Guild Wars 2

The way I feel about Elementalist is like this…

The other classes are like the Teachers….
…while Elementalist is like pretty having the most amazing Substitute Teacher ever conceived… willing to help while accepting all the risk and responsibility of the Standing Teacher….

However, regardless the skill or ability of a Substitute Teacher… A Substitute Teacher is still in the very end of the day, a Substitute Teacher… One that will be remembered..

In short, I feel that Elementalist is a Secondary Class right now compared to others and the one thing everyone wants is for Elementalist to play like a Primary Class. Problem with that is that somethings gotta give. Either lose the flexibility that substitute teachers have (Subs have the ability to float around and adjust to situations, teachers do not have that right or luxury and have to maintain themselves in their own classrooms) and become teachers, or strengthen the level of flexibility that the Elementalist actually has…

…and that exists in the skill trees and that is what happens.. Non-Celestial Builds mean a focus in one area while giving up a lot. Celestial Builds means having an “Absolute Balance” that actually requires a lot of experience and a strong mind to play. I remember using weapons under celestial builds with specific intent to TIP the balance into one of the areas. Full Set Celestial Armor and Trinkets, but then Berserker, Knights, Cleric, or Rampaging Weapons…. and carrying around excess equipment to adjust to situations…

I still read about Fresh Air Builds and what I have to say is this…

I left this game around 1.5 – 2 years ago. I recently bought HoT, so I am behind…However, the fact that people still talk to me about the main damage build being a Fresh Air build. and that was the final build I used prior to leaving the game makes me believe that a lot has not changed for Elementalist. ;(

I look at this thread and I see almost the exact same pattern from two years ago and wonder why things are so similar… I feel as nothing hasn’t truly changed and the class retains its set of problems.

People told me
“The solution to your problems is just playing another class”
and my reply was
“I don’t want to play another class… I want to log in, and know that my Elementalist is worth something… "

Is it so wrong to be loyal to one class regardless what happens to it?

This thread is an example of the frustration that exists within the Elementalist Class itself. Don’t get me wrong as when GW2 was launched I wanted to be an Elly from the start, and I was….. Back when it was strong and powerful.

It was always nice to be able to have a mage in the game until they took out the mage part and everything became more about support. I always loved the fact that Elly has a skill to help in every situation possible, and one of the reasons why Celestial builds became popular was to actually balance out the skills in a way that they weren’t too powerful or were too lacking that it was useless…

Prior to leaving this game I had many different sets of armor in my storage from all the times Elementalist was nerfed and I had to go after something else. It wasn’t fun when a nerf broke a build and I was forced to start over with a new build from scratch just to find that build nerfed in a future patch.

The people were like “yeah, it makes you think and always switch everything up” and I was like "This is a game, not a second job…and I find it annoying that outside of instant-damage on Fresh-Air builds or making an offensive bunker build, that elly pretty much became a heal-bot class.

First game where my love for support was in a mage class that lost its ability to mage (compared to when it was released) and retained its ability to support.

This thread is an example of why I haven’t come back to this game. I don’t mean the type of posting, as I can go to any forum out there on the net….and find the same quality of posting. At least here people actually would declare that they mean no offense or rudeness.

I remember having a lot of builds as Elementalist in Guild Wars 1 and playing GW2 I though the graphics and animations were cool for Elly, but hated how things panned out. I was loyal to Elementalist, and rather than picking a new main class… I went through hell in my real life and left the game.

This game was originally advertised that it was YOUR story and it was about the way YOU wanted to play. It then became NOT your story and it became all about how the developer WANTS YOU TO PLAY, and I never found that to be fair.

I am still waiting for the day I can return to this game, play my Elly again and find that I can feel good with a straight face and that I can look at the other elementalist across from me…. and know we have separate, yet equally effective builds to squash each other with, and run with a sign of relief that the opposing elementalist that is out there killing me is not running the same two to three builds that I am always running.

So much for Build Diversity

World vs World was by far my favorite thing in Guild Wars 2, and I felt that I went from Build-Crafting to have fun to Build-Crafting in order to survive.

Hello to Tarnished Coast….Been Gone forever….don’t know if I should return!

I have not played the game in a long time, but my main was elly…and always my favorite.

The trick to dungeons is building a sustaining-strategy for trash mobs, and a utility-strategy for bosses. What transpires is “same group, same strategy, all procedural” approach. The trick to real mastery is playing with different groups and seeing “what is available…what do we have to play with?”

Pardon my biases. I will throw my list:

1. Elementalist – Ellys were created to be a “party” class. They are at their strongest when they are in a group due to their offerings. Sure, they can solo and the many youtube video proves it, but in all the strength they offer soloing, they offer 10x more when fighting together with the group. However, one has to be careful as with any “Group Support” be it offensive, or defensive…a second elly in the party can make it or break it for the whole group. Two supports of any type (offensive, defensive, healer) require coordination.

2. Warriors: Why am I choosing warriors over guardians? Those banners are great, and that Elite Skill that can revive players from down state is amazing. Warriors (like elly) can make a crazy DPS build, but then throw in supports in their utilities. Its a shining example of how “opposites attract” and I like how it works out.

Guardians: Quite Put, their condition cleansing and simply being able to give 12 stacks of might on a staff is already offering a lot to a group. One skill = half-max might to the whole group. However, I’ve built entire party survival tactics around wall of reflection. Guardian really is one of the best.

Thief and Engineer (Second Tier): The problem is not the ability of these classes. Its usually the players. Many I’ve met play the classes in a limited way, using few of the resources offered to them. They use around 3 – 4 skills at most, and a utility when jammed up and repeat the process over and over. When a player really knows thief and engineer (and their learning and gearing curves) they truly shine…..but most of the two I’ve encountered I have shook my head and wondered if a “thief” trainer exists. Fortunately I knew several great thieves and engineers…

Ranger: The pet AI gets in the way and the one thing I do not want to do is have my party’s fate..or my character’s decided upon the success or failure of an AI. Not to say one can’t make ranger good…..but it would love for good ranger builds to exist without the need for pets….you know, more like the American Military’s Rangers and the expression “Rangers Lead The Way”

Necromancer: I have a level 80 necro myself. I’ve seen some promising necromancers. Really some stellar ones. Problem is that the style of the necro, and the meta that people want to play. Yes..I say “People want to play” because most people demand the same 2 -3 party set-ups in each dungeon, in order to achieve the same “familiar” run without trying anything new.

I can’t fight against this demand, or change it. All one can do is find another “interesting way” that would make necromancer viable. Unfortunately, I have seen necromancers do extremely well when the method of destroying the dungeon is unconventional and off the beaten track. I put it as last place due to the fact an “unwritten” and “conventional” standard has risen in the form of beating these dungeons. We sacrifice Creativity and Exploration for Ease, Security, and just getting through the dungeon to get our goods and continue on our way.

Personally, I like new and interesting ways…but all the same i don’t want to take an epoch to beat a dungeon either.

Hi!

I find for leveling characters to eighty, the grind isn’t there and yet at level 80 there really is not much to do required for level 80s. The Level 80 dungeons, fractals or fighting thr super tough bosses or playing WvW.

As far as grind goes, there is a mega grind that is cyclic. The way it works is that you get your armor, weapons, trinkets, backpiece, runes and sigils. Then when a new “balance” patch breaks your build, you are forced into starting over the grind to get a new set of gear. Sure, buying yellows is cheap, but I, and most of us like exotics. That becomes a real big pain.

Many players talk about farming, and those I knew who went after legendaries had to grind for them (i.e do things you do not want to do to get the things you want or need.) This is called “work” where people grind away in jobs they do not like for a paycheck in order to pay the bills for thirty to fifty years of their life.

I boil all grinds down to time-relations since what we have to barter and make expressions with is time. What do we get for our spent time?

I stopped playing GW2 due to how many obstructions got in the way of time. From having to stop playing the way I wanted to due to having to make a new set of a gear due to a patch destroying my builds, to wondering why it takes longe to find an overflow in a living story where the guild back then could play together.

I play PSO2 in Japanese servers and interestingly enough, while grinds do exixt, it does not seem so severe because its not boring to me. Its not boring to me because as far as hairstyles go, there are 150+ for characters, costumes number in the hundreds too…difficulty levels are nice, and i can play alone or with others…There is always something to keep me interested and knowledge of the next patch is easilly obtained. GW2 has a community of faith-struck personnel who believe that one-day all will be fixed and all new content will occur. The last patch fixed stuff but it didnt change the way the game actually plays or appears at level 80.

I am after my masters degree in education and my undergraduate education was in computer science and music. My play session of guild wars 2 allowed me to play becauxe of the guild I ran, but the quality of the game drops when playing alone, and outside the guild i was used to playing for (Which i founded and lead) and yet when guild wars 2 started I enjoyed one good thing:

I could log in, for fifteen minutes, play and have something done. It was nice and it made me feel nice. Specially on busy days. Then over time it became a game where people in my friendlist refused to play with me because they said they were in a grind or farm, that they wished they could play normally but grinding and farming takes priority. I rmember people who logged in once a day to do their dailies for laurels and thats it.

My play sessions became that I could only play when I was willing to commit at leadt two to four hours at least….to the game, so I couldnt play on days I really focused on my studies and classes. If I did, I felt unfulfilled..

In playing PSO2 at least I can log in, choose the map I want to run, run it..win or lose and depending on map I can feel satisfied after five minutes, or fifteen minutes..

GW2 is a game I tried and did about everything possible on, with the exception of going after legendaries…for the time It takes to get a legendary, i can learn a different game altogether…I play games for fun, and to engage in something fun with others.

I would GRIND for a doctorate or a masters degree because it means something, I am paying for it and it does open doors, and lasts forever, while games are temporary, close down, or lose meaning. Sorry, but I cant see any of you playing guild wars 2 ten years from now.

Try all you want but I went from being a very satisified and loyal player, to being completely the opposite. I dont even want to hear of this game anymore, and Ive moved on, I speak only now to people I met in this game.

I replied here because I was linked to this thread and asked to reply.

I have recently left this game, but maintain a high level of trust among several gaming communities out there. I recently discussed the pitfalls of this game and the greatest I have come across is the way “The Living Stories” are implemented.

Its not that the content itself is horrible, bad, idiotic, stupid etc…

Far from it, as there are new schemes and mechanisms tried out with the different patches.

What makes it fail is the following:

The living story is something many players look forward to try out. Players want to run the stories together either with their home server, their friends, or their main guild. Unfortunately to the majority of players that will not happen.

The last eight living stories I was always thrown into an overflow after the Living Story was patched. I was a guild leader and wanted the guild to experience the story together but the different overflows and many of them filled to map cap prevented us from playing together.

Nevermind guilds, not even those in my friendlist could play with ease in the same overflow unless we made arrangements.

The sacrifice we all make is that if we arent those first 100 lucky people who park their butts in day one to the main server, chances are on high population servers you wont enjoy the LS with your server, your friends, or your guild.

Your options become fighting in an overflow and waiting until all the large guilds and most proficient players in the server, willing to wait to get in and plant their butts there. finish the living story achievements to give other players a turn, in which the proficiency of the server will be slightly higher than a standard overflow, yet still limited to 100 players or so…or whatever the map cap is…

This system is not friendly to guilds, nor friends. I remember having five friends, all on different overflows, all those overflows full for the event….unable to play with them..

The other part of this system that is unfriendly is that if you miss a living story you might not see it again.

I remember the first time I missed a living story event…..coming back and people accusing me of being lazy….telling me thats what i get, those who dont play, get nothing..

Know what I was doing?

I was burying my real life brother who had died the last week of June. I was out there dealing with my real life. The second time I took a break or reduced playtime, I was dealing with graduate studies and the coursework was intensifying.

I couldnt just park myself 8 hours on a queue waiting for the server to accept me. So I started playing other games while parked in a queue and I was happy I could run with my friends, my guild (the one i am in the other games) and my own home server without ever arguing or thinking about it. It became natural.

Its like I am member to my server when nothing important is going on, but when all the good stuff happens, i dont have a home server, instead i have an overflow..

…and that is not fair.

Other MMOs have channels. Why cant this game have channels?

For a game that claims to be friendly to its playerbase, this is one of the unfriendliest systems out there….along with the fact that so much content is created that can only be enjoyed for 2 weeks.

In fact if we factor out the living story and talk about permament additions to the core games, every other mmorpg that has released an expansion in the last year and a half has had more content additions than GW2.

2014 is the year of a lot of games everyone is after are coming out. Be prepared to really fight to maintain your playerbase. I was taken by another game because playing gw2 made me appreciate the stability in other games to at least have my home server and play with a group of people through everything and sadly, guild wars 2 does not offer this.

I do not think I am asking for much in simply wanting stability on a server and the response (oh transfer out to a lesser populated server does not solve the problem) as my characters have lived through nine servers already. ^^

What has me support ranger for the first class that needs the most help even higher than elementalist is the fact a ranger can not be a ranger. (Im an elly main, but ranger needs help)

The pets do not work right and the anti spawn exploitation that monsters have prevent a ranger from kiting. If a player character attacks a monster from above and the monster is unable to find a clear path to the player, the damage against the monster goes invulnerable.

In fact ranger and elly face the same problem that one can not target an AoE at an angle from above, so even from above 1200 range the targetting would not appear.

example…. taking the mathematical pythagoream theorem.

If a ranger faced me from a 45 degree angle on top of a structure meeting at 90 degrees at the base, where i stand that makes a 90-45-45 triangle. Where the ranger is viewing me from the top is the hypotenuse being the square root of 2, which is 1.41. This means the distance from where I am standing to the ranger is 1.41 times greater. I said our distance to the base where the ranger is standing on is 900. Taking a calculator we have 900 × 1.41 = 1269 which is out of range for both of us hitting each other, since 1269 units > 1200 range. The thing is that if you are the ranger standing on top of the area looking at me, your targetting reticle wont appear, if it does it will be red and you cant even launch your attack. I can angle to actually target an AoE by actually aiming at the wall itself. I can move up to the base by 30 units, then angle an attack at the wall at 820 units…In short 820^2 + 870^2 = C^2 where C = 1196 range. Remember the target on top, specifically the ranger…..aiming at me is aiming at me from 900 units above the base…im just hitting the wall.

I am aiming at the wall itself….because i can simply cast meteor shower or another AoE and the projectile is generated from above which descends to hit the surface….

The ranger standing on top will do 900^2 + 870^2 = C^2 where C = 1251. 1251 units > 1200 range. So he will have to actually target over 75 units away from his intended target hoping his AoE would hit off-center……and it will still be at 1200.84 range. So it will be around 76 units away. (900^2 + 795^2 = C^2’ C = 1200.84)

So what is the difference?

The ranger or target on top is doing it legitimately and had limited space on top to run or dodge. The target below, is hitting the target above for tons of damage by hitting the wall with an AoE like barrage or meteor shower.

I can use the wall to give you a direct hit from below from the projectile generation occuring from above and score more hits on you than hitting me with the same attack.

In short I can hit the wall itself 80 units below the target and 30 units closer to the base from a Right Triangle and hit you dead on, while your attack from above under the same skill will hit me for less even though you have less room to dodge, run, but have a height advantage over me….and your damage using the same skill under the same build will hit me for less.

Also if you use 900 range attacks, dont count on even the reticle showing up even though the only way the attack will go is down, with the support of gravity.

Please note…
It should be observed that while I like math, I did not use rocket science! I simply used the pythagoream theorem and this math is taught in eight grade under the Common-Core guidelines. In short, I used middle school math within the area of Geometry.

I refrained from using calculus as many cringe to it, but many out there have an undying love for geometry (currently it is the world’s most popular and most widely used of all the maths)

(Yes, i just used math to prove that in guild wars physics, players have less of an advantage at higher ground than lower ground due to how projectiled at end of range simply just vanish)

This is an interesting thread. Yeah, im from TC and though ive been in many servers, this thread is an example of a split in mentality.

PPT vs Direct-Kills. There are TC guilds and commanders who like both. I actually like playing for PPT, but will go for straight up kills if it means liberating a map.

The new map is a fresh map which only serves as overflow and since it has no actual WvW point distribution and the matches are a lot smaller, its easier to have a more objective based global experience across server clusters.

Sadly, this also seperates the mentality too….

With an unlimited number if overflow maps to spawn the EoTM map, and the players who wish to play in TDM (Team Deathmatch) fashion like in early shooters, the populations of both mentality are split into the following:

PPT based WvW across four maps in week-long fights…

or

Kill-based fights which do not count for server WvW score, across one map having a more complete experience as its harder to have a shortage of players.

Please note the EoTM is also good for servers who do not have the population to maintain a wvw map, or even four of them.

Now those with common goals can play in their arena and since there is now an overflow map, the map benefits the lowest and highest population servers but not the populations in between.

Of course now WvW is disfunctional and now forces mercy in a mercyless gametype.

….win too much and all your enemy withdraws into EoTM.
….win too little and get crushed by everyone around you.

In essense I cam understand SoR. Notice im not attacking BG or JQ or even making references to guild buying/selling. Its not even the point….

point is now that those who feel different about WvW can get the experience that they want, it means mor are showing their true colors, and the common ground is:

This is just one of many threads that legitimize the end and doom of WvW as a whole gametype. It was a nice run, now servers will be doing all possible to not take the #3 slot. More and more will go to overflow, populations will be split and basically out of 51 servers (na and eu combined) there will be only around 8 – 10 servers….less than 20% which can function as WvW intended…

I am mot surprised at SoR….or and server who wishes to take a stand. I am sure that maguma and FA who like playing for kills are also following the trend.

Hello everyone.

I run a constant frustration at several elements of this game. Of course I have not given up on it and continue playing, and so here is my take on it…

1) The trinity approach – please make it disappear, dont repackage it.

Tank, Healer and DPS is the basic trinity, but the guild wars 2 trinity is Soldiers, Knights and Berserkers for the majority of builds out there with the occasional cleric’s build. The game still favors DPS over everything else, specially in dungeons and fractals.

2) Overflow mess – please read below:

For as long as I can remember the living story events have been unfriendly in the sense I can’t play them in the server unless I am willing to try to fight with everyone else in the server to be first in line to be in the main map. This is the equivalent as the idea of saying “you dont have to wait for parties” and being lied to. I’ve sat around in Tarnished Coast (and even servers in lower tiers) for as many as twelve hours in queue to be able to enter an event map. In fact 99 out of 100 times if I am not one of the 75 – 100 people the map can support, I will not be enjoying a server-wide Living Story event with my own server.

I have to deal with people in my friendlist being in as many as five overflows that are filled up and thus its hard to get together with anyone during these Living Story events.

I can play other MMORPGs and not have to deal with not playing with my own server events that run or exist.

My suggestion is to bring the Channel System that the first Guild Wars had. Make three channels or four in each event zone in order to allow each server to have people share with each other the events…..

3) Permament Content —-- not just southsun cove!

Its nice to have Ascended Weapons and Armor, however outside of Fractal and Southsun Cove, how much permament content had we truly received since the game went live on Sept. 2012 away from beta stages?

I am not saying that the living story is horrible, but how many people will refuse to play this game because they feel punished from not being able to have the chance to experience the story chapters to the Living Story?

4) Fear and Turmoil

I don’t look for overpowering builds, just the builds I like to try to run to find a role in the party that I like. I am a group player and always have loved helping out a group. However, due to being able to run any kind of build on any class, specific skills overlap builds, and when they are buffed or nerfed they end up affecting multiple builds. That is the price of making a game build-based, which is ok, I liked GW1 for the reason it was build based…

….However I feel like I am buying one of those consumable objects that allows my build to run for around two weeks, and thereafter it expires when a new patch is released and then burns my build into submission. It forces me to go out, and completely start over..

This means I have to acquire six pieces of armor, six trinkets and as many as four to six weapons, depending on the build, as well as Sigils and Runes. At this point, I am spending more time trying to get the gear to be able to play this game, than actually enjoying the game itself. My bank has 120 spaces devoted to my main character with a lot of armors, all which remain because I did not throw them away after my builds being nerfed to oblivion. I feel this is a deeper grind…

….and there are many players who refuse to post builds or even talk about them due to the fear of their videos being the catalyst for what will lead to a nerf.

5) “Guild Wars 2 is about guilds…..”

These are the words stated in another thread by the developers. Problem is that with the addition of magic find, the magic find buff is nearly useless because 10% doesnt cover so much. Most of the buffs that cost merits are worthless, and some buffs that cost slightly more render weaker ones useless.

The guild system in GW2 is failing in the way that many can circumvent the guild system by simply joining utility guilds that have all the guild missions unlocked for the purpose of just getting guild commendations. Once that is factored out of the equation, the one thing guilds have that is special, which is their internal currency is taken away and the value of guilds are diminished. I really feel its a slap to the integrity of the guild system.

Please review the guild upgrades and buffs…..Also please install the mod that tells us when a player logged in last so I don’t have to spend time running attendance when in other games I don’t need to ask for something so basic…

Well good luck everyone.

Lately running through an achievement per event would give players a skin or two, sometimes some recipes for backskins. So of course this creates multiple categories of items, both necessary.

1) Earned by Gold: A set of items that obtains through recipes where all the materials are not account bound and can be bought or searched for. This came through Ascended Backpieces.

2) Earned through achievements: Get an achievement, get a skin….simple as that. Except it has to be applied to an existing backpiece.

What about the third category?

3) Earned by Grinding: (notice I am being blunt here and not sugar coating it)

I am currently working on my Fractal Backpiece to be fully upgraded because it requires Account Bound Fractals-Only components. Anyone who sees the fractal beta capacitor on my back knows that I have some fractal experience. It shows that I truly earned it and did something to get it.

All the Gold in the world will not get me the backpiece, I have to earn it.

I have defaulted towards trying to get this not to say “I am better than you” or to have some sense of entitlement either. I have wanted to earn this because not everyone has this, or is capable of getting it. It shows to the community where you have been, and where you skills lie to some degree.

I am asking if more weapons, armor and backpieces can be made on this level. I dont mean just throwing out a lot of materials out there, but I mean account bound materials along with things obtained in a zone or region/gametype so when I look back on my experience, i can say “yeah, I earned this and I really like this gametype” type attitude.

I think so far the fractal capacitor is the only one out there.

Its just a thought.

I would love to see one for each dungeon using those gifts as well as perhaps a wvw one using a gift of battle. That would be special.

I contacted an anet employee in TC Lion’s Arc on the matter. I was assisted and wanted under advisement to write a record of it in the forums.

We now can summon the fiery greatsword underwater. Its cool, but its bugged.

~When summoning underwater, we are left with our trident skillbar
~When summoning on Land, and we walk into the water, we lose our skills and revert to underwater skills.

Question: Are we using the same Land SKills for underwater combat, or is a new bar going to be made for Underwater Skills? Also, will the transition allow us to retain the bar on Land and Water as it can be cast underwater?

/End of Bug Report

Thank you for the help.

@Retsuko

Oh staff builds for zergs are not useless. In fact one of my favorite builds I used previously to my fresh air build as a support build that has some good damage in groups and is balanced out was 10/10/5/15/30. This build required full celestial ascended equipment as every point counted as well as those willing to get full infusions in order. I ran runes to give me either confusion or torment as a third damage condition. Running torment, I also used a sigil to increase my power, but food for condition damage and condition duration along with another weapon to switch out bloodlust sigil when its at 25 stacks. I loved the one that caused AoE bleeding.

I would open up fights by throwing eruption when might stacked. Then I would throw a frozen ground, have it detonate for area frost armor. Then the dodge roll, attunement swapping and my traits and buffs, I easilly had players with burning, weakness, torment. 20 – 25 stacks of bleeding, cripple, etc while doing good damage with ice bow’s ice storm, meteor shower and other skills. I used my staff build for months before working a fresh air build due to all that staff has to offer.

Though it had damage that was good might stacked from an outside source, it was a support build aimed at reinforcing anything out there. Good in dungeons, fractals and WvW since you needed to output damage and have some survivability.

As far as my fresh air build went. I use s 20/30/0/10/10 build with berserker armor + divinity runes from an old set along with full celestisl trinkets. Run with a
pair of guardians who can give you 24 stacks of might and know what you are doing and easilly enemies get killed and its nice having 3500 – 4000 point ice storm blasts in ice bow.

I use this build as a measure of keeping enemies off the line in zerg fight. Other ellys and I throw sandstorm into the point whete zergs clash and alternating we use swirling winds. That helps a lot against the zergs.

Fresh Air builds have to play differently, below is a list of things to do:

1) If you are pulled and are on air, throw your knockdown skill on focus, even if you dont have it due to being on fire, you still have your greatest chance at hitting with a point blank phoenix three times, for massive damage. If your KD skill works you can hit with dragons tooth and phoenix.

2) While you are launched or disabled, as long as long as you change to air, and use your arcane skills (the one with 1500 range) you can still hit.

3) if you are targetted in the midline, you get earth skill 4 , them you can use earth skill 5 which if all its ranged projectiled, the combination of that and swirling is 13 seconds of taking no damage from any projectile, but 4 seconds invul. In fact sometimed i use invulnerabilit on earth focus 5 and fire frost bow and ice storm on myself and down depleted enemies around me.

4) As long as you know your own place in a zerg battle its works out. Also if you are in a zerg battle and are not the commander, the build works great in focusing enemies who target commanders. I remember when I was being chased by an enemy commander, I hit him with Air focus skill 5, he fell and then our zerg rolled over him on their way back.

These builds are amazing if players with you, in your group know what you are running. Thing to elly is that if your group is horrible, everyone dies….but so many elly builds are out there where under good and experienced groups, the elly becomes the backbone that holds the group together.

Other thing was, I use Elemental Attunement like 40% of the time. Only in good and experienced groups do I use it, it breaks the rhythm an elly has to attune and get the boon, which is mostly swiftness that doesnt help as much in-combat (when other classes have a much better way to grant swiftness. Staff elly swiftness actually removes all conditions hindering speed) as well as protection, which helps but not so easy to focus and target outside of certain conditions. Its an example of a trait that I absolutely loved and adored but had to learn the hard way why this perceived A+ trait is actually a C grade trait.

I’d much rather have a guardian trait five points to apply protection in virtues and use retreat to cover the group’s protection/swiftness need without ruining rhythm than have the poor elly trait 20 points in arcana post dec. 10th for a trait that at times the elly will lose their rhythm to apply the boon itself over playing the rest of the class.

I’m happy we beat out SoR. We do not think at TC that one win makes us T1 material. Its true that all servers had their ESO moment. We know to be T1 material we would on the minimum need enough guilds to be second place in T1 meaning beating out JQ at a decent rate.

We did not gain any guilds in the season. In fact we lost KH, EP and RoT which were blows to the server.

We had to pull militia together and I was commanding in EB at times against JQ and SoR. So why the doubleteam accusation when it was predictable? I know everyone has something to learn so I will share something with you.

When playing Blue in EB as we were red, you can put trebs that will hit Bravost and QL pretty easilly. However I always saw 20 – 40 SoR which my force beat and their commander trying to take down the gates with rams. Try putting in two guild trebs inside your keep. That is far more effective. 2 people and a party of five to retake a tower is far more efficient.

Now I remember being questioned by my own force and some SoR friends in my friendlist why did I not hit QL. I would never have red hit that vs capable servers because in front of QL is Blue and behind it is Green, who need it to hit Blue. Its asking to take a hard target to juxt be sandwhiched between two servers. Not a good strategy for Red to take on a smaller force.

So yes, sometimes JQ and us would let each other pass in hitting your blue keep back to back because when you lose your support towers like that, you are opening yourself up for being doubleteamed.

I liked the fights against JQ and SoR last week a lot and over the course of these weeks some militia and guilds new to WvW had stepped up and cope with the loss of three of our good guilds.

What helped TC was that we all played our hearts, rallied behind a goal that was reachable. Why did we fight for third? The answer is because we did not want to go a week viewing WvW as us getting our kitten kicked by JQ and SoR.

We chose to focus SoR since we thought we were going to come third as a measure to “picking out the winner” and we came out second in the process. We tried our hardest and still had to deal with many fights against JQ as well.

I still had fun, though the tier 1 servers ive seen are great zergfest, but who doesnt know this?

We do not have the coverage to continuously fight in tier 1 for long without eventually burning out, and we beat out tier 2 so its like we are still tier 1.5. Hardened and trained by T1, but no overall challenge in tier 2 except some of the zergball fights we see.

I wished that cultural armor wasnt earned through dropping gold. I wish it was earned from performing missions for that said nation (like accumulating rank with the nation itself or a new token) In doing so, possessing cultural armor for your character would mean you have heavily been involved with the said nation or culture, not simply throw 120g into it.

Cultural Armor is special not because of Race itself, but should be because of the devotion towards such a culture. It should not be bought, it should be earned. Buying it means even a lowly bandit thief who prided his life creating criminal acts agaisnt the said nation can steal enough money from tyrian innocents to buy his armor. How much value does it have then?

I am hispanic, born in the U.S and I know English, Spanish, Japanese and auxillaries to a dozen languages. Should I be denied to wear and represent a culture I like or support on sheer race alone?

Such a stance is pure racism. It goes against what this nation represent (as well as being human). We bring our colors from all over the world in order to share them, wear them, and represent them. A lot of Americans are loyal to the U.S but loyal to their roots as well. We are a people of two worlds.

I think people get lost in sight beyond how things truly are.

Cultural Armor should be earned, not bought! That was the first mistake. It should not be one race…I mean c’mon…..

The whole game deals with bringing races and people together for a grand war, I mean look at Divinity’s Edge…

…..and here we have this heavy fight about cultural armor.

…and it started because the developers made Racial Armor and called it “Cultural” and said “raise money and buy it.”

My main character, spends most of her time in charr and norn lands, as well as Lions Arch and the least in human areas, so why cant i go after something tied to a culture i like to be around and represent.

I rather have designs of all the cultural armors for each race, but make it hard to get it. I know this is extremely hard to do…since one will have to develop five times the skins properly UV mapped and everything.

“Hi!!! I’m a human who loves charr culture and lives around that area, but since I am not a charr, i cant get closer in any way to that culture, since it seems culture in this game is all about the race you are born as, and nothing to do with what one actually does for the said civilization.”

Ive been running a modified version of a fresh air build as a commander in and out of zerg fights and hitting tons. I play scepter/focus and have far more defensive abilities and damage than most other builds.

If I am in the middle of the line, swirling winds gets all of those projectiles away from the zerg itself (except siege shots) but it means if those outside the center of the collision fire into the zerg, for six seconds our side’s projectiles hit, while our enemy’s projectiles are taken out of the equation.

I also get earth skill 4 i can use in the midline that keeps me alive, while my earth skill 5 gives me greater defense and protection after a zerg rush. I can make my dragons tooth hit in confusion, as well as my phoenix all the way to my sandstorm and frost bow ice storms.

Way I survive getting focused is either lightning flashing to the backline or using my earth skills which grant me more staying power in a zerg and still high damage output than any of those low damage, 0/10/0/30/30 builds out there.

Sure, anyone can reply negatively to this post but bare in mind…I was commanding and taking part in open field zerg wars against JQ and SoR last week and managed to survive most of these battles, both of which are tier 1 servers.

Hell, I will go to say the following:

10 – 12 major builds so far, 9 sets of armor, several sets of weapons as an elly. I havent used 0/10/0/30/30 for months unless I am asked for it. In fact, I haven’t used evasive arcana, mistform (outside of downed state) and most of those basic traits more ellys are addicted to….for over a month….

…and Ive gotten far better playing without major dependencies.

I am curious, will the conjured weapons gain internal weapon damage on the level of ascended weapons or will they remain on their level? I am asking because when ascended armor is released, if they remain on the same level the ascended armor enemies wear will diminish the power of these weapons.

I just want TC to come in second this week, but i want JQ to finish up the week with their achievements complete. Next week will be JQ most important week! Though I am TC and love the TC server, next week you will be fighting to break BGs undefeated streak, or you never will hear the end of it!

So I will be cheering you on from T2 lines, while doing what we have to do on our end of things. You guys gotta come through for yourselves!

Actually TC was +330 – +350 at one point.

My first time commanding in EB on the side of TC came after chu went to attack borderlands. I asked if I could tag up but for some reason our server VoIP didnt register me on EB, so I commanded through all the in-game chats.

Took SM with 20 – 25 people with +5 supply buff and 5 RAMs very quickly after wall went down, then I chose to not take QL, because I knew it was attached closer to JQ territory and they really needed that tower. Instead we kept on taking Bravost with the occasional JQ/TC spat at durios. I let JQ take supply at umber without retaking the camp too soon because i knew they wanted to assault a T3 keep. We took the camp to resupply to run our assault against SoRs keep to weaken and set up blockades.

To SoR: Good defense work at your keep for the last few hours. Would have been super boring if you were phased out of the map.

To JQ: I knew you were attacking a T3 keep which is why I passed you by without engaging you. I wanted you to have your shot at it with everyone with you. Should show as a gesture since you had prepared for it before, and we were taking turns.

Thank you everyone who followed me in EB tonight. Keep the good timed rolling ^^

~Shira Rae

So much for the forum-garrison’s direct AC defense.

A few things people did forget to mention about the quality of wvw. The first is when all strategy fails, blob + brute force a bunch of alpha and omega golems during coverage weakness to win the map. You know its true. Sometimes I wonder a lot about golems.

Also, i know how crazy things get. This month and week in particular. Its thsnksgiving week in the U.S and many are trying to get to their families and dealing with many arrangements and issues. Not to mention those working black friday and beyond, and those in school.

Lets not forget the console wars have began anew and we have a lot of new games coming out as well.

I know many love WvW and like to play it and many things that were horrible happened this season. I am sure wvw players are like “I did all of this for one achievement and i get less than a temple clearing as a reward” is something we can all relate to.

However, just for this week I know there are many people out taking care of their lives and fulfilling obligations and duties. I am just glad that the league is nearing its end and there are still enough to run wvw.

That alone makes me happy.

Two servers…
IoJ for its early days.
JQ for withstanding the test of time and remaining in T1 for a year.

Worse server vote goes to FA for far too many reasons.

Hi everyone!

First a shout to [Hel] and [Hire], though a very long time ago, I still rmember our IoJ days. Tesla still around?

Secondly, I am from TC and we have not had it easier. Losing KH, RoT and EP hurt us a lot. We also had a weird position where we would be in Tier 1.5 back then, where we beat any tier 2 server and lost to any tier 1 server.

Sometimes I would pop my commander tag during losing times to do all possible to not have our spirits and morale broken, specially when its fairweathers and myself running a decent garrison defense.

The server itself, win or lose…..
We do come out and play, against the tier 1 servers. Not the entire “Oh we are going to kick everyones kitten ” attitude. More the simple fact we want to be able to just WvW, do decently and finish our achievement rewards as well.

I’ve had my fun with SoR and JQ players. Some of your roamers arent bad at all. Ive been running a modified fresh-air build in there and have enjoyed the gameplay lately. Lots of stuff I’ve learned fighting against the tier 1 servers in these past weeks, so its been nice.

But yes we know at times we get our kitten kicked, but we take our wins as well, since going against tier 1 servers and still playing while being reminded we cant win the coverage war is disheartening, and we just want to retain our smiles and log for the next session as happy gamers.

cheers

I do command at times for TC on the Borderlands and I don’t go after trying to get 50+ people. In fact I recognize humility and can adjust strategy as well. So far my favorite so far in the last 24 hours was when it was early in the morning after seeing many SoS players in mag BL in their lake tower do a defense while I wasn’t commanding, I went to our home BL to find everything except garrison taken by SoS. I popped my commander tag with another commander and later on became the only commander remaining.

I did not have giant zergs of people to retake the map but we made due with what we had and eventually we did lose more people, but my favorite was when SoS broke the bay wall and tried to use those catas to break the inner wall. I had destroyed those catas with the treb I set up for defense and SoS was smart enough to not attack directly inward.

Then when we did that run between vale and bay which started with us on the losing end, then I changed our strategy from direct based to more siege based and of course you did too. I recognize how difficult a vale defense can be and though we managed to break through and retake our camp, you played a kitten of a good game in your camp defense. I rather enjoyed it…specially when we thought the very same thought and used the door on both sides as making a choke point.

I also liked retaking our briar. I knew you would be in there and at first after breaching you were stealthed to hide your actual numbers, came out and at first you were winning then still being below the stairs on the inside, I told everyone to start targeting side siege from below while resurrecting players. Eventually we made it up, fought the tower lord and held position while fighting your remaining outside….we prioritized taking the tower, then pulled you in so the tower lord can help finish you.

You might had lost against us, but I actually really loved that defense of the camp and tower. It was a good shot. You didn’t let us roll over you and I had fun. It wasn’t a pure brute-force command and I truly loved it.

This is what I mean by humility. Recognition of good fights and plays as we are all gamers becoming each other’s entertainment, despite who wins and loses. I also loved your sneaky ram spot on garrison.

Mag and SoS…

I know its your shakedown week. Good job on making it to tier 2 and the gold league. You are brave to want to get better because eventually we will fight against the tier 1 servers and that will become our ultimate test of endurance.

Its bravery to fight so hard to reach tier 2 knowing the kind of competitiveness we will get when tier 1 and tier 2 servers are mixed up on these gold league battles.

I’ve realized that golems are used excessively to turn a defining battle into a quicker one. Constantly I see the common “Take out oil” and demolish with a 50 man zerg protecting them and rushing with 20 golems an entire borderland.

It would be nice if each week we were given a bonus and a restriction as ways of keeping WvW interesting. Something that changes the gameplay, specially in the leagues that would show servers the ability to adapt.

Just once, for one week I would love to see a restriction were golems of all classes are not allowed and more defense and grunt work is needed to maintain or capture a keep.

How about a week where we get double the guard respawn rate? Or perhaps maybe a week where gates and walls regenerate but players cant use supply on walls or gates and the supply comes slower, only used for siege…

The possibilities for variable gameplay seem promising if programmed right and it will throw something interesting…

It would be like a Living World version for WvW players…

I like great sword and rifle…

But on the wilder side of things……

I rather have a claw or how about a whip? I loved how lightning whip looked in daggers that it begs to ask if a whip weapon would do things like pulling, or be more short ranged control damage based.

Then add a few twirls to it and elemental animation and that would be nice….whip on the main hand, claw on the offhand.

The way I would improve WvW is to do the following:

1) replace the bloodlust with something fair. I’ve been on both sides…max bloodlust to no bloodlust and I can’t see a fair fight on even numbers work on this system.

2) Take the 24 NA servers and map WvW to six servers per round.
1st and 6th server gets mapped to Green
2nd and 5th server gets mapped to Blue
3rd and 4th server gets mapped to Red
Name them Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum.

Servers will move up and down the divisions taking spots, and transfers will fuel two servers as opposed to one. This also encourages servers to retain their populations and makes stacking a lot tougher.

In other words, the divisions stay static while the servers themselves move up and down the division ranking list…so a server in one week may be bronze status and another week might be silver status.

3) Have scoring redefined in the following ways:

~Regular score remains for cumulative addition of WvW bonuses of each server.
~Victory is based on competing in four time zones and is handled in the following way:

A) Every six hours the score resets and its added to a total cumulative score. 6 hours meaning 24 tallies for each zone. If not four zones, then do three zones of eight hours. Zones are North American, European, Asian, and Oceanic time slots.

B) After each tally occurs, Victory or Match points are awarded to the server that is leading for that zone. 1 point for third place, 2 points for second place, 3 points for third place.

C) A record is kept in the match panel of such progression on a daily basis…

The idea behind this is to spread WvW into its 24 hour cycle with players having responsibility for their time blocks and zones. In short in this way players in each zone can truly feel accomplishment, victory and defeat based on performance and they will truly know how it all went down.

The other reason for doing this is because of my love of the different zones. Its nice entering during oceanic times or European times and helping groups. I know I am out of my zone, but its nice to meet people from other nations and adopt that kind of gameplay, and it’s very nice that each zone can have their own encapsulated battle in the grand scheme of things.

It will also encourage all the servers to recruit and try to divide their forces into each zone as well. ….and most WvW players who have been in the game for a long time know the importance of each zone….this also encourages defense.

When I was in IoJ many months ago, we would prepare keeps and towers to be turned over to the next time slot and it worked well. I felt it was honorific because we were not screwing over those who took over for us later in the night and we were giving those in the next time zone the means to open up on good standing.

D) My last entry for improvement in WvW is server points. If a player does not generate at least 10 WXP from being killed by another, then the server that kills him gains points. This punishes the zergs that get wiped, come back just to get wiped again and generate less than 200 points as a zerg when killed by a defending group.

Why not break up the servers the following way?

TIer 8 (lowest rating servers) : Bronze Division

Reason: The lowest server is not going anywhere and breaking to another tier means being decimated by everything and everyone.

Tier 7, 6 and 5: Silver Division

Tier 4, 3 and 2: Gold Division

Tier 1: Platinum Division

Reason: A lot of guilds in the #5 and #6 Tier 2 servers have transferred already to Tier 1 in order to be with the stacked, winning servers. I know this as I play on TC (#4) and the score has Dragonbrand being beaten by SoS (who is actually a tier below them) and by TC as well. So its going to be Two Mothballed Servers and the current top six is really the top 4, where Tier 2 has no chance to win out against the overstacked tier 1 servers….

This is either that players do not want to play WvW or that simply put, a lot of guilds transferred to Tier 1 in order to call themselves “Winners”

Point is that all that this WvW Season 1 is actually doing is centralizing the WvW population to very few servers. Of course having a WvW event isn’t a bad thing.

I’ve said this in many posts, as long as WvW doesn’t have a PvE-check of some kind, Servers are doomed to lose their guilds to the top three. If not with a PvE check, at least some other mechanism has to exist in order to allow the servers to balance out as right now there really are only a handful of servers that are considered to be good at WvW and properly set up to have good weekly runs without feeling empty.

I wanted to say thanks, as the response has been decent. We are still recruiting. Meeting new people is always nice out there. Thanks for contacting me. Keep ’em coming.

I’ve been using staff most of the time running full celestial and 10/10/5/15/30 and it has been great specially in a WvW. Only thing is that its a support build but once you make use of might from guardians the build becomes a triple threat for support.

Condition Damage runes and condition damage and duration food along with bloodlust sigil is nice. Staff uses geomancy.

I’m glad we might be getting buffs. Also, I love the Conjured weapons…I use them all the time.

Like I said before….

If you truly want to de stack a tier 1 server we should look at the core problem. Tier 1 is composed of WvW centered populations while PvE and everything else loses quality, and they all know that…..

They all know they are destabilizing PvE and are happy and don’t care…

So simply connect PvE to WvW in a way, which measures the PvE activities on a weekly basis to buff WvW just like WvW buffs PvE on a weekly basis….

…and all of these problems, start going away as stacked WvW servers now have to think of population and this entire concept of mothballing an entire server population to do well in WvW ends…

I’m in TC and are population is balanced, we can win in tier 2 but can’t score second place in a WvW match since any guild that feels they are losers and unhappy in WvW will simply stack a tier 1 server.

…and yes, its true,

There are tier 2 guilds transferring to tier 1 because they want to be on a winning server for the best league rewards.

I will be happy once guild wars 2 reaches the level of fair play that guild wars 1 was along with the build complexity the game had. It’s going to be funny when every single tier 1 server carries the most points ands the developers see that the idea of evenly matching WvW servers in this game has failed.

Hello everyone!

Twilight Daze is a Tarnished Coast PvX guild. Our main site just came up at www.twilightdaze.com. The guild has existed for quite some time across servers but we have settled on Tarnished Coast.

Our internal focus deals more with Inclusion rather than ‘Exclusion and Competition’. I wish to allow players who actively work a lot in the real world a chance to play this game. I also desire to keep the guild small (between 75 – 100 members) and focused on daytime play in order to not have members lose any sleep (which is important for operating in the real world.)

We allow players to represent bank and utility guilds but hope we can be their main PvX guild.

Rather then be extremely competitive, we keep to ourselves and just take everything one day at a time. We look more for people that we can get to know and are not afraid to ask for help and to develop a relationship with those in the guild. The guild is far more centered on its members than the guild as an entity. Its planned max size is there so we can get used to playing with each other and become familiar with one another.

This guild was created due to my bad experiences in guilds in online games, as well as my experience growing up. Growing up, I had to deal with exclusion classrooms and had to overcome the most severe form of ADHD. I saw how people were treated and how even today, regardless of the progress made, people still remember the horrors of the past.

I understand what it is, what it means to be picked on, bullied, judged for being different and what it also means to play a game with people one can count on, get to know and return to, knowing they can be friendly without looking down on you.

Minimum Requirements are as follows:

~You must be a Tarnished Coast player if you wish to WvW with us.

~If you are strictly a PvE player and are very good and patient at running dungeons and Fractals and are developed, you may come from any of the servers provided you are willing to guest for guild missions.

~If you are a new player and without a guild, I wish for you to be a Tarnished Coast player. Each server has new players and its nice if those players could join guilds in their established servers. You can get to know your crowd in that way.

We like to do a little of everything but we live a lot for running dungeons as that has become the most popular activity within the guild. We are also planning some guild events for Halloween too. :P

If you wish to apply,
My in-game name is Shira Rae

You may also mail me in-game or email me at shirarae@twilightdaze.com

Thank you all for reading. Happy Gaming!

Alaric, we have had our past. hi, its Shira!!

However, I was always far more loyal to IoJ than FA itself. Glad to see you on that server again. I don’t mind guesting to say hello, but while I don’t run a pure WvW oriented guild (as I prefer doing everything out there) on Tarnished Coast, we do play and I still work with militia a lot.

I know that IoJ needs a lot of help and experience to recover and I wish the server the greatest of luck in that road.

Not to be rude, but how the hell do you determine GvG rank when a formal GvG system does not really exist? Do you have a site or a GvG league or something?

It feels kind of strange because usually when we encounter you from Tarnished Coast, usually militia commanders wipe you off the map. Not being rude as this is a recruitment thread, I am just curious as where this entire “GvG rank declaration comes from”

Not just from this thread but the sheer number of guilds declaring their GvG rank without a single lookup anywhere…….

I don’t know what is worse. Us in TC dominating everything in Tier 2, or being destroyed in Tier 1. I, personally believe that the experience in fighting the Tier 1 servers is nice, although there are many fairweathers that have not played, I love the matching when the server numbers are even.

Those encounters are pretty nice…

The only sadness I get is when two groups of equal numbers and equal skill encounter each other and find the difference between winning and losing is in the side that has more bloodlust buffs than the other.

I love this new dungeon.

Our guild ran this dungeon for the first time and after learning it and figuring it out we really loved it. As far as graphics, its like Unreal Tournament meets Doom and Phantasy star.

The trick to beating this dungeon is similar to other dungeons, know your build and classes…..use VoIP communication and apply some teamwork.

We beat this dungeon and enjoyed the content.

I know it sounds very strange…as I’ve played WvW for a long and a topic like this will be shot down in a million different ways, but I feel I should be posting this because it has bugged me for a very long time.

How come there is a WvW bonus that applies itself to the whole server (mostly PvE) but there is no PvE bonus accumulated by PvE players which apply to WvW players? Before you all slam me down into oblivion, think about that for a second and why I make a mention to this.

When there is no PvE integration into WvW, it makes it so that WvW-Oriented Servers exist. Servers who have power simply because more and more players WvW in a 24-hour period. A server that can abandon its PvE completely just to remain in the top three.

What is more is that those servers get their PvE experience by actually guesting in other servers. For example. I am a Tarnished Coast player and more frequently I run in small guids. I try to support them a bit and they tell me that its usually five or ten of their friends in BG, SoR or JQ (Yes, I’ve seen all three so far) guesting on Tarnished Coast for its PvE experience.

I’m not saying meeting players from other server are bad, but I feel the PvE population gets mothballed a bit in the scheme of it. More and More WvW oriented guilds stack up a server to retain them in the top three at the cost of a worse PvE experience.

So I’ve always wondered….
What if there was a PvE buff that affected WvW itself in a certain way? Much like in the way of saying “You can’t have an Army without a Nation, and each server is a World, and without a healthy world, one cant really have that healthy of an army” in attitude.

In short, something that would force WvW and PvE players to depend on each other, to end the bickering that comes across the two populations that at times puts them on opposite ends of the stick.

I don’t like the idea that Exclusion is made and its done so in a way to make it look like PvE depends on the WvW to get their bonuses. I rather see Inclusion be reached by having PvE players do something to help WvW players (Outside of the obvious, join WvW)

I find this would force WvW populations to depend on their PvE populations to achieve things instead of simply electing to all join in a few servers that are majority WvW populations where they can freely throw everything else away.

Due to my fear of developers releasing a patch after all ascended gear is completely released to scale monsters to the level of ascended gear, thereby making ascended damage the new exotic damage, I have an idea…

A hard mode which works in the following way.

1) A party chooses a difficulty mode from the party screen itself.
2) Based on the party difficulty mode, events have different requirements or restrictions affecting the entire party, as well as more rewards…like better drop rates, more gold and exp etc….special items.
3) The enemies can appear to the party itself as higher levels like level 84 – 85 and higher grades as well, where these enemies only target the parties in Hard Mode and can not hurt players in normal mode and normal mode players can not hurt hard mode enemies.
4) both, the normal mode event and hard mode event runs at the same time. This means players share the same event and can fail or succeed the event without the two groups of monsters getting in each other’s ways.
5) in order to ensure that players do not cheat from changing the party mode, one of two things can be done…force the party mode on players in cities before heading out to the maps, or lock the slider when in an event and if a party leaves the event, the difficulty slider has a cool down time.

Thanks to varying difficulty, this can guarantee that all zones have a high replay value and that everyone does not have to be stuck in the level 80 zones forever…

I was in IoJ a very long time ago. I have many memories of the server being a decent home for a long time. The server had a lot of oceanic guilds and was struggling in NA time slot but even so the guilds became tightly close and familiar with one another.

Eventually IoJ became a server with a tier 3 population which made it into tier one. I was one of the players who went to IoJ when they needed more NA guild and eventually started Twilight Daze there as a small guild running five man parties.

I enjoyed the server and when we finally got to tier 1 so many players left WvW and entered the Halloween event, forgetting that we earned our tier 1 spot. We held our own for three to four days in tier 1. Once guilds saw we were not serious as a WvW server, they left to other servers. This started a downward spiral.

Towards the very end, paid server transfers were coming and before falling into tier four, around 12 WvW guilds transferred to FA including my own. However, it wasn’t what it was meant to be..

…while I felt happy for a while, I saw the IoJ spirit fall apart. There were different mentalities and attitudes to deal with on FA and the IoJ guilds offered a lot of help to the FA guilds but I saw the FA top guilds and opinions dominate a lot of attempts to move forward. While FA grew stronger, the combination of FA and IoJ guilds and their gameplay never allowed them to legitimately achieve what IoJ managed to achieve alone, to enter into tier 1 and fight a match at that level legitimately and not by random deviation matching at WvW is.

IoJ earned its tier 1 match and I enjoyed every second of it, along with the long nights and months of WvWing and getting to know many there. However it was due to the FA attitude that some former IoJ guilds left FA and went to other servers.

I still feel today that I am one of the few who even as TC player still retained the early, friendly IoJ spirit that I learned in that server. I feel a lot who exist on FA from that server lost their spirit that today its like if those players have become different people.

I would give a lot to see IoJ recover itself, get a handful of new guilds, recover their old guilds as well in an “Enough is Enough” message and knock FA out of the water. I found my home in Tarnished Coast but I would start a second account and pitch in my own way if anyone spearheaded (myself included) a recovery of that server.

It was great while it was good before its full decline into the ground. Next to Tarnished Coast, it was my favorite server, while I can say that out of eight servers I’ve spent time in, FA was by far the worse server experience of my life….both times I was there.

Celestial is my favorite armor set as an elly so far.

Due to Legendary Weapons gaining an offensive infusion slot, does this mean ascended weapons will allow for players to use sigils and infusion slots at the same time? Or is it one or another.

Secondly, What about Exotic Celestial Gear?

I am a player who spent so far 45 – 50 days gathering rare crystals to craft a full Celestial Armor set and three celestial weapons so far. Due to the fact its one crystal per day, will there be a way to convert later the exotic celestial gear into ascended gear?

I ask this because other armors do not have the one material per day limitation that celestial has.

In other notes, I would like to say that Celestial has become my favorite on an Elementalist for the role I play. Thank you so much for including that in there.

Another bug I find:

Rune of the Undead on Elementalist:

As a test I put in five points on Earth. This means the elly gains 50 points by default and +80 points for being Level 80. However the #6 on Rune of the Undead does not work with this, but the other classes in the game get benefit from their own stacking skills in their trait lines.

This means using the #2 scepter skill on Earth does not work, neither does the stat bonus outside the original 50 points. I could be wrong if its a tooltip error on the Hero Panel, but I am just trying to get the condition damage I should have.

So yes…I get the Condition Damage total for the +50 (5 points in Earth) but I don’t get the increase from Scepter Skill #2 or the actual +80 points from attuning to Earth. The skill and trait line fails.

Sorry to bother everyone here.
Just a question to ask.

How come Evasive Arcana reads that on dodge roll will run a Churning Earth, but when I hit enemies the damage log reads the attack as “Shockwave” in the combat log and it only does a single stack of bleeding and applies cripple with the animation of Churning Earth?

The original skill applies 8 stacks of bleeding so its not a tooltip error.

My second question is:

Is it the intention of the developers to have the Evasive Arcana version apply less stacks of bleeding for gameplay balance? Specially when a dodge roll gives 1 bleeding stack while primary attack on Scepter and underwater weapon apply three stacks? Doesn’t make sense to me…

I am well versed in Comp Science, Mathematics and Music and we can talk about scenarios. So this isn’t a “you suck and should go home” post….but more of a supporting one since [math] is your heading.

An idea for a solution is to reprogram the random number generator in determining random target selection in the form of a priority or deviation number (programmers like to call it weight.) An example would be to give all siege a deviation or priority number of .5 or 1.0, then have an algorithm to apply the random number that comes out to make siege engines easier to hit.

Basically when an AoE skill is used, have the target detection occur. Example…Cast Meteor Shower and in the casting the system receives data per tick saying the following:

“Are there more than five targets? How many of them are siege engines? Do we need the modifier?” Remember, the modifier is taken from the class itself, so each siege engine has its own modifier.

The weight or deviation of the target (like player characters will have a deviation/weight of 0 so that targeting does remain random [at least random enough to not guess where it goes]) However, Siege through its deviation of .5 or 1.0 will become easier to hit from AoE damage.

This is my solution to solve the problem of commanders (like myself) who call for 10 – 15 players to stack around siege knowing full well that the siege will be protected since more targets around an AoE = less chances for a siege engine to receive damage.

I find that siege engines should be easier to hit because of their size, sensitivity and power. If a siege engine has no target cap, then targeting such large and more sensitive structures should be easier to hit.

In programming it this way, one doesn’t have to increase the target cap or the AoE damage itself since the damage is being concentrated to where its needed most.

I went through fractals and loved it, ran through WvW and spent around 2000 hours in this game across plenty of servers. The fact remains that on one side players are told that this game has no grind, when it does….

A player who only runs WvW and only that requires 750 BoH, 150 laurels and 100 ectos for ascended equipment.

This kind if play actually goes against the way guild wars 1 was played in the following way:

In guild wars 1 I made a scrapbook of over many Elementalist builds I got to work and were functional and did good in the different PvP and PvE offerings. Thanks to the way PvP worked I was able to test a lot of things.

GW2 is highly punishing to player characters in the sense one is encouraged to play one build and stick with it through obtaining ascended and exotics. If I want to change my build to a completely new one, I have to buy a complete set of new equipment. Full weapons, armors, trinkets and restat. I might as well roll a new character of the same type and go with it or deal with the inventory space required to have multiple sets of equipment.

Seriously, its not an exaggeration. I have many sets of armor and several sets of weapoms on Elementalist just to make different builds work. If you love a class, every good player has some sets….

In another mmorpg I play to keep myself from burning out in playing guild wars 2 I ran an instance with a full party and I got a high level rare weapon drop, then I raised it to +6. A friend told me it took him a few days of running instances when it took me two hours. I do not have to hunt for any weapon of the same class anymore because I have a top weapon.

My point is that GW2 has had more grind in obtaining equipment for multiple builds than almost any other game that I own that I play. I have to use my inventory space and storage space to carry around 18 pieces of armor and 10 – 15 weapons, and that is just being an Elementalist to run my build. That to me is just clutter…

While I like that WvW has been getting some attention, I do not like the fact that wether it takes five minutes or five hours to get that shiny laurel, that it still is grinding and counting down the days for equipment and I feel I have to put in time to play like others tell me to play, rather than actually play a game to explore and have fun.

I literally have to make it a ritual to launch the game, run my daily first and sometimes I remember I had to enter and run my daily and log out because I had little time to play and had to tell friends that after the daily I was logging. I did not wish to say that, but the laurels force me to chose wether I want to accumulate them or play with my friends at times and that to me is a failed system.

I play four games and when I only have ten to twenty minutes to play with a friend, I can not count on guild wars 2 since that means choosing the laurels first and my friends second. While twenty minutes is enough to finish most dailies, I like being able to log in, and just go without having to be burdened that no daily equals no laurel…which is why other games I just pick up my weapons and just go without worry.

This worries me a lot because if this means when ascended weapons and armor are released I’m going to have to grind for the sets for my Elly to use on her build and the WvW costs for trinkets are high, I can only imagine the kind of grind it would take to obtain full ascended gear per character….

…and I fear when that happens, gw2 will be about each player having one character, with one major build and full pricy equipment. All I can thank gw2 for is being easy to cap level, opposed to the other three games that I play, but the grind to obtain sets of equipment for all the builds I want to run in gw2 makes weapon and equipment gathering much tougher than the other three games that I play and even more of a grind.

The major problem with this game is that its about finding what to do and it becomes boring pretty fast. Only reason I play is because of the people I’ve met, guild I run and helping others….but its extremely boring.

Explained Below:

The manifesto claimed that the game story was all about you. “This is your story” is heard at the beginning of character creation. Problem is that only the first chapter is really your story while any player joins one of the three factions later. Just so that towards the end of the story-mode your character is subjected to a Sylvari general who becomes the main character, while your character becomes the lackey of a side-kick.

Its no longer about your character’s story as much as making a general great and when the final enemy is killed, it doesn’t feel like the end of a struggle or conflict at all.

If a player runs PvP, they get nothing to further advance their character in PVE and once a player gets those skins for their character through dungeon running, there really isn’t much more in the way of upgrading for a look. Sure, one can play WvW but rather than be rewarded for winning at the end of the week, a new match starts with all servers losing all their bonuses and having everything reset.

Furthermore, a grind now exists for Ascended Equipment in the form of the daily laurels. Combine that with Guild Missions and the fact that so many builds have been affected in so many ways that players are locked into several builds that are very predictable and using builds outside of the norm becomes risky (most of the time, there are some amazing risky builds out there). WvW just introduced a grind to level several abilities that are character-bound.

The more I play Guild Wars 2, the more guild wars 2 goes from being a game about you, the character…and making your build work and playing the game the way you wish to play, to being a game where you play the way that developers want you to play.

Check out the Irony:

Guild Wars 1 was a PvP based game and it was all about you, the character finding builds and experiment from 100s of skills and using PvE to learn how to PvP and was more PvP focused and oriented.

Guild Wars 2 is PvE oriented, and while it advertises that its all about “YOU, and YOUR character”, there are so few skills that more “Racial Elites” exist than “Profession Based” elites and each new patch makes the game less and less about you.

I still like the Art Style of the game and I am hoping after the 1 year mark a lot of stuff is fixed in this game…Specially how Crafting outside of gaining levels is utterly useless (and I have them all at 400)..

Anyhow, that is my take on this game.

I love groups of five out there, and I would like to meet many who like running groups of five from the three Tier 2 servers. I don’t mind rolling with the zerg to work on other elements of the game, but deep down my heart lies in parties. I rather be defeated knowing that I gave my all to support the party, rather than die in a zerg battle that goes south.

I love the independence of knowing we can live outside of the zerg and help the zerg across the map, handle ourselves, assess the situation, chat it up in the VoIP and really trust each other and put faith in each other to live. I play support in mine so, once in a while i go to the dueling spot, not to win…..but to see how I can get better at surviving a battle when 1 or 2 players focus-fire me as I play a support-build.

IRSyKo.5843:

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

Kingzook.1620:

Shrouded.6450:

Don’t worry “Fort Jaspenwood”. ;3 Besides, don’t you want to see your old CD buddies? It’s like an IOJ/FA/CD reunion back in T3.

i was thinking more along the good old TC/CD/FA match ups which TC won but 100k points….. what i don’t get is why after saying they love this tier and match up so much, they are trying for tier 1 which pretty much broken the mighty Blackgate after 3 weeks, including 1 win, due to it toxic nature

Does TC really want to test itself on its ability to survive that?

I don’t think most of TC is interested in “pushing for T1” – what we are interested in is not having to play 12-16 hour shifts to make up for gaping Coverage gaps.

We’ve been looking for EU/Oceanic/SEA Guilds that would be a good match for our culture for over 6 months now, and we feel both excited and fortunate that it looks like we have found some.

I and many others on TC still hope that quality, classy NA Guilds will consider Kaineng to help shore up their coverage gaps too.

I can’t believe you guys would have tons and tons of people who play for 12-16 hours. People have careers and kids, I can’t think of a single FA player on my friends list who does anything like that. I played 12-16 hours for a week and got so sick and burnt out of the quit I stopped playing for weeks.

I have a suggestion, don’t do that. Go outside, spend time with your family/friends.

It’s a dangerous game this coverage game, it’s a black hole that can never be filled.

I came straight from FA and a lot of the hardcore players there would spend anywhere from 6 – 12 hours playing every night. You insult the guilds you have received from other servers, specially IoJ and SBI who would play 6 – 12 hours+ a day in an Ironman defense/offense lineup.

The IoJ guilds that played would do so for 6 – 12+ hours while in IoJ to make up for a lack of manpower. While there, we got to know each other from the very long hours we played together that we talked about anything and everything. IoJ moved together (most guilds) to not lose that contact. When IoJ guilds transferred to FA, they were happy they no longer had to run double-session lengths to be able to retain their points.

Of course, there were people who were willing to play 12 – 16 hours on FA itself between a strong time zone and a weaker time zone to pick up the pieces.

Don’t insult them or dismiss them by saying that your server does not do that. If you really really care that much about eliminating that kind of behavior, then try to solve the problems within your server and focus on your server.

Simple as that…

This has to do with the current WvW matchup…

@FA

Please do not message me in-game claiming that my members are TC spies.

We have decided the guild will have an FA section and a TC section. The time has come to put this bickering aside as the TC section is more WvW oriented while the FA section is more Roleplaying/Story Oriented (with some WvW players).

In short, the sections are the opposite of the “declarations” of what each server represents. I was not going to ask those members in our FA side to leave, as we have been together for a long time and we know each other by real name and we are people first.

We aren’t letting our choice of servers tear us apart!

I don’t care who started the squabbles between both servers, but I am going to use the guild as a symbol to bridge the gap between servers and we will be doing WvW events as well as projects.

We have very strict rules as to how WvW communication can be used. Outside of Party Chat (if a party made of members of both sections exist), no information can be relayed about the status of position movements and commanders. Information can not leave the party chat. A mixed party will have its own private room on our raidcall room. Such information can not leave the room.

This is to keep the match fair.
I will not win at WvW using what I morally define as cheating in a video game.

I find both servers really need a guild like this…and as I’ve lived on Kaineng, FA and now TC…I should eventually know the three servers pretty well.

Lots to reply here:

@Evalana: “You’ve been more polite and diplomatic here, than in-game or in your forums. Thank you.”

@Gao Gao: “Irrelevant, as it pertains to an element in psychology that is under heavy dispute and maintains an extreme degree of scrutiny.”

@Beachead: "I am happy my timely death amused your teamspeak channel so well. I aim to please! Amazing how I brought laughter to that utter depressing and gloomy channel. Also, just because I did not conform to your server mentality does not mean I did not question it, nor understood it. I don’t need to down a gallon of bleach to know it will kill me.

@Shera: “I like your post a lot. Glad we have met in-game. You already know of my project”

Match up has been fun so far.
Keep it up everyone. :P

Been a good start to a match up so far….

First thing is first!

Kaineng, you were my first home…Where I started. Thanks for catching up and not giving everyone else a heart attack. I like the integrity of Tier 2 to stay intact with three servers that can kill each other in a three way. So yeah, I would like to see RISE, WM and the guilds I’ve seen in KN fight! Please stick together and if you feel like burnout is coming, just take a break and organize. I do like fighting against you and am glad my first home, although changed is doing ok.

FA, you were my fifth home and quite a deceptive one at that. The more you spoke against TC, the more I wanted to see just how “Evil” TC was. It turned out that they have been so far the friendliest server I’ve come across this game. Not once did I ever see a TC player holding a banner saying “Kill All FA, they slaughtered our Yak Parade” and we did not receive a “Oh you’re FA, we don’t want you here” mentality upon joining…

You speak of maturity, yet you (FA) have involved others in your squabbles (the IoJ transfers into FA, along with anyone else…) acting like everyone should consider TC to be the fourth Reich, while considering anything that top FA guilds state as the Holy Grail and Truth…..

Ah and to those who still have some respect for me in FA:

“Thank you for everything. It was fun and it would be nice to see you in the battlefield as opponents, then we can whisper-chat about it. I’d like to see some of you at the kaineng dueling spot too. You were not evil, but my only tiny complaint is that while you told me the large guilds are eating FA out of their integrity, you didn’t do anything about it either. You represented FA on the battlefield, but let everything else get consumed. Never forget that your home is FA and if you can’t make it a better place, it is doomed to a miserable experience for others.

For better or for worse, I enjoyed running with Purple Dragons, Deep Penetrations, Armored Fist and Primordial Dragons (when they lived), as well as the many many small guilds we met on the field. FLOT was one of my favorites.

I hope to see you on the battlefield as my best friends followed the shooter mentality of killing each other and then talking about the great kills and fights we made against each other, all night long.

@TC, my new home….

You have been really friendly so far. I hope it lasts and I hope I can help. I’ve gone through life with many throwing friendly fronts at me that it takes time for me to trust others. I really like what I see in the server and I have not seen friendliness and kindness at that level in a really really really long time throughout this game.

While some FA guilds were kind in some time zones, there is a more unified kindness/friendliness pouring out of TC that makes things fun and more interesting.

To those at Kaineng….
Keep on playing and stay together…

To those at FA
Speak up and be heard. You deserve to be treated a lot better than you are being treated now. I hope we can kill each other and then chat about it.

To those at TC

Thank you for the warm welcome and everything so far.

~Shira Rae

Reminds me of the music video for hard rock hallelujah by lordi.

I play on the side of FA and can appreciate if I lose something to a good strategy. The thing to the tier is that we are closer to actually playing the game as intended across the three servers. This reveals the actual flaws and frustrations behind the system itself.

Factor out the orbs themselves as those were part of the system but taken out of the game long ago for the sake of consistency and awareness of existence and we can talk about what we have left.

In a decently ran universe, a borderland is going to be attacked from two sides simultaneously. It will 100 vs 100 vs 100 if that is the map cap and it created the intention. Defenders fighting a war on two fronts, predisposed that when the enemy enters the map, that each place or location is fortified to add up to the map siege limit.

The system encourages defense and line-playing.

The defenders would have to divide up evenly to fight smaller, 50 vs 100 numbers, always as each side would be evenly contested. The fifty defenders only having a chance due to the advantage of prebuilt siege to make up for a lack of numbers.

This encourages enemy zerging and region-assault style of playing.

Problem is that in history of military tactics and warfare, no defensive force has even won a war on two fronts, but they have been able to hold against larger, more offensively organized populations. Just not enough to retain everything…

I don’t think the siege limit on the map allows the full defense and sieging of all locations on a map well enough to defend against the many zergs or the people to make it happen in this situation.

The siege limit would be reached before one can place all the superior siege on all the walls outer and inner and all sides of the keeps as well as towers, camps and even blockades…

So I do believe the intention would be that all areas in a BL would be fully sieged and at max upgrade status to receive two full enemy groups at map cap. The trade off would be defenders would get a lot of loot bags while offensive players would take locations if played right to reset upgrades and the game is over when defenders lose their northern side along with garrison.

It would be nice to set up an event where one map is at map cap from all three sides, the BL is fully sieged, fully upgraded and ready to go, and we could take turns playing invaders or defenders in a more structured environment to see what the true limits of WvW are…..and how viable the system truly is.

We all know that zerg vs enemy tower without siege and filled with paper walls and gates is usually one dead tower.

But it would be curiosity, as these three servers are borderline close to playing as a tier the game as it is intended…just need more guilds, players and smart saying for it to make it happen…then we can truly see how much fun the endgame to WvW truly is