Guild Wars 2

Overview
Violent Tendencies [vT] is an old GW1 GvG guild and multi-gaming group looking to add new blood and expand into a larger community. We play every aspect of GW2 and we’re seeking fellow Blackgate players to share the experience with us. Players must be mature (18+) and must represent [vT] in WvW (elsewhere is optional). Aside from those requirements any type of player is welcome. We use RaidCall and frequent the public Blackgate Teamspeak server.

We will be building up a WvW group focused on defensive tactics. All too often does a tower fall to an enemy because nobody could be bothered to stop running with the zerg and defend it. Our goal is to keep an eye on friendly territory, scout enemy territory, harass supply lines, and quickly respond to threats. Hopefully, in time, we can build up a force dedicated to defensive play that will relieve some of the pressure on the larger guilds and reduce some of the multitasking required of Blackgate’s commanders.

About Us
Violent Tendencies started in 2007 in Guild Wars 1 as a PvP oriented guild with a focus on Guild vs Guild and Alliance Battles. Much of that core group remain together today, having overcome numerous challenges over the years, such as that one night when our main monk player thought it would be a good idea to try healing in GvG using the touch pad on his laptop (without telling the rest of us). While we’ve always focused primarily on Guild Wars, [vT] has expanded into other games, such as Dawn of War and League of Legends.

Contact Info
If you wish to join, or would like more detailed information, whisper or mail the following players in-game:

Spyters (Leader)
Roy Raynor
Irrounst

Wtf am I reading?

8/10 for the name. It sounds fitting for a Charr and is themed with the profession.

Mine are:
Rydan Blackmane, Ash Legion Thief
Venrik Grimfang, Iron Legion Engineer

I played the first Guild Wars for a long time, and the Charr are my favorite non-human race. Most people seem to hate them for ruining Ascalon and such, but I always thought of them as a cool new enemy that I’d never seen anything like before. The Searing was a huge slap in the face for most people it seems, but seeing the “stereotypical medieval fantasy kingdom that you see friggin everywhere” suddenly get magic nuked by a bunch of snarling cat-demon-things was one of the early moments that got me hooked on Guild Wars and kept me away from the WoW bandwagon at the time.

So, no, I don’t hate the Charr. I love them for ultimately helping Guild Wars stand out when I first played it. Being able to play them in GW2 is icing on the cake (the steam powered, smoke belching cake).

Pretty much what Curuniel said. The term “earth” was used to describe the land we stood upon long before we even knew what a planet was. Although we commonly refer to our home planet as Earth, many people consider Terra to be the “official” name for our planet, largely because it forms the basis for a lot of land-related terms (terrain, territory, etc) and because Latin is the base language many modern European languages were built upon, including English, which happens to be the most prominent language worldwide. Also, Terran sounds cooler than Earthling.

So, the people using the term “earth” in game are referring to the ground and nature, not the world.

The Charr agreed to the ceasfire because they already had enough problems to deal with. The siege of Ebonhawke was already on the backburner for them. They literally used the city as a proving ground to test out new siege weapons and other ideas. Meanwhile, the entire rest of Ascalon was a constant warzone. Ghosts, Flame Legion, Branded, etc, etc. Despite the siege, the areas around Ebonhawke were the most stable and predictable in Ascalon. That’s changed ever since the ogres moved in due to the ceasefire, but now they have the Ebon Vanguard to help with that, so it balances out. The ceasefire let them redirect resources to more important areas, and to be honest I think even the Charr had grown tired of their feud with the Ascalonians. They pretty much won the war when Ascalon City fell. Besieging Ebonhawke was pretty much just rubbing it in at that point.

As for Kryta, it’s too far away for the Charr to care, and the centaurs keep them in check anyway. The Asura gate could have escalated things, but the ceasefire occurred shortly thereafter, so we’ll never know how that could have panned out. As for the Priory, not even the most aggressive Charr are blind enough to not see the massive backlash they would get from the other races for roughhousing a multicultural organization dedicated to knowledge and learning, especially when they could just go there and do the research themselves. That would be like a nation in the real world forcing Google to search for them because they couldn’t be bothered to type it in themselves.

In short, the Charr benefited too much from the ceasefire. They would have been stupid to refuse. It shut the Ascalonians up, made the Krytans and other races happy, and it let them focus on other things. A complete win-win situation for the Charr.

BAM!

The Krytan shield skin works beautifully with this armor.

Auriken.6805:

need militia organization and a decent EU guild to put pressure on our low points

That’s a shame. SoR is literally killing WvW for both us and JQ. It’s depressing.

He’s the Kormir of GW2 for most players. The player(s) do all of the work, and this useless, boring NPC swoops in and takes all of the credit.

In Trahearne’s defense, though, he’s not nearly as bad as Kormir was. He actually helps out by doing a lot of the planning and logistics during the invasion of Orr, but needs the player character to do the legwork, as he pretty much sucks at that.

Kormir, on the other hand, invented the Thief profession.

SchuMidas.4782:

pusshhhh a little harder, like giving birth

That is literally the most disturbing analogy you could have used. Wtf, man.

Kript.3291:

Underdog: SoR. nuf said

Most impressive improvement: Kaineng. They went from a server nobody-cared-about to the top tier. You can almost make a film that depicts this tremendous journey.

Major disappointment: Blackgate (or SoSgate) has the potential of dethroning Jade Quarry but seems unable to keep the momentum going.

Got to love uneducated opinions.

First off, T1 has been a 2v1 against Blackgate since we got there, seeing as SoR still have pent up aggression toward us for maplocking them repeatedly in T2 during the BGvsSoRvsIoJ match. Then they got lucky with the rating change and shot to T1 despite having no legitimate reason to be there. The past 2 weeks have been Blackgate vs Sanctum of Jade (or Quarry of Rall, your choice), and it’s not even remotely fun.

Secondly, Kaineng is the product of numerous T1 and T2 guilds server transferring before the paid transfers were implemented in order to stack a server and stomp the lower tiers for their own circle-jerking amusement. It is less of a “tremendous journey” and more of “giving a third-world country advanced weaponry and tactics, but only letting the foreigners that brought the weapons use them.”

The grand irony is that T1 will actually be good again once Kaineng kicks SoR out.

The more you know.

Waage.2047:

WHO CARES!!! TIER 1 IS BORING!!! I want to go back to tier 2 that was fun.

Only because SoR has made it that way. Worry not, things will be competitive again when Kaineng gets here. Patience.

Unfortunately.5940:

T2 is a fairly awesome matchup at the moment; pretty much even with each server having their own peak time. As for sporadic population, FA & TC have a coverage gap in SEA time but there’s still action all the time. Speaking for FA, there’s barely any queues outside of NA prime, and even then they’re short and only on 1 map usually.

Oh god, you guys are gonna have to put up with SoR soon. I’m so sorry.

I can only hope they leave their rivalry with BG at the door and keep things civil in T2 when they get there.

Murderin.8269:

Looks like T1 and T2 are the best choice based on score, any players from those servers have an opinion on how sporadic the population is?

Blackgate player here. T1 is kind of imbalanced right now. JQ has a HUGE American primetime population, whereas BG has a much larger Oceanic presence. SoR is making things worse by turning T1 into a 2v1 against BG out of spite until Kaineng inevitably overtakes them in rating, thus turning T1 into a mess of indignant raging for now. Once Kaineng overtakes SoR, T1 will be absolutely golden.

So, Kaineng, when can we expect you guys in T1? SoR is getting increasingly angsty over the fact that you’re overtaking them and have been helping JQ win T1 for the past few weeks just to spite us.

It’s made WvW dreadfully boring, and we’re waiting on you guys to make it fun again.

-Love,
Blackgate

It’s good to be fighting SoR again, you guys were always a fun opponent. TC gave up trying and all they do anymore is camp the EBG JP, and Kaineng was a massive disappointment despite all of the guild-stacking shenanigans. How boring.

1.) Palawa Joko’s Undead. Immortal undead soldiers with all the intelligence of a normal living being. No boring, shambling Risen here, just an army of immortal troops with centuries of experience under their belts. It didn’t take long for them to reconquer Elona after Palawa returned and got them organized again. Just imagine how nasty they’d be if they got a hold of Charr weapons or Asura technology.

2.) Tengu. They were pretty awesome in GW1, and I was massively disappointed to find out they weren’t playable in GW2.

3.) Stone Dwarves. We know they’re still down there fighting the Destroyers, so we might see them again when Primordus’ turn to die comes around.

I love all these posts regarding the Zhaitan fight and why it wasn’t all “up close and personal.”

The dragon is literally bigger than the airship you were on during the fight. Think about that for a second. Do you honestly think your little sword or fireball is going to even get its attention, much less harm it? No, no they won’t.

Yes, the last fight felt a bit impersonal, but blowing the crap out of it with cannon fire was also the only logical way to kill something that big. Something that big that can FLY, mind you.

I am also a fan of Sword ’N Board, Shadowwaka, though I find that I benefit more from Power than I do condition damage. I build a tanky Strength/Defense/Tactics hybrid warrior, with Power being the primary attribute on my gear. It has a lot of group support and survivability, but it also has a very strong and consistent damage output with the Sword/Shield combo, even with hardly any condition damage other than what Might gives me.

Warriors are one of the best professions for raw Power builds. Easy access to Might and Fury combined with very few ways to reliably pump out damaging conditions means that warriors fall behind most professions in terms of condition pressure (as has been discussed to death in this thread), but outshine most professions in longevity and damage reliability.

In short, no, don’t focus on condition damage. Warriors are far too versatile to limit themselves with such a build, and the sword is still a nasty weapon even with low condition damage. You bring sword for the mobility and control. The bleeds are just icing on the cake.

There’s a trait that immobilizes on cripple. The 1h sword has both a cripple and an immobilize on it, and if he adds in Throw Bolas, the warrior could easily immobilize you long enough to get his cripple and immobilize on the sword back, adding to it.

Braxxus.2904:

Nice flaming rant though without any actual reason for it. Always nice to see blind misplaced aggression.

Always nice to see blind uneducated opinions from someone that’s apparently so well versed on the matter. Hard to take a guy complaining about the warrior and using the greatsword anywhere in the argument seriously. Especially when that guy fails to realize that literally every other weapon combination available to the warrior gives them far more to work with, ignores this fact, then runs off and claims the ranger weapons have more skill synergy while comparing them to – you guessed it! – the greatsword.

I’m sorry the warrior ain’t up your alley, but your argument as to why was very much the same crap we’ve seen since launch. Don’t let this community’s hard-on for a single weapon ruin the class for you.

Though I would like to apologize for my earlier toxicity. You can only read so many complaints about the greatsword while the entire community ignores every other weapon before you want to punch a puppy.

So, you ran greatsword on warrior, didn’t like how the greatsword played, and thus called it quits for the warrior? All this based on the “popular” opinion that greatsword is the only good weapon because of HB?

The greatsword warriors are only popular because it’s a one-trick-pony build that’s mind-numbingly easy to run, so all the moronic sheep run it. I never use greatsword on my warrior, as I find it absolutely dull and the lack of CC/skill variety makes it unappealing for someone looking to actually be a credit to the people around them.

Even a basic skimming over of the warrior traits should have revealed a class that is extremely versatile if you had the cognitive ability to think for yourself and develop your own playstyle beyond the “Flavor of the Month” build. To each his own, I guess.

That’s exactly the point I was trying to make with that example, Helequin. Though it was just one thing, and the topic is for the game as a whole. Stealth was just the most blatantly obvious example of a mechanic with poor counter play. The overall lack of counter play options makes stealth a very one-sided mechanic that is only fun/engaging for the user, and adds nothing to the game for the opponent other than a frustrating break of pace.

I’m not saying it’s OP or anything, but when a mechanic only earns your attention via being annoying, there’s certainly something not quite right with it.

The Warrior in GW2 has very much the same purpose in PvP as it did in GW1.

To be a bully.

You want to be fast, vicious, and as annoying as you can possibly be. I played warrior in GvG for years in GW1, and my goal each match was to get in the enemy team’s faces and just be a huge pain in the neck. Warriors could be fast, hit hard, and take a hit as well. In GW2, you have more tools than ever to do this with.

I think the common misconception with warrior traits and stats is this seemingly pathological need to “specialize.” No. Stop that. Versatility is your friend. The warrior is the ultimate gap-filler. You can easily trait into so many different weapons and utilize your stats to give you good durability while still hitting like a truck. Warriors can also be incredibly mobile, and are without a doubt among the best initiators in the game. Few classes can start a fight as “in-your-face-we’re-doing-this-right-now” as the warrior.

You need to be fearless and vicious. You need to think like a bully, then proceed to slap people silly.

I understand that most MMO’s handle the melee classes more like walking meatshields, but I’ve always loved the Guild Wars series for its approach to the Warrior. Sure, you can be a damage sponge. But why would you when you can be such a powerhouse with the right mindset?

You can really do whatever you please in PvE, though.

I went for a cleaner, more professional look for my warrior. I ended up with a look that gives him kind of a militaristic “field commander” vibe. This game has too many spikemonsters walking around, if you ask me.

I see the Dwayna vs Grenth activities during Wintersday as nothing more than a holiday tradition. Yes, they are mother and son, but one is the goddess of life and warmth while the other rules over death and cold. As a way of interacting with humanity, they would participate in the Wintersday festival and “fight” to determine the length of winter, when in reality they had no control over the weather, and humanity knew this. It was a way of keeping touch with humanity on a annual basis before the gods distanced themselves further.

Perhaps the reason why it’s Dwayna vs Grenth and the other gods don’t participate is BECAUSE Grenth is Dwayna’s son. Dwayna loves humanity, and Grenth likely feels the same way. Dwayna watches over humans in life, and Grenth cares for (or punishes) their souls in death, so they have the closest connection to their followers out of all the gods.

Kormir doesn’t count because she’s the patron god of thieves.

“Hey guys, watch this.”
“I can defend Hodgins while you destroy the burr-WHO TRIGGERED THE SCAVENGERS?!”
“Why can’t I stand in front of the Howling King?”
“Stability prevents immobilize, right?”
“I love jumping off of walls with Death from Above on. Sends people flying friggin’ everywhere. Here, watch this!”

This thread is the result of some recent brainstorming, and I’d love to see what my fellow GW2 players think.

I’ve recently watched a video by the folks at Extra Credits that explored the concept of “Counter Play” in multiplayer games. The concept seems very simple when put into words/writing, but is actually fairly difficult to wrap your head around while designing a game with it in mind. The basic premise is this: A mechanic/ability/weapon/etc in a game has a “counter play” system in place when it increases the options for both the player(s) using it and the player(s) playing against it. The mechanic has successfully achieved counter play when players on both sides can enjoy it and work with it.

They used a handful of examples from a number of different games to express how this system works, however, I’ll translate it into a GW2 relevant series of examples. A good example of counter play in GW2 is how the Elementalist’s attunements interact with their weapons. Attunements essentially give the Elementalist four weapon sets with a single weapon, allowing them a significant amount of skill diversity. However, the weapon they choose often dictates what sort of role they might play, and at what range they’ll prefer to fight. Opposing players can use this to their advantage. Thus, the attunements give the Elementalist a high degree of flexibility, yet the way they work with only one weapon allows enemy players to counter this flexibility by utilizing the limitations the different weapons place on the attunements. The attunement/weapon interaction allows both the Elementalist and their opponent to work with the mechanic, creating a mechanic that both players can enjoy. This is good counter play.

An example of bad counter play is one we’re all familiar with, not only in GW2, but in most games with a rogue-like class. Stealth. Stealth is a mechanic that drastically increases the options for the user, while reducing those of the opponent. Because this mechanic heavily favors the user, only the user can utilize it, and only the user can enjoy it. The opponent is stuck waiting for the stealth to end to resume the fight, resulting in a break of pace, which is unsettling to the mind. Often the stealth is used to simply end the fight via breaking off and retreating, or to give the user an advantage that cannot be countered. The end result is that only the player(s) on one side of the mechanic can work with it and enjoy it. This is bad counter play.

So, my fellow GW2 players, what do you think of this concept, and do you think that it has been applied to GW2 well enough, or not?

The difference between Abaddon and the dragons is how each applies their power. Abaddon was actively working with his followers to weaken his prison and corrupt Tyria. He had a plan, and his followers were executing that plan over time whenever they had the resources and support they needed. Mortals on Tyria itself, such as Varesh, served to compliment this, and all according to Abaddon’s design.

The Elder Dragons, however, seem to just do whatever they want. For the most part they seem intelligent, but uncaring. Most of them just want to destroy and corrupt, as opposed to dominate and conquer. The reason Zhaitan was the most prominent threat is because he was the only dragon that was actively attacking Tyria’s nations with a much more structured and organized force of minions compared to the other dragons.

Man, Henge and Eredon used to be on top, and now they’re getting stomped in the lower brackets. This is what happens when the huge WvW megaguilds have drama or bail without regard for the negative effects they’ll have on the rest of that server’s community.

Every playable race has a “rogue” faction in it that goes against the overall ideologies of the race as a whole, such as the human bandits, the Sons of Svanir, the Inquest, etc. Which one is your favorite, and why? Which one do you think poses the greatest threat?

For me, it’s the Flame Legion. They’ve really stepped up their game since GW1, and they rival the power of all three High Legions combined, which is a scary thought. They’re even better at the “turning the landscape into a hellish wasteland” thing than the Destroyers are. In Fireheart Rise, it takes an alliance of High Legion AND Pact forces just to get to the Citadel of Flame. That’s all three Charr legions and all three Orders fighting there, and that’s a lot of manpower being arrayed against just one faction, which implies the Flame Legion is the largest non-dragon threat.