Guild Wars 2

Get a Naga…all of you…

Swiftwynd.1685:

Finally got around to editing a video of a fight that’s a “decent” display of the damage potential of the build. Although not perfectly optimized with 25 might stacks, 25 vulnerability, and full list of boons, this is quite a good display of an easy boss beat down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH2ylNFbf0o

I immediately discounted this as evidence of “super leet Ele deeps” when I saw 2 Warriors, a Guardian, and a Mesmer. Not to mention that boss has nothing for HP to begin with. Multiple Glass GS Warriors with a Time Warp and a Lyssa Mesmer makes anything look good.

I was gonna call you a liar Jed and say that you failed on a weekly basis in your quest to beat Sea of Sorrows back when you were on SBI, but then I saw the qualifier of the statement, “map.” You should’ve been in JQ Bay keep tonight instead of in BG Garrison. I always prefer SBI loot bags to JQ ones.

That’s unfortunate we lost SoR hills. Church and I dropped enough siege to wipe out an army in a few seconds. Only thing I could think of that could hit that for 19k would be Trebs, but that is a singular shot and not cumulative. Oh well, guess we can do it all over again tonight.

Kurthos.2354:

Actually, we’re putting in the same 6/12/18+ hour shifts we did back on SoS… since Dragonbrand….. Since Beta.

I remember those days…they weren’t exactly fun to day after day, week after week just to make sure the server was in good shape. I myself have been assisting in the SoR BL hills defense for 20 hours now. Haven’t had more than 20 guys on that map in total except once in the past 6 hours. Unfortunately job interviews suck and I must take leave.

Though my 49ers have disappointed me in their loss to the Ravens in the big game, the folks here at Violent Impact and IGC have yet to disappoint. Except for our Thieves, those guys get /sighs from me all the time. Honestly, who runs off leaving your healer to solo supply camps while you play mash #2 as hard as possible on some up-leveled chap running the opposite direction. Need them blast finishers bros!

We’re still recruiting all of the professions, however, Elementalist, Thief, and Engineer are definitely on the top of the list. We had a blast last night with the rest of the AoI folk in an alliance-wide WvW workshop. Had a lot of fun, learned a few things, and most importantly did a bit of curb stomping to our enemies.

Sarcasm On -

Why should I learn how to play the game when I’ve rode on the coattails of good, intelligent players under the system of the holy trinity?

Sarcasm off.

Pretty sure back in the days of WotLK, my DK was the tank/healer or the tank/dps for every heroic dungeon I went into (at least after a certain gear point). If I had kitten for DPS, I threw on my dps gear and told the healer to watch me carefully. If I had a kitten for a healer, I put on full tank gear and told him to not bother healing me, I had enough cooldowns and sense to know how to keep myself alive.

You want to know how my groups did a lot of the explorable modes before hitting max level and getting exotics? we used COMBO FIELDS. Need a quick heal? Blast finisher a water field = AoE heal. Don’t have water fields? Warrior shouts heal people when specced.

There are videos of glass cannon warriors soloing the hardest dungeon paths in the game. This tells me 2 things – 1) These things are pretty easy as is if they can be solo’d by some guy using a full blown dps spec with little to no survivability (thus there being no need for a healing role, barring intelligent play and 2) Nerf warriors.

Cleansing Flame, Armor of Earth, Mist Form, Lightning Flash, Magnetic Aura, Swirling Winds, Burning Retreat, Fiery Whirl (and those are just the Elementalist abilities). He will pause , then raise one hand above his head and move the other off to his side/back, he will glow while doing this. You have about one and a half seconds to react.

Stun breakers, stability, projectile reflect/destruction, every man’s best friend.

Xynn.2748:

If you need to cheat AC…well IDK…

^ This. You should probably uninstall your game and just go back to playing Tea Party with some dolls because if you can’t legit do AC, you just aren’t good.

Also, in most cases a “clever us of game mechanics/terrain” is exploiting. A spot where you can hit a mob but he can’t hit you? Terrain exploit. I remember back in the day when mobs would evade bug if you tried that and instantly reset HP.

The first time I ran into Kholer he was a hard boss too….it was back in April/May of last year. Scorpion Wire with no start-up animation straight into Daggerstorm. Good thing my guild had 3 brain cells and learned what stability and stun breakers were. I miss that version of him, kept me busy and on my toes.

I guess i shouldn’t be surprised, but somehow I still am; even after almost 7.5 years of MMO gaming, I still can’t get it through my head how people can be so bad at video games.

If you watch some of his videos, you’ll probably find me in most of them, if only I had kept my Fraps footage…On another note, I still have people that get knocked down by Gravelings in AC, or can’t dodge Kohler’s Scorpion Wire (sometimes ts even the guys who typically do it flawlessly). We res them, I joke about them being terrible, they learn to dodge it or they equip stun breakers.

Edit: If you REALLY want a fight that requires everyone to be perfect or you fail (particularly now with the no waypoint zerging) try Giganticus Lupicus out for size in Arah (any of the paths).

NickChabby.8907:

Mostly Subject Alpha, second encounter. I mean, sure, I count 2 seconds to dodge, but we don’t have an infinite amount, I have to care about downed teammates, crystals (or getting imprisoned) while being chased by the boss. The ice attack OR the two circle Aoe (earth spikes?) pretty much get my almost instantly every time. I won’t call “just learn yo’ mechanic and be bettah” a good advice or any kind of useful solutions.

We spent almost three hours without getting further than removing 10% of his health because of this. We were all 80 geared in full exotics, one elementalist (me), one mesmer, one thief, one warrior and one guardian. A big waste of time.
This fight was already a pain prior the patch, now it’s a real spike in the… hole…

You should try using Mist Form or maybe a Sigil of Superior Energy if you don’t have dodge rolls. Also, you could even use Burning Retreat or the Fiery Greatswords #3, both evade attacks during their animation. Perhaps you could even move out of the red circles of imminent doom if you know you can’t dodge roll instead of sitting in them. Oh and get Vigor (cantrips are an excellent way).

Alpha doesn’t hit that hard, honestly he doesn’t do damage unless you’re in front of him at farther than melee range (or if you get hit by red circles). In regards to killing crystals adn worrying about downed teammates, try stacking up next time, random AoE will kill crystals and stacking (albeit if you screw up will kill you if you miss a dodge) allows the other 4 non-bads on your team to res you near instantly just in time for the next round of AoEs.

And one more thing, stop being bad.

I like this idea of ball-busting. Because my balls are getting busted by ANet if these changes go thru. I might just have to delete my Bifrost equipped Ele in favor of a #2 spamming Thief.

Neuromancer.2148:

Not trolling, but I do suspect being persecuted for foul play is a bit different from your laundry list. :-)

It kind of is, but I remember SoS being the first server to ever bring WvW drama to the front page of Reddit. Silly JQ not sweeping SM…got it ninja’d 2 hours later by 20 guys and a really dedicated Mesmer. So, I sort of know that feel of yours. Mind you this was right after that wall jumping video was released so the “OMG EXPLOITERS” QQ was super strong that week.

I’m gonna let you continue to think area denial with red circles is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but double dodge roll thru that choke to Earthshaker is still the most pro move I’ve seen. Actually, you could probably Earthshaker over those pitiful radius AoEs. If someone is dumb enough to stand in a red circle, that’s their own fault, they deserve to die.

Dodge Roll was given to us in this game for a reason. To complain about something that not only has a vivid and long animation, but also a big red kitten circle on the ground saying “HEY DON’T STAND HERE” being too effective compared to something like a hasted 100 Blades or a Thief opening strike proves that intelligence is still a rare find among MMO players.

Causic.3798:

In melee you can get stunned, pulled, immobilized, etc.
Can’t even get hundred blades off before being CCed and pulled sometimes.
In the back? nothing but stray shots.
.

0/10 don’t troll again. You think being out of melee range prevents this from happening? That is half the reason kiting is near impossible to do and why the damage disparity being so mismatched is an issue more so than a few idiots who can’t hit dodge roll or strafe. So many immobilizes/stuns with a 400-600 range, couple those with the constant stream of gap closers on melee weapons and being ranged is just nerfing your damage in battle. I’ll give you melee runs a higher risk, but I can’t hit 2 buttons that lock someone at 600+ range and drop a full tank spec from 100 to 50 in < 3 seconds, melee get to do that once they close the gap to 600.

P.S. – Try stability next time, or maybe a knockdown before you 100 Blades.

Causic.3798:

Poor play is punished through repairs (things still break if you die)
Easy play has not been punished (stand in the back firing AoEs and getting more kills, badges, and loots than anyone else)

Pretty sure I could roll a Thief/Warrior and go run into the faces of zergs and double my current kill count in a matter of a month compared to sitting back firing off that 3 second cast AoE. When AoEs do the damage of 100 Blades or Steal/Backstab/CnD chains in a comparable amount of time, then you can say that the ‘easy play’ is unpunished.

I honestly think what’s hurting Blackgate and stopping them from getting these big Xfers was all the forum warrior kitten-talk done all those months ago, and again recently before their second jump to T1. It wasn’t done by any big name or respectable guilds, but done by the overzealous guys who troll forums more than they WvW. Would you bring your top-tier guild to a server that trashed talked and then couldn’t deliver?

It’s very unfortunate because some of you guys are excellent opponents on the field. But in this case, the masses of unknown have potentially ruined it for you guys. Something else could be that a lot of players have as Kurthos would say “gotten fat” from sitting around steamrolling T2 for so long. The same thing happened to JQ and SBI when SoS first came into T1, they had easy wins against dissolved HoD and ET servers with the only other competitors being BG and IoJ (the latter of which proved to barely be T2 capable). So when we (SoS) came in, we didn’t just raise the roof, we blew the whole kitten house up.

The same thing is happening this week to us, we ‘got fat’ from winning with minimal effort for so many weeks that we’re struggling in the NA timezone because we have to fight larger coordination and better competition. Thankfully, our SEA and Oceanics are saving our kitten right now. BIG shout-outs to those guys We owe you for this one.

To whoever quoted me pages ago, it’s not so much the fact that I die 1v3, it’s that I die 1v3 to completely skill-less scrubs who don’t get punished for being so. I’m able to live 1v3 for a lot longer than 90% of the playerbase in WvW because I specced and geared for it. But even with all that (20k hp, 2600 armor, 3k attack) the damage on staff is pathetic at best.

My most important skills root me in place, melee classes don’t ever get punished for being kited (every weapon has 1 or more ridiculously large range gap closers), when someone does get low because they were too stupid to move out the dozens of red circles its always “zomg gap closer AWAY from the tanky staff Ele.” Additionally, the dps of the skills on ranged weapons is kitten awful in comparison to melee weapons that are ridiculously easy to stay in range with.

None of this really matters though, the problem isn’t AoE, the problem is the large disparity in damage of various skills coupled with the weird scaling that essentially promotes the game being a glass cannon zergfest. Crit damage is too abundant and scales way better than toughness/armor does. Coincidentally, Power means little to nothing because in the grand scheme of things.

Now this is a terrible example because Eles have kitten for base hp but here goes – Full bunker Ele vs full glass cannon Ele – glass cannon gets hit by 1.1k fireballs, full bunker gets hit for 850 fireballs but gets crit for 2.4k. Now, the bunker build will win this one, but only because the Ele’s damage, even in glass cannon, is so awful that the bunker build has nearly infinite sustainability against someone with that low hp. Turn that glass Ele into a Thief or a Warrior, and guess what, bunker loses every time. Now, it might take 5-10 minutes, depending upon skill levels of the individuals, but the damage/sustainability of the glass cannon Thief/Warrior far exceeds the capabilities of the bunker Ele. And even if the Ele was REALLY good and managed to get the Thief/Warrior low, POOF! Vanish away/gap closer gap opener (sorry, I had to do it) and live to fight another day because poor play is NOT punished.

Mance.5640:

PAPAJ from VI on SOS…now I know your name you turkey. I’ve been calling you the big fat norn elementalist commander.

Stop spending so much time chasing SG thief groups around your BL’s with your bunker ele shenanigans! We just want to fondle some dolyaks and hold hands =( We won’t ninja anything…

/salute from SG to all today, good fights.

I am Norn. That says it all.

Meteor Shower takes 4.25 seconds to channel actually…just saying…Also, it’s a 30 second cooldown that takes 15 seconds for its full damage output to be done. Sure, there are a lot of meteors but how many of them honestly hit you? I’m a Norn (super big hitbox) and I’ll eat maybe 3 meteors out of an entire cast. If anything a lot of AoE needs to be buffed. Not necessarily in damage, but at least a reduction in the time it takes for the abilities to land. Examples:

Dragon’s Tooth…not even a ground targeted AoE takes 3 seconds to land. Ice Spike…2.5 seconds. Lava Font…takes 1 second after it appears to deal its first tick of damage (which by the way still has a bugged tooltip, the durations says 6 seconds but if definitely is only 4). Eruption…don’t even get me started on this one…3.5 seconds with a very visible graphic, little damage, and easily cleansed conditions.

AoEs are meant to punish those too stupid to move out of them as well as to punish stacking up in tight balls. The 5 player cap already makes stacking up semi-effective…except against siege and melee trains. The fact that non-melee AoEs (exception being Earthshaker, the Warrior Hammer burst ability) are more than amply animated, plus give the red circle, plus do kitten for damage compared to a lot of the melee ‘AoEs’ (they’re really cleaves) makes you wonder why you roll would roll ranged.

The damage disparity between melee and ranged weapons is already astronomical, and I get can understand why some might think this is a good idea. 1200 range vs 200 range, getting up close is typically a chore and more risky. But, in this game, staying in melee range is easier than cutting thru butter with a hot knife. Couple that with the fact that melee auto attacks are easily 33-40% faster than 75% of the ranged attacks, and you have a severe damage disparity where the caster has less tools to open the gap than the melee class have to close the gap. Obviously if you’re a bad build and didn’t get any mobility a ranged class is going to kite you, but whose fault is that? It sure as hell isn’t the caster’s fault you’re bad at the game or refused to carry a ranged weapon.

Another game I played had this issue, Rift. Warriors got a 20m teleport every time they crit a target (max range for casters was something like 30m). Did I mention that their teleport broke stun and movement impairing effects AND rooted the target they ported too? Rogues had more teleports (also that broke crowd control effects) and immunities to magical effects that if one got on you as a Mage, you were screwed. Between them immuning and constantly breaking your limited CC, you having 1 whimpy kitten 20m teleport, and the oh so important DIMINISHING RETURNS it was impossible to every get range enough to do anything useful.

Speaking of diminishing returns, YOUR GAME BLOODY NEEDS IT. Getting tired of having 20 seconds of stability, 4 ways to cleanse stuns, immobilizes, and cripple/chill and still the end result is my corpse on the floor as a full bunker spec to a measly 3 people who have way more CC and gap closers than what is necessary.

Score update – 5:52am EST on Saturday. Maybe I will be able to play the Defiance beta AND get in some good time with MechWarrior’s double XP weekend after all.

Matt Witter.6982:

…both internal and by our trusted alpha team

That fantastic internal testing and trusted alpha team deserves a pay cut, I don’t know how many times the forums lit up with concerns about one thing or another during those 3 BWEs, but look what happened at launch….it was ALMOST as bad as TOR’s. And that is an impressive feat.

Only 7 hours of WvW on reset night? We still have our NA crews out there in SoS. We try hard. On another note, it was fun out there in SoS BL, everybody had us on our toes. The golem rushes weren’t funny after the first half dozen times though, nor the catapults on the Garrison side of Cragtop; I’ll give it an A for effort however.

Nothing sucks more than playing 10-12 WvW shifts and hoping that when you wake up that the PPT is the same (or better) than when you logged off the previous night. Anybody striving for the gold medal in any particular week “knows that feel bro”. As Jedahs said, as a leader/commander you can only do that (and to a lesser extent make your regular guild members do that) so much before the path of ‘hands in the air jsut don’t care’ is traveled down. That path leads to burnout not just of the WvW aspect of the game, but the entire game itself, especially if WvW is the only thing you care about.

A number of the NA commanders on SoS lost a long-time friend from the Dragonbrand days to WvW burnout this week. He didn’t just quit WvW, he quit the game. And regardless of how little anyone might think it affects them, it affects them greatly. It starts with one commander, then the guys who take over for him, then the members. Sooner or later you lose an entire guild and sometimes an entire server could be drug into the abyss because 1-2 of the guilds on the grand cog of WvW sustainability broke off thanks to the game simply being not fun anymore. Be it for the reasons of getting pummeled week after week despite immense effort into helping your server on the battlefield or for the reasons of not having anyone to play with anymore, when players quit the game suffers as a whole.

So why risk remaining susceptible to that level of stress of possible self implosion when SoS has the coverage and the community to let you enjoy WvW instead of it being a 2nd job. Even moreso considering in just 11 days, making a decision to prevent this could cost not just you, but each of your guild members $20.

Take my opinion and story for what you will (I am one of the guild masters on SoS after all, so one could say there is bias) but I believe I can be objective here.

All the way back in October, not even 2 months after the game’s launch, I was faced with the hardest dilemma known to the leader of any guild. And that dilemma was – How do I save my guild from dying? Violent Impact – [VI] – being one of the founding guilds and still a current member of the Axis of Inssurection (AoI) alliance was faced with the fact that Dragonbrand was dying as a WvW server. Simultaneously being a guild that focused on a higher level of play and coordination in WvW as well as part of a WvW alliance with the same goals, I was faced with a very sticky situation.

Do I stay on the dying server and let my guild suffer because WvW would become a 2nd job in order to merely keep pace? Do I make the move to a server where I know the people I would see in-game care just as much as I do? Do I do nothing and hope the game becomes more appealing to those less interested in large-scale PvP? I went with option #2, I moved where I knew a true community could be built and where my WvW experience would blossom with competition.

The NA transfers from Dragonbrand (AoI alliance and TSym & affiliates) learned from the mistakes made previously, a few well known guilds with the burning passion of 1000 suns does not and cannot carry a server. It takes a lot more than that, it takes a server to carry a server. So we reached out to our Aussie brethren and while there were many kinks in the garden hose initially, we all realized in the end that it wasn’t about us as individuals or as guilds, it was about us as a server.

So, the free transfers end soon, and with it a lot of the volatile nature of the current WvW ranking system. However, it also makes it harder to save your guild and your server. It’s pretty easy to convince 20+ people to transfer for greener pastures and better competition when it doesn’t cost a nickle. But when that transfer costs $20, I bet you’re going to lose a few in the process, and nothing sucks more than saying goodbye to the people you’ve grown accustomed to and fond of.

I’m glad I made the choice to move [VI] when I did. I might have lost a few kind folk on the trip, but I know I saved the guild from a slow and painful death. It gave members the competition they deserved, it gave them the peace of mind knowing that someone else on the other side of the world did care about what happened, and most importantly it let them enjoy the game. Nothing sucks more than pulling a 12 hour WvW shift day in and day out and know that all of it will be for naught because nobody is there to take the reins.

Bottom line: SoS is the server that cares. From the best and most publicized WvW guilds all the way down the line to the lone wolf who roams WvW looking for something new and exciting to do, SoS players care the most. If you want to play some of the best in the game alongside some of the best in the game, you’ll want to be on Sea of Sorrows when you do. We don’t just have WvW guilds, we have a WvW server.

Kurthos.2354:

REMEMBER DRAGONBRAND

VIVA SEA OF SORROWS

I think they (Blackgate) forgot that 80% of the NA on SoS were from Dragonbrand and have been waiting a grueling 13 weeks to return the favor of that beatdown, only this time without the EU server hopping shenanigans mid-week. Try hard SoS, try hard.

Also, I would like to give props to [HB]. You guys made it a night to remember on reset in your BL and for most of the next day. You do your server an honor by giving it 110% and for not crying and participating in the excuse war currently happening in this thread. Stay classy and stay fighting.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Did we (SBI) cry about 2v1 this much?

If you did I don’t remember it as vividly as I will this. Besides, my fondest memory of any emotion-filled forum responses actually comes from your own forums right here. Oh Kelo, your post brings a tear to my eye every time I read it. Keep up the good fight in T2, you guys can still recover as a server.

Don’t you dare take away my Angry Birds and my Durios Basketball! Seriously….those holes in the top of the Tower’s domes….fun stuff to drop rocks/diseased cattle into.

Update as of 3:14am EST. It has been some good fighting all weekend. It’s kept me very busy during/between football games. Sad to see Peyton get knocked out, I had him going to the big game, but my 49ers are still strong in it.

Also, a pic of the map status as of the time of the score photo.

I personally don’t see the paragraphs proceeding my first paragraph as “junk.” It’s an observation that holds 100% true. I’d say at bare minimum 5 out of 10 players did not even congratulate SoS during their winning streak, especially during holiday weeks. In fact, it was quite the opposite during those weeks; I vividly remember post after post after post with “SoS only won because of the holiday” or “PvDoor is hard, come at us when we have numbers.”

Not only was there not even a semblance of a congratulations in the majority of those posts, it could be taken as a slightly malicious insult directed at our ability to WvW on somewhat even (or even) terms. All I see from these two most recent posts is that SoS commentary is being to a double standard, because when SoS loses, it is unacceptable to say it was due to holidays and the like. However, when SoS wins on a holiday week, it is okay to say en masse that it was due to the holidays.

It is my firm belief that excuses are lame in general and are more of a cop-out than anything; however, it still stands that SoS told the truth – we lost because most everyone was taking a well needed holiday break. Sure, one could say that there is truth in several of the JQ/SBI losses that lack of population was a major factor in, and I will not argue against that, I’m not blind to my own logic after all. However, SoS came out of the gate this week exasperated and with a mission to prove that we are still deserving of that top spot, something that (unfortunately) cannot be said of the other two servers.

I suppose what I’m saying is this – cut the double standard on commentary and if that single tally in your ‘W’ column was due to server superiority and not because of holiday related lollygagging and gallivanting about, come out and prove it with another tally in that ‘W’ column. SoS did it 6 times on non-holiday weeks, I do not think it unreasonable to ask somebody else to do it once.

Also, @hex, you might be surprised to know that I did not use the word “but” at any point in my previous post OR in this one at any point until this sentence. @Wotah, to an extent Jedahs is right, these forums and the Guru forums were hefty with “JQ #1” “Holidays aren’t an excuse” “JQ > SoS” commentary over-hyping the win last week. I know kitten well a lot of SoS was guilty of that during our first triumph in T1 (myself included), so I will plead guilty to the chest-thumping charge. In fact, make that 8 counts of chest-thumping, because we put our money where our mouth was and did it 7 more times.

Also, for relevance I present to you the scores as of 11:04am EST.

All I see is a bunch of JQ forum warriors trashing Jedahs and my server for saying “Congrats, you beat us over New Years, looking forward to this week” I must’ve missed the memo for when it was deemed socially acceptable and respectful to rip on another server for congratulating you. Let me just run some numbers by all these smack-talkers real quick:

SoS, SBI, and JQ have been in 9 (if you include this week) matches together, only 3 of which were what you could consider holiday-esque (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s). SoS has won 7 (more likely going to be 8 judging by this week’s progression) of 9 with the only loss being during the week of New Years. So, excluding the other holiday weeks, you are left with 6 weeks of SoS being victorious without the excuse of holidays (hell I’ll give it benefit of the doubt and say 5, we’ll count the terrible Wintersday event as one).

All I’m saying is for using that “we’re on holiday/break excuse” as often as it was thrown out there, nobody stepped up their game the following week to prove that it really was because nobody was online. SoS did step it up this week after our loss to prove just that.

So to me, Jedahs (and probably most of SoS’) statements regarding any “Congrats on the win, we were doing Christmas stuff,” should be interpreted as “Congrats on the win, we slacked off and you stuck it to us. Hope to see what you can do this week against our real force.” At least that’s what I thought JQ and SBI were saying every time that holiday excuse surfaced; I assumed everyone would be bringing the hurt once the population came back, guess I was wrong.

P.S. – GTFO Pangloss SBI, that is [VI]’s supply camp, rather it was for almost 4 hours last night.

Score as of 10:04am EST, probably wouldn’t hurt to throw some bodies out there, at least slow down JQ a bit. They can actually beat us if they maintain this PPT from now until reset

Edit: It has been brought to my attention that JQ needs a +285 PPT over SoS PPT for the rest of the match to win; my math is apparently terrible when it is not attached to gigantic kitten mechs shooting big lasers and auto-cannons at each other.

SoS – 3923 – +340 – SM
SBI – 2518 – +220
JQ – 1617 – +135

To the white-haired human female pistol whip Thief from [MORD], why you no taste my rainbows

Also, score update: 1:51am EST (GMT -5)

Violent Impact
A Guild Wars 2 chapter of
Impact Gaming Community

Website: http://www.impact-gaming.us/
Recruitment status: Open
Timezones: North American (PST, MST, CST, EST)
Server: Sea of Sorrows
Voice: Teamspeak 3

Mission Statement

While not a casual guild, Violent Impact strives to achieve progression without the oppressive rigidity of a ‘hardcore’ guild. We genuinely get excited at the prospect of amazing teamwork in the face of challenging content. That level of teamwork can only come from truly exceptional and talented players who not only posses a high level of knowledge about their class and game mechanics, but also a genuine affection for the people they play with. Violent Impact endeavors to provide the environment where those conditions can be realized.

Through organization in our own guild, and constructively interacting with the other guilds on our server; our goal is become a force to be reckoned with in Tyria. We will be the spear that pushes into the enemy lines, and the standard for others to follow through the breach. While we do not know quite what is in store for us with regards to end-game, rest assured we will be at the forefront of it.

Recruitment

Our players come from all walks. Fom the student with surprisingly far too much free time on their hands to the player with a family and full time job. We do our best to accommodate each; and everyone is a valued player here. However, it also almost universally guaranteed that each and every one of them has the following qualities:

Active – You genuinely enjoy the game!
An active player isn’t necessarily one who is logging in every available minute of every day. We cater to all types of players and their various schedules. Active players don’t just log in for guild events, and then are rarely seen until the next event. It’s someone who enjoys exploring all the game’s content, be it leveling, crafting, gathering, questing, or anything else in between. Sometimes it’s about the journey, not the destination.

Mature – You can take a joke and dish ‘em out!
Applicants are not limited by age, but they must be intelligent, considerate, and enjoy friendly competition. A sense of humor is an absolute must! In addition, we abhor drama; we’re all here to have a good time together.

Reliable – You’re responsible and can be counted on!
Our players are able to follow a schedule. They check the forums frequently, and communicate with members and leaders. We consider communication one of the most important aspects to a successful guild. If you signed up for an event and can’t make it, please let your teammates know! If you plan on being absent for some time, drop the leader or an officer a quick note.

Skillful – You desire to play at the maximum potential.
You can do this using your past knowledge and experience of game mechanics, or by investing time to research, test new things, or practice playing your role until you can execute it with precision. You must be the kind of person who pushes the envelope in the gaming world, evolving and adapting to an ever-changing gaming environment.

Motivated – You want to get things done to better yourself and the group!
To get something, you must want it first. Players here possess a passion for success and are driven to discover possibilities. Self starters are highly desirable. Be proactive in your play. Don’t wait around for a group when you could be getting one started yourself.

If you feel you fit this criteria, we’d love to meet you.

1. Head over to http://www.impact-gaming.us and register for a forum account
2. Submit a quick application to Violent Impact at http://www.impact-gaming.us/violent-impact/apply - Please ensure you use an e-mail address you frequently check
3. A VI rep will be in touch with you shortly (within 24-48 hours)

Any recruitment inquiries can be directed to gw2recruiter@impact-gaming.us

To the SBI and JQ folk who came out this week and fought the good fight, thank you. It felt as refreshing as our first of many matches against SoR and IoJ did those many weeks ago. Mad respect to you map-flipping guys from SF and LoD who kept pestering us on JQ borderlands, god kitten do I loathe your BS immobilize/stun trains.

Wednesday night I think we all got tired of seeing you guys come on to sweep your corner and harass us so we bunkered down and actually forced you guys off the map for the first time during the match after some epic fights in and around ruins/Champion’s Demense/Greenwater. While I hope to see less of SF and LoD specifically this week, I am looking forward to the match and another week of excellent WvW.

Score update as of 4:20am EST.

Been a good 2 days so far, some really intense stuff out there. That LoD hammer train is nucking futs, I don’t think I could’ve lived through that crap even if my healing didn’t take a 50% hit from the Evasive Arcana nerf.

On a side note, there seriously needs to be diminishing returns in this game. Removing an immobilize just to have another one thrown on me, just to cleanse that one, then have another thrown and cleansed off again, just to be chained hammer stunned from 100 to 0% makes one feel like utter kitten.

On another side note, everyone keep up the good work (on all servers). It’s nice seeing new people on the battlefield, and I’m sure everyone on SBI and JQ thinks so too.

HabibLoew.2590:

Currently WvW uses the same skills as PvE, so PvP balance changes do not have an impact on WvW.

So the weakest of the bunker builds gets nerfed to high heaven (Elementalist) which coincidentally kills a significant portion of my dungeon support and group healing in WvW, but Thieves still get to Backstab me for +7k? Not cool bro, not cool

soraky.7418:

Well, even Warriors are complaining apparently. Everyone is letting out a knee-jerk reaction, which is fine, but not informed at all.

Then those Warriors are some of the saddest excuses for the conglomeration of flesh and bone that I have ever seen represent the human race, because they pretty much got projectile finishers on 2 more of their Rifle abilities and 3 more of their Speargun abilities (not that those matter because most fields can’t be placed underwater) and got a buff on their Longbow auto-attack damage. And if I had to take a guess, their Triple Chop damage got boosted as well because responsiveness typically relates to how fast an ability either activates or finishes animation frames before proceeding to the next attack.

Arc.9374:

You guys don’t seem to realise that there’s a good chance all the bunker builds will eventually be tweaked downwards. That the Ele bunker got nerfed first is irrelevant and shortsighted. They have no place in the game. Period.

Survival oriented builds designed to buy time, sure. Almost immortal builds that require extreme dedication of manpower to drop in a timely fashion, no.

Sure, it would have been great to have all that happen in one patch, and I’m not arguing that the patch is kinda pathetic, given the state of the game right now, but you’re acting like you’ve been singled out above all else to receive the only bunker nerf that will ever happen in the entire history and future of the game.

It’s reasonable to assume that, if the developers are competant (the jury is still out on that one as far as I’m concerned) broken things will be fixed, and yet here we are, crying about how some broken stuff was fixed, like it’s some kind of massive surprise. The only surprise is that it took this long and that it wasn’t uniformly spread across all the offending classes, which I’ll not argue feels like a bit of a slight, but I would hope that what we’re seeing now is the beginning of them bringing a lot of classes into line as far as capabilities goes, in order to evaluate on a roughly even playing field, and then, if necessary, buff appropriately. If you’re too short-sighted to see the vague outline of a medium/long term goal for achieving overall balance, then I honestly don’t know what to say.

It’s more significant than you think it is that the Ele build was nerfed first. Particularly that no other bunker builds were even touched, yet they do it better. Not to mention that our bunker build (and the Warrior’s to a lesser extent) was also the best PvE support specs for dungeons for our class.

As to bunker builds having no place in the game whatsoever, I am going to have to call you out on that one. Because there are no avoidance stats like dodge or parry, and since there are very few skills that mimic those, avoiding damage and being able to eat some damage before dropping into the downed state was something anybody with half a functioning brain should have realized after playing a single beta weekend. I won’t argue against the point that they make things frustrating, particularly in sPvP, but why nerf the weakest of those builds? Why not bring the others down from the top of Mount Everest?

In regards to everything else about this just being the first of many balance fixes to come…..this is a horrendous start. Rangers were supposed to get a lot of love (quoting an ANet moderator there) this patch, and they got not very much at all, mostly a bunch of useless stuff done to them. Warriors haven’t seen a nerf yet since the game launch, Guardians are kind of sitting even by the looks of it, and Engi’s (which were in many people’s thoughts were supposed to get a much needed Grenade Kit nerf) didn’t really see any detrimental changes to their class.

So I’ll agree with you that my trust level in about 6 feet under at the moment, but I can’t have a positive outlook on the long-term and ‘big picture’ of things if this is what they deliver in terms of class changes and balance when they made bigger promises weeks ago.

@Arc – Bunker Staff Ele’s were some of the worst bunker-builds in the game. Yes, they are powerful, yes they can stall a point like mad, but compared to a Guardian or Warrior or Engineer bunker they are not even in the same league.

I won’t lie and try to tell you that I didn’t troll the hell outta people in WvW and sPvP with my bunker staff build I’m fairly certain I was the at the forefront of creating, because I trolled a lot of people on a lot of different servers. But a Warrior/Engi/Guardian bunker takes half the effort and is probably close to 1.5-2 times as effective. Without Evasive Arcana, the Warrior shout build is no ifs, ands, or buts about it, superior in every which way since we no longer have a reliable AoE healing source.

6) Tornado goes from used on occasion to used never with this one. Sure, melee have a hard time killing you, good thing they have the ability to swap to a ranged weapon and get free pew-pew. Now, I’m sure this was a bug that cancelling the form allowed you to retain stability, but at a 180 second cooldown…….I’d rather just not have an Elite skill equipped at this point. Everything but the Earth elemental on the Elite glyph die way too fast, and the Earth elemental won’t taunt things in WvW off of me so…yea…can I just equip a 4th utility?

7-11) This totally makes the conjure weapons worth it…wait, no it doesn’t. You still lose out on your stats from your real equipped weapons and either Mist Form, Cleansing Flame, Armor of Earth, Lightning Flash, or…wait a second…not even Tornado has any good uses as an Elite skill now, so yea just those 4 and the massive stat nerfs you don’t get back anyway. I’ll give it an C for effort in regards to making the conjure weapons more appealing because this was a kitten attempt at best. And it definitely didn’t make them any more appealing to use.

I’m dumbfounded, speechless, and in general very upset with the handling of everything as of late regarding GW2. I don’t deny the spec I ran with was ridiculous, it was pretty absurd what I could do (see this thread for 1st hand accounts, about halfway down the 2nd page). But it was the only thing I could do, and I didn’t do it any better than a bunker specced Warrior/Guardian to boot.

I suppose I’m just confused as to how this is balancing in any sense of the word. Single-Double-Triple Chop auto-attack chain does more damage on its own as a bunker Warrior than any combination of crazy button mashing and APM on a bunker Ele could ever accomplish, so why nerf us is I guess what I’m getting at. If you can’t be killed, you shouldn’t have the luxury to kill either.

TheWarKeeper.5374:

Elementalist
Evasive Arcana: This trait no longer creates unintended blast finishers.
Healing Rain: This skill’s tooltip now states the correct duration of 6 seconds.
Armor of Earth: This skill’s tooltip now states the correct duration of 6 seconds.
Mist Form: This skill now works with the Water Magic trait Cantrip Mastery.
Healing Ripple: This skill’s scaling with healing power has been reduced by 50% in PvP only, as it had scaling that’s normally reserved for main healing skills. The maximum number of targets has also been reduced from infinite to 5.
Conjure Frost Bow’s Ice Storm: This skill now applies 5 seconds of bleeding per hit instead of confusion.
Tornado: Leaving this elite skill now removes the stability it grants in order to make it consistent with other elite transformation abilities.
Flame Axe: This weapon now grants the wielder 166 power and 166 condition damage.
Frost Bow: This weapon now grants the wielder 20% increased condition duration and 166 healing power.
Fiery Greatsword: This weapon now grants the wielder 239 power and 166 condition damage.
Magnetic Shield: This weapon now grants the wielder 166 vitality and 166 toughness.
Lightning Hammer: This weapon now grants the wielder 166 precision and 5% critical damage.

Enjoy the nerfs and see you ingame!

So taking this point by point going down the list….because these are the bullets I am most infuriated by

1) ARE YOU SERIOUS?! Our best trait (by a landslide mind you) just got nerfed into near uselessness. The sole reason this trait was ever useful was to be able to easily blast combo into fields for quick healing, quick AoE might, AoE Frost Armor, etc etc at the expensive of your best defensive ability in the game…your dodge roll. I would really appreciate some developer insight into this and why this was necessary, especially since the Elementalist traits are some of the most bland and weak traits of any class.

2) It’s as I feared, the tooltip was bugged and not the skill duration itself. I could live with this….what am I saying? I can’t live with this; not since Evasive Arcana no longer has blast finishers, and the most consistent blast finisher we have is Eruption….which is horrendously tedious to time due to a long cast-channel time. Couple that with the fact it fails to ‘erupt’ half the time because you get dazed/knockdown midcast and the channel on it cancels….our only reliable way to combo off our own fields is to throw rocks at the speed of molasses or to waste 2 utility slots on the terrible arcane finishers.

3) You know, I thought it was odd that even with and without points in the Arcana tree, the tooltip duration said 8.5 seconds no matter how many or few points were thrown in there. If only I had sat down and taken a serious look at it and said “Nah, there’s no way an 11 second stability + protection on a 90 second cooldown is balanced, they clearly meant base duration to be 6 seconds, not 8.5” my punching bag could’ve avoided another jab.

But seriously though…it takes almost 2.5 months to fix MINOR tooltip errors like this? Color me impressed, I’ll need to send extra thanks to my computer engineering friends and commend on them on the extra hard work they must do.

3) Well…at least it works now, not that I ever used that trait because there are better traits….in the 1st tier of majors mind you. See above paragraph for additional snark commentary.

4) That hurts a lot….probably not as much as the note makes it seem, but that scaling was 1.0 of your healing power, now it’s 0.5 if I had to take a guess. I’m a firm believer though in if damaging AoEs are capped, so should healing AoEs as it will help alleviate the infamous zerg stack turtle in WvW. Still upset by this one, but not infuriated to the level of the Evasive Arcana change.

5) Hoo-rah Marines, we now get a god awful condition in place of a really overpowered condition on guess what…a conjure weapon….which were (and still are) some of the worst utility skills in the pool.

Edited original post (1st post in thread) to better reflect current setup.

Flawed Victory.4321:

Good ele but perhaps not a wise person?
Does sos need to be ‘pushed’ to t1? Do we have to ‘send’ sos to t1 just to avoid tough fight? Humiliating everyone here who tries to fight fair and square.

I meant it as a joke referencing the fact that it seemed like people were not happy about being baited into trying to kill me and having a worse batting average than your average baseball player. We (SoS) have already secured T1 placement it seems due to Blackgate losing steam in their matchup and since SoR is now seemingly permanently ahead in overall score over IoJ.

I personally have had a blast the past few weeks (though it did become more and more stale with each passing day) and I wish everybody well in next week’s matchup. My only regret is that this big tier shift for SoS is happening the week of a major content patch. At any rate I had fun and I even made some acquaintances amongst the enemy ranks by the looks of it.

However, one does not simply give out trade secrets; especially not ones as game breaking as my build is being made out to be. But I will tell you that it is lurking somewhere in the forums, undoubtedly being hidden by the constant onslaught of threads titled something along these lines “OMG DAGGER ELE 2 GUD.”