Guild Wars 2

You should rally from a Yak kill (I have not tested it) but remember that the Yak guards disappear when the Yak dies, so you should be able to use downed skill 4 to revive yourself assuming no enemy players are present.

Think of it this way: if there’s another trait you’d use in that spot.

For me personally, I see WvW as the less casual of the two pvp modes. (exception being if you are doing a 5 man premade tourny group, of course)

And by this I mean that in WvW, if you die, you suffer a repair bill, your opponent gets loot, and you get a run back. You never know what will happen, who you will face, from what direction or when. You could be running down the road and get jumped by a full on zerg, or meet an enemy one on one. You never know what’s going to happen. You fight not just for ~15 minutes at a time, you fight for a battle that lasts weeks. You don’t just fight over a 5 meter wide circle, you fight over camps, towers, keeps, supply lines, choke points, and open fields.

In SPvP, when you die, you have at most a ~15 second respawn. You have no repair bill and your opponent effectively gets nothing for your death. The match is over, and you move on to the next one. You’re forced to pick builds that are good for 8v8, 5v5, and 1v1 combat instead of having the freedom to include builds that are good for larger combat. Your gear choices are severely limited, you can’t even use all of the runes, sigils, and gems. Every primary objective is a small circle you stand on.

SPvP is what I do when I just want to kick back and relax for an hour or so. WvW is what I do when I’m getting down and serious about kicking some butt! That’s just how it feels for me, both game modes are fun and some people will be more attracted to one over the other. I have fun in both, I just prefer WvW personally. It’s not more casual, it’s different.

Great video, and seriously great plays there. You played very well, and it’s nice to see more videos of roaming Necromancers.

I’ve found Necro (I’m also condition, although with a different build) very strong in solo or small group pvp, but like you mentioned we lack escape. If we get jumped, we die.

I don’t really think they are spamming. Out of the ~25-30 topics on the first page, only two of them are BoC (at first glance). Granted maybe they could combine some of the threads instead of making multiple posts, but it’s not really bothering anyone. (but the mods have the final say)

It “should” have no effect on performance, since instead of your computer saying “red” or “green” it says “black”. I have enemy team colors turned on, that way when I see people in the distance before the nametags load I can tell if they might be enemies or not.

And to make it fit with the lore, just say the whole thing takes place in the past in a fractals of the mists type thing. You’re fighting for your world, in the past.

Eliyahu.1467:

Paruza.3162:

I ask because I’d like to do a build focused on aoe auras and healing to sustain the zerg. However I don’t think I’m going to bother if it will substantially harm my ability to get badges…

Your healing skills have cooldowns. Damage people while waiting for those cooldowns and you’ll be fine.

This. With the recent changes in how you get credit for loot, hitting a player with one aoe spell is usually enough to get loot. Also watch chat for when your mesmers are porting people in the EB jumping puzzle, that’s a quick chest of badges and loot.

My scepter applies 4 seconds of poison with just the +33% scepter duration trait and +36% condition duration food. (Don’t ask me how the math works out, but it’s 4 ticks of poison)

For kiting, that also makes Scepter 2 apply 8 seconds of cripple with only a 10 second cooldown.

They recently improved upscaling. My level 15 mesmer had something like 3k attack, 67% crit chance and 110% crit damage just with a full set of cheap level appropriate gear. While it would be quite difficult to 1v1 a level 80, WvW is a team game and you can still do quite fine in group battles. You’re at a disadvantage, sure, but it’s not as big a gap when you think about the team mechanics and the fact that just as many lower levels are on the enemy team.

As far as gear goes, it’s easy enough to buy a set of rare gear on the trading post. That plus an exotic weapon is plenty enough while you work on full exotic gear.

I think defenders should just get the bonus exp/loot/coin/badges from kills buffs from being near a friendly location or dolyak instead of having those be guild claim buffs.

Nice video. I have to say that you could have been meaner and more effective than it shows in the vid but still shows what a thief can do.

For example, cloak and dagger before finishing someone, that way you can’t be interrupted.

AoE is already less effective the more targets there are. Also many AoEs can be simply avoided due to taking awhile to land, for example.

I do agree that some single damage builds need to be beefed up a little, but I hardly think AoE is just “too strong”, not with a five target limit.

Bhawb.7408:

Weakness will drop the incoming damage (excluding existing Dots) by 50% to any non-crit build

Not to be picky, but weakness reduces non-crit damage by an average of 25%, not 50%. (50% chance to deal half damage on an attack)

I agree with making it stack every second, or even every 2 seconds would be a nice improvement to this skill.

I think maybe giving plague form a skill that removed all conditions from you and spreads them randomly to enemies in the area of effect, kind of like a watered down version of Epidemic but on yourself. Give it a decent cooldown like 15+ seconds, basically it would be a way to remove the slows and immobilizes that shut down plague form.
Even if it doesn’t transfer conditions, simply a way to remove slows and immobilize would be great. I personally LOVE plague for wvw, you can charge into the enemy zerg and really disrupt them, giving your team an edge. It’s also really weak in some situations since all anyone has to do is just slow you and walk away.

So many times I wish I could have told a player “good fight” or otherwise compliment them.

I think it should be an option to allow enemies in WvW to /whisper you, with the default being off.

I think the outmanned buff should give a bonus to siege damage and health (except trebs, to prevent possible exploits), and a bonus to wall and door health, as well as NPC damage and health.

Basically, it wouldn’t make the players themselves stronger, but would make the team stronger and give them a better chance at taking and holding objectives against a superior force. If you’re outmanned 2-1, your siege, gates, walls, and NPCs should be 25-50% stronger.

Best way to counter a golem rush: scout, scout, and scout. Nothing sucks more than getting your 10 golem army slaughtered by an angry mob or some siege set up in advance!

While it would be a nifty feature, it is already almost as easy to swap your weapons. Hitting H only displays the weapons and gear your character can actually equip, making switching easy. Although it can get a little tedious if you have to put some in main hand some in offhand etc.

I love the guy on the left with the YOLO hat just shaking his head. lol!

Whenever I’m on my bank guild, I earn influence in WvW from the events only, so I would imagine that anything that increases influence from events would affect it and not anything that affects sPvP

The best way to preserve peace in the WvW JP is to kill the enemy so that only allies are left alive in the JP.

Thieves are easy to stomp.
Step 1: Start your stomp. Do it quick, don’t hesitate.
Step 2: When the thief teleports, cancel your stomp and dodge roll to his new location. Dodge rolling is important because you will probably be crippled.
Step 3: Stomp him. The stealth ability does not come off cooldown quick enough to prevent 2 stomps unless you’re being slow or get distracted by his teammates.

Sometimes the thief might be able to teleport to a location that is out of your line of sight (but not his) and be hidden behind a pillar or around a corner from you. Just learn to expect it and you can still stomp him in time before his stealth is off cooldown. Or, just DPS them like others have said. Most thieves are incredibly squishy.

Thieves are not hard to stomp, they have a very good downed state but they aren’t impossible to finish off.

I believe I’ve read you need to do 5% of the damage to get credit for the kill, but in my experience it seems higher than that.

I find SBI is still doing quite well, considering our lack of numbers. Many nights we are able to retake our entire borderlands and defend from enemy incursions, and then make a dent in EB.

Most of the commanders I have ran with have been decent, as well. And the player’s attitudes surprisingly good considering our situation. Lebannen, maybe it’s just the time of day that you play (I play nights and weekends normally) but don’t think that it’s this way all the time. I barely notice any drama when I play, except for the occasional lone troll (that I’m sure every server has).

I love SBI. I still have fun in WvW and win fights. Score means nothing, it’s all about the battles! FOR STORMBLUFF!

Put more objectives and areas to fight that encourage smaller numbers.

Or build some arrow carts. An arrow cart mid-battle can easily let you push, but many people don’t do that.

Balistas have a cap of 50 targets, according to a post on these forums by a dev. (Sorry I don’t have a link handy)

edit okay I can’t find the post so I may have been mistaken, but I swear one of them made that post.

You can also drop the well that blinds, or use shadowfiend blind skill midstomp to hopefully interrupt them. (takes timing and isn’t reliable)

I think scaling could be improved, but it doesn’t need any drastic changes, just tweaking some of the numbers and better gear available from wvw. Also put more skillpoints in the maps, each wvw map only has 3-4, compare that to most pve maps that have double that.

Being able to unlock new traits, skills, and gear while leveling keeps a sense of progression and achievement while leveling in wvw, and a down leveled character can still be a productive part of a fight. Yeah, you’ll get stomped 1 on 1, but in a large or mid sized fight you’ll be able to do decently well, and don’t forget many of your opponents will be downleveled right along with you.

You can revive or stomp while in death shroud, but it’s awkward. Hit the buttons for death shroud and revive/stomp at the same time and you will. You can also use fear while reviving/stomping, which is pretty useful.

While I strongly disagree with most of your ideas, I just have to say that unescorted dolyaks sometimes DON’T survive because there already ARE NPC ambushes AND enemy sentries that can stop them.

Requiring a 10 second finishing move that is interrupted on damage is also a bad idea because then any thief could stop multiple players from being able to finish off a dolyak for quite a long time.

There’s more I disagree with but I just don’t have the time to type it all out. I don’t think this is the way to go about fixing WvW.

Merging worlds in GW2 seems it would be a lot easier than in other games because, at least in my experience, player names are US-based, not server based, so you wouldn’t have naming conflicts. Also they could easily transfer guild upgrades to another server.

As for the technical aspects of it, I wouldn’t know, but they do allow plenty of server transfers. Doing a world merger would pretty much be just doing a mass server transfer of one to the other, however the background programming and logistics of it may be something entirely different.

Also merging servers is usually met with player criticism as a sign of a “failing game” whether or not the idea is a good one.

shochinhwa.1648:

Personal attack is not allowed in this forum. Please read code of conduct. Great chainsaw sound is really annoying. More annoying than choir bell if you ask me. There are players who are already glitching the infinite animation especially warrior and wielding a great chainsaw can cause verbal distress to the ear, more so than a high octave choir bell. Perhaps, the poster above will like to contribute to the discussion in an adult manner instead of trolling me with nothing much to say.

Thanks.

How was he trolling? He made no personal attacks nor did he do anything else that is against the code of conduct.

Even when I go face first into a group of 3+ equal or higher level mobs (or when I am downleveled) I can take them all on no sweat.

I find elementalists quite powerful at leveling. Granted, I’m only level 24 right now, but so far it’s as easy as thief and almost as fast as necro. (necro has much better survivability in pve due to minions though)

I don’t get why people are complaining about elementalist leveling, it seems fine to me. I kill stuff quick, I can do well with a staff or D/D, I have plenty of escape and healing abilities to deal with emergencies, and I can easily handle being downleveled, equal levels, or higher level groups of mobs or single veterans either solo or in events with other players. The AOE buffs and heals also mean I can greatly help allies if the situation call for it.

Felicela.2810:

How about making it Change Quantity, that way you can increase or decrease based on what you still need.

Yes. This would be so nice.

Also ability to see buy and sell orders when you are in the selling screen.

I only read the first few posts but I have to say one small thing:

As a cashier in a retail store in the same state and county as ArenaNet, I do NOT inform my customers that there is a 9.5% sales tax added on to all of their purchases, except some food, at my store. I simply tell them the total of their sale.

To this day, I sometimes have people who are oblivious that there is 9.5% sales tax, and wonder why they are paying more than the item is listed for, and after a few seconds they remember that there’s tax.

It’s not my responsibility to tell each and every customer exactly how much their subtotal, their tax, and their total with tax is, every time. 9.5% is close enough to 10% that people should know how to do some basic math when they are buying things.

It’s kind of the same with the trading post. Now, let me say, yes it would be nice if they made it clearer. When you list an item it would be nice if it said something like “Non-refundable listing fee: 90c. Sales tax: 1s80c. Projected profit: blahblah”
That would be a great feature and they should add it in, but it isn’t necessary and certainly not deceptive. If you think the trading post is deceptive, I challenge you to go to every store you shop at, buy something, and then chew out the cashier and manager and file a formal complain when the cashier didn’t tell you exactly how much your tax was on your purchase. Do it. Stop being a hypocrite.

A flaw in one of the strategies you mentioned in regards to thieves: placing all your marks on one spot may not be a good idea, it lets the thief dodge all four of them at once while stealthed and puts them on cooldown. Not to mention many thieves use the trait that removes a condition every 3 seconds while in stealth, which means if you hit them with bleeds while they are stealthed, chances are most of it will get removed quickly.

Shadow Refuge: Staff 5 is your friend here. Seriously. If you can fear the Thief out of the Shadow Refuge, they will not only lose their stealth, but also become revealed for 3 seconds before they can stealth again.

Maintain range against thieves at all times, unless it’s obvious you have the upper hand and will win anyway. Most thieves need to close to melee range to damage you (D/D) or to cloak themselves using cloak and dagger. Even pistol/dagger thieves must close to melee to do this, so staying at max range will make them waste initiative/cooldowns to close the gap to you. A D/D thief who has to spam heartseeker to get in range isn’t going to have much left to actually deal damage to you with.

Depends if you have the +50% duration fear trait and the +20% from runes of the necromancer. I don’t know how exactly the math works (multiplicative or additive) but if you don’t have the 50% fear trait, you’d need +100% duration condition. With it, you would either at max +50%.

CHIPS.6018:

JQ and SOS literally just stand there and look at each other. How sad is that? They don’t ever fight at all. We got 2v1ed the whole night and our score eventually dropped to 55.

I mean I play this game for fun. I couldn’t careless who is winning as long as it was a fair fight. But these 2v1s happens every night and they are really taking the fun away.

I’ve had JQ defending SoS Yaks that were heading into SM that I was trying to kill.

yeah… But they aren’t 2v1ing us at all, right?

Oh yes, remove that invuln! As a necromancer, ugh…

And people who are dead and partially revived, should start to lose their revive progress after 10 seconds of not being revived. This would help solve the issue of being able to slowly revive a dead person over a long time.

First of all: I don’t think the solution to the zerg problem is going to be found in removing downed state. The solution to zerging is going to be map and objective changes in WvW, giving people a personal and team incentive to send small groups to attack different objectives.

I think the revive speed should be slightly lowered, along with a longer duration downed penalty. Currently, when someone is downed, they get a stacking penalty that reduces their health the next time they are downed, until eventually they pretty much will instantly die. Make this stacking penalty last longer, so someone who keeps gong down and being revived will soon be killed. It seems the down penalty lasts like 20 seconds, make it last 2? minutes.

This would be on the surface subtle changes, but it would punish players who are constantly downed and revived over and over in the same battle, while not changing the downed state itself much.

I disagree with the “don’t change WvW”. WvW DOES need changes. It needs better rewards, for one.

Siege should be blocked in the puzzle. And maybe disable Mesmer portals in the puzzle. (being able to port people up at will reinforces the idea of camping it. People should have to run the puzzle if they want the rewards)

Really that’s all that needs to be done. There are plenty of jumping puzzles that aren’t in a pvp zone. This one has the added challenge/fun of pvp.

Down state is fine in WvW. A valid complaint might be that not all class’s down state skills are equal in WvW. Elementalists, for example, have the flat out BEST down state ability for WvW. The ability to run back to your team or into a nearby tower is something unique to the Elementalist. Necromancers have the worst, single target fear? Hah!

Also, the down state can be used AGAINST the enemy. I don’t know about other people, but very often I will see people who die while trying to revive their teammates, and I myself have taken advantage of this to take out opponents. If you’re having a problem with people being revived and you’re not using your abilities to stop them, you have bigger things to worry about because you are probably losing the battle anyway.

Use crowd control. Get a thief or mesmer to stealth stomp. Quickness stomp. Use a pull ability on the people who are reviving. Build a balista/catapult. Lay down poison fields. Lay stacks of conditions on the downed then spread them with epidemic. Or just DPS the people doing the reviving, they are helpless.

I think a cooldown would be needed, otherwise minions would be able to stick to runners far too easily. Minions shouldn’t be able to keep teleporting to somebody who is themselves teleporting/charging away, if that makes sense.

iniside.4736:

Just swap Trident and Staff 1 skill.

I would love this! But it would make the scepter a thing of the past. So OP and I’d love it!

Hmmm, never thought of that. Still think they’d die too quick to mobs though.

But don’t tell the devs this, they’ll make it so you can’t heal them. haha

randomfightfan.4091:

Ravien.4823:

Don’t worry, thieves will probably still be able to shoot clusterbombs over walls from a safe distance out of LoS, doing as much damage instantly as Mark of Blood does over it’s entire duration, while at a safer vantage point.

lol… just lol

and what exactly is the travel time of this insanely slow projectile that is the mark of blood. It has to be slow and predictable to be compared to clusterbomb

You mean the barely noticeable projectile that doesn’t give any warning unless you’re staring up at the sky? Do you stare straight up during zergs? I have a thief too, clusterbomb is easy to hit people with in mass WvW combat. Sure Mark of Blood is easy to hit people with too, but half the time your bleeds are cleansed in about 3 seconds, whereas clusterbomb can be lobbed from out of LOS, over walls, and does the same amount as Mark of Blood, except instantly. And it also applies a bleed for even more damage.

Make it 3 target like the Thief’s sword. This would also buff utility by letting you apply vuln to multiple targets. (Kind of like how a dagger Ele can?)