Guild Wars 2

My Sylvari Guard says that phrase on occasion when I use Renewed Focus

Saiyan.1704:

I can’t, not, buy it. Especially now that Guardian takes more skill to play, to the point where people think Firebrand needs a heck of a lot of buffs. I’ll take it.

PvP has it’s frustrations but there is no other PvP game in the same genre that beats GW2 for the price and competition…. and I don’t play many games so yea, i’m going to buy it for sure.

Really? Guardian is my favorite profession and I didn’t find a single thing enjoyable about Firebrand.

The only one I remotely liked was Spellbreaker. Oh, and Holosmith, but I don’t play that much Engi

And if by “competition” you mean having to fight against the mentally deficient people on your own team, then yes GW2 is a rousing success.

I just got done with getting my refund for the pre-order tonight.

I went and got it as knee-jerk nostalgia.

But…after being sorely disappointed with the new elites for the professions I like to play, that PvE is just plain bad and now whatever the hell they turned PvP into I just flat out refuse to give Anet any more money

I have to echo a lot of the sentiments here.

I was super stoked at the thought of Firebrand at first, but in my humble opinion the play style of the tomes and mantras are god-awful and I feel more like a punching bag than anything else.

Maybe it’s different in WvW, but I don’t play that mode (I pretty much just do sPvP and the occasional PvE).

So far my initial reaction is no reason for me to switch using it over Dragonhunter and that’s just sad.

Dadnir.5038:

Starbreaker.6507:

I’m assuming that Jacaranda is ths venus-fly trap looking thing they show in the video for Soulbeast?

No jacaranda is the gray flying root. The flowery thing is called an iboga. Those are 2 of the very first mobs you encounter when you play guild wars nightfall.

Jacaranda were mainly air magic elementalists which result to a pet in gw2 that strike with lightning magic.
While Iboga were mainly mesmers, translated in gw2 by a pet loading conditions on it’s foes. (especially confusion)

Ah, thanks for the clarification!

I vaguely remember some of of the mobs from Nightfall, but the way my memory works now I barely remember stuff from last week

I’m assuming that Jacaranda is ths venus-fly trap looking thing they show in the video for Soulbeast?

As of tonight I haven’t found a reason to keep playing anymore.

I was doing okay lately, but tonight I ran into a buzzsaw of just flat out bad teams.

Did I play perfect? Nope, but I’m not legendary caliber enough to carry teams so I lost 8 out of 10 games tonight with multiple games losing -20 rating while my wins are only giving me +10-11.

Quite frankly PvP was the only reason I still played this game because I find the PvE side pretty boring and linear and if I wanted to play the raiding days again I would most definitely choose another MMO.

Oh well, least I got a year’s worth out of the game and got HoT and the base game in one shot instead of buy each individually.

Now comes the tough part – finding another game to play. I’ve been looking around and nothing is really piquing my interest.

I’m down for any suggests though.

Congrats!

How did you find the journey?

I’ve never delved too much into Necro myself (even though back in the day I was hardcore Necro in GW1) but I’ve seen a lot of people say that reaper fixes a lot of the core necro issues.

Ross Biddle.2367:

I came out of placement at the top of gold. I then moved into the bottom of platinum, then plummeted with pretty much back to back losses all the way to the bottom of gold. By this stage I had to question what was going wrong, but could also sense the slight (though unapparent at first) shift in the meta. So I adjusted my build first off, then acknowledged that my time away from the game had lead to me forgetting how to conquest properly. After a mental check of what I should be doing and how I should be rotating, I instantly turned the game around and began climbing. Now back in gold 3 and still climbing toward platinum.

The two questions I’d suggest you ask are,

• Has my build capped out at it’s potential in the ladder?
  and
• What am I doing wrong in conquest?

FYI, I’m playing rifle/gs power warrior. I know my build will cap out at some point vs experiences players running meta builds. It’s not quite there yet, and my interest in playing is seeing where that is.

That’s a legitimate question.

The build I play the most is symbolic DH which I know is slightly less powerful than the standard meditrapper build, but I prefer its play style over the meta build and I switch up things (i.e. traps, amulets) based on what the other team has.

I can see things I lack on when I compare my play to the ESL players and watching their videos. They see and anticipate things I never see coming, and I’m completely honest with myself that I will probably never get that kind of awareness so there might not be much else for me to do beyond that point.

A little disappointed for sure because I thought I was maybe a plat level player, but the fact that I’ve been hovering from S3 – G2 range for a few weeks now I think that’s just where I’ll be and where my play is at.

Do I see things from my team that infuriates me on a routine basis? Sure, but I’m not going to go as far as others to say that the odds are stacked against me and that’s why I can’t advance. Some of that certainly is my play too, just like I know I’ve won games despite my own terrible play.

John.8507:

Only getting 24 – 26 points for a win. Its going to take ages to get out of Bronze.

I’m just shy of gold 2 and getting 11-12 for a win but 14-15 for a loss.

At best I break even if I go win-loss every two games. At worst I have to win 3 (if I’m lucky) for every 2 losses just to tread water.

This is the soft wall I’m running up against and really killed my motivation for doing more than the one required ranked match every couple of days to prevent decay (for whatever that’s worth)

Moonsinn.5382:

Ithilwen.1529:

@Starbreaker

The seasons have been repeatedly set up with stacked matches. That is to say, matches that were deliberately unfair, set up for one side predicted to win.

I don’t expect to be top of the leaderboard. I do expect an even match. This season, as the three previous ones, the matches are uneven.

As to indirectly holding me responsible for pvp issues.. well, thanks for granting me that much power.

Matches are not deliberately stacked. They MM algorithm tries to get matches as close as possible, but it will never be perfect. In this game mode, though, even a little difference in skill or some luck can make a big difference in score. It is possible to snowball after winning mid, and unless the losing team is coordinated, it can be difficult to gain momentum back.

Hogwash, it HAS to be because of stacked teams.

Nevermind zero evidence that shows Anet is remotely doing anything like this, if people are losing a lot of games it can’t be them settling into the rank they should be at it’s definitely Anet’s fault.

Right?

Wasn’t the pip system from seasons 1-4 worse because of the safety net they put into place?

I remember late-season low ruby game and they were absolutely awful filled with people that had no business being there, but ground their way up into it.

Anecdotal evidence versus anecdotal evidence.

Who will win this titanic matchup?

Nice job on turning it into the participation trophy of GW2.

Not that it was much of a prestigious award to begin with.

Shaogin.2679:

You’re the first person I’ve seen complain about the map all season. And it did actually go through a beta period and many changes ges were made due to player feedback. Where have you been man?

God the old one was so awful with multiple trap DH/Necros on the opposing team.

All in all I don’t mind how it is now, except somehow I once got feared off the laser pad and died from it

OP is racking up the frequent whiner miles today.

How come nobody comes in here complaining they won against a 2-2-1 without having the same on their team?

Come on guys we need people posting the screenshots of those wins and demand that Anet takes those victories away since it should never happen!

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Starbreaker.6507:

RAWRIORS

No. Bad. Go sit in the corner.

Its mostly matchmaking. DH is strong (and frankly I’m ticked off that spear of justice triggers an unblockable, unevadable hit) but it’s not broken. It fills a purpose and has counterplay.

I don’t know how to fix matchmaking though. maybe there’s a lot more people that are bad than was originally thought, or maybe the pvp season is flooded with pve players looking for shinies. We’ll need more seasons to sort that out.

I was thinking about this and had a tin-foil hat thought:

With the introduction of being able to acquire ascended gear PvP did get clogged up with a lot of PvE players that don’t understand the first thing about the build style, maps and nuances of PvP.

I do believe that as time goes by that those players will settle into the bottom, but I think they displace the original bronze/silver quality who do PvP and artificially push them up the ranks.

I think what’s left is a pesudo-terrible section around upper silver into low gold that is very reminiscent of how low Ruby was in the previous seasons where you saw just truly terrible play because of the people that ground their way past the safety net.

Or I could be completely full of crap in my idea, but it’s a thought nonetheless.

THIS SEASON IS TEH SUX!!!!

ANET GIVE ME DUMB TEAMS AND DO BAD IN PLACEMENTS.

NOW I BRONZE AND CAN’T GET OUT. HALP!!! ANET GIVE ME STUPID TEAM EVERY kitten GAME AND I CAN’T WIN CUZ ALL ENEMY FILLED WITH ANET LUV BABIES DH RAWRIORS AND ELES.

THESE ALL BS CLASSES THAT I NO VAULT N LOTUS SPAM TO WIN. SOOOO kitten BROKEN.

I NO MEANT FOR BRONZE BUT LEGEND LIKE REAL LIFE!!!

Divine.3279:

Pssssssst, this is clearly a troll thread. Take yer food and get it away from the troll!

Where’s the Danish to track his IP with TrollTrace?

I’ve been toying around with something like this and it’s fun every once in a while, but I can’t seem to string together any consistency with it.

My biggest stumbling block so far is trying to find the right pets to run. I can’t seem to find the right pairing.

I will say the style is hysterical in team fights as soon as there’s a downed player on either side because people tend to group up for the rez/stomp and that’s when you can really lay it on with entangle, traps and CA abilities.

vove.2768:

Rifle has nothing on longbow and I believe after the season either rifle will get buffed with something like splash damage or longbow will get nerfed.

Knowing Anet it’ll be the latter

katniss.6735:

There’s no carrying in gold league.

I’ve played with and against the two kitten talkers you had on your team.

I can’t believe they made it into gold because I saw them when I was in silver.

Endless trickle of 1 teammate at a time into 3-4 enemies on Forfire mid.

I can’t tell you how many games I’ve seen the revolving door of deaths from people doing that. Also couldn’t tell you how many games I won because the enemy did it too.

Divided by zero.9370:

You assume a uniform distribution, but its probably more of a Gaussian distribution (bell shaped) with most players in gold/low platinum which don’t appear on the leaderboard.

I know this is anecdotal, but the curve should probably be slid back to more silver/low gold.

I just clawed my way out of silver and while doing so had near instantaneous queue pops whereas the last few days at gold 2 it’s taking longer on average to get into game.

Again….just stating what I’ve been seeing.

Warrior isn’t my main either, but I do like to play it from time to time.

The thought of them with guns always sounded cool, and I especially love seeing the Charr NPCs with the heavy armor using them.

I think on top of everything else that’s been stated it also doesn’t help that there’s a ton of projectile hate from a lot of other classes.

Which suprises me that bow is used so much.

Gwaihir.1745:

Priest NSCO.6054:

yeah guardian trapping ridicilous in pvp , and dont talk like that they not strong class in pvp , all the time about 50-70% match population is guardians.

70% source? I see stacked necs/eles/engis in gold the same as stacked DH.

Volume 1, Page 5, paragraph 1 of Encyclopedia Anecdotal Evidence

I don’t get what everyone is complaining about.

According to the PvE circle-jerk on Reddit this season is a blast slumming it down in bronze and sub-30% winrate your way to some sweet gear and if you can’t have fun while doing that then you’re not playing PvP right.

Anet will listen to their joy and pencil this in as “greatest season evah”

Justine.6351:

Starbreaker.6507:

Okay everyone you heard it.

Only serious posting from this point on.

We don’t need joking or anything funny making it’s way into the official forums. Guess we need to save that crap Reddit?

If only it were funny.

Thank you for informing us.

I was trying to look up what was funny and what’s not, but you cleared it up so nicely.

Based on this startling revelation I have decided to report the thread immediately in the hopes it gets stricken from the site.

Okay everyone you heard it.

Only serious posting from this point on.

We don’t need joking or anything funny making it’s way into the official forums. Guess we need to save that crap for Reddit?

I agree, buttcapes are too overpowered.

I just get mesmerized whenever a druid twirls around and the cape follows through.

I get lost in the moment and forget there’s a bristleback next to them drilling needles into me . Next thing I know I come too and then I’m in downstate.

They could make it all soloq vs soloq and people will be on here complaining about the next imaginary reason why they’re losing matches and not advancing

Fluffball.8307:

Athix.3460:

Despite that I feel like the ‘carry’ potential could be higher compared to the destruction some other classes can cause. I can handle holding a point 2v1 or stalling, but if my team doesn’t cap anything I’m stuck in that fight while the enemy team is racking up points.

Is that just the curse of a druid/low elo right now? Did anyone have more success with a different build that works better in low elo?
I WISH there was a viable Condi build simply because I like the feel ob sb+axe/torch, then again I don’t want to rely solely on traps, any suggestions?

Ele and bunker druid have low carry potential, but if you don’t have them it’s tough to win. That’s part of the reason I prefer a glassier build most of the time, and LB can cover two points at the same time. Like on forest I tend to park myself in the courtyard area and it gives me vision on both mid and the beach to home.

The meta build with staff/GS could probably carry silver pretty well. With the super high mobility you can basically play as a thief, which has is definitely the highest carry profession.

Also check out the WvW trapper thread, Justine theory crafted a build that is not 100% trapper. 100% trapper is not a good build, but survival+traps can work. I was screwing around with a very similar build before the season started and it works. I just didn’t have time to get used to the awkwardness of the new healing spring.

I tried out the staff/LB last night and I had mixed results with it.

I’m sure it’s due to rust for not playing in almost 5 months combined that I’m not a top tier player. I went back to the “old” bunker and I seemed to have a better go at it. Especially given that ranked this season is now solo/duo Q.

I can see the potential in Staff/LB on a coordinated team though, especially against condi-heavy teams solider’s rune really got work done.

Just a P.S. – Having said all that though, the 10 placement matches I did yesterday were about some of the most rage-inducing things I have ever done in this game (and dare I say any video game I’ve ever played). I ended up at the very top of Silver 3 where it literally looks like maybe 1 win (or 2 at the most) to get into gold, but painful nonetheless…

I haven’t been able to play for the last 4-5 months and I’m finally trying to get back into the swing of things.

Is the Mender’s Staff/Sword & Dagger still the defacto spec to run or are there more options now?

I’ve been out of the loop for a while, but I happened to pick up on this change.

Have they reduced the number of blocks from other classes to coincide with this change?

Previous that’s what I really loved having the daze on Test of Faith to be able to stop some of that junk (like Revenants)

Xillllix.3485:

I said earlier that removing the option to play in an organized group made everything their eSport community worked toward meaningless.

You get a class balance that is completely terrible in 1v1 and are told that it’s intended that way because pvp is a team game… Yet we can’t even team up and work on team synergy!

Clearly I’m in the minority of complainers here, so I apologize about complaining again.
I guess that’s what a free to play game comes down to: pleasing the majority by making them believe they are legendary material, even if they can’t play in an organized team.

I’m not going to argue about the validity of that if it brings Anet the fund to improve create a GvG mode for the next expansion. It would have been worth it.

But what is the message sent to your eSport community? Are your past tournament participants happy not to be able to play together as a group? I can’t believe so.

Anet reaps what it sows.

They listened to the whiners that thought 5-man teams were the boogeyman that was keeping them from reaching lofty heights in ranked PvP.

I say this as someone who never had a group of 5 for playing and was 99% of the time soloq. I very rarely ran into 5 man groups on the other side, and even if I did it didn’t stop me from at least trying.

Interesting stuff that’s good for me to know too!

I was doing only PvP, but I think I may start switching over to more PvE since I don’t have the patience for PvP like I once had.

Having never done high-end fractals or raiding what makes condi better than power-based play?

FiveGauge.1357:

Drakz.7051:

snip

We’re talking about Pro League, it’s little to do with casual league or your perception that PvE and WvW aren’t successful either, for their own reasons.

Drawing people into the casual league system is not the only point of having Pro League, and if those people do end up disliking the casual league system, it’s not the fault of eSports for enticing them to try.

I’m not knocking Pro League because I do enjoy watching the matches, but has it been successful at pulling people in?

I started watching the weekly pro games the first week of season one, but at that point I had already decided that I wanted to PvP and had gone from a F2P account to a full one.

Two things struck me the first games I tried to watch:

1. Being new I hadn’t the faintest idea what skills/effects/etc… were being used. The entirety of the games were one gigantic blitz of seizure-inducing light and effects.

2. The in game observation was jerky and the way it tries to zoom across the battlefield when you click on a player left a lot to be desired.

Again, I had already gone to full account so I wasn’t the targeted potential group they’re trying to advertise to, but I think from the two items above would turn off the average viewer coming in to see if they would want to play the game and as they say: you only get one chance to make a first impression.

Maybe my mind is in the gutter, but the title of this thread has me laughing pretty hard

Not to get too off-topic and beat a dead horse on the HoT storyline, but I think they missed out big time on not leveraging the Nightmare Court more than just turning Faolin into a weird vinetooth sock-puppet.

Imagine how much more interesting it could have been if you needed to strike a deal with the NC in order to get some of the missions completed. It could have set up a great dynamic of ‘yeah I can’t trust them, but can I use them to accomplish the mission? ’

Then you could throw in tensions that Caithe and/or Canach would have with using them and it could have made for a better overall story, imo.

Why has “toxic” become the phrase-du-jour I’m seeing on every video game forum?

I can only imagine the smack-talking now:

“Dost thou even hoist, brother?”

I give you credit for willing to put up with much punishment.

I only needed to hit ruby this season to finish up my back piece and then I just stopped playing. I tried a few matches earlier this week but the game quality was so horrendous I didn’t even have the ambition to try and finish my matches (I know…I know you should always play to the end)

I can’t put my finger on one single problem with sPvP where you could say "a ha, if they fix this PvP would be alright ", but the safeguard system that will make any brain-dead grinder eventually hit Ruby would probably be a good start.

We learned that some people aren’t that good at PvP, come to complain about it on the forums and feel they deserve the backpiece no matter what.

Having said that though, and despite me reaching the highest rank I’ve ever gotten in a PvP season, I feel this season was a lot worse in game quality.

Ruby now felt every bit as awful as amber and emerald did in the previous seasons.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Starbreaker.6507:

snip

I was replying to OP.

Sorry…my bad. It’s sometimes tough to tell when it comes to the forums.

I’ll redact what I said.

No H8

I prefer to break the mold of trolling and pull mobs away from people with Path of Scars.

They never see it coming

I’m having the same type of issue and it started about the same time yours did.

I’ve been back and forth with Anet and I really feel like I’m getting the runaround.

I have every non-Microsoft service shut down on startup, made 100% sure my antivirus had GW2 set as an exception and it’s still routinely locking up.

For comparison, I loaded up two games last night that are pretty graphic intensive, cranked the settings up and played for a few hours without even a dip in FPS much less a crash.

I’ve also worked with my manufacturer tech support and all diagnostics have ruled out it being a hardware problem.

I’m giving it a few more days before I just decide to find another game to play.

Shaogin.2679:

Ok, so were going with derailing the thread. Cool. Should be another closed Ithilwen thread by the next business day. Grats.

It’s incredible how all of your threads seem to turn into you talking about how much you deserve this back-piece and how Anet hasn’t fulfilled some promise you seem to think they’ve made, and you don’t have a fair shot at getting the back-piece and “hardcore” or “elite” pvp’rs are stepping all over the poor casuals/pve’rs.

If anyone cares to stay on topic, I’m down to discuss. But if you guys wanna continue a conversation with a brick wall, then it’s time to sit back, enjoy the laughs, and wait for this thread to be closed and the next Ithilwen thread to open.

I’ve been saying that since the first ‘I deserve the backpiece’ thread was closed.

The saddest part is people offered suggestions, tips and even going as far as offering to queue with her and she’s refused help.

How and why she’s allowed to continue making threads like this is beyond me.

You could say “well you don’t have to read and/or respond to the thread”, but all that does it become an enabler and show that this line of posting is acceptable and we’ll be inundated with thread after thread like this one.

The moderators really need to put a stop to it. None of these threads are helping the players or the PvP community.

Reading through this thread I’m seeing some of the most ridiculous statements I’ve seen posted anywhere:

‘However the privileged %1 are fully against this ideal because it would be the end of their age of stomping solo players for free wins, titles, and items.’

’ I’ve argued for removing what I consider exploitation by pre -mades that more-or-less act as bullies’

The real travesty is wild statements like this continue to be allowed on this forum and that people that are trying to refute them are being reported like they’re the ones doing something wrong.

I’m going to do what I feel is right and report this thread, as it’s another in the list of OP’s posts that aren’t designed to create discussion, but bring drama to this forums.

I hope justice prevails and this thread gets locked up as it’s already gone on for 2 days longer than it should have.

I run a GeForce 760 Ti video card in my PC and have been cruising along just fine in the game up until 3-4 days ago.

Suddenly I am getting graphic issues where my screen will suddenly go black, flicker then come back. If I Alt+Tab to my desktop I see an item in my notification section saying the display driver stopped working.

I ran through all the diagnostic tools on my PC and spent almost an hour and a half on the phone with the manufacturer tech support and everything checked out just fine. No errors with the hardware, drivers up to date, etc…

I can’t honestly say if this would occur in other games as I only play GW2 these days.

Has anyone else had issues lately and is there possibly something I’m overlooking?