Guild Wars 2

But then I noticed BP borderlands was slowly turning blue

Oh well I logged this morning and saw BP was back up to 465 pts. :x

This is part of my frustration with WvW and why I’ve slowly been playing less. You spend all night taking towers, camps, or if it’s a good night, keeps or SM. First off, you don’t get much of anything besides a piddle of exp and karma which, by 80, you rarely need. Then, by the time I get home from work again the next day (or, heck, most of the time as soon as I wake up it seems) everythings flipped. It’s like…what are you really working towards? Log on every night to take the same towers over and over and over again?

Guess I think it’s far too easy to flip a tower and there is little reason to do so as the effort you’re investing isnt going to mean anything in the next 5min-5hrs. I think WvW overall would be more engaging if the structures were WAY more difficult to take as it would encourage people to at least try and defend it. Unless you’re standing next to a tower or already in it when its being attacked, i rarely see people scramble to go defend it a-la DAoC and a group with 3 rams can take one in about 5 minutes or less.

You won’t earn any respect from top tiered players anywhere in the gaming community winning only with 20+ people… If you can’t win fights with your number or less than you deserve the criticism you get on these forums. If that comes off as arrogance than clearly you don’t win fights with your number or less.

And to think I actually thought for a moment I wanted to join you….

I think the attitude you portray on these forums is entirely unnecessary but not uncommon for someone to get get ‘big boy’ syndrome behind the anonymity of the internet. I get the sense you don’t care, so I won’t try to convince you otherwise.

I will however attempt to relieve any confusion or misconceptions you may have about your guild and say that there is nothing particularly special about any of you. If you put 15 people on voice chat together and trait 12 of them to be nothing more than walking-meatshield-KD/Immobilize-monkeys so your thief can hit ‘2’ a bunch of times, you get PAXA. ‘Stability or aegis’. Thank you for explaining how to counter one, maybe two of your CC’s. When your entire guild is focused around rotating knockdowns one stun break isn’t going to go jack, but by all means please continue to imagine that it does and what you’re doing isnt both low or abusive. I imagine you prolly ran with 6 minstrels chain casting AoE mezz in DAOC too.

Bottom line, I think you give yourself far to much credit for ‘skill’ when the real reason PAXA continues to steam roll people has absolutely nothing to do with skill but rather communication and traiting for control, something any organized group could do with similar success.

But if it makes you feel better to be an internet tough guy, by all means, please don’t let common human decency get in your way.

I confirm that Shrubfelty is a hell of a fighter.It’s an Honor to fight at your side!

LOL Thanks Z I know you love to be [SOLO] but if you’re looking…:)

To the [CoM] ele in blue and gold, I really enjoyed our fights in NS BL. Especially the one just north of middle island there.

Hah, thanks. That was me. If we werent interuppted I am fairly confident that duel would have gone on for several hours. We must be basically identically specced/traited

I’m always roaming so I’m sure I’ll see you around!

-Shrubfelty

@Once

In short not everyone is a hacker Ive seen people do some crazy kitten since I started playing this game a few weeks ago. Some dude today whispered me from another server telling me that he reported me for hacking!! Really? I was told that was a hack in itself there HackerTeivospy. So why dont you guys start pointing fingers at the real people ruining this game on your own home turf!! Also please leave Fox guild out of this I was in their guild but no longer are. I left Fox because they are good peeps and dont deserve all the harassment either. They were defending me because thats what guilds do. A few of them were with me the other day when my bug started and they knew it was just some freak weird crap going on. SO please just leave them out of it!!

Its funny how your video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOwQII2nOb0 looks EXACTLY like this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvmOi5Yf9h0

Do I need to post my video of you last night running circles at Mach 5 around my party of 3 while /laughing to drill home the point?

I have zero respect for you and what you’re doing is giving your guild and server a worthless name. Obviously you don’t give a kitten, however, or you’d keep your ‘glitched client’ back at home in Lions Arch and not abuse it in WvW.

Grow a pair and stay the hell out of the borderlands dude.

What is being done to combat the speed hack exploit that I am seeing become sadly more and more prevalent in WvW. While I could frankly care less if they want to speed hack their way to killing rabits and skale, allowing this to go on in an open-world warfare situation is unacceptable. I have video footage of this occurring as recently as last night where, after downing and killing a player outside the south camp at the very bottom of his BL he appeared to teleport and bounce through the map and appear at the camp not 10seconds later. He then run around us in circles at mach 5 stopping to /laugh on occasion.

This is extremely concerning and should be a top priority before this gets out of hand and this game goes the way of every Call of Duty ever made; not worth playing because the hackers outnumber the purists.

After playing daphoenix original build for quite a while (nearly the entire way to 80) I’ve tweaked it to my own liking and wanted to offer this up. While daphoenix original build is rock solid and you can out-last most people, even groups, the damage output is sadly lacking.

I now run two possible builds/specs.

1- All PVT gear from AC, Valk daggers, clerics accessories, PVT backslot, PVT aquatic helm, 2x s. water, 2x m. water, 2x monk runes with battle/bloodlust sigils. Build is the standard 0/10/0/30/30 build.

2- All knights gear, crafted. Valk daggers, valk amulet, knights rings/earrings, power/crit backpack, PVT aquatic helm. 2x s. water, 2x m. water, 2x divinity with battle/bloodlust sigils. Build has been modified to 0/30/0/30/10 (http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoIGAIPOxFWEPewCMKFmB)

By focusing on knights and precision based gear you get a (small, but noticable) bonus to healing by way of air5. My base crit percent is 43%, 63% 90% of the time when fury is up. My power is around 1850/3k attack, toughness sits at about 1650, and I have 18k HP from the valk gear. Between the runes, the 2 valk daggers, the valk amulet, and bolt to the heart your crits hit hard while still carrying the boon duration bonuses from arcane5 – they just dont last as long.

I was never a fan of evasive arcana, and i tried fire for the might but as most cantrips are on a 30s or longer CD (even reduced) the benefit was few and far between.

While I certainly dont have the sustain ability of the original build, I have comparable toughness and slightly less vital with substantially increased damage and crit rat/crit damage. You could even drop 10pts in air and place them back into arcane if you wanted to focus on boons more (at a loss to healing).

Overall I think this build is much more suited to my style, you just have to know your limits.

Hello!

After playing WvW extensively now accross 3 characters I’ve noticed that, over time, it begins to feel like running in circles. Zergs run clockwise from tower to tower to reclaim/take, while the opposing force runs counter-clockwise to take them back. Taking towers or keeps really doesnt feel rewarding and the incentives to spend your hard earned money on siege, repairs, etc doesnt feel justified.

Enter the ‘War Contributions’ board.

Every cycle the game tallies your contributions and presents them scoreboard-style for anyone to see. Easily and quickly see who your top contributors are, your top guilds, and your top squads with categories like:

- Most structures/towers captured
- Most structures successfully defended
- Most siege deployed
- Most supply used/carried
- Most invader kills
- Most crafting nodes harvested/“resources”
- Most effective commanders
- Longest time in the borderlands

Having this data you can then begin to reward the top 10/25 individuals from each category with basic rewards. Siege patterns, karma, crafting resources, consumable buffs, and so on.

Everyone likes being acknowledged for their efforts, their time, and it creates a very tight sense of community knowing whos on top, who the real work-horse guilds are, and who on the enemy to avoid.

I, for one, would absolutely love to see this added as it really would bring a new level of gameplay to WvW that, today, seems to be absent.

Thanks-

@daphoenix

Thank you for making this guide, it’s helped immensely. One thing I thought is worth mentioning. Between page 1 (the original spec) and page 9, you’ve kept the build but changed your focus on gear substantially from PVT/Clerics to Knights/Berserkers. Someone viewing the guide for the first time isnt getting the full picture so my suggestion would be to update your guide to reflect the gear choices you’ve made over time. That’s valuable information there that might get overlooked. I know I did

Thanks again-

Hey folks. So I’m verhemently against doing dungeons right now simply because there is no solid dungeon matchmaking or LFG system. I hate standing around or /shouting for groups, I just feel it’s a waste of precious time and am hoping ANet can add a utility for this in-game soon.

That aside, I’m just curious from those that do frequent the dungeons how quickly it takes on average to get yourselves a full set of gear? Im looking at AC and COF specifically (god the dredge stuff is ugly..). Pardon my infamiliarity with the dungeon scene and thanks in advance-

Nice video Neil -curious what armor choice you went with and your accessories? Assuming some mix of PVT and Ruby gear?

LOL….some PRO was laughing about the forum posts and did it on purpose to see if you would post and they were right. lol

Right…it’s amazingly convenient that you seem to have a ‘reason’ for the (at least 4) cases of proven exploiting you’re guild has been a part of, 2 of which are documented in screens on this thread alone…

“Yes, your honor, I only stabbed her in the throat to see if the blade was sharp.”

And you’ve got the balls to throw rocks at others? Wow.

Sorry but you’re a pretty kitten poor example of a guild leader. I don’t care how good you may think you are, given this threads posts alone I’d want nothing to do with you. Hubris. Look it up.

@Drednyte [PRO]

I normally don’t fan flames but dude you need to calm down about AR ‘hacking’ and ‘exploiting’. You might want to check your own ranks before you go throwing stones at other people. I’ve got a lot of respect for some members of your guild, but I suspect [PRO]‘s notoriety was built by a select few and the rest are dragging you down doing the same kitten you’re accusing us of.

Yet again AR hackers at work. …….AR — joke of a server

Really? Pot, Meet Kettle.

Exhibit A attached…

Long story short, you’re just as guilty as the rest so come down off that ivory tower before the air gets so thin you sound even more like an ignorant moron than you already do.

12/23/12 – 5 versus 15-20 AR at Supply Camp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmVVfNxWxTw

12/31/12 – 7 versus 20-30 AR at Greenvale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEp8xS0IBKI

Couple things:

1) Nice job holding greenvale. It was well played and very demoralizing (at least for me) that we were getting consistently rolled. Im not sure why but one of our commanders was using half the party to take back camps instead of defend the keep which was further frustrating when your left to die defending.
2) The videos, while entertaining, kind of show our (AR) disorganization and the fact many of our WvW’ers are low level. Definite room for improvement.
3) The fact you have 15k HP and can stand in the middle of a zerg and barely go below half while STILL hitting harder (3-5k crits) than my near pure DPS warrior in full exotics is extremely frustrating. Why even play anything except guard or ele.
4) I will post screenshots when I get home but it was very frustrating to defend greenvale when members of your zerg including several notable guilds (yes, PRO) were using an exploit to get indefinite invulnerability while hugging corners of their territory then /laughing while attacking uncontested.
5) The entire concept of WvW is screwed up imo. DR has fielded, consistently, insane numbers at all hours. I realize this is war but it’s also a game. Why the game allows a team of, for example, 100 to fight against a team of 50 seems stupid to me. In any sports game the teams are even, skill is the determining factor. I don’t understand why this needs to be different and WvW should be capped to be +/- percent of currently participating players thus allowing it to scale up or down.
6) Im pretty sure we have about 4-5 regularly on commanders. I believe I saw a screenshot recently where DR had 15?. I wish we had those numbers as it would be much easier to organize offensives. Several times I’ve logged on in the afternoon and there isnt a single commander anywhere and I, unfortunately, don’t have 100g to blow =/

In any case, well played, enjoyed the fights. Time to roll a guardian so I can be neigh invincible and team friendly lol

Angus, Anvil Rock – [ATX]

I like the concept. Not sure I’d pick Death from Above over Berserker’s Power.
Quick Breathing instead of Lung Capacity is an interesting choice.
Overall a very nice build!

Thanks! I do rotate DFA and BP quite a bit…sometimes Ill even swap into DFA just for a few large falls and swap back. It’s not worth having up 100% of the time but it is…rewarding…to jump and see a giant crater and smoke plume form where you landed every now and then :P

I have been looking for a new build to change to with my war. I have almost felt like I have to go to 15 in defense for the adrenaline regen? do you feel your survivability is ok with that build.
Secondly and I will admit my PvP skill is not great i have felt i had to use rifle for range in WvW as there is a lot of zerg fighting. If i go into melee range I get swarmed and die quickly. how do you handle that. I like the idea though and may try it out.

The adrenal regen is nice but going into the defensive tree just for that one trait (without focusing a build around regen and/or defense) is conflicting. Someone awhile ago did the math and it’s something like 300 every 2 seconds which, while useful, isn’t groundbreaking and, its worth noting, requires you to have full adrenaline AND never use it which I think is counter-intuitive.

As far as survivability goes I have not had an issue thus far. Between the mobility of the warhorn, the heals and consistent condi removal coupled with ~30k HP and a moderate level of toughness, I’m surprisingly durable. About the only thing I’ve had an issue with thus far are well-played mesmers.

But then again, who doesn’t have an issue with well-played mesmers…:D

Hey folks. This has been working fairly well for me in WvW and I figured I’d share and see what kind of feedback it gets. Im originally a R31 sPVP guy and run a modified axe/shield + rifle spec that works very well but doesnt lend itself to WvW well. Thus I went back to the drawing board. Feedback appreciated.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIMQNBHhFakzJ5t5xFiJOAYU0TQHFUxU6RZslGA;TsAA2CvoyyklILbWuskZtsYgxECA

Running in full crafted exotic knights gear with soldier runes. Rings/Bracelets are either Berserker or Valkyrie (I mixed it up). Everything else is from the link above.

- Vulnerability and Bleeds with Axe
- Bonus to crit damage with Axe
- #3 is your slow and Eviscerate hits like a truck
- Warhorn 4 cures conditions, converts them to free boons, and provides AOE swiftness with a 90% uptime
- Warhorn 5 cures condis/free boons and provides AOE vigor
- GS 5 plus swiftness = gap closer
- GS 3 for aoe spin to win with bleeds and vulnerability
- GS 2 on choke points, NPC’s and doors with AOE fire to boot

- FGJ gives AOE might/fury/heals/cures conditions
- Shake it Off gives AOE x3 condi removal + heal
- Endure pain gives you the ‘Oh kitten’ button to get away but can be swapped with On my Mark if you’re good with it

Lastly, and my favorite part, during keep defense you simply swap out Quick Breathing and Vigorous Shouts for Stronger Bowstrings and Burning Arrows. Swap GS out for Longbow and instantly you’re raining fiery hell down on the enemy at 1200’ and providing combo fields.

I find this build to be, overall, fairly well-rounded. With a 40% base crit plus Signet of Rage and FGJ crit + might and power arent a problem. You have very good survivability by way of the Knights gear and Warhorn and are extremely valuable in a zerg/group setting.

Thoughts? Improvements?

Thanks!

Angus the Black – Anvil Rock

Also no one sees Tryndamere as overpowered in League of Legends, lol.

Should read: Also no one [playing ranked for elo] sees Tryndamere as overpowered in League of Legends, lol.

Cause I guarantee you the new guys hate playing against em…

So I was just writing a reply to this thread when I realized something I hadn’t noticed before.

Playing a 100b frenzy specc’ed warrior is basically like playing Tryndamere in LoL.

- Obscene attack speed
- Ridiculous crits
- Ability to essentially global someone at will
- ‘Vengeance’ ability (come back from death and keep on trucking)
- New player un-friendly
- Viewed as OP and cheese
- Whirlwind damage/mobility move
- Charge/bull rush move
- Fast/High mobility
- Builds addrenaline/rage on-hit/on-damage
- Uses a greatsword
- Frenzies
- etc….

Nothing more than an observation really but…yea. How…cooincidental, eh?

Can’t beleive I didnt notice that before…haha

You guys are basically arguing for the sake of arguing at this point. This topic has been beaten to death in so many other threads but continues to resurface for one basic reason.

It’s not fun.

Let’s call a spade a spade, the 100b combo and the thief mug->cnd->bs combo are what we in the game world called ‘Cheese’. ‘Cheese’ exists in every game going as far back as throwing fireballs in super mario brothers to hit enemies that were off the screen. From console to PC, it’s there and will forever be there.

From UrbanDictionary:

“A cheese strategy is simply a high risk/high reward tactic which aims to win a game with little strategic effort, and relies on the failure of the opponent to properly react. A cheese strategy will often leave the cheeser at a significant disadvantage should the cheese fail.”

Sound familiar?

- Legit? Absolutely.
- Overpowered? Yes. That’s why everyone uses it. It could absolutely stand to be knocked down a bit.
- Counterable? Yes, but the penalties for not being able to counter it due to low skill level or your CD’s being down are too high. The risk to reward ratio is unbalanced. The ‘omg just dodge roll nub’ argument is for peons who think they’re better than they really are and don’t want their gimmick build touched.

The bottom line is it’s an overly simple combination to pull off that produces exponentially higher damage than a MORE difficult combo while providing mobility, aoe, and get away ability via the #5. This, is cheese.

Cheese sucks, cheese pushes people toward one build, cheese frustrates new and lower skilled players, and cheese imbalances the game in both directions (nerfing the cheese class too much, or buffing everyone else too heavily).

Sadly, cheese has been around forever and thouhg I don’t advocate for it (my main is a warr and i refuse to use a GS for just this reason) cheese isnt going away anytime soon.

Oh boy. Let’s try and keep this ‘direct’, shall we? I’ll do my best.

Please do use your brain and try to think about it before responding.

I’m sorry anyone with an opinion that isn’t yours automatically is ‘below you’. My apologies, sire, but if I may please continue?

And about sPvP needing more maps. Seriously? Really?

Yes. Really. By having one single map and one single game mode players are incentivized to play one very specific set of builds and classes. It does not promote diversity or flexibility in the sense that you could field 4 bunkers and probably do just fine as the only mode is conquest. If free or tourney play rotated between conquest, CTF, and king of the mountain, for example, teams would need to field much more diverse and non-specific comps.

That and it’s effing boring. To use an analogy you’ll understand, “Let’s eat pizza every day because pizza is good.” After so long, you’ll get sick of pizza, no matter how delicious it may be.

Let me ask you this. What ARE you grinding for? The cosmetics, correct?

Because that’s all the game currently allows me to do?

There are no rankings. No elo. No community. This is so far from eSport you’ll be playing DOTA2 before this, competitively. Moving on.

People who are serious about PvP grind to improve themselves as a team. Think of it like bodybuilding

Did you seriously just try and say that competitive gaming in GW2 is like professional bodybuilding? Really? You should probably evaluate your priorities in life, boss. Whatever floats your boat I guess…

the entire [League of Legends] community is built around teamwork,

Ok see now it all makes sense. I played LoL for over 2 years. Max level, all the toons up until when I quit. I did the competitive thing. I took my licks. I can say this of LoL.

1) It is a very fun game and every matchup is different, every move with a consequence, every build with its counter. It’s done very well but should NOT be compared, by any stretch of the imagination, to GW2.
2) The LoL community is by far the WORST community of any game I have ever been a part of since I picked up my Atari 20+ years ago. Nearly every game (ranked or otherwise) has a rage-quitter. Every game has someone calling someone else a ‘stupid noob’, or some equally offensive slur or racial epithet. SO MUCH SO that Riot had to create their own ‘Player Judgement System’ (The Tribunal) just because there was SO MANY COMPLAINTS they couldnt deal with it themselves.

And given how youve attacked everyone on this thread with an opinion different than yours, it makes complete sense why you love LoL so much.

With that demographic, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. They are like a bottomless stomach, like the modern day Sarlak Pit, always wanting more and more content

League of Legends releases, at minimum, one new champion every month. Coupled with the new skins they release every few weeks and the two BRAND NEW game modes they released in the last year, you just invalidated your entire argument because LoL is the Sarlak pit. Who do you think is monetizing and promoting the game? Who do you think pays for those new skins and pays to unlock a trait, who basically feeds Riot’s salaries. Not the pro-gamer who got everything for free with a sponsorship. The casuals. You should try and read up on basic marketing strategies before you try to imply that this game can and will be fully supported by a ~5% player base of ‘hardcore’ pvp’ers that don’t care about the above because you’re just flat out wrong.

And sadly for you, ArenaNet is catering PvP to us, and not people like you. ArenaNet wants to build a competitive PvP community, so all of their efforts are into doing just that.

Yes. They are. But as others have stated you, bud, are the minority. Know that. If they cater JUST to the eSport player, you’ll have to LAN your games together because there won’t be anyone left to play as all the casuals and ‘for fun’ or ‘for gear’ players have been run out of town into another game they can feel that their time and effort is being rewarded for. Your reward is in kitten points with your tourneys, our reward is unlockables, achievements, titles, gear, and uniqueness.

To end this topic as its gone far, far away from my initial point – the PvP world feels like its slowly dying and it needs an injection (of what, I dont know) to breathe some life into it. We need diversity, reward, ranking system, something that encourages us to want to play. Right now the Battle of Khylo i’ll run at level 3 is the same as the Battle of Khylo I’ll run at 92, 14 months and millions of hours later. Same character. Same build. Just maybe a ‘glowy sword’.

If you don’t see the inherent failure in that, well, you’re in for a disappointment.

If your motivations for PvPing are purely cosmetic, then that makes you…a material girl.

That’s right. You’re materialistic. Of course you will burn out and become a quitter. You don’t have any real motivations for PvPing other than beautifying yourself through rank and cosmetic gear.

I’m not going to say I am not materialistic, but as in anything in life I want my time to mean something. I work for hours, I make a paycheck. I go to the gym, I get stronger and more confident. I do yardwork, my lawn looks nice.

As others have said, grinding the same 5 maps for 40 DAYS for NOTHING is pointless. And it was ‘fun’ for a while. I have 3 80’s and have played many builds. After that, its just repetitive. At least in LoL I earned money I could spend on toons I didnt have or unlock abilities I needed.

This is like watching Seinfeld. We’ve all seen em a hundred times and it’s not doing anything for me anymore…

I’ve been PVP’ing literally daily since about two weeks after launch. I am now R31. Given that I am fighting for purely aesthetic gear and running the same 4 maps over and over again to do it I am rapidly losing steam to continue.

With each rank rising in experience needed, and most matches producing anywhere between a paltry 100-150 glory, I believe someone in my guild calculated it out at near a half million games played to reach max rank (which isnt even a goal I care about). At 15minutes a match, of the same maps thats…insanity.

Couple this with the fact that WVW’s rewards are badges and trash loot and every death you have to pay a repair bill (unlike spvp) even WVW is a poor option. The actors motto of “What’s my motivation” screams out here. Why am I fighting to defend a tower that provides nothing for me, my guild, or my realm besides a crappy crafting bonus? Give me a reason to make me want to sit on the ramparts for hours lobbing arrows at nameless targets from somewhere that will be ‘somewhere else’ in a few days time.

I guess…with very little incentive to PVP, rising rank costs, high rish/low reward, and killer repetition I find myself logging off earlier every night.

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel or have we entered the ‘slow death’ phase of GW2 PVP…?

I don’t want it to be but I feel it may be inevitable.

@Schwarheit – Good catch, I put that last 30 in the wrong slot. I have no points in tactics (for just the reasons youve stated).

My exact build is:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAR5ejgOxuxQ2OMxBE0jqAMEQzjjQ8AiTBlA;T4AA2Cno2xsjYH7Oudk7sgYYxpiNCvKmYA

Oh and they are also 0 threat to you since they deal miniscule amounts of damage.

People always try to use this as a defense for those guard/ele bunker specs but its pure crap.

If the bunker can consistently out-heal the DPS, ANY (and I do mean any…even 1HP) will EVENTUALLY win because the DPS is unable to get ahead of the healing. Plain and simple.

Hooray! I hit for 900, you hit for 50. Too bad you heal for 1000 and I have one 30 sec CD…but don’t worry, ‘youre not a threat’.

The numbers are obviously fabricated but given we’ve all seen then take on 2-3 opps at a time, I dont think its unreasonable to think they can very easily out-heal a single DPS…

…unless of course it’s a thief.

You still would have lived with 8k hp, I’m not seeing the issue here

You must play a thief to ‘not see a problem’ with taking 20 THOUSAND damage in mere seconds with no chance to react from 3 abilities. Or that a face-roll auto-attack ability crits for 3k….twice.

Let me put it another way.

Steal ->5 -> 1 = 20k in 1.5 seconds

Show me another class that can do that and I’ll eat my shoes. “Warrior with hundred blades, man!” Nope. Requires a 40second CD to initate, a 60 second CD to haste, and then you have to be dumb or unlucky enough to stand there and get hit by every swing while it channels. No comparison.

Fix this ez-mode thief BS please before every PVP game winds up like …

So if the guardian is the best tank.
And the thief is the best pure melee burst.

What’s a warrior for?

I’ll just stand here next to my banners knowing im the only class in the game that can give you a paltry 70 condition damage in a small AOE circle.

Yippee.

And whoever thinks that cloth wearers need protection should probably actually play PVP first. I don’t even bother trying to take down elementalists anymore. I’ve seen them take on 5+ attackers at a time and walk away scratch-free.

The bottom chat log is what I was referring to, sorry they got flipped. And the 96% health is an exaggeration to prove a point. Its obviously only 20k out of 27k health…instantly…silly me…

@Mindless – Yes, and protection is even more ridiculous. Why is the caster wearing cloth armor with no toughness able to mitigate damage better than a plate wearing heavy class/soldier with a shield and high toughness kitten

I realize im stereotyping here but ‘trinity’ or not…these are basics. And for the record, I am using Earth runes – fat lot of good it would do…

I realize I am re-hashing a long since beaten horse, but nothing is being done and I can’t wrap my head around why anyone at ANet thinks this is fair.

My stats for this particular tourney attached. Warrior mace/shield + gs spec, 30/10/0/30/0, not glass cannon but not a ‘tank’ either. Earth runes for protection, accuracy/blood sigils. Pretty ‘tanky’ spec overall.

Top Chat Log: 96% of my health was obliterated in the span of 2 seconds in four abilities.

Bot Chat Log: The thief *AUTO ATTACK* lotus and wild strikes hit for 3k each? Additionally, my stun break was on CD so every one of those hits landed in a single basilisk venom.

I don’t have the ss of taking a backstab for 13k unfortunately… So here are my questions

1) ANet, why is this happening? I mean…I don’t think it takes months of QA or a rocket scientist to see how outrageously overpowered that damage is.

2) What’s the point in adding any kind of toughness whatsoever if it doesn’t seem to have an effect on damage mitigation worth a kitten I purposefully focused on raising toughness from the 966 default to the midway point to 2k solely to mitigate these types of ambushes…so what I took away from that is if I didnt have the toughness I had…I’d have been hit…harder?! You’ve got to be kidding me.

So really you’re telling us, the player, that there are 2 classes to play in competitive pvp…glass cannon thief and your-favorite-bunker-here. After all, the only game mode is conquest…and what’s better for taking and holding a node than a bunker. For a game that touts its flexibility you sure have pigeon holed us pretty well.

Im sorry to drag this topic up yet again but this has got to stop, plain and simple.

Oh and the kicker? Here’s the best part. Mid-way through the round that player switched from Engineer to Thief….I won’t even start as to who thought that mid-round class swaps during a tourney was a good idea….

Gee: Valid points. The stuns are of course a cornerstone, but its not a one trick pony. 2k power and a 45% chance to crit means I can put out some solid damage and have various weakness/vulnerability/cripple abilities to work into the mix as well.

I will definitely look into changing the sigils. I am…not impressed with doom. Additionally, I am considering dropping the points in tactics and moving some to defense to get to sundering mace. Given both weapon sets use it, I think I’d get more use out of it than a quicker weapon swap.

Thanks for the feedback!

Happy Thanksgiving folks. I would like to share a build I recently created with mixed success and request some critique. It’s fairly good (1v1, node holding) but I think it can be better (team battles, being kited).

The build focuses on tying up your opponent and preventing them from fighting back. With 6 interrupts (daze/stun/knockdown) it can be quite frustrating to defend against while also providing a solid 44% to crit, moderate toughness, and high vitality. In short:

Strength: Short Temper (gain might on opp block), Distracting Strikes (apply 3x confusion upon interrupt), Physical Training (20% CD 100% damage to physical skills)

Arms: Unsuspecting Foe (+50% to crit on dazed opp.)

Defense: Embrace the Pain (Gain adr. on hit)

Discipline: Mighty Defense (gain might on your block)

Your passives provide you a primary source of health regen, and a 2nd regen from Dolyak signets and possibly a third regen if you swap Mending for Healing Signet. Additionally, each ability synergizes with your stuns upping your critical, applying confusion and restoring health while your opp is tied up. Fast swapping of weapons allows for constant rotation of stuns and weapon sigil applications and decent toughness and high vit allows you to survive well, though not compared to the ridiculous OP survivability of an ele, but enough to fend off a 2v1.

A standard ‘rotation’ for me is sword 2 (gap closer), 3, to mace 5, swap, shield 4 to mace 3, f1, stomp and repeat. If they evade or fight back – shield 5 to mace 2 for 4.5 seconds of block with a riposte.

If you burn through every stun ability, in chain and without allowing your opponent back up, you can effectively neutralize them for ~10seconds.

And in case anyone is curious, the doom signet for poison is to neutralize any regen the player may have as its been proven poison, whether intended or not, seems to cancel out some/all ticks of regen.

Thoughts? Where could I improve this?

@Schwarheit – I tried everything except Longbow TBH. This is purely opinion but:

Rifle is decent as a weapon swap, but I wouldnt make it my primary or make a build/spec off it. The #5 is clutch and being able to kite with your 2/4 is definitely valuable.

Mace was kind of…sad. I expected more. I tried m/shield and m/m and even axe/m – the basic swing animation is so slow its painful and seemingly always missed in pvp. For whatever reason the #3 ability rarely seemed to ‘stick’. Meaning, it wasnt missed but either the daze didnt fire or its so short its not even noticable. I even tried to make a build that gave plus 30~% to damage to weakened targets and played off the third strike of mace…seeing as the third hit never landed, wasnt worth it.

Sword is fun for the lunge and the bleeds add up quick. I use it as my secondary when I swap off GS into sw/shield.

Hammer – same problem. With highly mobile opponents and the fact that 2 of the 5 abilities root you during the animation, I found it to be difficulty to work with and more of a ‘con’ to me than a ‘pro’.

Horn – shout builds that use this (Yojacks) are great and the 6sec weakness is nice, as is the swiftness, but the horn overall doesnt seem to fit unless your running some heavy defensive banner/horn spec where you’re basically a buff-bot. I guess that works but…not my playstyle.

Axe/Axe has the ability to put out some significant damage but the range on the swing comparatively to the GS is pitiful. You have to be up your targets kitten to land a swing and there’s a bug with the #5 ability apparently. If I’m going for damage, I’m going GS. Axe/shield has it’s place, but it’s a very specific niche.

About the only thing I havent tried is longbox and sword/sword. Again, these are all opinions from the 2-3 weeks I’ve been playing around with various specs but I keep going back to GS. I guess I’ll try a heavy bleed build and see what happens.

Thanks guys

After rolling my primary (a thief) to 80 and playing 30+ ranks of PvP, I got bored and wanted to try something else. Rolled a mesmer to 80, enjoyed that, then a warrior (I like to get to 80 to understand the class before I try to pvp with them).

I have to say…I am, sympathetic to all you warriors now having played one. In two week’s I’ve tried:

1) Taugrims Hammer Gun
2) Yojacks ‘Minstrel of Pain’
3) Defectives ‘Avalanche’
4) The ‘Axeman’
5) A max toughness/vit build I call ‘the wall’

Each one felt…lacking and I outright refused to be ‘just another greatsword warrior’. Too easily kited, abilities seemingly constantly missing or bugged, slow weapon animations, little mobility, few ‘escape’ options (compared to blink or shadowstep, for example), and otherwise underwhelming gameplay that just wasn’t fun. Most specs just feel like you’re ‘delaying’ your death or you’re too heavily reliant on friends being in the area to feed off your peels. Very ‘blah’ overall.

Typically a 1st-2nd place player in hotjoin PVP, I found myself struggling to get to 4th or 5th. I was..sadface panda.

So after losing my faith, I gave in to the darkness and went full glass cannon greatsword. I am entirely squishy but at least I feel like I can contribute. But unfortunately I’ve become …another greatsword warrior.

I guess I want to say…I feel your pain and it’s become clear to me why so many of you stick to the greatsword. Either it, in it of itself, is overpowered, or literally every other weapon is underpowered.

Here’s to hoping you get some love. Cheers-

Sorry, glad the healers are gone. Pretty sure most people got sick of trying to ‘out DPS the healer’. Thankfully gone are the days of 1 tank, 5 DPS and 4 healers in WoW PVP where one priest could essentially keep 2-3 people up indefinitely, let alone should you actually try to down the priest. They’ll just run around jumping and self-healing while laughing at you. No thanks.

There is plenty of healing and mitigation that we don’t need a class dedicated to doing it for us. My burst cannon thief still cant even chip off health from a well played elementalist and you want to add more healing? Duck no.

Can you please set a client side cookie that maintains my logged in state from session to session? If I close the browser window after already logging in, then re-visit the forum later, there is zero reason I should be asked to log in again. Unless I flush my cache or explicitly hit logout, I should be ‘logged in’ at all times.

Similarly, its flipping frustrating to read a thread, find one that you want to comment on THEN hit ‘login’, enter your creds, and get redirected back to the forum home page and have to hunt for the thread again that you wanted to comment on. Grab the referrer from the header and redirect me there after logging in so I dont ‘lose my place’.

Thanks-

The irony is that anyone claiming there is a “vocal minority” in a forum like this IS part of a that vocal minority pretending to represent the “silent majority.”

You are incorrect. Statistically people are less inclined to voice their opinions on something positive than they are to complain when they disagree. It’s the ‘Amazon Rule’. How many times have you bought something on Amazon and went and praised it? Now compare to the number of times you went and complained and gave it 2 stars.

This forum is filled with the latter, people demanding this and that like they’re entitled to it and when they don’t get it, throwing ‘threats’ around and commanding ANet like they were their children.

Ultimately I find it amusing, because all this whining is just solidfying ANet’s decision to cater to the % of people who are willing to put in the work for better gear and not simply demand it because they paid for the game.

Problem is, I don’t even want to get exotics for my alt anymore. Why should I? They’ll be made obsolete by some future dungeon anyway

Dear god I’m getting disgusted with the amount of self-entitlement on these forums. Why would you? How about because people arent created equal? Because the mere token fact that you bought the game does not mean you spawn into the gameworld with the best equipment and, gasp, my actually have to work or compete for it?!

I don’t know what your smoking or why everyone seems to think they’re deserving of something but I’ve got news for you. In the game, as in real life, kitten ain’t free and there are no handouts. The quicker you realize that, the more fun you’ll have in a game that doesnt force you to do anything. You want to get Ascended gear? Go for it. You want to wear the exotics you worked so hard for? Absolutely. You’ll always be ‘cooler’ than someone else, don’t you worry, and if you stopped focusing on getting freebees or crying that your gear is ‘obsolete’ (im sorry, did the patch remove its armor value and all stats too?) the more time you’d have to enjoy the game.

Play as much or as little as you like, its a game. I say again. It. is. a. game.

Good lord…bunch of babies I swear….

I’ve been playing thief since beta, am 80, and have near 30 ranks of PVP under my belt and will be the first to admit that we are excessively overpowered. This is not the fault of the thief but rather the devs and it will continue to be a problem so long as initiative exists.

This aside, you can’t deny that we (thieves) predominantly do not switch weapons. I can say this after now leveling a 2nd toon to 40 (Warrior) and find myself constantly swapping weapons. Thieves, by nature of initiative, have little reason to do so unless its to swap to short bow and teleport away. If ANet dumbs down the damage on our abilities AND focuses on upping damage/utility on our other weapon abilities then I think thief will become more in line with where they should be.

Let’s face it, you may be able to run D/P or S/P or even P/P with moderate success but few things beat D/D and near every build in use today focuses on their abilities (LDB spam, Backstab burst, DD, etc). If our other abilities get tuned to the point they become worth using, and dagger damage gets a nerf, I think we’d be ‘OK’ in the long haul.

My 2 cents but don’t expect any overnight changes.

A bunker is pretty much the counter to the exact build you were running, and you wonder why you were struggling? lol

So what you’re saying is there’s a spec that completely negates mine and utterly destroys me in combat?

And people wonder where the rock, paper, scissor comments keep coming from. Why do I have to run a condition spec to deal with bunkers and a cannon spec to deal with casters? Ill take that one step further and say that tournaments are immediately, before the game even starts, in favor of one team or another based on whos spec naturally counters another…correct? Say I join a tourney, we have 2 cond specs against their 3 bunkers. Hooray! Now instead pretend they are cannon spec against the same bunkers. Immediate disadvantage.

THAT…should never happen or you’ve created a natural imbalance that can’t be overcome by skill or altered mid-game (a-la changing specs in RIFT).

Kind of have to agree with Timeraider. By taking the stance of ‘there is no trinity, everything can DPS/Support/Tank’ then you’re basically saying a thief can play bunker and a guardian can burst for 12k in one hit…

Simply not true.

Tulisin – Thanks for the feedback! Personally, I wouldnt run Uncatchable on a power/crit build as you’re not really capitalizing on the damage potential from the bleeds that you would get if you were running a condition spec like LDB or pistol/dagger. Similarly, because the damage/output is smaller, your ability to synergize with that heal is less.

I absolutely don’t dispute the power of malice on an LDB/caltrops bleed build but I wouldnt run it on this spec for the reasons above.

I do agree with you on Signet of Shadows and have been experimenting with rotating that out for Shadow Refuge or BP among others.

Thanks!

EDIT: Apologies, fixed the link.

Gear

Amulets

Soldier’s amulet is used for the power, vitality, and toughness. Three, in my eyes, essential stats for PVP. I swap out the soliders jewel for a berserkers for the additional 5% crit damage. If you use the entire berserkers amulet you gain some additional crit, but the survivability goes way down. With this spec you are surprisingly durable with ~20k HP, 1.5k toughness and around 3k armor.

Runes

Full runes of the eagle to, again, artificially inflate our precision without having to change out the amulet while gaining more plus crit damage in the process. Add another 5% damage to your +70% damage earlier for targets under 50% health from rune 6 and you’ll be hitting reliably hard. I tried runes of the pack and divinity and found eagle to be the best bang for the buck. The buffs you get with pack don’t interest me as much and you do get more crit damage/health/toughness with divinity but at the sake of precision and damage. You could use either with similar results.

Sigils

Sword – Sigil of Fire: Why? Fire, when tested, hits for around 1k but is an AOE meaning while you’re duking it out on a node, you’re hitting everyone. This is particularly useful for mesmer clones and cloaked thieves. Air does around 1.3-1.5k but only hits one target. Your call but with ~35%(42%) to crit, this will be going off pretty frequently and the aoe damage adds up.

Dagger – Sigil of Accuracy: Another means by which to artificially inflate our crit damage. You can, alternatively, try running Bloodlust but my problem with that is its gone on down. Most games you will be downed at least once and your buff is effectively cancelled and requires you to kill more people to raise it again. If you’re ninja with the shadowsteps and short bow, run bloodlust, otherwise stick to the guaranteed crit from Accuracy.

Short-Bow – Sigil of Fire: Same as above. Burn baby burn.

Playstyle

This build affords you with the damage/crit to be a threat, the mobility to get around fast, the vit/toughness to compete, and the utility to survive a number of situations. It’s cannon, without the glass, with a cup-holder. Yea I said it.

You do have…

Two shadowsteps, 2-3 stealths, 2 condition purges, 2 break stuns, auto condition removal, cripple/weak removal, a large health pool, moderate toughness, aoe cleave, immobilize, aoe on proc, boon removal, and ~40% chance to crit.

By trading in…

Higher crit, higher power, better single target damage, minor +crit damage

You do NOT have…

Any condition damage, limited stealth (compared to a pure shadow arts build) and only one heal.

Hope you guys find this useful, I’ll post a video with gameplay this weekend when I have more time and my basement isn’t flooding.

Cheers-

- Aldrich [HATE] – Dragonbrand

Weapons:

As mentioned earlier the build ditches the traditional D/D and instead utilizes S/D for a number of reasons detailed below. The beauty in Sword comes from it’s 3 base abilities that I think have gone overlooked.

Sword #1 – It cleaves in front of you hitting all targets. The 3rd hit cripples and weakens and from stealth you get a 2s daze and blind which sets you up for a number of openers.

Sword #2 – A free medium-damage shadowstep and condition purge that causes immobilize AND breaks stun… Um, how awesome is that?

Sword #3 – The least impressive of the abilities but there are a things you should know. One, its a very difficult ability to land in a firefight. Keep that in mind. Two, the first strike is unblockable and the second strike hits for upwards of 1k damage (3k crits). And three, the first hit removes a boon off your target. Good for annoying regen hunters and boon friendly guards.

Dagger #4 – Dancing dagger: A multi-target ranged cripple that bounces, causes cripple, and hits surprisingly hard. Use this anytime you’re in the frey with more than one target around just be sure to try and time it so you start your throw animation as they are almost done with an evade roll. Also use it to keep fleeing targets from..well, fleeing.

Dagger #5 – Cloak and Dagger: A hard hitting ability that causes weakness on your target and stealth. I want to use this more but I find it difficult to land though it does set you up nicely for other abilities.

Utility Spells

Utility 1 – Signet of Shadows: One downfall of this build is that sword is relatively slow, comparitively speaking, to dagger. This can make landing your hits trickier and a fast opponent will be just outside range. I run with this signet to help narrow the gap and allow me to cover more ground on a map as a roamer. You can, alternatively, run with shadow refuge or blinding powder if you prefer to ‘get the drop’ on your opponent over speed.

Utility 2 – Shadowstep: A bread and butter thief ability that I find surprisingly underused. First, the range on it is massive. Second, its a breakstun for when you get bull charged by a 1000b warrior, etc. Third, you can easily use it to get away or throw off your opponent by ‘recalling’ to your original location. Anyone running pvp should have at least one break stun and between the freebie you get with your #2 and this, you’re infinitely slippery to deal with.

Utility 3 – Haste: If you’ve read this far you know sword hits hard. Very hard. When your Quickness procs you’ll see first hand what I am talking about. Now add in a on-use 4s of Quickness and pair this with a solid opener and you can cleave someone (or a group…) down fast. Try to burn it after you’ve expended all your endurance. I personally like to open as such:

1) Cloak and Dagger or Powder into stealth
2) Get targets back
3) Simultaneously hit Haste and 1
4) Sword daze will occur, burn through your 1-1-1 combo.
5) At end of combo, daze wears off, hit 2
6) If 2 lands, they are now immobilized
7) CnD back to stealth
8) 1 from stealth again for another daze
9) Target should be dead rinse/repeat

Ultimate- Dagger Storm: I prefer to use dagger storm over TG because the thieves attack too slow and are killed off easily. I reserve DS for mesmers to negate their clones and phantasms and when I see a ‘herd’ forming. Personal preference really.

Sword Duelist – The Build

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlUmaOHdS8E+5Ex2jdqTeqVgmdPuq8jPA;T0AA1CnowxgjAHLOOck4ssYYx5j3ITCA

The build itself is about balance without sacrificing too much of any one thing and it works really well. I’ll break it down starting with the build.

Standard: 10/30/0/30/0

Traits:

Deadly Arts:

III – Mug: Steal provides an invaluable gap closer as well a number of beneficial abilities. With the build being heavy on power and precision Mug is going to give you a solid chunk of damage when you steal.

Crit Strikes:

III – Side Strike: A ‘standard’ glass cannon build would be anywhere between 52% and 57% crit, unmodified but in getting those stats you have to forgo with some survivability and utility. This build brings you half way there with a 30(35%) chance to crit and another 7% from Side Strike brings you up to 42% from the back or side. The underlying goal be to artificially inflate our precision/crit without giving up too much else.

X – Critical Haste: The build forgos with the standard dagger/dagger and instead utilizes the AOE cleaving and ‘big hits’ of the sword. That said, when quickness procs with a sword and you get a few solid crits, things go down. While testing my damage on the dummies, ‘basic’ crits from the #1 sword ability range from 1.5-2.5k with the third hit landing for around 3.5.

XI – Executioner: This is key to this build. You will be using your #1 sword ability a lot, in fact its probably the most used ability shy of #2. Why? Math.

You’re 25th point in Crit Strikes increases your damage by 10% when init over 6.
You’re 25th point in acrobat increases your damage again by 10% when endurance is not full (Duh..)
You’re 30th point in Crit Strikes increases damage by 20% when below 50%

That’s a combined increase of 70% damage if all you do is roll around and mash your #1…

Acrobatics:

II – Power of Inertia: You’re an acrobat. You roll a lot. Rolling gives might AND swiftness. Might = power. Power = damage. Damage is good. Roll.

VII – Fleet of Foot: This build, like any melee build, relies on the ability to close the gap and get to your target to actually hit them. Any condition (freezing, immobilize, crippled) will prevent that. This allows you to feed off your acrobatics and negate a cripple and get back in your opponents face.

VIII – Pain Response: I can’t even begin to say how many times this trait has saved my behind. Simply put, in a game where nearly everyone lays out conditions thick as mud, this will help you push through it and stay in the fight. A thief that can run away to go heal is fine but contributes nothing, one that can survive and fight back is far more ideal and again, balance. We want to hit hard, we also don’t want to be a wet paper napkin.

This is what i picture every bunker to be like, if they were real people. Just change it to “I heal myself and knock you down”

Bunkers are op because heals / protection / toughness are infinitely much better than offensive stats. People playing bunkers sacrifice much less than those playing glass cannons, yet if they’re lucky enough for their glass cannons to ‘carry them’ they get the same reward. Its the same in pve, if you have a tank , he rarely ever gets killed (unless everyone else gets killed) but your dps can get 2shotted

Exactly. I’m tired of fighting teams of 4 bunkers and a mesmer/dps. For giggles I ran a pure glass cannon spec last night (you know, the 12+k backstab burst spec yall complain about) and had little to no effect in tourney’s that were bunker heavy. Their ability to knock down, knock back, deflect, heal, invulnerable, or otherwise compliment their already insane survivability consistently negated my damage. At one point in a match I took the high ground and started to plink away at one of them with my short bow and he stood there and /waved at me as he was easily able to heal MORE than the bow was doing even with crits of around 1500.

This aside, the issue is not in bunkers themselves (though I do feel they need to be taken down a notch – no one should be able to solo 80% of a team (4 players) and come out ahead) but rather in the game mode. If tourneys went:

Game 1 – CTF
Game 2 – Conquest
Game 3 – Siege/Kill the Lord

You’d have a very different meta game. DPS would be valuable again in siege, mobility and CC paramount in CTF, and bunkers shining in Conquest.

Unfortunately this is not the case and due to that team comps (for those solely interested in winning) will continue to focus on beaing bunker heavy running 3 or 4 bunkers/heavy defense and one mesmer for portals.

There is no reason to run anything else, period and because of this PVP is one-sided, predictable, dull and frustrating for having to be pigeon-holed into a very specific composition to be remotely competitive in the tPVP meta game.

Great info, thank you Teapot.

As an ele I personally prefer the protection boon over toughness for non-bunker builds. I can maintain 70-100% protection uptime (depending on build) while still having a 67% crit rate

And THAT…is just ridiculous…btw. You effectively have better protection than a tank, higher crit than a thief, and (im assuming) neigh infinite survivability by way of water.

Should have rolled an ele…good lord.

I am convinced that after nearly 30 ranks of PvP, multiple hundreds of specs and amulet tinkering among other things that toughness (for light and medium classes) doesn’t make a significant impact.

Why? Tradeoffs.

Typically to run a high toughness build, you sacrifice either DPS or Vitality. So either you have a tremendous HP pool and get hit hard, or no HP and get hit ‘less’, or neither and hit like a wet paper napkin. I put ‘less’ in quotes because I do not feel that, on my thief or ranger, that I am any more durable with a full toughness build than I would be with simply 2x the HP.

The exception here is the soldiers amulet which provides pow/vit/tough – great. Well, I typically run a condition build and there is no cond/tough/vit amulet with similar stats.

What I would like to see is someone with empirical evidence on how toughness affects damage taken. For example

With 1000 toughness – ‘Slice’ hits for 943
With 2000 toughness – ‘Slice’ hits for 865

You get the idea. Has anyone done this before and/or can link to similar data?

Everything about PvP seems to push the user towards toughness but the armor values and impact to overall DPS seem to lend themselves much better to heavier support classes than lighter damage classes. Just looking for data to back that up instead of just ‘my gut says’.

Thanks-