

I never experienced this.

Only thing I noticed was, that my speedy kit trait was deactivated today (leaving the trait slot blank). But this is probably due to this trait being changed in the last patch and not random.

Were all your traits reset or just some missing (due to changes in the patch)?

I experienced it the other way round. Starting out as a thief and then falling in love with the engineer profession.

Now I play my engineer when I want to have fun and my thief when I want to secure success.

It’s possible to achieve the same results, but it feels like triple the effort on the engineer, while on my thief (venom share pet build) I don’t even have to respec to change my role and everything is just so forgiving…

On the other hand, I cannot say the same for the warrior – for me it’s even harder to play warrior than engineer, despite all the peeps claiming it would be easy mode.

It might come down to preference, playstyle and some professions (e.g. engi) suffering from bugs.

edit:

But that’s just it, I hardly EVER see thieves, or at least not more than one, in the final round of the tPvP brackets I run. Not saying they aren’t there, but every team that’s ever beat my team has had no more than 1 of any class.

Well, I rarely encounter a team in 3rd round, that doesn’t run a thief or doesn’t run a double something (even engineers^^), so it might be just you. This is not meant to imply thief would be op or something, just that I cannot confirm your statistic.

‘Serious’ guilds will usually be active on some boards (e.g. inofficial server forums) as well, so that’d be a good place to look.

Also, I am quite confident, that the server communities will come to know their guilds in the next months. It just takes some time – also, don’t forget that most of the high-end guilds keep a low profile (especially ingame). When I was still playing WoW, the top 3 guilds of my server were almost invisible and most of the scrubs on general chat didn’t even know we existed, only bragging/ranting/flaming/mentioning the middle tier guilds, they were lucky to pug with at some time or another.

But you’re spot on with that trend of games veiling their player stats recently. Still, there’s other ways to find the right guild than who-stalking.

You know how you could have achieved the goal of exploring overall player satisfaction much easier?

Just count the amount of goldselling ads. They scale with the concurrent players of a game and are the perfect indication of a healthy player population. It’s when they leave, that we have to worry…

- a happy engineer

I play with a naga, too, but I managed with a 5 bucks 5 button mouse before, as well.

It’s certainly not essential to this class and GW2 features very few keybinds anyway (I think I got less than 20, as opposed to 50+ in swtor). There are so many binds availabe from WASD, if you use modifiers, even more when you make the shift to the right (e.g. TFGH), it’s just a matter of getting used to something and establishing some kind of layout logic (I bind my heals/interrupts/ccs/stealth/autoattacks/nukes/etc as similar as possible across games).

Biggest problem with razer products is the ridiculously poor workmanship of the mice. I had 3 Deathadders break on me over the course of a single year (returning them until I lost my receipt for the 3rd :/) – and I used them in a totally normal way. I only use my naga still, because I am too lazy to change my habits.

Wouldn’t recommend.

It’s funny how the OP spawned the association of ‘to train something on someone’ with the (choo-choo) train and everyone jumps aboard.^^

To train is just a synonym of to aim (e.g. the execution squad trained their rifles at the victim’s head). In mmo terminology you don’t create a train of mobs, but train a (or several) mob(s) at a player.

On topic: I don’t see an issue here, unless you’re afking in the open field – and there’s an easy fix for that (e.g. don’t afk in the open field).

edit: Also, the Dawn of the Dead remake did not invent the fast zombie. 28 Days Later did. And because Rocket loves thatkittenmovie so much (“…an alpha predator doesn’t walk to its prey.”), we can’t have the slow’n’shambling type, we crave so much

Gaining 200 more power does not yield more damage than a static discharge crit damage build (and elixir u is not that strong for engi rifle burst – you’ll just get in 4 shots in the time of 2 every other minute for the expense of a slot skill. We have no channel that profits from it like other professions). Oh – and you put in berserker’s jewels everywhere (as in: not only amulet), which is something you can do in WvW, I guess, but is bad for comparison’s sake

@OP – why don’t you just get yourself some steady weapons (that’s why they’re there) and try both specs at the dummies and check for yourself what comes closer to your goal. From there on, you’ll gradually want to change the spec anyway (if you want to play glasscannon at all).

Gilgamesh’s spec indeed is more of a WvW spec, as it maxes out grenade damage specifically and is stronger in AoE situations. If you don’t use the grenades, there’s nothing to be gained from going more than 10 explosives, really (apart from the power, but that is overshadowed by static discharge and the +critdmg from tools as pointed out above).

Behold the mighty Fekktor (lv17, r22), showing off the ebony rugged/mistwalker set with the whisperer rifle in the mists:

I posted my rifle build in the engi build thread, along with an in-depth explanation:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Post-Your-Build-Thread/first#post214103

But keep in mind, I do not strive for max dmg, but rather a compromise, because I dislike playing full on glasscannon.

If you wanted to really max out damage, you’d take that build and switch the 10 points from alchemy to 10 firearms (incendiary powder), switch from divinity to scholar runes, from blood to air sigil and ditch the 2 elixirs for the goggles and the ram. Additionally you’d have to switch traits in the tools section – speedy kit becomes speedy gadgets and adrenal implant would make way for scope(IF that trait worked…).
edit:
like this: http://tinyurl.com/glassengi (keep in mind that Scope trait is not working properly atm! oh – and Go for the Eyes should get changed to either Napalm Specialist or Precise Sights, I forgot :/)

Then you’d have the ultimate glass cannon rifle engineer. But I wouldn’t recommend. Play my build instead and pack a little less punch, but loads more survivability.

signahead.7281:

For some reason, this is a huge problem for me in sPvP. My first kit was a grenade kit. After learning to activate and deactivate kits using the same button, I have trouble remembering to activate my healing kit with one button and deactivate it with another.

I don’t know if it’s of any help to you – but try to think of it as the main weapon button, as opposed to a switch button.

This way, you’ve got one individual button per weapon/kit in your mind and it should disentangle the mental loops with some practice.

Or you just wait till they fix it.

You seem to have actually ‘heard’ the term only (without knowing the meaning), because it is not applicable at all to a just released game like GW2…xD

I use the swap weapon bind to go from med (or any other kit) to the rifle again. Works like a charm.

As to its viability – it’sdefinitely on par with its alternatives. Only a matter of playstyle/build/situation (and my personal favorite).

Shukran.4851:

probably because falling you take the damage needed to exaust the red life you have while downed. so you insta-die.

That’s exactly the issue – it happens when you wouldn’t take damage if falling normal (i.e. not downed). It’s like you turn to glass, when downed midair and shatter due to the tiniest of heights.

Rika.7249:

Edit: I totally now see what you meant, I thought about the general “dying” from fall damage.

Dying midair, you mean.

I don’t know what to say about that really. I hope they’ll change it so it doesn’t happen unless you take fall damage.

Glad you went through the effort to confirm this!

Rika.7249:

This doesn’t happen.

It only happens when you would otherwise have taken fall damage.

The end.

Well, this bland statement conflicts with my firsthand experience on multiple occasions. I invite you to try it out – go khylo with a mate, hit him down to 5% hp and make him do the 3ft jump from clocktower node to the floor. While he is airborne, get rid of that last 5% and he’ll be dead from the ‘impact’ of falling to the floor.

Anyplace works, really, as long as there is any kind of elevated architecture and the player dies (rather: gets downed) airborne between two different niveaus of terrain, no matter how measly.

Surprised nobody brought this up yet, so I guess it is intended?

To clarify: If someone gets downed while airborne, hitting the ground will instakill him with no chance to rally. The falling distance doesn’t matter – it happens even when jumping from the last step of stairs (this terrain difference is pivotal, though – jumping on flat ground doesn’t lead to the same fate obviously).

Elixir S
This is your main ohkitten-button. Use it wisely. The time spent in invulnerability can be used to drop the med kit skills or your elite instead of running like a chicken. Throwing the elixier is mostly used for securing stomps (drinking it works better, but is a waste of the cd imo), but can be utilized defensively or offensively as well. Play around with it a bit.
Elixir R
The ability to rez yourself is just too good to pass by. When you see yourself going down in the next 1-3s, throw it on yourself, interrupt the first stomp and hammer #4 and you got yourself an extra life. Also great for a casual drive-by rezz on allies and one of the only two condition removals of this build (if played with tool kit instead of Elixir C), but I rarely use it for that. The drinking ability comes in handy, when you feel pressure on you – use your two dodges, drink R and have another two at your disposal, so you can LoS and use your heal again.
Supply Crate
Yeah, no real choice here. It just outhines the others. I use it as either an ohkitten-button or to help decide big group battles. You can also use it to pull the npcs on foefire and nifhel, but that’s a cd waste most of the time.

Runes/Amulet/Jewel
I settled on the combination of Divinity Runes with a Berserker’s Amulet with the Berserker’s Jewel. It gives me the stats I am comfortable with (3.1k power, 52% crit, 62% critdmg, 20k hp), but here’s where you can do a lot of tweaking (e.g. knight’s jewel or scholar runes), depending on what direction you want to develop.

Playstyle
There’s generally 3 different modes, you’ll find yourself in when playing this build:
long range
Here is where you’ll feel very comfortable. When left unchecked and at range, you are free to unload your autoattack and wrench and simply melt faces. You should proactively work for this situation and engage and disengage fights accordingly.
bursting in close range
This situation might arise due to the following circumstances – you want to kill a tanky target, you are fighting another strong range, you are fighting vs a condition build or as a reversal after pressure on you. If you try to simply autoattack here, even your 1-2k crits won’t get you far. Instead you should try to go for combos like netshot->rocketjump->blunderbuss->knockback->wrench to kill the other range/condition/tank guy fast.
under pressure
You are very dangerous when left unchecked and people will want to punish you, especially when they find out, that you are low on toughness. So you need ways of dealing with the following pressure. Fortunately, you got all the tools in your bag. Unfortunately, there is no recipe to success here – it takes experience to utilize the right spell at the right time. You’ve got the invulnerability (Elixir S), the self rez (throw Elixir R), 2 extra dodges (Elixir R), a very low cd heal, the medkit bandages and antidote, your elite, your shield (tool kit #4), a knockback (rifle #4), an immobilize (rifle #2) and ofc your 2 regular dodges and LoS at your disposal. Use them all and you’ll have no trouble to survive, even with base toughness.

Overall I can say this is the build I have the most fun playing. It’s much easier to do good on my (venom share) thief, but it’s much more rewarding to do it on my rambo engineer.

PROS
- high sustained damage
- decent burst
- straightforward playstyle
- decent mobility
- high survivability (if played well)
- very rewarding
- very strong vs melee

CONS
- squishy
- weak vs condition (can be changed by switching Elixir C for tool kit)
- weak when outnumbered (as oppsed to e.g. bomb/condition builds)
- high skill cap
- limited support (Elixir R to rez, Elixir S to secure stomps, some interrupts/KBs)
- limited AoE (thrown wrench, piercing rifle)

I’ll try to upload a little bit of gameplay footage later, so you can see the build in action. If there’s any questions/criticism – just shoot.

Rambo Engineer – Crit Rifle Build (sPvP)

A straightforward build designed for hot-join (it is definitely tPvP viable, but depending on your role/comp, there’ll be better alternatives). You will pack a heavy punch, which comes with the cost of a certain squishiness – but you won’t be a glasscannon, since you carry the tools to get you out of dangerous situations. The build is designed around the rifle as main source of damage, for all the engineers, who like the style of the profession, but don’t want to go through the hassle of utilizing several weapons or go full glasscannon. Easy to learn, hard to master.

http://tinyurl.com/ramboengi

Weapon/Sigil
The rifle is the obvious choice for a power/crit build.

Your #1 will hit the squishies for 2k+ crits and be the main source of your damage.

Your low cd 2s immobilize on your #2 will drive melee nuts and allow you to chain skills for devastating combos.

#3 can be a pita to hit, but still is useful for clusters of enemies or burst combos.

#4 is godly for neutralizing/capping nodes (#4->#2), or can be utilized in burst combos (e.g. #4->wrench->#2->#5->#3). Another usage would be to interrupt a stomp or a heal with it or simply blast a melee away from you. Crazy good spell with its fairly low cd.

#5 is awkward to use, but able to deliver a high amount of burst. Don’t use for mobility unless you try to hit an enemy as well.

There are many sigils, that go well with this build. I chose Superior Blood (chance to lifeleech on crit) to add some effective health, but Air (chance to Lightning Strike on crit) or Bloodlust (+10 power/kill) can be utilized as well, if you’re looking for even more boom.

Traits
30 Firearms are a given to grant the rifle improved damage, lowered cds, the ability to blind with rifle attacks (50% on crit on a 10s icd with a 52+% crit rate!) and ofc loads of crit.
10 Alchemy lowers the cd of the two elixiers. Again this is a defensive choice – if you want to up the damage instead, substitute for 10 Firearms with Incendiary Powder(33% chance to burn on crit).
30 Tools not only gives us the crit damage, but also buffs our squishie’s endurance regeneration, adds a little punch to our burst and, most importantly, grants permaswiftness with the Speedy Kits. I cannot bring myself to play without this anymore.

Slot Skills
Med Kit
The med kit grants us a heal on a ridiculously low cd, synergizing well with the static discharge trait, the bandages heal for significant amounts as well, the antidote is one of the only two condition removals of this build and the stim gives us 20% crit with a theoretical 50% uptime (ymmv). It takes some time to utilize the kit to its potential, but I strongly recommend going through the hassle.
I use it to grant myself permaswiftness as well (using #5 to alleviate the effort a little^^) – just switch to the kit and back again, when your swiftness buff runs out. With a little practice you’ll manage to do this even in combat situations (you’ll want to use the med kit in combat all the time anyway.)
Pro Tip: Don’t save your heal. Instead use it to keep your health up at all times when in combat (I rather allow it to overheal a tiny bit than not fill me up) to make use of the low cd.
Tool Kit
The tool kit’s purpose is twofold. The main reason is ofc the toolbelt skill Throw Wrench – it simply hits like a truck, able to hit many targets, is on a low cd and synergizes well with static discharge again. The other reason for bringing the kit is the #4 ability, granting your squishy another ohkitten-button. #3 is decent burst, too, but you’ll usually want to use your other dps abilities instead. #5 is another very situational ability, that you might need for interrupts, when rifle#4 is on cd or out of range.
If you want to build more defensively: switch the tool kit out for Elixir C and you won’t have to worry about conditions anymore! Try both and decide for yourself.

What the above guy said.^^

Also, is this about mesmers or the treb?

They sometimes salvage from non-tourney stuff, but this is probably as unintended as getting tiger tokens from dolyak stuff, so it’ll get fixed eventually.

So, you use this site only to complain and not to inform yourself…?

I fail to see how you adressed my quoted argument in your post, sorry.

Imo wvwvw will feature population/time related issues by design. It’s just a matter of who takes the shaft, not if. And the people, who are complaining about the nightcapping at the moment claim to demand justice/balance, although they are already in a privileged situation and simply demand the imbalance to shift in their favor instead of someone else’s – it’s the loads-of-time-at-hands guys complaining about the timezone-spanning-language-united-fortunates.

All the while, the majority of people, who are under actual time constraints couldn’t care less and deal with it….

I agree with you on the situation being frustrating. But there’s no imaginable and feasible change that is able to fix it – you could just give someone else the stick. But who ‘earns’ to get privileged in your opinion?

This issue, or even more general, the fact that numbers>all is the exact reason why I could never care for ZergvZerg. But some of my mates just enjoy the group experience, the whole Big Battle thing – to each his own I guess, but stop thinking you could ever balance something like this.

Instead of thinking of the server rankings as reflections of skill/capabilities/strategy/organization, you should simply see it as a measure of server activity. Only this way they make actual sense. And this way, they are perfectly accurate, too.

They simply play more than you.

‘You cannot drop bundles while in the air’?

Why, for kitten’s sake, why can’t I?

The map would be significantly better, if they fixed that annoying invisible obstacle at the beginning of the ramp, that leads from spawn to beach.

And why does it have only two nodes…xD

It’s the sticky in this forum:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Current-world-rankings/first#post82393

I am not a WvW player, because the mass zerging is not appealing to me. Still I follow the discussion out of curiosity and there’s one thing I don’t get regarding the whole ‘night shift’ issue.

You complain about getting ripped off your achievements, that you accomplished all day long, after waking up the next day, right? The reason being that a larger number of players on one specific server is active during a time, you do not want or are able to play.

But why is playing during the day par for the course? I mean, what about the working population, or rather, just the people who have a [i]limited[/] amount of playtime at their disposal? E.g. – a huge chunk of the player demographic will be able to play only for a few hours in the evening. Their ‘blind spot’ is even bigger than just the night. For some it might be some hours in the morning or even only every other odd day.

Point being, that being able to play daily and for long stretches of time (up to all day long) is already a deviation from the norm. Essentially, the Vizunah players are beating you with your own weapons. If you cry injustice on them playing at night, you seem to forget this, you know?

What if there was some kind of mechanism, that would alleviate your situation? Could the situation be called fair then?

I’d say no. It would just be in your favor…food for thought maybe.

Azure Prower.8701:

I leveled 10-80 in WvW. I only got defeated twice.

Good thing they nerfed the escort exploit then…:p

Someone posted a screen of his combatlog on capricorn – 17k backstab. And it was sPvP, so no vast level/gear difference either (though zero toughness on victim ofc^^).

Rugged and Mistwalker chests look fine and there’s plenty of cool helms (rugged, rascal, leather1, etc). And for the less visible slots, any set has okish to great stuff as well imo.

Now vigil is kind of a joke on norn engineers…

On a related note:

I once messed around with Infiltrator’s Arrow before round start, using it near the closed door on nifhel spawn. With two consecutive IAs I managed to tele through the door and start the round a few seconds earlier.

Are we even supposed to post stuff like this…?

ColinJohanson.2394:

Chaplan will be putting out a blog post in the next few days that summarizes where we stand with PvP right now, and where we’re headed. From there we’ll continue to update as other Esports features come online.

You sure know how to tease…

JonathanSharp.7094:

Very soon, I’ll be posting blogs about the things we plan to do, so watch for those. You know our policy – we try not to make empty promises, and we try to tell you about things only when we feel they’re ready to be talked about.

(a week ago…)

But yeah, take your time with it. Noone would want rushed information/content.

So, the effect radius is the same and only the visuals differ, you say? Well, this must mean that

a) you get knocked back before you enter the small bubble
or
b) you can enter the perimeter of the big buble without getting knocked back.

Either your extensive testing was flawed or the situation is even more awkward, than with the bubbles having different effect radii.

Bubble/any AoEs should get the same treatment as the hitboxes and get normalized across the board. Anything else is bullkitten.

Well, it is even more natural for me to use ‘swap weapon’ to go from kit to weapon, because it’s universal (as opposed to using the individual kit bind again).

Just a matter of habit, I guess – but I can definitely commend trying to make it one.

You know, you can just use swap weapon bind to go from kit to weapon again?

Bind draw/sheathe weapons and use that to cancel your attacks instead of esc.

Yeah, should have thought of that – it definitely is because of medkit, since your toolbelt is disabled and you wouldn’t be able to heal otherwise (apart from elite)

The thing you are saying about points is a valid concern. In a perfect world hot-join would not yield points, only tournaments.

But if they removed the points, we’d have another complain wave inc (this is useless, why don’t i get rewarded for my efforts [yeah, srsly – people call playing games voluntarily an effort..]).

The way it is now, we have kind of a compromise with hot-join yielding points, but without them people would feel pigeonholed/shoehorned/yourfavouriteforumterm to do tPvP only and the hot-join queue would suffer as a consequence.

Hot-join yielding more glory than tourney is true – but in reality it’s just a problem if you care for cosmetics and try to powergame towards them. It doesn’t add or substract from the actual gameplay in any way. Still, I don’t understand/support it either.

If you ask me – increase the glory bonus for winning tourney games (overall and also in increasing steps for 1st,2nd,3rd round). As a bonus, it improves the current situation for the unlucky point defenders.

Regarding the rpg/fps comparison – why would you say that it’s an off comparison? Obviously I limit the comparison to the general structure of the respective games’ pvp. In your generic fps game, from the first quake to the nth iteration of CoD, you have two options:

a) casual
b) competitive

Casual is hot-join/random/public/pickup/etc. You hop in and out of games, are able to join/leave running matches without penalties, winning/losing doesn’t matter and all everyone cares about is individual performance.

This is the game mode you play, when you’re new or want to try out something or your team/competition is not available. Or maybe you just want to do some mindless zerging. It’s perfectly fine for this.

Competitive play, be it a ladder or a tournament, is where it’s at. Here you play for the win and apply strategy and tactics together with your team mates in a closed, persistent game with balanced, premade teams.

Anet seems to follow this fps system here. Winning/losing doesn’t yield you anything, besides the wimpy 18/36. We also have autobalance, you are able to join/leave running games without penalty and all everyone cares about is individual performance.

Compare it to WoW bgs. You have to queue until the system found both teams, you usually start a fresh round, the difference between winning and losing is significant and leaving goes with a penalty.

Everyone who played that or another, similar game knows how that system turns out. kittenheads, who are facing signs of a loss decide it would no longer be worth their time and go afk, other kittenheads go for the who-blames-first-is-not-responsible-approach (usually the worst players on the team) and the whole thing gets an unpleasant, unrelaxed cesspit of blaming/failing/raging. If you decide to leave, you punish your team and get punished as well.

The problem with the above system is, that random pvp is…random. Teams are not balanceable and your individual contribution might matter, but the degree to which it does, varies wildly. You get punished by other’s mistakes. Leaving and autobalance wouldn’t be feasible anymore, opening up for a plethora of other issues and, most importantly, certain people would show their online face again.

It really struck me how silent most people are in gw2 hot-join. Ofc there’s somekitten but for the most part, people just play and don’t bother with flaming – since it doesn’t matter what the team does. You don’t have to queue up for games – no waiting time. You can jump in and out of games – no penalty, because you had to take akitten or a phonecall. There’s just so much beauty in this system.

The most common mistake I see in the discussion on sPvP is people missing the big picture, i.e. how autobalance, the score system, the team size and the irrelevance of strategy all synergize together.

You can always play tPvP. All problems solved. Well, apart from the glory system. as you pointed out. But that’s another issue and should be brought up as such (and again could and probably will be solved with a fix like my above suggestion – maybe with paid tournaments).

I wasn’t talking about balance, just trying to discern between bug and design.

Also, even untraited I get 2-3 attacks off. Your math is way off But again, balance is not the point of my inquiry.