Guild Wars 2

By downed player cannot be rezzed by players in combat, do you mean someone in down state, but still alive, or someone “double-dead”?

Hugely disruptive to the current culture and habits and organization. We can adjust, but in any case working people have less time during their weekend to enjoy the most competitive days of WvW. Terrible change, kind of better than the disastrous previous change, but still horrible compared to status quo.

Don’t fix what isn’t broken as many are saying.

Sure, a part of your gaming audience have been scheduling their weekend around Friday resets AND Saturday evenings for 3 years. Let’s make Friday boring and dead as can be and only leave the fun for Saturday with an inconvenient reset time (PST morning?!)

I wouldn’t be surprised if we get an announcement that Raid resets happen on Friday or something, that’d be the cake.

Tested while dueling with friends in private spvp lobby. He stacked confusion alone on me and staff #4 would fail to remove it. It simply would not remove anything at all.

At other moments, he stacked over 7 stacks of torment (no other condis), and staff #4 only removed a few stacks of torment, rather than all stacks.

Not sure what is going on exactly, but it doesn’t work consistently.

This really needs fixing. Especially for hammer #2. This is a huge issue for all types of content. WvW, spvp, dungeons, etc. you name it.

Hello from [DR] Dragonriders, SBI

I recorded and edited some of my favourite fights where I happened to be both online and recording (neither of which I always am). Great fights so far. Keep it classy.

Before alarm bells start ringing about the skirmish vs [MM] (not a proper GvG per say, since neither team had scheduled and planned for it) at the beginning, I just happened to be recording 1 of the 5 fights, we didn’t win all of them, so yeah it’s showing only one side of the medal.

More on [ATac] itself:

Applied Tactics is a reformation of a Guild that represented Infamy Gaming from BWE1-BWE3. We have since detached ourselves from the E-Sports Organization and formed our own entity, now known as the Guild Applied Tactics. ‘ATac’ for short, is a competitive Guild focused mainly on WvW, as well as end game progression content that may be available in GW2. As a Guild, our main goal in aspects of PvP are to dominate and lead our particular server of choice to a top ranking in WvW, as well as compete in major tournaments held by both ArenaNet.

We offer our members a fully functional webpage (Enjin) including forums, a 100 slot TeamSpeak server, and a solidly organized and structured WvW focused Alliance: Axis of Insurrection. ATac is an organized and team oriented Guild that made our bones by establishing ourselves as a tactical force that aimed to outplay the ‘zerg’ of WvW, and having a structured system of play for all of our squads/teams. Our member base is 30-40 active members strong, and focuses on team play, communication, and most importantly having fun with a competitive yet laid back atmosphere. We accept all from the most competitive of players of those who want to learn and grow as an aspiring WvW player. Though our main focus is and will always be PvP, we believe in forming a bond and creating a community of all types of players to be successful at our focus game (Guild Wars 2).

WvW – We are looking for team oriented players, with great communication skills, who are willing to put forth dedication to playing and learning the strategy and tactics (metagame) behind WvW to compete with servers that vastly outnumber ourselves. Infamy will be striving to be known as a figurehead Guild of our server, and known to the other servers as one that can hold out and siege against twice our numbers. If you want to be part of an organized Guild who apply themselves to GW2 and it’s community both in and out of game, and one that will be looked at as a driving force for the server we play on, we want you to apply for our WvW Division!

Small Groups/Guild Mergers – Are you a small group or Guild looking for a competitive WvW focus place? Had bad luck with recruitment but want to keep everyone together and not break up your tight nit Guild? Have a group of friends who are all planning on playing the game for hardcore PvP, but don’t have a Guild or don’t want to create one to call home? ATac is looking to recruit you and all of your friends/guild members! If you think you and your group fits the criteria mentioned above and below, contact us on our forums under Recruitment.

(Original text by Miz)

CONTACT INFORMATION:
Contact me by guru forum message box
OR

For the Open Field Unit, contact these players ingame :
Oddbot (not Obbdot as the forum account name)
Toohot

For a more general ATac application, contact in game :
Syni Kal
Oddbot
Or apply directly at: http://applied-tactics.com/

Applied Tactics [ATac] has now moved to Blackgate, with its allied guilds since the beginning of GW2, under the Axis of Insurrection. We are now starting again a recruitment and training period for people aspiring to play competitively in WvW on a daily basis.

We wish to grow our numbers to where we have at least 20-30 WvW players active during NA prime time on weekdays. We are also doing independent recruitment for ATac’s new division, the Open Field Unit, (under the same guild tag and chat as the main ATac) for more hardcore players who wish to push their WvW play a step further.

We will provide training, challenge and great fun for players who want to delve in high level WvW action. Our guilds does not accept multi-WvW representation (representing other PvE guilds for occasional dungeon runs is somewhat tolerated, but not encouraged). Every member of our guild is part of a tight knit family and many of us now call each others friend. When we took the decision to transfer to Blackgate this very week, only a handful of still active players decided not to pay 20$ or 36g. to transfer with us, that’s how close we all are.

ATac is an organized guild with stellar commanders and proudly part of one of the strongest and longest lasting guild alliance in GW2, with guilds such as [Work], [VI], [DR] and [OnS].

I’m representing the Open Field Unit (a.k.a. OFU), a new project within ATac developed by officers Toohot and myself, Oddbot. By the way, any Axis of Insurrection member, even if not in ATac, is welcome to be part of the Open Field Unit without the requirement of joining ATac. Here is what it is about:

Introducing the ATac Open Field Unit

Who are we?

The Open Field Unit (a.k.a. OFU) is a division of Applied Tactics [ATac]. It is composed of people who share an interest for medium/large scale open field skirmishes strategies and are willing to evolve in a structured environment.

What is our purpose?

We are the strike force of ATac. This group will be extensively trained for zerg busting so we can provide superior firepower to our commanders and help them deal with the most extreme situations. We strive to be among the bests and to fight the bests, while not shying away from battles that can be won by superior skills and coordination. While open field combat is our main focus, we will of course also be coordinated with other commanders and play the game for score. When/If the time comes, we will also represent ATac in GvG battles.

Who can join us?

Anybody willing to learn as long as you are ready to conform to the rules. Candidates should also look forward to play mostly during NA prime time.

What are our commitments?

First and foremost, you are a proud member of ATac and its allied guilds under the Axis of Insurrection [AoI]. As such you must abid and follow the rules set by our guildleaders and follow directives of the council members and officers.

On top of that, as a member of the OFU, you’ll have to agree to the following:

- Unless told otherwise by the group leader, you must take part to the Call To Arms which is currently scheduled everyday from 9pm to 11pm EST. This does NOT MEAN that you have to play daily. It means that IF you play during those hours, you have to be in WvW and run with the group. Exceptions can be made as long as you discuss it with one of your leaders. The CTA may be waived from time to times, to give players a deserved break.

- You have to learn the basic SOPs, battle plans and strategies that will be submitted to you. A weekly training session will be scheduled in order to help you understand and practice those. Members will have to be disciplined in combat and follow very closely their commander. Obviously, you are welcome to share and promote your ideas to help the group improve.

- You won’t be imposed a specific build, as long as you can justify its usefulness, but you will have to follow guidelines and requirements for your character in order to ensure an optimum group synergy. This division of ATac will heavily enforce a particular type of meta that may change as we learn new concepts and techniques.

- People can be recruited directly into the OFU and invited to stay should they be a good fit for the group. Should their preferred playstyle not fit the unit after all, members will be directed towards other competitive WvW opportunities within ATac. Members excluded of the OFU may still be standing members of ATac and all members of ATac are not automatically admitted into the open field unit.

If you guys are interested about joining us, post here or drop a tell to either Oddbot or myself.

See you on the battlefield!

(Original text by Toohot)

For some reason, even when in combat, while in the Heart of the Mists, these pet skills receive no increase duration whatsoever with all of these :

2x Runes of Water ( + 10% Boon Duration)
2x Runes of the Monk ( + 10% Boon Duration)
Concentration Training (II – Nature Magic, + 50% Boon duration on pet skills)
30 Points in Nature Magic ( + 30% Boon Duration)

Note : The boon duration on the pet tooltip on the pet skill is affected by 30 points in Nature Magic and +boon duration runes, but is NOT affected by Concentration Training. So I would assume these are suppose to affect it.

NONE of these have any effect on these 2 pet skills :

Furious Screech (Red Moa) : Fury – Base duration is 15 seconds. With the setup mentioned above, the tooptip says 22½ seconds (+50%). Yet, when applied while in combat, it only applies 15 seconds on myself and one near ally. Considering the runes, the 30 trait points and concentration training, the effective duration should be +100%, for a total of 30 seconds.

Protecting Screen (Blue Moa) : Protection – Base duration is 4 seconds. With the setup mentioned above, the tooltip says 6 seconds (+50%). Yet when applied while in combat, it only applies 15 seconds on myself and one near ally. Considering the runes, the 30 trait points and concentration training, the effective duration should be +100%, for a total of 8 seconds.

Mighty Roar (Jungle Stalker) : Might(x5) – Base duration is 10 seconds. With the setup mentioned above, the tooltip says 15 seconds (+50%). Yet when applied while in combat, it only applies 10 seconds on myself and one near ally. Considering the runes, the 30 trait points and concentration training, the effective duration should be +100%, for a total of 20 seconds.

Regenerate (Fern Hound) : Regeneration – Base duration is 10 seconds. With the setup mentioned above, the tooltip says 15 seconds (+50%). Yet when applied while in combat, it only applies 10 seconds on myself and one near ally. Considering the runes, the 30 trait points and concentration training, the effective duration should be +100% for a total of 20 seconds.

N.B.: Tests were made on golems and Chieftain Utahein in the Heart of the Mists.

Yeah… just tried that.

25+ wipe almost instantly. After 20 minutes of amazingly fun “res and run”, the event failed because we couldn’t keep the NPC alive. Heck. We couldn’t even keep ourselves alive.

At least I got my daily revive achievement… once the event failed and only then were we actually able to revive others.

Best troll mechanic ever.

Both my fans on my graphic card were slowly dying. When I monitored my graphic card temperature using MSI Afterburner free software, they were working fine 90% of the time, but they would stop working now and then, causing crashes within a few minutes. It’s a matter of luck that I alt+tab at the right time to notice a 110ºC graphic card (anything above 95ºC is worrying). I left my case opened and noticed that the fans were sometimes not rotating well at all.

Disregard this. I isolated the problem. It’s hardware related. Fractal crashes were mostly coincidences.

It is unchecked and has been since August beta and pre-release.

1st crash (dec. 18th) : lvl 20 w/ mesmer during Ice elemental boss fight, 3rd instance, dredge fractal
2nd crash (dec. 19th) : lvl 1 w/ guardian during Ice elemental boss fight, 2nd instance, dredge fractal
3rd crash (dec. 19th) : lvl 1 w/ guardian during Ice elemental boss fight, 3rd instance, dredge fractal
4th crash (dec. 20th) : lvl 1 w/ guardian during big tree boss fight, 2nd instance, swamp fractal
5th crash (dec. 20th) : lvl 1 w/ guardian during archdiviner final boss fight, 3rd instance, cliffside fractal

The crash is a full computer crash (no blue screen, just sound bugging on a single note and screen going black). It never happened to me in other games, in never happens to me outside the fractals (and always during a boss fight) and I’ve been playing WvW a lot which seems more demanding of my PC than fractals. Immediately before the crash… I’m simply fighting the boss, using a mix of utilities and weapon skills. I’ve also reached lvl 20 fractals with my mesmer since release of the fractals without a single incident. These 5 crashes are all my last 5 attempts at fractals. I haven’t been able to complete A SINGLE fractal run since dec. 18, despite 5 long and painful attempts. There was no significant change with my PC since then.

Troubleshooting already done :
- Fans & GPU temperature seems within expectations
- NVIDIA drivers and DIRECTX 9&11 updated between 4th and 5th crash.
- gw2.dat file completely replaced with a friend’s file who owns the game between 4th and 5th crash
- Did all my Windows update between 4th and 5th crash

My knowledge in PC/Game issues is extremely limited, so I’ll appreciate any troubleshooting tips, may they be software or hardware related.

Spec:
Intel Core i5 CPU 750, 2.67GHz
RAM 8.00GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470
64-bit Windows 7 SP1

Settings:
Res : 1440×900
Refresh rate : default
Frame limiter : 60
Interface size : normal
Animation : Medium
Anti-Aliasing : FXAA
Environment : Low
LOD Distance : Medium
Reflection : None
Textures : High
Render Sampling : Native
Shadows : High
Shading : High
Post-processing : High
Best texture-filtering & Depth blur checked
High res character textures & vertical synced unchecked

EDIT : Also, the black screen issue troubleshooting for NVIDIA cards regarding Anti-Aliasing has been verified and already is set as suggested.

Also, nobody else in my party is crashing.

EDIT : Disregard this comment. Somebody in my party DID crash, 5 minutes after me, during the Ice Elemental.

N.B. : I’ve done the Ice Elemental with no problem whatsoever in the past weeks since the beginning of the fractals. I’ve been doing fractals every day or two since their release.

I report to have crash A THIRD TIME in the EXACT same boss fight (Ice elemental final boss of the dredge fractal), and have not crashed in any other places, either in GW2 or any other games. I’ve been doing fractals for 8 hours in the past 2 days with no progression whatsoever, because I always get the kittening dredges on my third instances with the kittening ice elemental. I’m kitten to no extent to have crashed 3 times in a row in my third instance of the fractals and therefore having failed progression after investing so much time in it.

This was again with my guardian, on lvl 1 of the fractals, simply walking and auto attacking with my staff, while the boss was halfway done.

Hi.

I have crashed both today and yesterday at the exact same fractal fight, i.e. the ice elemental final boss of the dredge fractal. Yesterday I was on level 20 with my mesmer and today I was on lvl 1 with my guardian. Both times I was simply running / auto attacking. I’ve been playing guild wars 2 since the pre-launch and these 2 crashes are the only 2 instances that I’ve ever crashed playing guild wars 2. The crash was a full computer freeze and not a crash to desktop.

It might be a coincidence, but the crash happened both times in the same fractal fight after playing many guild wars 2 hours during both days.

Intel Core i5 CPU 750, 2.67GHz
RAM 8.00GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470
64-bit Windows 7 SP1

Res : 1440×900
Refresh rate : default
Frame limiter : 60
Interface size : normal
Animation : Medium
Anti-Aliasing : FXAA
Environment : Low
LOD Distance : Medium
Reflection : None
Textures : High
Render Sampling : Native
Shadows : High
Shading : High
Post-processing : High
Best texture-filtering & Depth blur checked
High res character textures & vertical synced unchecked

Ranking made by running fractal 20 (not over 20).

1. Dredge: The switch room is bullkitten with a somewhat glassy group. Again, I consider myself highly tankish for a staff/sword mesmer, but this room is a freaking nightmare. The bomb/frost gun part causes me no problem because of blink and portal, but it sure is painful for almost all other professions. The fact that they all have ranged attacks while you are forced to stand in one place, spread around and separated, is downright annoying and ridiculously hard at times.

2. Cliffside : The healing abilities of Chanter is way too high. Even with a coordinated group with high DPS, it is nearly impossible to achieve if the group is glassy, because you can’t just run between arm seals, you have to always stand your ground in the hallway and clear mobs. By the time you do that and you have to smash again, the seal is almost fully healed again. With tankish group where 2-3 continuously run and 2-3 stand their ground in the hallway, it works out, but the healing is still too high, making it a complete pain in the kitten and downright ridiculous when you get a DC. This fractal also takes too much time to accomplish for its difficulty and probability of failure.

3. Grawl : Hard, but this one is more balanced then others and attacks from mobs are mostly dodgeables and the number of trash mobs is decent. Nothing really to fix with this one, as long as it isn’t made harder. The boss is by far the hardest boss in all fractals, but with good coordination and not too much glassyness, its feasable.

4. Svanir : The elemental crystal fight is challenging, especially with the winds knocking you down around the fires, while you have to evade elementals attack. The periodic teleports messes up group coordination. This one seems well balanced too, in my opinion.

5. Ascalon : Well balanced, neither too hard or too easy. Final boss can be very challenging when he gets the burning great sword. Pack of mobs require some coordination to beat down, but it’s well puggable.

6. Asura : The poison room with the spinning droid may be hard with a lack of coordination and harpies may be very annoying with a lack of reflection or no line of sight AOE, but otherwise it’s generally fun and feasable. Still well balanced imo.

7: Underwater : First part is well balanced. Requires coordination and timing. The group is as good as its weakest member, unless you resort to suiciding at the boss room so people can reset in there. The boss is incredibly boring, long and easy. Its life should be decreased by a third, but he should be made more dangerous.

8. Jade Maw : It all depends on agony resistance. It’s a fun fractal, not too hard, but it shouldn’t be so, considering you have to do it almost all the time.

9. Swamp : Easy with any decent group. The one far node with the skelks isn’t walkable at all without a mesmer portal, even with swiftness and avoiding all traps, depending on the tree blockades (which seems not so random at times, blocking this node more than others). You can always let them randomize again, but still, I don’t see the point in having one almost impossible to do without mesmers.

Trading in GW2 involves the trading post. They did not implement any direct trading system between 2 players for goods, much less for services. If you accept to pay for this type of service and do not receive the service in return, you have no system or tool at your disposition to seek compensation from grief. And since it is probably not a sanctioned activity, reporting the person for scamming won’t get you a refund.

In my opinion, the potential for scam is too huge to try those expensive services. The point of my screenshot was more to express that if some guy makes money charging 25-30s for an overflow taxi and that he finds customers at such a price, then the overflow system is in dire need of a quick fix. The price of an ecto to have access to overflow is ridiculously expensive for something that should be free and easy to access in the first place.

There should be no market for overflows, because there should be no design flaw in the first place.

People have started to sell overflow. One look at this screenshot can help see how dire the problem has become. Time on the screenshot is EST.

http://postimage.org/image/a7hciofl7/

I’ve started to have people joining randomly my party just in hope that I might have an overflow, in order to join on me, leave and form a party of their own.

This happens mostly at 10:00 to 14:00 EST, meaning that people are just mostly asleep are not playing, or a least not massively in Lion’s Arch. This is however the time of the day at which I do most of my dungeonning, being more busy with WvW in evenings. I cannot enjoy this aspect of GW2 as much as I use to in the first few weeks of the fractals. This issue has been happening to me every day this week.

Also, those who like to alt+f4, go through 2-3 loading screens, walking back 1 WvW mile… don’t know what time-money efficiency is. If you would suck up your repair costs and don’t go through DC, you wouldn’t find yourself out of money in WvW, ever.

Of course you can make way more money in dungeons, cursed shore or farming southsun cove, but I really don’t understand what’s the kittenss about repair costs, they won’t bring anyone decent in the negative. The real gold sink in WvW is tower/keep upgrades. Repair costs is just a GOOD way of making death an inconvenience, as it should be in any team based PvP game worth playing.

Dungeons would be god awkittenl if death-zerging was an efficient way of doing them (some are… and it should go down the trash). WvW would be worse. Death zerging sucks and ruins most games. If you die all the time, it might be time to review your build and/or gear and maybe play smarter too.

~ a Sea of Sorrows fellow.

note : censoring “f-u” is kind of overkill, as many non curse-words use this combination of letters… like “f-uss”, “awf-ul”…

What’s the fuss about the kill on alt+f4 or disconnects. Most game out there results in a death when you DC or worse consequences.

DC in any shooters : you lose your place in the score ranking, you lose your bought guns (if applicable), you lose any equipment you had collected, server might even be full when you try to reenter, etc.
DC in Diablo : your character dies and you have repair costs. Have fun if you’re playing Hardcore
DC in Starcraft : you lose the match
DC in league of legends : you’re out of the match
DC in a lot of online RPG and MMO : your character stays idle in game for a few seconds. this applies even to most PvE content.

And by default, all these means that your opponent wins. Having a “bad internet” is no excuse for having a free pass out of a loss, and therefore denying a victory+reward to your opponent. It’s not how any games or life for that matter works, anywhere else. GW2 would not “improve on the standard model” by being different there.

So what is so new and terrible about this? Stop whining.

Trying for 2 weeks to get to Balthazar Temple in Sea of Sorrows. Nobody wanna group up in either LA or Strait of Devastation. This is excessively frustrating, considering that this is the only place to get those kitten shards with Karma instead of a million grinds of Fractal. I’m in a WvW guild, so there is no way I’m going to server hop to another NA or EU server just for shards.

Any guild/body here in SoS is looking to group up to do Balthazar?

Add me to your friend list. Oddbot or character : Arianne Of Dorne

To add two more :

Rally on kill. If they stomp or finish off someone on your team, and all their downed players at least got a few hits on your team mate getting killed, they will also all rally. Killing a random Quaggan/Firefly/Guard/etc. will do the trick as well.

Vengeance on warriors. If they traited it, any player/npc kill will remove the death timer.

I have a perma stealth Thief alt. I can stack up to 13 seconds maximum, but traits and skills help replenishing the stealth stacks as it is depleted. It is not easy to do by the way. Hats off to thief doing it for 15 minutes long, this is truly impressive, and the zerg that got fooled by it is also really incompetent. I have myself done it once for a 4-5 minutes, but never more than that, as I got discovered or lost stealth in the process.

Tip 1 : a thief is no way near invincible when stealthed. Counter : AOE + random sword slashing
Tip 2 : Spread around. Most of these thieves use a combo field + combo finisher attack to regain stealth. If they mistakenly attack a random target instead of “air”, they will come back visible. So spread around instead of stacking.

Yup. Very vocal minority. This game is great, combat is engaging and challenging. Love that I can’t sleepwalk through it. Dungeon are hard enough, even though it is sometimes hard to find decent teammates. Delightful artwork, small secrets, intricate details in landscape design and dialogues makes me wanna take my time and explore everything.

As a former business student, I don’t agree with the opinion that “if ArenaNet just go for profit they will lose their soul and wreck the game up”. If they really care about profit they will follow their VISION and keep to the identity of the game. A MMO with no identity fails more rapidly than others. A company seeking profit isn’t bad in itself, but a company seeking profit unintelligently is the problem. So far so good for ArenaNet. And with the beta in-game surveys and other tactics to get feedback from players, they’ve got enough talented analysts to keep it that way and get the real opinion of their gamerbase.

Disclosure : Never played WoW, never will and never cared. Never went to Orr yet, no pressure whatsoever to rush to the so-called endgame. Just enjoying dungeons and WvW and casual exploration. Got 7 characters, 1 of which is lvl 80, others between 15 and 35.

Running Twilight Arbor.
1st run : before day reset.
Path : Up
Reward : 20 (ok)
2nd run : start 7:30PM GTM-5 (NY, Mtl), end : 8:20PM, after day reset
Path : Forward-Up
Reward : 45 (should be 60)
3rd run (started around 8:40PM)
Path : Up
Reward : 30 (should be 60)
4th run (ended some time around 10:30PM)
Path : Up
Reward : 10 (should be 20)
Someone in my party got it all right from 2nd to 4th round, which is 60-60-20. Some others in the party got wildly varying amounts that weren’t the same as neither of us.