Guild Wars 2

Undo.5091:

I haven’t looked at flamethrower all too much yet in game, but my understanding was that they decreased the direct damage, not increased. That forces it out of the hybrid and towards conditions.

Yup. You’re right. I don’t know how i misread the notes like 4 times. This makes no sense to me. It’s nice that the FT got some love, but I feel… confused about what they did here. Was FT being used too much for physical damage? I just… what?

Foefaller.1082:

On #10, I wonder what your definition of “Reasonable Build” is.

I actually use a Sinister build instead of Vipers. It’s not technically the most optimized build, but it gets you close enough that it’ll do for anything. I’ve lost a somewhat decent chunk of Condi Damage because of it (not enough for it to be a huge deal, but it still rubs me the wrong way). Additionally, you’ll get a 150 Precision boost from Rangers (more than likely), so you’re losing a bit from that as well.

Ultimately, my point was that I think the stat gain should be a bit higher since Condi Damage isn’t as useful as Precision, Power, or Ferocity. Not everyone will benefit from it, so it’s not as good as the other aura boosts.

What wasn’t changed:

• Med Kit. Oh lord, Med Kit. Another balance patch and yet again, no change to Med Kit. The numbers are theoretically there, but the difficulty of using it and the loss of a player’s DPS while using it just makes Med Kit a complete joke. Literally the only use is in a Static Shock build for the F1 ability.
• Turrets. Turrets need love. While not as kittenhredder Gyro, they’re still pretty far down there (except healing turret). For most of them, their use is outweighed by “losing” a utility slot for something better.
• Gadgets feel like they’re on the cusp of usability, but for the most part, anything they do, you can get with something else better. Blast Gyro makes Battering Ram look like a joke, Utility Goggles isn’t as flexible as either Elixir B or Elixir U, Rocket Boots is just out-matched by the hammer’s #3 (though the tool belt skill is respectable), etc.
• Shield. I bet most of you forgot that Engineer can even equip a shield. I know I did. This weapon is so intensely over-shadowed by the Hammer, I honestly cannot think of a reason why you would want to equip it.
• General Trait balancing. Things are certainly better after this patch, but there are still a number of lines where I feel there is only one choice (and sometimes not even that). For instance, if I want to use Elixirs in an offensive build, I either have to choose a dead trait (unless I’m using elixir gun), remove myself from combat for 4 seconds when I hit 25% health, or have a worse regeneration on me when I’m using a kit. Tuning some traits up and maybe even tuning others down would certainly diversify builds.

If you made it through this tremendous wall of text, wow! Thanks a bunch for reading all of this. If you didn’t…
TL:DR; Engie got some nice changes, some confusing ones, and still needs a lot of work.
Either way, feel free to share how you feel on these changes.

My thoughts on the changes:

1. The rifle change is a far cry from making Engie-Rifle playable in any sort of format. Very oddly, the condition damage on the skill (at close range) increased about 56%. This makes almost no sense to me since the rifle hasn’t any other condition capability, so you’ll never use it for the condition damage (although the longer bleeding duration does synergize with Hematic Focus.) However, the rifle still pales in comparison to Scrapper’s hammer. If you are doing physical damage at close range (where the Rifle is at full effectiveness), you really should just go Hammer. If you’re doing long range physical, you run a kit.
2. A 33% increase to condition damage for Fragmentation Shot. If you’re playing Condi Engie, you should not be auto-attacking with your pistol (especially after some of the nice Condi buffs in this patch).
3. Uhm… wh-…what? Why did Blowtorch get buffed? Blowtorch was the skill you wanted to use as much as possible and they buffed it by 33%? I won’t complain, but I am confused.
4. Both buffs to Elixir U are very nice. With HGH, you can get a cooldown of 32 seconds on both the drink and wall. The buffs provided aren’t particularly amazing, but nice none the less. However, the wall can be a great defensive option; 12 seconds of negating projectiles for 12 seconds every 40 seconds is nothing to sneeze at.
5. The “buffs” to Shredder Gyro are an absolute joke. At level 80, the Gyro does approximately 1k damage every second. This sounds pretty decent, until you realize a) the average DPS drops to about 300 when you take cooldown into effect, b) not all of the hits may actually land if the target moves/kills the Gyro, c) the utility provides very little functionality beyond the damage, and d) the Gyro DOES NOT SCALE WITH YOUR STATS. The final point makes the Whirl Finisher almost entirely useless. Each flaming bolt that hits (and it won’t be a lot), will only deal 131 damage at most. You cannot increase this except by Vulnerability. While this is still the case, I do not know. This utility is an interesting idea in the sense that the Whirl Finisher seemed to be the main selling point of the thing; however, the execution does not match this idea as ArenaNet seems to keep pushing the physical damage up. This not only makes the skill boring, but it also makes it severely difficult to balance as the expected damage will vary entirely by how long the target remains in the AoE.
6. The changes to bombs seem mostly like bug-fixing, but increased Immobilize on Glue Bomb will not be unappreciated.
7. Shaped Charge, Glass Cannon, and Static Discharge have all been directly buffed. These changes can be combined together to increase physical damage by a fairly hefty amount, but I would say that the tools aren’t quite there to make physical damage great.
8. Shrapnel has effectively been upgraded. A bit more than double the proc chance but half the duration of the conditions will net-gain Engineers who use explosives. As a side-effect, Shrapnel will be a bit more “bursty” in terms of damage. However this seems more like a smoothing out of RNG. The 15% chance was fairly uncommon to occur so this new version should make things more consistent (which is always nice).
9. The tooltips showing which skills are considered “Explosive” will certainly be appreciated, as will making Gyro self-destructs explosive. However, I will miss crippling smoke bombs, though I will entirely admit that interaction was unintuitive and certainly a bug.
10. Pinpoint Distribution. THIS NEW VERSION LOWS YOUR CONDITION DAMAGE! (Though, I admit, not by too much.) With the old version, you were guaranteed 100 Condition Damage and it only went up from there. In a reasonable build, it would net you between 163 – 200(ish) extra points which was nice! But now it’s set to 150, losing you stats (though it gives it to other players, too). HOWEVER, giving condition damage is nothing like giving power. Power will always be useful, as will precision or ferocity since all skills scale off of those three stats. Condition Damage though? Not all abilities scale with it. It’s a net-gain most of the time, but this still rubs me the wrong way quite a bit.
11. These Flamethrower buffs are actually quite nice. It pushes the FT a bit more into a hybrid kit, which isn’t bad by any means. Flame Blast, which was fairly respectable burst, is now improved by a fair amount from the damage increase, not to mention 9 seconds of extra burning if you can time your blast well. These changes likely aren’t going to increase FT’s use at all, but they will push the numbers up a bit for people who do use it. Okay, so I somehow misread the FT patch part no less than 3 times. It made sense to try to push it to a Hybrid kit sorta place that ALL the other kits are at, but now…. I mean I guess it gives you some reliable burning.

Engie Patch Notes:

• Blunderbuss: This skill has been unsplit from PvP and will now deal the higher (10%) damage values in all areas of the game. Increased bleeding stacks from 1 – 4 to 2 – 5, based on range. Increased bleeding duration from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
• Fragmentation Shot: Bleeding duration has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.
• Blowtorch: The number of burning applications that this skill applies has been increased from 1/2/3 to 2/3/4.
• Elixir U: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.
• Toss Elixir U: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 50 seconds to 40 seconds.
• Super Elixir: Fixed a bug where this skill would display the wrong healing values underwater.
• Shredder Gyro Self-Destruct: Increased damage to match other gyros.
• Shredder Gyro: Increased damage by roughly 50%.
• Glue Bomb: Immobilize duration of this skill has been increased from 1 second to 2 seconds.
• Big Ol’ Bomb: This skill is now affected by Short Fuse. The visual size of this bomb has been increased by 33%.
• Short Fuse: Updated the Fuse Time to correctly display the fuse time reduction of 0.5 seconds. This trait now affects Big Ol’ Bomb.
• Glass Cannon: The threshold for damage increase has been reduced from 90% to 75%.
• Shaped Charge: The damage of this skill has been increased from 7% to 10%.
• Static Discharge: The damage dealt by this trait has been increased by 20%.
• Shrapnel: The chance for this trait to activate has been increased from 15% to 33%. Reduced cripple duration from 2 seconds to 1 second. Reduced bleed duration from 12 seconds to 6 seconds. Fixed issues with this trait that caused it to activate at lower-than-expected rates for some skills. Updated the description to specify that this trait only activates on hit.
• Explosion: Skills that count as explosions for the traits Steel-Packed Powder, Explosive Powder, and Shrapnel are now marked with a skill fact. Scrapper gyro detonations are now considered explosions. Skills that do not hit the enemy, such as Smoke Bomb and Magnetic Bomb, are no longer considered explosions for combat clarity reasons.
• Pinpoint Distribution: This trait no longer grants condition damage based on precision. This trait will now instead grant up to 150 condition damage to nearby allies.
• Flame Jet: The duration of burning inflicted on the final hit of this skill has been increased from 2 seconds to 4 seconds.
• Flame Blast: Reduced the base damage of this skill by 66%. This skill now inflicts burning for 3 seconds.
• Detonate Flame Blast: Reduced the base damage of this skill by 57%. This skill now inflicts 2 stacks of burning for 3 seconds.

I recently got an HTC Vive and I would, more than anything right now, like to play GW2 with it. I want to see the beauty of Tyria in an immersive format, but literally everything I’ve been able to find is extremely out-dated.
I found a video of a guy running GW2 using TriDef 3D, but apparently that doesn’t support VR displays any more, so that’s (apparently) no longer possible.
I’ve found Vorpx, but that’s $40 and for a program that is (apparently) hard to use and doesn’t even work all the time, I cannot justify potentially just throwing $40 away.
I’ve also found Vireio Perception, but that just straight-up does not work at all.

Any help with this line of inquiry would be greatly appreciated.

Wards of the Mists is looking for new members.

What we are…
The Wards of the Mists is a guild that focuses on having a helpful and friendly community. WARD is a guild in which the people we play with is more important than what we play. We strive to have a guild in which anyone can feel welcome; we do not discriminate based on your gender, skill in the game, religious or political beliefs, sexual orientation, etc.
We want to have an environment and atmosphere where everyone can relax and have a good old time playing GW2. We are a group of friends that is always looking to expand so that we may accomplish more together than we ever could separate!

What we have to offer…
Every Friday evening (after server reset), we participate in guild missions. We also do various other events such as Fractals, dungeons, and other general PvE content. We have members who also dabble in PvP and WvW (we’re quite scattered across most servers), so if you’d like to try those out, we’d love to help you there!

We have several members who have fairly extensive experience with the game. These players are more than happy to help newer (and even more experienced) players, answer questions, or take part in dungeons, fractals, and other events; you need only ask!
Even if you don’t want help or have any questions, our members can be frequently found talking in guild chat.

Finally, we have both a dedicated Team Speak 3 server and a website (which is under construction) that we encourage our members to use. We use our TS3 server to coordinate during guild missions, fractals, dungeons, and events. We also use the TS3 server to just chat, share ideas, and hang out.

What we expect of you…
Our requirements are fairly lax. We only ask that you are a generally friendly person and we demand that you respect all other players (not just WARD members).
We’d prefer that you use our website and TS3 (especially during events) as it makes coordinating during these events much easier. Even if you don’t have a mic or do not want to talk, it’s helpful for you to hear what’s going on.
We have no issues with you being a member of other guilds, but if you are going to spend a large majority of your item not playing with us, you have to ask why you’re joining us.

If you have questions/want to join…
You can…

• Send me a private message.
• Message me in-game (ShadowMageAlpha.7580)
• Check out our website and post there.

I really hope to hear from any and all of you soon! See you in-game!

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

auto attack him once or twice he will run away XD

Except he/she’s “invulnerable” about 60% of the time. So 1 attack ain’t going to do bumpkiss.

Ario.8964:

Staff/dp acro
This build is full cheese mode for damage dealers, it provides absolutely insane amounts of dodges and bigger sustain at the cost of burst. The pressure from these types of builds will be a great deal less so you can afford to be more restrained in using your burst when you catch them out because you have to drain their cd’s to win. You essentially follow the same process as with the other one just over a longer period of time and generally with better cd management as you have to be prepared for the long haul.

Pretty certain this is the one that kills me. The more traditional thieves, it’s not such an issue and I feel that I can prepare well enough. The issue with the dodging is that it deals 33% of my HP on Vault and I can’t hit with anything to actually put condis on (but when I do, they’re gone as you’ve said). I can’t really “outlast” them as getting hit by Vault does ~6k damage (1/3rd of my health). So I have to avoid taking their vaults, (which are fast, spammable, and 50% evasion), while trying to find an opening to land a CC or Condi burst, while also not leaving myself completely vulnerable by leaving myself without dodges, etc.

It just seems like there’s no reasonable way for me to defeat a Daredevil of similar skill.

Azukas.1426:

You shouldn’t have a problem vs thieves

Engie actually. And do not say play a different class or change to a different build.

I’ve played a good amount of PvP and I can effectively 1v1 most things (except Necros since they just dump my condi’s right back onto me, which is fine). But Daredevils… every time I fight one, it’s pretty much the same every time. They’re constantly dodging/vaulting dealing damage and being 95% invuln to anything and everything. I’d be okay with this if Vault didn’t do 33% of my HP in a fairly large AoE, too.

The only times I’ve ever beat a DD is when I’ve gotten stupid lucky with an CC’s timing, but intentionally trying to time a CC is effectively impossible (cast time, travel time, lag, etc. etc. etc.) that when it hits, the thief is almost invariably mid-dodge.

So… wat do?

Okay! The first post has been edited to include the data, conclusions, and links to graphs!

Sorry about the delay folks!
I’ve got some findings and interesting data. I need to format it for the GW2 forums. That might take a bit, but hopefully this will be up soon!

RedZebra.2345:

@ shadow : maybe also promote a bit on @ https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/ and let us know the outcome

I’ve already done that Zebra! Got a very good amount of responses as I hit front page for a decent amount of time. Still, I want a better variety of people other than just redditors.

I’m trying to do a survey of this sort of thing. I need as many responses to the survey as I can get, so if don’t mind, I would really appreciatd responses.

Survey

I’ve been seeing some interesting trends, but I very much could use more survey responses. Once I get home, I’ll post some early data and some early interpretations.

I’ll be updating this thread and/or making a new one. I’ve got some early results here: link.

I would have put the chart in this thread itself, but… the formatting for Reddit is very particular, and I do not want to try to convert that to this forum. x-x
But yeah, once I get more responses, get a bit more time into interpreting the data, I’ll be posting my findings as well, as the complete data set, so people can look at the data and try things out on their own.

coro.3176:

Didn’t see any glaring issues with the survey. Hope you get some responses.

I’ve thrown this up on Reddit and it’s gotten me quite a number of responses. I’ve got a bit under 800 right now, hoping to get more.

So we’re at the end of Season 3 today, and I’ve had my share of issues with this season, but I’m only one person.
I got to thinking about how everyone else fared this season, and the best way to do that is a SURVEY! WOOOOOOO!

If you did any PvP this season at all, please please please take this survey. Even if you did not have a major opinion of this season, take this survey. I want as complete a picture as possible, and that can only happen if as many people fill out this survey as possible.
If you know anyone else who PvP’s, I would appreciate you directing them to this survey too! Many thanks.

Here’s the survey . Results will probably be posted in about a week or two. Depends on how long it takes for people to stop answering.

Edit:
Survey Synopsis:
The survey asked a number of questions concerning the player’s performance in this season of PvP. These question were fact-based, although there was nothing to stop the respondent from lying. I expect that the vast majority of people would answer the questions (relatively) accurately. Such questions included:

• The version of the game (Heart of Thorns, Core Game, F2P)
• Earned division
• Tier within this division
• Legendary multiplier (if applicable)
• Win percentage
• Longest win streaks
• Longest lose streaks

The second part of the survey asked the respondents to share their opinion concerning the state of various aspects of the PvP season. The questions were multiple choice with 6 answers available (“Very Poor”, “Somewhat Poor”, “Neither Good Nor Poor”, “Somewhat Good”, “Very Good”, and “N/A”). In the graphs, these responses are ordered 1 through 5 for V. Poor to V. Good, leaving “N/A” unchanged. These questions consisted of the following:

• Match-making quality
• Class balance
• Class variety in matches
• Build variety
• PvP rewards
• Ranked Progression
• Map Mechanics

The final questions were text boxes which allowed the respondent to type out their response to the questions. These were all open-ended opinion-oriented questions. Currently I have not analyzed this data, as it’s far more complex to attempt to analyze data such as this. I will get to this eventually though…
Only three questions asked:

• Which classes were over-powered?
• Which classes were under-powered?
• What other comments do you have?

Data time:
Gallery of all graphs and charts

• Win Percentage (1% rounding) (2.5% roudning)
• Longest Win-Streaks
• Longest Lose-Streaks
• General Frequency Graphs Gallery (Mostly meaningless, but interesting to look at)
• Division-Sorted Frequency Graphs Gallery (Also mostly meaningless)

Note: The Frequency graphs for division-based sorting are quite misleading. You must look at the approximate percentages of each division. This is because the number of responses in each division varies quite widely.

Interpretations:
Note: As I get more time to review these graphs, I’ll be editing more stuff in! Be sure to check back later for more findings and conclusions]

• The win percentage graph is unusual. Given the math behind games of PvP (there must be an equal number of winners and losers for every game), one would expect a bell curve centered at 50%. However, the graph is heavily skewed above 50%. This is a good indication that my survey has a very small sample size. I expect that if/when more people fill out this survey, the graph will trend to a bell curve. For now, though, this gives a good indication of the general quality of people who took the survey and how accurate my survey is.

• The match-making graphs are a bit peculiar, but not entirely surprising. While in general, a wide margin of people believe the match-making system to be “Somewhat Poor” or “Very Poor”, when you break this down according to divisions, there is an obvious pattern.
  All the divisions but one hold to the general trend; the divisions mostly feel as though that match-making is quite poor, with a majority of respondents indicating their displeasure with match-making. But, Legend-division players are much more spread across the field. While almost no Legend players believe the match-making as “very good”, the group as whole is not nearly as displeased with the match-making. (Perhaps this is in part because they made it to legend?)

• An over-whelming number of people (nearly 70%) seemed to indicate that build variety this season was either Very Poor or Somewhat Poor. This view is held by all divisions and it seems to be an even larger issue that match-making, which is interesting, because match-making was what I seemed to see the most complaining about.

Conclusion:
While this (hopefully) is far from done, indications seem to point toward people not hating Season 3 as much as I might have expected. While peopled seemed to (generally) hate the match-making and lack of build variety, most other facets I surveyed were more middle-of-the road or even positive.

My sample size is still quite small in comparison to the PvP community at large (which itself surprised me as the PvP community feels small). Hopefully this post will encourage people to complete the survey themselves (hint hint) so I can continue to collect more data.

Quick References:
Survey
Full Graph Gallery

If you have any ideas on what patterns I could look for (i.e. “See how win-rate affects match-making feedback.”), feel free to let me know! You folks may think of something I do not!

Thanks again folks, and, once again, if you have not done the survey, please PLEASE PLEASE do the survey. The more responses the better!

You don’t get credit for volunteering to join the smaller team.

There for, you join the losing team, and get stomped. And get no reward for being a nice guy.

Both inconsistent with standard PvP set-up and generally bad game design as it gives people no reason to be nice.

Hmm… Let’s see here. There’s about 8 different “keys” that are not currencies… Sooo… YUP! Completely pointless because the “best” thing these shared slots can be used for is out-numbered by the items you would want to share.

Not to mention you had to spend $35 USD to use 5 keys on all your characters, a feature that SHOULD be free.

You already got my $100 for HoT. This sort of thing makes me not want to spend any more money in the gem store. But then again, I’ve already given ANet hundreds of my dollars.

Happened again. Being in a party is completely irrelevant to the bug.

I think I know what the problem is: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/WW-JP-servers-not-closing/first#post5864069

I was in a Winter Wonderland jumping puzzle “match” and the timer hit zero. But peculiarly it did not kick me out. Instead it said something along the lines of not being able to move me into the same map as the person in my party.

Generally there’s a bit of a delay after the timer hits zero that it’ll kick you out, but I was in there for 5-10 minutes after the timer hit zero. It got to the point where I was literally the only person left in the match.

This may be why it’s so hard to get into matches for the jumping puzzle. I’d imagine a great deal of the servers aren’t closing properly and aren’t repopulated.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/8Z8GeEd.jpg[/img]

benhamann.9570:

Things that aggravate me about pvp – premades and DH idiots. Other than that, I still love it. If I find myself in a premade and realize we cant win, I will at least make an annoyance of myself and draw the match out as long as possible. Or switch to a character I want to experiment with. Just avoid DH. They are ridiculously broken. Anyone who says otherwise is maining one.

While good suggestions, I’m just not good enough to put up a fight. And I feel absolutely disgusting if I just sit in spawn and let them win.
So if a pre-made happens (because there is no surrender option), I have to waste about 10 minutes or more of my life for absolutely no benefit. I learn nothing, I earn nothing, and I have exactly 0 fun.

I’ve been incredibly frustrated with PvP for a long time.
The matchmaking has always been the worst I’ve seen in any game (and I used to play Awesomenauts which didn’t have a big enough player base to even have their matchmaking work). It’s needed a massive over-haul for some time, and I was hoping (but not expecting) Leagues to do… I dunno… something. Was really sure what.

Well, they certainly did something. I just played the most unbalanced games I’ve had in a long time against generally unpleasant people culminating into a just un-fun time.
Further, I’ve just gotten plain sick and tired of Revenant and Dragonhunter spam. I’ve never felt so powerless. Can’t fight them, can’t run away, I just have to roll-over and die.
Finally, I don’t know if it’s just me, but the particle effect over-load has gotten particularly disgusting lately. When it’s literally not possible to see my character model, I don’t know how I’m supposed to play the game.
This, of course, is not to mention all the other entirely legitimate complaints and gripes that this PvP forum has been filled with.

At this point, it’s faster, easier, and literally more fun for me to just go into a PvP Daily server and grab the dailies, grab the rewards, and never look at PvP again that day.
I’m fairly bull-headed, and almost never give up, but when it feels literally everything is stacked against me, I’ll just not play. I’m certain I’m not the only one to feel this way, and I’m certain there are other people just growing entirely weary of official forms of PvP.

Until I hear things improve, I’m gone. I don’t need to play PvP to get the rewards, so if it’s so unfun, why should I?
If you’re tired of it as well, I strongly suggest just finding a decent farming server. Open the PvP browser and join one that looks good to you. Within 10 minutes, you can easily get all 8 of the PvP jugs and the progression in the game even gives you rewards.
It’s certainly better than trying to take part in PvP, at least in my opinion.

I was called mad for stock-piling thousands of resources! I was told to sell me stock-piles! Well… Who’s laughing now?! MWUAHAHHAHAHAHAA!!!!

Being a pack-rat may pay off! I have learned Skrittkittenwell.

I want to love this game. I want to enjoy every facet of it. But why the FREAKING HELL is matchmaking crippling my time with this game?

I’ve been trying to get practice Mesmer, but every gokitten game I’m matched with people who know what’s going on. I end up dying in under 3 seconds once in combat, and I have no ability to learn anything because the encounters are over far too fast to be able to do anything.
I’m pitted against people who CLEARLY know how the hell to play PvP because they combo me down and my life disappears in 2 or 3 chunks.

I keep trying, and I keep getting the same results. Games that end 500 to 200-something, if that. WHY WHY WHY am I CONSTANTLY getting face against people like this?
WHY do people for the broken matchmaking? Has it always been like this? Have I just been insanely lucky with my other class and managed to avoid this?

Better yet, there’s no way to exit out of a clearly imbalanced game. When we’re losing 300 to 50 at 2 or so minutes into the match, why the HELL do I have to stick around for the next 5 minutes? Why can’t we just have a freaking /surrender vote and get it over with?

The Wards of the Mists is looking for new members.

What we are…
The Wards of the Mists is a guild that focuses on having a helpful and friendly community. We strive to have a guild in which anyone can feel welcome; we do not discriminate based on your gender, skill in the game, religious or political beliefs, sexual orientation, etc.
We are a guild that focuses on making friends and playing the game. We are more than happy to teach new and old players about the game.

What we have to offer…
The in-game guild is already fully researched. Every Friday event (after server reset), we participate in guild missions. We are able to consistently clear Tier 1 Bounties, Guild Rushes, Guild Treks, and Guild Puzzles. Depending on how lucky we are with event rolling, we’re also quite able to beat Tier 2 Bounties and Guild Challenges. We do our best to make sure that all members are able to participate so that we can all join in on the fun and get some guild commendations!

We have several members who have fairly extensive experience with the game. These players are more than happy to help newer players, answer questions, or take part in dungeons, fractals, and other events; you need only ask!
Even if you don’t want help or have any questions, our members can be frequently found talking in guild chat.

Finally, we have both a dedicated Team Speak 3 server and a (under construction) website that we encourage our members to use. We use our TS3 server to coordinate during guild missions, fractals, dungeons, and events. We also use the TS3 server to just chat, share ideas, and hang out.

What we expect of you…
Our requirements are fairly lax. We only ask that you are a generally friendly person and we demand that you respect other players.
We’d prefer that you use our website and TS3 (especially during events).
We have no issues with you being a member of other guilds, but if you are going to spend a large majority of your item not playing with us, you have to ask why you’re joining us.

If you have questions/want to join…
You can…

• Post on this thread.
• Send me a private message via Reddit.
• Me me in-game (ShadowMageAlpha.7580)
• Check out our website and post there.

And remember, Flooaboo the WARD quaggan says, “Quaggan wants yooOoou, coo!”

Lite.3819:

The problem with the medical kit is that it is too good for its own good. As a result requires a playing style beyond what most players are capable of. This single kit by itself gives nearly infinite regeneration and swiftness and short duration fury and resistance plus 500 health and condition removal from a smaller pool on a short cool down without even using the main heal. Not a single trait needed. The only draw backs being ground targeted and being a bit selfish. In theory, the kit is literally sitting on the edge of being overpowered.

If it becomes any easier to use or affect multiple targets expect heavy nerfs.

Except you need a significant amount of micromanagement to maintain the near-constant buffs. When you’re micro-managing the kit, you’re actively contributing to a fight.

Granted, if you were able to perfectly manage the Healing Kit, it would be literally better than the Healing Turret in some situations. However, these situations are fairly uncommon, and perfect utilization would require super-human ability because of the severely hampered method of delivery.

“Med Kit: Increased Med Blaster’s base healing by 36% and its scaling with boons by 36%.”

Probably not.

Previously, the numbers for Med Blaster weren’t terrible. With a decent number of boons on you, you could actually surpass the healing per second of Healing Turret.
The healing per second wasn’t really the issue with the Med Kit. Since the Med Kit’s rework with the Specialization update, the new Med Kit has had terrible usability.

The range of all the Med Kit’s abilities are 600, which is significant. This allows you a reasonable amount of distance from your healing target. However, this issue is complicated by the fact that, even if you target your patient, your character will attempt to “auto-attack” enemies near by. You will shoot your blasts of healing energy at the enemy even when you do not.

Further, the pick-up radius of the thrown packages are incredibly small. I’d estimate somewhere between 25-50 radius. At 600-ish range, where you and your target are likely moving, this makes it infinitely improbable that you will hit your intended target.
This wouldn’t be such an issue if the pick-ups weren’t lost in the chaos of a fight. That little brown vial isn’t going to be noticed when there is a literal rain of enemy fire coming down from the sky in the general area.

Finally, while using the Med Kit, the Engineer is effectively not contributing offensively to the fight. This would not be such an issue if the kit provided some unique and powerful utility and support for the group.
But instead, the Med Kit just provides some reasonable steady healing, Condition removal, and some minor buffs. But a Healing Turret combined with HGH Elixirs does this just as well (if not better), without removing the Engineer’s offensive capabilities.

As much as I would LOVE to use this kit, it certainly doesn’t seem to fill the niche ANet is pushing for. In my opinion, the kit still doesn’t seem worth the effort.
It honestly seems as though the kit needs a fairly substantial rework before it’s usable.

tl;dr:

• Enemies have higher priority for Med Blaster than allies.
• Size and visibility of pick-ups makes in-combat use almost impossible.
• “Removal” of Engineer from active combat is not compensated well enough.
• These issues with the Med Kit have not been tweaked with the patch.

Just a bit of additional opinion; the width of Med Blaster feels small and makes it feel hard to hit with. Though this may just be an issue with the peculiar auto-targeting.

Recently (and I may be mistaken), it seems as though the the ArenaNet developers have been much more forthcoming with what’s going on in their fields of development.

For one, we’ve had all that information about what changes they’re making for the BWE’s. Bundled in with this has been clarifications on information on the Scrapper. And the changes back-and-forth with the Daredevil’s dodges. (I think I saw no less than 2 or 3 updates in 1 day on that!)

Further, the devs of PvP have been keeping in touch with the PvP community on how, apparently, the PvP matchmaking got borked. It’s not easy to admit when something gets messed up under your watch, but they admitted something happened, and were even pretty open with exact details!

In short, I have loved this, not only as a player of the game, but also as someone who has a strong interest game design. So I would like to thank the devs who have taken the time to communicate with the players! I very much appreciate it, and I’m quite certain that other people appreciate!

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

There are a lot of things you can complain about, but losing on a class you are bad at compared to your normal skill level doesn’t really hold much water to me.

Except it’s apparently gotten worse, and is worse than that.
I completely forgot to mention, but I had the idea to play my main class, and when we’re winning, switch over to Mesmer. Pretty good idea, I think. I can support my team, have fun, have a “good” match, and get the reward.

Except no. Screw me. Get stomped every time.
Even playing my main, it felt like I was getting matched against people who were waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than me. And while it used to happen every once in a while a week or two ago, now it’s been happening literally 90% of the time if not more.
Hell, I used to be able to off-class and still squeeze out a victory within 3 or 4 games, sometimes even on the first try. But matchmaking lately has been the most infuriating thing I can recall in video games. (And I played Brink with the AI.)

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

I think you just need to breathe some fresh air…maybe go outside or play another game? Getting angry and going on tilt in game isn’t going to help you much more and probably only makes the issue worse. Also, judging from a recent post, the matchmaking issue is something they are actively working to improve.

I have gotten a breath of fresh air. I went to class. I’ve played other games. Over 48 hours, I’ve wanted to play this kitten game that I love and it kicks me in the balls EVERY kitten TIME.

And I am, somewhat, relieved that they’re actively trying to fix it, but I’m still hella kittened and needed to rant.

But this just takes the cake…

I am freaking done. I may actually not touch PvP again because this has gotten to a point where it’s actually bad for my mental state.

I didn’t bother to keep track, but I have lost no less than 10 games in a row, more likely 15 by my rough estimation. All this in an effort to get the, apparently impossible, Daily Mesmer achievement so I can push for some dungeon rewards in a different and “fun” way.

But this has be the single most grossest matchmaking I’ve seen in the last 48 hours. Every single game has been utterly disgusting. Every single time, I am the least capable person on the teams by far. I die instantly and there’s nothing I can do to prevent it.

I don’t know Mesmer, so why the HELL am I getting matched with people who know their profession forward, backward, up-side-down and color inverted?

I’m aware that there’s been some matchmaking glitches, but does not make this any less upsetting. It’s just a game, and I should be having fun, but when when 95% of match-making aren’t close or fun, and then THIS happens… It’s merely a test of patience rather than anything that even remotely resembles a “game”.

P.S. – Give us a kitten /surrender option or something. If I’m shafted by match-making, don’t make it last longer than it needs to. It feels like someone’s spitting in my eye after kicking me in the nads.

Just 8? I have no sympathy. I’m somewhere close to 15 and I a GET ABSOLUTELY EFFING SICK OF THIS BULLOCKS.

I generally don’t post, but I’ll give my feedback, though it’s probably been said time and time again.

What I like:

• I like how this fits into the lore of Mordremoth and such. He/she/it isn’t just waiting around for us to come to him/her/it; it’s going on the offensive. MASSIVELY. Very cool.
• The fact that there are 3 kinds of events is nice. Prevents things from getting as boring as quickly.

What I don’t like:

• The “best” way to play this is to not actively participate, but to put your fingers as many events as you can so you can increase your bloom income.
• The amount of time you need to participate feels disproportionate to what you get. i.e. I could grind for about 5-ish to 6-ish hours for a mini. More if I want a set of Gloves & Shoulder. MUCH more if I want 1 potion. 2 potions is impractical/impossible. It makes it feel as though if I’m going to do anything with this event, I have to not have a life. If I were able to spread out the grinding of hundreds of blooms over the course of a week or 2, it’d be okay. But the pressure is so high to get anything done in 4 days, I’d just rather not do anything.
• Not as large of an issue: It feels unrewarding doing individual events as you get nothing from the mobs themselves. Even if I got the grey trophies with the occasional piece of blue/green equipment, I’d be fairly happy with that. At the very minimum, I’d like to see some XP get rewarded so that people with on-kill effects (Sigils, foods, etc.) actually get to trigger those effects.

What I would suggest:

• Making the increasing rewards across the map as a whole. This would put more of an emphasis on finishing the events so everyone can benefit. Not just an individual.
• Either increase reward income (either as flat percent increase or make champions drop extra bundles), lower the price of items, or increase the duration of the event.

I’ve generated several codes. And even successfully linked my PC and Tablet via my Google account.
Gonna try the desktop app.

Well, tried the desktop app and that worked, but I really want the authenticator on my tablet, and now I cannot unlink the desktop authenticator as I do not have my “special key”.

I cannot copy something from my tablet onto my computer.

I installed the app on my tablet, and no matter how many times I try to enter the code, it always says invalid.

Ultimaistanza.4793:

In any case, I would actually get the Crystal Nomad outfit and Arcane outfit if I could use the head without the body.

There are MANY outfits I’d get if I could only switch out the hat-slot. I’d probably blow about $50 on cosmetics if they changed it to this.

Pure Heart.1456:

Frankly, I’m miffed at the lack of real armour pieces, and miffed at the outfit limitations. I’m expressing my dissatisfaction in a non-offensive manner albeit in necessarily negative tones, and the developers should know about it if they want to increase gamer satisfaction.

Fair enough comment I suppose. I think there’s probably good reasons why they do and don’t do certain things, but they don’t do the best job of explaining their thought processes.
Of course, if they took the time to explain every little thing, there potentially be “too much” info, maybe even detracting from development in some way. (Of course, it could also potentially improve it via player feedback.)

Pure Heart.1456:

Regardless of the coding/technical issues involved, allowing this as a possibility should have been a no-brainer, “goes without kittening saying” decision. That it wasn’t done is breathtaking.

It may simply not have been an idea that came up when they were doing outfits. I’d actually really like to hear from a dev on the subject, but I kinda doubt it’ll happen.

But at any rate, it doesn’t really do any good to take such a presumptuous and haughty attitude. I would greatly prefer that the comments remain positive, rather than… well…that.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Outfits are inherently easier to design and implement: a single skin for each gender/race combination (and sometimes a bit less) that doesn’t have to be tested against every other skin, since they work as a single piece.

Opening them up to customizing even one slot (e.g. the headpiece) would change them from being simpler/easier to being close enough to regular armor pieces that they might as well just drop the outfit altogether. In other words, the very thing that makes outfits attractive (from a design point of view) would be lost.

I just want to point out that your argument is half-right. (At least from what I understand.)

There’s already pretty much implementation of what I suggest in-game: Aquabreathers.
Apparently, when you enter underwater combat, your head-slot changes to the Aquabreather cosmetic. This shows they they already have the ability to change at least the heads-lot of an outfit, possibly by over-riding something. So outfits don’t really work as a single piece.

Granted, it IS underwater combat, something no one seems to care about (ANet or the playerbase). Additionally, I think all the rebreathers have the same skin, so even if ANet does check rebreathers with the outfits, they only have to check that one skin for everything.

Axelwarrior.9084:

Pockets.3201:

My engineer can’t wear outfits because she needs her glasses to see properly.

Can’t she use her utility goggles?

Do you know how hard it is to get those in prescription lens?!

Kityn.8247:

I would totally buy the new Mad Scientist outfit if my charr could wear her hat with it.

This is EXACTLY what I was thinking.
My Engi’s hair is a bit…dorky looking, so she always wears a wide-brim hat. (I think we need more of those in-game, but that’s another issue.)
I think the outfit would look really good on her, but…the goggles just don’t fit her style.

I know there’s a reason as to why outfits aren’t actually armor-skins. (It has mostly to do with “seams” of each piece of armor-class not matching with other armor-classes, or so I’ve been told.)
However, I can’t imagine there’s TOO much of a difference between the seams around the head, right? (I could be completely wrong about this, and if I am, PLEASE tell me.)

It seems to me (just a casual, non-developer scrub) that it would be fairly “easy” to allow GW2 players to combine head skins with outfits.
As someone pointed out on reddit, this was even how it was in GW1. (But GW1 and GW2 may be different enough to make the systems completely dis-similar.)

The first Hunt Across Tyria ended last night. While the turn out wasn’t as great as I would have hoped, I did have fun making these clues, and I hope those who entered had fun themselves!

The Winners:
Non-TAW Members
Kyban : 24.5 Points
Balkor : 22.5 Points
Drekk : 5 Points

TAW Members
AimedZero : 5 Points
AegisRuneStone : 2 Points
No Third Place Winner (Doh!)

Answers
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5

Thanks again to those who played. I’ll try to get a second one of these going sometime, so if you’re interested, keep an eye out!
If you have any feed-back, good or bad, I would love to hear it! Thanks!

It’s time for the final week of TAW’s Hunt Across Tyria! You still have 7 days (the end of May 8th) to get in your submissions!

This week’s clues:
Easy
* Golemancy isn’t as easy as it looks! Bugs have to be worked out, sometimes you have to dig through your whole toolbox to find your arcane resonator, and on occasion, the golem will just explode or attack for no good reason!
* These pirates hid their treasure somewhere. Dig around for some scraps of the map or maybe you can bust a couple heads to get some pieces.

Medium
* Born from the actions of two seeking peace, she watches over her people, guiding them as best she can. Tragically, many of her children have turned their back upon her teachings.
* This relic, torn from the gaping maw of the dragon, stands a test to all those who wish to test themselves. Though you may think yourself great, you have no power to even dent even this small part of the elder dragon, try as you might.

Hard
* In a city of non-believers, he must defend the “poisonous” ravings of a heretic. Help him iron out his argument for the defense.

It’s the second-to-last week for the contest, so still plenty of time time answer!

This Week’s Clues:
Easy
* If you can keep this junk from being stolen and scrape the ooze off it, you might find something useful these piles of gears.
* Even trees need to eat. The kelp found here is delicious and nutritious, but you might have to find off a drake or risen.

Medium
* When he was tempted by the dragon, she was left with no choice. She was forced to slay her brother and earned the ire of all his sons.
* When I think “experimental golem power-sources”, I don’t think of bug-guts. It seems to work well though, though researcher safety isn’t guaranteed.

Hard
* Mechanical genius and traitor to the crown, his contraptions spread music to the masses, royal and commoner alike.